No Excuses in 2009 - Here Are 7 Essentials To Start Your Internet Based Web 2.0 Business!
January 4, 2009 by Bill Sifflard http://budurl.com/9wpe
Have you been thinking about starting a new internet based Web 2.0 business, want to change your lifestyle, quit your current job, but always seem to have an excuse to either not start or not follow through on your dream? Do you have great concept, skill or passion that you want to run with, but you just do not know where to start? Well today, right now is the perfect time to follow your dream and get your business rolling. Stop making excuses and decide today that you are going to follow your passion and make 2009 a year to remember and not another one worrying about the economy, your jog security and paying the bills. Start following your vision and use these seven concepts to help guide you as your develop and grow your new entrepreneurial adventure.
1. Create An Ultimate Personal Vision
In an earlier post I wrote on New Enterpreneur Essentials I laid out the steps for Creating Your Ultimate Personal Vision “UPV”. Check out this post, use the tools and define your UPV. Even if you have an existing business or are just thinking about entrepreneurship, this is a great exercise to evaluate what you really want from your life.
2. Consistent Focus and Commitment
If you are going to go after this and take your life in a new direction, then you need to determine how much time you are willing to put into the project and commit yourself to it. If this is a part time venture and you need to keep your day job, that is fine. Just establish how much time each day or week you are going to commit to building your new business and stick to it. If you are going to go at this full time, then set specific goals and organize your time to focus on what will drive your business forward. You will hit road blocks!, You will get frustrated and discouraged! I do not know many entrepreneurs over the last thirty years who have not experienced those feelings. The difference is that the successful ones NEVER lose their focus and commitment to their UPV, where the unsuccessful ones LACK the focus and commitment letting a set-back or unforeseen challenge side-track their efforts and they give up.
3. Information Overload
Once you start surfing the web you can feel totally over-whelmed with the overload of information that is available. The key to being successful in the Web 2.0 era is “focus on your core“. If you try every idea that comes along, or try to read every post, tweet or email you receive with the next greatest idea you will accomplish nothing.
I am not saying that you do not want to continually learn and develop your knowledge and understanding of the market, you should always be learning. There are some great bloggers out there who you are going to want to read and learn from, but you can not read them all and you need to structure and set aside a reasonable amount of time for “feeding the mind”. You can not learn to ride a bike by reading the manual. I use to hire sales people who would want to sit in their cubicle for weeks reading about products and programs until they felt like they were an expert. I would kick them out the door and tell them they are never going to balance themselves on that bike of become an expert unless they get out there and fall a few times. You are going to fall and learn from it, but keep picking yourself up and get back on that bike.
What is important also is that you focus on your business plan and work it to success. I see to many people trying to juggle 2, 3 or 4 different projects at once and never really committing to the success of any of them. Your plan will evolve and change and you may decide to go in a different direction at some point, but what ever direction you go in…commit to it and give it your all!
4. Mastermind - Develop a Circle to Learn and Grow
If you think you can do it alone…you can’t! and more over why should you try to re-invent something that you can learn from others. I believe strongly in Napoleon Hill’s philosophy and vision regarding the development and use of a Mastermind Alliance or Group to develop both personally and professionally. To be a successful entrepreneur you need to align yourself with others who can contribute to your success, be able to share ideas, opportunities and challenges in a forum where all can contribute and benefit. It may be that you find a group with similar interests in your local area, meet up with a group on LinkedIn or Twitter or you may want to join a group that brings professionals together from across the country and around the world. To learn more about Mastermind Groups read The Secret Behind a Mastermind Group at the Bssential Small Business Solutions website.
5. Do Not Waste Your Time - Outsource
So many Entrepreneurs try to do it all themselves and waste their vital time and energy doing work that they can have done faster and better by others for a fraction of the cost. Your time is valuable and once you determine the value of your time you will realize that logos, websites, administrative duties, email campaigns can all be automated or handled by “Virtual Assistants” and other professional sourcing solutions, so you can focus on what will make you money. You can develop an effective Web 2.0 presence and not know anything about WordPress, widgets, themes or html. You just need to know how to delegate and establish the processes and proceedures you want in developing your site and your business.
6. Marketing the 80/20 Rule
Marketing yourself, your business and driving traffic to your site needs to be the primary focus of your attention. If you are not spending 80% of your time generating traffic to your site then you are not going to achieve the success that you desire. This gets back to outsourcing where you waste time doing things that will not help grow your business. Invest your time in learning developing your marketing skills from those who have been successful. You need to focus on learning how to drive traffic to your site, creating useful content that will draw readers to your site and utilize the tools that are out there to promote and get your site noticed by the search engines.
7. Build Your Community
Community and a follwing is critical to your success in building a internet based business. When I talk to brick and mortor retailers the first question I ask is “how big a database of customers they maintain and how often to they communicate with them and how?” I generally get a blank stare like I have 3 heads. Most businesses have no idea who their customers are and your primary focus is to reach out and create that list of subscribers to your site that you can establish and build a relationship with by getting them to opt-in to your blog post updates, email newsletter as well as buy products and services you offer. If you draw a visitor to your site, but do not get them to give you permission to communicate with them they are a lost customer. Develop a marketing strategy to offer something in return for their registration. The key is working to get a name, an email address and opt-in permission to contact them.
Follow Your Dream
Now is the time to follow your dream, stop making excuses and commit to yourself to change direction and set a new course in 2009.
To learn more about building your internet Web 2.0 based business join the Bssential Solutions Community and utilize the links, tools and services that you can find there.
There you can sign up for regular updates to the website and blog, register for the Bssential Small Business Solutions Newsletter and check out some of the courses and programs we offer to help establish and grow your business.
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