Archive for Entrepreneurship
Saving Money – A Comparative Strategy
Posted by: | CommentsTake a look at my income portfolio, and you’ll probably deduce that I’m a lot more interested in making money than saving it. Sit down and have a cup of coffee with me, though, and you’ll find out that saving money is as much of a get-out-of-debt strategy for me as building extra income streams.
When I talk about saving money, what I’m really talking about is “not wasting money.” In other words, it’s about efficiency for me. If I can get the same quality for less money, without spending unnecessary time I could use to make money, then I’ll do it.
For example, clipping coupons from the newspaper is rarely efficient for me. If I spend an hour sifting through coupons, I might come up with about $10 in savings. If I spent the same hour working on a freelance project, I’d earn $40 – $50. So I’m not going to cut into my work time to clip coupons and end up with a $30 – $40 loss.
Now, I sometimes get coupons in the mail from the grocery near my house. I realize these coupons are automatically generated based on the things I’ve already bought, which might seem a bit intrusive, but who really cares if my grocery store knows how many pounds of tomatoes I bought last week? If it means I can save$0.40 this week on tomatoes, then the execs at Kroger can print out my receipts and roll around naked on them for all I care.
By the same token, hiring someone to mow my lawn may seem like a waste of money. But even though the lawn guy charges me $25 for a job that takes him 10 minutes, the same task would take me an hour. And I’d hate it. I’d much rather spend that hour making $50 on a freelancing project and not break a sweat doing so.
Saving money is about finding people (or tools) that can do things more efficiently than you can do them yourself. It’s not about spending hours saving what you could make in a few minutes. That’s just plain stupid. What can someone else do for you more easily than you could do for yourself? Be realistic — pride isn’t going to move you any closer to your financial goals.
Eliminate waste. You’ll save money (and, just maybe, add a couple of years to your life in the process).
Your Successful Internet Based Business, Part III
Posted by: | CommentsThis is the last post in my series on building a successful internet based business for extra income, so you can reduce your debt. In case you missed the previous articles in this series, you can find them here:
Starting Your First Extra Income Stream – The basics of building an internet based business.
Your Successful Internet Based Business, Part I – Learn about the first essential element of running an online business – passion.
Your Successful Internet Based Business, Intermission – Here, I explain why building an internet based business is important if you want to get out of debt without living like a pauper.
Your Successful Internet Based Business, Part II – How to use the second element of building a successful online business – practicality.
Now… the third “P” of building a successful online business is profitability. In other words, can you make money from your business?
It seems like a silly thing to point out… but most internet business owners neglect their research when it comes to profitability. So they invest heaps of time, effort and money into building a business, only to find out that their customers aren’t buying. Or that they’re buying low-dollar items that yield piddly commissions.
Sadly, passion and practicality don’t mean much if there’s no profit. I see people start websites and blogs about topics like Lady Gaga’s newest sunglasses or other popular topics. They may love writing about it. If they’re good, they may even build good website traffic. But chances are, they won’t make any money with it – or at least not enough to justify the investment.
Google and Facebook are two good tools for assessing profitability. Both of these sites support paid advertisements – if you look on the right side of the Google search results page, you’ll see ads relevant to whatever you’re searching for. You’ll also see them on the right side of your Facebook profile page. If there are ads relevant to your topic, somebody is probably making money selling to people in your target audience.
If not, there are two possiblities. The first (and highly unlikely) is that no one has ever thought to market in your niche, and you’ve just hit a freaking goldmine. The second (and very likely) is that the horde of other internet marketers out there have already figured out that the niche is unprofitable.
The other strategy you can use in determining profitability is simply using common marketing sense and asking questions.
- Are there products available to sell in my niche?
- Does my audience need or want these products?
- Does my target audience have the disposable income to buy my products?
- Will they buy these products online?
Now, “products” doesn’t have to mean tangible items. On one of my other websites, I sell WordPress themes, which are programs designed to help people build blogs quickly. There’s no physical product, packaging or shipping. The customer just pays and then downloads the program. (Incidentally, because there are no manufacturing, storage, packaging or shipping costs, this type of product is far more profitable than a physical product. )
Tying it All Together
By now, you should have applied the three “P”s of building a successful internet business to your idea bank. These three elements are a kind of filtering system to weed out business ideas that will waste your time and money. At the end of the process, you may only have one or two ideas that made it through the three “P”s intact. That’s okay. In fact, it’s a good thing – because now you can focus your energy on one business, instead of worrying about all of your other ideas.
Soon, I’ll start showing you how to take your surviving idea and put it into action, so you can start generating extra income.
Your Successful Internet Based Business, Part II
Posted by: | CommentsSeveral posts ago (before I got distracted, which happens quite frequently) I wrote about the first “P” of staring a successful internet based business – Passion.
In case you haven’t yet read that post, you can find it here:
Your Successful Internet Based Business, Part I
As I promised, I’m picking back up today with the second “P” – Practicality.
So you’ve written down your list of interests, and identified the ones you’re really passionate about. The next step is to determine if the ideas that are left are practical.
By practicality, I mean simply this: Is there sufficient interest in the topic to get the attention (visitors) you need to turn it into a profitable business?
Or to put it even more bluntly: Does anyone else care about your interest?
Yeah, that’s pretty harsh, but let’s face it – if nobody else is interested in your subject matter, your website will just sit and collect dust. Oh, and it won’t make you any money, either.
Case in point: I’m passionate about Tzarist-era Russian history. It’s been a lifelong interst of mine, and I can tell you more about the dynamics of Tzars, Tzarinas and staretzes than you would probably ever want to hear. But frankly, there aren’t many people out there who would be willing to listen to me prattle on about the life of Tzar Nicholas II. Although there were about 22,000 searches last month on Google containing the word “Tzar,” most of them were conducted by people looking for cheats on the role playing game “Tzar: The Burden of the Crown.”
So low interest means few visitors, which translates to little or no income. If I wanted to create a site about Russian history to amuse myself and bore everyone else, fine, but I can’t turn it into a business.
There are a few free ways to see if a business idea is practical:
- Go to the Google Keyword Tool and enter some words and phrases related to your prospective topic. This tool will give you the number of people (both in your country and globally) who searched using related terms last month. The lower the number of searches, the smaller your potential audience.
- Go to Yahoo! Answers (or a similar site – there are thousands of these damned things)and search using the same terms. Are people asking questions related to your topic? If so, you might have hit on a good business. If not, it might be time to move on to the next idea on your list.
- Enter your terms into a simple Google search. Are there thousands of relevant pages about the topic? If not, people aren’t writing about it because there isn’t much of an audience.
Now, here’s the exception. In the highly unlikely event that there are tons of searches, but few existing pages, you may have just struck gold. You know, the whole supply and demand thing. You’re a lucky, lucky sod if that happens.
In the next post (unless I get distracted again), I’ll discuss the third and final “P” of building a successful internet based business. From an income standpoint (which should be important to you if you want to get out of debt), this is the most important “P” of all.
Your Successful Internet Based Business, Part I
Posted by: | CommentsJust before my last weekly New Car Challenge update, I asked you to develop an “idea bank” for possible internet based businesses. I that post, I pointed out that not every hobby and interest will make a good internet business. You want a business that generate income with the least stress possible, so you can start paying down your debt and build savings so you never have to survive on credit cards and payday loans again.
There’s a simple 3-step process for evaluating your ideas to determine which ones you can successfully turn into extra income streams. Since I can be a bit cheezy at times, I’ve dubbed the test The 3 Ps of A Successful Internet Business Idea. Wow – I suddenly feel all Tony Robbins-esque.
Today, let’s look at the first element of a successful internet based business – Passion.
One of the biggest mistakes new internet marketers make is choosing an internet business based solely on the potential of profit. That’s important, of course, but if you also have to be passionate about your subject matter.
Why?
Building an internet based business isn’t just as simple as slapping up a web page and raking in profits. You’re going to be putting in lots of hours on your project, even though it may only amount to an hour or two each day. If you want your business to keep bringing in money month after month, you will be writing dozens – if not hundreds – of articles and pages. That can be pretty exhausting in the best of times… but if you don’t care about your subject matter, it’s downright dreadful.
I know this from personal experience. One of my first ventures was a website on – i kid you not – hemorrhoid remedies. At the time, a slew of companies had released natural “cures” for hemorrhoids (usually info-products, or ebooks that told readers how to cure hemorrhoids with herbs), and I wanted to get a piece of the action.
There were two main problems with this venture. First, I underestimated the competition. I wasn’t the only one who saw the profit potential in hemorrhoid cure ebooks… so I couldn’t just set up shop with a half-assed website and leave it. I had to provide more (and better) information on the topic, so my site could show up on the first page of Google search results.
In and of itself, the competition wouldn’t have been such an issue… but the “more and better” requirement wore on me, because I really couldn’t have cared less about hemorrhoids. Granted, I learned more than I ever really wanted to know about the topic, but each successive article was harder to write. It didn’t take long before playing on Facebook, cleaning the refrigerator and flossing the cat took precedence over writing yet another article about hemorrhoids.
In the end, my site became just another corpse in the vast Internet graveyard.
Passion is critical for internet business success. It will help motivate you when you don’t feel like spending an hour or two working on the business after you come home from work. It will also help keep you from burning out and abandoning your project before it starts making money.
Go back through the list you created a couple of days ago, and cross the less interesting ones off your list. You may have a passing interest in, say, golf, but unless the topic really excites you, it’s probably not a good topic for an internet business.
In the next post, we’ll look at the second P of a successful internet based business – Practicality.
Starting Your First Extra Income Stream
Posted by: | CommentsA few posts ago, I wrote about how building income streams cheaply can help you dig your way out of debt and build a financial cushion. If you take it seriously, it can even help you get off the “credit grid” entirely.
In that post, I suggested that you make a list of all of your interests. (You did do that, right?)
If you haven’t done that yet, get out a pen and a piece of paper and write down everything you can think of that you’re interested in. At this point, it doesn’t really matter how obscure or silly an interest might seem. Just write it down. You don’t even have to show it to anybody if you don’t want to.
There’s a very important reason for this exercise. This list will serve as you “idea bank” for your first (and maybe second and third) internet-based business.
Now, this doesn’t mean that every interest on your list will translate to a successful internet business. Over the next few posts, we’ll look at what makes a profitable business idea, and what just makes a time-waster. Knowing the difference can save you months of work and get your extra income stream flowing much more quickly.
In case you’re worried about the technical stuff (like building a website and getting people to visit it), don’t stress. We’ll get to that soon enough. And when we do, I’ll lay it out as clearly and simply as I can. With the right tools and instruction, just about anyone can build an income-producing internet business. It doesn’t take special knowledge, a degree in computer science or a lot of money. It just takes the willingness to learn and an extra hour or two each day.
Why Build Extra Income?
Posted by: | CommentsThe third element of getting your financial life back on track is building extra income to pay down your debt. Once your debt is paid off, you can use this income to build savings so you’ll have a financial cushion. This will help you avoid future credit problems. It’ll also help take you off the “credit grid,” so you won’t have to rely on credit cards for anything.
I firmly believe that starting a business cheaply is one of the best ways to achieve financial independence. Now, I’m not suggesting that you dump your life savings into a brick-and-mortar business, like a physical retail shop. If you’re already in debt and having credit problems, that’s not realistic.
What I’m talking about is an internet-based business. You can start one for about $10 – probably less than one fee from a sleazy check cashing joint.
Besides being cheap, an internet-based business can produce residual income. Residual income is money you don’t have to work for. You do the work once, and you get paid for it over and over again. The more you build, the higher your income potential.
One caveat here: Building an internet based business is not an overnight prospect. It will probably be a month or two before you start seeing any money… and even then, the income will be small. But over time, it will build.
But I don’t know anything about starting an internet business!
That’s okay. It looks hard, but it’s not. You’re looking at an internet business right here on Surviving Bad Credit. I’ll teach you what you need to know to choose a business, start a website and make money. I’ve been doing this for years, so I’ve made all the time-consuming mistakes, and you’ll be able to avoid them.
Even if you don’t know HTML from a hole in the wall, you can start and grow a business for under $10 a month. (In order to keep your website running, you’ll need a hosting package. I use GoDaddy, which costs about $7 a month.) You might buy some other things here and there to grow your business, but that’s not critical in the beginning.
So stay tuned – and in the meantime, start thinking about your interests (outside of getting out of debt). If you get a chance, write them down, no matter how obscure or silly they might seem. Trust me, this will come in handy later.
About Affiliate Income on Surviving Bad Credit
Posted by: | CommentsI touched on this on the Disclosures and Disclaimers page, but it’s worth noting here.
If you look around the site, you’ll see links to products and services. More often than not, these are affiliate links. That means that if you sign up or make a purchase, I’ll probably receive a commission.
Why am I bringing this up?
Well, there are a few reasons. First, there are tons of sites out there that are built with the sole purpose of getting you to buy or sign up for something. Most of the time, the owners won’t tell you that the site contains affiliate links. Everything about these sites, from the content to the layout, is designed to drive you to click those links. All of this should make you wonder… if they have to try to fool you into buying something, are they really concerned about your best interests?
This site earns money. Not a ton, but it pays me for the time I spend researching, writing and maintaining the site. Internet entrepreneurs are professionals just like lawyers, accountants and editors, so it only makes sense that they should be paid for their time.
That said, I recommend products based on how valuable they will be to you, not how much they will make me. If I recommend a product I don’t believe in just to make a couple of extra bucks, I’m shortchanging myself. Why? Because you’ll figure out quickly enough that the product sucks, and then you’ll be mad at me. And you probably won’t come back to Surviving Bad Credit.
The other reason I’m being completely transparent about this is because this site is a perfect example of something I stress very strongly – entrepreneurship. Except for the first couple of days, I’ve never spent more than an hour a day working on this site, or any blog I own. And as far as cash outlay – running this site costs me about $8 a month.I haven’t even spent anything on the design – I just made a banner using GIMP, which is a free image manipulation program similar to Photoshop.
So even though I’m allotting as much income as possible to debt, I can still build entrepreneurial endeavors without feeling guilty. I spend more on coffee than on running this site. You don’t have to dump thousands of dollars on a business – start small, build slowly, and let your venture continue to grow and make money you can use toward paying down debt.