Finding the Right Help for Your Online Business
The stats say that 90% of home based startups will flop before 12 months have passed. I’m writing this in hopes of inspiring you to not let that happen!
You’ll find why you shouldn’t really be surfing the internet for business advice and why choosing one online business professional to follow is the only answer to a slump. Don’t worry though this won’t cost you an arm and a leg – you can start an online business and build it into a nice little income if you persevere.
My task today is to inspire home based and online business owners to either keep going through the hard times, reassess the business plan, or prepare to sell.
Walking away from the business you started is not an option. Even if you choose not to work through the hard times, your online business has value – value that you can be compensated for.
It’s a harsh realization should you come to the point where you think the only option is to close your hosting account and give up. You likely started that business with big expectations, a dream of financial freedom, or grand hopes for the future. Before you think of walking away, give it one last chance and remember the reasons why you first started your business or (at the very least) document where you are now with it and sell it on eBay (keep in mind that I said "at the very least").
Giving Up Your Home Based or Online Business…
It’s always best to have an exit plan in case things don’t work out but you should never completely give up on your home business.
Smart alternatives are to rework it, rewrite the mission, change the focus to make your business more profitable, enjoyable, or less time consuming.
There is never a good reason to let a home based business sink into oblivion. At minimum your domain name has tenure and therefore value.
Here’s an example from one of my subscribers last week (July 2007). She’d started a home based business but wasn’t seeing much money from it after 6 months of advertising and struggling to get customers and turn a profit. Trust me on this, the business she’d started is not a business you’d likely ever want to be in, and for the life of me I don’t know why she ever began…
As I said, after 6 months she was ready to pack it in.
Should she throw in the towel and walk away?
Not as far as I was concerned! She was already on her way to establishing her name and credibility in her market and community! Plus, she loved the business idea – she just didn’t love that it wasn’t making money off the hop the way she’d hoped.
All it would take to make the business model work was to rewrite a more profitable business plan, change her income sources, and stick with the primary market she’d originally targeted.
Advice for a Failing Business
In order to take any of the steps I suggest above (before walking away from a business), you need to know how to plan – or you need to find someone (a business consultant) who has been around the block with a home or online business before.
For years I have been offering free advice for failing or struggling business and I have helped hundreds of people through phone, personal and email support – not to mention the books I have published.
What’s really important to note here is that bad advice and information on home business survival run rampant online and one good reason why you shouldn’t be taking advice from 10 different marketers through email subscriptions and newsletters.
Keep in mind that:
- Not all advice suits all business models.
- A lot of the advice online is years old and may not even apply in today’s marketplace.
- Most people talking about business online have never run a business! Scary isn’t it? These people read that giving business advice, selling business ebooks, and positioning themselves as an expert is the way to make money online.
I can’t tell you the number of people who have written to me asking me to help them start an online business that teaches others how to earn money online. Now think about that for a moment…you can not teach what you do not know. If those people knew how to make money online they wouldn’t need my help now would they?
At this time I am no longer taking clients or performing mentorship opportunities or free email consultation on running an online business. I have done this for too many years now and am drained from all the people who need help.
My current advice (techniques I am currently using to generate my own income from home) is to choose your business model first:
- Affiliate income model: You’ll need a ‘quick to set up’ website and to spend your time on site promotion until the money starts flowing and the site is established. investigate this script and the supporting forum (it is full of people who are learning and succeeding with this business model), or
- The eBook model: You write a book and learn how to promote it to sell online. Thousands of products, forums, websites, and ebooks have been written on this topic, but you might as well head straight to the best in the business and follow the mentor I follow. (I’ve read, visited, tried nearly every other trainer/mentor and he’s the best, plus he’s been marketing info products and services longer than any of the others. I know this for a fact because I’ve been online since the early days and he was already here.) You can try before you buy too, with his free guide (see the sidebar) that way you’ll know if he’s the right trainer for you. He also has high end coaching calls for entrepreneurs who want to take their business to a higher level.
- more resources coming soon as I think of them…
I’m only ever just an email away if you have a quick question. Leave an introductory note about yourself or your online business here and I’ll do my best to answer you quickly.
Laura Childs
This article was originally published on GoodByeCityLife.com in 2001
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