Must You Reinvent The Wheel?

by Yank Elliott, MBA & IAHBE Staff Writer

 

As a small entrepreneur trying to start your first business, or any new business, you are faced
with seemingly insurmountable issues all around. Don’t feel like you’re
starting from scratch! Many others have gone before you, so instead of reinventing
the wheel, learn from others what works and what doesn’t work. In this
article, I’ll give you some starting points and some resources.

Every business must provide these basic functions:

Manufacturing, Product Development, or Services

Many home-based businesses will sell products made by others (outsourced). In this day of
the Internet, this is instantly and easily accomplished by using drop shippers
from all over the world and by joining affiliate programs. Usually there is no need to stock products at the entrepreneur’s place of business.

here are also large numbers of home-based entrepreneurs who produce their own services,
write their own e-books, or make craft items. These businesses have the advantage
of low or no production costs; though sales may be low volume, the income is
mostly profit.

Sales

Very few people like to sell, but many home-based businesses are of the Network marketing
variety requiring direct selling to succeed. Services must also be marketed
to the public to succeed. Even if all selling is done via a Website, there must
be a continuing marketing effort to drive buyers to that site.

Finance

Some home-based businesses are able to start with almost no money up front; that’s wonderful.
However, most will need some financing. Sources are personal assets, personal
loans, home mortgage, credit cards, and friends or family. Some will also use
venture capital

Personnel

For the home-based entrepreneur you may say there is no personnel function. Not true.
The entrepreneur is the employee, and the same issues relate to that person
as apply to employees in a Fortune 100 company with thousands of employees.
The entrepreneur is the personnel manager (now more commonly known as human
resources) and must establish appropriate policies for the employee (herself).

One of the first things all human relations departments do is produce an employee handbook
stating company policy with respect to duties and behavior of employees. The
small entrepreneur should write a short list of things she needs to do every
day to accomplish her objectives. Issues covered could be daily hours of work,
how to handle friends and family, ways to defeat isolationism from the surrounding
community, how to obtain any necessary training, and other problems related
to running the business.

In addition to these basic business requirements, the new entrepreneur must find out everything
about their products or services. There are thousands of Websites offering training
in how to start a business and what the owner must know and do. All of these
require some expense and much time to conquer their learning curve. Even then,
how do you have any confidence in what you have learned?

There are better ways. One is to use SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives. Services
are free and easily accessible on the Internet; there is likely a local chapter
near you. SCORE is an affiliate of the US Small Business Administration.

Another excellent source for the entrepreneur is the Kauffman Foundation, a non-profit
group dedicated to promoting the entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurial
success. They sponsor training through many organizations all over the US. Contact
them to see if they have a program that can help with your small business issues.

In the U.S. there is a nationwide community college system. Most of these have a small business
development center (SBDC) where the entrepreneur can obtain help with problems.
Call your local college for information.

Most public and private colleges and universities also have small business assistance. If
you are close to one, see what they have.

A source for better ways to sell is the book How to Win the Sale: Telephone Sales Scripts,
Marketing Letters, Voice Mail & Email Messages, by Ann Barr.

Here are two final thoughts on how and why to not reinvent the wheel and use what is
already available. First is a business-type issue which is being conquered by
a church group. A group of Methodist churches realized each of them was spending
untold hours working on their individual plans for things like developing a
small group ministry while others are involved in determining a better balance
in their worship services. So the Free Methodist Website is trying to accumulate
ideas so all churches can benefit and not waste all that time. An example of
what they have accomplished is the Pastor’s Handbook.

Last is a statement from Singapore Entrepreneurs about Warren Buffet’s donation
to the Gates Foundation:

Instead of starting his own foundation, he chose to put the money into a foundation
which is already in operation and has been doing good work. The notion of putting
money into another foundation and not getting so much fame later (in future,
people will remember the Gates Foundation, but maybe not the Warren Buffett
fund or grant) is what I think is remarkable of Warren Buffett.

Save your effort and learn from what others have done and are doing

 

Six strategies how to keep your body health and avoid from heart attack and stroke

By Erny Setyawati

We always eat fast food and lazy to do exercise. This is live style of modern people now
days. People do this because of many activities, busies live and crowded problems
that they must face. The researchers from American Heart Association and American
Cancer Society give warning to people around the world in order to do few suggestions.
They suggest few strategies can avoid from stroke, heart attack. We must change modern life style in order to be health. To do health diet and active life, prevent heart attack risk to 27 millions people and
stroke risk to 10 millions people. Based on study of American National Health
that has been done research for 1984 until 2004, giving suggestion like below


1.Stop smoking.

Based on research, people that become smoking addiction, tend to get stroke
and heart attack easily. People tend to have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, avoid to smoke too much.

2.Body mass index.

Avoid your body over weight. Keep your body balance. Consult to your Doctor how to do health diet. Over weight have risk, diabetes, heart attack and high blood pressure.

3.Keep your cholesterol (LDL) stable.

High cholesterol make your blood stream does not run well. Doing sport and take
activities are the best solution.

4.Keep your blood pressure stable.

Avoid eating fatty food and consume health food. Consult to the Doctor about health menu.

5.Keep your blood sugar content stable

People have diabetes risks, avoid to drink and eating high sugar content. .

6.People tend to have heart attack risk. They had better to drink aspirin every day.

 

Computer
is important tool for running business on the net. The improvement of Internet
Technology, people
world wide begin to look for business
opportunity on line. We only stay in front of PC or Lap top can market and
sell products and services around the world. We only need computer and high
speed Internet access. You will get information, business partners, joint venture,
and rent system through Internet, without going out from your home. Few countries
give free Internet access. Improvement telecommunication technology make high
cost Internet access tends to decrease. We must be wise to use our computer
so that you can use as long as possible. Generally,computer can use between
four until six years, but depends on using the computer.

We give few tips how to keep your computer stay long so that you can not spend
too much money to repair and buying.

1.Use PC has economical energy. Do not use screen saver. Shut down your computer
when you go away or not use it.

2.Change your PC to note book because more economical than PC

3.Use LCD monitor than box monitor. Avoid printing your work. You had better
save your work as PDF soft copy

4.Use operating system and software that be needed only.

5.Avoid up grade software and hardware that you do not need it.

6.Use power management in your Computer operating system. Make stand by and
shutdown automatically, if you do not use the computer.

7.Be diligent to use management tool, as disk defragmenter, up date anti spy
ware and anti virus.

8.Throw away rubbish data that you do not use any more ( dish clean up )

9.Decrease running program in the same time.

10.Choose and buy a computer that has logo, Energy Saver, Green PC, Eco Friendly
Computer, Energy Efficient so that increase your computer performance and saving
the earth from global heating.

 

Few
strategies how to create Internet café business

By Erny Setyawati

Internet is like hamburger or hot dog that so
popular between children, teenagers and adults. The Internet users tend grows
especially in Asia now days. Based on Jupiter Research proved, Asia grows to
42 percent of the world's population with regular Internet access, 5 % more
than today. China and India will take a place Internet access than America and
Canada reputation. The condition is supported by infrastructure development.


The global technology improvement makes people think to create a
new business to Internet access oriented. People become create Internet
café business. We can see few countries in Asia, Internet Café
business becomes booming. We try to discuss few strategies how to create Internet
Café business below, how to begin, design and find target
market.

1.Finding strategies places.

Building Internet Café business, we must think strategies places. We
must choose strategies places that near to community, crowded population that
lack of infrastructure so that people tend to go to your Internet café.
Consider to make research first in order to know how far people needed to access
Internet.

2.Building infrastructure

Prepare your desk stop computers, laptops, servers and AC that have minimize
electricity energy so that you will not spend much money to pay electricity
bill. Create simple network so that can recovery so soon, if there is trouble.


3.Human resources

Prepare yourself to know about hardware, network trouble shooting. Avoid to
rent expert, because you will spend much money. You can rent expert, if you
can not overcome infrastructure trouble.

4. Room design

Design an Internet café room as nice as possible so that your customers
become enjoy and stay long in your café. Keep your customers privacy.
Do not create sitting position so near between others customers.

5. Give free bonus

Give free bonus, as free drink, snack and candies. This innovative invites new
customers come to your Internet Café.

6.Campaign your new Internet Café through brochures, sales letter, newspaper
and Radio.

7.High speed Internet access

You must control Internet speed access every time. Your customers will run away
because of this problem.

The last think that you must consider before begin business. Count your operational
cost carefully, as electricity cost, Internet connection, cleaning service and
others.

 

 

The Pay Per Click Marketing Game

 By Jim Sansi

As an advertiser you're probably tired of playing the bidding wars by being forced into paying
top dollar for good keywords. This is particularly true in when advertising
in highly competitive markets while having to deal with click fraud and junk
traffic that hardly converts or is barely profitable.

The good news for advertisers is that there are lots of new players in the pay-per-click
arena with large and divers enough networks of sites that can deliver a good
steady amount of traffic to your sites. Here is a quick look at some of the
alternatives.

The richest man in the world, Bill Gates has entered head first into the traffic business
with the launch of the Microsoft adCenter. Although adCenter
is quickly becoming popular among former AdWords and Yahoo users and driving
up prices, you may still be able to place ads in some markets with good results.

One of the lesser known pay per click networks is a company called GoClick. GoClick
is cheap, incredibly cheap for most

keywords. However this is offset by the fact that the quality of the traffic
from GoClick isn't the greatest since they place ads on game or other sites
that may not be relevant to your ads. However if promoting products with mass
appeals like health and wellness GoClick can certainly provide good results.

StumbleUpon is proving to be a good source of cheap yet somewhat targeted traffic. The secrete
to StumbleUpon is a toolbar that users install that keeps tracks of the types
of sites they visit, then when an advertisers site is displayed it is targeted
to the users preference of site. With keywords starting at five cents per click
and the ability to deliver thousands of visitors every day

StumbleUpon is quickly proving to be a leading source of inexpensive and profitable
traffic

So that covers a few of the better alternatives for PPC advertising. It is also very
important that when starting a promotional campaign for a brand new affiliate
site or sales page to not buy any traffic. This can become incredibly costly
without leading to any kind of results.

For new sales pages or affiliate link you can use other forms of free traffic generation
like article marketing, forums or social bookmarking sites to test the waters
and see how well the offer converts into sales. Once tested and converting well
then delve into the PPC arena.

---

At http://www.articlelistcourse.com
find the best methods to super charge your article marketing efforts...
Guaranteed!

 

 

Niche Marketing Tactics to Make Money

By Karl Augustine

 

Niche Marketing: Tactics to Use To Make Money With Niche Marketing

Niche marketing has always been a key any success in marketing but lately it has
become quite a prominent force in the online marketing world. Many books, manuals,
courses, and web sites have been developed that focus on niche marketing. It
is easy to find solid resources on the Internet that can teach you how to make
money with niche marketing.

Niche marketing online is a distinct segment of Internet marketing and is the quickest
way to get maximum exposure if you know how to leverage the search engines to
draw attention to your niche web site.

There's many things to learn to be successful and profit from niche marketing and your
USP (Unique Selling Proposition) will dictate exactly how to plan your attack
to successfully market to customers in your niche.

If you plan to use niche marketing to draw visitors to your web site, here's a
few tactics that you can use to make money:

Niche Marketing Tactic #1, "Research"

Fully utilize all of the research mechanisms that you can find in order to make sure
that you truly understand your niche and all of its nuances.

This requires understanding what tools are best to use so you can understand what
your target niche market does day to day, where they spend their time online,
and what makes them tick from a personal and business perspective.

Niche Market Research (http://www.nichemarketresearch.com)offers free reports and
articles to help you make the most of your research time.

Niche Marketing Tactic #2, "Define your paying niche"

Clearly define who will make up your niche market and make sure that the people in that
niche market are willing to pay for the solution that you provide to their problems.

A niche is a clear subset of a larger category.

An example of what a niche market is not: "People who want to learn how to
shoot better scores in golf."

In this example, there are far too many people within the main category (golf)
to make this a true niche. Virtually everyone who plays golf will want to play
better and shoot better scores so this wouldn't qualify as a niche, much less
a category worth pursuing.

An example of a niche market: "Women who play golf who want to learn how to
drive the ball longer and straighter."

This would be a niche because it clearly defines and segments who you'll cater to
and why they would need your service.

After clearly defining your niche market, you should make sure that they are willing
to pay for your services. The easiest way to determine this in the online world
(other than using common sense) is to find web sites that may be close to, or
even in your niche, and see if those web sites charge a fee for their services.

In addition, you should look to see if there is a reasonable level of competition
between those web sites.

If you see more than a few sites listed on a SERP (Search Engine Result Page) that
cater to female golfers for a fee, chances are the people who are your target
customer will pay for your services for solving their problem - women who can't
consistently hit long straight drives in golf.

Niche Marketing Strategy #3, "Choosing keywords and domain names"

Research and choose your keywords carefully so you can acquire the best domain name for
your site. Niche marketing most often includes maximizing the way search engines
work to make sure that your web site gets listed n the first page of the SERP's
from your chosen keywords. Your domain name contributes to getting those first
page results.

Go to Digitalpoint's keyword suggestion tool and type in keywords that you feel
people would use to find the product or service that you offer within your niche.
Look at the number of searches performed per day for those keywords and review
the other keywords listed.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Type the keyword phrase that you think best suits your USP's target customer into
Google and assess whether or not you can reasonably compete with the sites that
are listed on page 1 of the SERPs.

Can you get a page 1 ranking knowing that you'll have to compete with the sites
already listed?

Repeat the process until you have decided what your main keywords will be for your
product or service within your niche.

Those keywords should be in your domain name and preferably, they should be your entire
domain name.

Example: if you've concluded that 'blue widgets' best suits your USP and you feel that
you can compete for page 1 listings on the SERPs with the sites that come up
on page 1 for the keyword 'blue widgets', then a good domain name for your niche
marketing site would be 'bluewidgets.com'.

Niche Marketing Tactic #4, "Posting keyword rich articles or reports throughout
the web"

Niche marketing doesn't differ from any other online search engine marketing, posting
relevant content is the best way (bar none) to get the right type of traffic
to your niche site.

Writing keyword rich articles or reports and posting them to high traffic web sites
is a great way to make sure that you get maximum exposure within your niche
market. People will use your keywords to search for information about the topic
that they have interest in, and they will come across your web site on the search
engines results.

Niche marketing caters to a distinct and select group of people who need what you
have to offer. If you define your niche properly and make sure that your ability
to solve their problem is something that they will pay for, you will have established
a "money maker".

Utilize the search engines to make it easy for your niche market to find your service
or product. Niche marketing is the easiest way to be successful on the Internet
if you do the proper research.

---

About The Author: Karl Augustine -Publisher, "Starting Smart!" *Learn SEO -
Top 10 listings http://www.9mistakes-online.com/nichemarketing.htm

 

 

AboutPress Releases

by Yank Elliott, MBA & IAHBE Staff Writer

Internetor not, business or non-profit, what is your biggest problem? Is it knowledge
of the business, management ability, financial strength, or what? You must
have prospects to come to your establishment and buy or use your products and
services. Even a non-profit has to have traffic that will use their ideas and
services and donate money to keep them going. So the question is, “How
do you reach your target market and get prospects to visit and buy or use?”

If you watchTV news and morning shows you see every day an author pushing sales of a book
or an inventor selling a unique product. These people are featured in interviews
which do not seem like sales pitches, but that is exactly what they are. The
same thing happens in newspapers and magazines. All of them have sections featuring
the latest lines in every area of interest like business, gardening, hunting,
and all the other special interests. Have you ever wondered how the TV producers
and print media journalists “discovered” these wonderful new books
or products?

Most likelythe TV producer or newspaper journalist received something called a “press
release.” There are two kinds: one is sent to TV or print journalists
and the other may also be sent to these people, but it is really intended for
the Website or product “target market,” those potential prospects
who are most interested in whatever you are trying to sell.

Nowlet’s talk about how your reporter, journalist, or potential customer
might view your press release. Right away be aware all these people are overworked
and deluged every minute with this stuff. They are looking for something they
can develop into a story or that will help them as nothing else will. Notice
the TV interviews and written articles about these new items. Do they appear
as advertisements? They don’t even look anything like an ad. They are
crafted as news interviews or news stories, and that is the form you must use
for your press releases, otherwise, if they even smell like hype or sales, into
the trash can they will go!

Here is some information you must know to use press releases effectively.

What is a press release?

A press release is a written statement intended for editors, journalists, reporters,
Internet prospects, and others who might draw attention to the release subject.
This document must have no hype or sales material. It is intended to portray
the item in question as something that has a story that can be written up and
reported as news in a favorable manner.

What does a press release look like?

The HEADLINE is used to get the attention of journalists and prospects. This is
so important it deserves a bit of explanation which is best described by Peter
Bowerman in The Well-Fed Self-Publisher. Bowerman cites a headline used to market
a book about magic. The initial headline was “New Book: Tricks With Your
Head” which brought ZERO response. A change was made, “How To Stick
A Fork In Your Eye (And Why You’d Want To ...), which resulted in more
than 150 interviews and more publicity! Do you get the point about headlines?

Contact and Dateline goes at the top of the release with the release date, your name and
address, e-mail, and telephone numbers.

Introduction is the first paragraph in a press release that generally gives basic answers
to the questions of who, what, when, where and why. To get anyone’s attention
in our over-hyped world you must always express BENEFITS as opposed to FEATURES.
To define benefits effectively, you also need to develop the USP (Unique Selling
Proposition) for your new project.

The Body contains further explanation and background about your product that are
relevant to this news release.

Boilerplate is generally a concise "about" section, with more information on the
company or individual issuing the release.

After the boilerplate you MUST include the Close symbol, “XXX”, without
the quotation marks. This is simply an accepted convention but you must use
it or face the trash.

After the Close symbol comes Media Contact Information which may be the same as in
the Contact section at the top of the release. It could also contain separate
public relations information.

Here are some ideas about what to include in your release:

Always include any unusual or unique element that makes the release newsworthy.
You are trying to supply information for a story so you want to tell about something
different from all other information out there.

Look for ways to connect your information to holidays or special events because these
times will tend to lend more exposure and interest for your release.

Try to include human interest elements in your release as well as awards and disagreements
or conflicts that tend to separate your promotion from all the others out there
competing for attention.

Your release should be built around short, simple sentences and paragraphs. If possible
limit your document to 300 words and one page. Be sure it does not sound like
sales or marketing; you want to make it news that is deemed worthy of a story,
interview, or prospect’s action.

Why do you need to use a press release?

Sales don’t happen on the Internet unless potential customers visit your Website.
That means they need to learn about it, click on a link, and visit your site.
A press release can be easily submitted all over the Web in ways we will discuss
below. Remember that is this is a wonderful vehicle for broadcasting information
about your latest site or products to enough places where people will see it
and act to your advantage.

Where can you get a press release?

You will need to write it yourself—not too difficult if you follow the suggested
format above—or you can hire a copywriter to do it for you. There are
many of these on the Internet and you may even find one living near you. In
either case you will have to provide the necessary information. You will need
to separate the real benefits of your company from feature hype and promotional
sales information. The idea with press releases is always to present a news
story of real interest to your readers or viewers rather than just marketing
copy.

Don’t forget that prospects and reporters are very much alike with regard to press
releases. They don’t care anything about helping you; they can hardly
help themselves. They are sick of being worried all day every day by public
relations people. All they want is for you to offer something different they
can use to benefit themselves. All your copy should be written with these things
in mind. So give them a really good story.

Now we have arrived at how to use your press release.

Remember the reason you developed your release was to get customers to your Website or
store location, if you have one. Most of you use the Internet almost entirely,
and you should consider it as part of your marketing plan. This makes it necessary
to do what you can to optimize it for search engines (SEO). To do this, always
include keywords from your Website and appropriate links. You do two things
here: people are more likely to find you during a Web search, and your search
rankings will tend to be higher.

You can find many sites that will broadcast your release all over cyberspace; many
of them are free. Find them by using an advanced Google search here and enter
“free press releases” without the quotation marks. Below are a few
I picked; all of them have an Alexa rating below 100,000. If you need more,
you can certainly find them. Some of these require registration, but it’s
free, so go ahead and use them:

ClickPress
is ranked 75, 852 by Alexa. This Website maintains a searchable database available
to media sources worldwide. They have several inexpensive programs that physically
distribute your releases.

Free-Press-Release.com
is ranked 19,834 by Alexa. They claim being the Number 1 press release distribution
service since 2003. Additional distribution services are available for a fee.

I-Newswire.com
is ranked 56,926 by Alexa. This company has strict policies against press release
spam, which means releases that are no better than sales letters. They also
have a Featured Release program and other extra services for a fee.

PRLeap
is ranked 21,077 by Alexa. The company says over 24,000 businesses use their
services. They provide RSS services as well as normal release distribution.
Other services with higher placement are available for a small price starting
at about $10.

Pressbox
(UK based) is ranked 51,637 by Alexa. Based in London, this service offers a
searchable database to many journalists and public relations groups.

PRLog
is ranked 47,346 by Alexa. This site serves over 40,000 RSS feeds and all its
services are free.

Creatinga press releases is not such a formidable task, and just about anyone should
be able to follow the instructions here to get their message out. If your releases
are successful, you will get a lot more traffic to whatever you are trying to
promote. Remember, the word “promote” is not exactly correct because
it implies a sales message. Never use such a message in your release; you want
to provide input for a popular news story. Try a few of these and see what happens.

---

Yank is a home-based entrepreneur and freelance business writer living in Hurricane
Alley, North Carolina, USA. His Website is http://www.alternate-choice.com
and you may contact Yank at mailto:newideas@alternate-choice.com.