Online Business - Easy Money?

Running your own business can be very rewarding but it is not easy and many new start ups fail within the first year because they have underestimated the work involved. It is not simply a 9-5 job, to be successful you need to put in the hours and re invest your hard earned profits. Once the idea has become a reality many new start ups lose the enthusiasm and fall back into the comfort zone of working for somebody else. So working for yourself is most definately not easy money.

More and more people are looking for ways to either start and run their own business ideally from home, the use of the internet is an essential tool and one that is relied upon heavily. The biggest disadvantage is lack of resource, by this I mean man power.
Many new starts do not have a huge budget to employ people so much of the tasks usually delagated have to be undertaken by the individual - so, not only the actual product or service needs to be taken care of but the administration.

Another angle to take is to (and this sounds far fetched - but read on) not do any of the actual work but just advertise and pass on leads to larger and better established companies.
To do this though first you have to grasp the concept of advertsing on the web (detailed here)
Once you grasped the power of putting your website/product/service in front of the masses the world really is your oyster.

Just imagine this - your are extremely knowledgeable about your subject (lets use pet care as an example) You have a website that attracts vistors wanting to learn more about pet care and eventually purchase from you. To win an order you have not convince a viewer that your company is the right company to entrust with their purchase but you physically have to take the order, process it, invoice and ship. So you have to touch the sale many times - plus do this process many times a week/month to earn a decent profit.

Selling other peoples stuff.

This is the concept that has been around for a few years now and is becomming huge in terms of potential and growth. There is a whole host of information circulating the web - BUT be warned for every good peice of info there are lots bad info.

Now image this - you tailor your site so that when a viewer arrives on your site, when he or she feels that they want to make a purchase that can do so - but you do not have be involved in the sales process. This is called affiliate selling. So your website is made up mostly of information with leaders for the viewer to leave your site (with your persuation and recommendation) and arrive on another website (usually a much larger organistaion) and hopefully purchase. So you are selling other peoples stuff and earning margin.

Confused......in laymans terms your website is called Charlies Pet Care. Visitors arrive at your website because you have learnt the art of SEO. Once on your site your knowledge is abundant regarding many aspects of caring for pets. Your invidual web pages are, as an example:
charliespetcare/dogs/caring for older dogs....this page describes how to care for old dogs with emphasis on diet and vitimins. You have an article on the do's and dont's - with products that you recommend (I can think of several products that dog owners would buy for the older canine friend) - your recomendations are links to other MUCH larger pet care stores. If the viewer starts at your website...then follows the link and makes a purchase you earn a percentage of the sale.

What are these link and how do I get them?
I will explain in the next post where to go and where to join to be part of an affiliate program. This is a business concept that is currently booming. BUT as I have said previously not all the information you read will be the truth.

If you are still confused about the concept you should read the beginner guide to affiliate marketing by Rosalind Gardner. Rosalind is a pioneer, her ebook is the ideal starting point, it costs around 25 pounds presently - this should be the first material you should read, this will give you an absolute understanding of the basics of affilaite marketing. After you have read her ebook it should give you a pretty good idea if this concept is for you, it is not for everyone.

Reading this book will either change your business model and life or it will leave you 25 pounds out of pocket!!!! either way its worth the risk.
Click Here!

Online marketing strategy for new businesses

So you have tweaked your website and you are fairly pleased with your optimising efforts, you are beginning to be listed by the search engines for key words and phrases and listed within directories. What next?
Think of your website as one of your sales people (or only sales person) you have bought a domain name and bought a years hosting, you have probably spent somewhere in the region of £100 there or thereabouts (this figure doesnt include any directory listings or Adwords campaigns) So this sales person costs you £100 a year - a salary equal to roughly 2 quid a week. Is it worth employing this sales person, are they bringing in the business, are they worth 2 quid a week in wages. If they arent then you seriously need to read an earlier post as to how to promote your website

*A side note for Moonfruit users - if you have only purchased the free or lite version seriously think about upgrading and having the benefit or more websites.

So you have one website working 24 hours a days - acting as your massively underpaid salesperson bringing in the business or at least making the phone ring and trickling in emails from interested potential customers. What is the next step? It realy is so obvious and yet 99% of small business owners fail to implement the niche duplication method, utter madness.

Just think about this.
Your website written and produced by you, details (hopefully) everything about your business this is your flagship. BUT because it is your flagship your theme is probably a little too broad.
Trying to cram keywords that are revelent to everything that you do may dilute the whole website - plus, trying to balance the wording in the site description may be too vague.

Just imagine this.
You sell baby clothing and accessories
your URL is www.babyclothesuk.co.uk
so - you basically sell baby clothes and accessories... quite a broad theme to a broad catchment area.
If a potential customer is searching for baby clothes how will they search - they may type baby clothes + whatever town, or baby clothing (web wide) who knows????
They may or may not find their way to your website.
The answer is to increase your web presence - built another mini site but this time "niche it"

Niche Duplication Method

If you are serious about your business and want the business to succeed then you will need to invest - not a lot, but invest nonetheless.

The first thing to do is to categorise your theme.
So, you are in the baby clothes and accessories business.
Baby shoes - you have one category
baby all-in-ones - another catergory
Pyjamas, trousers, hats etc....
and so on.......
Taking baby shoes has an example - buy another domain that relates to just baby shoes ie. firstbabyshoes.co.uk
Create a minisite BUT link it and back link to your main flagship site (two way link)
This new minisite has its own identity with the opportunity (for you) to be abslotuley specific about the keyword content. So now you do not need to generalise about your theme but be absolutely specific.
A searcher may search for "baby clothes" - but if they search for "baby shoes" your flagship or main site may not be strong enough to return a decent listing on the SERPS.
But - a minisite concentrating on just baby shoes is not only keyword content rich but has less competition in the SERPS.
So now you have two salespeople working for you - the second new salesperson has only cost you about £5 a year (plus your time) he is an expert in his niche - he just sells baby shoes, but if an interested customer wants any other baby clothing related product - this new salesperson (minisite) can lead thru to your main site.

Then spend another fiver and build a site about rattles...........


*just a side note - when building a niche site - do note duplicate word for word any content from your main site as the SE's (especially google) will penalise duplicate content.

*another side note about linking - it is not a good idea to link with other sites that do not share your theme (directories are fine because they categorised by either business, business themes or geographically. If I owned the baby clothing website I would not link exchang with a site promoting Bingo.


Tony Jay

Promoting your website

So you have built your website and now you want your phone to ring and to receive emails from interested customers - this is the hard bit and there is no quick fix. Time and research are critical, following the steps below should reap good results.
The first thing to do is have a good look at your website and try to imagine it from a customers perspective - would you actually buy something or even contact your company judging by what you are looking at. If the answer is no have a rethink as to how your web site looks. Under no circumstances use a flash intro page - this is a major deterrent for a perspective customer plus the fact that it will not do you any favours in the search engines. Another no no is the use of a visitor counter, when I visit a site and see a few hundred visitors or even a few thousand this says to me "new business - new website." Your business may be new and everyone has to start somewhere but a majority of potential customers will be put off and will overlook your company in favour of a more experienced business - why give visitors this option.

Look for competitors

I am so surprised and amazed that everyone doesn't do this. When I launched my wife and I's catering business at the start of 2006 the very first thing I did was to check out the competition.
I put myself in customer mode and spent the best part of a week searching Google, Yahoo, MSN and Dogpile for businesses that I would use if needed a caterer for a wedding or a birthday party (did I mention we run a catering company.) As our business is for local clientele my search criteria can be narrowed down quite a bit.
My searches would be along the lines of...
wedding caterer (my town or county)
catering (my town or county)
party caterer (my town or county)...
you get the idea, many differing combinations.
I wrote down the names and web addresses of the most frequently found businesses that met my search criteria - then I checked out their website code. You can do this by right clicking on their home page which will bring up a dialog box - if you then look at the bottom of the box there will be something which says "view source" click this and it will give you the code of the web page. This isn’t rocket science or very technical but is important.
When you are in "view source" mode you will see a jumble of HTML - the important part to look for is toward the top, find the part that looks like this...

Meta name = description
Meta name = keywords

These are the keywords and the site description of your competitors website that ranks
very well in the search engines - why not copy them and include them in your site at the admin control panel (obviously changing any company specific words - for example the name of their company to yours.) This is just one part of the search engine optimisation process or SEO.

Using directories

The most frequent occurrence you will notice when searching for a competitor is that directory listings will appear in the search engine result pages or SERPS very highly, this is because most directories have a either a good page rank (PR) or contain very specific content to that in which you have searched for. Use directories – this is of utmost importance. Do a search for “business directories” and “local listings” and the like and include your company in as many as you can find, there are hundreds. Even now I am still finding directories that our business is not listed in, when I find one I list us. Many are free with no obligation but some require a reciprocal link – always take this option. Add a link page to your website that is purely for links and start adding directory URL's that your site is associated with or listed on.
When you about to submit your listing to a directory the actual wording should be very specific. As an example if your company is called Benny’s Shoe shop and you are based in Ipswich your company description or detail should read like this “Benny’s Shoe shop is based in Ipswich serving, XXX, XXXXX, etc." (the XXX’s are other local towns) Supplying shoes etc… Do not just write “shoe shop supplying shoes etc…" always include your company name and what area (if you are just local) as this will help you immensely when a customer searches for a “shoe shop in ipswich) – the chances are a directory will appear in top results and the chances are your piece of text “Benny’s Shoe shop” will appear under the URL as descriptive text. As I have said most directories are free but some charge – if you find a directory that appears extremely high in the results but there is a fee it will be worth it in the long run to buy a listing providing it is not extortionate. I would not pay any more than £40 per year for a listing. At the start of the year every enquiry we got for our catering business originated from our directory listings, in all I have spent around £300 on paid for listings – we have turned over around £30k in our first 6 months of trading, so I think that is a good return on investment.
A warning regarding directories…. Some well known directories allow a free listing but will always follow up with a telephone call to try to get you to upgrade to advanced listing offering guaranteed visitors, clicks etc… costing upwards of a hundred (even up to a thousand pounds) NEVER take this option you will be wasting your money. Never pay more than £40 for a year.

Signature Links on forums

Another dont for small businesses trying to gain a web pressence is not (at least not early on) include your weblink on forums (the Moonfruit forum is ok though.) The reason for this I found to my cost early on - when you are new at business you tend to ask some questions on buisness related forums that in time seem quite stupid. The sort of "how do I do ...." type question. Even now when I search for my company name specifically- the first page of google displays a business forum entry (by me) asking a question that is a dead give away that we are a new business, which may be percieved that we do not know what we are doing!!! In time though when you have got out of the asking a silly question phase it is an advantage to include your URL in your signature.

The wording of your web site.

Lets use Benny's shoe shop as an example - www.bennysshoeshop . com. The domain name is ok because it describes what the domain is about - the Benny part could be better (maybe Ipswich, as in ipswichshoeshop .com - although this would be better it does take the personality out of the business. I would stick to bennysshoeshop. All the above is relevent to the business. Incredibly though some "clever" people call their business something like "abracadabra" or something equally obtuse - how on earth is this relevent to a shoe shop, massive own goal.

Search engine optimisation can be a science and some people cleverer than I charge an absolute fortune to "optimise" your site. They are not magicians, this is something that someone with just a bit of common sense can achieve.
Firstly, your domain is www.bennyshoeshop .com - when you are in web site building applications control panel (Moonfruits admin section) under the "site title" dialog box dont just duplicate this - why call your website "bennys shoe shop", when you have a chance to call it "ipswich shoe shop" You now have the phrase "ipswich shoe shop" working for you on the web."

Your home page is the most important page of your web site, as described previously do not use a flash intro - you want your viewers to look at your products or services not a ridiculous flash intro that takes time to load - a visitor will decide after 3 seconds whether he or she wants to continue viewing or go elsewhere.
As this is your home page - this is the window to your business, you must describe exactly what your business is about as clearly as possibly and in a user friendly way. Being arty wont help Benny sell his shoes.
Moonfruit is a great application and service but many Moonfruit sites look like a school project because they overdone the "moving stuff."
Getting back to the wording of your home page - again using Benny as example. The search engines like relevent text, so give them some... write about your business in the third person...using "Benny's" as opposed to "we" gives you an opportunity for relevent text.
"Benny's shoe shop based in Ipswich serving XXXX, XXXX, XXXX and surrounding areas."
Benny's shoe shop and Ipswich mentioned in the opening sentence - this pleases google.
Try to think of the text of your home page as if you writing a magazine article about your business and include as many phrases as you can and expliot them as search phrases.
Do a google search for keyword density - the magic number is 7% - this means that out of 100 words 7 should contain some kind of "shoe" related relevency.

Another tip for your home page - for god sake make your phone number or email address
highly visible.

Submitting your web site

Submit your site to google, yahoo and MSN - there are probably around 80,000 search engines, but submitting to the big three will suffice - all of the others are related to the big three in some form or another.
After your site has been submitted dont expect overnight results - 3 months after I did all of the above we started to to get extremely high ranking for several relevent phrases and in some cases top 3 positions out of hundreds of thousands and even millions of results, so it can be done.
But done forget the directories will be working for you straight away if you have listings.

So just to recap in no particular order

• design a site for your customers not for yourself
• look for your competition and clone cleverly
  
• always include relevent phrases in your text
  
• submit your site to many directories both free and sub £40 a year
  
• do not pay hundreds for listings
• do not pay a SEO company to do the things that you can do as above
• dont expect an overnight success for your own domain

Regards
Tony Jay

Building a website for a new business

Building a website for a new business is an absolute must - but why new businesses spend hundreds or even thousands getting one built by somebody else is beyond me. There are dozens of cheap and easy website building packages available, some good, some not so good. The web building package I used enabled us a web presence in a couple of days. This was the catalyst that kick started our (my wife and I) business. Being involved in IT I had a slight advantage in so much as I had an understanding as to how the web worked but I have learnt so much just from building our own website (still learning.) My wife had no understanding at all and shyed away from anything to do with the computer but now she has the ability to log in to our website and update when needed.

What website building package

A while back I trialed dozens of software packages - what I didn’t want was a steep learning curve and a big expense. I didn’t want to become an expert web developer - I just wanted to put our new company into cyberspace and see what response it got. As described in an earlier post it was three days later that we received our first email enquiry.

Moonfruit

Without wishing to blatantly plug the company, Moonfruit is one of the best web design applications I have ever discovered - it is a dream to use. I was particularly impressed by the fact that it offers a free trial for 14 days, then after that you can either pay for the service or continue to use for free but with restrictions. My total cost for my first year web presence (not including advertising) was $33/£22 - all the tools and the hosting.
I liked the fact that there was nothing to download or install, everything is hosted by Moonfruit and the software used to create websites and pages (Sitebuilder) is so simple and can be mastered in days.
When I first discovered this package I had a basic site up and live within a few days - I must admit that at first the wife thought I was some kind of web magician, but in truth the Sitebuilder software is completely drag and drop and over the last year or so I have persuaded many friends and acquaintances to sign up with Moonfruit and everyone so far has managed to get to grips with it quickly and easily. There is also a busy forum with plenty of members willing to help with any queries - the official support is actually good as well.
Seriously, go have a look at Moonfruit - but before you do, try to find negative comment from various forums, this is something I always do before investing in any product or a service. Searching google for phrases that include "Moonfruit" and negative words doesn’t bring back much in terms of bad feedback.

Building your website for your customers

How many times have you discovered a business website and thought "what is it that they actually do?" I am sure professional web designers build a site for a client to showcase their own creativity rather than to benefit the customer. When I built ours I was always conscience who our potential customers were to be. Don’t ever lose this focus and carried away with the bells and whistles - when a potential has found your website he or she usually makes up their mind if they want to continue browsing it in the first five seconds.
Realistically, all the potential customer is interested in is...

• Have they got want I want
• Where are they
• How much
• How can I contact them

Make the above four points highly accessible to them.


Tony Jay

Starting a business - The first steps

First steps

It amazes me when I read posts on business related forums that many people invest money first then submit questions like "how do I get customers?" Surely its common sense and good business practise do at least a bit of market research first.
Why on earth spend money getting yourself ready for business when you have not got any customers or clients.
My suggestion for the very first thing to do is - read forums on business start up type websites. This is absolutely essential reading. There are many forums, join a few and start posting - some can be quite a closed community, but once you get passed that and become known you will be accepted. My tact for using forums is to be very polite and when I have a query answered I ensure that I thank the member or members that has given the advise. In general, even though forums are largely anonymous, people do tend to get a buzz out of helping others, free advice.
The other advantages of using forums are you will build up a contact list, I have made some valuable partnerships and frienships with people over the last couple of years.
On a side note, if you are considering joining a forum - for the first few months do not under any circumstances put your proposed company details (url, email address, company name etc...) on your signature file. Business related forums on popular websites are extremely well indexed by the search engines - you may be in a position where you have asked a question and have created a reasonably long thread by other members replying - your post may be picked up by the search engines if a potential customer is browsing the web, the last thing you want is to draw attention to your greeness.

Website

If somebody said to me "I want to start my own hairdressing business - How do I do it?" I would answer "Build a website!"
It sounds easy - and it is (really). I have been involved in the IT industry for many years but my weakness I would say are my "web skills." That was until until I discovered the build your own website type products. In my next post I will review a few website builders and mention the one that I use. They are not expensive and I use these easy website builders to do my market research for me.

Making the phone ring

When I built my first proper website for my wife and I's business - we got our first email enquirey about three days later. This was such an amazing feeling, we almost cried. Imagine that, no advertising - just the self built website and someone has enquired about your offering.
This is the perfect position to be in. Hardly anything invested in the venture but already the potential is there. taking this first enquirey as a case in point - two possible outcomes...
Outcome one. We have an enquirey, we feel we are not entirely ready yet - so we call the customer and express our apologies that unfortunately we are fully booked and therefore cannot do business with him/her at this point in time. But we have a possible customer for the future. Plus also the mere fact that the customer has found us and contacted us must mean that we are visible and there is demand for our product or service.
Otcome Two. Do the deal.

In the next post I will detail how to build a cheap (but professional looking website) that can be updated easily. I will also detail how to market very cheaply using the internet.

Tony Jay

Thinking of starting a business

Starting up in business today can be incredibly easy. This could be construed as an astonishingly arrogant statement but nethertheless a true one providing you add determination and common sense to the equation and above all have the ability to listen and learn even if you consider yourself to be an expert in your industry. However a couple of years ago I would not have had the knowledge, expertise or sheer effrontery to start writing an article such as this one. In fact even now its slightly embarrassing to compose - I am not a business guru nor do I even consider myself particularly business savvy (yet), but within the last year the small business that my wife and I have started has grown from nothing to a stage where the income from this venture will support us both. To steal a well known advertising slogan "I'm lovin' it"

Have you got what it takes?




If you are the type of person who has to have routine in their life - has to watch the latest soap opera episode or have an attitude of procrastination then stop reading this because Eastenders may be starting. I was one of life’s procrastinators, I would often dream of money making schemes or business ideas but they would never get past the dream stage, tomorrow I would do something about it. I am mid to late thirties and my biggest regret in life is not putting into practice my dreams or ideas - I feel as though I have not so much wasted but missed opportunities over the last 15 years or so. Until recently I worked a salesperson for an IT company - I have sat at the same desk for the last 10 years, the thought of spending the next 10 years in the same situation fills me with dread (or would have had I not quit.) Does this sound familiar?
But having said all that it was a pretty safe life - I probably could have stayed there for the duration of my working life, got my gold watch and spent my twightlight days in a retirement home.
Not very interesting but a safe life - Mr Average. Are you Mr, Mrs or Miss Average?
Not that there is any wrong with a 9-5 kind of job but bear in mind it’s currently a hot and sunny Wednesday afternoon - I decided to take the afternoon off. I'm sitting in my garden composing this on my laptop - why?....because I can. But having said that the wife and I were working until 1 o'clock in the morning the previous Saturday - why?...because we chose to!

What am I good at?

Everybody has some or at least one skill (even an interest or hobby) there is absolutely no point whatsoever in building a business around a subject that either doesn't appeal or interest you - sure you may be running your own business but this will quickly become a chore, interest will wain and you are left in job type scenario.
Two years ago I wrote on a piece of paper two headings: skills and interests...my wife did the same (in truth though we already kind of knew the industry path we were heading.) My list had one or two skills (IT being one of them, not that I am an expert but after 10 years I managed to pick up a few things.) My wife’s list had the biggy - food. Cooking and food was not only her best skill but her passion and her hobby - imagine that, earning form something you love to do.
This was quite an easy pick for us - so we started a local catering company (I will explain exactly how did this in a future post)
So, get a piece of paper and write down yours skills and interests - this seems a pointless exercise but looking at them in black and white it is quite surprising how many skills and interests you actually have. Most or at least some will be marketable business propositions.

I've got an idea

Rather than trying to invent some revolutionary new product or service - don’t try to re invent the wheel. So unless you have a significant amount of money for investment (that you don’t mind possibly wasting) stick to trying to compete in a competitive thriving market. Competition is good it underlines the fact that your service or product is in demand. Don’t base your business on fads. We chose catering because every year people get married, they need food. Every year people have birthday parties etc... you get the picture.
Quite possibly the easiest business model to take from concept to practise is that of a local targeted one that provides a service and sell a product later as a compliment. Targeting a local audience seems to go against the common theme nowadays of global dominance. Using the internet can reap incredible results especially if it’s aimed local - furthermore you do not need to be particularly internet wise. In a future post I will explain how I built a website that is highly visible to our targeted customer market and locale - I am not a web designer but there are tools available to build a very professional web presence that can be updated in seconds - even by my wife, who 2 years ago didn’t understand what email was.

What to do next

If you are in employment - the best thing to do is stay in employment, treat the potential business in the beginning as a part time interest, it is easy to develop a seed whilst you still have an income without the stress of having to make your business pay from day one.
Any spare time you have use for research, don’t waste time - don’t leave it until tomorrow because tomorrow will never arrive and before you know it, weeks then months and eventually a year will pass.
If you are reading this article and have a skill, hobby or an interest then seriously think how you could mould this to your advantage. Future posts will describe the next step and how to take enthusiasm and transfer this into something tangible.

Tony Jay