You’re Just 3 Steps Away From Your New Business
Issue #2253
- WEALTHY: How to handle the market’s effect on your investments (Rick Pendergraft)
- HEALTHY: Combine these ingredients to slash the risk for prostate cancer (Kelley Herring)
- WISE: Golo Mann on accomplishing great things
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Start a new business this year (Paul Lawrence)
- The number one problem for a Stage One business (Michael Masterson)
- It’s Good to Know… about the bamboo microscope
- Add "remonstrate" to your vocabulary
Revealed: Probably the Biggest Red Herring in History!
While the world’s been stock watching (and losing!), the elite quietly play a different game with different rules…
Feeling cheated and disillusioned by the stock market? Sure, you may have made a good trade here… but then lost on another. The people dutifully pour their hard-earned cash into investment banks to put into the stock market for them… and those investment banks gladly oblige, for a fat fee… which they invest somewhere else! I’m no conspiracy theorist, but in my opinion the stock market is really a diversion for the masses… a distraction from where the BIG and consistent money is made… in the world’s money mountain. And when I say “ Money Mountain ,” I speak quite literally… the BIGGEST mountain of money on the planet. Click here to read more…
Investing in 2008: View Each Trade Independently
Not all stocks or sectors will move up or down with the market. And not all market shifts will make or break a stock. If you pick the right stocks and the right time to buy them, you will be able to withstand small moves against you.
Do not let a preconceived notion about the overall market impact your decision on one stock. Look at each investment on its own merits. If you have a good stock selection system, what the overall market is doing should have little impact on your decisions.
[Ed. Note: Rick Pendergraft, a two-time winner of the "Top Trader" award at Schaeffer’s Investment Research, is a contributor to ETR’s free e-zine, Investor’s Daily Edge . Learn how to protect your portfolio and multiply your money - in any market - by clicking here.]
"Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him."
Golo Mann
You’re Just 3 Steps Away From Your New Business
I’m willing to bet that one goal you have for this year is to become wealthier than you are right now. If you’ve been paying attention to Michael Masterson’s advice, you know that means starting your own business - which, says Michael, is " one of the best (or possibly the best) ways of growing wealthy."
Well, what’s stopping you?
Starting your own business may sound like an overwhelming task - but, like every worthwhile goal, it can be broken down into manageable parts. In fact, I’m going to show you how to do it in three simple steps.
The important thing is to take action. Instead of just dreaming about starting your own business, do it! Don’t worry about the details, just come up with a sensible overall plan and get your business off the ground. You can go back and fine-tune it later. As Michael says, "Ready, Fire, Aim."
I have helped start dozens of small businesses. And all of them were the result of combining Michael’s Ready, Fire, Aim philosophy with my own three-step approach.
Here’s how it works…
Step 1. Identify something that people want and will pay for.
One of the most common stumbling blocks for aspiring entrepreneurs is deciding on a product or service to market. The primary consideration is to choose something that people will buy. And the easiest way to do that is to go with something that other people are already selling successfully.
Ideally, that will be something you love and/or know a lot about. For instance, if you’re an accountant, you could create and sell programs about how people can prepare their taxes, how they can make a household budget, and how they can find hidden tax deductions. Or, if you’ve always loved animals, you could sell pet toys, treats, and accessories.
If you have trouble coming up with a likely product or service based on your own interests and/or expertise, choose a relatively simple service that’s in high demand. A house cleaning service, for example, or bookkeeping, lawn mowing, resume writing, or house painting. The possibilities are almost endless.
Step 2. Find a way to supply it.
This step just requires a bit of business common sense. If you’re selling a service, you would either supply the service yourself or hire someone else to do it (or help you). If, for example, you’ve decided to go into the moving business, you don’t have to be capable of handling furniture yourself. Simply hire a few people who can do heavy lifting and either buy or rent a truck.
If you’re selling a product, you would ideally seek out suppliers that can provide you with merchandise at a low enough price for you to be able to make a profit. But that usually means buying in volume - which may not work for you when you’re just starting out. Let’s say you’d like to sell bookshelves. In this case, it might make more sense for you to get your business going by buying the lumber and building the shelves yourself (or hiring someone to build them for you).
Step 3. Sell it to the people who want it.
I’m a big believer in direct marketing for small start-up businesses. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to get your marketing message to prospective customers via e-mail, regular mail, ads in local papers, or even flyers distributed door to door.
Let’s say you want to start a housekeeping service. You’d identify a few affluent neighborhoods where the homeowners could, presumably, afford maids. Then you’d target them with either flyers or small mailers.
Or suppose you want to start a business where you take people on charter fishing boat trips. You’ll be marketing primarily to tourists, so you’d work on getting yourself listed in local tourist guides and maybe advertise on a few bus benches in your city’s hotel district. If you decide to go after locals too, you could contact local fishing clubs and see if you can rent their membership lists to do a mailing. You might also make a deal with local bait shops to distribute your flyers.
Obviously, starting and running a successful business requires time, energy, and effort. Still, when you break down the process, it’s just three simple steps:
- Identify something that people want and will pay for.
- Find a way to supply it.
- Sell it to the people who want it.
If you really want to run your own business, it’s time to take action. Just think - by this time next year, you could be living your dream.
[Ed. Note: Paul Lawrence is a produced screenwriter who has written a multimillion-dollar film and is the president of a successful direct-mail company. Learn about Paul’s " Dare to Live Your Dreams " program on his website.
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Dear ETR: "What’s a good sign-up rate?"
"As well as my normal job, I run a free daily e-zine that focuses on self-help and parenting (goals-4-life.com). While we are having some success, I wanted to get your advice on what a good sign-up rate is.
"At the moment, we just use Google Adwords, and seem to get sign-ups in the range of 10-20 subscribers a day.
"P.S. I love your daily e-zine. Thank you so much for providing practical information."
- Andrew Collings
Melbourne , Australia
Dear Andrew,
I can’t tell you what a good sign-up rate is for your particular situation because I don’t know the details. I don’t know how your business works, how much you charge for your products, how good those products are, how many products you sell, what the lifetime value of your customers is, etc.
In a moment, I’ll give you a hint - based on what we do at ETR. But every business is different, so this will be only a very broad indication.
Rather than try to give you a precise figure, I’d like to answer your question more generally. I think such an answer will be more useful to you in the long run.
Every entrepreneurial business grows through four stages: infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Each of those stages has its unique problems, challenges, and opportunities.
It sounds like you have a Stage One business, a business that is at the beginning of its life cycle. You have a small number of active subscribers and revenues of less than a million dollars.
At this stage, your number one problem is that you don’t know how to bring in new subscribers profitably. You have ideas, but you don’t yet have a proven formula. Since you have limited time and cash, you want to be sure that you are investing the resources you have wisely. The goal is to discover how to grow your business before your time and patience are depleted.
As the head of a Stage One business, your priority right now is to create positive cash flow. To achieve that important goal, you are going to have to become an expert at selling your particular product(s) to a particular segment of the marketplace. Only you can discover how to do that.
In the meantime, you will be asking questions such as "What is a good sign-up rate?" That’s normal.
There are many such questions that people new to online marketing ask ("What is a good conversion rate?"… "What is the best repurchase rate?"… and so on) but only one answer: It’s the rate that - at the end of the day - allows you to grow your business to the next stage as soon as possible without jeopardizing quality.
Every marketing medium is different. Every offer is different. Every product is different. This makes for an infinite number of possible combinations - making it impossible to say that there is one sign-up rate that works for everybody.
What you want to do is bring in as many qualified prospects as you can as fast as you can, given the cash you have available. What makes a prospect "qualified"? The likelihood that he will buy other, back-end products from you after his first purchase. Every type of media you advertise with will attract prospects of different quality. Every offer you make will bring in different segments of those micro-markets. Even changing your sales copy will attract a different sort of prospect in terms of their later buying habits. So you have to keep testing until you find out what works for you.
I explain this important marketing principle in my new book, Ready, Fire, Aim : Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat. Ironically, it is the first book I’ve ever written about the subject I probably know most about: starting and growing small businesses. If you want to really understand how to get your business through this first and most difficult stage of growth, I strongly recommend that you buy the book.
In the meantime, here is what Alexis Siemon, ETR’s Search Engine Marketing Specialist, has to say about your particular question:
"This is truly a hard question to answer, because it depends on many factors: your budget, the number of keywords you’re bidding on, your click-through rate (CTR), your conversion rate, etc. For instance, last month, one new service I’m working on averaged about $150 per day. It also brought in 33 names daily at an eight percent conversion rate.
"I would say a good goal to aim for would be a two percent CTR and a six percent conversion rate. Depending on your budget and the number of impressions you get from the keywords you’re bidding on, this could earn you a wide range of daily subscribers."
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: Send your questions to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com . Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.]
A Culinary Combo That Fights Prostate Cancer
New research shows that curried cauliflower - a traditional Indian dish seasoned with turmeric and other spices - provides powerful protection against the development of prostate cancer. What’s more, this Madras medley was shown to be effective in treating established prostate cancers.
Scientists at Rutgers tested curcumin, a phytonutrient found in turmeric, along with phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC). PEITC is a naturally occurring substance particularly abundant in cauliflower and other vegetables of the broccoli family (including arugula, watercress, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, kohlrabi, and turnips).
The researchers injected the mice with curcumin and/or PEITC, alone or in combination, three times a week for a total of four weeks. Both curcumin and PEITC significantly reduced the growth of cancerous tumors. But PEITC and curcumin together had even stronger effects.
Pick up a bottle of this powerful prostate protector. Look for high-quality, organic turmeric at your local health food store, and make sure to keep it in a cool dark place. (Light reduces its potency.)
[Ed. Note: Kelley Herring is the founder and CEO of Healing Gourmet (www.healinggourmet.com), and is editor-in-chief of the Healing Gourmet book series, including Eat to Fight Cancer . Learn more about how simple lifestyle choices can improve your health by reading ETR’s free natural health e-letter.]
It’s Good to Know: The Bamboo Microscope
Adequate funding for education is a worldwide problem. But in rural India , even basic teaching materials can be hard to come by. A New Delhi-based nonprofit organization is working to combat this problem. For one thing, it has created a compact microscope made of bamboo and simple magnifying lenses to help instructors teach hands-on science. The microscopes cost about $4 each.
So far, educational aid organizations, such as the U.N. Children’s Fund, have distributed 2,500 of the microscopes to cash-strapped schools.
(Source: Nature )
Put Thousands of Extra Dollars Into Your Bank Account Every Month
21 percent of adults surveyed said a lottery would be the most practical strategy for accumulating several hundred thousand dollars, according to a recent survey of about 1,000 Americans by Opinion Research Corporation.
Don’t fritter away your life away waiting to win the lottery. It ain’t gonna happen.
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If you’d like to spend the rest of your life the way you deserve to, you owe it to yourself to look into this opportunity.
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Remonstrate
To "remonstrate" (rih-MAHN-strate) is to reason or plead in opposition, protest, or disapproval. The word is from the Latin for "to point back to a fault."
Example (as used by Colin Thubron in The New York Times ): " When things went beyond the control of her forceful personality, inventiveness, or charm, if the problem was something she could not alter or manipulate, she didn’t pine or remonstrate, she merely buried what was threatening or damaging to her sense of worth."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker … build your self-confidence and intellect … increase your attractiveness to others … just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR’s new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008