Michel and Sylvia Fortin have run successful copywriting and outsourcing businesses (along with dabbling in many niches). They are veteran speakers on stage for business development.
Perhaps more than anything else, their experience seeing the needs of business owners motivated them and their team to construct a well-organized, step-by-step, and comprehensive coaching membership site called Success Chef with which I am indirectly affiliated.
Whether you are new to online business or want to take your existing business to the next level, whether you are on a shoestring budget or have a cushion for investment, whether you need money right now or can wait until your business is well cooked and the aroma gets out, the Fortin’s take you to what’s next for you if you just follow the recipe. Plus the site has a large “pantry” stuffed with resources and problem-solving ideas for many business types. Plus email support. Plus, plus.
The Fortin’s basic online business model teaches a four part progression from “Viability” to “Sourcing” to “Website” to “Marketing.” Violating the steps in the progression usually yields failed business one way or another.
For example, the most important step in their view is “viability.” Viability is more than finding where in the water the fish swim, but also what the fish are like, what they want, and how the fish want it delivered. If fundamental problems appear in your business, viability is usually the step to which you need to return to correct it.
(The Fortin’s give a sneak preview of viability techniques by suggesting Spyfu.com to gain information on successful competitors and Quantcast.com for demographic details of your target market.)
But if you are into shady practices and short cutting customers, beware that the Fortins have landed squarely in promoting sound business ethics.
Watch this one-hour video tutorial from Success Chef
Tags: business coaching
Amit Mehta of PPC Classroom 2.0 suggests various website design and use ideas to make you website more search engine friendly.
To this may be added resources listed in the first section of Online Resources for Affiliate Marketers.
Tags: PPC, search engine friendly
As I write, I believe the next big trend in the markets will be a much scarier ride down than the previous 2008-2009 recession from which we are supposedly recovering. I consider the US in particular as perhaps subject to the greatest changes, although the trend will be global to one degree or another.
If we take a forthcoming deflationary depression as a foregone conclusion, how do we succeed in business while in a depression?
If I am not going out on a limb to predict a depression, I would be to predict a likely scenario for many things. I do not know which institutions will go bankrupt and whether the dollar will fail, for example.
I can say that Americans have already taken action under changed circumstances, as is no doubt true elsewhere. Things like reducing expenses, delays in having children, and working until older. These changes can only become more common in the near future, but for many, they will not prove sufficient. More fundamental and sweeping changes in expectations must occur.
For a period, we will not know what to expect in an alarmingly worsening market. We will have fewer options when accident or illness strike. More emotional stress over debt, more fear of spending, greater difficulty gaining trust, more competition for customers, fewer business and educational opportunities, more losses of homes, careers, cars.
In the 1930s, the US looked in substantial measure to government credit for relief, but government credit is tapped out now in the US. There is much truth in claiming that government does not create wealth, at best it only provides a milieu in which private citizens can create wealth.
Government functions by siphoning wealth off of private citizens. And when the income of private citizens drops, government revenues drop with them. Less money for welfare. Less money for social security. Less money for schools, roads, health, public transportation, education and research grants, farm subsidies, and so on.
Of course, the changes will present new opportunities for business. Many products and services are geared toward customer tastes under bull market expectations. In a bear market, many will develop new expectations and tastes for bear market products and services.
In comparison to the bull market, many will have even stronger unmet desires, but less money to buy. It would be a mistake to focus on price alone, although a preponderance of credit card spending will likely yield to cash and debit card spending.
Economic pain and job scarcity will likely motivate more to take risks associated with self-employment and entrepreneurship. More desperate people will also try their hand at scamming others. Skepticism toward too-good-to-be-true opportunities can only increase. But the entrepreneurs who provide innovative solutions will do well.
In general, those businesses which helpfully address people’s fears will probably find the readiest markets. If not a wild income, at least a small, steady one. If not the hope of elective surgery, at least the assurance of lower risk. If not quiet private homes, at least close proximity to opportunity. If not the convenience of debt spending, at least a secure investment. If not time saving outsourcing and automation, at least an affordable do-it-yourself. If not the vanity of flaunting, at least the value of floating.
Success itself will be redefined. And yesterday is the time to think about what it will be.
Tags: economic depression
Say you are a small business owner online. At some point, you realize that you don’t have enough time or skills to do it all. Your time is more valuable than your money. You outsource.
In the beginning, of course, you may not consider outsourcing much. Its cheaper to do it yourself. You also learn by doing.
Maybe at some point then, you have done something often and well enough, but you feel you could better spend your time doing other tasks.
Or you can do a task, but feel others could do it better.
Or you are at the mercy of your betters, perhaps in a technical area. Or you have a special project you need extra manpower to complete.
Research
Writing content
Developing websites
Software development to automate “X”
Graphic design
For such outsourcing, here are a few sites to consider.
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Elance.com – a kind of online mall connecting buyers and sellers of a variety of online outsourcing types
- Craigslist.org – a kind of mass online classifieds site (as well as serving other purposes)
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Guru.com – technology, creative arts, business
- Odesk.com – hire online workers
- Hubportinteractive.com – “IT Web Solutions and System Development Solutions,” based in the Philippines
For Website Design or Software Development (many from Sylvie Fortin)
- Minisitegraphics.com – Direct Response Graphics
- Agentsofvalue.com – “link builders, web developers, virtual assistants, graphics designers and webmaster staff”
- Mturk.com – Amazon
Or on the flip side, if you have a skill to offer like research and writing or software development, you can use the above sites to attract clients to hire you. As a service, many of the sites listed above act as liaison for financial transactions.
Peter Rubel
Tags: outsourcing
Once you have a target niche, domain name, and at least the beginnings of a site or blog, the next logical step is to find the right web hosting company (and plan within the company) to service viewers.
Most small business owners have found outsourcing web hosting is less of a hassle and more cost effective than hosting one’s own website on one’s own PC. Web hosting is popular and competitive enough to make fees for start-up sites reasonable. Why not let someone else handle power outages, server crashes, viruses, spam, and a host of technical details for your site?
Choice of a web hosting provider becomes less dependent on computer speed and memory space as these continue to improve over time … for decreasing costs. Even once high-end hosting software has come within reach for small business webmasters.
I think the CEO of Google once remarked that by circa 2024, you could turn on a garden-variety iPod and play video downloaded on it for 85 years … nonstop because the memory capacity will be that great.
All that does not mean that the small business owner should necessarily choose the cheapest web hosting available. If your site traffic grows, your hosting service may not be able to handle the load, which is bad for the growth. Plan for a bandwidth cushion and find a company that allows for upgrades.
(And by the way, if you choose free web hosting, remember that with it comes somebody else’s advertisements and site control.)
For small business owners, I suspect that in the future, what will separate the best web hosting providers from the pack will be customer service, reliability, and reputation. Plus possibly environmental friendliness.
In one sense, improvements in technology will make reliability of web hosting common to all. Better power back-up. Better automated house cleaning and troubleshooting. However, with increasing technological complexity comes increasing troubleshooting issues. Reliability will be an issue as long as humans are involved.
If your business depends heavily on Christmas sales, your server is more likely to crash or have down time in the Christmas rush than at other times no matter how sophisticated the hardware and software. (… This is a hint to make sure the web hosting service is 24/7.)
One way to determine reliability is by reputation. Check out the web host’s awards and certificates of recognition. If a provider has them, the provider will display them on site. Also check for customer reviews (unless the review suggests the customer has an axe to grind).
So I think the primary factor separating the best web hosting providers from the rest will be customer service. By customer service, I don’t just mean how accessible and friendly the voice at the other end of the phone line is, but how committed the company is to solving your problems, particularly your technical problems associated with providing your site viewers with fast, functioning, reliable service.
admin
P.S. Transfer of your site from one web host to another is possible, but software compatibility and other technical issues are part of the process. It is easier to make a good choice first thing.
Tags: Web Hosting
Your domain name is one of the most important marketing tools, and often one of the first items web viewers will see. If you already have a domain name that is less than ideal (as I do), the following may help you do worse next time. Here’s seven great ideas about how to choose a bad domain name:
1) Make the name irrelevant to the subject matter of the site or blog. If your subject matter is growing tomatoes in your garden, choose a name like “spaghettirecipes.com” or “farmfertilizer.org.”
That way, most of your site visitors will leave instantly and be disappointed.
Part and parcel of being irrelevant is avoiding keyword research. That way, choosing a good domain name will be like pinning the tail on the donkey when you are blindfolded … and in the wrong room … and usually, the wrong house.
2) Choose a name which is obscure. Either make it relevant to a niche which is too obscure to attract anyone (“bedtimestoriesfordustmites.com”) or looks like personal code (“xlc462quagmirez34.com”) so no one will remember it. The longer, the better.
3) Make your name relevant to a fad as the fad is waning. That way, your domain name will be desired for the shortest possible time frame. As someone said, “He who is married to the spirit of the age is soon divorced.”
4) Avoid “.net,” “.org,” and especially “.com” addresses. Prefer “.info,” especially if you want to avoid a professional appearance or be harder to find.
5) Use misspellings. That way people are more likely to miss you when typing in your domain name into a search engine. Unfortunately, this can backfire if the misspelling is funny or common. Be careful to misspell properly.
Prefer “o” and “0″ which leads to confusion between letter and number. Similarly, keep searchers guessing whether your domain name has Roman numerals (“ix,” “v,” and so on) or letters of the alphabet.
6) Prefer underscores, hyphens, and numbers in your domain name, especially if they are unnecessary or have nothing to do with your existing brand or business name. It adds to the difficulty people have with your domain name.
7) If possible, choose a name which is generic in a highly competitive niche. That way, no one will ever find you in the crowd. Nothing in the name will make you stand out. You will be camouflaged.
Of course, there is an exception: your domain name infringes on the copyright of some big fish. At least that way, you will invite a law suit.
But otherwise, we hope the above helps keep you in the dark and on the web.
Peter Rubel
P.S. NameCheap.com and GoDaddy.com are two places to get started with domain names. Check for domain name availability at WhoIs.net.
P.P.S. As a bonus, you could purchase an old domain name with lots of baggage–one with a history of spamming, porn–whatever works (or doesn’t). Just try to shake such a reputation! Find out about the baggage for yourself on archive.org.
Tags: domain name, keyword research
Your website or blog may be lost in the crowd. Making it easier for the right people to find you online requires a little ingenuity.
1) Unless you are a big fish in a big pond, hunt for less popular keywords.
Using the Google adwords keyword tool in the “Descriptive words or phrases” section, you are more likely to find such words that have 150 to 2500 searches per month.
No, these Google results do not represent the whole picture, but they are a good benchmark.
2) Target keywords that are less competitive.
Do a Google search for any one particular keyword, and ideally the competing sites should be less than 10,000 near the upper right hand of the screen. In the image above, the results 26,900, are above the ideal … but not bad.
3) Use the Google Adwords keyword tool, Website Content section, for the site ranking highest in searches for related keyword ideas. The keywords generated are what Google considers relevant to the highest ranking site for the search you did.
4) Use each of your best keywords in their own article or blog post titles and once or twice in the body of your content.
Your blog posts and articles are more likely to rank well (Page Rank) if the titles contain keywords that have at least a moderate number of searches per month with a modest number of sites competing for the same keyword.
Further, the body of the article or blog post should have the keyword in it once or twice (do not overdo it) to tell the search engines and human readers that the title and content match.
Of course, the keywords should fit the context well. One keyword per article or blog post.
5) Use keywords as anchor texts in the resource boxes and biographical sections of your articles.
Most article directories have a separate section for the author to place self-serving information that may also be helpful to the reader.
Use the keyword as the text on which the reader may click. This helps search engines and human readers know what is relevant to the content of your article and to the site or page that will appear if the human user clicks the link.
… In which case, you should make the anchor text keyword relevant to your article and the page that shows up when the reader clicks the link.
Tags: boost traffic, keyword, keywords, PageRank
OK. I digress. But health is important to your business, and health care reform is still a political issue.
Consider: When we are healthy and mature enough (i.e., not children), normally we can be productive members of society. In those earning years, our productivity goes down with ill health.
Restoring the sick to productivity is itself a drain on productivity or savings, not to mention the loss in productivity of the sick during illness.
Medical care is a draining expense. Lack of medical care is more so. The question then becomes, “How can medical care minimize the drain on productivity and savings?”
But that is not the only question. Being human means more than our net economic worth to society. And each of us has an emotional attachment to his or her own survival.
And so we might sacrifice more productivity and savings than is necessary in order to help ensure our health and survival. Valuing human life as sacred and fearing for our own survival might even drive us to support universal tax-supported health care.
The appeal of universal health care is not so much the political mantra that we have a right to be healthy (as if achieving universal health were possible), but more because we fear ill-health and its consequences.
Whatever the advantages of tax supported health care, government cannot deliver on its promises of universal care unless it redefines such care in Orwellian terms.
For one thing, such a system provides incentive to overuse. Someone else’s tax dollars will support me. If I don’t use the system, I’ll miss out on something valuable. Thus overuse leads to waiting lists and rationing, as may be observed where tax supported health care has been instituted. Those who need care can’t get it in a timely fashion if at all.
A shift from private to universal, tax-supported health care also means that government gains greater control over who gets care and even what care is. In the US, such a system would seem to undermine human rights at a fundamental level, the doctor’s and the patient’s.
It also makes medical innovation much more difficult on average. Those with political clout may have the means to institute change under universal health care, but such entities normally have a vested interest in the status quo.
Of course, a private health care system, or the quasi-public, insurance-government-pharmaceutical-hospital system in the US today, each have their own problems. Some treated patients can’t pay. Some untreated patients can’t afford treatment.
There is no ideal solution to ill health. There is only the question of how to minimize ill-health’s damages while appeasing our emotions and valuing being human.
Given the present financial challenges nationally and internationally, health care of any sort is at greater risk than in a vibrant economy. Better business is thus one healthy pill for health care reform.
You purchased a domain name relevant to your business and have the beginnings of a website or blog on your web hosting service.
You downloaded some files onto your PC that you want on your website.
How do you transfer these files?
(1) You may download some open-source software to your PC for free to do this. For example, go to FileZilla (from Sourceforge) to download the client software–assuming you are doing this for your own website or blog.
FileZilla is file transfer protocol software, or FTP for short.
(2) Once your FileZilla screen is open, note the boxes at the top labeled Host, username, password, and port.
Typically, you would put your website URL in the Host box, minus the “http://” and the “www.” — such as YourDomainName.com. The username and password would typically be the same you use to get into the cpanel of your website.
The port box can be left blank, or the default port “21″ inserted.
(3) Now note the two columns below. The Local Site (left column) is your PC. The Remote Site (right column) is your website hosted wherever the web host server is located.
Find the file on your PC you want to transfer. Also locate the place you want it put, typically in public_html on your site.
Drag and drop with your mouse. Go into your cpanel, and there it should be!
Tags: file transfer, FileZilla, ftp, Web Hosting
