4 Key Steps Before You Start Your Own Online Business

Posted by admin in online business on Jul 22nd, 2010 | 0 comments

When you start an online business, do you want to pass the successful people and to try everything by yourself? How to start online business is not a guesswork, where every newbie tries to invent how to start my own online business by trying and trying.

If you want to start your online business that way, stop reading now, this article is not for you. But if you want to follow another, proven route starting an online business, keep on reading. Here comes the method, I recommend.

1. First, Make A Self Research.

Sounds funny, but you will be the engine for your online business and it is very useful to do everything so, that they will utilize your strengths. Starting online business after this research means, that it will rest on a solid rock.

Make a tour to your history, school years and other meaningful happenings and think, what were the things you liked, where you were especially good at, and bad, what others said about you and so on.

The target is to clarify your skills, professionalism, wants, talents and style. When you start your online business, these are very important and already at the very beginning. You see, your online business start will be different depending, whether you are HTML, product or marketing oriented.

Finally do a brief summary about yourself, a profile, which includes all the major features of yourself. It is like a list of your technical data, which is the starting point, when you direct yourself further.

2. Find A Proven And Respected Marketer.

When you start your online business, it is extremely important, a must, that it starts to go to the right direction right in the beginning. Who else can guide you, than a proven and respected marketer. The better, if his online business idea is based on the tutoring and helping newbies.

There is one thing, which is very useful and that is your own website, which you can customize later. This is the tool by which you will start to build your own brand. There are principals, who offer this service too.

The requirements for your principal is that he can offer the full set of tools and help: DVD, ebooks, email courses, training pages online, online marketing forum and quick online help. These will offer you a great help, when you start your online business.

3. I Recommend That You Start Your Online Business As An Affiliate.

To start as an affiliate is the best way, because it is easy and offer you a full set of marketing material, tutoring and needed tools. The merchant has done so much ready for you, which you just cannot do by yourself.

4. Be Realistic With The Timetable.

When you are about to start your online business, you are very enthusiastic and are waiting big money overnight. That is not realistic. The realistic way to think, is to understand that online business grows step by step and it takes a couple of years, yes years, to make a decent income. Forget millions right away.

As you see, the method to start your online business successfully is simple, like all successful methods are. I recall once more about the fact, that you have to research yourself, before you will start your online business. Do it, you will thank you later on!

Encouraging Entrepreneurialism in Your Business – 6 Steps to Take Now

Posted by admin in Entrepreneurialism on Jul 22nd, 2010 | 0 comments

If your business is lacking in entrepreneurialism then you could be losing customers, losing sales, and losing ground to your competitors. That’s not something any business wants to do without a fight. That’s why I have put together six easy steps for your business to take that’ll pump energy throughout your organisation – from the cleaner to the boardroom.

1. Incentivize

As a business owner, you should look for ways to motivate your employees. Offering them bonuses, especially when they are closely tied to performance in their job, will likely benefit your staff and in turn your business. Entrepreneurialism is something that’s only ever truly harnessed when a person is exploring ways to improve their own wealth and achievements.

2. Track Performance

You can tell how successful your business has been by taking a look at your P&L. As a member of staff within your business, especially the lower down the ladder you go, the less a person’s performance is tied to the profit of your business. Incentivising your staff to perform is one thing; however you should also ensure you track your staff and show them how they perform against their co-workers. This will unlock hidden energies within your staff, and make them compete with one another. This is evolution at work. The great workers will thrive in this workplace dynamic and the poorer workers will need some training to help them catch up.

3. Freedom of Thought

Entrepreneurialism needs freedom to flourish. That’s why you should give your staff room to explore their ideas, and contribute meaningful things to your business. Google give their staff 20% time, which means that their staff are allowed to spend 20% of their working hours exploring ways to improve Google’s existing products and create new ones. This is an innovative way to encourage loyalty within your organisation.

4. Personal Stake

Nothing encourages entrepreneurialism like equity. Just ask Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and all the other famous business leaders that have made their mark. Although their passion and knowledge got them so far, they probably performed better because they had a share in the game. Consider offering your staff stock options. If you are a smaller firm, this can be particularly meaningful.

5. Share Information

Don’t just tell your staff only how they are doing when it comes to meeting their own targets. Let them also know how the broader business is doing too. Your staff likes to know if sales are up or down, and if the business is going places. If you let them know how things are working out, they might have great ideas to contribute. Not only that, but when people know what the business is aiming for, everyone might rally behind the same common goals.

6. Strong Team

If entrepreneurialism exists within parts of your organization, and you actively encourage it, then it should spread throughout your business. In order to ensure this happens, and that the best staff influence everyone else, you need to ensure you have a strong team. Don’t be afraid to invest in team building exercises to make sure you get the dynamics right for everybody.

Craft Business Basics 3 – Price

Posted by admin in Business Checklist on Jul 22nd, 2010 | 0 comments

This article is the third in a series of four articles that will guide you on how you can start your own crafts business using the four Ps of Marketing -Product, Place, Price and Promotion. What are the things you need to consider when pricing your product to ensure that your product is priced well enough to sell and well enough for you and all involved to earn well?

Pricing, as you might have experienced, is something many people struggle with. If you’ve already created your product, you’ll know what I mean. When I first had to price my products, I checked out some marketing textbooks. They were unfortunately of little use to me, other than telling me there were different ways of pricing the products.

What are the 2 challenges of pricing?

1) Pricing at a level that attracts the buyers

2) Pricing at a level that maximizes profits while remaining attractive to the buyers

In certain businesses, the cost-plus method of pricing works very well, meaning you calculate your cost and add a certain percentage of profits. However, in the crafts business, this method, while being able to give you reasonable income, may not always be the best.

For example, the Harrod’s bear and Paddington’s bear don’t cost much more to produce than a nameless toy bear, but they sell for so much more. If you were to simply apply the cost-plus method, can you imagine how much you’d have lost?

The difference here is the perceived value of the item. If you can make something look expensive or create something that people want, you can and should charge much higher than the cost. In pricing, you will have to look at your packaging and promotion so don’t be pressured to price low simply because your material costs were low. However, if what you have is not unique then it may not be wise to put a high price tag on your product. Your customers may be willing to pay the price at the point of purchase but if they see a similar product selling much cheaper elsewhere, you may lose your credibility and the potential of repeat purchases from them.

If your craft item is not entirely new or you’re just making a popular item to sell, it’s easy to check the market price by visiting a few stores or checking the internet. An original product is trickier because it might involve some testing before you get the right price. Start by asking a few friends, especially those who share your interest in crafts. A better way would be to make a prototype and then take it to your friends and the gift and/or crafts stores and ask them how much they would be willing to pay for it or how much it can sell for. You should be able to get a pretty good idea.

Whether you want to use the cost-plus method or price at the market price, you’ll need to have a very good idea of your cost. Failure to do so may result in you losing money instead of profiting from your crafts.

Here’s a simple checklist to help you work out your cost.

1) Material cost

Make sure you list down everything, even things you are able to get for free now because you may have to pay for them later and that will affect your pricing. Furthermore, even free things need time and time is money.

2) Labour cost

If you’re making them yourself, you need to ask yourself how much you’re worth per hour then work from there. Suppose you make ten of an item in an hour and you want to pay yourself $20 per hour. The labour cost of each item would be $2.

Remember to include packaging time and even the time you need to travel to the post office.

3) Marketing cost

Depending on the sales channels you’re using, the cost here will vary. If you’re selling on the internet, you’ll need to factor in your webhosting, domain name, design fees etc. If you’re selling via catalogs or mail-orders, you must factor in your printing and shipping cost as well.

Also, if your product requires you to explain or clarify things on the phone, remember you need to factor in your phone bills and more importantly, the time you’ll need to spend on the phone.

4) Your Profit

This is an area which many freelancers or work-from-home business people miss. It’s alright to just earn your income based on your per hour worth but that would be a bad way of running a business. We need to remember we’re running a business here and we need to treat a business as a business. This profit amount will make up for lower sales volume, increase cashflow for purchase of more materials and also fund your expansion. If we don’t factor this in, we’ll forever be stuck with the same pay. Even employees get raises right?

After you have included your material and labour cost, you should mark up another 20% to 30% or more as your profit margin. However, this only represents the minimum amount that you’ll accept for your product. The next part will help you determine the cost you’ll sell to different parties.

5) Distribution Channel Markup

For most product-based businesses, a product typically flows through the distribution channel in this fashion.

Manufacturer -> Distributor/Wholesaler -> Retailer

In between them, there may also be agents and if the products are sold to different states or different countries, there may be other local agents/distributors and the chain will get longer and longer.

What this means for you as you’re pricing your product is you will need to ensure that you keep the retail price competitive and that the various parties get their fair share of profits at the same time.

Typically wholesalers will accept a lower markup than retailers because they work with higher volumes and because they need to ensure that the retailers have enough to earn. If you’re just starting out, you can be your own distributor and go directly to the retailers. This allows you to earn more or give a greater markup to your retailers but because you or your staff will need to go to the stores, it will require greater effort on your part.

Retailers will as for a minimum of 20% to 30% markup for most products, depending on the products. I may be spoiler here but many products are marked up hundreds or thousands of percent. In my own store, I only retail products that I have at least 30% to 40% (usually more for craft products) unless the product is so popular that I can sell a lot more to justify the lower markup. With a healthy margin, I have some room to do promotions or clearance sales so even if the product doesn’t do too well initially, I can do something about it without losing money.

It is very important to keep yourself focussed on your core competency and earn from that. Some people get greedy…

Small Business Books- Knowledge is Power

Posted by admin in Business Books on Jul 22nd, 2010 | 0 comments

Every small business owner knows that it is essential to keep updates of his or her business. This is a good and reliable way to follow the progress of how your business is doing. Any business information needs to be stored in a convenient yet secure location. In the past, small business owners used books to store their ideas, plans, sales etc. These books contained very sensitive material since they were the very essence of the business.

There were receipt books that recorded the sales. It was a tedious process but usually it was manageable. Nowadays many business owners have replaced the use of pen and paper with computers and effective computer programs that make it easy to store material.

It is interesting to note that however much we advance you cannot do away with the power of books. There are many small business books available on the shelves and also on sale online. These books educate the new small business owner and help the existing one polish his or her act. The business world keeps changing and it is important to be aware of this.

Reading a book on how to start, operate or even manage a small business can give you ideas that previously had not crossed your mind. Since they are written and researched by experts in the business they will give you other option on business. They make you think like a businessperson and you get tips on how to be successful. They also teach you how to save and invest in other ventures. Small business books contain a world of knowledge and every small business owner should make a point of taking a break once in a while and indulge in them.

Affiliate Marketing – Setup Your Own Business

Posted by admin in Business Checklist on Jul 22nd, 2010 | 0 comments

Since the time of introduction of the internet, one thing that is always making people think is how to earn money online. Many schemes that are aggressively promoted by so many people the in the world wide web from all parts of the world, you are always wondering which is the surest and the best way of doing business online so that you can also earn your millions online. This presents a very confusing situation to all newcomers in the Internet marketing industry.

All newcomers in online business must by all means have plan and a very basic and simple checklist of what things to when starting off in launching of a profitable online business. As a person who has just started, it is advisable for him or her to first join up with an affiliate marketer like ClickBank, start selling other people’s products through the website. When you are fully aware and you become more familiar and proficient, you can then create your own affiliate business program or sell your own products and market them online.

The following things are required to be done first if you want to start your own affiliate business and make it a great success:

You should first identify your target market, target. This is necessary as your research will help you to decide the product you want to affiliate and sell for. You need to construct your sales pitch now. People don’t buy products, they buy ideas and concepts to take care of their needs and they buy solutions to solve problems that they otherwise can’t solve themselves. This is an integral and inherent feature of the customer psyche. When choosing a product, you need not research or crack your head on the features and benefits, rather you need to realize yourself if the concept is new and prolific, and if it helps in satisfying the needs of the customer and solve his problems. You need to aggressively sell your product by driving maximum people to your website. If there is little or no traffic to your site, there will be no sales at all. After having narrowed down your target segment in the market, try to encourage people in the net to visit your site. Your website is your online retail showroom which is your place of online business. Front end offers are made at the initial sale, now your strategy should be to follow up with your customers with your back end offers. If you want a regular and steady income from your website you should never ignore the back end offer part. It also gives you a higher commission.

You need to now create multiple content web pages which will enable you to sell other product types that will give your earnings a major boost. Keep adding new pages and multiple product lines and check for new opportunities all the time. This is the best route towards building your own internet business. By following these simple tips you will slowly over a period of time be able to devise your own affiliate business checklist with the simultaneous growth in your experience and expertise.