Your Questions About Business Online Services

Jere answers:

It really depends on what the business will be doing. Most small businesses around 10 employees do fine with business-class cable. This is about the same as a residential connection, but with better support, designed for businesses. This will allow all employees internet access, and as long as all the employees aren’t spending all day on the phone at the same time, a higher-speed cable connection will support VOIP as well.

Keep in mind that a $60/month cable connection provides around 6-8 Mbps, whereas a $250/month T1 is only 1.5Mbps. As long as you can live with an occasional service interruption of an hour or so, I would reccommend regular cable.

Jere answers:

Steps to starting an Online Business
So you have a product or service and you wish to sell these products or services online. Consider the steps you will need to start an online business. So assuming the you have done your due diligence as far as knowing whether or not your product or service will sell and have priced your product accordingly you will need to do several things.

1. Incorporate your company

2. Build a web site
Register your domain name
Purchase a web hosting account

3. Get a merchant account to accept credit cards online

4. Build an online marketing plan
Open a Google Adwords account
Open a Yahoo! Search Marketing Account
Consider search engine optimization (depending on your industry)

Incorporate your company
You will need to incorporate your company and there are some extremely affordable ways to do so. You may not think you will need to incorporate but it makes things such as accounting, getting a merchant account and limiting liability much easier. You can incorporate and have all your letters within a couple weeks time and for less than $500 so be sure to shop around online for the right company to do your incorporation. One of the main reasons you should incorporate is to get a merchant account so that you can accept credit card payments online. Most merchant companies deposit and withdraw money from your bank account and they like to see a proper business bank account so in order to expedite your approval process get incorporated.

Build a web site
Of course, what’s an online business without a website. There are essentially three steps to building a website. You will need a domain name, a web hosting account and a web design with developed functionality. Register a domain name and set the name servers to those of the web hosting company you choose. You will need to ask the web hosting company what name servers to set your domain name to. There are hundreds of domain name registrars, I would strongly recommend going with an ICANN Accredited Registrar rather than an authorized reseller. Some domain name registrars are more affordable than others. There is no difference in the actual product you are buying as domain registrations are all the same therefore we recommend the more affordable options such as GoDaddy or Enom. Both of these companies have telephone support which is very important. When choosing a web hosting company you should find a web hosting company that offers a package that will accommodate your web development. If you need a SSL certificate to go along with your merchant account to accept credit cards you will need to find a hosting account that will allow for this. If your developers build your site in Php and MySQL you will need a web hosting account with MySQL. Talk with your developers and ask them what type of technologies you will need built into the web hosting account. Once again, do your research and ask other webmasters who they recommend. If you have a development team you work with then you will need to portray what you are trying to accomplish so that the team can build the right applications and implement the right design. If you don’t have a development or design team you work with try eLance which is a free lance marketplace.

Get a merchant account to accept credit cards online
Definitely do your research when choosing a company to set up your merchant account. Ask the merchant account company for some testimonials and if you can find a webmaster forum and ask what company the majority of the webmasters use. Different companies offer different monthly rates and discount rates. Some companies do a great job of locking you into a lengthy term agreement with a hefty cancellation fee. I have heard of merchant account companies seizing funds for different reasons. I don’t know about you but if I sold $10,000 in goods one month and my merchant account company decided they would only release $2000 I would reconsider the partner. Be sure to Google merchant account feedback and more importantly ask other webmasters who they use and what they think. We endorse Authorize.net as this company has provided better services than their competitors.

Build an online marketing plan
So you have a web site showcasing your products or services and customers can purchase these products or services online. The next step is to get people to your web site. This is the most important part of running an online business. You can have the greatest prices on the greatest products with the coolest design but if nobody can find it then your sales are likely going to suffer. There is essentially two ways to get visitors to your web site. You can pay per click, per lead, per sale or per impression on another web site or search engine or you can get free traffic from the indexed results in a major search engine. Of course everyone wants the free traffic therefore this option is quite competitive. You can set up an account free of charge with Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. For those of you not familiar with Adwords or Search Marketing these are the sponsored results on the top of the search results on Google and Yahoo. This is an instant way to get to the top of the search results for any web site. You pay per click and according to the amount you agree to spend for a particular keyword will depend on how high your listing will show. Be careful, start out very slow as you can burn through a ton of money very quickly as Google and Yahoo tend do get some traffic volumes. If your industry is unique and not terribly saturated such as Web Hosting then you may be able to consider search engine optimization. You will need to do your own research on search engine optimization as good seo information is hard to come by. Try some of the different forums that discuss some techniques and you should be able to get some decent information.

So that’s it, you should be well on your way to becoming a millionaire. Realistically, there are dozens of additional factors that go into starting a successful online business but this should give you a good start. You will learn as you go and don’t be afraid to ask questions and read everything you can.

Http://www.webcounter.com

Jere answers:

If you really want to work online, I suggest you start your own business your best bet is partner up with a company that direct sales a product. That’s what we did. You can create a web site, or have the company set up a web site for you to sale the products and services. Or collaborate with different companies. After you’ve set it up, you’ll have to generate traffic to your site as means of either advertisement (which you’ll have to spend a lot of money doing) or the more effective way is word of mouth and referals, which are free and more effective. Partner up with a company that gives you monthly earnings from services that you put people on either by in person, phone or from your web site. What I mean is for instance, my husband partnered up with a telecommunications service provider and all the cellular phone companies. Someone purchase a cell phone from our web site, or a land line or Internet service or whatever, the product it’self your able to provide at a whole sale cost as a distributer through the providers. When someone gets on the services, the company pays you a percentage of that person’s billing every single month, month after month for the referal from you by word of mouth or by your web site.
If you’d like to see an example of what I’m talking about, your more then welcome to take a look at my web site at www.tiffanyvague.acnrep.com Take a look at the products and services there, tour the company etc and to give you an idea of how you should have each of the companies and make extra money off the effort that you provided to these companies.
Once you decide on a product or products and services, you need to start driving “traffic” to your web site. A lot of work but well worth the effort when your income starts going and rapidly increases. The most effective way I’ve found is simply word of mouth and referrals. We’ve had our business for over six years and this has been the most effective way. Loyal customers bring in more customers by the way you treat them, the quality of the items you have and the timely matter of the service you provide.
Get a product and or service that’s high in demand. If you create your own web site, make sure it’s professional looking and not cheesy like a lot of web sites look out there. I’m not a web master, so I had the company do mine for me.
If your interested in this industry and would like to learn more about it, and how to’s and what not, the person you should contact is Tiffany. You can e-mail her at kaiden4@aol.com
She can answer any questions you may have.

Good Luck

Jere answers:

What kind of online design service are you looking for? If you are looking for design ideas try www.getdecorating.com. If you are looking for a site to make floor plans, try www.plan3D.com.

Are you looking to start your own decorating business or are you looking for an actual designer/decorator to work on your project?

The expense depends on exactly what type of design service you need.

Jere answers:

Here are some resources that can help you write your business plan:

– SBA Business Plan Basics http://www.sba.gov/starting_business/planning/basic.html
– PowerHomeBiz.com Creating a Business Plan section http://www.powerhomebiz.com/startup/businessplan.htm
– Entrepreneur.com Writing a Business Plan section http://www.entrepreneur.com/bizplan/0,7253,,00.html

You may also want to review some sample business plans to see how it actually looks like:

– Bplans.com http://www.bplans.com/sp/businessplans.cfm
– MOOT Corp Business Plan competition winners
http://www.businessplans.org/businessplans.html
– VFinance – View hundreds of real business plans in pdf format. Http://www.vfinance.com/home.asp?bps=1&ToolPage=bps_main.asp
– Business Owners Toolkit Sample business plans and information on how to create a plan. Http://www.toolkit.cch.com/tools/buspln_m.asp
– PlanWare Planning software and information. Http://www.planware.org/
– Virtual Business Plan Walk through the design of a business plan. Http://www.bizplanit.com/vplan.html
-SBA Business Planning Guide http://www.sba.gov/starting_business/planning/basic.html
– Small Business Advancement Center http://www.sbaer.uca.edu/business_plan/businessPlan.pdf
– Sample Business Plan General planning guide created by the Canadian Business Service Center. Http://www.cbsc.org/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=CBSC_FE/display&c=GuideFactSheet&cid
– Business Plans Index – A subject guide to sample business plans and profiles for specific business types from Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Http://216.183.184.20/subject/business/bplansindex.html

Some recommended books are :

– Business Plans Kit for Dummies
– The Complete Book of Business Plans : Simple Steps to Writing a Powerful Business Plan
– Writing Business Plans That Get Results : A Step-By-Step Guide
– Business Plans For Dummies®
– Your First Business Plan : A Simple Question and Answer Format Designed to Help You Write Your Own Plan