I’m in the process of completely rethinking my business model, and that will be my primary focus as I plan this year’s business retreat for myself. Your business model doesn’t have to be at all complex, but should provide the guiding force for all that you do, like guiding you to the opportunities to accept (and those to decline), the joint ventures and strategic alliances to pursue, and the new ideas you should retain and develop, as well as those to let go of.

Here’s are the 4 steps I’m following as I create the blueprint for my business model:

1. Make clients pay well for your most valuable commodity — your time. I see many service business owners tying themselves up with (and tying themselves down to) far too many 1:1 clients. You have only so many hours in the day, and at some point you’ll hit the wall and not be able to expand the number of 1:1 clients you see. Sure, you can hire and train additional staff to handle the overflow, but in many cases, you make less money in this model while tripling your headaches. Make your 1:1 time with clients your highest-fee service, charging a premium fee to dispense your expertise.

2. Ongoing recurring revenue is key. Feast or famine seems to shape the life of the service business owner, regardless of industry. Wouldn’t your life be much more sane if you knew that you could count on recurring revenue each and every month, rather than having to constantly go out and find new clients? This was one of the models I adopted early on in my virtual assistant practice, i.e. working exclusively with clients on retainer rather than a “pay as you go” model. What is it that your clients need from you that you could provide on an ongoing basis with them that isn’t time-intensive for you?

3. Always have an upgrade. Never offer a stand-alone product or program that doesn’t have a natural tie-in to the next level of program or service that you offer. If there’s no way to leverage what you’re offering into some type of upgrade, don’t offer it! For example, a free teleclass can lead participants to enroll in a paid short-term group program. From that program, plan to enroll a certain percentage of those participants into a recurring revenue continuity program. You can then upgrade a percentage of these participants into a live event or small ongoing mentoring program, and from there make an upgrade offer to your premium 1:1 time.

4. Design the blueprint. Brainstorm all of the types of programs, products, and services you might offer in your business. Your list might look like the one below:

• Consulting
• 1:1 Service Provision
• Group Coaching/Mentoring/Continuity Programs
• Sale of Info Products –Private Retreats
• Strategy Sessions
• Live Events
• Speaking
• Information Products or Books –Licensing/Certification Training
• Teleseminars/Webinars
• Subscription Membership Web site

Pick 3-5 of these items that will make up your business model, and then determine what percentage of income you want to derive from each. Your total needs to equal 100%. Then, determine the order in which you offer the components of your program over the next 1-2 years. This becomes your blueprint for action.

How do you determine your success? If your business still suffers from feast and famine, take a long, hard look at your business model for the solution. Every offer you make in your business should flow seamlessly into the next, which will result in a steady, predictable income that you can increase over time as you become more expert at designing and following your blueprint.

Many people who are trying to dream up a domain name for their business discover just how common a unique idea might be. Welcome to the web! Trying to find a domain name that has not been taken is classic needle in a haystack. You can short-cut the process by doing your keyword research first.

If you know what search terms people are using to find your products and services you can back your way into a domain name that gets more credit in those searches. And that’s just the beginning of understanding how to take an idea online.

What I have also come to discover is that there is a proliferation of people out there with great ideas and many of them may even have an idea similar to yours. EXECUTION is what turns an idea into an enterprise. And that is what separates the men from the boys (and the girls from the women).

Execution is a matter of process. I mean process in the literal sense. A successful business needs a roadmap. No successful business that I know of flies by the seat of its pants and many may get there after a lot of failures, trial and error and sometimes costly ventures. But ultimately, a successful business lands on a formula, a process that allows them to deliver consistent results for their clients.

I work with a lot of people who want to start an ecommerce business for many reasons. For the most part, they all have good ideas and most have a good general knowledge about their wares. But very few know how to manifest their ideas online.

There are two roads to take in light of this. The first is to “jump in” – wing it! The second is to find a process that will work for your business. Even if you have to pay more money initially for the second option, you will save time, money, head-aches and heart-ache by the time your business begins to generate a return. If you go the first route, you may in fact never get there. By our conservative estimate, 70% of new online ventures fail.

The good news is that the process for developing your online business is quite easy to execute if you get a little guidance. Here are some of the basic things you should research and understand before embarking on an ecommerce business.

Keyword Research

Keyword research equals market research. People that skip this step are not only shortcutting the process planning stages, they are undermining their ability to succeed! There are plenty of free resources on the web to not only do your research but also educate you with respect to what you should be looking for.

For example, if you decide that the most general search term in your category is one of the ones you’ll focus on, you might as well just beat your head against the wall! The point is, there might be a LOT of searches relative to that keyword BUT you may never show up in the search engines for it. The scope of this article doesn’t afford time to explain the process of choosing keywords that you can rank for, so I’ll save that for a future article. But rest assured that this is one of the most important steps in the process.

Site Planning

Once you have your keywords, you should begin site planning. We recommend you build your site outline first and then see where your chosen keywords fit into the site map.

Your site outline generally mirrors your site map. You’ll find that the keywords that you have chosen fit under certain headings in your site map. You may have to plan separate pages for specific keywords, and that’s OK. Part of your business planning will be to understand how to write for the web. Plan on a 500-700 word article, appropriate pictures, and apply basic on-page SEO. This gets most of my new clients glassy-eyed again and it will take another article to explain “basic on-page SEO”.

Think Outside The Box

Your keywords define a set of articles. These articles don’t all have to go on your site. You should plan to write articles for distribution as well to help promote your site and start building links to your site. “Article Marketing” is one of the most effective means to promote your products or services and get links referring back to your site. The links, by the way, are keywords hyperlinked to appropriate pages in your site.

Get Connected

Start blogging. Set up a You-Tube channel specific to your business. Set up a social media business page on Facebook. Set up a Twitter account and start following people in your demographic. They’ll start following you too! Get on Linked-in if it makes sense (B2B).

Marketing and gaining business exposure is a function of being a part of the web community. Once your site is set-up with basic SEO guidelines, the search engines will start to find it (if you’ve chosen your keywords carefully). But that’s not enough. You business is not simply just having a website. Start engaging in as much of the social web as makes sense and plan on a significant amount of time reaching out, helping and contributing. The return on your effort will pay off.

—
Ready To Work At Home
Read How and Start Your Own Online Business
http://avcbi-businesscenter.com

Network Marketing is a great industry. It can be even more rewarding if you are fortunate enough to find an excellent product line with a stable company. Maximizing your financial rewards through the compensation plan can certainly be achieved if you take time to really understand your income opportunity – and especially the residual benefits.

As with any serious business endeavour, you should take time to develop a concise business plan which includes your marketing strategy. You will no-doubt have some key insight into a few of the specific elements of your opportunity, because there was obviously something there that interested you enough to get involved. The “hook” that brought you in, is most likely a key interest for you – so you will likely utilize that interest in your own recruiting efforts.

Key Point: take time to establish a serious business plan which will include your marketing strategy and perhaps your financial goals.

Unfortunately, most people who get involved with a Network Marketing opportunity do not really take their business seriously. They may join simply because they were given a slick pitch by their sponsor, or in some cases, really love the product. Many people get involved because they want (and perhaps need) to believe – this is the opportunity that will bring them financial freedom.

Certainly, there are many great rewards in developing a strong Network Marketing sales organization. But it does take effort, and it must be treated as a serious business – your business.

Too many good people have been hurt because they jumped-into an opportunity without assuming they had a role to play in the success. These honest people have been hurt by hyper-slick sales presentations giving the illusion that nothing is required in order to build success. One of the biggest problems in the Network Marketing industry is the unethical sponsors who recruit new prospects using hype and lies.

I’ve seen some pretty disgusting sponsor tactics. I have also seen many dreams crushed, because people joined with the wrong expectations.

The advice I would give anyone who is looking to join a Network Marketing opportunity is – do not depend on your sponsor for your success. It is inevitable that your sponsor will let you down, or will abandon you and never contact you again. If you rely on them for your financial reward – you will be terribly disappointed.

Bottom Line: You are in control of your own success

If you want to succeed in your Network Marketing opportunity, decide that you will succeed on your own – regardless of what your upline may do. Of course, you may want to use the resources they provide, but don’t get complacent about using your own marketing ideas. Use as many resources as you can – but do not become dependent on any one system or tool to succeed. Your opportunity for success does not leave when your sponsor goes AWOL… Just realize it is part of the journey.

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No one has ever logged onto the Internet for the first time and started pocketing dollars in a really short period of time. As with all things in life, there is a learning curve.

SOME PERSONAL HISTORY

Just a few short years ago, I was a working stiff just like you.

One day, I bought and read a book called “Multiple Streams of Income” by bestselling author, Robert Allen. Immediately, I began my journey.

Every night after work and after my wife and children went to sleep, I would get online and explore different ways of using the Internet to make money.

In the two years that followed, I spent over $10,000 racking up credit card debt buying eBooks, membership sites, special reports, opt-in leads, and joining every “guru” recommended business opportunity that flew into my email inbox.

I stayed up learning, working, and drinking coffee until 5:00 in the morning, month after month filled with the hope of making money online.

In my third year of working part-time to build a home based income, I finally broke through and earned over $100,000 in just twelve months from the Internet.

BECOME THE MASTER OF YOUR LEARNING CURVE

Research the lives of all of the “gurus.” The one thing that you will learn is that my own experience is not unique. Most of the high earners on the Internet experienced a learning curve very similar to my own.

Chances are that your curve will also be similar to mine, but it is my hope that you can get to the top faster than even I did. Three years was a long time to struggle, but every ounce of struggle was worth the reward I have finally received.

In order to shorten your own learning curve, you must do a few things differently than the rest of us did. You must become the master of your learning curve.

THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS IS A STRAIGHT LINE

There is only one way to shorten the curve on the Internet:

You must plan to succeed!

Here is the deal. Most people put up a freebie website and select a few affiliate programs to add to their website. Right out of the gate, most people are running for the finish line without any real plan in mind.

After a few short weeks, people begin to see the writing on the wall that says, “This is going to be a long hard road.”

People check their hit counters daily for six weeks before they realize that getting traffic to their free site is going to be tough.

At this point, they begin developing their first batch of advertising. Then they spend countless months finding places to show their advertisements for free. Some make an even more drastic mistake by blowing thousands of hard earned dollars on their new and untested ads.

These are the people who will learn the facts of life the hard way.

In time, they will learn how to make their advertising work for them, but most will earn very little money from their affiliate programs.

At this point in the learning curve, most people throw up their hands and walk away from their dreams in utter disgust. Instead of a walking away point, this should have convinced the struggling online entrepreneur that they were simply traveling the wrong road.

YOU MUST PLAN TO SUCCEED

From day one, you must begin to learn about the nuances of web promotion. Read everything you can get your hands on. Don’t just read the hype, back it up with the opinions of others who have reviewed the same programs before you came along. Learn from their mistakes and successes.

As you begin to learn, you must also look to make a decision. Do you want to step into a pre-built program that is designed to help you to succeed, OR do you want to create a completely new program of which you are the sole owner?

If you decide to step into a pre-designed and complete turn-key online money-making venture, then you must select the right venture to step into. If this is your decision, I encourage you to check out the Plug In Profit Site

If you decide to go the journey on your own, then do all of the necessary research, planning and preparation that is needed for your success.

PREPARE TO SUCCEED

Decide what you think you would want to do, and then figure out how your planned site will generate a real income.

Internet old-timers know about hundreds of corporation domains that existed with IPO millions, but did not have an actual money plan that could sustain their business model. Most of these companies were among the hundreds of companies that bellied up in the 2000 dot bomb experience.

Don’t blindly believe in your plan. Research others on the web who have undertaken similar business models and see if they have survived. Study your competitors in depth to learn what is working for them and what did not work for them. To better understand what has or has not worked for competitor websites, check out their time lapsed progressions using the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org

Once you have determined your money plan, then you should undertake the development of a business plan and a marketing plan. Utilize professional assistance if you need to do so. While creating your plans, make a determination as to which domain name you think would be best, then register it along with a hosting account. You can do this at Host4Profit in Step 2 on this page.

Once you have developed your business plan and marketing plan and have run them through several revisions, then it will be time to buy your domain name and to begin work with a site designer and developer. You may need to have your domain sitting on a web host for your site developer, but this is not always necessary. While they are doing their work, enlist a copywriter to help you with your site sales copy.

When your site designer and developer have your site working, you should then undertake significant testing to make sure everything works as planned. It is much harder to fix problems on a operational site than it is to fix problems on a site that has yet to be launched.

When testing is done, then you should fill in your sales copy and then shoot for launch. Of course, you already have a marketing plan in place, so your preparation here will be simply a matter of putting the pieces of the puzzle into place.

You are finally ready to open for business. Don’t be afraid to spend the money to bring your dream alive. Time can replace money in the goal of starting a profitable online business, but money invested can shave years off of your company’s growth.

-Albert-