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Business Ideas for the Entrepreneur
Many individuals nowadays prefer to have a home-based job rather than working eight hours each day in the office. Some people are also into franchising; this may sound good but if you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you don’t have to focus entirely on franchising. You should consider other business ideas that you can venture into.
Research can be carried out with ease these days, thanks to the power of the internet. If you conduct your search online, you can find other business ideas that you can use as an entrepreneur. Beginners will benefit a lot from the information they can find online about business ideas.
Because of the many business ideas you can find online, you will often find it hard to choose the ones you like. It’s easy to choose if you use your instincts. For instance, if one business idea feels right, take note of it but if you have second thoughts about another idea, disregard it.
As an entrepreneur, you should investigate further by gathering as much information as possible about the business ideas. True enough, franchise is absolutely a great idea. By choosing this business alternative, you can be the boss of your own business and you can earn unlimited income.
However, according to experts, franchise and other internet businesses promise the same business opportunities. It will all differ on how you handle the business.
Not all individuals who desire to own a business can achieve this goal. You see, being an entrepreneur is hard. There are a lot of factors to consider before you decide to become an entrepreneur. Even if you have the capital to finance the business undertaking, you can’t be sure that it can give you high profits in the future especially if you don’t know how to handle certain business situations.
First and foremost, you must be able to work alone. Once you’re an entrepreneur, you’re already self-employed. It would also be best if you can have the support of your loved ones.
Here is a very good example. As mentioned earlier, further investigation is needed to evaluate the business ideas that you have in your hands. Starting a business from scratch requires a lot of work. Suppose the business that you’re about to put up is also available in franchise, which business idea will you choose?
For the smart entrepreneurs, they will already go for franchising because it requires less work. An established business undertaking is less expensive and less risky. But before you make a final decision, you must be able to weigh all the advantages as well as disadvantages. This is an essential part of choosing the best business idea.
Once you’ve chosen the right business idea, you can spring it into action. Soon enough, you will gain the financial benefits that you’re dreaming of. Whether you choose to start your own business or go for franchising, the most important thing is to develop goodwill. All the actions of the entrepreneur must be focused in attaining all the objectives of the business.
If you want to become an entrepreneur, you must research all the business ideas that you can get online. The internet can help you a lot. Also, don’t forget to develop the needed traits and skills as an entrepreneur.
You can get many resources through the internet or you can talk to an established entrepreneur so that you will have an idea on what you’re about to undertake.
Website monitoring, from Atwatch
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7 Sure-Fire Ways to Keep Your Customers Coming Back For More
If you've been reading our newsletter for awhile, you already know how important it is to drive qualified prospects to your web site. What's even more important, though, is finding ways to keep them there once they've arrived.
After all, what's the use of spending all that time and money on securing top rankings on search engines, setting up a network of affiliates, and building a 200-page site if nobody stays once they arrive? That's the hard way to learn the value of "sticky" content.
The easy way is to keep reading.The information I'm about to share with you will show you how to use content to turn visitors into shoppers… and shoppers into repeat buyers!
We've boiled it down to 7 simple ways to keep your visitors coming back for more. Put these tips into practice, and watch your sales start climbing almost immediately.
1. Take charge of your content
It's important to spend a few minutes thinking about how often you really need to update your content. If your site sells reports on housing trends, your visitors may expect new content about the housing market on a fairly regular basis. If you're selling nails and screws, your content probably won't need updating nearly as often.
If your site isn't going to need content changes on a regular basis, think about writing the content yourself. Nobody knows your product as well as you do, so who better to write about it? Of course, you'll want the content to have a strong focus on the features and benefits of your product or service, so here are a few ideas for articles you could post on your site:
- Three ways your product can save your customers time.
- Three ways your product has saved your customers money.
- Interesting or unique applications for your product.
Ok, ok… I can already hear some of you saying "I'm an entrepreneur -- I'm not a writer!" My answer: Why don't you give it a try? You'll probably surprise yourself. Even if your writing isn't as clear and flowing as something crafted by a professional copywriter, your enthusiasm for your product will go a really long way.
There are a couple of situations where I would recommend hiring the services of a professional writer. If you simply aren't comfortable writing your own content, then this is definitely the way to go. You will also probably want to look into the services of a professional if your site is going to require frequent content updates. Writing can be very time-consuming, and as a business owner, you'll need to decide on the most profitable way to spend your time.
Here are a few of the better resources I've found for tracking down copywriters:
NOTE: Top-notch copywriters can charge up to $250 per hour, so you won't want to hire one just to proofread your web site. A writer, editor, or proofreader can be hired for between $17 and $75 per hour. Make sure to check references and establish deadlines!
2. Tell your visitors "What's New"
Let's face it… nobody spends even close to as much time hanging around your web site as you do. Your visitors may spend just a few minutes a month at your web site, so you'd better be sure that their attention is immediately drawn to where you want it.
If you're introducing a new product or service, it's important to make sure that your visitors know that it's new. Remember, people scan web pages, they don't read them. They're more likely to pay attention to an item with a "NEW" icon beside it, or something labeled with the current date.
Unless you label new content as being special or important, your customers have no way of knowing that they should bother paying attention to it. But keep in mind that it's just as important to remove those "NEW" labels every so often. Your customers won't be very impressed by a flashing "NEW" banner next to an item about last year's Super Bowl.
Want a great way to tell your customers what's new while building your opt-in e-mail list and customer base at the same time? Offer to e-mail your customers new content on a monthly basis in the form of a newsletter. Of course, you'll want to include information about new products, upcoming specials, and current sale-priced items.
Place a box somewhere on your front page with a small blurb explaining that, by entering their e-mail address in the space provided, they'll be e-mailed exciting new content on a monthly basis, along with exclusive offers available only to subscribers.
The best part is, it's MUCH easier than you might think to set up this kind of monthly newsletter. You've already got the content, since it's up on your web site, so it's just a matter of making a few formatting changes and then mailing it out to your customers.
3. Get Your Visitors Involved
It's a proven fact that the more your visitors interact with your web site, the more comfortable they become. And the more comfortable they become, the more likely they are to make purchases. Here are three tried-and-true ways to get your visitors to interact with your site:
- Set up an online suggestion box. This is a great way to get your customers involved with your products or services. Let them suggest products they'd like to see featured, recommend ways to improve your product, or tell you know what they think of your merchandise.
- Run a contest. Ask your customers to submit a short blurb about why they love your product, and offer a cash or merchandise prize to the weekly or monthly winners. Not only will you be getting your customers involved, you'll be collecting testimonials to post on your site.
- Conduct an online survey. They'll be able to voice their opinions about your business, and you'll learn a lot about what they like (and don't like) about your products or service. More about this later.
4. Check "All" of Your Content
Remember, when we talk about content, we're not just talking about the text on your site. We're talking about every single word, image, link, logo, and e-mail address.
One of the most important things you can do to keep your site current (and drive sales) is to rotate your features and specials. Is your best-selling product featured prominently on your site? If not, visitors won't find what they came for… and that's costing you profits!
Always keep your catalog up-to-date. Nothing will drive customers away faster than receiving an e-mail from your company saying that the product they ordered yesterday is no longer available. It never ceases to amaze me how often I come across sites with outdated, unavailable products still posted online.
Check all of your links. Every last one of them. Even that one at the very bottom that links to your privacy policy. If the link through to your "Satisfied Customers" page isn't working, how comfortable is a customer going to be entering their credit card number?
And while you're at it, make sure that anything labeled "Coming Soon" will be actually coming soon. If it's not going to be ready within a week, take it down.
I'd also highly recommend that you go through your web site on a computer other than your own. It's amazing what you'll learn. That image that looks so great on your computer may actually be broken when viewed on someone else's! Make sure you take note of how long content and images are taking to come up… If it takes more than 10 seconds for the image of your product to appear, you're probably losing customers by the truckload!
The idea here is to make your visitors comfortable enough to make a purchase from you. There is a direct correlation between how comfortable people are and how likely they are to make a purchase. And a web site where everything works is a comfortable place to be.
5. Check Out Free Content Providers
In a word: YES! Believe it or not, there are actually a number of places to find content on just about every topic imaginable that you can post on your site at no cost. Of course, the quality of this content varies tremendously, so be sure to choose carefully.
You should be aware that some free content providers will try to take visitors away from your site. You may find, for example, that the news headlines you've posted on your site whisk visitors away as soon as they click on them. Obviously, this is not what you want.
If you want to look into free content for your site, here are a few good places to start:
- http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/
- http://certificate.net/wwio/index.shtml
- http://www.web-source.net/syndicator.htm
- http://www.ideamarketers.com
And don't forget, you now have permission to reprint these "Marketing Tips" articles on your web site or in your e-zine as long as:
- Each article is printed in its full form with no changes.
- You send a quick e-mail to editor@marketingtips.com to let us know where you'll be publishing them.
- You include the following byline at the end of each article:
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Corey Rudl is the owner of four highly
successful online businesses that attract more than 1.8
million visitors monthly and generate over $6.6 million each year.
He is also the author of the #1 best-selling Internet
Marketing course online.To check out his site that's JAM-PACKED WITH THE EXACT
INFORMATION YOU NEED to start, build, and grow your very
own profitable Internet business, I highly recommend
visiting http://www.marketingtips.com/sr/t.x/848787This guy really knows what he's talking about
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6. Never Throw Anything Away
Want to know an almost effortless way to make your site 50% more useful to your visitors? Archive your content. A study by online usability guru Jakob Nielsen showed that an archive of past content increases a site's usefulness by about 50%. And since you've already produced the content, it's no hassle to simply index all of those articles in an archive. And, believe me, your customers will be glad you did.
As a subscriber to this newsletter, you know that you have access to our complete archive of dynamite marketing tips and advice at: http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/. That's pretty valuable, isn't it? Now, why not offer the same to your customers?
As your archive grows, you'll add credibility to your business, because your customers will be able to see how long you've been around. With all those extra pages, your customers should be hanging out at your site a little longer -- making them more comfortable and more likely to buy.
7. Look, Listen, and Learn
So now that you've spent all of this time getting your web site as current as it should be, you need to find out what kind of impact you've made. Of course, if you've done everything right, you'll start seeing results right where it counts -- in your bankbook!
There are, however, a couple of other great ways to judge the success of all your hard work. Invest some time in going through your server logs (provided by your Web host), and see how much time people are actually spending looking at your content. If, for whatever reason, people aren't using your "Weekly Updates" page, you probably shouldn't waste too much time writing content for it.
The online suggestion box that you set up is also a great way to measure the usefulness of your content. If nobody EVER comments on your "Monthly News" section, it's probably not worth your while to slave over it at the beginning of every month.
Final Thoughts:
Having fresh content isn't about having today's news headlines scrolling across the top of your homepage. As always, keep your eye on the bottom line and ask yourself, "Is this content helping my sales"? If the answer is YES, you know you're on the right track.
REMEMBER: Marketing a product online means that your web site is probably the ONLY way your customers will ever interact with you. What you have posted on your site will speak volumes about the kind of company you're running: a site with relevant and current information will deliver instant credibility to you and your products.
Keep your site current and your content relevant, and I guarantee that your visitors will start spending more time there. And the longer they stay, the more dramatic the impact will be on your profits!
