Now that you have developed the right mindset and a simple business plan in place, you’re ready to take the next steps in starting your online business.  Before we discuss some of the technology you need, I’d like to share a video interview with Chris Farrell, an Internet Marketer who has made millions since coming online in 2008, and who has a wonderful teaching style.

In this interview Chris explains that it is possible to make money online, but there are some things you need to be aware of so you do not become discouraged easily.

As Chris mentioned, you must treat your online business as a business, and like any other business it takes time to start making real money in your online business because there are systems that need to be in place first.  We start discussing those in my next post in the series.

What are your thoughts on the video? Do you believe Chris Farrell painted a realistic picture?  Please share in the comments.

The headline reads, “Smiles Can Ease Stress at the Office.” The article was written by syndicated columnist, Michelle Singletary, and in it she mentioned the number of businesses that were laying off staff and closing locations leaving those employees who kept their jobs to shoulder more responsibility.  She noted that this added more stress to the employees who remained.

In the article Michelle also reviewed a book that focused on the the need for levity in the workplace. The book highlighted the need for employers to create a fun and light atmosphere on the job and incorporate these in emails, memos, voice mails, meetings, and training sessions.

As I read the article I thought of how this article could be applied to entrepreneurs and small business owners. Do you work from home full-time? Are you alone in your home office day after day? Do you take time to smile or even laugh? If you are a small business owner with a brick and mortar store, like a boutique, do you find ways to inject humor into your interactions with your clients and prospects?

There are many types of small businesses where there is a lot of interaction with the public. For example, hair salons, spas, auto supply stores, hardware stores, fabric stores, etc. Because of this interaction there is no shortage of communication and opportunities to inject humor into your day; but taking or making opportunities to smile or laugh when you’re alone may not be something many of us think about.

Most entrepreneurs, especially ones who are just getting started, find that they stay busy doing all the things necessary to create a profitable business, including marketing and product creation.

From this article, and in reviewing the book, “The Levity Effect: Why it Pays to Lighten Up” by Gostick and Christopher, it’s clear that it’s important to find things to laugh about during your day. It lightens your mood and relieves stress. Stress is something that can sap your energy and make you lose the fun rather than keep the fun in your business.

The fact is that small business owners are usually busy working on their business by planning, organizing, thinking of ways to increase cash-flow, marketing strategies, talk with mentors and other professionals. They’re often also working in their business – doing the actual work. But amidst all of this, it’s important to take time to smile, or even laugh during your work day.

Here are a few suggestions. You may think of many more:

• Your Daily Newspaper: Read the Business section and the local news, but savor the Comics as well. You may be surprised at the chuckle you can get from some of the characters. If your newspaper has a “Good for You” section, you may find it pleasant to read of the accomplishment of others.

• I love reading “Awake” magazine as there is always an article on an everyday topic that makes me smile, while providing benefit at the same time.  A current title is “A Bird’s-Eye View of Fishing,” which discusses the methods different types of bird use to fish for their prey. Some are quite amusing to read about.

• Call a friend during your lunch time or break time and exchange pleasantries. Do not call the friend who you know is going to complain about everything that’s going wrong in her life. Save that call for other times.

• Where possible, close the doors of your establishment, or if you’re at home, close the door to your office, get a sandwich and take a walk or a seat in a nearby park for even half an hour. You may find that simple act allowed you to exchange pleasantries or even just a smile with someone and you return to work with renewed vigor and a positive attitude.

The important thing is to take time to smile or laugh every day so you do not lose the fun or joy in your business.  How do you keep the fun in your business?  Please share in the comments.

The first part of your business plan takes into consideration your target audience, what they expect, and how the product or service you will be providing will meet or exceed their needs and expectations. 

The following sections will apply across the board, but keep in mind that if your audience includes investors, venture firms, and or banks, your business plan would be much more detailed.  These are ‘bare bones’ guidelines written with the entrepreneur, solo-professional, or small business owner who needs to have a written business plan to serve as a guide or track to run on.

 When organizing a business plan, break it down into sections such as:-

 1.  Business summary – The product or service you will provide.  What you will have to offer must be clearly defined.  Imagine that a stranger is reading your document.  By the end of the first paragraph your reader must clearly understand whether you will be providing products or a service, or a combination of both.   Ask yourself:

• What problem will you be solving?
• What is your solution?
• Why should people listen to you?  Note: This one can be tricky if you are launching a business that’s new to you. But if you have received specific training, do not be afraid to state that.

 2.   Market analysis – Research the product or service and how the competitors are doing.  Identify the weaknesses in the market and how you can satisfy that need.  Include what people are paying for similar products in your market and what you can expect customers to pay.

 3.   Product positioning – How to make it more prominent compared to your competitors. In your Business Summary you would have stated what product or service you will provide.  In this section you will:

• State what you will be selling or what service you will provide
• What are the features, advantages and benefits
• What is your unique selling proposition that will set you apart from the competition?
• If you’re writing your plan after you’ve started your business, do you have testimonials?  This would be the place to put them.

 4.   Market strategy – How are you actually going to market your product or service?  For example, if your broad area is Internet Marketing, what will be your niche? Affiliate marketing? A Private Label Rights website, Article Marketing, Blogging, etc. What marketing strategies will you implement?  For example, if Blogging – how will you monetize your blog? What methods will you use to market and take it from ‘just a free blog’ to one that makes money?

 5.   Customer analysis – Look at what the customer wants or needs.

 6.   Financial analysis – What you need to invest in order to set up the business and keep it going while it is just getting started.

 7.   Overall business goals – What you hope to achieve in one, two and five years.

 Once a business plan has been developed, it should not lay in the back of a drawer or sit in a frame on the wall of your office.  Rather, it should be a working plan that you can refer to when you need to.

 The best way to make a written business plan is to keep it simple (one or two pages should be all you need).  For most entrepreneurs a paragraph for each point should be sufficient to give you clarity and provide a document for you to refer to.

Based on the suggestion of one of my peers,  @Melanie Kissell, in the future I will be doing a series of actual examples of the negative impact failure to have a written business plan can have on your business.  I may be contacting you!

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

The above quote may be regarded by some as a cliché, but it is also a very true statement.

You’ve decided to start your own online business and may fall into one of these categories:

• You’re brand new to starting a business
• You’re brand new to starting on online business
• You have an offline business but want to build an online presence in order to attract more clients or customers

What You Have in Common

The common denominator  for all three groups is that in order to reach your goals and experience success, you must have a plan in writing or a blueprint for your business.

Value of a Plan

Having a written business plan or a blueprint gives you focus, allows you to create momentum, and create direction in your business.  It will allow you to keep your business on track by providing ways to identify your goals and the strategies you’ll need to implement in order to reach your goals.

A business plan, properly executed, will allow you to identify your business strengths and weaknesses.

It’s important to note that as you gain more knowledge and understanding of what is involved in having an online business, your needs for your business may change or grow.  As a result, you may need to make changes to your original business plan for the success of your online business.  If you’ve already started your online  business without a written business plan, it’s time to go back and do it.  It’s worth the effort to do so.

In my next post I’ll expand on how to set up your business plan. In the meantime, I invite you to visit http://budurl.com/gybot and claim a copy of my Checklist on getting your online business started in 72 hours or less.

Providing superior customer service in your online business is essential to building lasting relationships with customers and clients.  It is an integral part of doing business on the internet.  Note that even if you do not have a product and are not yet providing a service other than writing a very informative blog, consider your visitors as your customers or clients.

Understand What the Customer Wants: It’s important to understand buying triggers and purchasing behavior.   I love to share products that I’ve found valuable with others.  These may be free or there may be a cost attached.  In the past, in my enthusiasm I often felt that if I liked and benefited from the product others would feel the same way.  No so!  It’s important to find out what people want, and just as important to remember that people do not always want what they really need.

People tend to buy from those they know, have established confidence in, and like. The good news is that you can achieve all of these things with your customers without ever meeting them face to face. It just takes some time, email messages with a slightly personal tone, followed by trusting actions. Most people can connect with these, and will feel they know you, even if they have never heard your voice or seen more than a picture of you on an internet web page on their computer screen.

Valuable Information: In order to keep your customers happy and coming back to you– to be your raving fans– you must provide a consistent supply of valuable information relative to your niche in the form of e-books, articles and reports as well as video and audio sessions. It depends largely on what your customer base  needs.

Consistent Communication:  Encourage your website visitors and customers to come back often by offering a newsletter or free product for them if they sign up for further information from you. Offering quality resources makes it easier for even the most reluctant person to divulge their contact information to you thus enabling you to connect with them on a regular basis.  You can also use this means to determine what your customer needs from you so that you can fill the need.

Responding to Comments:  As mentioned in the opening paragraph, you may not have a product or service for sale.  However, your visitors to your blog should be shown the same care as you would give to a prospect or client.  It could be viewed as a training or testing ground.  When you’re in the habit of replying to comments or questions, then it will be much easier to respond to questions or comments your customers or clients make in the future.

Taking care of your prospects and customers is essential to keeping them engaged in your sales funnel.  They’ll appreciate the effort you put in to the service you are providing when they see something of good or even great quality offered on a consistent basis.  It’s what will keep them loyal to you, as well as have them recommend your site to their friends.

On a personal note: Two  the areas I’ve committed  myself to improve in providing superior customer service online and create raving fans is adding videos to my blog and sending autoresponders more frequently.  How about you? Are you satisfied with your level of customer service online, or do you see room for improvement?  Please share.  We learn from each other…

Goal-setting is a process for personal planning.  It could be regarded as a tool for narrowing your focus and segmenting your business so that you can evaluate where you need to give more attention for maximum results.

Goal-setting provides you with long-term vision, while providing you with short-term motivation.

Benefits of Goal-Setting for Entrepreneurs

• Setting goals allows you to determine what you want to achieve in your business:

-  Do you want to have a hobby that provides a small extra income?

-  Do you want to have a serious business that generates a healthy cash flow?

- What are your short-term and long-term visions for your business?

•  Knowing what you want to achieve allows you to decide where to focus your attention and become specific.  In any business there are broad areas you can cover, and many huge corporations do this successfully.  As an entrepreneur, however, you may find that when your focus becomes more narrow, and you target a specific audience, your business may expand dramatically.
• Setting goals help you to improve your self-confidence because you’re no longer floundering; you know exactly where you’re going and how to get there.
• Achieving small, short-term goals allow you to enjoy the satisfaction of accomplishment and strengthens your resolve to achieve greater goals in your business.

What are your thoughts on the above?  What has been your personal experience? 

In my next post, we’ll consider how we can set goals effectively. Until then…please feel free to leave your comments.  We learn from each other.

Recently I read a quote by author Pearl Buck: “I don’t wait for moods.  You accomplish nothing if you do that.  Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.”

Building a successful business online brings a lot of satisfaction, but it also brings its own challenges so I really appreciate the above quote.  Because we are our own boss we can make excuses for ourselves why we cannot work in our business at any given time.

“It’s too cold and gloomy today.” Well, you’re working from home!  Turn on or up the heater, turn on more lights and get to work.  I found that while they cost more the “Daylight” or “Natural Light” compact fluorescent lightbulbs make a huge difference, whether I’m working at nights or on a cloudy day.

Compare that to trudging through snow or cold winds to get to a job and you’ll feel better.  Building an online business from home is a much better proposition.

“I’m feeling down today.” Depression likes inactivity as it allows you to focus on yourself and any negative situations in your life.  Could you call your boss and tell him or her that you’re not coming in because you feel depressed today?  You’d probably become more depressed as you might be told not to return.

Instead, call a friend who always has positive, upbeat comments.  Call a business partner, or if your have a mentor you communicate with regularly, call your mentor.  Just avoid calling someone who’s usually negative or depressed themselves.  You don’t need reinforcement; you need encouragement.

“The holidays are around the corner and I have family coming.” How long does it take to prepare for visitors and how much time do you need to prepare for your holiday celebrations?  Applying time management strategies will allow you to plan your tasks so that you do not neglect your business.

Building a successful online business takes work.  If you were to do a poll of successful business people, including internet marketers, they would tell you that a huge part of their success comes from their willingness to work even when they did not feel like it.  Are you willing to train your mind to ‘know it has got to get down to work’ and not just when you’re in the mood.  I know I’m willing to do so. How about you?

I recently decided to do some research on link building to make sure that I was using the most effective link building strategies in my online business, and especially as it relates to the hub of my business, my blog. During my research I discovered many link building strategies, but here  are 10 basic tips to link building that even persons who are brand new to internet marketing can begin to implement.  I will go into more detail on some of these in a future post.

1.  Offer valuable, high-quality information on your blog.  This will bring more ‘organic links’ to your blog.  This means that you will naturally attract readers or traffic to your website  by providing good content.

2.  Make your visitors feel welcome to your website by sharing a little about you in a “Bio” or on an “About” page; and make it easy to navigate.

3.  Ask and answer questions on Yahoo Answers.  There are lots of Google groups that you can visit and ask or answer questions.  Your comments will link back to your website or blog.

4.  Visit forums in your niche.  Spend short amounts of time getting a feel of the forum as a guest then when you decide to join, create a signature which will include your URL to your website or blog. When you ask questions or post comments you will link back to your blog.

5.  Become an active part of the blogosphere.  Bloggers are like a community online and when you visit other blogs and leave valuable comments you usually can post your website address. Many bloggers will visit your website and return the courtesy.

6.  You can submit your site to web link directories.  There are paid ones, but initially just submit to directories that allow free submissions.

7.  Be a Guest Blogger on other blogs.  These blogs can be in your niche or they may relate somehow.  You’ll see examples of Guest Bloggers who have submitted posts on my blog.  My most recent post as a Guest Blogger was “4 Effective Ways to Attract Traffic to Your Online Business” on http://kathryngriffiths.com.

8.  Article submission.  A good-quality article that has a keyword rich title and one that is optimized with keywords can be submitted to not just one but to many article directories.  Once people are able to find your article and benefit from the content, you will get inbound links rather quickly.

9.  Social Media is an effective way to get inbound links.  The main sites that I’d encourage you to spend some time on if you are not already doing so are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

10. Social Bookmarking.  This is one area that I have not explored, but my research indicates that it’s an effective strategy.  Social bookmarking sites like Digg, Technorati, StumbleUpon are great ways to get links to your site.  You  register and submit your site or articles for people to bookmark, which gives you popularity and more links.

If you were to read my recent guest post mentioned above, you’ll note that some of these strategies are mentioned.  This is because many of the marketing strategies that attract traffic to our website or blog are the same that will give us back-links, one-way links and grow our link building strategies effectively.

Savvy internet marketers consider their blog their home on the internet and therefore seek to improve their writing skills to become a better blogger.

Here are two ways that we can implement in our blogging schedule to become a better blogger.

1.  Write Keyword-Rich Posts

There are times you write an article about a topic that answers a question one of your readers asked.  However, it’s recommended that you optimize at least post every week.  A quick way to identify keywords and long-tail keyword phrases on your topic is to use Google keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com or wordtracker.com.

2.  Create Variety in Your Posting Style

To create variety for your readers, you may want to write posts of different lengths – some long, some short.  This post is an example that. Most of my posts are between 300 and 500 words so to have a post of  less that 200 words took a lot of effort on my part to condense these points.

I’d love to get your opinion…and I promise not take it badly:)  I want you to enjoy your visit to my website.  Which type of post would you prefer to read on my blog?

1.  Longer, ‘meaty’ posts as is my preferred writing style, or

2.  Short, concise posts.

Please leave your comments in the ‘Comment’ section.

woman reading a gift card

How many times you’ve been out shopping and as you walk back through your door you recall that you should have bought some greeting cards?  Have you ever suddenly remembered that it’s your best friend’s Anniversary in a week’s time and you have not mailed her a greeting card, or even purchased it yet?  How many times have you thought of sending your clients a “thank you” card but the thought of writing 20, 30 or 50 cards is so daunting you never get started?

I know this happens because it used to happen to me.  I’ve also had people tell me in March that they have unwritten cards they should have sent out in November or December of the previous year but it was such an overwhelming task that it got started but was not completed.

Send Out Cards is a unique greeting card system with a complete online service that allows you to send a physical, glossy greeting card from your computer that’s delivered through the US Mail.  It is cost-effective as each card with postage costs less than the average price of a regular greeting card.

The greeting card system allows you to leverage your time.  Once your contacts are entered in the system, you can type the message once and select all of your contacts, who will receive a card with their individual name in the salutation. An actual postage stamp is on the envelope, not a metered stamp.

Send Out Cards offers a selection of over 13,000 cards in various categories to suit business and personal needs.  Further, with this system you will never forget any of your customers or friends and family special days as once you fill in the information, the system will remind you in advance of any upcoming dates.

Would you like to see how this system works by sending a greeting card from your computer?  Go to http://cardsuccesscircle.com and click on “Send a Free Card.”  After you send your card, I’ll be happy to send you a copy of my report “One Dozen Reasons to Send a Follow-Up Card.”