How To Avoid The Costly Mistakes That Cripple Small Business

Whether you have been in business for years or are just starting out, you need to recognize these costly errors before you can learn how to avoid them.

These are the deadly traps that too many small business owners fall into:

1. Getting wedded to an idea and sticking with it for too long - Don't stay married for life to a single idea. Ideas are the currency of entrepreneurs. Play around with as many ideas as you like to discover which ones create money and lasting success.

2. Operating without a viable marketing plan - A winning marketing plan captures the attention you need to surround your enterprise with the right calibre of people; employees, customers, suppliers. There may be a 100 disparate ways to market your business but an exclusive viable plan implemented effectively, efficiently, and consistently will be results driven, eliminating guesswork.

3. Failing to appreciate market forces - Changes in customer preferences and advances in competitive products and services can leave you stranded in the dust unless you take the trouble to get to know your market and your customers well. It is essential that you appreciate what customers want now, what they're likely to want in the future, how their buying patterns are evolving, and how you can become a constant resource for them even if you don't have the right products and services for them right now.

4. Ignoring your cash position - Customers do not always respond to superior products in the time frame that you think they should. You'll need plenty of cash to sustain operations in the interim. Cash is king, so be on your guard as to how it flows in - and out.

5. Ignoring employees - The management and motivation of staff is one of the biggest challenges facing the business owner. Without patience, persistence and people skills, problems quickly multiply - and morale, productivity and profits can easily be destroyed. Always make your people your first priority.

6. Confusing likelihood with reality - The successful entrepreneur lives in the world of likelihood but spends money in the real world. Be realistic in all of your commercial undertakings.

7. Operating without a sales strategy - Without a strategy for selling, there is no effective way to gauge the financial growth and progress of a business. You need a realistic map that identifies where the sales will come from, how they will come - and from whom.

8. Playing the Lone Ranger with no back up - You are the key to it all but you cannot do everything yourself and continue to grow at the same time. Even modest success can overwhelm you unless you hire the right staff and delegate responsibility.

9. Operating with no mastermind on board - Most small businesses expand faster when there is someone around with a few grey hairs to cast an experienced eye occasionally on overall activity. Your elder statesperson could operate for you as an executive director or part-time consultant.

10. Giving up - Not every successful entrepreneur gets it right first time; some fail several times before they strike the core formula that does it for them. So, if you are failing, go ahead and fail. But fail fast and learn from the experience. Then try again with this new wisdom. Never give up and never suffer either.

Knowledge is the key

The birds of the air have the knowledge (and the wings) to get from one destination to another on time, every time. They have no need of travel schedules, passports, currency exchange, traveller checks, or any other restrictive man-made paraphernalia to staunch their progress. Flocks of swifts, for example, are so confident of their navigational prowess they catnap on the wing on journeys spanning thousands of miles.

They have an instinctive fail-safe route plan.

So too will you when you learn how to avoid the ten most deadly mistakes in minding your own business.

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Old Habits Die Hard in the Third Age Years…

I spent a lifetime in retailing and I’m still at it in retirement; albeit virtually.

You know how it goes.

You put up a web page and throw in some stock.

Your page begets another and another and another until one day you’re looking at a site that’s got more stock than Bloomingdales.

But you can’t stop…

The old sourcing skills are making a comeback, sharpening their talons, and coaxing you to duck and dive, bob and weave to find still more stock at even better prices.

So you build another virtual retail store and then another and another and another until you’re looking at an empire.

Then you diversify…

If you are upmarket, you go downmarket.

Why not?

There no shareholders breathing down your neck or smart ass vice presidents demanding that you pull in the reins.

And so you build a bargain basement store and another and another until you’re looking at Wal-Mart.

Expending your energy in this way is fun; it’s therapeutic, and if you go about matters in the right way, it doesn’t cost a thin dime apart from hosting fees – and it can be hugely profitable.

In between times you are still knocking out the odd bestseller just to keep your hand in.

But even now you can’t stop…

You dig deep into the inner recesses of the psyche and draw down expertise that has been rusting away for eons in the vaults of the supraconscious.

Ideas leap out at you from nowhere; you create courses on creative writing, starting a business, offline marketing, online marketing, maximising on retirement, and what have you.

So you build more websites and more websites and more websites and now you are busier than ever you were when you thought you were working.

So how am I doing with all these third age activities?

I’m not hurting…

Most mornings my inbox is crammed with cute little messages like ‘Invoice from Clickbank’ and ‘You have money at PayPal’ and so forth.

But don’t take my word for it.

Visit one of my stores and judge for yourself…

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Writers Scribble

Affiliate Revenue – Part 4

The last few weeks have been taken up with preparations for the launch of my latest online venture.

You may recall in a recent email how I started to dabble in affiliate reselling and met with immediate and albeit unexpected success.

Now I am taking the experiment a quantum leap forward with the launch of a portal website featuring 12,000+ ClickBank products plus a sprinkling of the best of the latest affiliate reselling opportunities.

Window dressing the storefront

I have already tweaked the system so that at will I can do an instant makeover of the 12 featured products.

For a month I shall leave them as they are to monitor returns.

Thereafter I shall rotate these from a choice of 100 alternatives

Will surfers use the search box in my system’s portal?

I think the answer must be ‘yes’; especially when you consider this endorsement from no less than personage than a ClickBank Vice President,

"This system has serious tools for serious ClickBank affiliates"
Jennifer J., Vice President of Client & Customer Services, ClickBank.com.

How well will my system perform?

That’s anyone’s guess but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be a case of softly-softly, catchee-monkey.

If I am wrong and it suddenly takes off, I‘ll let you know in Part 5…

http://how-to-products-xl.com

How to Write 1000s of Zero Cost Articles Effortlessly, Set Up Your Own Submission Center And Place Them In the Top Hubs Free of Charge!

Whether you are a newcomer to online marketing or you’ve been in the trenches for some time, you need to learn how to write zero cost articles and harness their amazing power to drive hordes of visitors to your website and email inbox.

You will miss out on a goldmine of potential buyers if you do not…

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You have just found the all-encompassing zero cost articles kit

What you will learn from the Zero Cost Articles Kit

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You will also learn how to incorporate the age-old strategy for successful zero cost article distribution

Writing editorials; not ad copy
Why you must be totally truthful in your claims
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You will finally learn how to set up your very own
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It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s free to create, and you will have the top 130 hubs at your disposal to submit your articles free of charge, time after time, from your very own personally generated submission center.

The choice is yours but you know the old saying:
buyer beware…

You could opt for one of a range of high-priced alternative products - but you may find it leaves you short on information on how to effectively write your articles and you end up doing rather more than you bargained for at the outset.

Your guarantee of satisfaction

You have 60 days to try out the Zero Cost Articles Kit at your leisure and you must be 100% satisfied with the product or you may request a refund which will be honored without quibble.

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