To People Who Want Your Own Business – But Don’t Know Where To Start

"Dead Doctors Don't Lie" and the Many Hazards of Affiliate Marketing
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Being your own boss is a dream that hundreds of thousands of people aspire to every year. But out of the many people that start a business each year, approximately eighty percent fail. But, that also means that twenty percent of the dreamers build a successful business. Whether you want to open a family business, or you intend to build a chain of stores, there are some common elements that are necessary for success.

A Business Plan is necessary for every business no matter how large or small. This plan should include such things as a description of your business and your plan for its future success. Operating without a business plan would be like starting on a vacation without knowing where you were going. You would make it somewhere, but it might not be where you wanted.

A good business plan is written as a guide for your business. List what your objectives are; are your business objectives only to make a profit, or are you interested in long term expansion. These are questions to ponder.

Your business plan should include a marketing plan. How will your customers know that you are there? What types of advertising are best for your business? Advertising rates can vary widely depending on which media you choose to use. Newspaper advertising may be successful for one promotion, but not for others. One business owner that I know created a very expensive radio advertising campaign during a basketball tournament to advertise a clothing store and did not do very well with the promotion. Other times, I have known radio campaigns that did very well. The best way to “get the word out” will vary from location to location.

Be realistic. Your competition is a major factor to think about when considering opening a business. Perhaps there are too many stores that sell the same items that you want to sell. Visit the businesses that are going to be your competition; or have others visit them and report back to you. You may learn a lot from what others are doing. You may also learn what things they are doing well and what things that you can improve. Every person has been in a business and after leaving thought about things they would do if the business were theirs.

Opening Capital. How much money you will need to get started is something that is often under estimated. I would suggest that you estimate everything that you can think of that is necessary and at least double it. It may not take that much, but I have found that it is better to be over capitalized, than to be under funded. And, you will always have expenses that you forgot.

Finally, find out what your potential customers want. The adage “If you build it, they will come,” is not necessarily true. If you are selling something that customers in that area don’t need or want, the likelihood of success is minimal. Having a clothing store that specializes in men’s suits would not seem to be a good idea in a rural farm area. However, having a clothing store that sold jeans and overalls might do very well in that area. Ask yourself questions. If you do not purchase items very often that you are considering selling, chances are that your potential customers will not either.

Do your homework. Opening a business is hard work and taking shortcuts on your research will only hurt you in the long run.

And Do Not Give Up. There will be plenty of difficult times in the beginning. But if you persevere, perhaps you will be one of the twenty percent of the businesses that succeed and prosper. It will feel good to be your own boss and you will decide that it was well worth the headaches.

Article Source: http://www.articlecube.com

Paul Taylor is a business owner that helps other business owners and entrepreneurs locate wholesale distributors and dropshippers. Visit his website www.WholesaleMap.com" target="_blank">www.WholesaleMap.com for information about wholesale sources or opening a business.

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10 Steps for Increasing Visibility Online

The Heavy Metal Dillema

Most small businesses that run a website today don't have the insider knowledge to optimize their content and overall visibility online. I personally handle internet marketing issues--SEO, PPC, e-mail marketing, copywriting--every day, and I'm always surprised to see how many businesses have no understanding of what SEO means, let alone know how to approach it.

In the vast sea of websites--from e-commerce, media and informational websites to blogs and wikis--most site owners use a basic approach to search engine optimization. They submit their site to more than 200 search engines and blast these with some domains and keywords that may be related to the site. Some go to blogs and forums--related or not--and start "fishing" for links (making random, non-intelligent forum comments and submitting links back to their site). Even worse, they'll pay companies to undertake this useless exercise.

Next, if that doesn't work, they will purchase a marketing book, apply all the techniques and sit back, hoping that something will take. Often this will be done by an IT person who has been told to optimize the company website, which isn't part of their daily routine or knowledge space.

Rather than these slapdash attempts, you need a strong, long-term commitment to SEO and must always stay on top of the search engines and their ever-changing, underlying landscape.

Google, the top search engine--and the one to optimize for--handles more than 50 percent of search traffic and utilizes more than 100 algorithms to track and manage HTML content ("on-page factors"), external profiles ("off-page factors"), link architectures, popularity and reputation, as well as PageRank calculation (a complex site voting system) and web bots. The content gathered from spidering search-friendly sites gets stored into huge databases (called the "index") on a powerful grid of network computers.

Google weighs all of these elements into an overall score, and if you have optimized well in all areas and have reviewed your competition and their strategy (I'll talk about how to do this in an upcoming article), you can and will rank well for fairly competitive key terms. You must realize, though, that the more competitive your term is, the longer it will take--but you can get there.

Here's a 10-step plan to improve site visibility and increase search-friendliness. The first five steps address parts of your website's HTML code, while the final five are more abstract. Together, they add up to a "must do" SEO list.

1. Title tag (SEO Gone Wild – microsaw.com)

• This is most important of all. If you have the title tag set up right, and it's a unique enough phrase, you could rank on page one for this alone.
• Write your keywords early in the title, and place your company name last--unless you are Coca-Cola, or have a huge brand.

2. Meta tags

• Description--. Place your page content description between the blank quotes with a call to action statement like, "Sign up here," or "Call us at 800 XXX-XXXX."
• Keywords--. Place keywords between the quotation marks after "content," separated by commas. Google ignores this, but it appears that other search engines still review it.

3. Header tags

• H1--This HTML tag should contain your core keywords, one per page.
• H2--This HTML tag should contain derivatives of the keywords.

4. Body

• Content--Use content that matches the keywords on your site. You should ideally have 400 to 800 words on a page.
• Bolding--Include bolded keywords that match your topic/theme on the page.
• Create a blog--Wordpressis an amazing blog that is free and can easily be optimized via plug-ins. Then, write entries twice a week.

5. Linking

• Use links and anchor text to create popularity and reputation around keywords (example: don't link to just "click here," but create a better link like, "download the digital camera white paper").
• Internal links (link to other pages on your site)
• Outbound links (you link to another authority site on your topic)
• Reciprocal links (join link exchanges and contact partners to exchange links)
• One-way links (when other sites link to your blog, press releases or articles) are typically more effective than outbound and reciprocal ones.
• For some internal links, use "rel=nofollow" in the code to avoid losing PageRank to less important pages like "about us," "contact us" and "privacy policy."

6. Domains

• If starting a new site, try to get an established URL (purchase it if you have to).
• Use keywords in an easy-to-remember domain. Google recognizes domains that have been around and establishes credibility; you can avoid the Google Sandbox (where you don't show up in the index for months, potentially).

7. Users first, then search engine

• Make sure your sites have valuable and readable content. If you've optimized for search engines only and no users stick around your website, you haven't been successful.
• Navigation, directory structures and file names should be well defined. An easy way to solve this is to use breadcrumb navigation and linked navigation, not flash or JavaScript or image-based links. Develop a flat directory structure (no more than three levels deep) and name your keywords in the file name (ex: content-management-system.htm)

8. Keyword research

• Keyword development is one of the first places to start. Two to three keywords per page is possible. Combined with the items listed in the first five steps above, you will have a high success score.
• Use tools like Yahoo! Search Marketing/Overture, Google's Keyword Tool and SEOBook keywords tool.
• Try to shoot for keywords that have higher search counts; over 20,000 searches for your keyword are good, but it all depends on your industry.

9. Competition

• Find out what the competition is doing. Type in your search term into a search engine and locate three to five of the top results. Look at these sites and see what they are doing in the HTML (on-page) and linking (off-page) areas. I'll discuss this more in a future article.
• To find out how many sites are linking to your competition, type "link:http://www.competitorname.com" into Google. Do the same in Yahoo!, and you'll see a higher count because Yahoo! is more all-inclusive.

10. Be cool.

• Don't let this business get to you; it's frustrating at times. SEO is a long-term commitment. Some weeks are great, others are not.
• It's a serious investment of time, sweat and staying the course. The best success factors I've seen: Approach content and website design in a natural way; be ethical (don't spam); and keep it real--it's a business, and nothing comes for free.

Don't forget that search/internet marketing is multi-faceted. Traditional Marketing 101 teachers would say to build a comprehensive plan for marketing. Don't just work the online factors, but create a sound strategy around offline marketing, using ideas like postcards, trade magazines ads, phone/sales work, word of mouth and additional tactics that can help create a "buzz" around your products and services. Search engine optimization applied correctly will create better visibility online, but it's just one part of your overall marketing strategy.

Jon Rognerud is a recognized authority on the subject of search engine optimization and has spent more than 15 years developing websites and marketing solutions at companies like Overture and Yahoo!. His website provides a wealth of informative articles, resources and complimentary e-mail courses on everything you'll ever need to know about SEO and search marketing.

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