Internet Business Blog to Make Everything EzyAs123

If you’ve reduced all your chores to automated methods and systems, it’s time to think about taking yourself out of the equation altogether. While you may have reduced the amount of time you spend on repetitive tasks, you may still be a “bottleneck” when it comes to other aspects of your business. Take a hard look at what’s chewing up the majority of your time and ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?”

Perhaps you’ve heard of “absentee owner” businesses. They have complete systems of executing a business plan on “autopilot”, without input from the owner. From something as simple as a balloon-vending kiosk in a tourist attraction to a chain of self-service car washes, people have found ways to make money without having to show up and work for it themselves. By careful planning in advance and accounting for every step in the process, business owners can create automatic money-makers that take the owner out of the equation. Internet Marketing is ideally suited to this method of doing business.

Content providers, whether they supply writing skills, graphics or Web design can set up a business model that could be run by a manager, freeing the owner to set up other ventures. As long as there is a proven system for handling all the problems that crop up within that business, the owner can rely on automation and trusted employees to handle everything related to running the business. Careful planning and research will show you how to do this.

Copying successful business plans that have proven to be effective is a good start. The idea of creating an “autopilot” business from scratch may seem daunting, at first. Don’t do that! You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Go out and find businesses that are already doing what you want to do and “reverse-engineer” their business model. The longer a business has been in existence, making a profit and growing continually, the better the model to copy.

Another important consideration is scalability. Your business model will be able to grow indefinitely large if it can be applied to many different niches. Suppose you are a programmer who has produced a how-to video on installing affiliate management software for “tech challenged” marketers, sold via an automated system that you know works. By creating videos for other niches (sales management systems, content management systems, etc.) and using the same sales methods, you can expand your business as much as you want, with a one-time effort in starting each new niche. All you’ll have to do is monitor your bank account and spend the surplus!

Outsourcing will be a very important consideration for you. Getting a team of remote workers to handle your clerical tasks, manage your operation and supply your customer service takes some skill and experience. This is one area where a bit of caution will pay off in the end. You’ll need to reduce your tasks to a specific set of instructions that a person of average intelligence can understand and follow without a lot of personal tutoring by you. This can be laborious at first, but once you’ve done it correctly, those instructions will continue to work long after you’ve set them up.

No matter whether you hire employees, outsource to India or automate with software, taking yourself out of the process of your business means you are free to do whatever else you want. That includes pursuing a passion that will occupy all your time and energy, along with a big chunk of the cash you make from your autopilot business(es). Give yourself the choice to do so. Get yourself out of the moneymaking equation and concentrate on money spending.

Regards,

Ian

Internet Business Business Automation, Internet Business

A few days ago I wrote about Wordpress being the Best Blogging Platform and a few people commented about the fact they should change over from Blogger to Wordpress. In that post I had a link to the Plug-Ins I recommend and use in this blog, but I neglected to give you a good source of Wordpress Blog Themes.

Over the past few days I have been working on a package of Themes that I consider to be the best to get you started and give you a choice of over 50 Themes you can use to make your blog individual to you, plus include a number of income streams already plugged into the theme.

You can now have access to these fantastic themes at a very low and very affordable price, PLUS you also get Master Resale Rights to the package so you can make 100% profit with just one sale.

EzyWordpressThemes

The Master Resale Rights are only available to the first 100 customers, and there is another special offer after you purchase which is also only available to the next 100 customers.

Click here to read more and see a few examples of the themes I have put together for you.

Now, Your Blogs Don’t Have To Look Like Thousands Of Other Blogs Online.

Regards,

Ian

Blogging Tools wordpress themes

The customer is always right. However, a particular customer may not be right for you. There’s a lot of stress and hard work in being your own boss. By eliminating as much of that stress, you make your business better. By eliminating the few troublemakers who take up most of your time dealing with customer service issues, you do everyone a favour!

This doesn’t mean you have the right to be wrong or rude. You need to be polite, patient, refund their money and never accept another cent from them, ever again. It may seem like bad business to turn away more money. The fact of the matter is that aggravation is one of the most costly drains on a business. It causes chronic health problems, poor customer service to your good customers and unnecessary stress.

There’s a famous ratio called the 80/20 rule, or Pareto’s Principle. It states that 80% of your income will come from 20% of your customers. In the same fashion, 80% of your stress will come from 20% of your customers. In this case, that ratio may be more like 95% of the stress comes from 5% of your customers. Be willing to let them go and replace them with low-maintenance, nice customers.

In the same fashion, do your best to attract and keep the good ones. Put most of your customer service effort into retention of the ones that pay on time, are polite and respectful and handle your mistakes and errors with patience and kindness. The change in attitude and lowering of stress will improve your work environment.

You can take this improvement to the next level by thinking of ways to involve your customers in your business. By sincerely trying to find ways to make your business more useful, attentive and sensitive to the needs of the good people who buy from you, you create a connection with your customers that will be hard to break.

Keep in mind, your competition will be out there, trying to steal or seduce as much of your market share as they can. Your best defence against price cutting, bonuses, coupons, discounts and all the other inducements they may offer is customer loyalty based on something higher - love and respect.

This may sound extreme, but it’s really just the Golden Rule, applied to business. If a person behaves repulsively, repel them. If they behave wonderfully, wow them! This is just good business sense and practical business practice. You will find that your business’s “brand” will be measured by how well you treat people.

Wasting time and energy on negative influences is bad for business. Eliminate as many of them as possible. Pour as much energy and time into cultivating your good customers as possible. The result of this kind of working rule may seem intangible, but it will definitely create a positive influence on your future growth and stability.

In like fashion, be willing to take a small loss in favor of preserving customer retention. Quibbling over a few dollars for return postage or extra fees to solve a problem is another bad business practice. Many marketers are beginning to offer what is called a “lose/win” guarantee. They not only give 100% refunds, they throw in a bit extra to show that they really stand behind their product or service. In reality, just getting your money back doesn’t reimburse you for the time and effort you wasted buying a product you have to return. A lose/win guarantee respects that fact and acknowledges it in the best way - being willing to take a loss, just like the customer did!

Regards,

Ian

Internet Business customer service, Internet Business

You may not have known this but I didn’t have access to the Internet or my blog for about 4 days this week due to something ‘technical’ that couldn’t be fixed quickly. Fortunately I had already loaded a number of blog posts so they would be posted each day (must have known something was coming). So I thought I would dedicate this post to automating things to make life easier.for your Internet Business.

There’s a story about a wealth seeker who sold everything he had and used the money to search for “The Touchstone”, a magical stone that could turn anything into gold. It was supposed to be located on a seashore far away, mixed in with all the other stones found there. The difference was that it would be warm to the touch, unlike all the others. This seeker of wealth went to that seashore and began picking up stones, feeling them and throwing them into the sea if they were cold. This went on for many months. Finally, one day, he picked up a stone, felt it and threw it into the sea. Unfortunately, it felt warm.

The problem with repetitive chores is more than just throwing away opportunities by mistake. The time you spend on drudge work is time you take away from working on the strategic and tactical considerations your business requires. That’s where the money is. Being able to devote your time to planning, goal setting and the like will increase your income and free up your time to spend on all the other things in life you enjoy.

By automating everything from your email campaigns to updating the content on your Web sites or blogs, you free yourself from having to do that which is best done by machine, often for free. Sure, you may have to pay a monthly fee for an autoresponder. That money is well spent if you use it to its best advantage. Loading up 52 weeks of follow up emails to your list means you have a year to come up with more content for next year. Using a service to supply your digital downloads to customers means you don’t have to be checking email every five minutes and sending out big files as attachments that end up in a spam folder, leading to more email and more aggravation.

Thanks to the growth of the Internet as a “platform”, practically any repetitive chore can be done via software, scripts or another Web site that does these chores for you. This is also another means of making a killing online. By supplying the script, software or Web site that does chores for other Internet Marketers, you create a stream of revenue supported by folks who will grow and want more of the same. This can be a gold mine for programmers and those who manage them. Stay on top of what the market is looking for and be there to supply it reliably. Then, spend a lot of time counting and spending your income!

Another great feature of many automated scripts and programs is personalisation. When you “capture” personal information about a customer or prospect, that information can be used to “populate” forms, emails, sales letters and more. By automatically filling in what would be blank fields in a sales page or saying, “Dear ‘Sparky’”, rather than, “Dear Friend”, in an email header, you create an emotional connection with your contact. Even very jaded IM pros appreciate the little touches that show someone has thought about saving a bit of time or personalising what could be cold and impersonal.

You increase your value to people by giving them as much as you can that really matters to them. Nobody wants to hear the excuse that, “I’m doing this all by hand, so allow some extra time to get what you want.” Let a machine crank out your repetitive tasks and deliver your digital downloads. There’s less chance you’ll drop the ball through human error and more opportunity for you to work on the next phase of your campaign to dominate your neck of the Virtual woods.

Regards,

Ian

Internet Business automating your internet business

Build your business upon your main strength. Even though this advice applies to any business you might start, it’s especially true in the field of Internet Business. There are so many unique niches, skills that are required, services that are needed and products that are necessary that everybody should be able to find something to do that will let them shine. You don’t want to be wasting your time chasing after a business model that doesn’t fit your strengths.

Unfortunately, many people get seduced by the profits they see others reaping from a particular method or system, and try to “ape” them. Monkey see, monkey do is fine if you’re playing. In business, it’s a ticket to a quick loss and a face full of monkey’s doo-doo. Don’t just copy something because it looks profitable.

There’s also the problem of getting advice for your business from the wrong person. Just because somebody is a success in their chosen field doesn’t make them the right source for coaching you in your business. Too many successful people don’t really know why they are successful. Even worse, the reasons for their success aren’t what they think they are. If you want business coaching, go to a real business coach. You wouldn’t ask for soccer coaching from a golf pro, would you?

The best place for you to start, if you don’t already know with certainty what your core competence is, will be to ask other people. Many of us have a “blind spot” when it comes to ourselves. You may have been struggling with self-examination for years, but an outsider who gets to know you over the period of a week could probably point out your flaws and strong points easily. The hard part is hearing, and accepting what you hear.

Once you do know what you were made for, make a plan to put that to work. Keep in mind that your weaknesses and flaws will have to be covered by you, at first. Part of your plan should include a provision for outsourcing or leveraging your weaknesses as soon as you can afford it. A Virtual Assistant, employee or JV partner could be the way for you to get the chore done, without you becoming a drudge that spends most of your time working for your business, instead of ON your business.

This brings up the point of working on your weaknesses and improving them. It might be best if you didn’t do that. Let somebody else do that for you. It’s very romantic, to think of yourself as a self-reliant entrepreneur, handling anything and everything with a flair. That’s an illusion. Nobody can do everything well. Most of us are lucky if we can do ONE thing passably well. Don’t bother becoming a better clerical worker. Hire one, or pass the work on to a partner that hires them.

There is one skill that every entrepreneur needs to develop - the ability to implement a plan, idea or vision. Million dollar ideas are a dime a dozen. Implementation plans are priceless! You cannot make your millions if all you do is come up with ideas that never get made into reality. If action plans (systems and methods for implementing great ideas) are not your thing, you’ll need the help of a partner or company that specialises in making things happen. In fact, if they are weak in the area of “brainstorming” and comprehensive thinking, you may be the “outsource” they need to get their million dollar payday. Put your great ideas together with a team of battle-hardened warriors, and both of you will win the battle.

Regards,

Ian

Internet Business Internet Business

…then let common sense prevail!

It doesn’t matter if you have been around for a while, or relatively new to the Internet Business scene, you’ve probably already seen ads, sales pages and emails promoting a number of ways to become absolutely filthy rich in no time, with no work and no brains! Come on, if that were true, nobody would be working any more. We’d all be spending money online, buying from each other. For some of us, the spending part is too true! The problem is that these same folks aren’t making any money at all.

Aside from the various money scams, “phishing” tricks to steal your identity and “spoof” emails from payment processors, there’s a group of opportunists that want your money for nothing - nothing actionable, that is. They’re the ones that tell you what you want to hear, and may even tell you what to do to make big bucks fast and easy. The problem is, they don’t tell you HOW to do this. The system, method, technique or software that you’re encouraged to buy is missing a key element - implementation, or how to make it work.

In some cases, the idea actually worked well, for a while. Now that it’s outdated, diluted or even illegal, these sharks sell it to the unsuspecting “new kid on the block”. By the time the poor kid figures out that this bright, shiny thing is useless, the desire to get a refund has withered away. That’s what these predators count on - lack of follow through on the part of the buyer.

Since most people are not cut out to be self-employed go-getters, a promise of easy riches with no effort or sacrifice gets these “underachievers” to pay for products and services that won’t work. The risk is minimal. A simple disclaimer about income promises, work involved and ability are glossed over by the greedy and protect the scammer from being shut down for over-promising.

The problem for the sincere, hard working types who are looking for (and offering) genuine help and useful products and services is that many of the good ones can appear to be the same as the bad ones. In fact, most, if not all, of the tactics and strategies used by the crooks are used by the good guys. The difference is accountability. Practically every good idea, product and service is backed up by customer service, “no hassle” money back guarantees and genuine positive feedback from buyers who are reachable.

“Investigate before you invest” is sound advice when you’re thinking about putting your money in an investment product. It’s the same when you’re deciding about knowledge products, software and help building your business. The first rule of thumb for spending money on a given tool is, “When in doubt, don’t!” Until you’ve developed your intuition and some knowledge about good business practices, ask around. Go to discussion forums, interest groups and the like and post questions about what you’re investigating. Make sure you follow the rules of the group or forum. You can get booted out, razzed or worse if a simple search could have gotten your answer for you.

Research and caution are the two things you’ll need to protect yourself from excess credit card debt and nothing to show for it. Also, keep in mind those clever manipulators scam even seasoned business owners. Being experienced in protecting themselves, they get their refund or “chargeback” their credit card account. Then they spread the word to their colleagues that “So and So” is a so-and-so. By keeping your own eyes open and finding the places where the serious-minded businesspeople meet and chat, you’ll be able to share in the same warnings that the pros give to each other.

Regards,

Ian

Internet Business Internet Business Traps