The Business Builder 101

It’’s usually the first thing to go in a small business when times get tough.. The advertising budget.  If marketing wasn”t an effective way of getting customers to walk through your door (provided it’’s done correctly) then McDonalds, Coke, Nike wouldn”t spend billions on it annually to remind you about their products.

When you advertise, do you measure it’’s success? Do customers come in asking about something they”ve seen in your ad? A discount, a bundle only advertised? If it’’s working don”t stop.

If you have no clue if your advertising is effective start putting into place checks and balances.

If business is slow re-visit your target markets. Who are you selling to?  If 80% of your customers say for example come into your cafe, buy a coffee and sit and read the paper for an hour then you”re in serious trouble. Which markets are the best for your business? Which ones provide the highest margins and are easiest to convert into sales?

Change your advertising if after looking at your target markets you decided you need to change or if you are getting no results.

The last thing to do in a downturn is to discount. The discount comes straight off your bottom line.  A big sale with 50% off only shows how desperate you are for a sale.

What products and/or services make you money? This is important. If you don”t know how can you adjust your product range to get maximum profits?

The biggest weapon in a small business’’s arsenal is customer service. The personal touch only a small business can really provide.

In the above cafe example having coffee at lunch by itself may be a great item to promote as takeaway special. Then valuable lunchtime seats aren”t taken up with $3.80 coffee drinkers.

Do you have a sales budget? Without a yardstick you can”t reach any goal.

Keep stock under control. Figure out which items are slow moving. Are they a necessary item to stock?  Can you bundle them with another product?  Add value without discounting. This gives the perception of higher value but is cheaper to do.

Do you keep in contact with your past customers? If not start a database (check your obligations for collecting data under your countries privacy acts first) These people know you and will likely buy from you again. Send email or brochures when you have special offers.

Can your turnaround times be improved? Fast service or delivery is not often forgotten.  Improving efficiencies will save you money.

It’s been awhile and I’ve had too much time to read up on things and I’m surprised my web designer is still speaking to me.

It’s finally finished. Why did I make this site? To give people information on all things mind body and spirit. I have so many friends/consultants that have so much interesting information to share that I often find myself saying “you should write a book” Over time with much harassment from me I think a few of them will.

Please have a look and let me know what you think? It will be ever evolving and for entertainment purposes I hope the blog serves it’s purpose.

Lis

So you’ve set up your web site and you’re promoting affiliate products.

Have you got a link cloaker?  Why do you need one?

Well there is some spy-ware that catches affiliate links when clicked on them and replaces the code with the developer’s code so you could be missing out on commissions.

What to do about it?

I’ve found a free link cloaking product called “Profit protector”

Screenshot of Profit Protector

You can pay up to $67 for a link cloaking product. They are complicated to install if you don’t know much about creating databases.

Profit protector creates a java html file that you simply upload to your server and then point to it as per your standard link. People will have to have java enabled in their browsers. Most people do.

You can download this program here

Happy Cloaking!

Guru was great.. Until I gave a Freelancer my project. I paid the first installment on the 15th December. Heard nothing. Emailed them on the 23rd to ask what was happening and was told the person was on holidays so they couldn’t see his file.

I sent an email 2 days ago and got a lot of excuses why I hadn’t been contacted but that the e-book is almost ready! Not that I’ve seen anything of it.

Do I sound a bit annoyed? I am! lol

Definately won’t be using this Freelancer again.

On a happier note I’ve had 6 articles published by ezinearticles.com

I have two contributors of articles for my new website thats about to go up in a few days. (www.amindbodyandspirit.com)

I have e-books being written by two experts in their fields. Another is going to do a training course, and there’s another e-book coming from another expert in the next 4 months.

I guess I need to get this website up and running.

I discovered a program PPC spy it’s a free download that shows you exactly what keywords the PPC advertisers are using, how much their spending and how many clicks they get per day on what words! You can get the free download here

So the desire for starting a business online business is calling you. You have some great ideas; have a lot of enthusiasm your ready to start. You’re going to make a large amount of money and be your own boss. Well wait a minute regardless of the claims of how easy it is to get rich off the Internet. You will find starting an online business is no different than starting a business in the non virtual world. Maybe you need to consider some things first to make this profitable and mistake free.

When contemplating starting an online business you need to take an honest look at yourself. What are your skills? What kind of interests do you have? Many people stared their online business in the fields that they worked. A graphic artist could start a web design company or produce custom graphics. You will also want to think of the type of jobs you truly enjoy.

Do your homework to start your online business. Do not make the mistake of putting all your efforts, money and time into a service you want and try and find a market for it. You can not make people like your service or product. Instead find out what the consumer would like and then design a service or product to fit that need. Also just like a real world business there is a certain amount of risk. By doing your homework you can lessen that risk by finding something people will buy and for how much. This allows you adjust your costs to make sure of a profit.

You also need to study your competition. Find out what they are doing and what works or what doesn’t work. The more information that you have in regards to the market and your competition the better chance of success you will have.

Starting your online business you need to have a plan and follow it. What will it cost to start? Where will you get that money? If you are going to ask for a loan you will need to have a business plan to present to the loaning institution. It is a good idea to have a business plan even if you are funding your online business yourself. It will give you some set goals to look at.

To get your online business going you will need to make a time commitment and keep it. It will be difficult to keep a full time job and work on your new online business. You probably will not be able to accomplish that unless you set a specific time to work on it. Starting an online business and making it profitable enough for you to work full time on it does take some time.

You have done the required research, taken the time and made the commitment for your online business. You feel that now have a great product that the world wants and priced that they can afford and you make a profit. You have one more thing to consider marketing. Your customers need to be able to find your product so they can purchase it. This can be done online, offline, or a combination of them both. You will need to continually study what works and what doesn’t until you find what works for you the best. However, remember what works today, may today may not tomorrow and be able and willing to change your approach to marketing as the consumers dictate.

Yes it’s a form of squid but it’s also a very cool networking tool.. I’ve spent a few hours creating a few lens’s

Here’s the one for this site:  http://www.squidoo.com/thebusinessbuilder101

Here’s a video on how to set up a lens:

If anyone has some tips for Squidoo I’d love to hear ‘em.

Lisa

I’ve chosen a Freelancer from www.guru.com to write the e-book.

Now I need to take photos of some poor examples of advertising for the e-book. So many examples when I’m not looking for them!

We had a webinar with Alex a day ago. 6 hours??? This man should be the spokesman for Red Bull!

Analogies of oil rigs and fish. It did make a lot of sense. I’ve been checking out other students blogs. There are some great blogs out there. so now I’m going to start posting on them to tell them that.

By the 24th (tomorrow) I’m going to go and check out the top ranking sites for business building for small business to see what I’m up against and how I can do it better.

What I did do which has so far been a waste of money was paid a site to get me traffic. I was supposed to receive a report but never did. Shonky! When I find the site i’ll post the link here so you can avoid it.

I’m not so sure that putting your details up on a bunch of clearly “set - up” sites is a good thing for long term traffic.

One of my old Tenants (a hairdresser) now does piercing. Both fall under the beauty category but what happens when a client decides to start screaming whilst their belly button is getting pierced? It’s done in a  little room with no roof that surely will put a dampner on any scalp massage in progress! One of the major things wrong with this business is that the shop front is very open. A full front of glass so you walk past and you can see everyone sitting in their chairs with hair in all states of unstyled and dripping wet to full rollers.
I don’t know about you, but when I get my hair cut I prefer not to sit in a glass box where everyone can see my messed up/washed/wet hair. I conveyed this to the Tenant when they first opened - hence why I only went there once. I offered to put up a false wall at the owners cost to provide some privacy. A year on and I think the wall may be on it’s way now.

Think about your business from your customer’s perspective. Would you like to sit exposed in a hair salon having a really bad hair day prior to being styled? To claim that no one screams when they are getting their body parts pierced is ludicrous.

Why is the Tenant going into another beauty stream? Why does any business owner diversify?  Generally because they aren’t making enough in what is supposed to be their “expertise”. What does a customer think when they see their local carpet shop begin selling ceramics? “Danger Will Robertson Danger!” The customer, if they have half a mind will immediately think the business is not going so well. Will that put faith in them to want to place a carpet order with you? It may be a bigger detriment your business than the small amount in sales gained by selling a completely unrelated item.

Moral of these stories? Don’t diversify just because you’re going out the door backwards.  Do what it is you’re supposed to do well. Figure out how you can provide value to your customers. How can you get them to walk in your door? I’ll be giving you a sneak preview of some of the tips and tricks from my e-book so stay tuned!.

Ok one thing I did learn from all the things I’ve read and Alex has also suggested this.. For a really successful online business you need to provide your own content. Reselling other people’s work unless you get it completely re-written, just wont cut it. I have so many bad e-books from all the freebies given away when purchasing e-books. Although the most exciting one was “gifts in a jar” you can actually cook a cake in a jar and heat seal it so it stores for ages! Sorry got a bit carried away.

The self proclaimed “gurus” out there say that you should write about something that you’re passionate about. Or that you know about. Preferrably there’s a market for it as well.

So I’ve decided to write an e-book to help small business. I’ve gone to www.Elance.com and www.Guru.com which are sites where you can get someone to do anything from writing articles for your blog to writing a program to designing a logo.  It might just be me but I’ve found Guru to be the better of the two in terms of proposals received for my project. Elance they are either really expensive or you get the writers in India contacting you with a 67% rating. I’m down to two potential writers so in a day or so i’ll decide on who gets the project.

Back to self employed small business owners.. I hope in this climate some of them finally seek the help they need before it’s too late! After managing Tenants for over 11 years I’ve seen some great and some not-so-great business practices out there.  The biggest thing a small business owner that’s in trouble can do for a start is to take responsibility for the state of their business. Thats a rather large pill to swallow. Once they realise maybe they don’t know it all, the turnaround can commence.

With a background in Marketing I’ve seen some really bad branding, signage and overall presentation. I don’t believe these things have to cost a lot of money, plus I’ve got a lot of ideas on how to reduce overheads, they are tried and tested in the business I was in.

The e-book should be ready in 4 weeks (not so sure what Christmas will do to the timing)

In the meantime if you’re interested in online marketing get yourself a copy of the free e-book I’m giving away. It gives a lot of tips and hints on how to build your list.

It’s been an interesting few months.

In October I decided that I knew enough about the internet that I too could make money online. How hard could it be?  With 1000’s of people out there willing to sell you their information and each with their own slant.. Complicated!

After spending over A$800 on e-books claiming their systems would make me a fortune, I now own 8 domain names. It was so much fun going to www.adomainname4you.com and picking a domain name that I could own. Such power! Surel

So after making these mistakes (luckily I made a lot in a short amount of time), I finally came across someone great. His name is Alex Jefferys. He really wants his students to succeed. After all the emails I’ve received thanks to buying so many useless e-books I am now a bone-fide expert on online bull-shitters. (excuse my French) So I got as many refunds as possible on the e-books I’d bought.  Now Alex’s course is the only thing I’m concentrating on.. To download a free e-book on Alex’s system click here

Follow me on my journey to making my first $1 and beyond online.