Category: Business

Many small business and Internet marketing resources recommend creating and using a business plan before starting any (online) business.

But lots of people experience problems creating them or even don’t know what exactly a business plan is and what purposes it serves. So first, let’s dive into that.

Basically, a business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the arguments why they’re considered achievable and the detailed steps necessary to take in order to reach those goals. Usually a planning in time is included.
It may also contain further background information, but the set of goals are the core of a business plan

Chess Players Planning
The main goal of a business plan is to
serve as decision-making tool.
You see, while executing all steps described in your business plan, you will encounter new options, new possibilities, unforeseen problems, alternatives and so on. That means you have decisions to take and your business plan will always be your guide in the process.
It’s a reference point that keeps you focused on what you’re trying to achieve.

During the life time of a business, you can distinguish several levels of plans:

the establishment stage of the business,
launch of a new product or activity,
opening of a new area or segment of the market (local / global) and
some strategic development impacting on the business structure or framework.
These levels are a bit arbitrary as they can vary a lot depending on the sort of business, but in general they will do.

Like the different levels of plans, there are also different levels of users. If you have employees to execute the steps in your business plan, or even in case you are outsourcing tasks, job descriptions can be derived and described from those steps mentioned in the business plan. Which leads to well outlined tasks and procedures.

Besides their individual tasks, all users also need to understand the interrelating parts, in the functioning of the business, hence making the business plan play a crucial role in planning the business and running it successfully from all imaginable angles.

There are no fixed rules that apply to creating a business plan. Some kind of bulleted list of plans and the necessary steps to achieve them is always a great format to start with. Depending on the audience presented to, it can be changed to suit the audience, like banks or investors.

Now, this may all sound like great theory, but how do you create a practical business plan?
The problem here is, that although there’s outstanding help and some good resources available (a few of which I will mention below), the entrepreneur is the best person on-the-spot, because he or she holds the baby – the business. No one else would know that baby better than the father or the mother, who conceived and nurtured it and carries on doing so.

To give a business plan a shine, the (occasional) assistance of a professional may be necessary, but the nitty-gritty and facts need to come from the entrepreneur. And the advantage of that is that in the end, no one will know the facts and figures of the plan better than the deviser.

So it’s much better to start yourself first, disregarding format, lay-out and style. A presentation of facts based on data is always a good start.

In general, here’s what you can do:

write definitions of concrete policies,
assemble data from commercial feasibility studies and
the market – in terms of estimates of customers, prices and market share,
estimate a down-to-earth realistic forecast of increase rates for months/years, and
cost calculations for implementing the various planned actions.
From there, you can develop your Internet marketing plan:
– your market in terms of target audience with money to spend,
– where to find your target market and
– how you can reach them.

If you need some help creating your own business plan, here are some great resources:

Small Business Administration (SBA),
A Sample Internet Business Plan by Elizabeth Lenert, a University business student,
Center for Business Plans,
Your Business Roadmap from my good friend Bev Clement, who’s an expert in the field.
You can also Google the term ’sample business plan’, but most of the sites that show up want to sell you their plans or software.

So, a good business plan always is a dynamic document.
It should reflect current performance and state of your business by a systematic assessment and reporting mechanism, that measures against stated objectives.
And it should project actions and steps necessary to undertake in the near future.
From there, more general and less detailed ideas can be developed for the directions the business should take on the longer term.
Thus, your business plan allows you to achieve success in planning and making the right decisions at all stages and eventualities of the business.

What’s your take on business plans?

When you’re running a serious blog with quality content, chances are at some point you want to monetize it in some way. AdSense ads, banners, links, donations, reviews or affiliate programs, whatever.

But if you take the jump to monetize your blog, it implies that you’ll need readers first. After all, who would see your offers and click on the ads without visitors, right? And the only way to get visitors is to generate traffic.

So, before even thinking about making money with your blog, you first should create great value in the form of quality content and a kind of community of readers that return frequently to read and post their comments.
Make sense?

Now, the question is: when do you start monetizing your blog?
Daniel Sacco of Daily Blog Tips answers that question as a guest poster on Problogger.net: When Should I Put Advertising on My Blog?.

That is, Daniel doesn’t give an exact time table, but states that any monetizing efforts before 6 months of existence is too early.

I took my time with this blog. I started it back in 2004 just as an experiment, but really began blogging seriously about a year ago. All I did was post quality articles and market them to get visitors and RSS and email subscribers.

My first little steps to monetize this blog was an occasional promotion as an affiliate for some excellent products that I strongly believe in and use myself. It’s the easiest way to start monetizing your blog. And probably the most profitable.

Still, most content posted was free advice on the topics listed under categories. Readership is growing, slowly, -dang, I have so many other things to do- but steadily.

A couple of months ago, I tweaked the template, so I was able to show some banner ads in the sidebar and make money with them. My second little step.

The reason for that were a couple of emails I received for banner and link advertising quotations. Imagine, people asking for fees to place ads on my blog!

Next, because I want to keep in control and therefore do not like to use an external service, I had to select an ad management system.

Since I took Yoro Stark’s Blog Mastermind, I first checked out the program he uses as described in Making money from your website using advertising.
I briefly tested it, but then read a post by Andy Beard about Oiopublisher (amongst other systems) and found that much easier to implement.

The funny thing is, as soon as I implemented Oiopublisher, I immediately got a customer, even before I was able to test this system online. They did it for me and it worked like charm; not a finger to lift!

Since Oiopublisher also comes with paid link management, I can add that in a blink too and that’s what I just did.

The next step could be paid reviews, since Oiopublisher manages that too, but I’m not sure about that strategy. Some bloggers ask $50 or as low as $30 for a review and they probably create such posts in less than an hour.
I can’t.
I need at least several hours to make an honest review. Spending that much time forces me to ask at least $150 for a review, if not more. That may be too early for this blog.

An alternative is to add Adsense, but personally I’m not that fond of ads in my posts. Also, although I must admit that they probably will work, I’m not sure about the proceeds.

So, I’m back to the resources I used to set up a monetization strategy. And the first one is BlogMasterMind, the excellent and complete blogging course, already mentioned above.
And of course the posts from the most successful bloggers on the Net. Like Marlon Sanders used to say: “Do not create mediocrity when you can copy genius”.

About two weeks ago, I signed up for Plurk (my profile). I liked it, since, in contrast to Twitter, it’s easy to follow conversations. Te-Ge just published a great intro to Plurk: 10 Minute Guide to Plurk.

And only yesterday, Steven Humphrey invited me to a new social network called Fast Pitch.
I signed up to see what it was and immediately received an invitation to join a group. Few minutes later, a second invite was sent to me. I still have to investigate this one.

So how about you. Can you still follow all developments in social networks?

Below are some interesting links that possibly make it easier for you to follow what’s going on.

At Marketing Pilgrim, Janet Meiners writes about Men More Likely to be on LinkedIn, Flickr. She gives an interesting overview of several social network sites divided in age groups. And of course she also tells you where women hang out most.

Liz Strauss has an interesting post. What can you do with 1,000 friends at Facebook when your car breaks down? Read it at Social Networking: It’s Not Who You Know — It’s Whether You Know Yourself

My good friend Willie Crawford, who is always looking at the practical side of things, published an outstanding post, explaining how you can market your products and services on Twitter.
In this post, Willie also gives away a free ebook on How To Bookmark Effectively For Massive Free Website Traffic. You can, although it’s part of a GiveAway event, download it completely free and even without giving your email address, but if you are smart, you may sign up for more interesting advice.

If you’re in the coaching business, you most definitely want to read Are The Social Bookmarkers Doing It For Your Coaching Business? by Paul Duxbury, the coaching expert.

Furthermore, I’ve read some very good advice from Jeremiah Owyang about Build Your Network Before You Need Them, the real essence of building a social network.

And did you know that the secret behind long lasting relationships is reciprocity – returning calls? The more often you call each other, the longer your relationship. That’s the outcome of a recent study that Maki uses to explain relationships in online social networks. That’s an interesting read (as always with Maki).

Ecommerce is the selling and buying of goods and services over electronic systems such as the Internet. It’s more than just a payment system. Ecommerce also implies safe delivery of goods.

But there’s more, much more.
After all, the first sale is only the beginning of generating money online, isn’t it?

Therefore I want to describe the ideal ecommerce system. Although you can use it to sell tangible products, I will limit my overview to the sales and delivery system for downloadable, digital products, because that’s what we use most in the Internet marketing niche.

So, let’s see how an ideal ecommerce system would look like.

From the moment your prospect hits the ‘Buy’ button, she should be transferred to a secure online payment system, indicated by ‘https’ instead of the usual ‘http’. Fortunately most popular payment processors like Clickbank and Paypal do this automatically.

The payment should be instant and confirmed, so you know your money is safe. If you use PayPal, this implies you also have to implement the IPN feature that PayPal uses to confirm the payment.

After you made sure you received the payment, you should deliver the product to your customer.
But remember that the URL for the download link can be passed to the payment processor, so it can send your customer back to your download page.
Intercepting that URL to the download page by evil persons could result in theft of your product. So the call to the payment processor should always be encrypted.

If you’re a smart marketer, you should have your customer sign up for your customer list, rather then keeping her on your prospect list. So, after showing her where and how to download the product, you also want her to sign up for your customer list.

Lots of people only provide download instructions AFTER having their customer sign up for the customer list. I do not use this method, since it implies a form of ‘forced continuity’ and anything ‘forced’ isn’t good in my opinion. I rather persuade her to subscribe to my list or, even better, switch her from the prospect list to my customer list automatically.

Whatever you do, you should have your prospect on your customer list now.

Because now it’s time to make extra money with your back end products. All the people on your customer list have trusted you once with their money. They’re proven buyers. And easy to approach with your next outstanding offer!

Another way to make extra money from your customers is to present them with a ‘One Time Offer‘ (OTO).

The best time to present such an offer is during the download process, because she’s in a buying mood. Again, I would not force them to look at your OTO before they can download the product they’ve just bought, because they want instant gratification and it’s another ‘forced’ option, but you have to test that.
A great OTO can do wonders for your online income.

So there you have your basic ecommerce system.
But why do all that alone?
Why not have an army of salesmen working for you and generate even more online income?

You can achieve that by running an affiliate program for your products. And you don’t have to wait until affiliates stop by at your site. Since your client now is on your customer list, it’s easy to follow up with a message announcing your affiliate program. Offer a nice incentive, such as a 100% commission on the front product.

You can even build a better and more motivated affiliate team by also offering commissions on back end products too, but that’s up to you.
Providing great marketing tools for your affiliate army is an outstanding way to have them sell more, so you’d better give them these tools.

And the most powerful way of making money is landing some great joint ventures (JV’s). Having JV partners endorse your products to their lists can skyrocket your income, certainly if they have responsive lists. Therefore you should deal with them in a different, more personal way, increasing the incentives, so they’re more willing to work with you.

On top of that, you must split-test your sales pages so you can measure the effects of each an every element in there. Furthermore, you must use trackers on all of your links, to learn what works, what works even better and what doesn’t work. Presenting great conversion numbers can increase your chances to land a splendid JV.

Do this with all your sales pages and products and you’ll end up with an ideal ecommerce system.

I know of two outstanding resources that handle ALL of these elements.

The first one let’s you in control, since it’s a script that resides on your servers. It’s called Rapid Action Profits. A brand new and exciting version was released yesterday. You can get your copy with a huge discount when you click on the orange frog before clicking on the order link. But it’s only for a couple of days, so you better hurry.

Many sites you frequently visit these days require a password in order to enter. That’s because there usually is some form of confidential information stored behind these password protected pages.

But passwords can be cracked, so if you want to KEEP that information confidential, you’d better use a good and strong password.

And that certainly applies to your most important online accounts like bank or other money accounts. To a certain extent, I can understand (not agree!) why people want to have access to your PayPal or bank account, since there’s money to get. Greed and an easy way to make money is their motive.

But otherwise, I have NO idea why people would like to crack password for things like blogs and web2.0 sites, other than the morbid delight of destruction.

But it happens!

I had it happen to this very blog last month. Using brute force (see below).
So the lesson here is to defend your Cpanel, blog, bank and all other accounts with strong passwords that are hard to crack.

Now, I’m NOT a security specialist. All I can do is try to explain this matter in my own layman’s words and that’s what I do below.

Suppose I used a ONE character password to protect my site and that one character could only consist of the letters a to z. That would give me 26 possibilities to create my password.

If someone wanted to crack that password, all this person had to do is fill in each letter on my login page and hit submit. Including the response time this requires, this can be done at a pace of 3 times per minute. On average it requires 13 tries to find the password, so that only takes less than 5 minutes.

Now suppose I add another character to my password. Then the total number of possible combination would increase drastically, since for every character in the first position, there are 26 possibilities in the second one. Total number of combinations: 26 x 26 = 676. The average time required to find my password would become 338 / 3 = 112 minutes.

When we allow to have numbers in our password, the possibilities per character would be 36 and the total number of possible combinations when using 2 characters would be 36 x 36 = 1,296. Average time to find my password: 648 / 3 = 216 minutes.

Finally, when we also allow all letters to be in capitals, that adds another 26 options per character. So now the total number of possible combinations for a 2 character password becomes 62 x 62 = 3,844. Average time to find my password: 640 minutes!

If we would allow for more characters to be included in the password, the figures will be:

# Chars.	Possible Combinations	Average # minutes needed to crack password
3	238.328	39.721
4	14.776.336	2.462.723
5	916.132.832	152.688.805

See how the column at the right increases drastically?
THAT’S all you have to remember from this exercise.

Of course anyone doing this would be a fool, because we have computers to do things like this. And hackers and crackers use computer programs to do this. Their software starts at the left most character with ‘a’ and work their way to the most right character, scanning all combinations possible.
That is called ‘brute force’.

But for computers the same effect applies. The more options per character and the more characters used, the more difficult it becomes to find the right password combination.
Therefore, it’s wise to use at least 8 characters in your password, using a combination of upper and lower letters and numbers.

So the name of your little sister simply won’t do! Nor does the name of anyone else. You also need to include numbers and, if allowed, special characters.

If you use names, then at least don’t use names that are easy to guess. Use at least one capital and also add a number. A great way to combine everything is to replace an ‘a’ by 1 and a 1 by ‘a’. That makes names more difficult to find.

IF it’s allowed, you can also add special characters to your passwords, or even add a space, so you can make your password a phrase. Which, in general, is easier to remember.

But the fewer characters allowed, the longer your password should be!

If you’re really good in math, you can see from the table above that a 15 character password only containing letters is stronger than an 8 character password containing all possible characters on your keyboard, simply because the total possible number of combinations depends on the power of the number of characters in your password.

It’s also very wise to periodically change your password using the information above. Doing so avoids all possible hacks or cracks of your passwords since anyone on their way to compromise your passwords would have to start all over again.

I was browsing the web for some reactions to Google’s Universal Search, their new service that will mix Web sites, images, news, video and other results on the search engine result pages (SERP).

To me, implementation of this universal search feature meant, that getting higher rankings for websites would become more difficult.

As a consequence, I thought it would be rewarding to create other attractive items like videos, news items and pdf-files.

Another effect would be more PPC marketing, which is absolutely great for Google.

Another thought that crossed my mind was the contextual nav bar. I’m sure Google tested that one thoroughly, but would it really work?

I wondered what others thought about all this.

Of course, I first went directly to the source:
Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer (is that true?)
Taking advantage of universal search
Behind the scenes with universal search,
but as it says near the end of the last article: ‘it’s just a tip of the iceberg’.

Donna Boating of ZDnet isn’t positive: SEM Beware: Google deals blow to search engine marketing.

Pandya SE News tries to turn it all into an advantage: How to survive Google Universal Search ranking wise.

The most interesting post I found (and why doesn’t this surprise me) came from Danny Sullivan: Google 2.0: Google Universal Search. A very interesting article on vertical searches.

Temporary conclusions of the implementation of Universal Search: good for searchers, for marketers and seo experts who paid attention to the new developments and good for Google and their shareholders.

By the way, Google is always experimenting with search engine results. To view them, click the Experimental Search link at Google Labs.

And, at Google Trends, a new feature was implemented to show a list of current top-rising searches! Case