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Business Startup?
Here's What To Do When
You Don't Know Where To Begin
Most people start a business to
make money.
Now this may seem obvious, but the
high percentage of business failures clearly indicates that while the
intentions are good, the execution is poor. Build a house without a
blueprint and you'll have a lopsided structure that could collapse at
any minute. Build a business in the same fashion, and you'll get an
equally unstable result.
If you're going to do it, do it
right. Begin with the end in mind. If you know your destination, the
itinerary comes together easily. If you don't know where you're
going, you'll be all over the map.
Here are the steps you need to consider:
1. Start With Something You Like
To Do
Whether you're looking for spending
money or an entirely new career, start with something you enjoy
doing. I've seen so many people "crash and burn" by running
where they think the money is. As soon as the going gets tough, they quit.
Make a list of things you enjoying
doing. This could be your line of work, your hobbies, or your
"things to try in this lifetime" list.
2. Find Out What People Want
If you want other people to give
you their money, you need to give them what they want in exchange.
Find out what people are willing to pay for, and then start building
your concept around that. So many people get this backward. They
figure out what they want to sell instead of determining what others
want to buy. Don't make this mistake.
Research is the key. Fortunately,
the Internet makes this fast and easy. Here are a few suggestions:
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Go over to Hot100 at www.hot100.com
to see the 100 most popular sites on the web in a number of different
categories. You can see the top 100 sites web-wide, or the top 100
Travel sites, Shopping sites, Health sites, etc. This gives you an
idea of what people are looking for.
-
Sign up for the keyword ezine at
WordSpot, www.wordspot.com
. This weekly resource gives you the top 200 keywords people are
searching for in the search engines. You'll almost always see MP3,
sex, Napster, Yahoo, and Britany Spears, but you'll also see a lot of
other phrases that will send your brain into overtime.
This week's list including phrases
like Travel, Disneyland, Paris, Food, Research, Song Lyrics, and
Music. Any of your interest coincide with what others are looking for?
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Check out the forums in your area
of interest at places like ForumOne www.forumone.com
and Egroups, www.egroups.com
. You'll see first hand what people are talking about, and you can
ask questions, solve problems, and get some great ideas.
3. Determine Your Niche
Now that you know what you like to
do and what others are looking for, try to create a niche. The
narrower, the better. Let's say that you like to shop when you
travel. Travel is too broad. Shopping is too broad. Great shopping in
New York City (or Detroit, Madrid, Moscow, etc.) is also too broad.
But great diamond shopping in New
York City is a niche. Where to find car deals in Detroit is a niche.
Stocking your bar with Spanish wines is a niche. Where to find jeans
in Moscow is a niche.
Don't be a little fish in a big
pond. Be a big fish in a little pond. Dominating your niche allows
you to do that. Define and dominate. It makes a bigger bank account.
4. Decide What To Do
If you're working a full time job,
running a house, spending time with your kids, etc., your time is at
a premium. You need to be realistic in what you can do. If you like
to travel and shop, your ultimate goal may be to conduct shopping
tours or write about the different places to shop while you're
traveling the globe.
But don't put your life on hold
until you can have your goal. Work towards it. If you have 2 to 5
hours a week, for example, you have a couple of things you can do to
make money and hone your skills. You could:
A. Write articles about the
shopping in your area. You could sell this to your local newspaper
travel and/or lifestyle sections, a regional magazine, national and
international travel magazines, and national and international
magazines in your area of interest (like diamonds, car deals, wines,
and jeans, from above).
B. Create an information product
about the shopping in your area for sale to travelers coming your
way. My bookshelves have many such regional titles from our travels,
including Plantations of Louisiana", "The Decorative Iron
Works of New Orleans", "The Ghosts of Charlottesville and
Albemarle", "Texas Travel Guide", "What To Do in
San Francisco", a copy of the Mayflower Compact of 1620, and so
forth. We picked up most of them in the gift shops of the tourist
places we visited.
C. Become an affiliate for
different programs in your area of interest. Focus, focus, focus, and
deliver with a twist.
Love finding diamond deals in New
York? Give tips and tricks of where to go and what to look for and
become a reseller for airline tickets, hotel rooms, Broadway shows,
and jewelry supplies like cleaners, safes, and insurance riders.
Know the best places to find wine
in Spain? Write about local festivals and events and become a
reseller for airline tickets, hotel rooms, restaurants, car rental,
wine cellar supplies and books about wines.
The fastest, cheapest way to put up
a web site and maintain control? Buy a Site Build It! license and
follow the instructions, http://buildit.sitesell.com/nifty.html .
Not only will this program walk you
step-by-step through defining a niche and figuring out the marketing
angle, it hosts your domain and handles all the technical web stuff
so all you have to do is market. VERY cool!
(I bought a license earlier this
week to help promote my fashion site, and am BLOWN AWAY by what
they've come up with in this tool. I've just started working through
the steps, but anticipate some awesome results based on what I've
seen so far!)
5. Determine If It's Feasible
Can you deliver your idea? If you
have a fantasy about writing but can't string two words together,
taking a writing course. If you want to conduct shopping tours to the
Big Apple, can you manage all the details that are involved? If you
want to export Spanish wines, do you know all that's entailed in
exporting? If not, find out.
Sometimes you'll discover that
you're in way over your head. That's okay. The time to determine this
is BEFORE you sink a lot of money into the venture. Now having said
that, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should "chunk"
the idea. Rework it until it IS something you can manage. Start
small. Grow. Learn.You can build it to your ideal later, when you
have more resources and experience under your belt.
6. Test, Test, Test
Do you have a winner? You don't
know yet. Put it in front of some people who are likely to buy it and
see if they do. If they don't, change something - the title, the
presentation, the sales pitch. Try it again. If they bite, you have a
winner. If they don't, change something else and try again. Try to
find out why they are or are not buying. You're looking for feedback
at this point. You also want to work out "all the kinks"
before it gets to market.
This is another area where so many
people drop the ball. They roll out their product and assume it will
be a best seller. On rare occasions, it is. More often then not, it isn't.
Some people will like what you
have. If you have a few sales, you're striking a chord. But if your
sales are very few in comparison to your traffic, you're missing
something that's keeping more people from buying. Your task is to
determine what that "something" is. Testing will tell you.
7. Promote, Promote, Promote
Once you have something people want
and are willing to pay for, tell as many people as you can as often
as you can. Don't neglect the marketing. Only a handful of people are
actively looking for what you have to offer. Everyone else is waiting
for you to come to them. So go. And make it easy for them to buy from you.
Then keep in touch. If you they
bought from you once, chances are, they'll buy from you again.
Seem simple? It should be. Don't
make it more complicated than it is.
Good luck! |
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