subject: Be Smart and Plan Your Success [print this page] If you're looking to begin, revamp, or make improvements to an online endeavor, here's a series of things and concerns you need to answer, research and study (along with some websites to start checking).
Marketing and advertising Issues
Are you going to promote a item or program? Is this your item or service or are you going to market as an affiliate?
What is the availability & demand for that product? Who will be your prime competition?
Is this a specialized niche or are you going to be contending with the bigger corporations?
Are you going to use PPC (pay per click), adsense, email, document internet marketing, blogs, and/or Seo (search engine optimization) to promote your item / services?
If you're marketing products, do you have the merchandise in stock or are you only utilizing drop shipping? Are they digital merchandise?
How will you merge all of the Social Marketing (Facebook . com, Linkedin, Twitter, etc ...) into your company?
Have you costed out your merchandise or service?
Are you using this to substantiate or operate in combination with a traditional company? If so, how and can your consumers attach the dots? Will you do some local advertising and marketing to make it easier for them to do business with your business enterprise?
Operational Needs
Precise Key-phrases Index
A Domain and/or Web site (may / may not be necessary depending on your marketing and advertising strategies)
Email / Auto responder
Items / Service to market
An ability to track / organize: Revenues, Expenses, Site visitors, Website visitors, Response Rates, etc
Firm / Legal Needs
Are you going through this by yourself (frequently) or does it make sense to form a business?
How are you managing your firm?
Have you considered any tax factors (sales tax, hometown specs, etc ..)?
Do you have any legal culpability or are you managing mainly as a broker/affiliate and just earning a commission on each final sale?
Discovering Answers
They're loads of extremely good products and experts that can guide you with many of the above concerns and issues. Do a google request for items and services that you need, scan the client remarks, and ask a lot of questions. Sadly, many of the items over-promise and under-deliver. Be cautious.
Here are some Search terms (among others) that you'll definitely want to Google:
Drop shipper (you can search by a particular item to find a product supplier)
Incorporating Your Firm
Online Promotion
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Affiliate Promotion
Digital Goods
For Promtional Ideas and General Corporation Planning, you'll want to travel to these groups and their website pages. These Not-for-Profit professionals exist to help you.
SCORE -- offers firm answers at no cost from successful ex executives (even over the internet)
SBA (Small Business Administration)-- helpful location concerning endeavor plan outlines and practical advice
Also, pay a visit to a bookstore, read plenty of high-quality blogs, or go to your hometown public library. You can get handy aid without the need for plunking down a lot of money.
Dedicate the necessary time to plan for your riches and it will pay off in the short and long-term.
Remember: Entrepreneurs don't plan to fail they fail because they don't plan
