Starting up your own web business can seem daunting if you’ve never done it before. But there are a few simple concepts that will guide you and make sure everything you do contributes to building an effective – and profitable – business!

Here are some of the tips we’ve given in recent Consultation calls…

• Your Goals: Spell out your objectives in starting a web business, as they are what will keep you going through thick and thin… Map out the development of your web business against your goals, so that every element of what you do represents another (identifiable) step towards achieving your goals. Occasionally stop and look back at what you’ve achieved and give yourself a pat on the back, identify what needs adjusting, and learn from your experiences.
• Your Strategy: The beating heart of your web business is your business strategy. This is all about identifying a niche that you can target effectively, monetise and dominate and then working out how to do this most cost-effectively. Where do your prospects ‘hang out’ and how can you reach them? What ‘Irresistible Offer’ will bring them flocking in? Can you use viral products or videos to market your offer? How do you keep your customers coming back for more?
• Your USP: What’s different about you/your offer/ your approach – why should someone follow you or buy your products? You need to have some unique offering or angle that ‘stands out from the crowd’. SOS – the ‘Same Old Stuff’ may bring in the odd customer but we all look for something New, Different or Better all the time, don’t we? Look through your prospects’ eyes.
• Your Funnel: To maximize the benefits from your work, try to identify suitable products that represent steps through your funnel – from freebie to front-end product, mid-price, high-price, etc. You don’t have to have all these in place when starting out, but mapping out how you’re going to lead your prospects through your funnel will help make sure every element of what you do is productive in building your business and everything makes a coherent whole.
• Your offer: See how you can make the offer on your website (your free report) ‘irresistible’ – ie a no-brainer for people to sign up for! Then try to make sure that the expectations of those that sign up for it are exceeded, so that they want more! Again, look through your prospects’ eyes.
• Your Website: You have 6 to 10 seconds to grab your visitors’ attention – and hold it! Your headline should immediately ‘answer’ their problem and there should preferably be a relevant graphic that reinforces this. Your call to action (the ‘Most Wanted Outcome’) should be clear. Think about the changes you could make to increase conversion (reinforce your ‘irresistible offer’) – and keep testing them.
• Monetisation: The whole purpose of your web business is to make profit (by helping others), so try to think of all the opportunities to make a sale – I covered 16 at the Mastermind Workshop but web biz expert Rich Schefren says there are at least 45 different opportunities…!

Sure, it may look complicated but the final ‘bonus’ tip is KISS – Keep It Stupidly Simple! Oh so many businesses have failed because they got too clever or too complicated. Keep it all absolutely as simple as you possibly can – and simple enough that your prospects and customers can clearly see ‘What’s In It For Me’ and why they should do business with you!

Oh – last thing… Nothing will happen without taking Action. Small steps at a time… As the Chinese Philosopher, Lao Tze, said: “The journey of a thousand miles is started with a single step…” So start taking those steps…!

All the best with your web business…

John Thornely
Internet Tycoons

In an earlier post – What Is Your Life Worth? When To Outsource… – we looked at the value of your time, what to focus your efforts on and when you should outsource tasks.

In this post, I’m going to look at WHAT you can outsource easily and simply on the Internet.

When to Outsource

You’ll recall that our criteria on what you should outsource were:

· If you can get a job done by someone else for less than your
‘Outsourcing Cut-off Rate’…

· …(especially if they’ll do it faster/better)…

· And you can spend your time on more valuable things…

· => Then Outsource it!

What to Outsource

Well, here’s a short list of just some of the things you can easily and quickly outsource on the Internet…

• Research

• Copywriting

• Course / Tutorial creation

• Product creation

• Software development

• Articles

• Article submission

• Autoresponder series

• Web stuff

• Websites/pages

• Payment setup

• Press Release creation / issue

• Blogging

• Forum research

• Forum monitoring

• Forum posting

• Cold calling

• Call answering

• PA & office work

• Lead entry

• Video / Manual Creation

• Etc, etc

The list is – literally – endless!

What NOT to Outsource

Things you should NOT outsource include:

– Management of your business

– Control of your business

– Marketing of your Business (although you can outsource most of the elements)

There are also some key Skills you NEED to understand yourself, even if you outsource most of the work:

– Copywriting

– The Basics of anything you’re outsourcing, so you can Specify it and Control it

But How…?

The key stumbling blocks here often centre on:

• It’s too difficult

• I don’t know how to tell them what I want

• I don’t know where to go

• I’m worried I’ll get ripped off

Well, I don’t have time to go into all the details here, but suffice it to say…

It’s really not that difficult!

Just start with a limited task and try it out. Limit your risk until you have identified partners you can trust with bigger tasks.

And don’t expect any one individual to be able to do everything you need – most of the ‘freelancers’ and outsource companies out there have particular specialties – be it copywriting, web stuff, accounting or admin support.

I’m working on a full manual on Outsourcing Your Web Business but, in the mean time, look out for upcoming blog posts on WHERE to Outsource and HOW to Outsource …

Happy Outsourcing…

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

We could all do with more hours in the day, couldn’t we?

But how can we get them?

Ask Yourself!

· What activities are wasting my time? eg, if you watch TV for 3 hours a day, you could have an extra 20 hours a week to start your own business!

· What tasks are you doing that someone else could do for you? Most things you need to do in an internet business can, in fact, be outsourced.

· Who else can you involve to help you? Who can you ‘outsource’ to, partner with or get advice from?

· Are you doing the most important things? You should be – and giving the rest to someone else!

7 Steps To More Time

Answer the questions below honestly and commit to them.

1: Where do you waste most time at the moment?

2: How can you save or create more time?

3: What tasks can you delegate or dump?

4: Schedule time in your diary to take action – when?

5: When (regularly) are you going to review your goals?

6: How will you reward yourself for achieving these?

7: How can you learn from other peoples mistakes?

Above all else, if you want to succeed, you must commit to take these actions.

The thoughts we choose to think
are the tools we use to paint the canvass of our lives.
Louise Hay

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

I spent a fun and insightful day last week at Nick Tadd’s Social Media Workshop. Altogether a very useful and thought-and-action-provoking day!

One of the questions I raised with Nick was the desirability of using corporate versus personal branding and accounts when using the social media.

Nick has since posted a very interesting blog post examining the issue of Social Media Schizophrenia on the Ecademy Social Media Club (SMUDGE) Forum.

Nick concludes that “…The answer is to simply be YOU…you should focus on one core business, the one that you feel most passionate about. Build your on-line brand, personality, and profile around that one business. Once people LIKE and TRUST you, you can then expose them to your other business activities, even if they are totally un-related.”

As I noted in my response to Nick’s post, I believe the choices are not necessarily straightforward, and will depend on the individual, the business, target market and the industry.

And, as the social media and the way they are driving business strategy are here to stay, it’s well worth thinking through the issues as they affect YOU and YOUR BUSINESS…

As Nick (and Penny and Thomas Power, the founders of Ecademy) point out, the mediums available for promotion of one’s business are rapidly changing as we go into the 21st Century – largely due to the changes social media have brought, as well as the ‘information overload’ that we now have thanks to the internet as a whole.

As a result, we’re well into the ‘age of recommendation’ and the tendency to follow people, rather than brands (viz Penny’s KnowMe-LikeMe-FollowMe analysis).

There are many big corporates who use the social media – especially Facebook and Twitter – very successfully to promote the brand (Dell, etc) , rather than individuals – and this is an appropriate approach where the brand already has global or growing recognition.

Many senior executives do, of course, also have a personal Facebook and/or Twitter account, as this allows the corporate to put a more human face on the brand and plays to the above factors.

Many senior executives do, of course, also have a personal SM account, as this allows the corporate to put a more human face on the brand and plays to the above factors.

There’s an interesting TechCrunch blog post on how Charities are using Twitter very successfully to raise funds – this of course is using a corporate branding…

Celebrities are the prime example of using the social media to great effect on a personal branding basis, as people follow them (or their stage name personas) as ‘fans’.

There are also those who use the social media both with a ‘sober business persona’ and also with a zanier ‘ the real me’ persona – eg Simon Leung (of Adwords List Building) – @SimonLeung has 39,900 followers, while @CoolSi has 43,600.

Using a personal brand on the social media may also be less easy for smaller businesses, eg the local hairdresser/cake shop or online graphic designer, unless the proprietors have ‘big personalities’ and/or are already well known in their business/area.

For the smaller start-up business/entrepreneur, social media are inevitably going to be a necessary part of core strategy for the future – it’s more and more a question of making the product fit the media, rather than vice-versa.

However, as they may not already be known by their persona, whether to use a corporate or personal branding will depend on a range of factors, including the business, the industry, the target market, personality, etc…

So thanks Nick for a timely post – all good ‘grist to the mill’…

…and I’ll include some questions on these aspects in my Free Tele-Interview with Thomas Power on Wednesday 8th July on “How To Use Social Media For Business Promotion”.

Details at: www.ThePowerNetworker.com

I look forward to you joining us on Wednesday!

Cheers!

John Thornely

I caught a Twitter and blog post from John Haydon about a video tutorial on feeding your Twitter stream with your Flickr activity by Ian Wilker that you may find helpful.

This is a great approach for posting images that tell a story or update your Twitter followers – especially for businesses or non-profits organisations that communicate their impact with images, but have limited time for social media marketing.

As John noted, this process seemed so easythat he’s done a screencast while he connected his own Flickr and Twitter accounts.

So, my thanks to John Haydon and Ian Wilker. Follow John on Twitter.

Niche research can be challenging – but there’s a simple way to get ideas, whether it’s for an affiliate product or for your own information product.

One of the best ways to find a hot selling product is to look for a problem that lots of people are facing, and then offer them a solution.

But where do you find people talking about their problems? Well, wherever people ‘hang out’ to chat – particularly in online forums, especially if they are busy ones.

You can locate suitable Forums by browsing through directories listing online forums – such as www.big-boards.com.

Or you can search for them using search engines by typing in the search term: “(Your niche topic) + discussion forums” - using the inverted commas (“”) for a ‘Broad Match’ search.

You can tell if a forum is suitable for your niche research by looking at how often people post there, and how recent the latest post is. If there are few visitors in the last few days, the forum’s probably not suitable for your needs.

Check the quality of the discussion before you make your decision to use that forum or not – and then move on to the next one.

The best way to do your research will vary from forum to forum. But generally, you should look for ‘hot’ threads – discussion topics where there are a large number of page views or responses.

For example, if a discussion has over 400 views in a day, or over 1,000 views in 3 days, the topic is likely to have great potential, and will show you what are the ‘triggers’ that will get your target market’s attention – and the issues or problems they are seeking solutions to.

If you often see the same or similar questions being asked on forums, this can indicate an opportunity you can tap into.

So think of a topic and go and look at some forums!

Happy Niche research!

John

Have you spent any time recently looking at Google Books?

It’s amazing what you can find there… Anything from Shakespeare to the day’s ‘Random Category’ – be it Steam Engines, Confucianism, Housekeeping, Self-development, Political Psychology or Arboriculture!

And there are plenty of classics — from Francis Bacon to Napoleon Hill.

Sadly, they don’t yet have a category of ‘Internet Marketing’ or ‘Web Business’ – or even just ‘Business’ for that matter!

But you can search the millions of books already available — try searching for ‘copywriting‘ – there are some useful resources!

But there is a wealth of material and you can often pick up a lot of valuable information at no cost.

Not surprisingly, the whole site is geared to getting you to buy the books you look at—which you can do through a range of bookstores.

So, all in all, it has similarities to Amazon and some other online Bookstores that increasingly allow you to ‘see inside’ the books on offer.

Google Books does, however, allow you to look at much more of the material inside a book than other sources—and there are some where you can read quite a few chapters—even if the deliberate policy of missing alternate pages (or whole sections) in some chapters can spoil your fun a bit!

So go over and have a look at http://books.google.com/books

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

A topic that came up in two recent consultancy calls with Mastermind Program Members was using the correct spelling and language for your target market – and then directing them to the appropriate affiliate website to make their purchase.

Let’s look at a physical product that can be marketed through a Hub and Mini-site strategy – for instance ‘Media Centres’ (but don’t ask me what they do!).

First question… Who is my target market?

Second question… Where are they?

Third Question… What style of language do they use – ie how do I need to ‘speak’ to get their interest?

The Center of The Matter

Let’s look at media centres – or is it centers…? ‘Media Centre’ is the British English spelling… The Americans would refer to a ‘Media Center’.

To see what I’m talking about, do a Google search on the term ‘samsung media center’… When I did this, the first result was for ‘Samsung United States’, using the spelling ‘Center’, and so on down the list. When I spelled it ‘centre’, some UK suppliers appeared in the top few listings who did not appear for the other spelling (along with Samsung USA again!).

Now Google’s search algorithms are clever enough to get round the spelling question, so ‘center’ comes up even when I type in ‘centre’ – particularly as that is the spelling used by the manufacturer. And Google directs me to search using Google.co.uk anyway, whereas in the USA, they’ll be using Google.com with it’s algorithms set to focus on US-based searches.

What The Domain…?

But all this becomes more important when you’re selecting your Domain name for a Mini-site, doesn’t it?

If you choose ‘SamsungYH-999GSMediaCentre.com’ as your domain name, and use this spelling on your web pages, you’ll get British-oriented (UK) traffic – if indeed you get any, as Samsung don’t call it this (they use Center). If you want to target American traffic, you’d need to use the ‘Center’ spelling.

You can check on sites like Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk that focus separately on the US and UK markets and see what comes up for ‘Samsung YH-999GS Media Centre’. For my search, Amazon.com returned ads while Amazon.co.uk didn’t.

Now, if I live in the USA and I’m looking for a ‘media center’, I’ll expect it to be sold, and delivered within, the USA. I don’t know what these British pound thingies are (and the price converted into dollars is higher) and I don’t want to wait three weeks (or pay for) my purchase to be shipped across ‘the Pond’.

And vice-versa. If I buy on-line in the UK, I want it to be delivered tomorrow from a UK supplier (but see ‘Side Note’ below).

So make sure your supplier/portal matches your market… and your target product.

Side Note – Arbitrage: It’s sometimes cheaper to buy in US$ and get it shipped from the USA – subject to taxes, duties, warranties, servicing requirements, etc… So there can be opportunities for ‘arbitrage’ for uncomplicated products, by sourcing/shipping them cheaper from the US than consumers can buy them in the UK… but let’s save that for another blog post!

Divided By A Common Language

And don’t forget to use the appropriate words that your target market uses. Terminology can change between countries, states and even counties. An example I came across recently was the terminology used by different State administrations for corrective driving courses for speeding offenders in the USA. Nearly every state calls it something different (I don’t have space here to list them all!) – so you’d need state-specific web pages if you were marketing this product…!

The Moral Of The Story: So, when you’re selecting your domain name, make sure that you’re targeting your market correctly, using the right spellings for the market – and as used by the product supplier – and that you’re directing your prospects to the most appropriate seller.

This isn’t really complicated – but I hope the above will help you focus on getting things right rather faster than if you have to find out for yourself… the hard way!

PS: See my blog post “The Anatomy of Great Copy ” on how to find some of the answers posed above…

Happy marketing!

John Thornely
Internet Tycoons

I came across this useful video on “How to tell a story” by Scott Simon.

While the video is aimed at journalists, it is a very useful reminder of how to tell a story in your copywriting…

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Hack or Copywriter, we humans love stories and your story needs to grab your readers’ attention!

And if you want your story (or copy) to go viral, as Scott says… “Give your audience something they can pass on” – a catch-phrase or idea.

Happy copywriting

John

If you want to succeed online, you have to have a strategy (or theme, a purpose, or community) for your website, with a central focus on a specific WANT that your prospects have. Then, you find products which follow along the theme.

So, the three keys to creating income from ANY web site and ANY theme, according to Terry Dean, are:

1. Have a lead product that people WANT.

2. Have freebies at your site that follow the theme.

3. Have multiple backend or supporting products for the theme.

You can’t develop a business around a single product. Even if you are promoting a single product upfront, it is not the product that people want.

They want the BENEFITS they receive out of the product.

When designing your site, think about that ever abiding “WANT” or “GOALS” that your prospects have with them continually.

Things such as: more money, weight loss, online success, being sexually attractive, self-defense, etc.

These ultimate benefits are what your prospects are really seeking.

So, don’t base your business just on products.

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com