Terms of Use
Disclaimer
Privacy Policy

Copyright ©2000-2010 interpublishgroup

Technical Tools and Knowledge to run a Business

	Web www.enummi.com

To start and run a business requires some technical tools and some basic knowledge. We do not want to frighten off "budding entrepreneurs". On the contrary, we would like you to try things and start your venture on a secure footing so that your efforts brings you some rewards. To bring that about, we have assembled suggestions and some tools that will be helpful.

The Business Plan

Before you go to the next step, you might want to read the opinions of some other people. We have, on purpose stayed clear of the more ridiculous claims people make, when they want to sell the book (i.e. "How to start a Business in ten Days and become a Millionaire in two Weeks", etc.). There are large numbers of books available, the four below we have looked at and, we think, they provide some insight that should help you

Just one small word of advise: Try to stay clear of suggestions from friends on the golf course, who have friends (or friends of friends, or uncles of friends of friends), who have been very successful selling "green colored widgets with built in GPS's", working one hour per week and have ended up living the life of millionaires in St. Barth's or the French Riviera!

An Essential Business Tools
A Business Plan from a Template

These business plans are easy to use, have no hidden protection, do not need further software purchases and will reduce the time you spend planning by hours, days and even weeks. You have the choice of dozens of industries and with a bit of imagination, you can adapt the plan to almost everything you do. Again we have used several plan templates ourselves and know that they work and are easy to use. If you do run into problems, you can get in touch with us and we will help you. We will also do a business plan review for you, to see that you are on the right and realistic path and do not follow the direction of "wishful thinking".

Here are pre-prepared Business Plan Templates for a large variety of businesses with easy step by step instructions to guide you through the creation of your own personal business plan. It will include all the help you need. An incredible value for only US$ 59.95

Business Plan Support Coaching. If you really get "stuck", we will give you a 90 minute Coaching Session on the phone. We will require a copy of your plan and your set of assumptions. (sent by e-mail) 48 hours prior to the coaching sessions

A complete Review of your Business Plan with a short written report by us. You will be required to send us your business plan by e-mail. Full confidentiality is assured.

Our associate site, at JobLine International also have detailed instructions on how to create a business plan. The purpose there was to help people who have lost their job and want to start their own business. But the three extensive pages will help you set yourself up on the right way.

Analyzing your Market and the Accounting and Controlling Task There are many other useful products that help you start and run the business. You can do without them at the initial stages, but they are helpful and make your chances of success that much greater. But introduce them stage by stage, because otherwise it will overwhelm you. We have selected what we have tested and what we think enhances your ability to create a successful business. An Accounting System Initially you might be able to cope with something like Quicken or MS Money. But within a short time you will require a proper accounting system. For non accountants that often poses problems. Keeping accounts is also for most people a boring job, they would rather do without. Yet, unfortunately, the tax authorities, such as the IRS, require that we keep track of where we spend the money and how we make it. There are many relatively simple and good systems around. Quickbooks is one (Starter Version $99.95 - the Professional Version around $250.00 - they also offer a training course for $149.00), though it has over the years become quite expensive. We recently helped five people set up their business, (two for purely Internet businesses and three for non internet) and searching for a good simple accounting system we came across one by APS. APS combines highly powerful American/English accounting software features with a wide range of reports such as general ledger , profit and loss , trial balance, statement of account and balance sheet and also powerful tools guaranteed to insure satisfaction from all users of the system. In other words, it has everything you need and it can grow with you. The price is only US$ 99.00 (single user). We are actually installing it now for our own web based business. They offer excellent support as well. Click here to Purchase the download Creating an Ezine Ezines are information news letters which you send out in order to let other people know that you have a website and what it does. It is an essential business tool. Top Ezine editors all know the average value of a reader and they know the secrets that create, build and maintain their hugely profitable Ezine publications. Of course some readers will never buy your products, but others will frequently purchase the products recommended by the mailing list and web site owner. Now if you have an Ezine and a series of products you sell, you are on a winning streak all the way! There are a number of people offering different products. We have used, and are still using the one shown here. This toolkit provides you with the proven trade secrets to build your own incredibly successful Ezine publication. If you are a beginner in the world of Ezines, it is the best and easiest introduction. If you have some experience, it will show you new tricks! Click here to Purchase your Easy Ezine Toolkit for US$ 39.97 An AdWord Analyzer Advertising words or Adwords are search words through which people find web sites with the search engines. They are immensely important, since they determine whether your site is being found and seen by millions or just by the occasional web surfer that happens to stumble on it. A few weeks ago, one of the top online marketers put together a report that outlined the seven most effective ways to sell any product or service online. Using Pay Per Click Advertising, specifically Google AdWords, was his number one choice of marketing methods online! Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook devotes a whole chapter on how to find the right adwords. Clearly Adwords are as important for sites advertising your own products as for affiliate sites. There are several programs that help you analyze and select the appropriate adwords. The one we use is Adword Analyzer It gives you the ability to search deeper for specific terms. The program also produces links to existing advertising campaigns for each keyword or phrase it returns. Adword Analyzer also allows you to search by geographical datacenter, i.e. if you look for UK customers, then you will see only returns from UK advertisers. The cost is only US$ 67.00 Click here to Purchase

The Total Financial Costs of starting an Internet Business

We have on this page given you a lot of suggestions on what kind of products help you to start your Internet, or any other business, in order to make it a successful venture. We have been careful only to recommend products we have used ourselves or products we have experienced in use while consulting and coaching other people. The question you must inevitably ask is, well, how much does it cost me to set myself up in an internet business?

There is no doubt, the internet is the medium with which you can make money fastest and with an absolute minimum cash investment. But anyone telling you that it does not require some serious effort to set up, is "leading you down the garden path"! The amount of money you can make will vary with your effort, the products you select and various other factors. In that respect the Internet is not different from any other business.

So let us summarize:

	You require a lot of effort, so called sweat equity! This is especially true in the early stages. You probably have a little more relaxed business life later on, when you have set everything up and when you mainly keep the operation running smoothly.
	You require persistence and tenacity, discipline and thoroughness. You have to be optimistic, but not euphoric!
	You require very little money to start the business.

That is your personal investment and you can not put a price on that.Your desires and aspirations will determine this. The financial investment is, however, something quite different. It is made up of the following services and associated costs:

You need to register a domain name. One reliable company is directnic.com - annual fees for a domain costs $15.00 a year and if you want the advertising banner removed (you will need banner free hosting) it will cost another $15.00. The site is easy to use, clean and also offers a simple web builder. You can leave your website on their server and as long as you keep it reasonably small, it will be fine there. The support by this company is superb. This is excellent for a start-up and you save yourself the money for the ISP below, because directnic is your ISP. They also have a site builder to create your website and they have a site submission program so you can start submitting your site to the search engines.	US$ 30.00 (per year) Domain name registration only US$ 15.00 per year
Once you grow, you will need a reliable ISP (Internet Service Provider, where you "host" your website - you will leave the domain registration with directnic). There are numerous good ones available. The ones we have experience with are: XO (formerly Concentric) XO offers a webbuilder (where you can build your websites. It is very easy to use and saves you the costs of having to purchase something like Front Page) They have hosting packages available from, monthly $24.95 to 375.00. The $24.95 package (100mb/10 e-mails) will be enough for most people. They are relatively speaking, expensive, but ultra reliable. iPowerWeb is an excellent hosting company. They offer you a monthly subscription for US$ 7.95 per month, if you pay one year in advance, and no set up fee. You will get 2000mb, 500 e-mails,SSL, a marketing package, statistics and lots more. It is an outstanding deal. Marketing and search engine submission. Very reliable. Netfirms Web Hosting is a company specializing in hosting small businesses' web sites.They offer you a monthly subscription for US$ 9.95 per month, if you pay one year in advance, and no set up fee. You will get 2000mb, 100 e-mails, a website starter CD and lots more. PowWeb Hosting- 2,000 MB + 2 Months FREE! - $7.77/month! . The subscription is only $7.77 per month and you get 2 months free if you pay a year in advance. PowerWeb offers a site builder and a marketing package. A good reliable company. Jumpline.com Premium Web Hosting for as low as $2.50/mo. They offer plans from US$ 9.95 per month with 500 Mb/5000mb per month/75 pop3 e-mail accounts. One interesting special offer is that you can host 6 domains for only US$ 14.95 per month. HostRocket.Com - Web Hosting This company offers 1000 Mb and 5 Gb of traffic for US$ 6.95 per month (two year contract - otherwise $14.95) with no set-up fee. There is free set-up provided you pay a year in advance. Unlimited e-mails.	From US$ 60.00 - $299.40 per year
You should have an autoresponder. Most of the web hosting companies above offer one as part of their package. But, if you want to get more sophisticated, or when your site picks up traffic ( you can argue that, you have to have a good autoresponder and mailing list/client manager otherwise your site will never pick-up traffic! This is a valid argument!) you would consider someone like aWeber who offers an integrated suite. aWeber also offers some interesting articles on the subject. Another company is "getresponse.com". The offers are rather similar and reliability and support is very good with both companies.	(aWeber) US$ 179.40 (or US$ 19.95 if you pay monthly) US$ 149.00 a year
The SuperAffiliate Business Book (US$47.00), How to create and Sell Products On-line (US$127.00), How to Create an Ezine (US$39.97), the Adword Analyzer (US$ 67.00), eBook Secrets Exposed (US$49.00), How to write an eBook in 7 Days (US$29.00) and The Lazy Man's Guide to Online Business (US$ 29.00)	US$ 387.97 or US$ 309.97 if you do not want to create eBooks
The APS Accounting System	US$ 99.00
If you want to increase your Web Site Traffic through better positioning in Search Engines, a WebPosition Gold makes it easy to monitor your search positions & to improve your rankings! Don't be buried in last place, move up to first place!	US$ 149.00

Given, that you create something with which you can potentially earn several tens of thousands a month, this is an amazingly low amount. Moreover, the total start up costs do not all come up at the very beginning, but are probably spread out over three or four months.

The Key Issues in selecting the "right ISP"

Reliability
This is obviously the key issue for that. Because what does the best package help, if the site is down and no one can see it? The above recommended ISP's all have 99.9% reliability and we have never ever had any problems with a site not being available.

Storage Capacity
If you create an affiliate site or a site selling an e-book it is unlikely, even if you have a large site, that your storage capacity needed will be much more than 5 Mb. So, 1000Mb storage capacity offered is nice, but probably unnecessary for your type of business. You will need such large storage capacity, if you sell MP3 or DVD files and want the files stored on site for downloads.

Bandwith
This is the transfer capacity of files (e.g. websites and products) for the traffic you will get. If your site carries a lot of graphics and if you sell large capacity eBooks then you will require more capacity, than if you have an affiliate page with few graphics. In any event, buying additional bandwith is usually expensive. So if the ISP offers a lot of bandwith as part of a package, even if you do not use it at the beginning, it is a good thing.

Pop3 E-Mail Accounts
This is simple, the more you get, the better. You will use them in the end

Additional Items
These can be such items as a Web Site Creator, Autoresponder, multiple domain hosting, good site statistics, a marketing package and a search engine submission package, are all attractive offers that save you money and time.

Set-up Fee
Some of the ISP's charge you a set-up fee. This generally applies if you do not prepay for 6 months or a year ahead. This fee can be $25-100. It is therefore well worth considering prepaying for a period.

How to make your Website known to the Public

Making your website known to the public at large is not that easy, if you have a limited budget. Obviously, you could go to your local TV or radio station and advertise there. But most people do not have that kind of budget.

You can start with Google. They have some excellent websites that help you get your website registered with search engines. One of their pages is the analytics site at http://www.google.com/analytics . This will give you the basis of how to control and see where you visitors come from, which pages they like and and how long they stay on your site and read what you produced. You can also sign up to Google Adsense and Google Adwords. The former will enable Google to place adverts on your site, the latter will enable you to place paid adverts through Google on other peoples site on the basis of a pay-by-click system. In other words, you paid for every time someone clicks on one of your Google managed adverts and comes to your site. But be careful, this can add up to quite some bill in a month. So keep an exact budget for this.

Web Position is another company that provides Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of making web pages/sites search engine friendly resulting in improved search engine visibility and incremental traffic that helps you to position your website on the search engines. Their WebPosition^® 4 offers all of the tools necessary to improve your web site's search engine rankings and increase revenue. WebPosition 4 now includes a summary dashboard, trend graphs, essential off-site metrics (link popularity and search engine saturation reporting) and 200+ new search engines. The costs range from $149.00 to under $400 for the software.

There are numerous other companies offering similar services.