When we do business online, sometimes we forget that we are dealing with something that is global, something so huge and so potent. We forget that we are not just buying milk from the local grocery store or that we are not just selling lemonade from a lemonade stand. We always need to be reminded that the online business is a real business. It deals not with paper money, but real money. It has the complete potential to support you and give you the power to become an independent entrepreneur. Just because your business is online doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat it like a real business. This is the second post in a series looking at some of the most important elements of a strong online business model.

Build A Smart Model

Building a smart business is easier than you think. All you really need is some basic knowledge of the internet and some business common sense. The rest will all follow easily. How do you do this? Just follow some of the tips below and you will soon realize the potential of your online business to be a fully automated and smart model that could easily earn you extra money without giving it much effort.

Tip # 1. Diversify Income Streams.

Everyone know putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. The internet is a very potent source of income and you should optimize it by diversifying the way you make money in the internet. One method or one source is not enough to keep your income steady and flowing. You can easily add to your income if you use different methods ( such as having adsense on your site, hosting ad banners, etc) and add multiple streams of income from diverse sources. Why should you do this? Here are a few reasons:

• Doing this can protect you from losing everything when advertising terms change or a partner decides to pull out. By having more than one source of income, you could have the option of pulling out when you need to or have a steady source of income even if one source fails or does not perform up to your standards.
• Doing this, will require a lot of work, however, the security is worth it! By having multiple sources of income it also means that you double the work. You check more things, it requires you to answer to more people but the financial security of doing this is worth it. The double work pays off especially when you realize that it gives you double the income for a bit more of your time. Soon, if you work hard enough, the rewards will be greater and you will be earning more than you expect with a few clicks.

Tip # 2. Build auto-pilots to fund future projects

We all know that in order to make money,we have to spend a little money. However, if you do not have the capital at the moment, and you have a project in mind, it would be great to build capital for your next project by finding easy ways to make more money on the net. You do not have to spend a lot of time on the net for it. You could do this by building muse projects.

In the 4-hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss talked about muse projects. Muse projects are simple, single problem solutions, that once started, could run on their own yet provide some income. It doesn’t have to be a lot. What could you do with $500 a month to put toward your Internet Business? Adsense sites, affiliate products, hosting ad banners and similar avenues, any of these could be turned into auto-pilot projects. Add enough of them, and they may become your whole income model!

Tip # 3 Think global

Do not forget that the internet is not only a local network. It reaches every part of the globe at all times and it is a 24 hour money making network that never sleeps. When you’re developing your projects, remember that some of your potential customers will be outside the US. Many of the products sold online are not bought by local buyers, you will find that when you have an online business most of your customers and market would be outside the country. In fact, you may even want to target prospects outside the US and make money by offering products and services targeted for these audiences.

Never limit your target market to a certain region geographically if you are in the internet. It is smarter and wiser to remember that in the internet, you have the whole world at the palm of your hand and within reach.

Also remember to take advantage of global arbitrage when it comes to talent and labor. There are thousands of well educated, well qualified people around the world willing and able to help you build your online businesses. Look at sites like oDesk.com to find one that can help make your project a global success.

Tip # 4. Always keep your flagship.

I tend to believe that you should solve one problem with one solution. This manifests itself in my online business as hundreds of web sites, each intended to address and solve one problem. If you focus on addressing the needs and wants of a single market, you can effectively find out and be an expert on their needs and wants and anticipate the market demand easier than by solving many problems and addressing many markets at once. Though others may disagree and your experience will vary, this is just the way I’ve chosen to structure my business.

One reason is for ease of sale. That’s right. I structure my business so I can sell any part of it if the opportunity presents itself. It is easier to present and design a website if you have a single market in mind. You can singly attack and attract your target market this way and you can build a brand name for yourself that way. Being known for a flagship name could help make you a household name in the market you choose and easily bring more people to your online business.

And as of today, I don’t see any reason why I’d ever want to get rid of my flagship property, jtrigsby.com. I mean, lets face it, I’d pretty much have to change my name for it to become useless for me! Keep your home base just like a manufacturing business would keep their headquarters. No matter what they make or sell, the headquarters remains the same. Your flagship would identify you, no matter what you sell or what service you provide to different markets, people would always find you there and would bring business to you if you are known by that single name.

Building a smart model with the tips above could be easy for some and a challenge for some. Why don’t you try and write a one-page online business plan and see if it is possible to apply the aforementioned tips to your online business. In that business plan you should identify your objectives, and state why you are starting an on-line business.

Then, you should identify your market or the people who are you trying to reach and sell to. Give them a name, describe them, and make a list of where they spend money online today. Ask yourself what they need and what you could provide them as well.

Identify your competitors. Start with the big players then work down to the second and third tier. How do they reach their customer base? What can they do that you couldn’t? What do they do that you could do better? Identify your strengths and weaknesses against them.

Finally, think about how you’re going to get out. An exit plan is a great way to ensure that you will not lose everything when you close down shop. Will you sell to someone else or just close up shop? What will you do when you reach your objective? What are the determining factors that would make you close up shop?

By answering these questions, you would have created a solid plan of action that you could apply to your own business. Hopefully, you have built a smart model that could generate you money easily and could gain profit from the very rich and potent online market that you choose.

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Like any business, the online business needs careful planning, preparation and operation to make it successful.  Just because you’re business is online doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat it like a real business. This is the first post in a three part  series looking at some of the most important elements of a strong online business model.

Your Online Business Is Still A Business

It is important to remember that once you start doing business on the internet that you are actually being entrepreneurial and starting your own online business. Whether it is an online shop to sell your arts and crafts or you offering your services online to other people – it is an online business. For this business venture to succeed and start earning, you have to learn how to view it as if the business was real and not virtual.

To do this, you must start business planning and some market research which are the foundation of any business. However, if you are not a big business person, you can also achieve success in your business if you know the four basic business factors that are important in any business online or not. These factors include:  objectives or goals, market, competition and exit strategy.

Know your objectives

Before starting any business you must know your objectives. Of course, the ultimate goal of any business is to make money or gain profit. However, while that’s a good enough reason some times, more often there is a reason you want to make more money.  It could be to pay off bills, buy a new boat, or just quit your day job. Understanding WHY you are starting your online business makes decision making a lot easier later on.

Before you start your business, you have to start with by knowing what your business goals are. To effectively do this, it is important that you ask the following questions:

• Why are you starting this online business?
• What does your business do?
• What is this business for?

These three questions will help you formulate your Mission and Vision Statement. The mission statement articulates a company’s purpose. It announces to the world why your company exists, what it does and what your business is for. The mission statement will serve as your guide to achieving your ultimate business goals.

Alongside this, most business people put together a vision statement which is a statement of your company’s goals and what it wants to achieve. Together, the mission-vision statement defines the purpose of your online business.
Know your market

Once you get know what your purpose the next step is to know your market. There is only one way to make money, on-line or off-line… You have to sell something. It may be tangible goods or just your time. If you are having a difficult time figuring out what to sell, think about it backwards and ask yourself what people want to buy. Knowing your market makes product development a lot easier.

Once you get a general idea of what you are going to sell (whether it is a product or service), you have to find out who you are selling to. It is difficult to make money online if you do not know who to channel your marketing energies to. To do this, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is your product/service?
• Who will benefit most from your product/service?
• Who else would benefit or could use your product/service?

Once you answer these questions then you have discovered your Target Market. Remember that, Selling is easier if you have a target in mind. You cannot expect to put a website or products in the internet and they would sell instantly if you do not channel your energies towards marketing to the right people.

Focus your energies on trying to attract these people and knowing what they want or need.  This knowledge will help you develop or create better things that these people may want or need that you can provide. This innovation that is specifically targeted for them could help you get an edge in the dog eat dog world of online business.

Know your competition

Another way to succeed in the Online business world is to know your competition. Just like in an off-line business, taking on the biggest competitor in your on-line business niche is going to be pretty hard. When you’re just getting started, look for the second and third tier players in your niche and target their audience. Then with success, aim your sights a little higher. Taking smaller bites of the pie makes getting started a lot easier.

By studying your competition, you could learn from them. What they did right, what they did wrong, what they can improve and what you can do to get the edge and steal a portion of their market. Learning from your competitors would help you avoid the mistakes they did and make your business much more successful and profitable.

When doing the competitor analysis, you must answer the following questions: (SWOT ANALYSIS)

• What are my business’  internal strengths?
• What are the weaknesses?
• What opportunities are there for me to grab?
• What threats are there in the market that I should avoid or get over?

In addition, you could also answer the following:

• What things can I do better than my competition?
• What things did they do that I should avoid?
• What can I improve on their strategy to give me the edge?

Know your exit strategy

Finally, it is good to know that each business has its own cycle. It is good to know when to quit and bail out while it’s still good. What would you do if the business is already in decline? How would you exit the market?

In the early days of any business its easy to imagine that it will go on forever. Its important however to consider how long you will be willing to run your business and under what conditions you will consider selling or ending your business.

You have to be realistic and prepare for things that may come if your business is unsuccessful.

These four elements are also the four basic elements or factors in business planning and development. The knowledge of these four elements will help you write out a business plan that could be your roadmap to the success of your online business,

Have you started planning your online business? Or if it is existing does it have a business plan? Maybe the best thing to do to improve your business or start it out, is to write a one-page online business plan.

To this you have to:

• Identify your objectives, why are you starting an on-line business.
• Identify your market, who are you trying to reach. Give them a name, describe them, and make a list of where they spend money online today
• Identify your competitors, start with the big players then work down to the second and third tier. How do they reach their customer base?
• Finally, think about how you’re going to get out. Will you sell to someone else or just close up shop? What will you do when you reach your objective?

I hope that this article would help you create that perfect business plan for your business. Remember that planning is one of the best keys in strategic online business success. Good Luck and Happy Planning!

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The dictionary defines success as

An event that accomplishes its intended purpose

It doesn’t say anything about cars, houses or money. It doesn’t speak to your level of education, your earnings potential, or your family genealogy. It simply and succinctly states how we can achieve success… by accomplishing our intended purpose!

That gives rise to the next logical question… What is your intended purpose? NOW the cars, houses and money come into play. If your intended purpose is to have the nicest car on the block, fine. When you’ve done that you are successful. At least until your neighbor drives up in his new car a couple of weeks from now. If your intended purpose is to accumulate wealth, again, fine. Just understand that one dollar today does not equal one dollar ten years from now. Depreciation, taxes, even catastrophic life events can wipe out that tidy little nest egg over night… along with your “success”.

Balancing the success scale is failure. If success is to accomplish one’s goal, then failure can be simply stated to be NOT accomplishing your goal. As simple as that sounds, it can be a little tricky. Lets break it down a bit.

First, a goal can have many parts. For instance, I want to save $1,000 by December 31st. That’s a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable (maybe), Relevant, and Time-bound), but what if you only have $995 on December 31st? What if you didn’t get that last $5 till January 10th? Did you fail?

In the clearest sense, yes you failed. You did not have $1,000 saved on December 31st. But life is not always so clear. You do have almost $1,000, you’ll have the last $5 very soon, along the way you learned how to save, probably cut corners or be more frugal. If your goal were to “by the end of the year save around $1000 for a rainy day” then you might count this as a success.

Which brings us to starting over. If you have cash “in the bank” and lose it for whatever reason, you’re only starting over if your intended purpose is to have cash in the bank. On the other hand, if you have $100,000 in the bank and lose it, but your needs are still being met, food on the table, gas in the car… are you really starting over? Only if you goal is to have $100,000 in the bank. Because if your intended purpose is to have all your needs covered and some wants attainable… what have you really lost?

Does a marathon runner “start over” when she gets a cramp or stumbles? No. Its a setback to be sure, but she is not required to go back to the starting line and begin again. It’s just par for the course, and she keeps on running.

If your Definite Major Purpose, your intended purpose, your goal, is to make work optional, certainly one way to do it is to hit the lotto and live fat, dumb, and happy. Of course you’re still subject to the unforeseen events that may wipe out your winnings. A far better way, and the way I pursue, is to create diverse streams of income that require as little work as possible and produce enough income to cover all my needs plus a couple of wants.

Sometimes, in the course of creating these multiple streams, one (or probably many more) will fail. You’ll start a new blog, start selling product X, whatever… and it will not pan out. It will not “produce 25% of the income required to meet my needs” and will thus be a failure. But meeting that failure doesn’t mean YOU are a failure or that you have to start over. It simple means that way didn’t work.

Thomas Edison is famously quoted as saying,

“I didn’t fail to make a light bulb 10,000 times. I found 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb.”

Well, if its good enough for Edison, why isn’t it good enough for you?

You must consider the totality of the situation and make sure your perceived goals are in line with your intended purpose. If your intended purpose is to travel, that doesn’t mean you need to have $50,000 in the bank. You might be able to travel by driving a big rig!

I see this play out all the time when people say they need a job that pays better. Really? Why is that? What are you going to do with the extra money? If it pays better, does it require more of your time? (Unless trading your time for money is your goal, you probably want to steer away from that!)

Making more money is a short term goal that most people can’t tie to any specific long-term objective, other than perhaps to say, “Oh, I want to retire some day.” If by retire they mean quit working, I wonder if they’ve done the math with that extra money they’re chasing after so diligently.

Far and away, the better solution is to spend your time today creating sources of income that will continue to pay over time. This does a couple of things for you:

Pays you “retirement” money in inflation adjusted dollars – Since you don’t get it till you need it, you can assume it is adjusted for inflation. If you get it today and try to save it till tomorrow, it will NOT be adjusted properly.

Allows you to “retire” much sooner – Since you’re not trying to save a million dollars or more, you can have a much more attainable goal, one you can be successful in reaching, and then wave goodbye to your job.

Success is what you define it to be, not what your parents or your neighbors define it to be. Write down your Definite Major Purpose, say it outloud to yourself ever morning, then go make your success happen! If you stumble or hit a few bumps in the road along the way, that’s ok as long as you’re still making progress toward your goals!

@jtrigsby

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The truth is, what ever reason people give ( to get ahead on bills, to save for a rainy day, to get rich! ), we are not necessarily looking for a way to just make money on-line. We ARE looking for:

• Security – Insurance against a poor economy, against being laid off, against your job being oursourced or off-shored
• Freedom – The ability to do what you want in life rather than settling for what you can accomplish during your two weeks off. The opportunity to quit a bad job rather than suffer through Dilbert like bossed and co-workers. The chance to choose your journey rather than accept the one that’s been laid out for you.
• Independence – Living life untethered from the anchors that hold you back. Exercising your ability to move freely, make your own choices, do work that matters to you.

The appeal of a title like Making Work Optional is that it offers hope for regaining control of your life from the external forces that are MAKING you do work that may be, at best, unfulfilled. Making it optional draws us in because it means that all three of our reasons above are satisfied.

The social training we’ve been subjected to most of our lives makes the idea of not working pretty difficult for some of us to get our arms around. We’re taught that getting a good education, a good job, and working hard all lead us to the safety and security of a comfortable retirement. For some, the perceived value of that promise over-powers the need for freedom… and that’s ok. Sometimes there are good reasons to stick with what you have.

For others though there just has to be more. The promise of a retirement is too far away and uncertain. The security of their current job is questionable and loosing their job would devastate them financially. You need only look at the last 18 months to see what could happen.

The decision is yours. This week we will look at the issues and questions around making work optional, whether its right for you and how to get started if it is something you want to pursue.

Do you think bucking the status quo might be right for you? Are you safe and secure in your current situation and perfectly happy to stay where you are? Drop a comment below and join the conversation!

@jtrigsby

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In this week’s episode of the Life in the Internet podcast, we ( actually “I” since @VickieRigsby was off this week ) devoted some time to defining a Definite Major Purpose a la Napolean Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Coming up with my Definite Major Purpose, DMP for short, has now given me the opportunity to solidify and commit to making work optional… because that is now my DMP!

So I can hear the chuckles and the questions now. What makes me think we can make work optional and how do I plan on accomplishing such a thing? Well… I’m glad you asked.

This is a pretty big (read: lengthy) plan, way too long for a single post. And frankly, its not all done yet. There are parts I’m stuck on. But maybe by sharing the plan with you over time and letting you watch as we roll it out, you can help work out some of the shortcomings and maybe, hopefully, see a plan developing for yourself as well. So here goes…

Part One – Why Am I Working Anyway?

Work, as we know it, is a relatively new concept. For thousands of years men and women worked to survive. If they didn’t hunt, gather, or harvest enough supplies… they died. Simple. Their needs were food, clothing and shelter. If the activity they were engaging in didn’t support one of those needs, they didn’t do it… at least not before they had the hunting, gathering and harvesting taken care of.

The idea of exchanging labor for money then using the money to meet needs didn’t really come of age until the advent of the Industrial Age… then it invaded with a vengeance! Now, the closest most of us come to hunting or gathering is hunting for a fresh tomato in the super market!

Before we can begin to get our arms around the idea of work being optional, we first must have a solid grasp on WHY we work. I did a quick and definitely unscientific survey this afternoon and here are some of the answers I got to the question, “Why do you work.”

It’s all about the Benjamins baby. Gotta pay off the debt from my 20′s, man!

[B]ecause I have bills and I need to eat, if I could get rid of them, work would follow.

I work a job to pay bills and take care of my needs. This frees me up to WORK my business vision. Work is necessary 4 success.

To make meaningful contributions. B/c I like the other people. B/c my student loans aren’t paid off.

Sounds like the reason most of us work is to put food on the table, pay our bills and repay debts… all important things. I’m sure somewhere in there are considerations for a few wants, maybe a quick vacation or a cool (albeit expensive) toy. Now needs, we have to cover, no doubt. And don’t get me wrong, wants are an important part of a happy and fulfilled life. But right now, take just a second and stop reading this post and think about this single question:

The first step toward making work optional is to understand that there is a pretty big difference between needs and wants… and its not the difference we’ve been trained to believe!

Changing the way you think about needs and wants is not the whole answer, its just the first step! There’s a ton more discussion about this topic coming in the next few days. In the mean time, think about what needs you might be willing to transfer to the wants column. It doesn’t have to be forever but it does have to make a difference!

I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on this topic! What are some of the specifics we can do to transfer needs into wants? Radical things wanted! Here’s one to prime the pump… get down to a single car family, or if you live alone, get a bike and save some gas. If you can cut back from two cars to one you’ll save on a car payment, insurance, maintenance and gas… not to mention you’ll get to spend some quality time with your significant other!

Ok, that’s one… lets get more going. Leave a comment below with your ideas!

As always, thanks for reading and don’t hesitate to hit me up if I can ever help you!

@jtrigsby

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