“How to fire-up your mental furnace before
you try to build your small business website”
By Curt Graham
Hold it! We are talking here about a small business website that you have decided to build today. You’ll find on the wide expanses of the Internet an incredible number of gurus that are stampeding towards your e-click fingers to help you make your own website.
But first–you have to do some learning and research. Most understand that, but many swagger into the ebusiness stadium and pretend to know a lot. What they get is a good dose of disappointment. You’ll need the right kind of weapons, and the right battle plan to succeed.
I knew you’d bring that up! Yes, there are a lot of easy ways to build web sites such as using instructional CD’s, mentoring, or even “ready-made” websites that are flooding the Internet. And you can easily publish the site on the Internet an hour after starting. What is never obvious, and yet so important, are the necessary steps in the process of setting up a website that separate the men from the boys or ladies from the girls.
You want to make some money using the website, right? You want visitors to find your site, right? You want those visitors to buy something, right? You want them to come back again and again and buy, right?
If failure is not an option in your mind, then learn how to succeed!
Plan your work and work your plan!
Start at the end and work back to the beginning: Sounds dumb, but makes sense if you can follow me.
Many build a website, and then wonder how to use it. You need to know what your website is for before you ever start one—that is if you really want to have a successful ebusiness.
How you need to proceed:
- Set a business goal in simple terms.
- Determine if the goal is realistic.
- Discover what is necessary to make it all work.
- Find resources that will be needed.
- Budget for every step.
- Make a backup plan.
- Build your business website.
1. Business Goal: This is where you want to end up. Example: “I want to sell baseballs to every baseball fan that I can find.” Not, “I want to sell sporting goods to those that need them.” Pick out a specific business concerning things that you are passionate about, know a lot about, have a lot of experience with, or will be something that you will enjoy doing every single day.
2. Realistic Business: If you find out there are 14,000 Internet businesses already selling baseballs, you might want to change your original product to something else that involves less competition, or present your product in a different light—-like selling autographed baseballs. You need a business that not only provides the public with what they are buying and want, but also that has acceptable amounts of competition.
3. Get Smart: Learn why customers are buying baseballs, why they buy them from certain businesses, and if there is an associated market relating to baseballs that no one has thought of—–like a personalized stand or holder to put the autographed baseball on. Perhaps sell collector’s cabinets specifically for displaying baseballs.
Learn advertising, marketing, promotion, traffic, list building, tracking, business structure, and all those tactics and techniques necessary to succeed on your business web site. You’re laughing!
Yes, it would take years to learn all those e-topics! If you don’t at least get a superficial grasp of the ebusiness world, and even if you hire folks to do all that for you, you will not succeed. What do you think all the older generation starting out does to get smart? They only have a few years to pick it up and go!
If you are as smart as I think you are (just by being here and reading this), you will be a subscriber to the free ezines (newsletters) pertaining to the expertise you will need in all those areas of business—and you will continue to read them until you walk into the bright light. Join Forums as well. Know what they are?
4. Resources 101: Selling baseballs at competitive prices means that you have to obtain them at a much lower price to make money (for those new to business). But you could be a billionaire and be giving them away on your Internet business website. Do research and find the middlemen, wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers, and auctions where baseballs are available continuously at wholesale prices that can keep your stock shelves full.
5. Money 101: Never forget Church on Sunday, because sooner or later you will be praying for more customers, more income that you deserve, and for the cash to keep your business website rolling. It isn’t a matter of, “Ok, max out your credit lines and hope that some day you can pay it all off.” Knowing that 95% of small web businesses fail in the first 2 years—must mean something to you.
It’s a matter of budgeting for every aspect of the business carefully, and then spend your money for the best help you can find whether it is software, mentoring, or hiring.
6. Backup Plan: Suppose people stop buying baseballs for some reason, at least from you. Suppose you become disabled and can’t run the business. More often, it’s that the ebusiness entrepreneur finds a more lucrative venture, or more interesting one, or a better ebusiness niche to dive into. Smart business folks always are prepared for the “What if” scenario.
7. Web Site Project: It’s a hard lesson to learn—selling baseballs without having a business website. Thankfully, the experts in Internet business strategies have provided umpteen ways to easily set up your website. Inexperienced people do it all the time. The trick is to construct a website that is ebusiness functional and can easily be revised to follow the marketplace.
Maybe customers have become tired of catching baseballs in their bare hands, and now want to buy your disposable baseball mitts when they arrive at the game. Did you just start a parallel business?
Comments: If you discover that the hen house is empty in the morning, don’t always blame the fox! You, and only you, are completely responsible for the failure or success of your online business. Expect to work long hours to get your ebusiness website up and running, and to keep it profitable.
It’s always the right path, to obtain and use every bit of the knowledge and expertise available to you on the Internet—most of which is affordable and comprehendible by inexperienced ebusiness website owners……including you!
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Tags: build a website, build your own website, ebusiness, ebusiness website., Internet business, online business, small business, small business website
