What To Do If Your Entrepreneurship Fails The First Time

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

Making your way as an entrepreneur is never going to be easy. Sure, you might have a “head for business”, and that makes the process more manageable without a doubt, but without putting in a lot of hard work the chances of sustained success will inevitably be limited. This is important to remember, because the path to business success is littered with companies and individuals who had good ideas and vision but when frustrated at an early stage failed to drive forwards in the way they would have hoped to. It is easy to become discouraged, especially when there is money in the equation, but the people who find real success are the ones who realize that problem solving is an indispensable part of business.

One of the major problems that arises in business is a slow start. You have an idea and find a way to put it into action. You have good contacts and feel you have advertised well, but for one reason or another there is not the take-up on your offers that you would have hoped for. This is a situation that can arise for any number of reasons. You need two things to overcome this problem, and they are very different things. Firstly you need to be able to analyse well. There will be a reason things didn’t go as hoped. Did you think through your advertising campaign? Have you priced your service too high? Was there some slippage between what you promised and what you could deliver? These are just three reasons, and it may be that you find another reason.

The second thing you need is the tenacity to avoid getting discouraged. A business going wrong can be one of the most painful things to happen to a person, after divorce, bereavement and serious injury. It can be hard to separate the business from your personal identity, so if you feel that people do not like the business, you might extrapolate from that a personal slight against you. In actual fact, there is every reason why things might have failed in spite of you rather than because of you. Be forensic in looking for reasons why things went wrong, positive in applying a solution and honest in sticking to it.

Think about other things that didn’t quite take off at the first attempt but which are managing perfectly well now. Think about businesses and people who even went bankrupt once or more before they pulled things around, like Walt Disney and Henry Ford. That is the level of tenacity you need. No-one’s saying you should push things until you go bankrupt, but if you can rally yourself when things don’t begin encouragingly, you can be successful. In fact, it may be that it is what makes you successful. Every time you solve a problem, you learn something – something which is almost certain to be useful later on in your life. For this reason you need to roll with the punches from time to time. Combine wisdom with perseverance, and you will succeed.
First Published: Aug 8, 2009 EntrepreneurJourney.com

How Web Entrepreneurs Make Money Online By Striking The Iron While It's Hot

Strike While The Iron Is Hot

The definition of an entrepreneur is someone who will take a risk to make a profit. Although the image that the description conjures up might give the impression that to be an entrepreneur you need to be somewhat shady, this is not necessarily so. In fact, shady characters tend to become shady so as to avoid the risk created by their initiatives, letting someone else take the fall for their misplaced bet, as it were. An entrepreneur spots the opportunity to make an honest buck and goes for it. If they fail, at least they go down swinging, while if they succeed they have done so on their own terms.

In a majority of cases, then, entrepreneurs become so by striking while the iron is hot. They recognise a trend or a demand and look at how they can supply that demand, how they can tap into that trend. Because so much money is on the Internet these days, a lot of the entrepreneurial spirit of our time is directed there too. A web entrepreneur recognizes that much of the money on the Internet comes from advertising, so to make money on the Internet it is useful to find a way of harnessing that advertising. This is something that takes a bit of knowledge of website building, but not necessarily a great deal of such knowledge. It is all about how to manipulate a situation to your advantage. It relies on the creation of a blog, or a website, that people will want to visit, and the placement of appropriate ad content on the pages of that site.

The most important thing is that the site is something that will carry traffic through it. This relies on it being on a relevant topic. The more “of its time” the topic is, the better – if it can be arranged around the time of a major sporting event, for example, you will be able to bring people in on the basis of that event, and when they click through your advertisements they will earn you money – particularly if they make a purchase as a result of that click. This may sound cynical – cashing in on an event in which you may not have an interest, but the key point is that the medium will reward a good website. The more people who stick around to read your site, the more clicks you will get and the more sales you will generate. Consequently, you will make more money if you write a better website.

If you know something about your subject, it will help. There are countless people who have tried to start websites to cash in on an event, thinking that it was guaranteed money – but aficionados of a topic will be quite discriminating in terms of sites, and if it insults their intelligence they will give yours a miss. You may discover that you have a talent for what you are doing. If that turns out to be the case, so much the better, as there is certainly money to be made from it

First Published: July 19, 2009 EntrepreneurJourney.com

How To Setup An International Business With An eBay And A PayPal Account

International Business – Not Just For The Big Guys

When you hear the words “international business”, it would be normal to think of the companies with billion-dollar turnovers who have offices and possibly production plants in many countries. This is indeed what many people think when they hear those words because, after all, that is largely what it used to mean. Any company which had the money to carry out such a level of International trading would be one of the big ones. However, this has changed, as so much has in the business world, due in no small part to the Internet. As a budding entrepreneur, one of your first thoughts should be “How do I give this an International angle?”. By doing that you can seriously increase your profit margins.

Whatever your business is, there is sure to be some way that you can dress it up for an International market. Indeed, there is a case to be made for the argument that smaller businesses can cater for a wider range of people (if not a larger number) because of the freedom that their independence brings. If you can make your service so personalized that it allows you to offer the same refined items to people from Abu Dhabi to Zurich, it will allow you to take advantage of the massive reach of the world wide web. Although not everybody has the Internet, there are few parts of the world where there is not some level of Internet service. Its importance in terms of transferring information has seen most governments pump lots of money into making Internet capability widespread.

Having an Internet business presence is really one of the simplest things on the world. On the most basic level all you really need is an eBay account. If you have a stock of items to sell, or you make things to order, then all you really need to do is list them on the site and set prices, either for auction or using the “Buy It Now” option. If you set up a PayPal account alongside this, then you can receive payment in any currency, allowing you to have a balance in dollars, pounds, euros, dirhams, pesos or any other currency you could name. You can transfer it into your national currency or leave it as it is – but costly money transferring charges can now be a thing of the past.

You do not need to be a faceless conglomerate to make your business viable on an International level. The more trading you do with people in other countries, the more you will understand what plays well in different markets. People are learning every day, and the world is genuinely becoming a smaller place in a figurative sense. Getting an international, online element sorted out could take your business from respectability to fully verifiable success – all you need to do is play it the right way. A little bit of research is all that you require. Then sit back and watch the money roll in, in whatever form it comes.

First Published: June 22, 2009 EntrepreneurJourney.com

What Question To Ask Yourself When Planning Business Success?

Learning A Trade Pays Off

One thing that holds a lot of people back from going into business is a lack of confidence in their own value as a potential businessperson. They look at the world of entrepreneurial endeavour and think of how great it would be to be their own boss, decide the rules and the hours, and make money for themselves. All looks rosy until the question arises of what they are actually going to do. Regrettably, people on getting to this point are liable to think “Well, what can I do that no-one else can offer?”, come up against a brick wall and shelve the plan altogether. Firstly, there are very few unique businesses in the world, and those that are, are so niche that they probably do not make much money.

The better question to ask yourself when planning business success is “what do people need?”. You may also ask yourself what people want, but the former question is more important. People will always pay for what they need, but sometimes they have to lay aside what they want for reasons of economy. Depending of course on how busy you want to be and how much you want or are able to commit to the business initially, you can decide for yourself whether you want to serve a need or satisfy a want. One way or the other, this raises the question – “am I equipped to do what people need?”. If you do not feel that you are, this need not be the end of your entrepreneurial venture.

It has been proven time and again that people will pay for someone to do something they cannot do for themselves. It may be something really rather straightforward in real terms, but there may be many factors preventing them from doing the job themselves. Maybe they are impaired in terms of mobility or a certain motor function. Maybe they are extremely busy. Maybe they feel that the job would be better done by someone with the knowledge of how to do it.

This is where learning a trade really pays off. If you have ever considered learning a trade, there is really no better time. And if you never have, then why not consider it? Remember, there are many of us who work for a company or a boss because we don’t feel that we can drive things forward ourselves due to a lack in some part of the process. But why limit yourself? You can learn a trade, and the knowledge will end up paying for itself.

There are countless trades that we can go into. Maybe you’ve always fancied learning to become a plumber. By doing this, you can find yourself very much in demand from the get-go. People will always need plumbers, handymen, decorators and all kinds of other tradesmen. The benefits to you from doing a course in a trade that you find interesting will stay with you for some time – and could be the key to a goldmine that will just keep on giving.

First Published: July 4, 2009 EntrepreneurJourney.com

Internet Business and Online Money Making

Internet Business These Days

Another type of business that is getting very much popular nowadays is the internet business. People who own a successful internet business are enjoying the financial benefits and also maintaining a luxurious life style. There are a lot of internet marketing experts who are available for live support online and also they write article or blogs on various websites which can be easily accessed to know the tips and tricks of the trade. There is quite a lot of online money making tutorial websites now present on the internet and people have learned the necessary details and have managed to become the entrepreneurs and have earned mil lions through the internet business. All you should know is to make yourself aware of the internet business strategies. In order to reach the place where you can be an entrepreneur of you own internet business, you must first know all the tools, resources and necessary technical know how.

The very first thing that you need to know for online money making is that you need to decide what sort of product you would want to launch and promote through your website or what sort of internet services you may want to provide to your visitors. You will then need to register a domain name for you and a web host who will host your website. Some website host servers charge as low as $80 per month.

There are many popular ways to make money online for example, blog writing, social networking or a search engines. Blog writing is more fun filled and creative form of activity and plus once you have the internet traffic on your website, your blog site can earn you thousands of dollars per month. A lot of visitors visit blog sites to read and share the information on various topics. Once this becomes viral it will start giving you the kind of promotion you need to be successful in your internet business.

Social networking is another source to earn online. You must have visited a lot of social networking websites who offer a platform for the people all over the globe to know each other and make friends. There are also dating websites and lot of people subscribe to these sites. Social networking also has proved to be a great deal of a help for internet business and money making. And if we talk about the Search engines optimization or SEO it is also getting very much popular. SEO is basically based upon the back links. You can place back links in your articles and place them at article web sites or other blog sites etc. The SEO (search engine optimization) of your website affects the popularity of your website and bring you to a higher ranking at famous search engines. The SEO also promote the web traffic to your page. One important point that a newbie should never ignore is that making money through online business is going to take a lot of hard work and time as well. You should be very clear in the beginning whether you want to choose the internet business for a part time or full time option and which methods of marketing you would consider. The best trait for you is to believe in yourself and this is the only trait you need to make things happen.

First Published: Feb 13, 2010 EntrepreneurJourney.com