Posts filed under 'business start up'
I really enjoyed a nice round of golf with my son this morning, having a day off work and making the most of a sunny morning before getting down to some of my own work this afternoon.
It brought home to me the the importance of taking some time away from work and enjoying some leisure time, particularly with your kids, if you have any. Although, from the numbers on my score card you can tell that I haven’t been doing this often enough lately 
The main reason being, like many other people starting out in business, I still have a job. I am lucky enough that it is part-time and shift work, which leaves me plenty of remaining time to spend any way I chose. As I have chosen to use most of this time developing my own business at the moment, it is highlighting some dilemmas and issues in the early stages of a business startup that I am sure I won’t have been the first to face.
The first is the time commitment. Working in two different “jobs” the hours can soon add up, and even part-time employment can still be fairly tiring, especially if it involves night work and then fitting in some work on your own business projects whenever you can, gets pretty wearing at times.
This can leave very little time for leisure, sleep and the more relaxing things in life. Which brings to mind two famous sporting phrases which although now cliched still hold a fair degree of truth “no pain, no gain” and “how much do you want it?” The answer to the latter in my case being - a helluva lot! So I am willing to put up with a period of “pain”. As getting the lifestyle you want and to be able to only work if and when you want to, and even then only for yourself, doesn’t come easy, if it did everyone would be doing it.
This leads me on to the next dilemma, which is that you get to a stage in a business where you have learned the methods and have the tools and you begin to see where it could possibly go. Yet, you are limited while there is only you working on it and things can progress slower than you would like.
In internet marketing a lot of the most effective methods to improve performance of websites and sales are to generate more traffic to them by putting a lot of quality, relevant content on your sites as well as out on the net, to link back to where you want the traffic to come. This content takes a lot of time to generate as it has to be higly original to be effective, as I discussed in an earlier post, and therfore is very time consuming to produce.
Like most people there are only 24 hours in my day, so you get to a stage where you know that to really take off you have to start outsourcing a lot of the content generation, particularly the writing, to freelancers. This, of course, costs money which in the early stages you ain’t making a lot of yet. I find this more frustrating than the time issue, because at least you have more control over how you spend your time and when you really need a day off….just take it. But you can’t spend money that you don’t have, well acually you can, but who wants to be indebted to the banks heavily from the outset? Certainly not me! Although obviously looking for some good term finance is a step that most businesses have to do at some point to get the boost that they need. Or even, if the press are to be believed, to very poor term finance. As rumour has it that a very famous panel member on Dragons Den was maxed out on 3 credit cards and nearly lost his house before it all came good!
John
www.TheGardenLovers.com
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
September 3rd, 2007
In the early stages of a business startup it is sometimes worth reminding yourself of the attractions of the field you have chosen and the reasons that led to the decision.
In online marketing luckily this is relatively easy to do. If you compare it with a physical “bricks and mortar” based business it seems there is almost just one big list of advantages.
For starters no spending physical premises is required, anywhere you can use a pc you can conduct this business. Therefore no rates, no long term binding lease to sign and no maintenance cost. Set up costs are also relatively low so risk is minimised from the outset.
Many of the products are non-physical and downloadable so no headaches with storage and stock control. This also means no carrier costs and the market is very large, often global!
Business is conducted mostly via a website and therefore is open 24/7 and is not dependent on your own personal input. Marketing can also be much easier, for example with Google adwords you can write an ad, publish it and start to see an effect within 10 minutes! All of the other traditional options can be used as well e.g. press advertising and direct mail if needed.
Secure online payments also avoid the need for expensive fixed and mobile swipe devices and the whole payment process including follow up and continuing communications to maintain a customer relationship can be automated. This is to name just a few of the benefits the list could go on and on….. No business is without downsides, of course, and online marketing is no different. The main ones seem to me to be:
· It is a very competitive market with a lot of people selling similar products
· A fair amount of technical and IT ability can be required
· It is highly reliant on technology and therefore prone to failure
· As it is a global market there could potentially be some tax related difficulties on profits
All of these can be overcome and, in my view, the benefits far outweigh the downsides, especially when compared with most other forms of business.
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
www.TheGardenLovers.com
August 30th, 2007
Join The Federation of Small Businesses?
I first became aware of The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) when it was recommended by Nick James the well known internet marketing entrepreneur, at his seminar earlier this year.
He spoke very highly of it and outlined a number of the benefits of membership for small business owners. Having investigated it further since then, it seems to me that for anyone either already in or starting up a small business, getting a membership has to be a no brainer.
Not only does it provide an opportunity to network in person at local meetings with likeminded individuals, albeit in a range of different business areas, it is only about 150 quid per year and for this you also get a whole host of other benefits.
These include business related legal advice including some insurance cover if you are unfortunate enough to get a tax investigation, very favourable terms business banking, general business advice, discounted financial and telecom services and the possibility of attractive rate finance just to name a few.
On applying to join I was surprised, especially these days, to be offered a visit to my home by a rep, which I thought was a nice touch. Although in the event, it was perfectly pleasant, but in many ways it felt more like a visit from an insurance agent rather than a business assessment meeting. They did try to get me to sign up to various services on the spot in addition to the membership.
The FSB are a nonprofit making organization though and all profits, we are told, are plowed back in for member’s benefits. So I guess I can deal with a little bit of sales pitch, who can blame them for that?
I plan to give it a year or so anyway to see if I feel I’m getting value for money and I’ll be very surprised if I’m not.
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
August 29th, 2007
After a nice BBQ at the weekend I got back to trying to do a little work. I concentrated yesterday on methods of generating traffic to commercial websites involving writing pieces of text.
I use the term pieces loosely as, when you start to write for online marketing purposes, it quickly becomes apparent that each different purpose requires at least a slightly different structure and content if it is to serve function that you desire. As I am fairly new to this I thought it would be worth sharing my experience.
A commonly used method of increasing sales is to send prewritten messages in a timed sequence to people who have opted-in to your email list in any given topic. The purpose of these messages is to develop a relationship with potential customers. These generally should contain some informative and useful content with little or no sales pitch and although useful should be partly incomplete as the complete version will usually be one of your products which you hope to sell to them at a future point in time. These are called autoresponder messages and once written require little or no effort as they are sent out by the software as scheduled.
There are a number of providers of autoresponders and the one I have opted for seems to be the most recommended by experienced online marketers that I have spoken to and it is called AWeber. This is a subscription bases service and costs about $20 per month. It is very useful but I have found it has a bit of a learning curve to get used to how it handles email messages and lists. Although it is pretty easy to generate the code for your website for email opt in forms etc.
One of the most frequently used content approaches for these early messages to new list members is brief hints or tips on how to do something that is relevant to the subject of the list.
On writing these messages though in order to maximise the benefits of your time and effort it makes sense to use the information in other ways as well. Examples would include as articles for submission to online article directories or even a web page.
The problem that can arise here though is a straight duplicate will be picked up by the search engines and if the purpose of the feature is to generate traffic it won’t work. The problem being that duplicate content is usually not ranked by the search engines. So this defeats the purpose.
A useful way to try to avoid this is provided by a website called dupecop . This handy little program checks the source and the modified version and rates it in percentage terms for originality. To avoid duplicate penalties you should aim for greater than 50% originality.
In addition to the duplicate content problem the text would usually need altering a little anyway, as an email tip would usually be less complete and comprehensive than an article and would also include some personalised information. So writing a fuller version is usually necessary for this purpose and again a web page has different requirements as well and will require a third slight rewrite.
So for any given topic to write about it can require at least 3 versions! This can make it start to feel a little like hard work. It does make sense though, and I think it can be justified as long as the information is genuinely useful and the rewrites are serving a legitimate purpose.
Obviously online marketers who get more successful would outsource a lot of the writing to free lancers although this does run the risk of losing a large element of the character and personality behind the information.
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
August 26th, 2007
As I mentioned before one way to develop an online business, and probably easier to get up and running with, than developing your own products is marketing affiliate products.
Affiliate sales basically boil down to getting paid a commission for selling other people’s products. In the online arena this usually involves advertising a product via an ad link or feature on your website. These links and code are usually provided by the vendors when you set up an agreement with them and join their program. These arrangements are most profitable when you have a high traffic website and target the affiliate links appropriate to the website content.
Details vary between programs in relation to the level of commission, method of payments and tracking arrangements to ensure that you get paid for the sale.
Things can get pretty complicated pretty quickly having to keep tabs on all of these details and a lot of your web real estate can get used up with other people’s ads.
Choosing which affiliate products to market can be based on your website topics, likely good product sellers, high commission levels and just simply believing in the product. I have chosen this method for certain products which to me seemed likely to sell like hot cakes. An example of this is a piece of keyword research software Keyword Elite, for use mainly by online marketers. I was so impressed with this software that I actually dedicated a whole website as a affiliate link to this product, and you can you can have a look at this site here www.KeywordElite.uk.com.
Another novel and interesting affiliate approach is a project that I am doing at the moment which is called My Affiliate Store. I came across this at a Frank Garon internet marketing seminar in London in July 2007.
This is a subscription based system produced by two American online marketers called Len Thurmond and Bruce Safran. They provide a vast range of products from a host of vendors in a wide range of product areas already with pre-arranged affiliate agreements. They also provide a number of web templates to allow easy construction of a website that simply needs to be populated with products of your choice. It also incorporates built in search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to help get your site ranked.
The themes and topics of the site or sites is entirely up to you. I have developed one site on this system which is in the area of gardening. This has the advantage of being a big market, but on the other hand is a highly competitive market. How niche you choose to go is again entirely up to you. Popular wisdom is that the more niche the better as the market will be easier to dominate.
A key element in this system is keeping the content original including editing the imported product descriptions. This helps avoid search engine disapproval consequences but does make the process of building the site a bit more laborious. I have worked gradually at it spending about an hour every other day and grown the site steadily, which the search engines should like.
Traffic to the site is a major key in financial success and the founders recommend steady organic growth with a heavy emphasis on original content. As it becomes established google adsense can also be added to further monetize it. This though, has the potential disadvantage of taking the visitor away from the site so it is a double edged weapon.
Here is the result of my effort so far www.TheGardenLovers.com. I will post some updates as to how things go over the next few weeks and months.
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
August 23rd, 2007
Two to three weeks now after my online marketing seminar season it is dawning on me rather abruptly that making money in online marketing is not as simple as the gurus would have us believe.
The adrenaline rush that you experience after the gurus motivational spiel soon ebbs away when sat at your own pc flicking through your accounts and while the expense column grows the income column shows a big fat zero. Still, I continue to live in hope (and expectation).
If there is one phrase that is repeated time and again in this business it is ‘that you get out what you put in’ and I truly believe that to be the case. It is just that, unfortunately you don’t get it out straight after you’ve put it in!
I’ve been working mainly on three projects over the past few weeks, and I know this itself breaks one of the golden rules ‘complete one project before moving on to the next’. This is easier said than done.
You see, at the start just getting to grips with the basic building blocks of an online business is pretty time consuming itself.
The mounting expenses also make it difficult to resist having a punt at some of the seemingly easier income generation techniques like affiliate product marketing and google adsense. These also to a newbie, at least, are not that easy and a bit of a horse and cart situation can arise i.e. A good adsense site needs to be highly ranked and to get a lot of traffic, but to get highly ranked you can’t just load a site up with google adsense. These projects can easily become distracting sidelines and although I am not giving up on them, they leave me convinced that concentrating on developing your own quality product is THE most important thing.
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
August 22nd, 2007
A 2 hour flight delay! This is not how a budding newbie internet marketers’ supposed to spend his time.
Still, thanks to the gadgetry that is my pda and the mp3 file format I have just spent an enthralling 2 hours listening to a tutorial from the google awords guru Greg Cesar. What an eye opener, the things that he can do with keyword and adwords is truly awesome.
The holy grail of internet marketers is to use ads to get a high click rate (click through rate) by using adwords that don’t cost a bomb. That is what he does and perhaps why he is known as the adwords dominator. He can take a niche market in any area and take on the big boys, getting to top spot in google ads for less than a tenth of their costs and he drives traffic to his sites through the roof.
Of course, I want to do the same. Still it’s gonna take more than one tutorial to get me to that level. So here’s looking to the next 5 tutorials (webinars) in the set and I’ll keep you posted as to how they go and possibly even share some of his secrets with you.
Anyway, now I’m on the flight to London and again thanks to my beloved pda, writing this blog. I’m off to a 2 day master class by internet entrepreneur Nick James to try to get my business kick started. I’ve been working my ass off for about 6 weeks with a hundred and one ideas for web businesses and not yet got a live site. I’m not saying I’ve been messing around, quite the reverse. It’s just that there is a helluva lot of stuff to get in place before launching the web sites that hopefully are going to bring in all of the dough!
4 1/2 hours after leaving home I’m sat being bumped the hell out of on an airport bus to my hotel. Memo to self: At all costs avoid physically travelling when possible and stay by the pc cozy and comfy at home.
Finally arrived at my hotel and within seconds had added 30 quid per night to my bill being unable to resist the executive upgrade. This involved a better room, wi-fi access and, of course, the compulsory late night movie
The Friday night was a membership evening for Nick’s website. This was ok and it was nice to meet fellow members of the forum but it was a little light on content. Still off to the bar afterwards to network, had a few too many beers, a late night and was dog rough for the meeting on Saturday morning.
I was delighted to discover that that this hotel provided proper coffee from the Nespresso range of convenient “pod” ground coffee and it was freshly prepared double espressos all the way, which played a large part in reviving my spirits.
The meeting then kicked of with what is most fundamental in internet niche marketing, which is research your niche and ensure that there is a suitable market. There were two host presenters, firstly Nick James himself who has presence, calm and charisma.
He was a fount of knowledge and experience and presented things in a very clear way. The second presenter was a much less well known entity to many of us, and his presentational style was a bit in your face and OTT for much of the audience’s tastes. He was very well meaning and socially very pleasant though, it has to be said.
The research material included how to come up with potential product areas, such as from personal interests hobbies, magazines and then assessing market size using keyword search tools, google ads and hot web topics etc. Then it covered some further market research survey tools such as askdatabase.com and how to offset costs partially by affiliate marketing.
Lunch was provided as a perfectly palatable buffet, the coffee continued to flow and people gradually overcame their inhibitions and networked more as the weekend wore on.
The content continued with product creation and covered how to produce text based material, audio and video and what the correct tools to use are in each of these areas. Important marketing strategies were also covered including the price funnel of increasingly expensive products.
A key area for success in most of these areas is knowing when and what to outsource to preserve one’s own time for where it’s needed most which is business development.
Next up was membership sites and marketing product licenses. Then there was a fantastic session on writing effective sales copy by a chap called Raja Hireker and it was emphasized that this is a critical area to get right to maximise sales revenue.
Then marketing your site and traffic generation and unusually for a web marketing seminar a fair bit of time was spent on offline methods. These included newspaper and magazine ads and direct mailing through rental of mailing lists from hot buyers in related product areas.
There was only a brief time spent on google adwords and this was presented by a relatively successful forum member.
The meeting was wrapped up by a brief summary of material covered and some generous freebies with a usb stick full of material and utilities and a tape set of a previous seminar.
As ever I after such a seminar I am reeling with information overload yet buzzing with enthusiasm and impatience to get a site up and selling.
Still first things first. That is get back to my wife and kids, chill (but not for too long) and have an even nicer double espresso at home.
Now two days after returning from the masterclass I have worked my ass off trying to get the building blocks in place to run my own internet business.
Now it’s supposed to be inexpensive to set up an online business, and it is compared with a traditional bricks and mortar business. Still almost 5 grand into this arena for me in a 6 week period it certainly doesn’t feel like it.
Expenses include relevant seminars, registering domain names, web hosting, web design software, various software utilities, market research tools, outsourcing some product production design and copywriting, auto responders, shopping carts, some new hardware, setting up a limited company etc. The list goes on and on.
Then there is getting to know all the new software tools and reading various forums which a major time commitment. Not that I am saying it’s not fun but both the time and the money soon mount up. This engenders a deep seated desire to get some money flowing back ASAP.
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems (or as you are told) and what I am finding is that the devil, as ever, is in the detail I.e. The nitty gritty little details at every level. Such as what, if any, additional options to choose with a domain name, how to set up a clink bank affiliate and how to interpret all of your google ads research.
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
August 21st, 2007
