Post about "Marketing"

Starting An Internet Marketing Business Online

Are you looking to start an internet marketing business online? If so, you need to know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. Don’t think you can just enter into this industry and expect to start making millions of dollars within the next 6 months. I get requests from people all the time telling me that they want to be making $5,000 per month within 3 months. And these are people who have never sold a thing online!One thing that you need to know is that when starting an internet marketing business online, you “kind of” have the world at your feet. There’s plenty of places to advertise, there’s plenty of ways to get free traffic to your site, there’s plenty of business owners looking to learn how to do effective marketing online, and etc. So you can be kind of spoiled once you get your hands on some training materials.But understand that you are operating in a HIGH competition arena. A smart thing that you could do is to offer internet marketing services to local small businesses in your area. Most offline small business owners don’t have a clue about how to market their business online. But in the online world, people have training thrown at them all the time.So I guess the best question to ask yourself is: “How am I different?” Right?? You don’t want to be a “me-too” person when marketing your products and services online. This applies if you choose to be a coach, consultant, or sell products such as books, CD’s, DVD’s, or even magazines. So how are you different? How will you separate yourself from the pack and differentiate yourself from everyone else online who are making the same claims as you?It’s something you need to think about when launching your own internet marketing business online. Where most people get tripped up at is when, they read someone’s free eBook about internet marketing, and then go and buy a large resell rights package that is ALL ABOUT internet marketing.Each product in the package contains something about internet marketing. More often than not, the resell rights bundle may contain products about:Email marketing
Forum marketing
YouTube marketing
General internet marketing
Consumer buying behavior
Copywriting
Etc (the list goes on and on)
And most of these people spend YEARS trying to figure out a way to sell these products – if not sell them as a bundle. OR if not resell the same offer that they bought to receive these items. After years of failure, they usually leave feeling depressed, broke, and convinced that making money online is impossible… if not a scam. And this is just not true.All of these kinds of products are supposed to teach people about niche marketing. Especially a general product about internet marketing. The real pros who sell internet marketing products successfully sell them primarily for a good reason: THEY SELL THEM FOR VERY HIGH PRICES.They sell one course about internet marketing at $200. Then they backend sell you for another similar course at $500. Then they sell you another similar course with huge bonuses for $1000. Then they sell their 3-day seminar and invite you to attend… for the price of $2000. THEN they convince you to sign up for their monthly newsletter or membership website, and charge you $50/month to join.How rich do you think you would be if you were to successfully get people to buy your products at these price ranges?Meanwhile, you’re being convinced that selling $19 eBooks will save you from your day job. This is just not the case. To make $100,000 by selling $19 eBooks, you would have to sell 5000 eBooks per year. That comes out to 416 eBooks per month. Which means you would have to sell 104 eBooks per week. Which thus means you would have to sell 14 eBooks per day.How are you going to sell 13 eBooks per day and you’re struggling to make even a dime of profit selling a $5 eBook on eBay? You have to learn a lot about internet marketing if you want to make a lot of money in this business. ESPECIALLY if you’re selling information about “internet marketing”. If you’re not a guru and have been selling other niche products successfully online, don’t enter into this broad arena.The gurus who are selling “internet marketing” products successfully have a plan that have worked well for them over the years. EVEN IF they lose money on the first sale of getting that first customer, they know how to recoup their lost, and then still profit on the next sale that they make from that customer.They know their numbers. They know their sales conversion rate, their cost per lead, cost per sale, and their average long term value of a customer. Let me ask you a question:If you knew that for every 1 customer you acquired, that you were going to make an average of $5000 over the lifetime of that customer spending money with you… would you care if you lost $5 just to acquire them in the first place? Of course you wouldn’t care.But I’m sure you would care if you were spending $5 to acquire them, and then not selling to them again to recoup your profits. That would mean that for every customer you get, you would be losing $5 per sale… forever. You have to market to these customers over and over again to recoup a frontend loss. This is called “backend marketing”.If you want to get started online in the internet marketing business, you have to bring your A-game and have a mathematical plan of how you’re going to make money. There’s a lot to learn, but once you gain an understanding of how marketing online works (and how marketing in general works)… you’ll be well on your way to success in your business.If you’re going to buy a resell rights bundle package, at least READ the information in the products you acquired so that you can know how to sell them successfully. Don’t be a hopeless cause.

Small Business ERP – Be Aware of These Things

Finding the right Small Business ERP for your company
Small Business ERP is a unique category of enterprise software. It typically needs to have all the functionality of large corporate ERP software, but it needs to have as few clicks and screens as possible to ensure that the users are not overburdened with a lot of time spent entering data. The size of the business does not necessarily change the functionality required in the software. Rather, the small company often has a need for higher efficiency since they cannot afford the manpower to maintain the system.When you look at ERP software, there are three tiers of applications. Tier 1 is large multi-national software solutions, such as Oracle, SAP, and JD Edwards. Tier 2 is the mid-market level. These applications are suitable to businesses in the range of 50M to 250M. This is the sweet spot of the market. Like any bell curve, the mid-market has both the most customers, as well as the most product offerings. The last tier is the Tier 3 offerings which is the small business ERP category. These are systems suitable for 1 person start-ups to about the $50M level, although some of these products become inefficient if they have more than 20 users on the system. So while they claim to be Small Business ERP offerings, they are for the smallest of companies.Things to look for in Small Business ERP
When evaluating small business ERP solutions, it is important that you properly screen the potential software candidates to ensure you get a software that fits your business. If you don’t you will run into many different issues. Here are some tips:1. Make sure that the small business ERP software you are looking at fits into your niche.
2. Make sure that the data entry is simple and efficient
3. Make sure that the database platform can be managed by you or your staff
4. Look at the support offerings of the small business ERP provider to ensure that it is tailored to your needs
5. Determine that the small business ERP reseller provides enough training to properly get your staff up and runningLet’s discuss these points. First you need to make sure that the software you are looking at fits within the business model or industry that you work within. A retail store should not use a software designed for distributor. See what other customers that the software provider has worked with in the past and ask for specific examples of companies in your industry.You need to make sure that the users do not become slaves to the system. Make sure that the data entry screens are simple, efficient and do not require a lot of bouncing around to other screens to input simple things such as invoices or purchase orders.The heart of the system is the database. You need to make sure that the database does not require a full-time system admin to maintain it. It should be designed to be self maintaining and easily managed. Learn a little bit of the technical requirements from the Small Business ERP solution provider. You do not want to be in the situation where you need to bring in a specialized database administrator if later something goes wrong.Small Business ERP should have support designed for you the small business owner. You should easily be able to call in and immediately speak to a rep for support. You don’t want to have to wait for days to get answers. Be careful of small systems with small support staffs. Especially be wary where the system is developed and maintained by one or two people. Yes, they are also a small business, but it will be a big problem when they are not available to assist you.Lastly, you and your staff need to have enough training to properly operate the application. Do not skimp on this point. You need more training than you think. In fact, it would be good to plan on training to go live and at least one other training session a month after go-live to answer any questions and resolve any problems from a lack of knowledge. You won’t become experts on the system in a day, so plan on future training sessions.The future of Small Business ERP
The future of Small Business ERP seems to be one of two paths. There are those systems that will continue to be operating on a small network of computers and do quite well on them, such as QuickBooks or DBA Software. The other path is that of small business ERP companies such as NetSuite, who are leading the charge to bring small business ERP to the cloud. This means that you will have access to the application through a browser and no installed software will exist on your site. You are licensing access to a system that stores your data remotely and operates via an internet connection.People often are concerned with this model as your data lives somewhere else. The fact of the matter is it is probably safer there than on a computer sitting in your back room. The data center security policies and the high-levels of authentication that are enforced by cloud computing providers truly lock down your data and its accessibility. Whereas your server in your back room is often open to anyone who happens to wonder by. This seems to be riskier. Nonetheless, whichever path you choose, you can be assured that the small business ERP industry is continuing to grow and develop.