Start a Small Business Now - Brilliant or Barmy?

Starting a Small Business In a Recession

Is this brilliant or barmy? It totally depends what kind of business you want to start.

The Times Says Brilliant – If You Are Business-Like.

Lauren Tompson in The Times, last Saturday, discussed the fact that many people being laid off in the current recession are using their redundancy money to set up their own small business.  People are finding that it is harder to find a new job at the moment and 'taking the risk' of starting their own small business seems a good way to go.

Pros and Cons

There are many pros and cons to starting your own business

Pros:

• There are opportunities in the market for two basic reasons:  1.  The recession will have weeded out many inefficient businesses, and left a gap in their market and:    2.  Life is changing and opportunities are springing up that just did not exist 10 years ago.
• Banks are beginning to lend money again and interest rates are at a historic low.
• Starting your own small business could give you much more control over your life.
• You may be able to work from home, thereby cutting down on travel and child-care costs.
• You may want to create another income stream, not a whole business.

Cons

• If you do not plan, prepare and produce very efficiently, you are at risk of losing your shirt.
• You do need to produce a good business plan before the bank will even consider you for a loan.
• You may end up working longer hours for less money.
• You may find you hate being an entrepreneur.

7 Things you Must Do for Business Success

• Do your business marketing - make sure people will buy your product – even in a recession.
• Put together a good business plan.
• Make sure you understand all the different ways there are to run a business today.
• Understand what legal structure will suit you best
• Look for loans and grants through local and governmental organisations
• When going to the bank for a loan, don't forget to ask them about the Government's enterprise finance guarantee scheme.
• Take advice from everyone, especially Business link.

Business Link can help you achieve your business start up dreams. Use their online business start up guide along with the many other useful services they provide.

What Business?

The Times' article really focused on off-line businesses. Chris Simpson of Business Link (government funded adviser) said that he "had seen a growth in hair-dressing salons, fitness instructors, reiki practitioners and other well-being businesses."

If you are wondering about the best industry to be in, Check out our analysis on good industries to be in in 2010 to see what the experts said about this.

Online or Offline?

What Chris did not mention is that many small business start-ups can start their business from home and run it online. Why would you want to do that? Well, our website runs through 4 business models we think all of you could handle with not too much trouble. but in summary

• You get access to a huge market
• Your start-up costs are generally much lower.
• You can work from home.
• Small companies can look big online.

Susi Glennan, a work from home, teach at home Mom, tells how running an online business from home has helped her maintain an income while achieving the lifestyle she wanted. "I find time to keep my house somewhat organized (I like that Susi – Ed) and food on the table after a long day of educating my children and running my business."

Rob Marcus of Chat Moderator believes that the online business and the family mix very well after hiring his wife. "I admit that private meetings concerning strategic direction run on a shorter fuse than I'ver experienced in previous organisations, but this could be because of being married or simply being joint owners." Rob says.

So could an online business or money making activity be the answer you have been looking for?   Find out by reading all about it and by sending for our free introductory course to affiliate marketing Then join out 'Society of Small Entrepreneurs or SoME© to learn more about the subject.

Life Plans or Business Plans. Five Ways to Make Sure they Work

Writing Plans Can Be Hazardous to Your Business Online

When writing business plans, or any sort of plans, make sure yours work.

People like me (coaches, advisers and consultants) are always telling people like you (potential and actual e-ntrepreneurs©) to "dream big and set great goals". We are always encouraging you to create a vision of what you want to achieve as a person or in terms of starting your own small business online.

So you do that, then you are surprised and disappointed when things do not turn out just as they were in your vision.

Here are just five reasons why you may be having great difficulty achieving those goals and plans for a small business online.

1. Not your Vision: Your vision was not what you really wanted – you created it to meet the needs of others, not yourself.
2. Your vision was not clear enough. You did not see, hear, feel, taste and smell the reality that would exist when you had achieved your dream.
3. Focussing on the negative. For some reason humans are programmed to focus on negative things. When we are reviewing progress, we notice what has gone wrong, not what has gone right.   This means that people often focus on minor fire-fighting and totally miss the fact that their customers started using their product for something different. Launch the business in the direction you planned, but remember it is your customers that float it – make sure you are not fighting the current they are trying to create.  
4. Fear Factor. It is hard to break out of your comfort zones. Starting a small business online means you are going to have to do things you have never done before. We tend to focus on the fear we feel of doing different things, and ignore the fantastic potential outcomes of taking that action. 
5. Break-Down. Finally and most important of all, I find my friends are good at taking their visions and setting long, medium and short-term goals and action points. What they are not good at is applying their skills to visualising successful outcomes for those mid and short term goals. In other words they do not programme their brains.

Creating a good visualisation of a successful day, programme, plan, project or action can add massively to your success. Professor Richard Wiseman of Hertfordshire University in his book 59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lotadvises exactly that.

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!

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.

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 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.