Don't Try To Know It All Before You Start Your Business Online

I don’t know enough.

Many businesses fail even before they have started. People procrastinate because they think they don’t know enough. When is it the right time to start?

Now. Yes, I really do believe the right time will never come if you don’t start now. Irrespective of what you want to do. Whether you want to start with a family, start a business online or whatever you want to do, there will always be a reason to procrastinate. “We have to wait until there is enough money”, or “I don’t know enough yet”. If you are going to wait until you have enough money or until you know enough before you commit to something, you most likely will never start.

I am not saying you should just dive in blindly, go into debt, or recklessly just start your business online without proper planning or thinking it over. To the contrary, that is exactly where you should start. Commit yourself and start planning your business. Determine how much money you are going to need (by the way – this is an important part of what you need to know before you start your business). What skills do you need? If you want to start a business online, do you know your subject? Do you know your way around the internet?  

Knowing enough

Once you started this process, you have committed yourself. You have gained some momentum. So now you realize you don’t know enough about social media, you know even less about blogging…..oh yes, and then there are e-mail lists. How on earth can you start if you don’t know enough yet? When will you know enough to start your business? Never. Yes, never.

The good news is that every successful business man, everybody that is successful in whatever they do, started exactly where you are now. Not knowing anything.

So when do you know enough to start? As soon as you know just enough to take the first step. Then you start learning and gathering enough information to take the next step…. and the next…..and the next, until you start achieving your goals.

There is a saying that says: “the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know”. The bottom line is; you will never know enough. Any business is constantly changing; the internet is constantly changing, so you will never stop learning. Wait until you know enough, and you will never get started.  

Create a Map

As I already mentioned, I do not say that you must just blindly start doing business online without proper planning. No, planning is absolutely essential.

Carefully think about the following: What exactly do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? How will you achieve it (your action plan)? Once you achieved your goal, how will it affect you/your life? Do you have a strong desire to achieve your goal? Are you motivated? Can you persevere?

You need to know; the challenges will come. Achieving your goals are not going to happen in a straight line. Some of your strategies might not work the way you thought it would. There might be delays. If you don’t really have a strong desire, which will motivate you, you won’t necessarily persevere, and you might just give it all up.

Set your goals. Aim high. Dare to dream. Then start creating your plan of action. Break it all up into smaller goals (action steps) which are easy to achieve. This is like creating a map to reach you final destination.

Once you have this in place, take action. Only focus on your next step. If your next step doesn’t give you the desired result, don’t quit, be flexible and change your strategy, as long as it keeps you on track to your ultimate goal.

You Don’t Have To Do It Alone

If it is your goal to make money online, there are different channels you can follow. You can create and market your own product, or you can render a service. Information marketing is often very successful.  You can also join one of the many affiliate programs online, in which case you will market someone else’s product. There are some excellent affiliate programs available. You can join such a program at no cost to you and earn commission when you refer customers to the vendor’s website and a sale is made.

You can also take part in joint ventures, profit sharing programs (such as Google Adsense) etc.

What is important though, especially if you are new to online marketing, is not to be the “Lone Ranger”. It is important for you to interact with people. If possible, have a mentor to guide you along the way.

If I can make a recommendation, it would be to look at a company called Strong Future International (SFI). They give you the opportunity to get involved in a great affiliate program; they also have an online store from where you can generate sales and consider it as your own online store. It gives you the opportunity to create a passive income. Membership to Strong Future International (SFI) is free.

They have an excellent support structure, and you can visit their forum where you can meet fellow online marketers and experts. Discuss your own obstacles and get advice from other experienced marketers. You can also see what problems other people are struggling with and maybe you can offer the solution to their problem.

So how much do you need to know before you start your business? Just enough to take the first step.

You Want To Start An Online Business, So Treat It Like A Business - Part 2

Daily Action To Grow Your Business                         

This is the second of our 4 part series on starting your online business. If you missed the first part, you can can read it here.  

Today I want to talk about your daily actions. Once you have committed to the success of your online business and you have set your goals, take action on a daily basis. Always know what to do next. Your next step (however small it might be) must bring you closer to your goal.

You will never achieve anything by just thinking about it. You achieve your business goals (or any other goals for that matter) only by doing……by taking action every day.

Your next step can literally be “taking a next step” (which can also be turned into smaller individual goals), or it can be action steps, some of which can be taken on a daily basis.

Here are some ideas of what you can do on a daily basis:

• Add some prospects to your prospect list. 
•  Follow up with recent prospects. 
•   Place advertisements (paid advertisements or free classifieds).
• Set up a tracking system to track results on your advertising. (I can recommend TrafficXcess, Easy Simple Money Maker.com, and ViralTraffic4U – these are all free systems you can use).
• Review your tracking results on your advertising.
• Work on your social media strategy.
• Subscribe to a good internet marketing course.  
• Review some lessons from the course you are following
•  Take part in forum discussions relating to your niche. 
•   Send out a news letter to your prospects and/or customers.
•  Post on your blog.
•  Write one or more articles.
•  Search on Google for articles on how to become a better internet marketer and read them.
•   If you are part of a networking or MLM program, contact your sponsor and let him know what you are doing. Ask for his advice or suggestions.
•  If you have a down line, contact members and find out if you can assist them in any way. (Learn to help others in order to help yourself).
•  Review your goals

It is not to say that you have to do all the above every single day, these are guidelines and examples. You might do some every day; some might be twice per week or even once a week. It all depends on your “game plan”.

Go to Part 3 here.

You Want To Start An Online Business, So Treat It Like A Business - Part 1

A Hobby Or A Business?

So you want to start an online business. Why do you want to do it?...There is so much to discuss about this subject, I decided to publish a series of 4 posts to cover the topic as it is to much for 1 post.

 If you want to start your online business, you need to decide right from the beginning whether you want to just run it as a hobby, or do you plan to build it into a real business. By referring to “real business”, I mean you must be able to earn a full-time income from it.

If you are just looking for a hobby and generating an income is not one of your goals, fine, just have fun with it. But if you want to create a business, then treat it like a business from day one. If you think about starting to treat it like real business as soon as it starts to generate a worthwhile income, you most likely will never get there.

Set your goals, know what you want to achieve, and be serious about it.

If you decide to buy into some franchise, it will literally cost thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Spending all this money, do you think it’s going to work for you if you spend only a few hours a week as and when you feel like it, working on your business? Or maybe you consider not getting any training? Or maybe you would just give it a try for a month or two, and if it doesn’t work, you’ll just quit.

I don’t think so. By investing a lot of money, you’ll make sure you commit yourself to that business. You will try to get all the training you possibly can, and you most definitely will follow any proven guide lines provided by the creator of the franchise. You will also plan properly and prepare yourself, so that you don’t just quit at the first obstacle you encounter.  

So what is different about your online business?

The fact that you can start your online business without a huge capital investment creates a pitfall or stumbling block to many potential entrepreneurs.

I am not saying you shouldn’t invest any money when you start your online business. If you have the capital available and you know what you are doing, you might have your business up and running so much faster.

What I am saying, is that if you don’t know what you are doing, it might be risky spending a lot of money. I am also saying that if you don’t have the money, there’s no need to go into debt and take all kinds of risks. That’s the positive side of an online business.

The danger is that when you don’t spend the money, you don’t take your business serious. When family or friends make bad remarks, or have de-motivating comments, it is easy to quit. People often tend to judge what you do by the amount of money you put into it. If you want to start your online business, don’t allow this to happen.

You will have to invest in your business anyhow. Although you can start your online business with little or even no money, you will have to invest time. Yes, as the saying goes; “the only place where success comes before work, is in the dictionary”. So you have to commit to your business. Treat it as a full-time business. If you still have a full-time job, block out certain times in the week (preferably on a daily basis) to commit to your business.     

Once you treat your online business as a serious business, you put in the effort and commit to its success; it will become a serious, full-time business.

Go to Part 2

Content Is King? Wrong.

If you are involved in any form of online marketing, I am sure you must have heard “content is king!”

So how can anybody deny that? It is a well known fact that whatever you do, whether you post on your own blog, tweet on Twitter or submit articles to article directories, quality content is a must. Providing quality content is one of the best ways to promote any business.

This is all true, and I would have told you the same thing - “content is king” – as I have came to that same conclusion. That is until I recently paid a visit to CopyBlogger, where they discussed one of the pillars of internet marketing: relationships.

And it dawned on me, content isn’t king, relationships are king. Yes, content is extremely important and is also one of your pillars for internet marketing, but without relationships, it will lose much of its power.

I am always emphasizing the importance of building relationships, and after my visit to CopyBlogger I realized this: You can have a list of thousands of people, and with quality content you can achieve success (whatever methods you are using – email, blogging, newsletter, etc.). But imagine if you have a strong relationship with your following. If you have the trust of the people following you, you communicate regularly and you pay attention to what their needs are and what they want, whenever you put any content out there, they are going to read it.

I have often subscribed to lists when it seems to be a good option, just to be disappointed or even forget about the membership later on. You never read the emails, and eventually just cancel your subscription as they just fill up your inbox.

The Money Is In The List

Yes, this is true. You do need prospects, which you need to turn into customers. Without these, you won’t be able to conduct any business. But building your list without building relationships is like building a house without a proper foundation. You will have to work so much harder on building your list, because as you add people to your list you will just be replacing people who are unsubscribing. And even of those who stay on your list, there will be many who don’t really pay attention to you, because of a weak relationship.

Quality content will be the only tool to use. And if you start slipping, nobody will warn you. You will just start losing people (and income). Having good relationships however, chances are good that you will immediately realize when you are missing the point, as people communicate with you and you can pick up warning signals.

Two Way Communication

First of all, two way communication is not only essential, but will also be a good indicator of the level of your relationships. 

Your customers / followers should be able to indicate to you what their needs are and what information they need. But you should also realize that a one way relationship is actually no relationship at all. It’s exploitation.  You must conduct yourself in a professional manner from the beginning.

You must make it clear from the beginning that you are running a business and you will be offering products for sale or you will be rendering a service or whatever it is you intend to do.

Everybody needs to know that you will expect to receive cash value in return, but they need to feel safe in the sense of knowing that they will receive more in terms of use value from you. This should provide a good balance for relationship building, seeing that it is win-win situation to everybody.   

To summarize: Content is a very important pillar of your business, but relationships are king.