The World Business

Archive for November, 2010

Introduction

If you are anything like me, the words “make money from home”, “home based business”, and “internet business” cause immediate scepticism and eye rolls. We are always being bombarded by businesses, systems, techniques and all forms of propaganda about making money on-line. We hear far more often of the systems that fail than the one that succeed.

We are financially and mentally hurt by the ones that do NOT work. Now, do we know of any business that succeeds on-line at all? I was not sure. So I started to investigate some offers on the internet.

Opportunities

The amount of offered opportunities is tremendous, as I soon found out. I immediately was thinking: “OMG, this will take the average opportunity seeker for ages, to go through these amounts of information”. I mean, if you consider to start an on-line business, than you at least need to inform yourself about what it is and what it can mean for you. And you need to compare it to other offers, is it not? The first one you consider is not necessarily the best one (for you). Seeing how many offers there are (just google the words “home based business”and you see what I mean: around 500 MILLION PAGES are reported to cover that subject). I would say basically it is undo able to really investigate offers, since it will take a life time to only try to find the right one this way.

Back to the Basics

And I apologize because this is what I should have done in the first place. I said to myself: “IF I want an on-line business, WHAT KIND of business should it be? Aha, better start, I think. So now I am on the path to find out what kind of on-line businesses would be available and interesting for me. Googling On-line Business Opportunities does not help much (more than 1 BILLION pages). Now what? Give up? Nope, I really want to become independent, work from home and don’t have a boss. Motivation. Start to think for yourself and make a list of possibilities:

1. Selling my own products
2. Selling someone else’s products
3. Offering services
4. Don’t know yet but probably a lot more

Oke, now I focus on these first three first. I don’t have my own product, so no that skips. Number 2 maybe? Well, perhaps, worth looking into, at least. And finally, Offering Services. This is also a maybe for me. I know now how difficult it is to find good on-line business opportunities, but I am learning and why not help people in a later stage with my knowledge (for a price, of course)?

Opportunities (next stage)

Right, I decide to go first for number 2. I am not a salesmen, as a matter of fact I hate the idea to have to phone someone I don’t know trying to sell something. So I have my doubts but yet again, at least it is worth exploring. And exploring I did. Jeez, it takes enormous amounts of time to do this. After a month’s work in my spare time, I finally had the basics discovered to decide IF: a. there is something interesting for me at all in on-line business and b. what path should I follow? To make it short, and this in no way is meant to discourage you, just to get you SCEPTICAL: the first thing I found out that 95% of the on-line opportunity seekers DON’T succeed. Actually they only lose money, after signing up for whatever possibility. That is to say at least not very encouraging. But I am an optimist, so I said to myself: what the heck, this also means that 5% DO succeed! Compare it to the famous story: Is the glass half empty (pessimist), or is it half full (optimist). OK, Now what? Well, as I discovered, it can be certainly worthwhile selling other peoples products, by promoting their products and earning a commission. They call it Affiliate Marketing (google it: 57 MILLION pages). Yes, I decide to explore that further (57 million is much less than 1 billion ).

Affiliate Marketing (or: Selling someone else’s products)

“As I discovered the secrets shared, and learned how the business works, I was stunned. It made sense. It was true. It worked, and will work.”. That is what I dreamt about night after night after night. That is what I was thinking about day after day after day. Yet again I faced an unbelievable amount of information, opportunities and opinions to investigate. But it turned out finally, after spending 18 months of research, that Niche Affiliate Marketing ((Niche means: focussing on a smaller part of the general market, for instance: General is: Golf (google: 500 million + pages), Niche could be: Golf Balls (google: almost 15 million pages, but a better Niche would be: Personalized Golf Balls (500.000 pages)) is probably the best business to get into as an on-line entrepreneur. You can promote products (and when there is a sale: get a commission) from almost every on-line company in the world, this includes giants like Amazon and many others. I thought: if these companies offer to join their “affiliate marketing” program, then it had to be worthwhile, would it not? Yes, MAYBE, but how to do it so, that I actually earn money. And after that we need to: How to stay alive without a normal job. And then the next and final step: Earn enough money to become FINANCIALLY INDEPENDANT (the ultimate goal, don’t you agree?). I am facing now yet another learning curve, since offers to promote from others (affiliate marketing) google 58 million results. Now one thing I have learned being an off-line entrepreneur for almost 25 years is that I DON’T want to reinvent the wheel, I rather choose to learn from those who already have proven success, and want to teach us starters how they did it. (On-line they are generally called: GURU’S .

Guru’s

Wikipedia on Guru (just kidding, this is my own definition): “The people who are (or feel they should be) considered as real and proven successful experts in the field of knowledge they want to teach to others.” OK, finding a Guru is the way to find someone who can teach me to become really successful in my on-line business. I felt more and more to choose Niche Affiliate Marketing as my future on-line business, so I started to search for “Guru’s” in this field of expertise.

Disappointment to say the least. This is my personal opinion, guys, so don’t hang me if you disagree, but fact is: I found that the ‘gurus’ were selling re-hashed ideas that never gave me enough information to start making real money. At least, yet again, 95% of them . There are some really good, impressive, outstanding coaches (Guru’s) that can teach you all there is to know about Niche Affiliate Marketing. And yes, I found some, and yes, I am starting to get successful in Niche Affiliate Marketing. So I know now:

Niche Affiliate Marketing

WORKS. BUT……. There are many things to learn (the best is to find a good coaching program, IMO), this is certainly NOT a Get-Rich-Quick-Scheme, like any off-line business you need to learn and work hard to earn.

Conclusion

So to recap my initial question: Do any on-line businesses succeed at all? Definitely: YES, ……. BUT…….. I think if YOU want to succeed on the internet, you should choose to do so in Niche Affiliate Marketing. That is my honest opinion. But it finally is your choice of course. Be always very sceptic on all offers you want to look at, and do that BEFORE you pay, even if there is a money back guarantee (much income is earned from people who sign up for something, don’t do anything with it and forgot about the possible reimbursement). Be aware of the fact, even if you are already an expert in your field, there is lots of things you need to learn to become successful on-line. Even IF you use a Guru. And I certainly recommend a Guru, but yet again, there are only a few people who are really successful on-line and even much and much less really good Guru’s who can teach you to become successful. So beware who you choose as your mentor! Stay always SCEPTICAL!

Your job no longer comes with a guarantee.

Yes, that is right, you might have been taught that if you work hard, study for a professional occupation, and score high grades, your future is set. Nothing can harm you. You get a job with your beautiful education and a good salary, and after 40 – 50 years of working, you retire happy and do anything you want.

Let us look at the facts: Millions of people are laid off work yearly. Some industries, like the record industry, were completely obsolete overnight. Thousands of skilled senior executives and middle managers are losing their jobs. Some students even find themselves unemployed when they finish their courses.

Income and retirement isn’t looking too good either. Nowadays both husband and wife have to work to maintain a descent lifestyle. Statistics show that 95% of all people at age 65 are either dead, or dead broke, and that it is only 6% of the population that is financially independent … and only 1% of those can be considered wealthy.

In the 90′s people turned to small business as an opportunity to create the best economic return available. Most people who venture into their own business are the so-called “Baby Boomers” – people between the ages of 30 and 50. These Boomers represent a third of the population and they are leading the way to make entrepreneurship the Super Career of the 21st century.

Buying a franchise was also seen as a viable option. A franchise is a safe business structure as it has proven systems in place for generating and keeping business.

Women who are disillusioned with climbing the corporate ladder started a new trend in creating home businesses which they can work around their already busy schedules as mothers.

For these entrepreneurs who are looking to start a small business from home, Network Marketing offers many attractive characteristics, including low capital risk and the ease of operation. Unlike traditional small businesses, Network Marketing requires no expensive legal, financial or accounting services, low maintenance or overheads, no employees, advanced education or start up money.

In most cases the only requirements for success in Network Marketing are: A strong desire, integrity, attitude and action.

I started my company (EMJ) from the trunk of my car (and it was a small trunk so that’s a small business). I grew EMJ to $375,000,000 in sales prior to selling it to SYNNEX. I am now CEO of a $1 billion business. My successful blog at (jimestill.com) generates a lot of comments and questions. I want to share one of these thoughtful questions with you, and share my answer.

The question:

“First off I just want you to know all I’m asking for is advice, which is the most valuable thing I can get right now.

I have been working in a field of interest for many years now as a hobby. I’ve always had many very good ideas but I never had the resources to make them happen. I always figured it was because I was too young. Now I’m older, I have a job and I’m plagued with the same problem. I’ll have a great idea but it will usually be out of my range because I either do not have the technical ability, the funding or resources to make the idea I vision happen.

My most recent plan evolved from my experience running similar websites, I found there was an un-fulfilled need. I decided to start judging the need for what I was offering so I did my homework and contacted over 130 other similar sites. Within a day I had 20 sites interested in what I had to offer. That’s great and all but those 20 sites generate about 6 times the traffic I could handle. So once again I’m in the same position. I do not have the resources I need to properly execute my idea.

My basic question, what is the best route to take when you have a great ideal that is more then you can handle.

A little more about me, I’m 23 years old, I have been running web sites and involved in the industry for around 6 years. I have a good paying job in another industry which makes it even more difficult to make the “jump”.

Thank you for your time.”

My response:

1 – There is never a right time. Entrepreneurship involves risk. This means yous sometimes need to just jump. This said – I always say “fail often, fail fast, fail cheap” so I always look at the downside.

2 – It is very powerful to be under resourced. It will make you more resourceful and likely allow you to run a leaner more competitive business.

3 – I like to choose opportunities that are the right size for me now. This is a beautiful thing for business – there is always a right size business opportunity for everyone at every size. When you are starting from your basement, you can take a $100,000 opportunity and do well. Bigger companies cannot do this so will leave you alone.

4 – When the opportunity is too big for me, I consider narrowing my scope. Instead of being the biggest seller of bar code equipment, be the bigger in bar code for warehouses etc.

5 – Consider partnering. It is better to have 10% of something that is worth something than 100% of an idea.

6 – Ideas are a dime a dozen. It is the implementation that counts. How often do you see a restaurant with a line outside and the one next to it goes bankrupt. All the time. Ideas are easy.

7 – I know a lot of people who almost start businesses. They are not successful. To steal from Nike – “Just do it”. And do it now. Time is the enemy of ideas and business. Someone else has the same idea. It is the one who perfects it that wins.

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