Showing posts with label probably. Show all posts
Showing posts with label probably. Show all posts

Have you ever wondered how to decide what to outsource in your online business? It's probably more difficult than doing so for an offline one. That's because so many Internet-based businesses also happen to be one-man-bands and, as a result, you end up doing all of it anyway. But you know as well as I do that you can't do it all. So how do you decide what to do?




Before you can do that, you need to understand the difference between core and non-core business. Core business is what your customers pay you for. It's your expertise. It's what you give them that enables them to solve their particular problem.





Non-core business is everything else. And to the extent possible, you should be doing only core business.





Obviously, that is the ideal, and online entrepreneurs - especially when they first start - seldom have the money to outsource as much as they would like.





Maybe you're in the same boat.





Even so, here are some guidelines that will help you to get started.





The number one activity that you need to do more than anything else is to create your own products. The most successful online entrepreneurs do. It's true that there are some people, called affiliates, who sell other people's products and who do very well at it, but they are few and far between.





Apart from the advantage of keeping all of the profits for yourself, another good reason to create your products is that you have complete control over the quality of the information. Have you ever bought a product that purported to deliver something really valuable, only to discover that it failed to live up to your expectations or that what was promised was blown out of all proportion? I certainly have.





When you create your own products, you can make sure that this doesn't happen to your customers.





There's another activity that you probably ought to do yourself, at least in the short term, and that's marketing. Writing articles for this directory is a case in point. Unless, and until, you've written a lot yourself, you won't really know how to write them in such a way as to make them attractive to your readers.





Once you do have the hang of it, then if you want to, you can create a template and outsource the activity.





The rest of what you do can be left for someone else; but that's a subject for another article.


You have probably discovered already that your online business generates a lot of paper. Funny that. So, how do you create an offline filing systems for your online business? How do you keep track of all that paper that seems to come spilling out of your printer. You know that it's important; so what do you do with it?




Hands up if you have as much space on your desk to work as you'd like!





That's what I thought. I don't have enough room either. And one of the most annoying things is that the family seems to think that the mail and anything else that they can think of ought to get dropped on your desk as well.





How can you create a place for everything you need without losing it before you even get started.





Here are some suggestions.





1. Decide what categories will be easiest for you to remember.





Obviously, you can't have a separate file for everything that you print. That means that you need to create categories for similar documents.





2. Products





You probably will want a file for each of your products. That would include all of your development notes and any information about your prices.





3. Web pages





You may want to print each of your web pages and file them as well. If you lose your connection, these backups will enable you to see what you have. You may also want to keep a list of all of the URLs you have, the login pages with their login details. This would include your web host, autoresponder, shopping cart, and blog. Few things are as frustrating online as not being able to login to a site that belongs to you.





4. Suspense files





This is something I observed when I was in the US Air Force. The unit clerk had a folder for every day in the month, numbered from 1-31. Whatever was due on a particular day of the month was put into that folder. Then each day, the contents of that file were taken out.





All of us were able to use it. I used it for, among others things, to remind me to ready various regulations so that I would stay up-to-date on current and new policies. But for your online business, it could be to remind you to review your analytics, for example.





5. Other activities





Files for marketing, list building, or ideas for follow-up messages could go here.