Desty Online -- Online and Offline Businesses, Online Marketing » Offline Business http://www.destyonline.com Bringing offline business practices online. Turning bloggers into Businessmen. Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:57:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 en Keep Moving Forward With Your Business http://www.destyonline.com/keep-moving-forward-with-your-business/ http://www.destyonline.com/keep-moving-forward-with-your-business/#comments Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:22:59 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/keep-moving-forward-with-your-business/ I had planned on my article about holiday articles be my last article before Christmas.  I thought it was a good way to start the holidays.  Our plans are to head to my parent’s for Christmas Eve lunch, have the boys open their gifts there, then head to my inlaws for dinner, then open gifts.  We’d then make the treck back home for the night, get up the next morning, and head for my grandmother’s.

BANS Project 

I’ve narrowed down the research on my BANS project to my niche.  Using Court’s keyword marketing process, it looks to be an excellent keyword.  Court’s article talks mainly about selecting a keyword for blogging, and opimizing your site for the keyword, but it should work just as well for a BANS.

I hope to actually get started on the sites the weekend after Christmas; yes you read correctly, sites.  I’ve found a way to use a Wordpress powered blog to create a BANS instead of buying the clickbank formatted site.  So, the plan is to create two sites, both for the same keyword, one using the clickbank site and the other using the Wordpress powered system.  As long as I keep everything faily similar, it should be a good test to see which is the best way to create a BANS.

Keep Moving Forward

What got me to write today was watching a video my oldest son got for Christmas.  If you haven’t seen the Disney movie “Meet the Robinsons” I suggest that you rent or buy it.  Through out the movie, they keep mentioning the phrase “Keep moving forward.”  It’s actually a quote from Walt Disney himself.

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

Running a business, online or not, requires you to keep moving forward.  Something doesn’t work?  Don’t fixate on that problem, fix it, and move on.  Don’t allow anything to keep you stuck in one spot.  Keep looking to the future, keep moving forward.

Merry Christmas all!

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/keep-moving-forward-with-your-business/feed/ My 1st Real Business — How I Got Started http://www.destyonline.com/my-1st-real-business-how-i-got-started/ http://www.destyonline.com/my-1st-real-business-how-i-got-started/#comments Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:58:08 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/my-1st-real-business-how-i-got-started/ My 1st business started back in 1995.  I was pretty heavy into computer at the time.  By pretty heavy, I mean that I was pretty well versed in Windows 3.1, 3.11, and the brand new (at the time) Windows 95.  This was back in the time of massive computer expansion.  Large corporations were using desktops, but the small business owners were still using pad and paper for their bookkeeping, inventory management, records, etc.

I was going to the local Community College for Psychology and gen ed’s (general education requirements).  I had a job in the library’s computer lab, so I was pretty hands on with actual computer problems and coaching those who knew nothing about computers.

I had to go to my bank to get my checking account straightened out.  For some reason, they said I was over-drawn.  I keep a very detailed check register, and I knew I had plenty of cash, so I was prepared to sit down and go over, point by point, everything going back 6 months to a year if I had to.  Turns out that, of course, I was right; they reversed the penalties, contacted the various banks themselves to make sure I wouldn’t get in trouble for mistakenly bounced checks, etc.  The VP of the bank calls me into his office.

I’ve know Bob going back as far as I can remember.  I lived in a small town (less than 800) and on top of that we went to the same church.  After abit of chit-chat, he mentioned that I supposedly knew something about computers.  Being modest, I advised him that I knew a few things about PC’s.  Bob had a business partner who was having computer problems and he wondered if I would be willing to go help him out.  He’d be willing to pay me $13 per hour for my time.  At the time I was making just around $5 per hour part time in the computer lab, so I jumped and said yes.

Bob’s business partner, Pat, ran a car wash building and supply business.  People who wanted to buy automated car washes to set-up their own businesses would come to Pat and he would have his crew go out and build the whole thing from scratch.  Afterwards, the new car-wash would always need soap, brushes, maintenance, etc, so this business support made more money in the long term from the supply side of the business rather than the building of the car-washes.

Pat was using an OLD PC, still running on DOS, and an old version of DOS at that.  Good thing for him, I knew DOS pretty well.  Even though Windows 95 supposedly did away with DOS (they didn’t, they just hid it) I was still very well versed in DOS.  Pat was wanting to use some software his vendors had given him allowing him to manage his inventory and automatically reorder supplies.  After going over everything on the computer, I told him that, simply, his computer was too old and wouldn’t run the software.

I told Pat that he just couldn’t run that software on his computer, that the computer was just too old.  He asked what was required, so I rattled off the minimum requirements for the software off.  Pat nodded, opened a draw in his desk and took out a rather large roll of cash and threw it to me.  “Buy what I need.”

I took off towards the nearest Best Buy that was 1 hour away.  I was thinking I should be able to get a nice cheap Compac PC for just over $1000.  Then it hit me.  I had no idea how much cash I was working with.  I pulled over and started my count.  I had just at $2000!  For me, especially at that time, $2000 was alot of money and consider the amount of trust he had in me just throwing that cash at me, no receipt or anything.

So, I still bought him a computer that would do what he needed, but nothing too fancy.  I continued to get technical support work from Pat almost on a daily basis after school.  The next week, I received a call from my Sunday School teacher’s mother; Bob had told her that I ran a business helping people learn to use their computers and help fix them from time to time.  My business was up and running, purely on word of mouth.

As the months went on, I continued to get steady work and more customers.  That fall, however, I transferred out of the community college and into a larger 4 year school.  I was looking to have my business move with me, but when you’re a psychology major going against computer science majors for computer work, there’s no contest.

Looking back, I made some mistakes, of course, with my business:

  • Income — I made no records of my income.  I cashed the checks and bought more comic books (I was a collector at the time).  I also didn’t do anything with that income to expand my business, either in advertising or in continuing my capabilities or experience.
  • Taxes — I paid zero taxes on that income.  Could have been some trouble.
  • Marketing — I did zero marketing.  All marketing was done by my customers without any mention from myself.  I was flattered that they thought so highly of me.

Sometimes starting your own business isn’t so much forcing your way in.  Sometimes, it’s all about taking advantage of opportunities when they knock on your door.

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/my-1st-real-business-how-i-got-started/feed/ Be the One Selling the Tickets… http://www.destyonline.com/be-the-one-selling-the-tickets/ http://www.destyonline.com/be-the-one-selling-the-tickets/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:01:12 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/be-the-one-selling-the-tickets/ My wife has two businesses of her own that I have nothing to do with.  She sells Avon and has parties for Noah’s Ark where kids can create their own stuffed animals.  Recently, she and a friend have been planning on setting up an open house for the public showcasing several small work from home businesses.  Everyone would put up a small fee to help pay for the room at the convention center.  She’s been pretty excited about it.

My wife is a very social person; everyone wants to talk to her about everything.  Sometimes I think she has a sign on her forehead saying “talk to me.”  She’s been talking to people up to 180 miles away to setup booths at this open house and has quite a list.

Last night her friend, who has done this to her in the past, decided that she didn’t want to go through with the open house.  My wife was livid!  She’d put all this hard work into the open house, got commitments from vendors for booths, and had started working on the venue.

I suggested that she just go ahead and run the whole thing herself; she normally ends up doing most of the work anyway, so why not just to it herself.  That got her to thinking.

“You know all those millions that football quarterbacks make?  Who do you think pays for that?  The owners of the football teams and stadiums.  Those owners make so much money from the work of the teams that they can afford to pay those high salaries.  Don’t be the quarterback, be the person selling the tickets.”

My thought is for her to make this open house an annual or bi-annual event, every-time be willing to charge alittle bit for for a booth fee.  After the venue has been paid to host the event, use the rest for marketing to increase public attendance.  This will make more people want to get booths for next year, and more booth fees.  Just keep building and building the event. 

Don’t use the event to promote your own businesses, make promoting the event your business!

She likes the idea of it, but has doubts.  I think that if she doesn’t, I might have to jump in and take over, err, help out ;)

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/be-the-one-selling-the-tickets/feed/ Video — Finding Real Estate Bargins http://www.destyonline.com/video-finding-real-estate-bargins/ http://www.destyonline.com/video-finding-real-estate-bargins/#comments Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:01:57 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/video-finding-real-estate-bargins/ Note to RSS Subscribers — This is not a blank post, there is a video but I have not found out how to send the video along the RSS feed.

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/video-finding-real-estate-bargins/feed/ Something You Need to Do Before You Start Your Business http://www.destyonline.com/something-you-need-to-do-before-you-start-your-business/ http://www.destyonline.com/something-you-need-to-do-before-you-start-your-business/#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2007 01:26:41 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/something-you-need-to-do-before-you-start-your-business/ Over the past few months, I’ve written several articles about starting a business

Today I had a young lady come to me about starting a new work-from-home business.  I do have some experience in this, so I was willing to help anyway I could.  She started going into how she was going to make and sell gift baskets.  She was associated with several distributors so as to be able to include several products in the baskets.  While we don’t make or sell gift baskets, our business is also based off of working with several distributors to offer several products to our customers.  So far so good.

After going into the various different products she would have in the baskets, she asked what I thought.  Generally, when I’m trying to help someone, I try to see everything from their point of view.  I want to know what their plans are and what they’ll do in certain circumstances.  So I asked, “Who do you plan to sell these baskets to?”  She didn’t know.

How was she going to market these baskets?  She didn’t know.  I got the feeling that she really didn’t know what I was asking, so I tried again.  “How do you plan to let people know that you have these baskets for sale?”  She didn’t know, she was hoping that I would tell her what do to.

At that point, I suggested that she really needed to think about to whom she was going to sell to, and how she would get the word out before she actually invested any money into this, beyond maybe a enough materials for a single basket.  The conversation went downhill from there, and probably ended up with some hurt feelings and a bruised ego.

It’s difficult when people ask for help with their business.  People are extremely attached to their ideas.  It’s a huge step just to tell someone that you’re wanting to start a business and to lay it all out for them.  For the most part, my experience in talking about starting my own businesses with people who have never owned or ran a business is always the same.

  • You’ll lose money!
  • Don’t do it, I know someone who got sued!
  • You don’t know how to do that!
  • You can’t do that!

My problem is that I’m not a people person when it comes to advice.  As hard as I try, I tend to express myself as blunt and to the point.  Ask a question, I’ll do my best to answer it as fully as I can.  Don’t expect alot of handholding from me.  That’s what my wife is for ;)

As you get the courage to talk to someone about your business idea, stop and ask yourself, are you truly ready for what they have to say?  I remember going to my CPA with my very 1st business idea (which never got off the ground).  He asked the very same questions, what was my target customer base, how would I market the business, how can you compete with similar businesses, etc.  This was several years ago, so I hadn’t really thought things out that far beyond I wanted to start a business and this was what I wanted to do.

After you find a mentor who is willing to help you with your business, be willing to listen to what they have to say.  They’re there to help you, not to plan your business for you.

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/something-you-need-to-do-before-you-start-your-business/feed/ Taking Care of Your Readers With Excellent Customer Service http://www.destyonline.com/taking-care-of-your-readers/ http://www.destyonline.com/taking-care-of-your-readers/#comments Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:46:15 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/taking-care-of-your-readers/ Business, at its most basic core, is all about customers.  Simply put, customers have a need and you, as the business, are filling that need.  Whether you see the need and move to fill it, or you bring a product out of left field and suddenly everyone realizes that they have a need they didn’t know about before, you are still filling a need. 

What Makes You Standout

A product or a service is easy to copy.  Most likely you saw a need, saw another business filling that need, and you thought to yourself, “I can do better than that.”  What makes you so special?  Is your product superior?  Is your product cheaper?  If you are successful, then you can guarantee that your competition will notice and copy what you’re doing.

A perfect example is the cola wars of Coca Cola vs Pepsi.  Go into any grocery store and you’ll see 12 pack cases on sale.  If you watch over several weeks, one week Pepsi will be the cheapest, another Coke is the cheapest.  While they go back and forth, notice that the prices don’t waver too far from a certain point, roughly $3-$4 per case.  There are still costs involved in the product and a profit still has to be made.

Customer Service is the Key to Repeat and Happy Customers

There is another way to creating and keeping a loyal customer base:  customer service.  I’m not talking about just having a phone line with people to answer questions or a service desk; those are parts of customer service.

Creating and expanding relationships with customers is what customer service is all about.  Car insurance companies go back and forth with who has the lowest prices; who takes care of their customers the best after an accident?  You may not need customer service before an accident, but you’d better believe you’ll be relying on it after an accident.  I’ve switched insurance companies just due to poor customer service.

Examples of Reactions to Customer Service

I’ve worked in two major corporations with contracts to household named named companies (Wal-Mart, Toyota, etc).  Here are some examples of where excellent customer service pays off.

  • A division wide meeting was called.  During the last annual contract negotiations, Wal-Mart had brought up the fact that one of our competitors had offered a double digit discount in price per item from our price just to have Wal-Mart switch from us to them.  Wal-Mart turned them down.  Wal-Mart wanted us to know that the only reason that we still had their business, in light of this offered discount, was not only the excellent quality of our product, but mainly because top to bottom, from the customer service rep who answers the phone down to the driver who delivers the product to their distribution centers, we had excellent customer service and knew how to take care of their needs.
  • Toyota had placed up for bid a trucking route between a warehouse and a local manufacturing plant.  Our company placed a bid on the route.  We won the bid.  The ordering logistics specialist called us in for a pre-launch meeting to discuss what was required and mentioned that we didn’t have the lowest bid.  What got us the business was that Toyota got a greater value for our price.  They knew that no matter what happened, their freight would always deliver when they needed it, and that we would take care of whatever Toyota needed.  Our job was to enable Toyota to do their job and that is our top priority.

How Does This Translate to Blogging?

I know you’re thinking, “Great article on customer service, but I’m running a blog, not a trucking company.”  Get this through your head:

customers = readers

Your job is to take care of your readers’ needs.  There are two broad ways to do this

  1. Proactive Customer Service
  2. Reactive Customer Service

Proactive Customer Service requires creativity and an eye for detail.  Look at your blog.  Look at it from a reader’s standpoint.  What do you like about it?  What do you NOT like about it?  What can do you to increase a reader’s enjoyment of their time at your blog, and give them a better value.  There are other bloggers who talk about the same thing you are.  What can you do to keep readers at your blog rather than them going to those other blogs?

I personally made a switch over this weekend to a different WordPress theme to create a different experience for my readers.  I believe that this new theme looks better, and is easier to read.  The tabbed pages at the top of the header show off special sections for my readers.  Also, there are less advertisements so hopefully the reader will be less distracted by ads and be able to focus on my articles.

Reactive customer service is in someways easier and some ways the worst customer service.  A reader has said that they didn’t like something about your blog.  Before you go and make changes, ask these two questions:

  1. Is this person in the minority?  What if this person is the only person who thinks this?  If you make this change, what if everyone else thinks it was a bad idea?
  2. If this person is right, how many readers have you already lost?  I’ve seen several sources on the Net where it is suggested that a very low percentage of readers actually make comments.  How many people saw something they didn’t like, and instead of saying something about it, just left to never return?

Always be looking at your blog with a critical eye and try to stay ahead of the curve for your readers.  Anticipate their needs.  It never hurts to directly ask for their opinions.

It is said that content is King.  I think, going hand in hand with that is customer service is Queen.

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/taking-care-of-your-readers/feed/ What Is Old Is New Again http://www.destyonline.com/what-is-old-is-new-again/ http://www.destyonline.com/what-is-old-is-new-again/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:59:42 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/what-is-old-is-new-again/ For those of you who have checked out my About Me page, you’ll remember that I mentioned our very first business, an agreement with a candle distributor.  While it was the most profitable business we had in terms of amount of net profit (the eBay selling was the best in terms of investment to returns ratio and by far the least labor required), it lasted just a few months because the supplier started throwing stuff at us that was in the fine print, such as a annual processing fee.  While I do see the need for and agree with a start-up processing fee, if I’m making you money, don’t you dare say I need to pay you more just so I can sell your products to make both of us money!  Still irks me to this day…

I guess either Friday or over the weekend my wife got a call from a friend of her’s that she made through the business and who was still working with the distributor.  There was a reorganization at the company and they had rewritten their policies.  Turns out that the two owners of the company, a husband and wife team, were getting a divorce. 

The husband was the president of the company and had been behind the hidden fees; these fees had led to a HUGE amount of turn-over after a new seller’s first year.  The wife, who apparently had majority control, was still working with development and marketing; she was helping create new products, and pushing to expand and recruit new sellers.

Of course I don’t know what happened and why, but from personal experience I know that if you’re busting your butt to recruit new people and someone else in the company is pushing them out as fast as you can bring them in, it will build resentment.

So, the wife is now fully in charge of the company and has done away with the annual processing fee, along with some other changes I’m told.  A huge change has been that the company has reached out to the former partnerships with sellers that left and is offering to bring them back in with no penalty or start-up fee.

My wife loves these candles!  She’s excited about getting back into the business.  I’m alittle more wary, once burned and all that.  Going to have some professionals look at the contacts this time, but it looks right now that we’re getting back into the candle business.

From a business standpoint, they fit in well with our other product lines.  Their scents sell themselves.  As I’m expanding my knowledge into online businesses, I do see a problem.  The major selling point is how great these candles are, how great they smell, and how long they burn.  You can write all you want about that, but how do you translate that into an online, automated business?  You can’t smell these scents over the computer.  For current customers who know the products, it would be great; it would speed up the sales process so they can get their products faster.  But expansion of the customer base would have to take place off-line.  I am toying with an idea that would cost postage only to get some new online customers.  We’ll see how it turns out.

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/what-is-old-is-new-again/feed/ How to Make Money With Your Blog Part II — Affiliates http://www.destyonline.com/how-to-make-money-with-your-blog-part-ii-affiliates/ http://www.destyonline.com/how-to-make-money-with-your-blog-part-ii-affiliates/#comments Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:32:26 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/how-to-make-money-with-your-blog-part-ii-affiliates/ Affiliates are, simply, the fastest way to create wealth using blogs.  Notice that I didn’t say easiest, cheapest, or best.  Affiliates are other companies that you enter into an agreement to promote and sell their products.  You’re a salesman, pure and simple.  Well, not so simple.

A straight forward approach to marketing an affiliate is to post ads (banners), write articles reviewing the products, generally promoting the product to your readership base in hopes that someone will buy something.  Where as 3rd party advertising turns your blog into a billboard, affiliates turn your blog into a store.

Promoting affiliates only with your blog, while can net you some leads and sales, is an extremely poor way to promote your affiliate.  This is where you have to take a step back from your blog, your niche, and take in the BIG picture, the Internet.  The key to getting sales over the Internet is leverage.  The more eyeballs you can get to see your product, the more sales you can make.  Even if you get a conversion rate of 1%, look at the numbers.  If you have a readership base of 5000 views / RSS subscriptions per day, that’s still only 50 sales.  Looking at the big picture, bid on some keywords through Google’s AdWords, put your ad up for 100,000 potential customers, 1% becomes 1000 sales.

Leverage is the key, and the curse.  AdWords campaigns are costly and no sure thing.  You are the person who has to write ad that catches the potential customer’s eye.  You have to do the pre-sell that turns a click into a sale.  You have to know what keywords to bid on, how much to bid, and have the guts to run a campaign that might cost you money 29 days out of 30.

Properly marketed affiliates offer the greatest rewards for those will to do the research, invest in their ‘on the job’ experience, and take the gamble.  I’m currently in the research / planning phase to start my own campaigns.  I have not selected a product, as I’m still in the learning cycle.  As I finally get my feet off the ground and actually start the business, I’ll detail the steps I take in bringing this new business off the ground.

To the readers who actually have experience in running keyword campaigns, any suggestions as to reading materials would be greatly appreciated.

Resources

Super Affiliate Mindset

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/how-to-make-money-with-your-blog-part-ii-affiliates/feed/ What To Do When Your Business Partner Has Burn Out? http://www.destyonline.com/what-to-do-when-your-business-partner-has-burn-out/ http://www.destyonline.com/what-to-do-when-your-business-partner-has-burn-out/#comments Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:57:58 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/what-to-do-when-your-business-partner-has-burn-out/ Our most successful off-line business is a coffee and various mixes (cakes, dips, chili, etc) distributorship. We currently have 2-3 affiliates working with us and it does a moderate business. Our problem is that while the product is great, in its current state, the business is rather labor intensive. My wife and I book tables at various craft fairs, and other summer events to pass around free samples of tea, flavored coffees, a little bit of chips and dip, and make a nice profit. Well its finally gotten to my wife. You see, I generally handle the business end: the books, business planning, future expansion. My wife is the operations person; she sells the products, networks with stay-at-home moms, and does the general people-person type stuff.

Friday evening we had a talk about the business. Normally I’m the one who brings up business, so I knew something was up when she started talking about business. She was tired of it; we hadn’t done much with it over the last few weeks, and she was just tired of the whole thing. I didn’t push. When we started this last year, I told her that I would give my full support and help out with what I do best. I’m not the best person to smile and hand people a sample; I’m a paper pusher.

I’d like to continue the business; it’s doing well and the products sell well. My thoughts are to go online and get automated with a virtual store. eBay doesn’t feel like an option. There are too many people there already and we’d be lost in a sea of categories with other coffee related items. So, my thoughts are to get a domain and setup either a website or blog along with some shopping cart software. I’ve been looking around trying to weigh my options and came upon Ashop Commerce. Ashop isn’t just shopping cart software, they’re a fully integrated ecommerce software support center.  They provide hosting, domain registration, and all the support services for your virtual storefront. It’s a one stop for all online store needs.

I need to do further research to see what type of online competition exists for online bought coffees and mixes. Something that might sell well off-line may not sell as well online.

This is a sponsored post

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