Taking Your Internet Business To The Top Part 4

18/07/2007 by paul

Don't miss out! Make sure you read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

The Goal

In the previous sections I've highlighted the basic steps you need to take before embarking on your Internet business, or that enable you to re-evaluate your current Internet business. In this section we'll look at the business' goal, which is the yard-stick against which you should measure the success of your business in your own terms. This goal defines what you want from the business. Combining this with the previous sections allows you to evaluate whether the goal is achievable, and what input (financial or otherwise) is required.

'Success' is the achievement of a pre-determined goal

In order for the business to be successful, you need a clear understanding of its goal, and this requires a consideration of the balance between investment, profit and effort. Your business may be able to make a modest profit with minimal financial investment and no personal effort; many Internet businesses create income for their owners 'whilst they sleep'. This may be preferable to making slightly more profit, but investing financially, or working full-time within the business, but both could be considered success if that's what they set out to do. Remember that we're talking about the objective of the business here - not your overall personal objectives, though these will have an impact on the business goal.

The following is a list of example objectives that define the goal of a business:

• To provide $10,000 annual income for the business owner
• To do so without involving the business owner directly in day-to-day operations
• To do so with a maximum requirement of 4 hours work per week (book-keeping, banking, etc)
• To do so with $1000 initial investment

The above would be the business objective of someone who perhaps already had a full-time job and was looking for some additional income; or someone who was retired and did not want to work full-time within the business. Or perhaps this is the business objective of someone who has 10 such businesses, works 4 hours per week on each doing the book-keeping and accounts, something they particularly enjoy, and achieves a gross income of $100,000.

Rememer from Part 3 that we said that the goal is the 'why?' of the business - why do it at all? You'll notice that there is no mention of what the business actually does (the 'how?'), and why should there be? Unless your objective is to do a particular job, rather than achieve a particular goal, why should it matter how that goal is achieved? This is what defines entrepreneurs; they start by focusing on what will be achieved, not how it will be achieved.

Making an easy $100 repeatedly is often more attractive than making a risky $20,000 in one go

Take, for example, the perfume website Scentsations.com.au. The site currently enjoys modest sales of less than 10 bottles of perfume each week. Some people might ask 'what is the point?'. Well, the point is that the site is almost completely automated, taking less than an hour a week to maintain. Any income generated has cost the owner (me, in fact) less than 2 hours per week of effort. What it also provides is a testing ground for Internet marketing ideas, future opportunities for cross-promotion as I build a highly targeted mailing list and, most importantly, cheap perfume for my wife!

Once you've established your goal, revisit the market, the plan and the supply chain aspects of the business and work out if your goal is achievable. If not, something has to change, which can be a frustrating end to your hard work, but at least you've learnt that before you've embarked on an unsuccessful business venture.

I hope that this series of articles has given you some insight into what needs to be addressed when starting an Internet (or possibly any) business. The subject is large and I've only scratched the surface, but I hope to address each in more detail in articles to come.

To discuss any point raised in any articles, please, send me an email

Keywords :  internet marketing,