Taking Your Internet Business To The Top Part 1

20/06/2007 by paul

Okay, so you have an Internet business that's ticking along nicely. You have traffic, customers (some of whom come back again and again), a great product range, competitive prices, etc, etc...but you can't help feeling that you're somehow missing out on the real action - things could be much better and you could definitely be making more money. You started the business sure that you would be an Internet gazillionaire, and now you're working more hours than ever, you're more broke than ever, and things don't appear to be improving! Ask yourself…

DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?

That's certainly my story. After 6 years of back-breaking, heart-breaking work building a multinational Internet business selling consumer electronic products from digital cameras to broadband routers (please forgive the plug!) I had that sad moment of realisation when it occured to me that things weren't going to plan. In fact, I was so far off-plan that I was siginificantly worse off than when I gave up my well-paid job in IT all those years ago, and I know that my business partners were thinking the same things. I didn't want to spend another second working so hard at something with limited future…

SO WHAT DID I DO ABOUT IT?

Firstly, I took a long, hard look at the business to work out if there was any money there. I asked myself the question "Is there any money in what I'm doing?". The answer was "obviously not", otherwise I'd be making it, right?! After 6 years the one thing I have achieved is that I am an unequivocal expert in what I do, it's just that ‘what I do’ doesn't make me much money…though it makes my suppliers a lot of money, and it sure as hell made Google a lot of money!

Now, a lot of people would do what I did and think "Jeez...what can I do to get out of my business as fast as possible and do something that will make me money?" - but I soon realised this was the WRONG APPROACH! I had a business already, I have customers, some of which even have loyalty to the business and actively promote it, so am I really ready to give that up and the fruits of all my 6 years hard labour? Am I so sure that there is no money in my industry - one of the biggest and fastest growing in the world? No, I'm not, which is just as well, because even if I wanted to I can't just walk away. So…

WHAT NOW?

Just about this time I discovered something that completely changed my perspective. The thing about perspective is that what looks really bad from one point of view can look a whole lot better from another. I realised that our business had to change - WE had to change - because there simply wasn't any money doing what we were doing. My second discovery at this time was the concept of ‘leveraging’. In basic terms, you leverage what you already have to get/achieve/earn more. E.g. You can use the equity from your house to secure a mortgage on another house. This would be ‘leveraging’ your equity. I'm sure you probably know all about these things, but, like a lot of Internet pioneers, I never had any business training. I was a techy with an idea and the expertise to create websites. It's only in the last 72 hours (this is absolute honest truth) that I've realised what you can do with a marketing plan! That's over 52,000 hours of owning a business without this basic knowledge! I'm not telling you this to humiliate myself - I'm telling you this because you should understand where I'm coming from and know that, if I can do this, so can you. We're not talking rocket science here. I had to ask myself…

WHAT ELSE DIDN'T I KNOW?

Learning about leveraging got me thinking. If I didn't know this, what else don't I know? What other basic principles can I use to turn my business around? And that's where it gets very interesting. I've now discovered some of the worst kept secrets of Internet marketing ever. Yes, I did say ‘worst’ because the one thing the Internet gives everyone (over 1 billion people, anyway) is access to information. So, what did I learn?

I learnt that you need the following to develop a successful business:

1. A hungry market : You need to have people that are looking for the product or service that you're providing, and they need to be ‘hungry’ enough to want to pay for it
2. Supply : You need to have access to high-quality, high-margin products that the market is hungry for
3. A plan : You need to plan how you're going to deliver those products and/or services, how you're going to attract your customers, and how you're going to do this whilst maximising your profits
4. A goal : You need to have a goal in mind before you start. What are you doing this for? How will you measure your success? What will you do when you achieve that success?

...and that you need them in that order! Cue ‘lightbulb moment’

Part 2

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Keywords :  internet marketing,