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Welcome to the My Own Business, Inc. (MOBI) newsletter! My Own Business, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization providing free educational coursework on our website www.myownbusiness.org to foster successful entrepreneurs.
Each issue will give you information and ideas to help achieve your entrepreneurial goals. Highlights of this issue include:
- Feature Article "Tips For Developing A Successful Website"
by Thomas Mix, Executive Director for My Own Business, Inc.
- Five useful e-commerce websites to sink your digital teeth into.
- Article Excerpt "Disciplined Entrepreneurship" a capsulation of suggestions on how to formulate (and reformulate) your business plan by Donald N. Sull, the London Business School.
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Tips For Developing A Successful Website
By Thomas Mix
Executive Director
My Own Business, Inc.
Make your site easy to use and navigate. Don't let your site become the victim of a short attention span. When people visit a site, and they can't find what they are looking for, they will move on to your nearest competitor. While it might be tempting to have a cutting edge website, don't forget the basics. Make sure your site loads up fast, is easy to navigate, is well organized and descriptive of your business. Provide clear, easy to understand navigational tools on each page.
It's not enough to list your products and provide a shopping cart for purchases. You will need to provide meaningful content as well. If you sell ski equipment, your site could post local ski conditions and articles about the latest fashion trends and resort reviews. A CPA's site could publish tax tips and offer links to IRS forms. A catering service could offer articles on how to host a successful party.
Encourage customer feedback. Ask your customers what they want. Did they find what they were looking for? How could your site be more useful or easier to use? Listen to your customer's frustrations and gripes to get insight into what you are doing right and or wrong.
Most consumers hate getting spam. A far more appealing strategy is to develop a mailing list. Invite your customers to "opt in" to a newsletter or notices of specials running at your business. Provide a coupon that will give them a discount on their next purchase. And always give an easy means to "opt out" of receiving future emails.
Make your site easy to find by making sure you are listed on all the major search engines such as Google, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, etc. Creating a great website is only the first step to establishing a successful e-business. Once you have your website up and running you need to make sure your target audience can find you when conducting searches relating to your business via search engines. Almost 90% of Internet users today use search engines to find the information and products they need, yet only 13% of sites are registered with search engines. Search engines have a tremendous capacity to drive traffic to your site, yet few new entrepreneurs have the know-how to tap into this resource. The free website for entrepreneurs at www.myownbusiness.org offers detailed do's and don'ts on how best to market and optimize your website for placement on the top search engines.
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Five useful e-commerce websites to sink your digital teeth into:
We have put together a short list of some great websites to help you in planning your e-commerce objectives.
- Website101.com - Your Small Business MUST be Online! - Five common misconceptions about small business on the web. Find out why it is essential for any new business to have a web presence.
- Entrepreneur.com - A huge collection of informative articles covering all aspects of e-commerce including hosting, domain names, website design, and lots more.
- SearchEngineWatch.com - Search Engine Tips - covers search engine submission, placement and marketing issues. It explains how search engines find and rank web pages, with an emphasis on what webmasters can do to improve their search engine rankings by properly submitting, using better page design, HTML meta tags, and other tips.
- Ecommerce-guide.com - Getting Started on eBay - eBay has proven to be a key channel for small businesses to sell goods online without the cost and effort of creating and running their own shopping site. Yet making the jump to selling products through eBay can seem daunting and downright risky for a newcomer -- unless you're armed with the right intelligence.
- Nolo.com - Sales Tax on the Internet: Who Pays It, Who Doesn't - Despite what you sometimes hear, some Internet sales are subject to sales tax.
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Disciplined Entrepreneurship
 Donald N. Sull, associate professor of management practice at the London Business School, in an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review issue of Fall 2004, offers some practical suggestions on managing inevitable risks while pursuing opportunities.
Here is a capsulation of his suggestions on how to formulate (and reformulate) your business plan:
- Be flexible early in the process and keep it fluid. Don't commit too early. Expect your first plan to be provisional and subject to revision.
- Ask yourself if your experience or expertise gives you the right to an opinion on your specific opportunity.
- Identify your potential deal killers: variables that are likely to prove fatal to the venture.
- Clearly identify what you see as the key drivers of success. What are you betting on here?
- Raise money only in sufficient amount to finance the experiment or evaluation you next envision, with a cushion for contingencies.
- Delay hiring key managers until initial rounds of experimentation have produced a stable business model.
- At some point take the plunge and test your product or service on a small scale in the real world through customer research, test marketing, or prototypes.
- Test and refine your business model before expanding your operations.
To purchase the full text of Professor Sull's article please visit the MIT Sloan Management Review at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2004/fall/11/
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Share Your Success Story
Sharing your Success Story in the FYI Newsletter offers a double benefit: You can gain widespread recognition by promoting your business to the more than 140,000 visitors who view the My Own Business site over 500,000 times each month. Also, your success story will provide lessons and inspiration to the many others who are striving to achieve success. We really want to hear from you.
Visit our Success Stories page and share your good news at myownbusiness.org/success.html.
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New Updates to My Own Business
We have been hard at work and are proud to introduce the following course enhancements:
- We have added two new templates to help in planning your business. See "Key People To Review My Business Plan" and "Site Location Criteria" located at http://www.myownbusiness.org/plans.
- Enhancements are continually being made to all 12 sessions to keep each session up to date and full of valuable information.
- Our Top Ten lists are a great way to encapsulate and reinforce important elements of our course sessions. We now have printer friendly versions of the Top Ten lists for all 12 session topics.
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Dear MOBI Column
We welcome your questions to be answered in this Newsletter feature! Here is our Q and A for this edition:
Question:
At 57, has my window of opportunity for starting a business already passed? I am trying to get off SS disability and back to a full-time income. I have training and experience in landscape design and would like to start my own business, but at 57 that leaves only 8 years until I'm 65 and could retire. That seems like an improbably short period of time to start-up, become profitable and be able to retire. Thoughts?
Answer:
First, I'm sure you have heard the story of Harlan Sanders starting Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 67 years old. I would think that starting a business at 57 is entirely doable and in fact has some advantages. For one thing, in your profession of landscape design you have had time to learn much practical information to put you at an advantage over younger competitors. Also, I'm not sure there is any reason to think that the age of 65 is the time to retire. Staying busy and happy in your own business is a way of staying productive and agile in mind and body way past the age of 65.
- Phil Holland, Founder of My Own Business, Inc.
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My Own Business, Inc. welcomes your comments and questions. Please send to FYI Newsletter, My Own Business, Inc., 13181 Crossroads Parkway North, Suite 190, City of Industry, Ca 91746, phone 1-562-463-1800, or e-mail us at info@myownbusiness.org.
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