Taking the first step to being your own boss

It is a big decision to make, going out on your own and working for yourself.


It does not have to be a difficult one though if you plan ahead and have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Start off with an idea and gradually build on it, test the water by researching your chosen subject. Online businesses are very easy to set up and do not have to be expensive, plus you can do most of your pre-planning and research for free. Using search engines such as Google can quickly show how popular and how competitive your chosen business idea is, do not be put off by competition if your subject is very popular there are bound to be lots of others already in the field. Offering something slightly different or of better quality/service can give you an edge over the competition. Also learning good marketing strategies before you launch your business will help you better your competition.

Be prepared to put in the work, unless you have a large budget to get you started you are going to have to do a lot of the setting up yourself. Think about how you can market your business in the most cost effective way, you will probably need to hire some outside help for some of the tasks.

Starting up your online business such as getting your first website up and running is really easy these days with so many packages to choose from that do most of the work for you, again it all depends on your budget but remember the most expensive is often not the best. Some businesses spend fortunes on fancy websites with moving images and graphics that look great, but very often they just end up confusing or annoying the visitor. A simple black text on white background web page is much easier on the eye, think about if you read a book or any written text is it easier to read black on white or other colours? What if the pages of the book you are reading started flashing images at you, how easy is it to take in the information?

Some images and gimmicks can of course attract your customers attention and enhance the overall look and appeal of your website but don't over do it. It is good practice to test your ideas, show them to friends and colleagues for some feedback before going ahead with them.

To summarise then lets look at a simple list of tasks,

· Write a business plan

· Decide on a budget for your venture

· Research your chosen subject

· Test your ideas

· Start building the business

· Outsource some tasks

Your business plan does not need to be complex nor set in stone, you can always add to it and adapt it as you get going.

It is a good idea to set yourself a budget of at least 10% above your estimates to give yourself a cushion for the unexpected.

Research is the key, you must be sure there is a market for your product or service. How popular is your subject online?

Test everything out if you can before committing yourself to a task. Most things can be changed quite easily such as website design or layout, try several and see what people think works best for your business.

Once you have a clear focus on what you want to do, start building your business. Your website, products or service, emails, marketing and stock if you have any should all be in place.

The jobs you can't do, don't know how to do or just don't want to do should be outsourced. The more you can do yourself the more control you will have over the business, so learn as much as you can. Some tasks like building a website if you have zero experience may seem impossible right now but with a little effort you may surprise yourself. A lot of tasks like building your own site are much easier these days with lots of companies offering great learn as you go packages.



(c) Gordon Bloomfield 2010

Marketing and online resources.

Useful links to get you started, the last three are for when your site is up and running to generate that all-important traffic.

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Tips and tricks, the marketing systems

Hi again, here we are heading towards the cold weather, a good excuse to spend some time in the comfort of the office (office at home in my case) and get some marketing done.

As always I am spending some time building back links to my various sites, this is an essential way of getting your site recognised. If you have your website up and running but are not getting the traffic then make sure you have a links page set up and start filling it. The page does not need to be any more than a list of other relevant sites but some may want you to include a clickable picture or banner. You should always check that the site you are linking to has set up a link back to yours otherwise you will not gain any real benefit as far as the search engines are concerned. If you are new to this and don't know were to start here is what I recommend, first do a search on Google or any other search engine for sites in the same subject as your own (it is important for the links to be relevant to your sites content). Then with this list start contacting the owners and requesting a link exchange (aways be polite, please and thank you goes a long way).
You may find that sites run by manufacturers and the like are not able to link back to you for various reasons but you may still search their links pages to find other related sites.
I suggest writing a standard email message and save it then you just need to collect all the email addresses from the sites you visit. Do not expect to get replies to all your messages some will no doubt get labled as spam and not make it, others may just be disregarded. Keep at it and soon you will have a growing list of sites linking into yours, then the next time the search engines crawl your site they will see it's relevance in your niche and this should help with your ranking.

Website updates

September nearly over already! wow time goes so fast, I have been very busy updating the website and working on increasing that all important traffic,  I have been using this free.cool-traffic programme and
The list machine to build up my customer base and highly recommend you give them a try. 

List building is probably the most important part of any online business, without the customers to sell to you just don't have a business. You can always use ppc (pay per click) and i have recently found a great alternative to Google at a fraction of the price, I will publish a link later or email me now if you just can't wait gbgbmail21@googlemail.com ..

As time goes by with developing more ways of generating an online presence the amount of work builds, may be time to start outsourcing some of your article writing or social media interaction. If you have family  members you can get involved that can take some of the load, all the better, otherwise you will need to start looking for an online company to help you out. There are many out there who can write articles for you and plenty of add ons for the social media sites like facebook and twitter. I don't recommend any over the others so you will just have to make up your own mind on that one. More ramblings and useful stuff to come soon, keep on marketing!!

If you are looking for website building solutions you may also try this software, Xsite Pro offer great value and it is easy to use coming with step by step video tuition.

(c) Gordon Bloomfield September 2010

Traffic building plan

So you have your website up and running or your affiliate products ready to sell. The next step is to start getting good targeted traffic to view your products and hopefully buy them. How do you get this traffic? well there are several ways.

• Run an advertising campaign using google adwords or similar (pay per click)
• Publish articles to ezine articles and others based around your products
• Join Traffic generating programmes such as Traffic Swarm
• Make videos to promote on Youtube etc.

These are the top 4 methods but are by no means the only ways of generating traffic. Pay per click should see you get instant results but will of course cost you, the other methods may be free. I have published several articles on these methods already, some here and others on my website. If you would like to know more about generating traffic check out my money making making business online.

I have recently joined Traffic Swarm myself and can recommend them as a good free traffic generating system.

If you have not yet done so I would also recommend signing up with Aweber to create your own capture page for your potential customers and promote to them with automated emails.

Finally I recommend XsitePro who have fantastic, easy to follow website building software especially designed for online marketers.