My 1000th Post

Well, for my 1000th post I have written a series of articles but I have decided to spread them out a bit. So when I started thinking about what to write for my first post, I figured it would be something that although SEO related, have a a more broader appeal.

There have been many questions posted related such as "What makes money?" or "How do I get started?" so I thought I would write a basic do's and don'ts on starting your own online business. Hopefully through the course of this article, it will help a few people figure out what type of business they should start or if they should start one at all.

I will begin with a little bit about myself. It is very easy to get to 1,000 posts or more and have no one actually know anything about you. I received my Masters in Business Management some years ago and although I had always had owning my own business in mind, I decided early on that I needed to get some real life sales experience early on. My first job in the real world was a low paying one but really opened my eyes to what it took to sell. I believe the first principal of business is to be an amazing salesperson. Even if you aren't "out in the field" selling a specific product or service, as the business owner you should be constantly selling your business and yourself. Without that experience, you may find it very difficult to succeed.

After that sales job I started a bricks and mortar business that was successful for many years. It was only when I moved overseas (for love of course) that I sold that business and decided to go in a new direction. That was to start an online business with my bricks and mortar experience. Not being able to work for the first 6-8 months living here, it was a perfect opportunity to learn something new (I had no web design or SEO experience at that point), and to put in the foundation for a business. Many years later and I make my primary income off the web, although I do contract work here and there in order to stay fresh and informed. Hopefully in the following paragraphs I can import a little bit of wisdom.

What do you do?
When you own your own business, you will be asked this constantly. At every cocktail party, fancy dress or trip to the pub this question will inevitably come up. The first key to starting a business is to be able to answer this question with a short response. If you have taken on a business that requires a 3 hour sit down and a slide rule, you have chosen the wrong area or have failed to create a good business plan. Business Plan????? Whats that?

The most common misconception is that Business Plans are required only if you have to beg the bank for money. I can tell you that I have never borrowed a penny from the bank to start a business before but I have ALWAYS created a business plan. This is an essiential part of success and is your roadmap to where you want to be and how to get there. So often people start a business without even finding out who there competition is, how much they charge, what their expenses may be, how they advertise, what return they get, how much intitial investment is needed, and on and on. The key to creating this business plan is research. I typically spend six months gathering data before making a decision on whether I will persue something or not.

The hardest part of the business plan is honesty. Most people wear rose tinted glasses and their familys support (very needed in later stages) just clouds it further. The idea of build a better mousetrap and they will come is a fallacy. I will talk about that more later but for now, you have to prove on paper that you can be profitable. I explore every scenerio and develop a plan if it happens. This will be crucial in the later stages as everything and anything does happen.

OK, so I have cut my speech on the importance of the business plan short because after all this is an SEO forum. But I could (and it would be appropriate to) write 15 pages on how important research is when thinking of starting a new business. Those business's that seem to be the cheapest to start (web design, SEO) tend to be the most expensive in reality as because of the competitiveness due to cheap entry costs, they can be very expensive in terms of advertising, et all.

So what should I do or not do now that I have my business plan worked out?
Now I will assume you have either created your website or have paid someone to do it so I won't go heavily into that but I will give the following advice:
Be sure your site is fast, easily navigable and sexy. You have 7 seconds to catch someone (This isn't one of those urban legends, my logs commonly show a host of people at around 7-9 seconds then the rest for 4-5 minutes which is an order). There is a temptation to try out the latest flash movie or go graphics heavy. How many sales do you imagine you will get if it takes 10 seconds for something to even come up? The answer is easy - none. You will have wasted all of your efforts that I will be discussing in the following:

Some Common Mistakes:
Submit to 10,000 Search Engines
The best thing I can do is share a few of the mistakes I made when I first started out. It is a wake up call when after your first week of being online, you have yet to have a sale and maybe have hand a small handful of visitors (mistyped a domain most likely) and as you start to search the web for why you realize you arent seen in any search engines and just as you are pondering that, you get a really helpful email that promises to submit your site to 10,000 search engines for free. That sounds great! If only it weren't a scam. This is basically to harvest your email address and isn't worth the 30 seconds it takes to fill it out.

99% of your search engine traffic will come from 3-4 engines. (Currently it is around 80% Google, 9% Yahoo, and 8% MSN). The exact search engine that gives the most traffic may change but the theory of a few giving all the traffic remains true. You can hand submit to each of these although the best way to get indexed is other sites linking to you. The more links in to you, the faster you are indexed. I am now able to get new sites indexed (typically 100 pages then some more each week) in 2-3 weeks. You can search this forum or my sig (FAQ) for more info on how you should be getting these.

Buying Hits
HITS stand for How Idiots Track Sales. Don't be tempted to buy traffic without researching first. 98% of these programs deliver "visitors" by adding your site to popups on unrelated sites. Do your research and be sure that you are even targeting people that will see your site. If unsure, ask for a one month trial to decide. Most won't give this as they know you won't be happy. You are much better going for a proven PPC program like Adwords

Link Farms or Posting Guestbooks
Stay away from any program that puts your link with 1000's of others of many domains purely for the link benefit. These programs require you to link to them and this can be bad news. Be sure if you are going to be part of any scheme that you research it thoroughly. You are better off in this case with an Ad Network although be sure to research your specific network very carefully. The main focus should be to advertise, not to hide links and try to only get an SEO benefit.

As far as Guestbook SEO, this is a thing of the past. The only thing you will achieve is to piss people off as these links have been discounted long ago.


What SHOULD I do?
Your best strategy is to stay informed. SEOChat is great for this and although there can be a ton of posts in a day, if you start by reading those that pertain to your issues that day, you can gain a vast a amount of expertise without getting overwhelmed. Be sure to visit the FAQ to be brought up to speed.

Always remember that SEO changes week to week (in fact day to day sometimes) so what is more important is to always reflect back on your business plan. Focus is essential as there is a tendecy to stray from your core competency and spread yourself thin. I would recommend reading about Sam Walton who personified focus.

Hopefully I have scratched the surface and peaked your interest. I hope to expand on this topic further by being more specific on a couple of topics that were just touched upon briefly above.

I would also like to use my 1000th post to give a big Thank You to all those that have helped me be successful in SEO as it has rounded out my business plan. I hope to have a 10,000 post!

Jason

Great article. Congratulations on your 1000th post. Well done.

Jason that was cool, and well worth the wait.
Funny thing though that so many people here were involved in masonry at one time or another ;) ;)

Jason... I have always been a strategic and business planning advocate. Most would consider it foolish to go on a long road trip without a roadmap or itinerary, but they willingly risk everything they own by not constructing a good 3-5 year plan, i.e. their roadmap to success.

Congratulations on your 1000th!!! Good article. I really liked it.

Excellent post Jason! Congratulations and THANK YOU for your 1000th post.

Business Plans are king Jason. I am glad too see you preach that on your post. It's a good thing to have you idea on paper. You get all the assumptions on paper. I hope too see another 9,000 informative posts from you. Congrats.

What!? Are you kidding!? That's the only way to go! ;)

Lol, you don't know how correct that actually is - I worked construction full time (graveyard shift) throughout College to pay for it.

PS. Congrats on your 2000th Wit - I remember when you hit 100 (Wait that was just last month )

Excellent post Jason. Take us to the basics. Stick on them. Refine, adjust and learn from them. Recently did a business plan and redid it about 5 times. Finally realized what I was shooting at was too big. Now I am refining it to a smaller target better suited to my capabilities and resources.

It is totally important to focus on qualified leads.

BTW, Wit has hit 2,000 (probably + posts). Any day now he'll have the most posts and we will all have to address him as MR. WIT!

Dave