Launching An Internet Business: What To Start With?
Getting Started: Create a Business Plan
You're excited. You have a great idea for a profitable online business. Maybe it is an original idea that has not been marketed online before. Maybe you have come up with a new spin on the ordinary. Whatever it is that has influenced you to start your online business, be sure that you have a plan before you begin. This is not the time to pick it up as you go. These are some basic things that should be included in your business plan.
The business summary should give a brief description of the entire business and is an integral part of the overall business plan. After you have completed the business summary you should begin to list the objectives or the goals that you want to accomplish through the business. Next and perhaps most importantly, you should develop your marketing plan. The marketing plan will address all the specifics of the business. When developing the marketing strategy you should consider the following:
The target market. The target market is the customers that you expect to see visiting your site. For example will your product be more appealing to college students or those who are in retirement?
Consider the competition for your product when determining the marketing strategy. Choose a product that will be seen as unique and useful. Visit sites that are offering the same or similar products. Find out the cost, and how they are marketing their product. Finds out the pros and cons of their business and try to improve your product based on their flaws.
Research the various methods for advertising online. You should become educated about search engines and how they work since each one is different. Also be sure that you know how to submit your site to search engines. You should be prepared to spend a small amount of money on advertising, but the profits that you will gain from the advertisements will prove to be money well spent.
Think about pricing. Again, look at the competition and see what similar products are selling for. Pricing can play a big role in the success of your product since selling a product well below the average price may lead customer to think that there is a problem with the product or that it is not of the best quality. However, pricing items too high could also detour customers.
Determine the shipping method. Be sure that you know how products will be shipped so that you can have shipping details clearly posted on your site. If you are shipping things of great value, you should consider providing shipping insurance. Also think about shipping outside the country that you live in.
Think about the different methods of payment that you will accept. If your business does not accept credit cards, you should be ready to give up half if not more of your sales. If you decide to accept credit cards will you use a merchant account or will you use a third party credit card processing center? Both will help you get started and the third party processing center will handle all of the business so you don''t have to. You should decide which you will use and also if you will accept checks or money orders. It is essential to have a secure server when taking credit cards.
These few things will help your online business to become a great success and also provide you with peace of mind knowing that you have thoroughly thought about and planned for the opening of your online business.
Work From Home: 5 Required Steps To Generate Sales
If you're reading this you are probably between 27-44 years old (although some of you progressive types will be just under 27 and a bit older than 44). You work in a sales-type situation mainly from home. Meaning if you don't get sales you starve. You are a go-getter. You seek to improve yourself and your statistics. Some of you live all over the world, tucked away in your corner of the globe. You have some kind of product that you want to market but need more sales. You have good business sense and are thinking I need to make more sales and I don't know what to do? You want to do it on your own. Sound pretty close? If you make it past the next paragraph you probably are a good person too. Read why the above is exactly what you need to DO when thinking about your own marketing and sales.
How many times have you heard someone you know become a realtor, an insurance agent, a hypnotist, or a financial planner and so on. You know, "So and so got her real estate license." "So and so has his/her own website now?". Wow. Good for them. Do you ever get the feeling that they use the fact that they "started" a new profession or field to basically make others feel small. Have no fear, the reality will set in soon enough that they will have to get clients (and a lot of them) to make it worth their while. If you are one of those people or you work from home and you don't want to make others feel small but want to generate more sales, read on.
Let me enlighten you on the realities of being a "salesmen" in any capacity. Whether you work from home, or you work for a big corporation strictly on sales. If you don't get a high number of sales, you will probably spend more money on your new venture than you make. I mean it. You have to work hard and get a lot of no's before you get enough yes's to make it worth your while.
People always ask me "How did you generate enough sales?" "You must be a natural salesmen". Well, let me tell you I am a good salesmen but that doesn't excuse me from any of the real work it takes to generate sales. But let me give you what I think anyone interested in generating sales MUST do:
1. Niche.
I'll say it again, because you think you may know what I'm talking about: Niche. Almost everyone I talk to that doesn't make it as that insurance agent, mortgage loan officer, real estate agent, or financial planner thinks they have a niche. However after some explorations into their plans you hear they have what they think is a niche. Let me explain. When I was in the foreclosure business, I entered a fierce competitive cutthroat business. Most of the failures came from people who thought because they were in the foreclosure business that was enough. It was a niche in-and-of itself, right? But it wasn't. This is a niche (and you could take it further):
Homes within a zipcode that are 4 bedroom 2 bathroom, with the owner being unemployed 5 months or more with 1-2 children and going through divorce. They will be between the ages of 28-42. They will have had income of $85k within the last two years from a job that required 50% or more on commission. They have loans on their home of more than 80% of the value. Their home is in foreclosure but they are not late on their car payment. Their home is in perfect shape and they want to move on with their life.
With the niche detailed above I am given plenty of opportunities to market directly with little or no competition. Making it possible for me to spend money on advertising to those niche people instead of trying to place ads or talk to the multitudes that the big guys are vying for also.
2. Appeal to Niche emotional needs.
The niche above gives us a clear look into a life of someone. And they are going through something. They are feeling a certain way because of that experience. The fact is they will buy from you, or use your services if you APPEAL to those emotions. If they feel like you understand their situation and are really ready to serve that at a good price they will trust you. In fact give them MORE for their money. You could even charge a premium and you've become indispensable to your niche.
3. Specialty Products for Niche.
My client owns a fruit market. His shoppers usually speak another language than the country's official language. So he must have clerks that speak that language. He has specials on foods only the Niche would buy during the Niche's special holidays. He explains: "Our shoppers like us because on their holidays we put signs up in their language and have specials on food products that coincide with that holiday, and clerks that speak their language."
4. Survey the Niche.
Constantly keeping up with your Niche's likes and dislikes is essential. They are changing as the Niche's grows and goes through challenges of the marketplace. For instance, my client is a real estate agent that exclusively markets, apartment building owners in their 50's, in a particular zip code, in Chicago. Because she has implemented a system of survey she found out that most owners are converting to condo because of the taxes and vacancy rates. These factors were becoming more of a challenge. Why didn't they just sell? Because in your 50's you still need make money and these owners weren't ready to retire. So she found out that her Niche, apartment building owners in their 50's, was changing to Condo Conversion, property management and sales owners. So now she could get products like: Learn how to avoid building code violations when converting your apartment building, Seminar from me, your friendly Condo-Conversion Realtor.
5. Give the most efficient service, with fullest possible quantity and best quality. Have you ever been taken advantaged? Did someone ever rip you off? Did you ever get over charged for something? Did the wait staff treat you rudely? We all have feelings, nothing worse than getting shorted. However, there is nothing better than knowing yourself that you did your homework and gave the best you could give to a client. You have the satisfaction, knowing your client just got the best they could get. And you received a nominal fee for it. You will get referrals because of it. Now you're generating sales just by Niche marketing.
I'm running an experiment on the newest information marketing website turnkey system. In this system, FREE modules on internet marketing that I definitely use. The system advertised the typical promises: "help you make money from home with very little money, time and offers plenty of solutions that can cover most of your knowledge deficiencies." A current example to show anyone who is interested about home based turnkey systems: view an experiment system. See the bank statements to view how profitable or not so profitable.
Follow the money at http://howtocreateonlinemillionaires.com
About the Author
J. Kenneth Ezra is a writer, real estate consultant, producer and Elite Success Coach. His articles have been read by thousands of people looking to do better and make more money. All parties win or no one wins. International Coaching Federation Member #1020768 Follow the money at: http://howtocreateonlinemillionaires.com
Regulations Small Business Owners Need to Know
Time was, you could just hang up a shingle and call yourself a business. As long as you didn't shoot anyone, you were pretty much left alone. Not so any more. A glut of federal and state regulations have come into being, many just over the past few years, and many apply to small businesses. These regulations are meant to accomplish any one of several social goods, such as protecting an individual's privacy and preventing identity theft, preventing corporate financial scandals, or lastly, or so it would seem, just to annoy small businesspeople by increasing their paperwork burden. Fortunately, if you understand these regulations, complying doesn't have to be too difficult or expensive.
If you have a publicly-held company, you'll have to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which sets technological standards and reporting requirements for how companies handle their financial reporting. Passed in response to the recent wave of corporate scandals, fiscal mismanagement and outright theft, Sarbanes-Oxley puts in place a set of requirements for establishing internal controls that ensure the integrity of a company's financial data. Although the requirements are generally the same for companies of all sizes, smaller companies have been granted some flexibility in terms of longer timeframes to become compliant. This Act calls for, among other things, security-related solutions to be put into place to regulate access to financial data, provide an audit trail, and generate detailed reports for the government. The good news is, if you already follow best practices in security, you're already more than halfway there.
If you are in the healthcare industry, whether you are a healthcare provider, pharmacy, or a data processing agency serving the healthcare industry, you'll have to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). HIPAA calls for any company that handles private patient data to guarantee that it is secure and protected against unauthorized access. If your company handles healthcare information of any sort, for any reason, you will have to take technological steps to ensure that it is secure through measures such as encryption, strong two-factor authentication, and adequate firewalling.
And if you're in California, or if any of your customers are in California, you'll have to comply with SB 1386 (the California Information Practice Act). This law requires that your company provide notice to customers whenever any technological hack, or other attack has occurred and caused personal information to be exposed and vulnerable to theft. Meant to safeguard against identity theft, this state law also applies to any subcontractors of companies that maintain information about California residents. This particular law is ground-breaking, since although it is on paper just a California law, it has, in reality, become a federal law. California is the largest state, population-wise, in the U.S., and any mid-size company and many smaller ones have at least a few customers in California, regardless of where the company is actually located. If, for example, your company is in Maine, but your mail order division sold some products to someone in California, you must comply. Compliance simply means that if your network is attacked, you must notify your customers. Although this can be done individually, most companies actually make notification on their Web sites, or through issuing a public press release.
The Visa Cardholder Information Security Program (CISP) isn't a state or federal law, but a mandate from VISA USA created to protect cardholder data. It calls on all vendors who accept credit card payments to adhere to a higher standard of information security for the purpose of guarding against identity theft. CISP calls on vendors to implement standard security measures such as firewalls, anti-virus software, and strong authentication to regulate who has access to customer credit card data. Visa also has set forth a set of best practices. Compliance is easy, and involves adhering to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard which includes a call for implementing standard security technology, restricting access, and encrypting the transmission of any cardholder data.
About the Author
Audrey Hoffman is a successful business woman who writes articles for entrepreneurs, in addition to writing for Speedy Incorporation, a site that helps people incorporate in California and offers business advice . http://www.speedy-incorporation.com
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