Top 10 questions to ask yourself when starting a business

What do you need to know when you are starting a business? These simple questions will help guide you when starting a business, and hopefully give you a head start to your journey as an entrepreneur.

If you really want to quit the 9-5 and are serious about starting a business, this post is a must.

If you’re thinking of starting a business, ask yourself the following questions;

• How am I currently making money?
• How much start up capital do I have to invest in my new business?
• What am I really good at or passionate about?
• Am I an expert in a field already?
• Will I create my own product or promote someone elses?
• How much time can I commit to making money online?
• What tools will I need for starting a business?
• What am I not good at?
• What do I need to learn?
• What are my timescales?

Planning and focus is one of the most important stages of starting a business, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and money if you make sure you are open and honest with yourself when in this stage.

Let’s go into the questions a little deeper…

• How am I currently making money?
• How are you making money right now?
• Do you have a job already?
• Are you working full time or part time?
• Are you helping someone else out?
• Are you looking for a job?

It’s easy to get confused, and think that you have to start from scratch, but if you’re making money already, consider incorporating the way you are making money into your new business. E.g are you currently in sales and have good product knowledge? Consider using this knowledge and the power of your existing contacts when starting a business.

How much start up capital do I have to invest in my new business?

So many people try starting a business and fail miserably due to lack of funding. Set your sights on what you can afford. Start small and invest however much you can afford in you or your business. Prioritise your spending and make sure you are investing only in essentials such as training, marketing or products.

What am I really good at or passionate about?

What skills do you already have? Is there a subject or a ‘niche’ that you are passionate about? If you are stuck for a business idea, look into your hobbies, passions and current skillset for direction.

Am I an expert in a field already?

Are you already an authority? Are you well known in your Niche? If you are already an expert in something, you can quite easily promote or sell that expertise online. No need to re-invent the wheel! Many people fail when they start a business because they launch into a completely new field that they know very little about and fail to do proper research. Don’t get caught out.

Will I create my own product or promote someone elses?

Affiliate marketing is perhaps one of the fastest and easiest ways of starting a business. Affiliate marketing involves promoting someone elses product in return for a commission when a sale is made. having said that, it is relatively simple to create your own info product such as a tutorial, a course or an e-book, so make sure you decide which route you will take before you start.

How much time can I commit to making money online?

Plan your time around your lifestyle. When I first started internet marketing, I was working all day and learning all night. I burnt the candle at both ends and got nowhere. When I finally used common sense and practised what I preached, I organised my work on a weekly schedule and got more done in those couple of hours a day than I had in the months of long days and nights before! Ensure you can afford to spare the time you are dedicating to starting a business.

What tools will I need for starting a business?

After speaking with lots of people who have spent thousands on products and software, make a list of what you really need and keep it simple! You don’t always need that ‘must have’ software, and remember, there is NO push button product that will make you money. Stick to these guidelines and save yourself a fortune!

What am I not good at?

Be honest with yourself. Just because you’re not good at something, you shouldn’t dwell on it and let it stop you starting a business. If you’re confident that you can learn the necessary skills with relative ease, then go for it. If not, With the power of outsourcing and sites such as odesk, elance and fiverr, you can get work done relatively cheaply, and free up your time to get on with other work.

What do I need to learn?

With so many courses available in all different areas of starting a business, making money online, software etc, it is important that you don’t try and do ‘everything’ Plan out what you need to learn and what can be outsourced, and try and stay focused on that plan. I am saying this because one of my WordPress Coaching students had spent $7,500 on courses without making a cent online – think about it, – do you really need to be a Photoshop expert before you launch your blog, or can you outsource the graphics and design work? Don’t let the learning curve hold you back.

What are my timescales?

Setting timescales are a really important factor when starting a business. Don’t turn into someone who will ‘do it later’ or ‘start that tomorrow.’ Set yourself goals and timescales for important milestones for your business start up.

So, Are you set? Write the answers to the questions you have asked yourself, and go plan Starting A Business!

“Get Your Free Secret Reports” and learn about internet marketing strategies with WordPress at Caroline’s Blog

You Can you make money as a super affiliate of someone else’s product, but nothing can compare to the money that you can make by creating, owning and selling your own product…

Why? Simple, because like with any job, you are simply slaving away to make OTHER PEOPLE money. They take the Lion’s Share of the profits, whilst you do the Lion’s Share of the work – and get a near minimum-wage return for all your hard work.

Why else do you think all the top internet marketers develop and sell their own products?…

They may teach some affiliate marketing, or some other way of successfully making money online, but their fortunes are actually made by selling their own products and services… Think about this what specialised knowledge do you possess? What product could you create easily? What hobbies and interests do you have? What places have you visited? So make the decision today to start on your journey and create your own internet information product….don,t delay do it now!

The absolute truth is anyone can do this stuff. Now you will need some basic skills (and I do mean extremely basic). If you have these skills you are more than qualified to create unique products that sell like crazy…

• You Can Read And Write
• You Know How To Surf The Internet and use Google search
• You Can Use A simple program Like Word
• You Can Send And Receive E-Mail

That’s all you need to get actually started creating products you can sell for big profits…

You see, when you have your very own products, you can really build up an army of loyal affiliates worldwide, who are promoting and selling your product 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year – while you’re asleep.

Do you see what the big difference is in having your own product to market and promote when you open it up to the unlimited potential of affiliates marketing it for you, versus promoting someone else’s product as an affiliate?

Now, don’t get me wrong, You can make decent money promoting others affiliate products. But you can make more with hundreds or thousands of affiliates promoting your products.

After that, you will be able to follow up with your clients as much as you want for the lifetime of your relationship with your customers. Yes, that means a potential five or six-figure extra income, for little work.

James B Fisher
Check out the 1-Day-Product-Formula
http://www.1dayproductformula.co.uk

At some point, you’ll want to provide a self-created information product on your blog. It might be a free product you use as a subscriber opt-in enticement, or you may be ready to create a product you sell. Eventually, you will want both types of products available on your blog. Is it imperative to have your own self-created information product to make money online?

Not at all. You can certainly sell other people’s products and make a good income. However, you can bring in a lot more money and have control over the creation and promotion of a product if you create it yourself.

You Own Product or Affiliate Products?

When you sell affiliate products, you earn only a percentage of income you generate. The product creator earns the remainder (usually a 50/50 commission split).

But if you sell your own products, you make 100% of any sales on your blog, as well as a percentage what your affiliates sell. There are lots of options with product creation — you can sell your own information product, your affiliates can also sell it for you, and you can add to that income by selling affiliate products. Creating your own eBooks, courses, guides, etc., gives you the option for multiple streams of income that can eventually become streams of passive income (meaning you don’t have to do anything except promote the product now and then).

Many new bloggers believe they lack the knowledge or ability to develop a product from scratch. That couldn’t be further from the truth. You have many skills that others don’t have — and you can share those skills and your knowledge about them with others who are eager for the information. It can be anything from parenting tips to building a birdhouse! It’s just a matter of finding out what your readers want, then learning how to create and design the information product, and present it to your customers in an appealing way.

You also need to carve out the time during your week to work on the product. Let’s look at the initial steps for planning and producing an information product to sell on your blog.

Step I: Deciding What to Create

The hardest part of creating a product is determining what to create. When trying to decide, keep these two things in mind:

Be passionate about your subject matter. This will make creating the information product so much easier and the final result even better.

With your information product, be sure to offer a solution to a problem, teach something readers want to know, or show them how to do something that will improve their lives.

Now consider your blog niche and topic categories. Begin brainstorming some possible product topics you think might interest your readers and that would work well as a product. Make notes about these ideas. If you can’t come up with something on your own, begin research other blogs in your niche and look at the information products they sell.

Begin to notice other information products on the net. And even though a product may be out there doesn’t mean you can’t create something similar. The Internet is teaming with people looking for valuable information.

Step 2: Get the Reader Involved

If you really want to know what kind of product your readers will find useful, ask them! Many bloggers overlook this step because they just want to get on with the process of creating the information product. They get inpatient. However, your readers’ feedback and opinions are vital to the success of your information product.

Here’s why:

1. They become invested in the information product since they participated in creating it.

2. By involving your readers, you can create exactly what they want without just guessing or hoping they’ll like it.

When you engage your readers in every step, from the topic, to the format (ebook, course, etc.), to the medium (written, video, audio, combination), to the content, you further commit your readers and foster their enthusiasm and interest.

Here are some tips on how to engage your readers:

Start a conversation with them. Hopefully you have an email service so that you can send out a broadcast email. With a smaller subscriber list, you can offer a “survey” within the email, to ask questions about the information product.

• Advise your readers in the email about your product, and invite their input and ideas. They can select from ideas you present to them, and you can ask open-ended questions about possible topic ideas you may not have mentioned.
• Find out the type of information product they prefer — a course, ebook, workbook, etc. and the medium they like – written, audio, video, or a combination.
• Ask just a few questions so you don’t overwhelm them. If you need to find out more, survey them again as you work on the project, as you outline the content and need other answers from them.
• If you have thousands of subscribers, consider using survey software to help you collect your responses like Survey Monkey or Survey Gizmo.

Step 3: Research Your Topic

When you have a good idea about the product topic, conduct some research to make sure you:

• optimize SEO (search engine optimization) so your information product will be found on Google and other search engines;
• learn more about the competition and their products, noticing what you like or don’t like about them, and how they rank in SEO;
• create a unique point of difference for your information product so it will be more interesting, useful, and valuable than other similar products.

You can use a free service called Google Keywords to help you look at product keywords and phrases. This will help you learn about the competition, determine the best name for your product, and discover how many people are searching for this topic or related topics.

Be sure to use a strong keyword phrase is in the title of the information product. An interesting or creative name may seem compelling, but a straightforward keyword phrase will do more for you with helping readers find your product.

Step 4: Determine Your Creation Schedule

Be sure you proactively schedule time in week to work on your information product. Set a deadline, even a launch date, and announce it to readers to create a sense of urgency for yourself. Start working backward from your deadline, plotting on a calendar exactly how many hours per week you will spend working on the product. Outline the product content before you start writing.

Refine the outline, and then show it to your readers to get input. Once you have the outline, begin writing and developing the content of the information product. If you’d rather not write the content yourself, you can pay a freelancer to write it for you. You will make up the expense of this service when you begin selling the product.

Check out Elance to find hundreds of freelance writers. However, if you create video or podcasts, do these yourself, as your readers prefer to see your face and/or hear your voice. Remember, the work of launching an information product takes nearly as much time as creating it – between the design and packaging of the product, developing a sales page and marketing plan, finding affiliates, and promoting the product launch.

So consider setting two deadlines, one for completing the content and one for packaging and promoting the final product.

Step 5: Ask for Feedback

When the information product is completed, ask for input from a few readers and even other bloggers before you design and package it. Offer the rough draft to 5-10 readers at a discounted price in return for their feedback and testimonials – and with a promise to give them the final version once it’s completed. You can also ask a few bloggers to review the rough draft with a promise that they can be an affiliate at a slightly higher commission rate.

Ask them for testimonials as well to use for promoting the product. Once you have all of this feedback, make any necessary changes or corrections. At this point, you have should have a product that your readers can’t resist.

Creating a winning product isn’t rocket science – but it does require thorough planning and preparation. When you provide solutions for people, engage them in the creation process, conduct important research, and plan out your schedule, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor in the form of some cool cash!

Barrie Davenport writes about Good Karma blog marketing at A-List Blog Marketing where you can receive a free video course, The Heart of Successful Online Marketing.