TP Javeton WebNet

Category: Entrepreneurial

Having to do with entrepreneurs and the actions, methods, spirit, area, schedule, tips, techniques, activities, and other methodologies related to entrepreneurs.

Unique Touch Will Set Your Entrepreneurship Apart
Approach your entrepreneurship with a
dare-to-be-different attitude, and it will
create the edge you need to succeed.
– Tony Phillips

Your special something

That special something that only you can bring to your entrepreneurship and transfer it to your clients and/or customers has been defined in different ways by different industries. Some refer to it as a “schtick”, others a “modus operandi” or “tactic” and still others, a USP (Unique Sales Proposition/Proposal), the last term used most often in the copywriting business.

That unique touch I refer to adds value to your website and your service or product and is one of the most over looked and under rated strategies for improving your Web entrepreneurship. The Web and modern technology make it possible for anyone to offer that little something extra that nobody else does, and usually at no additional cost.

The why, what and how!

First the Why! Let’s look at why this is a good practice for big and small businesses alike, including your entrepreneurship: It’s a good thing to do because you will make more money if you integrate the schtick into your daily activities by making it a part of your overall business practice!

Second is the What! Now let’s take a look at exactly what value adding is! Value adding is giving surprise high quality and useful gifts. It’s giving something that your competitors aren’t offering. It’s promising the world and delivering the universe. It’s taking care of your clients and always providing something that your clients need and want, when and where they want it.

Third is the How! We’ll now take a look at the different ways this can be done: If you receive a free gift from someone when you don’t expect it, do you remember that person?

The USP example

Answer: Yes, most of us do, especially when it is something we can use or have needed. How can you do this in your entrepreship? The best way to answer this question is with an example as stated below:

If you go out to dinner and order a menu item, what do you expect? You expect to get what you ordered from that menu, right? Now imagine that you ordered a T-Bone steak medium well along with your beverage of choice and whatever side orders comes with the dish.

Say you enjoy your meal and is satisfied with the service as well as the price you pay, which you consider very good or great. You grab the bill and is ready to leave when the restaurant owner comes to your table with a package which turns out to be a bottle of good wine ($25.00 value) from his own cellar and gives it to you with these words: “our special gift to you”. Wouldn’t that make you more likely to go back to that restaurant for future steak dinners? Probably not only steak dinners either!

That’s one simple example, and I understand that it is impractical for you to sell steak dinners in a Web entrepreneurship, but I also understand that everyone may not relate to Internet newsletters or know what an eZine subscriptions is; however, you will agree we all have had a decent restaurant meal at one time or another, so a steak dinner is something we can all relate to. The point is, that restaurant owner got your attention with his unique touch.

The unique ingredient

Think of something you have that many other entrepreneurs don’t or, if others have it, they cannot serve it or apply it with the same skill or touch you can. You may have studied oceanography in college or maybe you’re a good swimmer who never went to college but have a knack for marine life and you own a Web entreneurship/website about marinas. Add something directly from you that anyone else will find it hard to match. That’s the best description of your unique touch / schtick / USP.

So you can see that by offering this free and unique gift you have achieved several things:
1. You have developed a product (at no cost to you) that you can sell and make a profit on. Think of it this way: Your unique touch, when added to an existing product has the potential of making that product like new. Just like new paint on an old house. “A coat of paint makes it what it ain’t”.
2. You have used that product to increase the chances of your new entrepreneurship getting repeat customers or visitors to your website (prospects now but future customers), as well as keeping their attention, if not loyalty will ensure that any specials you run and notify them via email they will open, so your list will also be easier to maintain.
3. You have promoted you site/service to other Web marketers that you may wish to do a joint venture with at some time.
Other ways to add value for less effort is to:
- Offer a 110 percent guarantee instead of a 100 percent.
- Offer FREE tips about how to get the best out of your product, etc., get the idea?
- It’s all just a matter of finding ways that you can give more, because the more you give the more you will receive.
I sincerely believe that and I hope you do also…You’ll be better off for it. Good luck!

Digital & Electronic Products – Unbeatable in Quality and Price!
05/05/2012
Trading Equity For Cash In A New Business

The need for seed money

Practically every new business which is created starts out with a great idea that usually needs shaping, molding and a lot of long hours and hard work if it is to become a viable and competitive member of industry. However, most business do not reach the level of industry competitor without some kind of monetary investment.

Let’s face it, after you’ve been awaken in the middle of the night, or stayed awake with a business idea that you’re convinced will change the world, only to learn next morning that you’ll need money to get the business moving. What do you do if you don’t have that ‘seed money’?

If you own a home, you’ll remortgage (refinance) it. Take it from me cause it’s what I did to start my own real estate agency in the 1980s. I was fortunate enough to have owned a home, but not everyone with a great idea for a business owns a home. So what are some other options?

Investors and Equity

Practically every economy is built upon the backs of small business and entrepreneurship practioners. Every day someone comes up with an idea that will make a great business. Every day, these same people wonder how they will come up with the cash to get the business off the ground. The classic answer is to look for investors, and this is where things can go bad.

If you’re seeking investors for your business, you are going to need to form a business entity. Corporations and LLCs (Limited Liability Companies) are the most popular, and give you the ability to trade ownership interest in exchange for cash contributions.

With a corporation, investors will buy shares in the corporation. With limited liability companies, the investors will buy membership interests. Regardless, this traditional exchange gives rise to a problem common among small business owners. They often end up giving away too much equity.

From Joy to Misery

A common mistake made by new business owners is to give away too much equity when getting initial cash contributions. This occurs because they let insecurities impact their evaluation of the business. Instead of giving away two percent of equity in exchange for $50,000, they often give away ten percent. Let’s look at an example.

An industrious person starts a business selling digital gadgets. S/he prepares a business plan and realize s/he needs $250,000 to get everything up and running. s/he has $50,000, but need to find the rest somewhere. So s/he forms a corporation with 1,000 shares and start approaching potential investors.

S/he offers 100 shares for $25,000 and finds five investors that invest $125,000 in exchange for 500 total shares. In summary, s/he now has $175,000, but has given away half the equity in the business. While s/he is not happy about this, s/he is still so excited and enthused about the business idea that s/he shrugs it off.

Compounded misery

The business gets rolling and s/he starts selling gadgets like crazy after one year. This gives rise to a serious cash problem because s/he’s getting orders, but can’t fill them because of cash flow problems. To make a proper go of the business, s/he needs another $100,000.

Where is s/he going to get $100,000? The business is only one year old, so a bank won’t touch it. The original investors haven’t seen penny one back, and are unwilling to put more money in. The only option is to sell another 400 shares for $100,000. Fortunately, s/he sells the shares, raises the money and stays in business. However, there is a major problem.

In raising all of this money, s/he has now sold off ninety percent of the equity in a business S/HE started, but now s/he’s left owning 100 shares and only 10 percent of the business. This is going to severely impact this owner’s physical, emotional and overall motivational well being. Slowly but surely, s/he’s going to become very bitter. It was s/he that had the idea and s/he is doing all the work! It really isn’t fair that s/he only owns 10 percent of the business! But that’s how it is. End of example!

Guard your equity…fiercely!

On second thought, this impression may come on very quickly. Regardless, the business is destined to experience major problems because the primary motivating force is no longer motivational. Unfortunately, many people with business ideas run into this problem.

If you are starting a business, guard your equity at all costs. Selling equity should be a last resort. Try to get loans or trade profit sharing in lieu of selling equity. If you must sell equity, do so only in small percentages. You do not want to be the small business person in the example above.

Digital & Electronic Products – Unbeatable in Quality and Price!

05/01/2012
First Steps Towards Your Own Web Entrepreneurship
First steps: Choosing the business

When starting an Web-based business there are a few things you should consider must-have requirements.
1. Business Name – Domain
2. Web Hosting
3. Advertising (Marketing) Budget
4. Web Marketing Tools
Among the most important requirements when starting your Web-based business is the business name. Since you will also need a domain name to make it possible for Web users to find your business, it will serve you well if you can get a domain name that is the same as, or very similar to your business name. Reason being, in the case of a Web-based business, your website IS your business; so having a domain name and business name that is the same will improve your marketing and optimization efforts.

Web Hosting is to your Web-based business as commercial space is to your offline (brick and mortar) business. You need a space in which to operate, where your customers can come and visit your store, look around, browse and perhaps make a purchase. Web Hosting provides that space for your web-based business. The Web Hosting company may be viewed as similar to your offline – retail space – landlord. They both provide the space from which you operate your business, making it a must-have requirement.

Exposure for your business

Now that you have your business/domain name and your Web hosting, you’re going to need exposure for your business. This aspect of your Web-based business can also be compared to an offline – brick and mortar – business in that advertising is essential to the success or failure of the brick and mortar and is even a more crucial element to your Web-based business because you would not have the benefit of “walk-in” traffic with a Web-based entity. So you must have an advertising and marketing budget.

In order to be as proficient in marketing your Web-based business – as you must assume your competitor is – you will need a Web marketing toolkit consisting of the kind of Web marketing tools you’re most comfortable with to facilitate your marketing campaigns. This is an area in which you will find several options. Web marketing tools you will be able to choose from include (it’s assumed that you’ll have a computer and internet connection):
- Website/Blog
- Lead Capture Software
- Autoresponder
- Video Producer
- Web Conferencing
- WYSIWYG or Other HTML Editor
You will also have at your disposal a number of Web marketing methods, techniques and resources that are proven to get results based on prior use by many successful and well established Web business owners who came before you. Types of marketing I refer to are:
- Content Creation (Article Marketing)
- Social Media Marketing (Social Networking)
- Copywriting (Salesletter Composition)
- PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Campaigns
- Traffic Exchange Surfing
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Profitability: The ultimate goal

Some of these methods you may not be familiar with in the early days of your Web-based business. However, you will always have the option of hiring someone who is an expert in one of these areas to do a professional job for you, which is why an “advertising and marketing” budget is among your must-have requirements.

After you’ve put together the best combination of your must-haves, Web marketing tools and types of marketing you intend to utilize, you can then decide whether or not you want to do most of the work, hire professionals to do the work or automate – as much as possible – your Web-based business so as to reduce your workload.

Let’s not forget what may be the most important element of your Web-based business. It must be Profitable! You may requireme that the business have the potential to generate at least $1,000 per month in profit, so as to replace the income from your job, thus making your Web-based business your full time job.

Only you will know the amount of revenue you want your Web-based business to generate. Once you’ve set a monetary goal and your other must-have requirements are in place, you can be off to the best start expected of any Web-based entity. Good Luck!
04/27/2012
Why Promoting Products Seems Easier Than Services
The products line

In this post we’ll take a look at the difference between promoting products as compared to promoting your services. In order to better understand each other during the discussion we should first agree on the most basic (if not obvious) differences between a product and a service. For the purposes of this discussion: A product is tangible! A service is not tangible!

Products often have cool features that show results quickly. You can talk about the benefits of a feature and how it will make your customer’s life easier and you will probably get a sale based on one product feature or another which is displayed clearly for your prospect to see.

About services

Services on the other hand, are intangible. There are no buttons to push or “before and after” pictures to see. Services often get categorized as “luxury items” we can usually survive without. They are more challenging to sell because the “results” of a service can be difficult to quantify, measure or prove.

Many “hard sell” sales trainers shy away from working with service providers. It is easier to train someone to sell products with features you can see and results you can prove than it is to sell a service which is devoid of such features or results proof.

Say, for example, that you spent a few years in the corporate world selling products like electronic telephone systems, and then went into selling yellow pages advertising. Many of the techniques used to sell telephones wouldn’t work in selling advertising! You’d probably have found out that you needed new sales techniques in order to promote the intangible results of advertising.

Value, essentially!

Authors, Coaches, Consultants, and other such professionals produce results that improve the human side of life and business and “Alternative Healers” deal with subtle energies that may take longer to produce quantifiable results. To the average consumer, these are luxuries that, although desirable and beneficial, can be crossed off the shopping list if money is tight.

You would also have found that most of your advertising clients hadn’t a clue about how to tell people about the benefits and results of their excellent services due to a sense of frustration they felt, and wondered why clients were so hard to get. Even today many are good at explaining how they work and what tools they use.

The problem is that most consumers couldn’t care less about how you work. They care more about the benefits they will experience after hiring you. They want to be clear on what results you can deliver in exchange for their hard-earned money.

“What’s in it for me?” your customers are asking. It is time to stop feature-dumping! Features only imply that a “process” is beneficial, or a “technique” is going to help…. As a service provider you must be able to describe clear results to potential clients.

A success story scenario

Service provider is in despair. She has a great service as a professional organizer and sadly, few customers to show for it.

She is asked to list the top 10 benefits of her excellent service. However, she – like so many others responding to this request – provides a list of features instead.

She lists “features” that describes how she gets to a result. Features like:
- Customized quotes
- Office flow organization tweaking
- Creation of new filing systems
- Ergonomic layouts for offices, etc.
They sound pretty good, don’t they? Sure, and the service provider’s customers seemed interested and keen, BUT they were not following through and hiring her.

Then she got some help in articulating a more effective sales list displaying a number of benefits and results relating to her excellent work. Results like:
1. Added value of charging only her client’s specific needs
2. Improved and streamlined office procedures
3. Saving time and reducing frustrations
4. Ability to provide better customer service
5. Increased efficiency with an improved filing structure
6. Less time wasted due to poor office layout
Resulting in increased productivity all around. She was also successful in creating a list of 6 good questions she can ask to uncover if a client needs organizational help. The reason being, why waste time telling clients all about her services if they don’t need them. Seems to make sense, right?

Service promotion proof is in the results

Now, this service provider will always ask questions to find out first if someone seriously needs her service. If they do, she tells them with confidence about the results she can provide and is more secure in asking for their business. By following these guidelines you too can get hired faster with more confidence practically every time!

If you are a service provider with very little sales background and you struggle to close the deal with potential clients, you can enlist the help of one or more business / life coach classes to learn the format, confidence, clarity and momentum needed to get out there and get more clients! A quick search on Google for business / life coach will get you a lot more information on this subject. – Good luck!

Digital & Electronic Products – Unbeatable in Quality and Price!
04/23/2012
Fact-Based Perspective On Web Entrepreneurship

Stats-based web success

Who doesn’t want to run a business from their home and wear a bathrobe to virtual business meetings? Since those heady days of the dotcom boom circa 1995, the ideal of starting an online business has drawn many to try their business legs in the challenges of online commerce. And indeed, the statistics were attractive back in 2009 during which time, over fifty-five percent of American households are wired for the Web, and over a third, or 32 percent have made a purchase online, according to the US Census Bureau. Today that number has increased to approximately seventy-five percent.

Also, according to InternetRetailer.com, “U.S. e-commerce sales totaled $165.4 billion in 2010, up 14.8% from $144.1 billion in 2009, according to non-adjusted estimates released today by the U.S. Commerce Department. The numbers also show that e-commerce is taking a bigger slice of the overall retail sales pie and is growing at a much faster pace than retail sales. 4.2% of total retail spending took place online during 2010, up from 3.9% in 2009, according to Commerce Department estimates.

When excluding sales in categories not commonly bought online — automobiles, fuel, grocery and food service sales — Internet Retailer calculates that e-commerce accounted for 7.6% of total retail sales during the year, up from 7.0% in 2009. Total retail sales, which includes e-commerce sales, increased 7.0% in 2010 and totaled $3.92 trillion.”

The Web: A blender of success?

So yes, there are buckets of money being made online, but who’s making it and who’s not? When some folks think of “making money online,” or Web Entrepreneurship, they create an image of simply turning on a computer and getting money out of it, as if it were an ATM machine. In fact, the Web, and all the commercial features of it, are merely tools in the entrepreneur’s toolbox that should be used alongside other, more traditional tools.

When you’re building a house, for example, sometimes that high-tech, laser pointing thingamabob is great; but sometimes you just need a nail and hammer. And so it is with online business, and supplementing all the high-tech with old-fashioned business, or in many cases, supplementing old-fashioned business with some high-tech, is what it takes to be successful. Success online comes not in replacing the old with the new, but blending them together.

Remember the old Yahoo!?

With a few high-profile exceptions, most businesses that “make money online” successfully aren’t exclusive virtual sales companies, but instead, they use the Web as just one of several sales channels. While people are buying things online, they enjoy having the Web as an option, but don’t want it to be their only option. More often than not, the Web is used as a vehicle for researching products that will actually be bought in an actual brick-and-mortar store.

Creating a virtual business doesn’t mean that it should be exclusively virtual. The most successful online businesses are those that have promoted themselves offline as well as on, through traditional media such as television and newspapers plus “click-throughs” and email advertising. Yahoo!, in its early days, was an excellent example of a fabulously successful online company, but what do many of us remember most when we think of Yahoo! these days? The silly yodel from their olod television commercials.

The online-offline strategy

Perhaps one of the most important things to remember when starting an online business, is not to get lost in the online mystique. The Web revolution has brought, and continues to bring, us all manner of useful tools and techniques for commerce, but if you want to get customers to visit your new online boutique, it’s a good idea to actually change out of your bathrobe, get out of your den, and actually talk to some people face-to-face, or at least, send out a few traditional newsletters that includes your online store information.

04/18/2012
Entrepreneurs Making Millions On The Web – Hype or Fact?

The hype or fact equation

How much money can you, the entrepreneur, make on the Web? Are there really entrepreneurs making millions on the Web? Can it be both hype AND fact that entrepreneurs are making millions on the Web? All these questions have been asked and answered many times by entrepreneurs who did their due diligence in researching the possibilities of making money on the Web over the last 20 to 30 years. However, we will take another look at this topic.

First and foremost let’s talk about the “hype or fact” element. Of course there are entrepreneurs making millions on the Web! And it is certainly reasonable to believe that you can be one of them. However, you should not allow any hype surrounding the emergence of opportunities cause you to lose your common sense.

Entrepreneurs become millionaires by effectively assessing the needs of a market and having a product or service that addresses those needs. There is a lot of hype surrounding the issue of making money on the Web, but as was stated earlier, entrepreneurs can make millions on the Web.

Before and after the Web

The Web can greatly expand your methods of selling products and/or services, as well as the market to which you sell them. Some entrepreneurs have been able to use this marketplace to make a lot of money. Some companies that operate only on the Web have made Web millionaires of their entrepreneurial founders. There is probably little doubt that Google founder Larry Page and Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg were young entrepreneurs who aspired to be millionaires before they actually became Web millionaires.

Let’s look at it this way. Before the Web there were auctions, but no eBay. With thousands of items sold daily, each one making a profit for eBay, there is no doubt that the founders must be entrepreneurs who had an idea for eBay – or something like it – and are now Web millionaires. And before the Web there were bookstores, but no Amazon.com. Today Amazon is outdoing traditional bookstores. Don’t you wish you were the entrepreneur who founded Amazon.com? Or, at least, one of the founding entrepreneurs?

An idea and a belief in self

Web entrepreneurs who become millionaires start with an idea and a belief in themselves. They find a way to set themselves apart from the rest. Like real world millionaires, they often have enough faith in their ideas that they risk their own money and even seek additional funding elsewhere. Once they get started, they make themselves big enough that the other competition does not threaten them.

Entrepreneurs who become millionaires on the Web, start early in the game. For example, now that we have eBay, people often forget that there are other auctions. The only real competition Amazon.com has today is the traditional bookstores that were always there and since Amazon.com has expanded into several other product lines it is somewhat of and overstatement to refer to traditional bookstores as competition.

When optimism outweighs pessimism

If you, the entrepreneur, want to be a Web millionaire, think of a need that is still largely unfulfilled or a market that is largely untapped. After that, you will have to believe in your idea enough to take some financial risks. If it doesn’t work, you lose your investment. If it does however, you might join the ranks of entrepreneurs who became millionaires on the Web.

In conclusion, let me pose this question: If you have what you think is a great idea, and you believe in it, wouldn’t your optimism that it WILL work outweigh your pessimism that it won’t? If your answer is yes, it follows then that although the risk of financial lost is real and you have taken that risk into consideration, it does not outweigh the prospects of success for your idea. If you agree with this conclusion, then you truly are an entrepreneur at heart!

Digital & Electronic Products – Unbeatable in Quality and Price!

04/11/2012