Working from Home to Build Your Business? Useful Free Gifts

Working at home to build an online business is hard. We would like to make the process easier for our friends out there with this gift of free applications and really useful stuff.

Everyone likes free gifts (is there any other sort?). And we were determined to find as many useful gifts for our friends who run or would like to run small online businesses.   Well, it is that time of year after all.

We know (because we have been there) that if you are working from home to set up an online business, every penny is vital. If you can do something for nothing, it might just keep you going.

So we dug through our own archives, and did a trawl of the internet to come up with stuff we thought would be useful to you as you try to set up your business online. I think you will like what you find.

As you "tear off the wrapping" we are confident that you will find something you can use to improve your business.

So dig in. Help yourself, and download, copy, pass on or just plain hoard everything you find through the links on this page.

Just one warning. Free stuff hardly ever really is free is it? So just be aware that you need to check Ts & Cs in case you end up with too many ads on your site or other conditions you did not want. Otherwise, enjoy!

Oh, and Happy Holidays everyone.

7 Great Links to Fantastic Free Stuff

1. Small Business Ceo:   This brilliant site has put together a collection of FREE management and leadership software that includes calculators, forms, plans, letters, training, spreadsheets, marketing material… The list just goes on and on. Make this your first stop and have a great Business New Year.

2. Inc.: http://.inc.com/tools/ also offers a range of free tips, tools and software. Their offering is divided into various sections including "Doing Business Online, Marketing and Performance Management.

3. Entrepreneur:   Provides a set of 12 free tools for online businesses. These tools vary from a toolbar that evaluates websites, image reducing tools and free keyword selector tool, to HTML tutorials and browser compatibility service (a tool that will show you how your site looks to browsers).

4. New York Times guide to marketing your business with Facebook. http://tinyurl.com/ykpa6yl Any hints and tips on using social media to market is useful, so go ahead.

5. Bookfresh.com blog:  A blog about starting and running your own business with loads of hints and tips – go check it out!

6. Web CEO: –  this is a great piece of software that has helped me loads in deciding on keywords when setting up my sites. It has all the SEO tools you could wish for. You can use the free version for ever, its really helpful.
7. Freeware Home:  is an indexed collection of FREE programs commonly found on the Internet around the globe. Fill your systems guys! http://www.webceo.com/cgi-bin/go/clickthru.cgi?id=Hathor

For even more great information  about starting different types of online business come and see us on our website!

Great Truths of Life - Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree!

Laura makes my life happier!

Laura is a dear friend of mine, who makes my life happier every so often by sending me emails that sum up life.  The contents of her most recent one (and I think the best ever) is below.  I do love receiving them.  Read this and you are bound to be cheered up. 

Thanks Laura, for being my friend, for sending these things though I don't send similar ones back, and for just being who you are.

 

Boost Your Pension - Make Money Online

Seniors - Add to Your Pension While Working From Home.

Have you ever wondered if you could make money online? You can – and with very little investment.

If you need to boost your pension, are over 50 or a senior citizen and have some time available, you need to read this.

How has the credit crunch affected you?  If you are like me, the stock market has left many of our savings in a laughable mess. House prices have crashed, wiping out our savings of the past years. There just is not enough money to pay pensions we have saved for never mind those we just sort of hoped would happen.

For many of us this is quite a frightening situation. I know I am worried about my pension and looking for ways to increase it. That is why I am here on the internet. That is why I am learning about making money online while working from home and passing it on to you.

Anyone Can Make Money Online While Working From Home

I completely believe that anyone (including seniors and those approaching retirement age) can make money online to replace their lost pensions or investments. Now almost everything you need to make money online is easy to do if you know how to use a programme like MS Word. You can build sites, put them on the internet, get people to come to them and update them with hardly any technical knowledge and very, very little money.

However… there is always that however. You will need to invest time. And you will need to invest determination and stickability. And you will need to learn a a few new things.

But hey, we aren't the same as our parent's generation are we? We know we are not old at 50 – no pipe, cardie and slippers for us. As seniors ( or semi seniors) we are brave, adaptable and we can learn easily.  We know how to change to face a different world.

The doctors say that when it comes to mental fitness and capability, use it or lose it.  Isn't it better to use it learning how to increase your own income rather than playing some electronic game that increases someone else's income?

Don't Get the Wrong Idea

I am not promising that you could be a millionaire overnight. I am not even promising that you will make more than a small extra residual income. But I am sure you can use the internet to increase what money comes into your household. And if you, like me, are dreading the heating bill  for the coming winter, that can only be a help.

Two Ways To Go

There are many, many different ways to earn money on the internet. But here are two that are simple to set up, do not involve you in any business dealing and can be based on any existing interests or specialist knowledge that you have.

1. Become an Affiliate

Becoming an affiliate is a fairly new way of making money online, but it is an interesting and very cheap way of doing it. This is how it works:

You find a subject that you are either really interested in or really knowledgeable about or both. Let's say you are passionate about cooking or car maintenance.

1. You find a company that is selling products or services that fit into that area. Let's say a great cookery book or a series of videos that show you how to maintain certain types of cars.
2. You sign up as an affiliate and they give you a link, personalised for you, to their web page / product details / service description.
3. Your job is to get people interested in going to the website where these items are sold.
4. But you do not sell these items. Your job is to interest and amuse and create a place where people who are also interested in these things want to be.
5. The best way to achieve your aims to set up a blog, a website or some other form of communication and make sure it is really interesting to the potential customers. As they read your content and take part in your discussions, they will begin to trust you and your judgement. So when you say that 'X Cookery Book' is great they believe you.
6.  In that part of your site where you say 'X Cookery Book' is great; you include the link you got to the sales page of X Cookery Book. If your readers click through to that page and buy the book, you get a commission.
7. No selling. No stock. No staff. No premises. No complaints. Simples!

 Of course it is more complicated than this. But this is the main outline. And I must emphasise, you are not selling the product. You are creating an interesting place where people who are keen on that sort of thing want to be. Your job is to make friends with a lot of people who think like you. Hard eh?

If you want to learn a little more about this way of doing things:

2. Drop Shipping

The second way to make money online that I want to talk about is drop shipping. This is a little more commercial but again can be set up with very little knowledge or money.

Drop shipping is more like a little business than being an affiliate. It gives you the opportunity to sell on auction sites and/or to create an online shop with a wide range of products without the hassle of having to hire staff, keep stock or manage deliveries.

How Does It Work?

• You set up an e-commerce website that has a suitable shopping cart and credit card processing facilities. Don't worry about the technical side of things because nowadays if you can read and type, you can do this easily. Or you can hire people on the internet for very little money.
• You use your favourite Search Engine Results Page engine (Google, Firefox Yahoo etc) to search for drop shipping agencies who sell things you are interested in. Drop+ship+cooking or Drop+ship+cars for example.
• Check out the sites that come up for the stuff that interest you, and choose those products / services you are interested in. Try to get recommendations from other drop shippers if possible so you know what type of customer service the organisations you are interested in provide.
• A great resource if you are looking for a drop shipper are drop ship resource directories. A good one is OneSource http://www.worldwidebrands.com/?kbid=6114. This website lists over 8,000,000 products from 234 categories.
• Open an account with the drop shipper of choice.
• Put images and information about your chosen products on your site and incorporate it with your chosen shopping cart. It sounds complicated, but if you have ever sold anything on e-bay you can do it. Actually, that is not a good example. Every time I put anything on EBay, it takes me far longer than I expect.
• Or sell on Ebay and/or other auction sites.
• Getting people to come to your site is one of the tricks of success. Don't worry about it how to do this though. There is loads of free information on our site and on the internet showing you how to do this, and you will find the whole process really fascinating.
• Now you just have to wait for people to buy things. Don't forget, they pay you as they buy so no worries about bouncing cheques. Crucially you get your customer's money before you have to pay the supplier. It is this fact that makes drop shipping a great route for people starting out in this type of activity. No need for big investments no left over stock; nothing wasted.
• Send full order details to the drop shipper company. They will bill you at the price you have agreed, and then they will complete the order sending it to your client. In most cases the labels and paperwork with any packages will indicate it comes from you.

A good drop shipper will provide you with everything you need to know in terms of how to pass orders and payment back, how to follow things up etc. Indeed a good drop shipper will work hard to help you create a great sales site. After all, for every sale you make, they also make a profit.

Do I Have to Pay to Join a Drop Ship Supplier?

A question that often comes up is whether you have to pay to join a drop shipping programme. The answer is that you do not with most programmes as their profit is already ensured.

Some programmes charge for joining 'higher' levels. Again I would think hard about this. If you are a good seller, they should pay you, not the other way around.

There are many ways of setting up your ecommerce website. You can use the standard templates offered by many Internet Service Providers, you could design it yourself or have it designed for you by a professional company.

The one thing you must ensure is that you have the appropriate shopping cart to deal with drop shipping. These range from free software like PayPal and Google to things with bells and whistles all over. Research and find the one that is right for you. The website  has a great page reviewing such software and there are many such sites around.

Ever Onwards and Upwards

Is Starting Your Small Business Online The New Black?

Online Literacy - A 'Must Have' Skill for Starting Your Small Online Business

Everyone used to be educated in the 3Rs.  Reading, wRiting and 'Rithmetic once upon a time was enough to get you a job for life.

But there is no such thing as a job for life today.  So what can you do to prepare yourself for our dramatically changed conditions?

Today a 4th skill is required if you want to be sure of maintaining your financial independence.  Today's 'must have' skill is Online Literacy. 

How To Start a Business Online-3 Absolutely Vital Actions

Learn How To Start A Business Online.

Create so much trust customers will roll in by making sure 3 vital factors are in place: transparency, trust and security.

Transparency

Up to 50% of your customers will be contemplating buying online for the first time. Let's imagine that Joe is in this position on your site right now. If you want to make the most of this opportunity, it is vital that you make it really easy for Joe to:

• Move around your site.
• Find what they are looking for
• Pay.

 Your E Commerce Site

Here are 13 fundamental questions to ask yourself about your e business. In fact this is so important to your success you might want to ask a friend to go through your site and ask these questions. You may be too close to see the problems.

1. 1. Is it clear, simple and easy to read? 
2. Is it free from too many wizzy bits and graphics that are likely to slow it down? Joe has an ISDN connection, and her brother Chris still has an analogue connection which are both a lot slower than broadband.
3. Is it free from links that will take Joe's attention off buying?
4. Did you do the planning so that Joe can find what she wants easily – i.e. through an in-house search engine and/or clear links?
5. Are there good, clear, accurate product descriptions and images?
6. Can/do you put information and advice on your website Joe will love? Because if you can, the search engines will love you too.
7. Does the product description include a notice that the product is out of stock if this is the case?
8. Does the product description include notes about all costs involved with the purchase (postage etc).
9. Can Joe put the product directly in the basket?
10. Can Joe continue shopping or go directly to check out as she wishes?
11. Is the check-out system really simple to use? If you have a system that shows Joe how many steps there are and where she is in the process, she is likely to feel more comfortable and is therefore much more likely to buy.
12. Can Joe have her basket beside her in full view all the time?
13. Can she change items at all times (deleting or changing quantities)?

Trust

Building trust is not that difficult. Deciding that you will fun an ethical and efficient home business will give you just the start-up impetus you need. There are x specific areas you can build and deepen the trust between you and your customer. These are guarantees, clarity and reliability.

Guarantees

Guarantees make your customers comfortable. Who do you trust the most? The site you stumbled across on the internet with no personal information and no contact details, or your best friend?

Stupid question huh? Well, everyone on the internet feels the same as you. So how do you go about creating that 'best friend' feeling quickly?

Give your customers exactly what they want to feel comfortable as quickly as possible.

For example on our online businesses we have a 100%, no quibble cash back guarantee. Our customers do not have to give a reason for returning the product. This means that they feel comfortable about ordering the products from the start – they know they will not be lumped with something they bought by mistake.

So has this policy cost us a fortune? No, because when we started our business online, we kept that 100% guarantee in mind every time we created and marketed products. We worked really hard at matching our marketing to our products and the products to our market. Result? Very few returns.

Confidentiality Counts

Fraud frightens people. Remember Joe? Before she puts anything about herself into the forms on a website, she wants a good, clear privacy/ confidentiality policy and statement that she can link to from every page on your website that reassures her.

But her brother Chris can't be bothered to read all that legal stuff no matter how clear it is. For people like Chris, wherever you ask for information from your customers, keep two points in mind:

• Wherever you ask for information include a short statement clarifying your attitude to privacy. For example:
• "We HATE spam and we promise NEVER to pass your details on to anyone else."
•  Ask for the absolute minimum of information. If you only need an email address, don’t ask for shoe size and marital status.

Clarity Counts

It is not just her personal information Joe is worried about. She is very concerned that her financial details may be lost or stolen. How can you persuade her she is safe?

• Show and Tell. Tell her she is secure and tell her how and why. Mention your SSL encryption and show her the little closed padlock in the browser proves it is safe. Flash the names and certification of whoever takes your payments.
• It could be a good idea to put a whole page on your site describing why it is safe to shop on your site for people who are nervous.
• This could include a description of your purchase, order and despatch process to increase the feeling of security for your customers.
• Point out any safety measures involving storage of her details and how her order is collated and sent out.
• If you can get your site tested and certificated by an independent body, do it and point this fact out to your visitors.

Reliability

Be the Small Business That Does What it Says on the Tin

If you promise to send stuff in 2 days, send it in one. If you promise 100% cash back guarantees, honour them quickly and gracefully.

All of us have had to battle with an anonymous on-line organisation to get our money back when their products were faulty. It often seems that the bigger the organisation, the worse they are at responding to complaints.

Which online business would you go back to? The one where you had to wear your fingers, ears and temper to stubs to get your cash back? Or the small business that sent a prompt response to your complaints saying they were really sorry you were disappointed; your refund is in the hands of a trusted 3rd party (e.g. PayPal) and you will receive it as soon as the unwanted product is retuned?

Very few of us running a home business can offer prices that are so low we can afford to ignore a customer's distress. Things will go wrong and you should have a process in place to deal with it. Just make sure the process leaves your customer feeling really good about you.

Turn the Tables

In fact, if you are really good at this you can grasp this opportunity to leave your customers feeling not just good about you, but indebted to you.

Let's say you follow the planning and put in place all the recommendations above:
You promised and gave full refunds.

• You responded quickly, politely and warmly.
• You apologised sincerely for the problem.
• And finally, you gave them a free gift to compensate.

 This does not mean giving something that costs you money. After all, you are a small business online, and you can’t afford that.

You could give something like an e-book or report either on the subject of their purchase or on something everyone is interested in.

For example, I have created a report on using the internet safely and generally keeping yourself secure in the digital universe. A report like this would be of interest to anyone using the internet, and could be used as the free gift you give your disappointed customer.

You are more than welcome to download the internet security report here (email and name) and to use it in the way I described as long as you leave accreditation details in it.

You have now given you customer more than they gave you. Research shows that all over the world, when people feel they owe someone, it makes them feel uncomfortable and they try to repay that 'debt' somehow.

You can offer them ways to help them do so and thereby feel better about themselves.

• Include links to your e business in all your communications with those customers so that they can go back easily and perhaps buy something else.
• Give them the opportunity (with links) to tell others what they think of you on your endorsement page or on any social networking site you belong to.
• Ask them if they want your e-zine or updates on your products.
• Ask if any of their friends would be interested in hearing about your products.

In Conclusion

Being an online business means your reputation is even more important to you than if you had an offline business. Pay attention to detail, design a great site and keep your mind on your customer.

Ever Onwards and Upwards

Internet Business Set-Up - Progress is Haphazard

Internet Business Set up Can be Haphazard

Follow progress on my internet business which teaches others how to start their small business online.

For those of you who have not visited us before, I am putting together an online business.  The business will teach others to do th sane using ebooks, online courses, video, audio and offline seminars.  Our goals is to help get 1,000 small business up and running in the next five years.

Oh, and to:

• boost my potential pension using e commerce and
• describe my progress and help me get things in order in my own mind.

I was trying to find a word that would describe progress so far and I have to say that haphazard does not go far wrong.  It is not that I haven't been working hard - every hour of the day is spent either thinking about the business or doing something in relation to it.

It is just that there are so many things you have to do when you set up a new online business.  They all seem to need to be done at the same time, and as you do one thing, you are reminded that you should be doing something else.  Also, so much of what you do is related and you need to make the links as you go, or you are likely to forget them.

The good thing about that is much of what you do or write can be used more than once.  A web page can be re-written and circulated as an online or offline article, a blog can become part of your sales materials, a sales page can be updated to be a new web-page.

I though I would run through what I should have done by now, what I have done and work out what needs to be done this week

Know What Your Market Is

So far I have got a very clear idea of what market I want to be in.  This market is made up of people who want to learn to make money online.

Know What Your Niche Is

I also know exactly what my niche is and I have set up all my goals with this in mind.  My niche  is made up of  people who have possibly not thought of starting this kind of business before.

These people may not be natural e-ntrepreneurs perhaps, but they have been pushed into starting an online business by current financial circumstances.

Know What Your Business Model Is

There are as many ways of running a business online as there are offline.  In my free course course I will be describing four business  'models' (apologies for the jargon), and I will be combining three of them in my own new business.    The four models and I will be combining them in my own new business.

 The four models we describe are:

1. Affiliate Business
2. Drop Shipping
3. Start Your Online Business
4. Your Offline Business Online

Start Communicating

It can take a long time to get noticed on the web, so the sooner you start the better.  I have got my web-site up and running and written 12 pages of content.  However, it is best ot wait until you have 30 pages or more before submitting the site to the search engines, so there is a while to go yet.

It is also good to get as many incoming links as possible before submitting to the search engines for the first time.  To try and achieve this, one of the things I am doing is creating useful links from this blog to  various pages on my web site.

I Can See Clearly Now

OK, well that has clarified that what I need to do this week is frantically write pages for our website and compliment them with articles and blog entires that are linked to the website.

If anyone out there has got a good suggestion as to where else I should try and get links from, let me know - I will be very grateful.

Is It Easier to Start a Small Business Online and Succeed Than it Used to Be?

A few years ago the answer to that question might have been no!  But things are changing and changing fast.

According to recent research done by Forrester Research which compared the results of 2009 with those of 2008:

• 42% of retailers increased their visitor to order conversion rate in the first half of the year.
• In 2008 web sales grew 18% compared to 2007.
• 50% of online retailers surveyed during the first half of 2009 were optimistic about sales over the next 12 months.
• A massive 87% of online retailers said their ecommerce operation was profitable last year.

How Much Money Should I Spend To Set Up My Internet Business?

Well, for a start I have very little to spend, so that closes the discussion down a bit. But my ISP (Internet Service Provider or the folk who host my website in this case) offer a service where I can set up a fairly instant website, with very little knowledge of these things and.... Robert is your Mother's Masculine Sibling.

Hmm... can it really be that simple? Well of course not. So far I have pretty much disliked every design they offered.

Malcolm Coles: Carter Ruck

Malcolm Coles: Carter Ruck’s new attempt to gag Parliament

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Marketing for the Small Internet Business

Marketing for the small internet business is more important than for the large business.  You as business owner or marketer have to understand your customers if you are going to help them buy your products or services.

Look here to get more information about how to find your perfect niche.

If you are marketing to Millenials (i.e. anyone born between 1982 and 2000) you really need to check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Digital Millennials: R U Ready

View more presentations from Resource Interactive.

Get our free course on Affiliate marketing to find out more

Make Money Online With Your Offline Business

Make Money Online 
Double your profits by putting your offline business online.  Read here for free information on putting your business online

Put Your Business Online

You have your own offline business and you would like to expand. Going online has many advantages and disadvantages:

What are the Pros and Cons?

Pros

• You don't have to get new premises.
• It gives you access to a world-wide market, rather than just anyone within the vicinity of the off-line business.
• Lower costs.
• 24/7 opening.  If you business is offline, you can usually only operate for 8 of those 24 hours, and 5 of those 7 days.
• You can sell your products and/or services through affiliates.
• You can sell affiliate or drop shipping goods as well as your own range if you want to.

Cons

• You have to learn a whole new way of marketing.
• You have to learn about a whole load of online technical matters you have never had to deal with before.

 Who Might Want to Take Their Own Online Business? 

Those who might want to take their own online business include business owners who:

• Want to expand, but don't have enough capital to do it offline.
• Want to experiment with different products, services and ways of doing business.
• Want to reach a much more varied customer base.
• Increase the return from their current investment in time, effort and learning.

 What you have to Consider

There are several things you have to consider:

• Will the online business be a copy of the offline business or something different?
• Is there a market for it online?
• Can your suppliers cope with any potential increase in demand?
• How will the actual process operate?
• What sort of payment system and/or shopping cart and will you put on your site?
• How will you put your site together and get it online? DIY or GSI (Get Someone In)?
• How will you bring your customers to the site (marketing)?
• What price are similar products / services are being sold for online?
• Can you sell enough to achieve your required income?
• Is the quality of your products / services high enough?

 Work Out How the Process Will Operate (The Business Model)

When starting your own business, you will need to work out exactly what has to happen between your customer ordering your goods and your customer receiving your goods. Unhappy customers are dangerous weapons, and you don't want any of them pointed at you!

Below is a very simple example of a work-flow process. Start with your customer's actions and walk through everything that has to happen in order for the customer to receive their goods quickly and in good condition.

  Work out How You Will Bring Your Customers to the Site and Keep them Coming Back

Online marketing will be where you have to put the most effort for your internet business.

Considerations:

Some of the things you will have to manage to make sure your online business is successful are:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or getting customers to your site for nothing.
• E-mail marketing.
• Audio / video Seminars.
• Sales (squeeze) pages.
• Using Social Media including blogs.
• Building links.

 These are just a few of the areas you will have to work on when building your online business. Even if you can afford to outsource from the beginning, it is vital you have helped to design the marketing plan and are able to detail it to others who may be working with you.

Set Up the Website and/or Blog
You may be able to outsource the design of your website and/or blog. However, if you are not don't worry. Many Internet Service Providers supply a range of free website templates with a range of fairly simple editing tools if you buy their internet services.

It is also possible to get a free website and even free hosting. Watch out for a surfeit of adverts though!

Remember, if you don't like the sound of this, you can get information about three other ways of setting up your business online cheaply in other blogs:

     Affiliate Marketing                      Drop Shipping                                       Putting Your Business Online

 And through My Business Coach Online

Get our free 5 part introduction to becoming an affiliate.


 If you are not sure which type of online business is for you, it does not matter – you can use them all. Consider some of these examples: 

• How about putting your own existing offline business online, and adding a range from a drop shipping warehouse?
• You could have a drop shipping site with some links to affiliate goods.
• You could have your own online business with a range of drop shipping goods and a few affiliate items as well
• You could put all four approaches on one site.

The point about this is that you are here to enjoy yourself and to make money online. You should try different approaches to make sure that you are not missing the thing that would push your site into the stratosphere.

Make Money Online With Your Own Home Business

Make Money Online from Home
No capital?  No problem.  Read here for free information on 4 cheap ways you can earn money online working from home.

Starting your online business, rather than going the Affiliate or Drop Shipping route  means you take responsibility for the whole thing. You create the product, bring it to the market, deliver, organise finance etc etc.

 That is you have to:

• Come up with the idea (to be discussed in detail later)
• Find out if enough people want it to make it worth while
• Get your Products / Services in line
• Work out how the entire process will operate
• Work out how you will bring your customers to the site (marketing).
• Set up the website, blog or other form of online selling.
• Go, go, go

I should say that all of these subjects will be discussed in detail in online and offline courses available from our website.

What are the Pros and Cons?
What are the pros and cons of building an online business rather than an affiliate business or a drop ship business?

Pros

You personally:

• Control everything to do with your internet business. 
• Bank all the returns your online business makes rather than just a percentage.
• Decide what you sell. 
• Control customer care, quality and service. 
• Can sell your products and/or services through affiliates. 
• Can sell affiliate or drop shipping goods as well as your own range if you want to.

Cons

You personally:

• Must manage premises (even if that is a website), staff, stock, cash, shipping and returns.
• Work alone – you will have to create or buy all your own sales and marketing materials.
• Have to pay for goods before you have sold them and manage cash-flow.

Who Might Want to Build Their Own Online Business?

Those who might want to build their own online business include:

• People who don't yet know much about running an internet business, but are totally excited at the thought of finding out. 
• People who know a bit about business (on or offline) are ready to begin their own venture.
• People who don't yet know much about it but know they like to control all aspects of their business. 
• People who have some capital and want to make as much money as possible from their business. 
•  People who have no or very little capital and want to make as much money as possible from their business.

What Do You Have to Focus On?

• Product: What will you sell, what level of quality will the product have, what size is the market for it?
• Price: what will you charge for your product / services? Will you go for a high quality, high price item, basic quality, low price or somewhere in the middle?
• Place: Are you going to use a website or a blog? Where will you market? Will you have a sales outlet and market offline as well as online?
• Place continued: How will people get the goods they have bought? How will you ensure that you get the right supplies at the right time?
• Promotion: How will you persuade people to come to your e-commerce outlet, and what is the best way to get them to buy as many items as possible. 
• What prices are similar products / services are being sold for online. 
• How many units of your product or service do you have to sell a month to achieve your required income.

How Does it all Work?

Below is a very simple example of a work-flow process. Start with your customer's actions and walk through everything that has to happen in order for the customer to receive their goods quickly and in good condition.

How will you Bring Your Customers to the Site
Marketing will be your primary task in your online business

Considerations:

Some of the things you will have to manage to make sure your online business is successful are:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This is a vital part of marketing if you are dnot to spend a fortune on Adwords.
• E-mail marketing.
• Audio / video Seminars.
• Sales (squeeze) pages. 
• Using Social Media including blogs. 
• Building links. 

Remember, if you don't like the sound of this, you can get information about three other ways of setting up your business online cheaply in later blogs:

Affiliate Marketing        Drop Shipping               Put Your Business Online

  And through My Business Coach Online

Also, please take our free 5 part introduction to Affiliate Marketing here:


 If you are not sure which type of online business is for you, it does not matter – you can use them all. Consider some of these examples:  

• How about putting your own existing offline business online, and adding a range from a drop shipping warehouse?
• You could have a drop shipping site with some links to affiliate goods.
• You could have your own online business with a range of drop shipping goods and a few affiliate items as well
• You could put all four approaches on one site.

The point about this is that you are here to enjoy yourself and to make money online. You should try different approaches to make sure that you are not missing the thing that would push your site into the stratosphere.

Make Money Online as a Drop Shipper

Make Money Online. No Capital? No Problem.

Read here for free information on 4 cheap ways you can earn money online working from home. 

Drop Shipping

Drop shipping is a great method for getting involved in e commerce and work from home without having to invest your own and your family's life savings.

Drop shipping is more like a standard business than being an affiliate. It gives you the opportunity to create an online shop with a wide range of products without the hassle of having to hire staff, keep stock or manage deliveries.

 What are the Pros and Cons?

What are the pros and cons of building an online business rather than an affiliate business or a drop ship business?

 Pros

You:

• Run a proper business but do not have to manage staff, stock, warehouse and distribution.
• Get money from your customer before you pay the supplier.
• Can design the look of your business from scratch.
• Get to try out being a shopkeeper with none of the disadvantages.

Cons:
You personally:

• Must manage the website, marketing and all sorts of other tasks alone. 
• Have little control of the quality of the goods or service your customers get.
• Have to learn a whole new way of working.

Who Might Want to Build Their Own Online Business?
Those who might want to build their own online business include:

• People who don't yet know much about running an internet business, but are totally excited at the thought of finding out.
• People who know a bit about business (on or offline) are ready to begin their own venture.
• People who want to dip their toe into making money online.

How Does It Work?

You will have to set up an e-commerce website that has a suitable shopping cart and credit card processing facilities. Try the website 'Taming The Beast' to get great information about the best shopping cart software and services. 

This site has some brilliant information. If you do go there and you are interested in being an affiliate as well as drop shipping, read carefully. This site is an excellent example of an outstanding affiliate site!

• Find your suppliers:  Check out the internet for suppliers you might be interested in, check out whether there is a market for you and sign up. 
• Check out the sites that come up for the products that interest you, and choose those products / services you are interested in. Try to get recommendations from other drop shippers if possible so you know what type of customer service the organisations you are interested in provide. Don't forget, the drop shipper can make or break your business through great or bad customer service.
• Look at the Dropship Resources Directory.  This is a great resource if you are looking for a drop shipper is OneSource . This website lists over 8,000,000 products from 234 categories.
• Open an account: Open an account with the relevant drop shipper.
• Populate Your Website: Put images and information about your chosen products on your site and incorporate it with your chosen shopping cart.
• Market Your Site. A big subject for later discussion.
• Purchases: When people visit your site and buy products, you collect their orders and payment from your site. (BTW a good shopping cart will do all this automatically).
• Inform the Drop shipper: Send full order details to the drop shipper company. They will bill you at the price you have agreed, then they will complete the order sending it to your client. In most cases the labels on any packages will indicate it comes from you.

A good drop shipper will provide you with everything you need to know in terms of how to pass orders and payment back, how to follow things up etc. Indeed a good drop shipper will work hard to help you create a great sales site. After all, for every sale you make, they also make a profit.

Recommendations

We do not recommend one drop shipper over another. I will never mention a drop shipper if I know anything bad about them, but no-one can know everything. Also different people have different approaches. What I like in a drop shipper, you might find to be really boring, useless etc.

If you want to go with any drop shipper, can I suggest that you do your own in-depth research beforehand because often you are handing over bank details.

Also, if you have decided to go with a drop shipper that has not been mentioned in our materials, we would love you to go to our forum at and let others know what you think. Or just go there and join in any conversation that interests you!

Do I Have to Pay to Join a Drop Ship Supplier?

Another question that often comes up is whether you have to pay to join a drop shipping programme. The answer is that you do not with most programmes as their profit is already ensured.

Some programmes charge for joining 'higher' levels. Again I would think hard about this. If you are a good seller, they should pay you, not the other way around.

There are many ways of setting up your ecommerce website. You can use the standard templates offered by many Internet Service Providers, you could design it yourself or have it designed for you by a professional company.

The one thing you must ensure is that you have the appropriate shopping cart to deal with drop shipping. Research and find the one that is right for you.

There are Many Other Resources Available

We at My Business Coach Online are working as hard as we can to bring you free and low cost products to help you manage all these factors in detail. Also look out for other free products on the internet.

At My Business Coach Online we offer information about three other ways of doing business online, and you can read about them on later blogs:

Affiliate Marketing,      Starting Your Online Business      Put Your Offline Business Online

Remember you can get a free introductory short course to affiliate marketing here.

Mix and Match 

If you are not sure which type of online business is for you, it does not matter – you can use them all. Consider some of these examples:

 How about putting your own existing offline business online, and adding a range from a drop shipping warehouse.

• You could have a drop shipping site with some links to affiliate goods.
• You could have your own online business with a range of drop shipping goods and a few affiliate items as well
• You could put all four approaches on one site.

 The point about this is that you are here to enjoy yourself and to make money online. You should try different approaches to make sure that you are not missing the thing that would push your site into the stratosphere.

Make Money Online With Very Little Financial Investment

No Money? No Problem
Make money online from home. Read for 4 free different ways you can earn money online.

Affiliate Marketing
The first thing I should say is that if you want a free short introductory course to Affiliate Marketing, get it here.

Amazon is credited with creating the affiliate market and since most people are familiar with Amazon, I will use them as an example to explain the concept.

Amazon has a wide range of goods and services for sale. Even an organisation as big as them would have difficulty marketing everything they sell .

Instead they allow you to market their goods for them.

Lets say your greatest interest in life was bird watching. You could set up a blog about bird watching that other interested people would like to read. You mention various bird watching books throughout the site and each mention contains a link to Amazon.

You are not selling the books. You are getting people so interested in the books that they go and look at Amazon's site. If they click through to the Amazon site from your, like the product and buy, you make commission. This is really a win-win situation.

The seller gets a whole lot of free marketing and pays nothing unless they get a sale.

You get the opportunity to earn money from your hobby/interest.

The person searching on the internet gets to know a lot about the product and why they should be interested in it before they even get to the bookshop.

What are the Pros and Cons?

What are the pros and cons of building an online business rather than an affiliate business or a drop ship business?

Pros
You:

• Can find out if you have the drive to make money online without investing a lot of your capital.
• Can work out where your best market is.
• Sell what you are passionate about. 
•  Manage a business without having to manage staff, premises etc. 
• Earn an extra income by working from home.

Cons

You personally:

• Must do all the research involved
• Decide what products/ services to invest in
• Give up some of your leisure time.   

Who Might Want to Build An Income From Affiliate Marketing?
Anyone who:

• Don't know much about any sort of business but want to learn.
• Just want a bit of extra income.
• Haven't got too much money to splash around. 
• Wants to take a bit more control over their life.
• Has lost their job, savings or investment.

How Does it Work?
Once you have decided what particular area you would like to make money online from (and we will cover look at niches in detail later) there are basically three steps to take:

• Sign Up: Sign up for the programmes or products that most interest you.
• Market: Create a way to market that product – for example a website, a blog, e-mail marketing, forum posting, a Facebook page etc.
• Monetize your Site.  Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat (sorry cats and cat lovers), there is more than one way to earn money from your site. Make sure you have checked them all out and have a strategy that will get the site earning the most money, without putting visitors off.

Affiliate Agencies
There are many 'affiliate agencies' where you can sign up and decide on one product or a range of products you want to become an affiliate for.

The agency provides the link between the vendor of the product and the affiliate (you) and takes care of all the admin. They give you a personalised link for each product you are interested in. You create a way of marketing that product (for example a blog) and put the link on the blog.

Agencies can make life easier because through them you can set up your program, sell as many of their products as possible and have it all laid out for you on one site.

Independent Programmes

Independent Affiliate Programmes are run by many large companies including Amazon who are sometimes credited with creating the affiliate market.

Are There Limits to the Affiliate Business?

If you come across a product or service that you would love to be an affiliate for, but they have no programme, don't worry.

A lot of people who are out there selling things on the net have not even heard of affiliate programmes, but that does not mean you can't become an affiliate for them.

Contact the owner of the business and ask them if they will sign up with an affiliate agency so that you can become an affiliate for them. It takes a few minutes for them and it is a win-win situation.

Research, Research, Research
 Like everything else connected with the internet, please make sure that you do your own research and do it carefully. You will have to hand over a certain amount of sensitive information so a method of payment can be set up, therefore research is vital.

We do not recommend one affiliate programme over another, but I will never mention a programme if I know anything bad about it,

However, if you have decided to go with a programme that has not been mentioned in our materials, we would love you to go to our forum and let others know what you think. Or just go there and join in any conversation that interests you!

 Do I Have to Pay to Join an Affiliate Programme?

Another question that often comes up is in two parts. The first is whether you have to pay to join an affiliate programme. The answer is that you do not with most affiliate programmes. Most of them are free to join. They make their money from a share of the commission when items are sold.

 The second part of the question is, if an affiliate does charge, should you pay to belong to it. My feeling is that you should not. There are so many free programmes available from good organisations that it seems strange that any programmes should be set up where you have to pay to belong to them. Reading some of the descriptions, you might think it worth paying because the returns appear to be so good, but there are two things to keep in mind.

• You still have to do the work to market the product / service – if it sells itself, why do they need affiliates?
• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

At My Business Coach Online we offer information about three other ways of doing business online, and you can read about them on later blogs:

Drop Shipping,          Starting Your Online Business                    Put Your Offline Business Online  

Remember you can get a free introductory short course to affiliate marketing here.

Is This All I Can Do?
If you are not sure which type of online business is for you, it does not matter – you can use them all. Consider some of these examples:

• How about putting your own existing offline business online, and adding a range from a drop shipping warehouse
• You could have a drop shipping site with some links to affiliate goods.
• You could have your own online business with a range of drop shipping goods and a few affiliate items as well
• You could put all four approaches on one site.

 The point about this is that you are here to enjoy yourself and to make money online. You should try different approaches to make sure that you are not missing the thing that would push your site into the stratosphere.

Ideas for Businesses to Set Up in Successful Industries

Generate Ideas for Successful Online Businesses

Set up in industries guaranteed to be successful in the future.  That is one way of future-proofing your small online business.  But how can you do that?

I have mentioned before that passion is vital when you set out to make money online.  But passion must be tempered with judgement. In this case judgement means being really careful about choosing  what you sell and who you try to sell it to. You want to be in a market that is going to grow and succeed in the coming years so that you can grow and succeed with it.

Hot Industries for the Future

So what industries will be hot in the future? Below is a list of areas the talking heads online generally seem to agree will be successful for a long time to come.

• Health 
• Employment Services
• IT (including hardware, software, design, manufacture, repair, installation, outsourcing, games, etc
• Financial Advice
• Management, scientific and technical consulting services
• Child day care service
• Skilled technical services

How can you use this list to better position your online business? Well these are the industries, but ask yourself, who are the buyers? Who are the people out there doing the buying and what do they want?

Consider Baby Boomers

A garden snake digesting a hedgehog is a metaphor that has been used to describe baby boomers. The lump the hedghog made in the snake as it was gradually digested was compared to the lump the boomers created in the economy.  Boomers are the generation born between 1950 and 65.  Because the generation was very large, its progress has created a 'bump'   in national economies all the way through.  

It is not going to stop anytime soon. Baby boomers are expected to live longer on average than anyone before them. And as they enter into the winter phase of their lives, that should be very interesting to anyone involved in business marketing (and everyone running an on line business is involved in Business Marketing!)

Turn a Problem into an Opportunity

Boomers living longer means more of them will have more needs that you can provide the answers to.

• Health Services: Health care, flue jabs, nursing, cosmetic procedures (in the US boomers soaked up 8.9 million cosmetic surgery procedures from a total of 12.1 million), supply of drugs and aids, alternative therapies. Consider how you can offer specialist advice, sourcing, management etc of all these areas. 
• Employment Services: Employment agency for health workers in hospitals, cosmetic procedure clinics, primary health providers, and homes for the elderly. 
• Training Services: For all the people that go through that employment agency 
• IT: Provision of goods and services, advice, training, assistance etc relating to IT. 
• Financial Advice: These boomers have lived through great times, but they have also lived through some very hard times. Many of them do not have enough saved to see them through to the final years. These guys need very specialised advice, but will only take it from someone they really trust – and how many trustworthy financial adviser could you name today?
• Management, scientific and technical consulting services All the services being set up for boomers will need the services of consultants. – be the 'go to' guy in your niche and the work will come in.
• Child day care service: Many boomers are already providing this service for their grandkids. There must be an opportunity here for training them to set up a child-care business, in offering them help in caring for the kids, in offering a care-service for the days they can't manage it, in helping them deal with the massive difference in the way they brought their children up and the way they are expected to treat their grandchildren now.
• Skilled technical services: All of us need good skilled technical services from time to time, but for the elderly it is vital as they can so easily be targeted by criminals. Can you set up an agency, can you provide information; act as a whistle blowing page to warn others about heartless traders in their area.

 Compare Industry to Market and Find Your Niche

This is just a tiny number of suggestions about how you could apply one market (baby boomers) to the hot industries of the future. Try it with other generations (generation X for example) and see if you can find a connection to your passion and the beginnings of a niche you could make your own.

Get Step by Step Instructions to Find your Passion

Send for our free introductory course to Affiliate Marketing for step by step instuctions and if you want to explore more about niches and how to find yours, read this blog.

Online Businesses can be profitable - in the right niche

Find the Right Niche to Make Money Online

Anyone can make any amount of money they chose online, as long as they chose the right niche.

What is a Niche?

A niche is a tiny, usually specialised corner of a market.  For example, there is a market for Jewellery. Within that there are markets for precious jewellery and costume jewellery. There are markets for Celtic, Indian and Chinese jewellery to name a tiny few.

Let's go with Celtic jewellery. You could say the market was split into types of trinket (necklaces, bracelets etc). You could break the market up by what the jewellery was made of (gold, silver, semi-precious metals, plastic etc). You could break the market up by colour – blue, gold, red etc. There are as many ways to break markets up as there are features to the jewellery.

You might find that there are enough people interested in blue, plastic Celtic jewellery. If this just happens to be your passion, and there are not too many competitors – you have found the perfect niche, and have taken a great step along the path of making money online.

Find out what markets are considered to be hot then send for our step by step how to choose the perfect niche for you by sending for our free introductory course on Affiliate Marketing.


Why Should I Go for a Small Niche?

The great thing about the internet is that you can reach a huge market. The worst thing about the internet is the huge range of competitors you are exposed to.

Focusing on a small niche minimizes the competition (if you chose the niche well) and actually makes it easier to reach out to your potential customers.

How Does A Small Niche Make Reaching Customers Easier?

People searching on the web have a good idea what they want and they use words to find it. “Green cow” might be their Google entry; “vacation in Ethiopia” might echo round Yahoo’s database.

It is this use of words that will help us find the perfect niche.

Slicing up the pie

Take the examples above. You might have decided that you want to sell cows or vacations. But if you just head for those markets, you will find it is very crowded. (20,000,000 results for cows and 56,000000 for vacation on Google at the last search).

But if you used Google Adwords tools or Wordtracker, you would discover that people are quite specific in what they search for.

You might find for example, that there are 200 searches a day for ‘green cows’ and 500 for ‘vacation in Ethiopia’. Now we are beginning to slice that pie up into manageable slices. And now you are beginning to see the outlines of a niche, a place you can make ‘all your own’ with a very definite group of potential customers and little competiton.

Finding your niche, understanding the people in it and giving them exactly what they want is one of the key secrets to making a success of starting a small business online.

Step by Step by Step

Again, if you want step by step instruction as to how to find your niche send for our introductory course in Affiliate Marketing.

Outline Plan to Start a Small Business Online

Job Squaring Gets the Small Busines Online

In my first blog I talked about the huge number of tasks there are when you are starting a new online business. It is harder for the new E-ntrepreneur to keep up with her/himself than to marshal bees in a flower-field. It is therefore vital to be organised, systematic and methodical.
You can’t rely on multi-tasking even if you are a mother. As a person who has studied personal efficiency in detail, and taught it to hundreds of people, I know that using multi-tasking is unfortunately utterly ineffective.

Then I had a brilliant ‘a-ha’ moment. You can’t multi-task (there have been scientific studies by experts proving this), but you can job-square. That is, instead of trying to do multiple jobs at once, do one job but make it have multiple outcomes.

Get Your Home Business Online With Great Organisation

Get the Small Business Online with Job Squaring

Yahoo….It worked. In previous blogs I talked about the new E-ntrepreneur marshalling bees. ‘It is therefore’, I stated somewhat pompously, ‘vital, when managing a business start up, to be organised, systematic and methodical’.

My trouble is, like a lot of you, I’m not.  Organised, systematic and methodical I mean. Not by nature anyway. So I have to be careful to make a habit of the things I think are useful when it comes to the planning to set up my internet business. But seriously, I think I have come up with a useful tip in terms of job squaring.

Your Internet Business Can Only Succeed If Your Mind is Behind It

Your Online Business Needs Your Brain

 Setting up and running an internet business requires an E-ntrepreneur to do so many different things it is not funny.  In fact it can be terrifying.   It can't be done unless your mind is working for you and not against you.  And that means setting great goals and sticking to them!

Setting great goals is more complicated than just saying "I want to own an online business" or "I want to be a millionaire". Our subconscious brain needs things to be specific. Oh and it needs things to matter as well.

SMART Goals

Lets look at SMART goals briefly first. All goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound. Breaking this down a great goal would be "I want to earn $2,000,000 dollars by 12 Dec 2014 by running a successful business selling nappies online".

It is Specific in that it says exactly what will happen, it is Measurable – a certain amount of money by a certain date. It is Achievable, it is Relevant to me and it is Time bound. (12 December 2014)

WOULD YOU RATHER START YOUR OWN ONLINE BUSINESS OR RIP YOUR FINGERNAILS OFF?

STARTING YOUR OWN SMALL BUSINESS IS HARD

“Start online business; rip my own fingernails off”

Do you remember that great advert where a little girl is asked by her sister “which do you prefer? Chips or Daddy”. This as a plate of luscious French fries is placed in front of her by her mother. Staring dreamily at the plate she intones “Chips, Daddy... chips, Daddy” as she tries to make this impossible choice.

This advert was funny and touching because it seemed like such a silly choice. Clearly she was a small, hungry girl who felt that she had to make the choice based on her feelings at that moment in time rather than on the long-term factors.

But perhaps the advert held a hidden truth. Perhaps the advert illustrated a truth about us that makes us all uncomfortable. Perhaps the vast majority of us would prefer to do anything rather than start our own business.  (And by the way, I did mean your artificial nails.... natch!)

Can Pensions Be Replaced Through Making Money Online?

People Have Lost Their Pensions, Savings and the Value from their Property

The dream of retiring at 60 or 65 has disappeared along with the savings of many because of the financial carcrash they call the recession.  For these people, the vision of the 'golden years' has been wrenched out of foucus and replaced by the nightmare of permanent trolley clearing or shelf stacking.

A survey by the CBI revealed that between 25 and 35% of Directors think the number of people working past the retirment age will increase.  A further survey by CIBT revealed that 71%  of employees 55 or over believe they will have to work long past the retirement age.

This is depressing enough, but to make things worse, many employers are reluctant to keep people on after retirement age.   Older people have the highest salaries and wages, there is a perception that older people can't learn new approaches.  Finally, according to Charles Cotton, CIPD:

"An older workforce poses many challenges for employers in terms of motivation and inclusion."

As a result many face continuing to work into their 70s at jobs they may not have been willing to do before 60 or 65.

Can Making Money on the Internet Come to the Rescue?

In the UK, online sales have increased by nearly 350% between 2004 and 2008. But the number of businesses selling online is only about 17%.

Clearly this is a gap; an opportunity for people to start tiny enterprises selling popular goods and services on their own websites, blogs and from sites such as eBay.

Mining Your Blog

Starting a business online can be easier than starting one on the high street.  The affiliate business for example allows people to promote products other people produce. They do not have to manage stock, premises, staff, cash flow or any of the other nightmares besetting small entrepreneurs.

An affiliate signs up with a seller and gets a special link. The affiliate then promotes the relevant product or services online.

A visitor clicks onto the affiliate's site.  If the visitor likes the sound of the product, they will click the link and go to the seller's site. If they then buy the product, the affiliate is paid commission.  Simple.

Lifestyle of choice

Services as well as products sell well online and their providers are doing very well and often enjoying their new lifestyle.

"I have been working from home for a while as a science editor and writer" Carol Featherstone told Julian Warricker on the You and Yours Show. "I work for clients all over the world".

Not an easy option

I should emphasise that many people who have done it agree that working online is not an easy option.

"But it meant I could live where I wanted" said Featherstone who moved to South West France 10 years ago. "If you have to earn your living, being able to work with something that really interests you and in a place you love takes the sting out".

Learn to earn and earn while you learn

I would not try to say that everyone can earn a living doing this. There is a lot to learn, a lot to do. But I think anyone vaguely determined can create another income stream. I also think that anyone who is really determined can definately earn their living online.

It does not all have to be done in one go. If you are willing to give up some time you could join many people who are working a day job and building a business at night and weekend.

For those willing to have a go there are many ways to earn and many ways to learn the necessary skills.

Use your search engine and you will find plenty of free stuff to help you.  If you want to stay local, take a look at our website for information about affiliate businesses as well as a lot of other information about starting your own business, and if you like download the free 5 part course on starting an affiliate business.

Invisible online

One of the key advantages of working online is that no-one knows who you are. Grannies can set up sites selling leathers for bikers, call themselves Clyde – and no-one will know the difference.

Cash in the Attic look out, here comes cash in the computer.

Starting a New Online Business

If it is true that you can't teach an old dog new tricks I am in trouble.  Arthritic, smelly, fur falling out all over the place and four-legged I might not be, but transister radios were cool when I was a teenager.  Yup, I am that old - I can even vaguely remember the Beatles the first time round!

I am comfortable with the world wide web, I know how to use most of the programmes on my computer; I even know how to use all the apps on my mobile phone.  So I feel fairly comfortable with new technology.  But not with nechworking (a little word I came up with to describe the technology of online networking). 

Why am I bothering you might ask yourself.  I am bothering because I intend to plunge into the icy internet pool  and start a business online.