A Few Rules and Practical Tips for New Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurial

It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur–in the last decade, technology has leveled the playing field and propelled an entrepreneurial revolution. As an entrepreneur, you now have more access to information that enables you to make more intelligent choices more quickly. You have an advantage over big businesses in that you’re lighter, more flexible, and faster on your feet. You can target new markets more quickly, and you can turn on a dime.

But being a successful entrepreneur requires that you look at the big picture and follow a plan through from beginning to end. Rieva Lesonsky, editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine gives some practical guidelines that can help you when beginning your own enterprise:

First and foremost

Don’t Quit Your Day Job. Consider starting your business part-time, especially if it’s online, while you’re working and have a steady income. It usually takes six months to a year to get a business going and you don’t want your ability to make your house payment to hinge upon your company being an overnight success. Start with what you can manage, financially and time-wise, and scale up as your business grows.

Second

Find Your Niche. The days of general stores are over. Particularly online, consumers are looking for stores that specialize. You have to find a need–something a specific group of people want, but can’t get at the big chain stores–and fill it. Advises Lesonsky, “You can’t compete with the big guys, so you have to find where the big guys aren’t and go into your niches.

Third

Have an Online Presence. Even if you’re not planning to start an online retail business, consider that the internet can still play a valuable role in your company. Having an online presence eliminates the limitations of physical location and broadens your customer base by, literally, millions. It’s also a great tool for promoting yourself and letting people, even in your own area, know that you’re there, and what you’re doing.

Fourth

Refuse to Quit. Successful entrepreneurship requires creativity, energy, and a drive to keep going when you fail. Few people realize that before Bill Gates created the extremely successful Microsoft 3.0, he created a Microsoft 1.0 and 2.0, both of which flopped–but he kept at it. And that determination and refusal to give up is what will separate successful entrepreneurs from unsuccessful ones. Says Lesonsky, “Arm yourself with optimism to get beyond the ‘No’ or the trouble. There’s nothing wrong in failure–just don’t repeat the same mistake!”

Submitting Your Website To The Search Engines


Invite search engines to your site

Proper website promotion is becoming increasingly important. There are literally billions of web pages on the Internet, and this makes getting noticed online a very difficult task. The first step to getting your web page visited by your target audience is to submit the page to search engines and directories.

You may think the search engines, like Yahoo, Google, Altavista, or Excite, somehow search every document on every server to find a match, but that is not the case. In order for a website to be included in search results, the web crawler – or search engine bot or spider – has to know that the site exists.

This is where submitting your website to search engines and directories becomes important. This is your way of telling the search engines that you exist, so they can point potential viewers to your site. There are several ways to go about submitting your site to the various search engines.

Search engine submission is a process

You can submit your site directly to each individual search engine, you can use an agent to submit your website for you, or you can use automated website submission forms.

The first option is certainly the cheapest option, and you will know that the job is done because you will have done it yourself; but there are several important drawbacks to consider if you are thinking about submitting your website to search engines directly. While it is true that it only costs you some time and there will be no doubt in your mind that it has been done, there are some difficulties.

 

First, it can be a very time-consuming and tedious process. Secondly, submitting these forms is an art; you’ll need to get it right so that you get the best page-ranking possible. If you have little or no experience in this area, you may want to think twice before submitting your site to the search engines on your own.

Explore alternative submission methods

That being said, if you know what to do and how to do it, submitting on your own can save you money and maybe even a headache or two.

Another option is to use an agent. This is a real live person who will submit your website to all the search engines manually. This person will ensure that it is done properly, in a timely manner, and in such a way that will maximize your page views. Again, there are some things to consider when you are looking at this option.

For starters, you need to make sure you are getting someone reputable who will actually do the job his or herself, and not delegate it to an online submission service, or else you could just be throwing your money away. Also, an agent can be very pricey, so you need to make sure that your website is sufficiently unique to call for such a specialized service.

The submission process can be automated

Lastly, there are automated website submitters all over the Web. Finding one should not be difficult. Finding a reputable one that is worth the money is a different story. Most of these services come pretty cheap, but you don’t get the high level of service you would get through an agent or by doing the job yourself.

However, depending on what your specific needs are, the speed make these submission services an attractive option for many website owners, bloggers, article marketers and webmasters.

It is wise to check out your favorite online trade association to make sure that the site you are dealing with is legitimate. Look for things like physical addresses and phone numbers to help verify the legitimacy of any given website submission service.