Right?

Not really, it’s not that I am not in favor of spending anything on marketing (in fact it’s quite the opposite); however you shouldn’t start spending heavily, at least before you’ve made the most of all those freely available platforms. Of course, all of these free marketing mediums will take some time, planning, and execution before you can reap the benefits; still it’s better than wasting hundreds on whatever option comes your way.

Let’s take a look at the five reasons why you shouldn’t spend heavily on Internet Marketing.

Reason #1 – SEO is free:

In spite of incessant grumblings and complaints coming from small businesses (about how hard it is becoming for small businesses to rank anywhere near the top) Search Engine Optimization is still a fundamentally free yet wonderful way to get new customers. It’s true that you need to spend some time on learning the nitty-gritty, and then spend even more time on creating content or building links for your website; still optimizing your website doesn’t necessarily require a spendthrift like many other advertising options.

It’s all about following some simple rules of seo and putting some extra efforts in creating good content on regular basis. And when we look at the rewards of getting top ranks for relevant key phrases, they are hard to match, since you will be getting a continuous stream of prospective customers searching at Google, and coming your way.

Reason #2 – Social Media is Free:

There’s a lot written on the grandeur of Social Media, and how you can use the sheer size of community to your advantage. The best part about all this is that social media is free and it doesn’t cost a dime to create a profile and get in touch with your target customers.

Remember that Social Media is not limited to just Facebook or Twitter, there are a lot and lot of websites that you can utilize, for example one of those social deal a day websites or some social networks catering your targeted market. Learn to create social media presence for your business.

Reason #3 – Blogging is Free:

Ok, not entirely free, as you will have to spend some bucks to get a domain and a web host, but launching a blog can benefit your small business in so many ways.

• First of all, you will build a lot of integrity by sharing valuable information related to your business or industry with your customers.
• Second, you will get to learn your target customers more via their feedback.
• Third you will be established as a credible person in your industry, and not to forget that you can add a store latter on to reap the benefits.

Blogging is a fun, it’s simple, and it sells.

Reason #4 – Email is Free

If you’re not ready to use any of the aforementioned mediums like Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, or Blogging, you should at least make the most of the evergreen medium of Email Marketing. You can use the emails to get repeat sales from your existing customers, and you can also use the email newsletters to attract new customers.

It will take time in building an email subscriber’s list, but each new subscriber is an asset and worth the effort and wait. Learn why your business needs an email list.

Reason #5 – Google Places is free:

According to Google, 97% customers search online when they are looking for a local business. The number might change from one region to another (especially in less developed countries), but nobody can deny the fact that more and more customers are now developing a habit of doing an online search and price comparisons before taking the final decision.

So, it’s very important for you to get your business on Google places, which is free. Again, you can’t just stop at adding your business to their database, you will have to optimize your listing to appear on the top, but that shouldn’t cost you much.

So those are the five solid reasons you shouldn’t be spending anything on Internet Marketing, mainly because you have got so many wonderful yet free mediums in the offing.

image:ezypay

Believe it or not, that’s how our company, TicketKick all started. Our President, Greg Muender did in fact get three traffic tickets in three weeks when he started college at San Diego State University in 2006. Having the stubborn, think-outside-the-box mind that he does, he thought, “There’s got to be a way out of this.”

Looking for Business Success ?

One ticket in California is expensive enough, and surely three of them very well may have ruined his college experience. Greg faced severely high ticket fines, enormous insurance hikes, a possible suspension of his driver’s license, and a seriously sad start to his college career. So he did some research.

“Just Google It”

Greg found out that the California court system allows you to do a trial by mail, through a trial by written declaration. He researched the laws, found some loopholes, talked to some attorney friends, and contested all three of his tickets through the mail. Two of them were completely dismissed. The third one he was found guilty for, but was still able to take traffic school. He kept a clean record and saved thousands of dollars. Friends and family started coming to him for help with their tickets. He started charging for his help, but only if he got them out of their ticket. That’s when the money back guarantee that TicketKick is so famous for originally started.

In 2009, Greg asked me, his girlfriend to quit my job and come on board to take over the customer service end so he could focus on the business end and legal aspects. We started with two desks in his bedroom. Within that same year, we moved into an upscale executive suite, hired two other employees and our team kept growing.

Within the next two years, our company grew to 7 employees, a team of outside legal and marketing consultants, and is set to break a million in sales by the end of 2011. TicketKick to this day offers a 100% money back guarantee, maintains about a 70% dismissal rate, and offers the lowest prices in the industry, giving thousands of drivers with traffic tickets in a bad economy a big incentive to kick their ticket. Okay, I’m honestly not trying to sell you on our service, but there’s a point to it all.

How We Did It ?

Now, of course, whenever I tell people what I do for a living, they say, “That’s so cool!” and yes, it feels to be on this side of the law. Everyone gets traffic tickets, but we didn’t do it for the popularity.

Greg shares his secrets of business success:

Regarding what has contributed to overall success in building our business in a bad economy, Greg says his key tactics include “providing a service that people really need, good or bad economy. Find a way to take advantage of a bad economy. People always like saving money, and that’s even more prevalent in a weaker economic environment. Providing a service that fills a need, instead of a want, is a great recipe for a stable company.”

A couple of Greg’s mottos include “Just Google it,” when it comes down to finding answers or better ways of doing things, and “I’m a master at finding people who are better than me at what they do, and bringing their skills onto my team.”

Customers First

Our core product as a legal document assistant, of course, is successful legal defenses for the customer and helping them kick their ticket, but it’s not our only focus. Regardless of how our their case turns out, we want each customer to leave satisfied with our service. We work diligently in only hiring the friendliest and helpful team members. The job market’s tough right now, and whenever we post an ad to fill a position, very qualified people with years of legal experience just pour in. We realize, however, that when it comes to customer service, knowledge and experience do no good unless the employee is willing to go above and beyond in meeting customer’s needs. Greg always makes this very clear in our employee meetings.

He says: “If someone calls us looking for the nearest Taco Bell, you jump on google and find it for them. If they ever get a traffic ticket, they’ll know who to call first because we’ve helped them before.”

Point being: Don’t skimp out on good customer service, in any business you’re in, and always maintain good business ethics. Train your employees to do whatever it takes to leave the customer satisfied. Many times we’ll go against our own terms and conditions to leave a customer happy.

Of course, we don’t endorse reckless driving. How does Greg feel about those 3 traffic tickets back in college?

Well, he certainly isn’t proud of potentially breaking any laws on the road, nor does he advocate it. And we won’t get into whether or not he was actually speeding. That’s not the point here. He surely did turn a potentially very bad situation into an amazing business opportunity just by doing some initial research.

We are very strong believers that out of something bad can always come something good, as long as you’re open minded, look for opportunities, and ultimately want to work to help others in some way, and helping people is our passion.

image: lasse

It can be tempting, when you’re first starting out, to do certain tasks in-house that you’ll probably outsource later on. For example, if you have a little bit of design background, you might create your own website. If you fancy yourself a decent writer, you might create the copy for your business’ online store.

Accounting is one of those areas where it’s easy to skimp as a new business. You put off hiring an accountant until some future date, loosely defined as “when I need one.” Yet, this isn’t always the best move.

Here are some compelling reasons why you might want to hire an accountant from the early days of your business:

An accountant can help with entity formation.

For some businesses, a sole proprietorship is perfect. If you’re an independent contractor whose industry doesn’t allow you any opportunity to grow your business beyond what you alone can handle, chances are you’re fine with a simple DBA certificate.

If you’re like most businesses, however, you want to grow. Moreover, you want the tax and personal property protections that can come from forming an LLC or a corporation.

Having an accountant on hand can help you weed through the pros and cons of entity formation in those early stages. She can tell you what makes sense for your business today, as well as what will make sense six months or six years down the road. Not only that, she will help you make the transition from one company form to another in as painless a manner as possible.

An accountant can provide money-saving tax advice.

You’re not a tax expert. If you were, you’d be running a tax business. Instead, you’re good at what you do. While you’re a smart person and can figure out your taxes with the help of some software, chances are that an accountant can identify tax efficiencies that you might miss.

In fact, having an accountant on hand can help you make smart choices from the tax perspective. Because of the complexity of tax law, there are some purchases, for example, that can actually save you money just by making them at the right time.

Your accountant knows what’s going to save your business money on the tax bill. Moreover, he’ll help make sure you’re meeting your tax obligation and not caught unawares with a surprise bill.

In addition, having an accountant through the year will save you money at tax time. Rather than having to try to scramble to get together all of the important financial information you need, your accountant can simply look back through the records she’s created and file your taxes.

Hiring an accountant now minimizes future accounting complexities.

By bringing in an accountant from the beginning, you’re certain the books are done right. The last thing your business needs is to discover, three years from now when you do hire an accountant, that you have a huge past due tax payment.

Beyond taxes, though, accountants can save you from a number of complex and sometimes-difficult situations. Your accountant will help you:

• Work through payroll issues to make sure you’re handling everything in accordance with employment practices and tax law. This is especially useful if you have a combination of employees and contractors at your business.
• Handle regulatory audits for certain fields. Some businesses have pretty steep financial reporting requirements, and a competent and dedicated accountant can help you meet those regulatory requirements.
• Know whether your business is truly making money. Many small businesses start up and the owners think they’re doing great. They buy more equipment, more inventory, and more advertising. Six months in, they’re deeper in debt than when they first started and sales have actually dipped. An accountant helps you understand the real numbers behind your business, and know whether you’re truly being successful.

You’re good at what you do. You’ve got a great product or service, and you’re willing to do what it takes to make your business to succeed.

In order for that to happen, however, you need a system of competent employees, contractors, and service providers. Bringing in an accountant at the early stages of your business just makes sense. It frees you up to do what you’re really talented at: growing your business.

image:zoli

For business there are still plenty of reasons to get a BlackBerry — especially the new BlackBerry 7 smartphones, which are undoubtedly the best BlackBerrys to date.

There are downsides to the BlackBerry, too, so it’s best to approach this from both angles. When does the BlackBery work for business users, and when does it not?

Favoring BlackBerry

1. The keyboard. One advantage BlackBerry has retained throughout the years is its physical keyboard. For some this might not seem like a big deal. Ask a former BlackBerry user who switched to iPhone, and she’ll tell you that the iPhone’s virtual keyboard works just fine. And it does. The average consumer likely won’t notice a big difference. But a business user will.

An attorney friend put it best. To paraphrase: When you’re on a plane, emailing a junior associate about a brief, emailing your boss about another brief, emailing a judge’s clerk to reschedule a hearing, and the flight attendant has just come by to tell you to turn off your cell phone for the third time, you come to appreciate the keyboard.

The keyboard simply makes for faster and more efficient messaging. It helps avoid the perils of autocorrect. That’s because it’s familiar, even if we’re typing with our thumbs. We just respond better to the tactile feedback of a physical keyboard. That might rule out a touchscreen BlackBerry device, such as the BlackBerry Monaco, but there are plenty of BlackBerry smartphones that still have physical keyboards.

2. Core functions. Amidst heavy competition, BlackBerry has managed to maintain its superiority in core functions. That is, they still feature better email, calendar, and contact apps than Android and iPhone. Since these are the primary reasons a business user buys a smartphone, it stands to reason that the BlackBerry might be the best option.

How is BlackBerry better at core functions?

• The interface is tried and tested, and has undergone only minor tweaks over the years.
• The inbox is easy to manage, and managing multiple inboxes is even easier.
• There are icons for each inbox, and there is a universal app that combines them all.
• The real difference is in the delivery method. BlackBerry uses proprietary servers to encrypt data, so it is not only secure, but also delivered instantly.

Calendar and contacts are pretty much on the level with iPhone, but it’s pretty difficult to screw up those two. (Then again, a look at Android’s contact system might prove that wrong.) BlackBerry’s advantage in messaging is one reason that businesses still choose it over the sexier alternatives.

3. Distraction-free. The iPhone and Android sell well to the consumer market because they’re filled with apps. Both the App Store and the Android Market have far, far more apps than BlackBerry App World. They also have more of the most popular apps. This might be and advantage to consumers, but it is not necessarily so to business users.

Apps distract. That’s what they’re there for. That might be welcome on a commute or during down time. But that’s not why a business user gets a smartphone. He gets a smartphone to more efficiently conduct business.

• If apps are cutting into that efficiency, it might be best to not have them at all. And that’s where the BlackBerry has an advantage. It might be a strange one, but it works for some users.

Disfavoring BlackBerry

1. Lack of software. Yes, the lack of software might keep the BlackBerry distraction-free. That could work for some users. Other users need certain software, perhaps proprietary software, to conduct business on a smartphone. On BlackBerry this might not be possible. While developing for the platform isn’t necessarily more difficult than for other platforms, it seems that there are more obstacles in the way.

Disfavored Blackberry user....

There is also the possibility that certain organizations use particular apps. If those apps aren’t available for BlackBerry, that makes life quite difficult. There’s a better chance they’ll be available on the iPhone.

2. Cost and usage. With many carriers, the iPhone and BlackBerry will incur the same data costs. While AT&T has a lower tier data plan that could appeal to BlackBerry customers, they are the exception. Other carriers offer a higher baseline. BlackBerry users will rarely hit that baseline, but iPhone users might. That is to say, iPhone users will get more bang for their buck. That’s certainly one justification for spurning the BlackBerry.

3. Outages. As mentioned above, RIM has top of the line push email services, because all of its data is routed through its servers.

• Unfortunately, as everyone learned a few months ago, those servers can crash. Sometimes they can crash for days on end.
• This isn’t common, but every so often BlackBerry devices will experience a massive outage. That can kill productivity, especially for organizations that rely on smartphones for communications.

Outages might not happen frequently and they generally don’t last long, but those precious hours can cost businesses plenty.

However, with all these favoring and disfavoring in mind Blackberry will be one of the best alternative for the Apple’s business gadgets.

• iphones and blackberries distractions
• most popular blackberry foy small businesses
• most popular business apps not available on blackberry

You can quickly create a digital product and push it to people – however, do that product helps the buyer ? do that product reaches the right audience ? do that product makes you rich than before ? do that product finds you a top place in market ?

There are lot of cross questions, i can ask you. Now it looks like, building product and bringing to market requires lot of work, right ?

One of the most important aspect is selling the product and definitely, you must have a web page or a dedicated site for that. The content that you write to push the product on that page is your sales copy.

A Sales Copy is the face of your product. Hence it should be good enough to attract the visitors and more important, it should convince the visitor to buy the product.

In this article, i will take you through the process which helps you to write better sales copy for your product that sells. Even i am working every day to launch my new products and i exactly keep these tips in mind….

Define the Purpose of Sales Copy.

You have to make it straight to the point and make your audience to see the point. You really need to tell them, what you want from them ? and what are you really offering ?

First of all, you must define the purpose of writing a sale copy and you must be clear with the message. This way, when you are clear with your purpose and message, definitely the visitor will understand what you saying.

Even your visitor expects to understand the purpose of product before buying.

Don’t distract your visitor from the purpose, make it simple !

Add Descriptive Feature List of the Product.

When you are selling a product, after its purpose – the visitor wants to know its features. Before placing an order, they need to understand the features of the product and what are all its special qualities.

More important: The visitor wants to know, how the product helps !

So make you product sales copy descriptive and list down all its great features. Tell exactly, what are the problems your product solves ? This helps to convert the visitors into customers !

You can even explain, how it works and make your visitor know from screw to bolts of your product features.

Wisely Tell Product Price.

Never over price a product more than its value and never make it cheap less than its value.

Be reasonable.

Consider the fact that you need to earn more than what you have spent to make such a product but never make your prices too high without properly showing its value.

• The right approach, show all the product features and its value first then tell the price. Don’t immediately show the price before showing the product features.

Add Videos/Screen shots about Product

To let your customer know more about your product a video or a presentation with screenshots will be very useful. In this way they will know, how your products looks like and what are the things that it can really do for them.

Video about the product must include some explanation while actually using the product to get the attention as well as eagerness of the people to have one.

With video clips, you need to add a few explanation, definitions and tips and tricks as well as guide on how to use the product and other information needed for the customer to know.

Tell What Problem the Product Solves ?

Always state the problem and show the product as a solution.

Remember to tell them what your product solves and be precise about it. For example, if your product is a wordpress plugin, write the problem of wordpress blogger first and then show, how the wordpress plugin helps to solve that problem.

In this way you are actually telling them to buy your product unconsciously – psychological way of selling !

Have Testimonials (Get Customer Feedback’s).

Remember to ask for a feedback about your product – from your customers.

It will be unnatural to show testimonials for a brand new product. However, when you are able to attract few customers, you can contact them and ask for a feedback.

If you are getting positive feedback’s, you can put them as testimonials for your product.

You can dedicate a page in your site to share all testimonials from your customers. This actually, drives the new visitors to buy the product and this greatly builds TRUST.

As long as you are able to gain such trust, your product sells hot and in fact, you can bring the buyer again to buy your next product. This way, you can gain Repeat customers.

Conclusion…

When you want write an effective and better sales copy, all you have to follow – present all things necessary in order to turn visitors into customer.

Don’t over promote and keep in mind that not all marketers are liars !

image:ashwind

When it comes to online based business, strategies are important at each stage of your business. However, your goals are even more important than strategies. Because without goals, you could not move up with your business or you don’t know where it goes.

Basically, goals are the driven factor for strategies.

The action plan comes into picture only when you have goals.

In this article, i will discuss how to set strategies for your business ? The idea is to, follow proven strategies right from the beginning by following others success. This is not a copycat idea, instead you have to identify and follow the same, on how people had grown their business.

Why To Follow Others ?

You may ask, why do i follow others strategy ?

The greatest advantage is: you are fool proof and out of risk (at least 50%).

How ?

Business involves lot of experimentation and at most cases, you could not predict the exact outputs. It varies from time-to-time and market-to-market. At the same time, when there are proven strategies – you can easily follow it which definitely takes you in right direction.

As the strategy is proven to work for others, it works for you too when followed correctly.

List Down Successful Businesses & Identify Their Strategy.

You have decided to follow proven strategies. Now the next step is finding whom to follow.

The steps are:

• List down few businesses say: successful ecommerce web sites, successful blogs in a particular market, successful Internet marketers, successful online service providers (ex. web design solution) etc.
• Understand their business and identify the growth strategy like: their source of traffic/visitors, their exact product/service, how they serve the customers/visitors, what are their income sources ?
• Try to become a customer (say, make a small purchase from the ecommerce web site and understand their process).
• Spend few days to watch their activities online and also, try to understand their background activities.

Now, you have the successful businesses and understood, what they are doing and how they are operating their business ?

List down all these strategies as a flow diagram or as steps – to understand better.

Check If Works for You (do a mapping).

Definitely, you will be having a business idea or proposal. Now map it to each of the strategies that you identified.

• For example, if you are willing to open a service based business – map all the strategies of successful service business to your own. By doing this, you will get to know whether it works for your business or not.

If you are finding more than one strategy then try to combine them to make a new strategy for your business.

• For example, my own strategy is to build a great blog and turn into business.
• Currently, i am in the process of building a blog – very soon i will turn this into a big business by introducing “profitable products” around it. This strategy, i identifed the same way from other successful bloggers/IM’s.

Your Own Action Matters.

For a business to grow, nothing will happen until you do the action.

Once you are ready with your business strategy, make a plan and stick to it. Concentrate on the action and do it well…it works best.

Following a proven strategy gives you more confidence as you are clear with what you are doing now ? and what you will do next ?

Now, what is your strategy ? do you follow others proven strategy ? share a comment….

image:ka

• proven buissness success strategies

Online businesses are same like the real world business and you have to take it serious – that’s my perception. In most cases, such beginners end up running a blog (with Google Adsense) which only makes few cents. Finally, you end up giving way.

Basically, the lack of knowledge, experience and curiosity towards earning are the major tiebacks of online business.

At the same time, when you think online business as a real world business, you won’t get into that mess. As a beginner, spend time to explore, understand what really is an online business, gain the practical knowledge and then get into the work. This way, you could survey and make a lot for the long term.

In my case, i started this blog as a hobby and slowly, i realized the seriousness of online business and now i am completely in a different mode towards building great businesses, products.

In this article, i will help you towards making money for the long term and interestingly, you don;t need to work hard every day.

First, Have an Idea.

Every business starts from a silly idea, you and me are not an exception. You can think something unique or something that no one had tried before.

• Explore your own knowledge and try to address the problems in a particular market.

I mean, your idea should address a problem and that’s the very basic requirement for a business to begin.

On the other hand, you don’t need to be unique, you can also find an existing idea/product in the market and alter the methodology to replicate in your business.

Any way, its the Time which nails down, how your idea works – because until you get into the work, you don’t know whether the idea works or not.

Have a look on this another article on new web site ideas.

Build your own product.

With my own experience, there are 3 types of online based businesses like:

• Type 1: Offering a service and getting paid
• Type 2: Selling others product
• Type 3: Selling your own product

Its up to you on which track you want to go.

• Type 1: If you are talented and highly capable to serve customers then open up a service business. Example: web design, banner design solutions
• Type 2: If you have the capability to appeal audience and push a product then simply, sell others product. However, you have to work every time to find new products and new audience so that you can make continuous sales. Example: affiliate marketing.
• Type 3: The last type, build your own product and sell it. You have to work at the beginning and once established, you can get into maintenance mode – however, money rolls in every day.
• When you compare type 2 and type 3, my choice will be type 3 – because there you have to work once and leave the product in the market (to others). You don’t need to work hard every day like type 2.

So the summary is:

• have an idea (spend time to identify its profitability)
• turn your idea into a product
• leave to others for selling
• take the back seat & count on profits….

Do Initial Marketing.

Product development is a tough process however, when you are clear with what you are going to do and the exact purpose of your product – you can make the process simpler.

A product can be anything a digital downloadable component (i am not speaking about physical products). For example, iPhone App is a downloadable product.

Once your product is ready, the next step: do initial marketing. I call it as, Push Marketing.

Because, when you are releasing the product into the market, no one knows about it. You have to push the product and show it to others.

• SEO, Social media, advertising are few of the ways to push market your product.
• Learn the rules to advertise online business.

Get into maintenance/support mode.

It is true that, the real work starts once product is released. Yes, the product is released and its being used by your customers. This is the mode where you have to support them.

When you are expertise with your product, customer support becomes simpler. You should be able to convince the customers and solve their problems, if any.

However, based on the complexity of your product, you can quickly move into maintaining/support mode.

• You can setup a support forum or wiki specific to your product and this releases you from hard work. And you are almost done with the product – the profit process is frozen here.

Do Periodic Marketing.

It is not like once you are into maintenance mode, you don’t need to work any thing. In order to survey/grow with your business for long term, you have to periodically market the product.

You have to make every one aware that your business is still alive and your product is here to serve new customers.

Do periodic marketing, say once in 2 months and also, you can spend some time to enhance your product in order to make is competing with other products in the market.

Make others to Sell It.

The greatest advantage of building product is that: you can make others to sell it.

Many of the successful Internet marketers are doing this only: even they outsource product creation and make others to sell it by sharing an affiliate commission. Learn what business functions to outsource ?

This is one of the best strategy which makes you money for the long term without doing much work every day.

Final Thoughts…

Don’t get into the beginner’s mess, understand: how to build products and take it to the market.

See, what other successful Internet marketers are doing and follow their strategies – so that you can easily inscribe into the success path. Check this Treps column from entrepreneur magazine for role models.

• On the other hand, you can build a great blog in a particular market – upon building, you can push both your products as well others product easily which makes you even more quick profits – This is the strategy that i am following today !
• Understand these steps to successful online business start up.
• Take this short free beginners course on steps to start online business.

Think smart, have short term as well as long term plans and work smart….

image:wahbain

• how to make money long term
• making money long term

In other kinds of small businesses such as a shop, or a trade based self employed contractor, the operation is clearly defined. You employ people to carry out the work you can’t do yourself and if you should die your life insurance policy would allow that to continue. It is a similar situation if you were to become incapacitated and could no longer manage the business itself as disability insurance can be arranged to do the same.

Unexpected Happenings With Your Online Business.

A online business is a different kind of small business in that most of the work, if not all of it, is carried out on a computer and if that is your business you will most likely be the only person who knows how it works, where all the passwords are, your contacts, and how, and to whom you outsource any extra work to.

Therefore, to prepare your web based business for the unexpected, the first thing you should do, like all other small business owners, is have a comprehensive life insurance policy that will provide adequate ongoing funding so that any dependents you leave behind will be able to carry on their lives in a similar fashion to that they were living whilst you were there to provide for them.

It is just as important for you to have yourself insured against becoming badly injured in an accident or contracting a serious illness that leaves you disabled and unable to earn a living in your own right.

Once you have these main basic personal needs attended to you can turn your thoughts to what would happen to your web based online business itself?

Now, How To Prepare Yourself ?

Some of these thoughts should go to ensuring the following factors are taken into account:

• Trusted People. Have someone who you know and trust who would be capable of carrying on the small business you have created, or at least have it prepared for sale, if that is the wish of the family. A good person to fulfill this role would be a spouse. If you have a blogging business place any contact details in a folder on your computer, or memory card, that advises of any blog partners who may be able to help, especially in the initial transitional period.
• Advertising & Affiliate Accounts. You will also need to have all the passwords that are pertinent to the running of your web based small business filed away in the same folder. These passwords would be necessary for somebody trying to come to terms with the running of your small business so they could carry on your advertising and affiliate programs as well as managing your business income.
• Have Blog Details. It is not uncommon these days to have other people online who do some of your work for you. Many bloggers don’t write all their own blogs anymore. If this is true in your case you will need to add details of all these people in your folder as well.
• Web Hosting Account. Your web host is a very important part of your web based small business. You will therefore need to include the password and details of your web host. If you fail to do this it will only be a matter of time before the web hosting expires, the site collapses and your platform for earning online will be no more.
• Paypal and related details. If you are using PayPal or some other online account it will be important to include these passwords and any other necessary details. Any money remaining on your PayPal account at the time of your death will have to go into your estate and the ability to access these funds will also be important for that reason as well.
• Web site / Data backup. All small businesses, whether it is web based or not, will have to have a file back up system built in, in case of a computer hard drive crash. The whereabouts, and how to access your web based business’ back up details, has to be explained in the same folder along with all the other login and instruction details.
• Official agreements/partnership Info. It will also be necessary to include instructions on how the small business operates. Such things as any agreements you may have arranged with any other people or business, who you can call on for any help if required, in fact anything you can think of that would make things easier.

If you have managed to have your life and disability insurances taken care of, and then have the above information stored away on a memory card (in case your hard drive crashes), your small business has a better chance of surviving than it would otherwise.

A web based small business is too easy to overlook when its creator dies or becomes incapacitated yet it could survive as a great financial aid and legacy for your family for many decades to come if proper instructions are recorded.

Kristy Ramirez writes for Life Insurance Finder Australia, a free insurance comparison website, where she helps people to compare and select the best total and permanent disability insurance policy to meet their needs at the cheapest possible price.

image:lumax

• how prepare business that goes online
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• what preparation work you shoudl do for a online fashion business

Increasing your online business income is not a simple task because you have work a lot with dedication. In fact, it takes time and you have to experiment with different strategies so that your online business grows every day. You have to set goals and work smart to achieve those goals.

In this article, i will take you through those strategies involved in increasing your online business income that too for the Long Term.Yes, you have to think for the long term so that you grow along with the market and its trend.

With my blogging business, i do plan for the long term however, i break them into short term goals so that i could achieve them faster. Okay, lets get into the topic…

Set Goals and Plan For It.

In general, when you are looking to grow (at any place) you have to set goals. Without goals, you are like eye-closed and you will loose your way. This is highly applicable to online business because of its flexible nature. I mean, online businesses are easy to drive in terms of employing your own ideas/strategies. Hence having goals – works better.

When you have goals, you will get inner drive to work and automatically you will work more to achieve it. Basically, you have to find your passion which drives the growth naturally.

Take your business as your passion.

As a first step, set goals in terms of driving traffic, finding new customers and income.

For example:

• Income goal – I will earn $100K in 1 year
• Traffic goal – I will double the traffic in 3 months
• Customer goal – I find 50 new customers every day

If you are an individual working with your online business, have reasonable goals that are easy to achieve. In that case, have short term monthly goals and work for it.

Once you are clear with your goals, make a plan. Simply, write down the various steps involved in achieving the goals – this will be simplest business plan ever.

Important, you must follow the plan and work towards the goal, never give up !

Read more about preparing an online business plan.

Drive Lot of Traffic (Targeted).

The success of any online business either you run an eCommerce web site or building a blog or selling digital products online – you need traffic.

Traffic is the source of income – the amount of visitors that you drive decides your online business income.

Naturally, when the traffic increases your business income also increases.

That’s the fact.

However, you have to drive people who are related to your business.

For example, if you are selling fashion products – you have to find people who are interested in fashion – this creates the chances of getting more sales.

• SEO plays a major role in driving targeted traffic especially from Google. The search market is dominated by Google and you have to make your web sites optimized for Google. Otherwise, your business won’t grow faster.
• Alternatively, you could employ paid advertisements which quickly brings in targeted traffic (if you are ready to invest money) however, you have to optimize your pages for maximum conversion.

Diversify Your Online Business Dependencies.

When it comes to online business, there are variety of opportunities available right from building web sites, attracting people, driving traffic and effective monetization. I mean there are lot of opportunities to diversify the dependencies.

Diversification is really required because you should not dependent on one source – when that source fails, it greatly affects your business.

For example, you should not dependent only on SEO – instead, diversify your traffic sources from other alternatives like social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, G+) and traffic from other web sites (referral traffic).

• Similarly, list your current income sources and identify the alternative sources of income. Utilize the alternatives.
• For example, you may be selling your product yourself – in that case, bring in affiliates and share a commission, this quickly sells your product more than you expect.

Never become dependent with one source of income – always diversify your income sources.

• Go through my another article on how to diversify your online business dependencies ? which explains more on this topic.

Do Experiments (but follow Proven Strategies).

Experimentation is part of every business. You have to do experiment every time with different strategies. Based on your goals and business model, experimentation varies.

Whatever experiment you do, in the end you have to measure the results. Collect data and see, how you are growing and what are all the sources of income boost. Tweak your strategies and look for improvements. Not only to increase your income, you could do experiment towards every different goals.

• As a note: spend some time to understand your competitors and also, any other grown business in your/other market.
• Learn how to dominate ? and beat online business competition
• Identify their growth strategy and understand how they grown their business.
• Simply, employ the same strategy for your business according to your goals.
• I mean, follow proven strategies from other successful people (i don’t say to copycat their business, instead follow their business model).
• This way, you are more than 50% safe with your business and that proven strategy definitely works for your business too.

Final Thoughts….

Increasing your online business income for the long term is not a simple task, you have to set goals and plan for it. Diversify your income sources and other traffic sources, do more experiments until you identify the best income source for your business. Follow proven business strategy from other successful people.

When you are not able to follow all these tips – just work to help people with your business. Your online business grows non-stop and incomes increases naturally….

image:beth

• alternative income models online
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• how to increase your business online
• how to increase online business

This is a story of our journey to selling online successfully.  It has not been easy and some times you could cry.

We built a kitchen and we had a couple of things left over so we put them on to eBay no experience and no real idea what we were doing.  But we sold them in 14 days and we made a profit.  One of the items was huge and it was so difficult to post but we managed okay and our Customer received their order.

So we thought what else can we sell we had the bug so we tried some batteries and after playing with the price we started to sell them.  These sales taught us so much we made so many mistakes selling our 2 or 3 items a day.

But we improved all the time and we kept on learning.

• The biggest mistake we first made was not noticing that the eBay and PayPal addresses were different.  We had our first few complaints from Customers for not sending the order.
• We fell for all the confidence tricks with drop shipping and other rubbish that is set up to get your money and give you next to nothing in return.  A drop shipper that drop shipped from another drop shipper before doing the business for you.  We tried so many things.
• The main thing to remember is to get rich slowly it works its hard work but you get there, the get rich fast schemes do not work.

We signed up for a few things and rapidly found that they sounded great but in reality rubbish.  They basically sold you what you can find on Google.

• We attended every free course going and met so many people doing the same thing as us.
• We found very rapidly that lots of people talk about their dream business but actually doing it is a huge jump that many are not willing to take and end up working for some one else.
• We then played about with a few other things and started to try all sorts of things, then one day we read an article on Cosmetics and our business was up and running.

We found a wholesaler and started selling at first it was slow and we would sell about 5 items a night always dreaming of that big sale and more orders.

We got to the dizzy height of 10 feedback’s on eBay and opened up for business world wide.

• We opened up a business account with our mail provider and got every thing going.  It took a little while to get the process working properly but we learned.
• One thing to remember is you never stop learning.

This was great we had orders from Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France and Germany.  Then the fun started with lost mail from overseas.  We developed processes to cover every eventuality and started to really improve.

Now we started to look for better suppliers that was a long journey and very hard work, but we had learned from our previous fun about what not to do.

We even tried China that was an experience of getting fake products at incredible prices but not worth it.  We wanted to see what they provided.

We have kept on growing we got quite good support from the Bank but they are so slow to decide anything.

Our Business Bank Manager is brilliant but its the time that they take to agree anything.

• In the mean time we had so many people asking us questions about how we have done this.  So we decided to create a company that taught people how to sell online.

We created Araide – got ourselves the web site and started creating courses on how to sell online.

Its been a long journey but full of adventure and great fun.

image:as

• get rich for free online no ebay
• my ebay journey