Business Plan or No Business Plan? That Is the Question...

Guy Kawasaki posed and he sites a study done by Babson College. 116 businesses that were started by alumni were analyzed and what they found was that there was no difference in success between businesses started with formal written plans and those without them. When I launched my art and jewelry business and website, I had no plan at all other than the goal to make money. Granted, I wasn’t searching for investors, so an actual formal business plan wasn’t really needed. I finally did sit down a couple months ago and hand wrote an informal plan for the sake of having some type of plan written down. Denise Wakeman offers two questions that entrepreneurs should be able to answer when thinking about an internet marketing strategy: 1. Who is your targeted prospect/client/reader? 2. How will you make money (or, what is the purpose of your business, blog, or ezine) Do you have a business plan for your online business? I welcome your comments below...

Just A Little Bit of Humor...

Richard Quick of Web Design Book has a fun little post that made it on the front page of Digg titled, "How to fake...a Web 2.0 Logo". If anything - the lesson to learn here is that humor goes a long way ;)

New Blog Discovery: Internet Business Blog

I believe that in order for one to succeed at selling anything on the internet, you must be good at sales letters and copywriting. After all, you don’t have that face-to-face contact that you get when you walk into a brick and mortar store to purchase a book, software, etc., so you have to rely on your words to convince people to buy from you. Today via Michel Fortin's blog, I discovered a great blog about copywriting and internet business by James D. Brausch. James develops software, has marketing courses, and offers a copyrighting service for those of us who don’t have the time or creative flair with words. Recently James did a test to see if signing your sales letter improved or decreased the conversion rate. He’ll be posting the results later this week!

Need Inspiration For A Business on Ebay?

As I’ve mentioned before, I used to have a business on Ebay selling my art and jewelry. Selling on Ebay is much easier than people think, but I highly recommend doing research on the type of business you want to get into before you set up shop. One way you can do business is to purchase overstock surplus of electronics - since electronics are hot commodities nowadays - and resell them on Ebay at discounted prices. One company that is doing this is Wirefly Mobile, a company that has deals on mobile phones. You can even get a free cell phone if you commit to a 2-year plan. So, where can you find these overstock and surplus suppliers? Simply do a search on Google for “overstock surplus wholesalers” and you’ll find many companies to choose from. If you have a company you'd like to recommend, I’d love to hear about it! **Sponsored Post

25 Tips For Bloggers and Thoughts on Plagiarism

I came across this forum where an article was posted offering tips on how to be a better blogger. #17 is what I like to do: 17) Spread the Link Love If you are blogging about a story, link up the original story as well as other’s commentary on the same topic. When you do so, you will often make those bloggers aware of your blog’s existence (if they weren’t already) when people click from your blog to theirs. And it also increases the odds that they will either link to you on that story or on something you blog about in the future. I think it's very important to credit and link to those who have inspired your blog posts. There's a great thread on this topic of crediting your sources over at Problogger. As a blogger, or website designer for that matter, you should never, ever, ever plagiarize someone else's articles. You will be caught sooner or later! There are so many ways for someone to find out that you copied their stuff. Is it even worth it?

Looking for Other Work at Home Business Bloggers?

If you’ve ever wanted to find other bloggers who talk about working at home on the internet, but don’t have the time to search the blogosphere, you may want to check out the latest edition of the Working at Home Blog Carnival at the Working at Home on the Internet Blog. This is where I discovered The New Business World blog and read the article, Easy Sites to Increase Blog Visits.

What Online Business Should You Start?

There are many people out there who want to start an online business but don’t know exactly what type of business to get into. I get emails once in awhile asking for my advice, so I thought I’d do a post on the topic. I always say you should start with asking yourself what you have an interest in. When you stick with what you have a passion for, it’s easier to stay motivated. When the going gets tough (and let’s hope it doesn’t), you’ll stay interested in your business because it’s something you enjoy doing. Ok, so you’ve decided that you want to start a particular business... Well, last year I told you what I thought the easiest way to make money online is - which is affiliate marketing. So, let’s say you have a passion for money and you want to create a website that has all kinds of resources related to money like investing, credit cards, and what have you. You could join a Credit Card Affiliate Program and other similar affiliate programs in order to make money promoting these types of services or products. The companies that you affiliate with can even help you with marketing. One company that I affiliate with is Amazon.com. Being that I’m an avid book reader, I often post book reviews on my blogs. When someone clicks through the link to the book that I’ve done a review on and purchases the book - or any other item for that matter - I collect a commission. Easy money, I say! **Sponsored Post

Online Marketing: The Real Way To Do It

Most newbies who start an online business are pretty excited about their business. I know I was when I was just starting out. I wanted to make money now and I wanted people to buy from me now. I was under the false pretense that all I had to do was put up a few ads around the internet and *poof*, money would start flowing in. Well, I was in for a surprise. However, what I’ve come to learn is that you must go out into cyberspace and get to know other people. Read and comment on their blogs. Find people who have the same interests as you do. Become personally connected with people whether it’s through MySpace, Digg, Ryze, or simply sending them an email to let them know that you like what they have to say. Have you ever been to a networking event where some people come up to you, hand you a business card, and after some “small talk” hop on over to the next person? Did that person make eye contact with you or really have an interest in what you did? Would you have done business with them? I’ve met those “people hoppers before” and I never referred any business to them because they didn’t make that human connection with me. Are you making real connections with your potential customers? What do you know about them?

Thoughts on Online Marketing and Blogs

For the past ten years I’ve been doing some extensive research on online marketing. Because I literally started with no marketing budget when it came to website promotion, I had to get a little creative and think of all the different ways I could advertise a website for free. Looking back on the early days of my online career, I joined Yahoo! Groups related to online businesses and network with other online business owners. What I found was that everybody else was there to promote their business as well and not enough sharing was involved. When I say “sharing”, I mean that nobody was really interested in sharing their stories or tips on running an online business. They basically were there to just post an ad and that was it. If you asked me now what is the best way to promote an online business, I would tell you that blogs are the way to go. People get to know you as a person and you gain their trust. People like to buy from business people they trust, right? Right now I’m reading Who Let the Blogs Out by Biz Stone. So far it’s a good read - I’m definitely getting a history lesson on how blogs started. Pretty interesting stuff...if you’re a geek like me ;) Related Posts: Five Online Marketing Tactics Every Business Should Use Online Business Marketing Tip The One Marketing Principle That Can Help Your Business ** Sponsored Post

New Year's Resolution: Buy Andy Wibbel's Season Pass Offer

For those of you whose resolutions for 2007 include making money with your blog, you’ll be interested in knowing about Andy Wibbel’s outstanding Season Pass Offer: Course background: 3 Live Teleseminars (11 calls) Business Blog Basics (Jan) Easy Bake Weblogs (Feb) Keywords Essentials (Mar) 3 Self-Study Courses Six Figure Blogging (still the only course of its kind) RSS Essentials Podcasting Bootcamp 2 books Learning Wordpress: From Wow to Cash Cow (ebook) Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging (print, featured in Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur and USA Today) That's three live teleseminar series (11 calls) + three self-study courses (hours of audio, pages of transcripts, tons of notes) + 2 books (one an ebook, one in print). Instant, anywhere, lifetime access. Archives are available forever from any internet connection on any browser. Free registration for future runs of the course. 60-day money back guarantee. Check out Andy’s Season Pass offer now!

What’s the Sandbox?

I must admit that I haven’t been keeping up with all the new Web 2.0 terms that are floating around nowadays, much less know how Google ranks websites (Does anybody really know?) However, my “learn something new everyday” concept that I stumbled upon today is “Sandbox”. Over at the Link Building Blog is a good explanation: “The sandbox/Trustbox is a set of filters in Google's search algorithm that together prevent new sites from ranking well until they gain trust.” Andy Hagans goes on to explain how you can gain Google’s trust including adding your link to Wikipedia and creating a lens at Squidoo. Check out the Online Business Resources lens for an example. I’ve been slacking myself when it comes to exchanging links with other websites. I’m somewhat picky when deciding who to link to. They definitely must be related to my website or fall under the designated link categories that I’ve assigned. How’s your link building campaign going?