Ecommerce Success Begins With Good Business Sense

There’s a false perception among many would-be home based business owners that all they have to do is build a website, buy a stack of shipping boxes from UPS, and before too long those homemade crafts and trinkets that are all the rage with their friends and family will suddenly make them rich. Ha! Not happening. 

Yeah, I’m sure that there are a handful of lucky people out there who do occasionally find such success despite having zero business sense and absolutely no plan, but for those of you who are serious about increasing your odds of becoming a profitable enterprise I’d like to share some advice.  I happen to operate an ecommerce site, so these tips come from my own observations and mistakes.  I make and ship game-related products, so for the purpose of this post, I’ll focus on home businesses that take orders via a website and produce a tangible product.

First and perhaps foremost, if you don’t have a whole lot of startup capital then it should be common sense that you need to pick a product that you can begin to make without the need for expensive machinery, computer upgrades, or a large storage space.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the truth is that no matter how well you plan ahead of time, there is still a chance your business will fail at some point down the road.  Better to fail and have your bank account intact than to fail and still owe the credit card companies thousands of dollars because you went nuts and bought all kinds of machines and gear during the startup phase.  Your product should ideally be something that you’ve already made from the comfort of home and that you fully understand.

Second, I would highly recommend that you focus your efforts on a product that is easy to replicate and does not rely on customization.  If you have to customize something per the customer’s request for every single order then it will slow you down beyond belief.  I’m not saying that customization-based businesses are necessarily doomed to failure.  They can, in fact, be very lucrative, but the energy expended on this kind of business model is huge.  I’m sorry, but I’m just not interested in exchanging seven emails and having three phone calls with each of my customers to make sure that their custom embroidered pillow looks just the way they want it.  Better to have a product that can be mass-produced quickly and efficiently.  This will also cut down massively on the number of returns and exchanges you have to deal with after shipment.

Speaking of shipping, you’d be wise to choose a product that can be easily and cheaply shipped without a high risk of damage.  The products that I ship are small, compact, and virtually unbreakable.  They are small because I don’t want to have to rent out a huge warehouse to make room for my product – I’d rather do it from my basement.  The size also makes it much easier to pack and ship.  The fact that my product is highly resistant to breakage or damage during shipment is a huge benefit.  I had to learn this one the hard way.  I used to make and ship a product that was huge, heavy, and susceptible to damage.  This became a major hassle because ridiculous amounts of time and energy were expended during the packing phase, and it turned out that no matter how well it was packed it still sometimes arrived damaged because of its properties.  This then led to dealing with sometimes irate customers, and it meant doing a long-distance exchange in each circumstance.  Needless to say, I learned pretty quickly that I needed to eliminate this particular product, and this move streamlined the business in a major way.

Finally, it would be a good idea to follow the advice of Warren Buffett by creating a business that offers you a distinct “competitive advantage”.  In other words, how could your particular situation or your particular skill set give you an advantage over potential competitors?  Perhaps you have a family connection who can provide you with cheaper materials than anyone else.  Or maybe you’ve spent a lifetime perfecting a talent or skill that few others can match as far as speed or quality is concerned.  Or maybe your marketing skills are so remarkable that your conversion ratio is through the roof.  The bottom line is that you need to find a way to get a permanent leg-up on the competition so that you have better flexibility with pricing and a better chance of eventually dominating your niche.

These are just a few things to think about before you launch an internet-based store from home.  As you can see, just a little bit of forethought and planning prior to startup can mean the difference between a business that bombs and a business that spits off cash like it’s nobody’s business.  Good business ideas are a dime a dozen, and the shrewd home-based entrepreneur understands that even good ideas can fail if not executed with an intelligent strategy in place.

How To Improve Your Time Management Skills With Micro-Planning

If you are trying to build an internet business in your spare time while holding down a full time job, the only way to keep up momentum will be to adopt good time management practices and develop a micro-planning strategy so that you know what you have to do at any given time of the day and can mentally prepare for it.

To make good use of any dead time in your day, look at how much time you’ll have available to work on your business and how energetic – or not – you are likely to be. Then allocate the most suitable task to that slot in your schedule.

With micro-planning, it is neither advisable nor feasible to plan more than 48 hours ahead. That is not to say that you should abandon making weekly and monthly macro-plans. Micro-planning is all about filling in the gaps in your day with appropriate tasks in order to keep your sideline Internet business (or whatever) moving forward in spite of your main commitments. To do that successfully you need to be able to predict with reasonable accuracy how you are likely to feel and how likely your
schedule is to change.

To squeeze full value out of microplanning, draw up a set of lists of the various kinds of job that can be done in different time frames and on different energy levels. For example, tasks that use up a lot of creative energy should be reserved for those days when you have generous periods of free time and are likely to have sufficient energy to get them done. Personally, I recommend early mornings for those kinds of tasks – things like writing articles, creating sales letters, designing websites and so on. Jobs like that should be placed on the “high energy/plenty of time”  list.

On the other hand, low input jobs that don’t require much time or energy to complete should be placed on a second “low energy/quick and easy” list. Tasks such as social networking, posting comments on forums and blogs, responding to e-mail, surfing traffic exchanges for credits, posting classified ads and so forth are ideally suited for those short, low energy time slots.

The photo of a page from my schedule earlier this month illustrates my micro-planning technique in action. I am a freelance English language teacher and teach various types of classes in various locations around town. Between the gaps in my teaching day I added various tasks that I thought I could realistically get done, and have checked them off as I did them. Okay, I admit I photographed one of my more successful weeks when I was able to maintain high energy and motivation levels for several days in a row.

Things do not always go so well, but even so, micro planning makes it much more likely that you will do more to maintain momentum for your side business during a busy week at the office, in the classroom, shop, factory, or coalface.

Working At Home – Does Any One Take You Seriously?

I’ve been working at home, full-time, for a few years now. It hasn’t been as easy I thought it would be, but it has been very fulfilling. It’s not just the realities of building a passive income business which has its challenges, its the issue of people’s reactions to the fact that I stay home all day and have no children or other “obvious” reason to be there. You need to grow a thick skin if you are planning on building your own business – particularly if you are doing it online.

Very, very few people understand how I make money online. Most people think the height of sophistication on the internet is being able to use Facebook or Twitter. Many of my friends use neither and some still haven’t really gotten a handle on email yet!

Therefore, trying to actually make them understand that I make a living developing my websites and being paid by advertisers (which is even the simplest explanation of it) leaves them at best thinking I am a web designer for hire, and worst – well I hate to think what dark and illegal things they think I do working from home all day. I know many of them think I just sleep all day or watch TV. I’ve even been told that I need to “get a real job” on a few occasions, and the funny thing is that I make more money than those people do while doing it on my own terms, and they have jobs they hate while making less than I do – yet I am the one that needs to get a real job in their minds. Haha!

Though I will say, before you can get other people to take your work at home business seriously – you need to take it seriously yourself. I have never owned my own business before this. It took me quite a long time to understand the correct answer to when someone asked me what I did for a living was “I am an entrepreneur, I am the owner of my own online business”. Its not a hobby or an experiment – and until you stop thinking it of like that you will find it hard to get others to take you seriously. And you do want your business to be taken seriously. First off, it will make it a lot easier to control your time. Having worked away from home for most of my life I love the fact that I can take deliveries during the day, run errands, be there for the someone to fix anything that breaks, and so on. But you don’t want to become the social center of the neighborhood if you are trying to get some work done! Set boundaries with friends and family so they don’t just drop by when they feel like it and stay for hours.

Also remember to dream big – don’t talk about making some “pin money” or “a little cash on the side” – because oddly if you talk that way that is all that you will make – a little. Its called a self-limiting belief and they are alive and well for many people starting their own work from home business – particularly women.

So take your business seriously. Get yourself some business cards, a decent computer setup, a comfortable chair, working hours, and a separate home office if possible. If you can’t handle the accounts or the technical stuff – outsource them – building a successful passive income business means that you will need to invest in your business as well. That’s probably the single biggest way to take it to the next level.

Working From Home Productivity Ideas

I have the sense that many, if not most, people in the developed world would love nothing more than to have the opportunity to work from home, whether it be as a consultant, freelancer, or online small business operator. It’s rare to find someone that loves their job and wouldn’t want to be more in control of their own destiny.  What’s interesting, though, is that the vast majority of these people will never actually follow through on this urge, and the ones that do quite often find that they simply can’t hack it.

In my view the main culprit behind this phenomenon is the lack of focus and discipline that characterizes a good proportion of today’s workforce.  This is not to say that most people are lazy – I’m simply saying that most people are too easily distracted to ever become effective home-based workers or business owners.  I’m suggesting that though most cubicle dwellers complain about constant oversight and micromanagement by higher-ups, the truth is that without this external pressure to perform and meet timelines many of them would probably get very little accomplished.

So what often happens is that the typical, disgruntled employee quits his job and strikes out on his own, confident that he can make more money from home anyway while creating his own schedule and answering to nobody but himself.  He quickly discovers, however, that he’s not getting anything done from his new home office.  Instead of actually working he’s doing a lot of TV watching, internet surfing, refrigerator raiding, and sometimes even napping.  He simply does not have the self-discipline to push aside distractions and focus on getting things done.  Does this sound familiar?  I hope not.  If it does, let me suggest a few ideas for finding the focus and motivation necessary to be a successful work at home individual.

First of all, get rid of the TV.  Okay, for most people this simply isn’t possible, but something you can try is to forcibly cut yourself off every morning.  My wife leaves every morning for her job while I stay at home and work, and I’ve gotten in the habit of tossing the remote control in her car’s back seat before she leaves so that watching the tube during the day simply is not possible!  Sure, there are times when I wish I could just take a break and do some channel surfing but by eliminating this possibility I dramatically increase my daily productivity.

Another easy way to cut out wasted movements is to switch to energy drinks from coffee if you need a morning jolt.  I used to be a big coffee drinker but I started to track how much time my habit was costing me every morning.  Between grinding the beans, brewing a pot, mixing in cream and sugar, cleaning the filter, and walking back and forth to the microwave ten times to reheat I was throwing away a good thirty minutes of valuable work time every single day.  Now, I go to the fridge, grab a cold can of Monster, and I’m ready to roll.  Same result – less hassle. This may not be for you, but you get the idea. Find that thing you do similar to this daily – that you don’t NEED to do – and get rid of it, or find a much faster alternative.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to productivity for most home based business owners is the internet itself.  This used to be a big problem for me, but I have worked hard to curtail it.  For example, instead of actually getting work done on the computer I was spending ridiculous amounts of time checking email, looking at social media, watching videos, checking website stats, and reading blogs that had nothing to do with my business.  I even decided to track my own activity one day and I’m embarrassed to admit that I checked my email over 30 times in an eight-hour period!  Why was I doing this?  Because checking my email was easier than working, to be blunt, but it also “felt” like I was working since it’s a small part of the business.  So was checking the stock quotes, reading the news headlines, and surfing over to weather.com to check the 10-day forecast.  All of these kinds of time-wasters will absolutely destroy your ability to achieve both your short and long term goals as a home based entrepreneur, and if you’re not careful they will end up sending you back to the dreaded 9-5 office cubicle quicker than you can say “tps reports”.

So how have I mastered my terrible internet habits?  I haven’t, really.  Much like my method for reducing TV time, I’ve simply removed myself from the problem.  Since most of my at-home work involves content generation I bought a word processor that is good for producing documents and that’s about it.  It’s the cheapest, most simple little tool imaginable and cannot be connected to the internet, so it’s perfect for me.  This way I’m not even tempted to surf the web because it is not even available to me.  I work on the word processor on the main floor of our home and only go into the basement twice a day to flip on our internet-enabled desktop so that I can check email and upload content.  This new ritual has proven extremely effective, and the amount of content I’m now able to churn out on a daily basis is simply staggering.

These are just a few ideas for reducing distractions and ramping up your productivity as a home-based worker, but the possibilities are endless.  Use your mind and I’m sure you can come up with some creative ways to cut out the “fat” in your daily routine so that you can meet your goals faster and create the kind of lifestyle for yourself that you’ve always dreamed of.  There are a million great business ideas that you can run from the comfort of home, but there’s only one way to make them successful, and that’s with good old-fashioned hard work, dedication, and self-discipline.

How A Funded Proposal System Can Turn Your Internet Marketing Business Into A Front-And-Back-End Money Machine

How does a funded proposal system work?

…And why should it be of any interest to struggling Internet marketers?

The aim of a funded proposal system is to help Internet marketers to fund their main business through the sale of a low-cost high-perceived-value entry product on the “front end” and generate bigger sales for the marketer on the “back end”.

A funded proposal system takes into account the fact that the first sale is always the most difficult one to get, and that sales are more likely to flow from an established customer base through purchases on the “back end” after trust has been built up between the buyer and the seller.

A high quality funded proposal system is based on the premise that it makes sense for network marketers to work out a way to generate an initial sale before they introduce their primary business proposal to the prospect.

With a funded proposal system, a low-cost but highly useful product or service is promoted first and is designed to fulfill two objectives:

Objective 1. Sales of the low cost product “on the front end” will bring in cash to help keep the Internet marketer in business.

Objective 2. The “front end sale” builds trust between the prospect and marketer, and leads the warmed-up prospect down a “funnel” which will introduce the primary business “on the back end”.

A recent development has seen the emergence of highly professional funded proposal website systems being sold at deep discounts in the business to business field on the Internet. These professionally designed funded proposal systems are sold as “front end” products in their own right.

A recent example of this is the highly professional Prosperity Marketing System where you can plug your own affiliate links into the website and turn it into your own sales funnel.

The beauty of this kind of system is that you can promote all of your different affiliate links simply by marketing a single link to your funded proposal website. When someone signs up through your link you will earn a small commission from the system, and your new affiliate will see all your affiliate products and will be encouraged to sign up to them and turn them into products in his or her own affiliate funnel.

However, a professionally designed funded proposal system should also give new affiliates the choice of adding their own programs to the system.

For one thing, the system will sell much better if this benefit can be emphasized, as it gives every prospective member of the system the chance of plugging in his or her own affiliate programs as well as giving the funded proposal website seller an opportunity to present his or her affiliate programs to the prospect.

Professionally designed funded proposal systems offer Internet marketers a great way to generate some quick income and at the same time build their main business.