Starting a New Opportunity Or Business

Imagine one day you are on top of the world winning and realizing your dreams and the next day you are reduced to being evicted from your home and living in low cost housing. Your health is gone and you are on dialysis. Not exactly living the American dream eh? Well that is exactly where I found myself three years ago. It made me humble and it made me realize that even though I had lost my health and all my material possessions that what I had left was me. I had earned all of those asserts that I had lost and I still had within me those talents and abilities that had build that dream before so I could do it again. I was broken, and confused not knowing where to turn. Where would my next check come from, the next day work I could find. I had worked hard and achieved my dreams. No one can know the satisfaction that comes from at last achieving the big dream. However, goals and dreams can disappear in a twinkle of the eye like anything else in life; it can be and often is temporary. All that we have can be taken from us without a moments notice, a new car, a relationship, a house, they are all subject to loss and we are left sitting with nothing on the table. That was the first thing I had to accept. Accept it I did and what I found was relief. Every situation we find ourselves in has its special benefits, we just have to find them and profits from them. No matter what kind of situation we find ourselves in it is how we perceive it that counts. So instead of saying to myself that I lost my health and my home now my life is over. I said this is a new opportunity to reinvent myself and find another career. I still have all the talents and abilities it took to build the last one. I am so grateful for having had the chance to have my career up until now and achieve my dreams. I am excited now to see what life will bring to the table and what I will make of it. I began to see that I would have to come up with a new dream and a new career. So I began to focus on sales and business. I also began to use some of the tools that I had at my disposal like Linkedin to help me get ahead. Here was a whole online group of people who had expertise and was willing to share it with me to get ahead. They were banning together to share their expertise to forge new business for themselves but they were willing to share their expertise with me. I also was offered on a regular basis new opportunities to read business books, go to seminars. Though I had very little money I was rich in time. So I began this tremendous new journey. I threw myself into it just as I would a job or school. I would learn and I would succeed. So first things first I got a website up and running and a store. They were not perfect but I began by writing daily and using my blog to drive traffic to my website. I continued to sell on Ebay to bring in some profit while I was developing my site. Then Ebay blew up on me. They said since while I was sick and in the hospital I had to cancel several sales that they were limiting how much I could sell on Ebay. They were also limiting my exposure and so I was given no choice but to develop my own website. So I began with buying online traffic. I invested in Google ad words, Yahoo and Bing. Made sense to me as I had no customers to convert, There is also no life time value of a customer if there are no customers. Of course most new business owners think that if you drive enough traffic that you will convert some of that traffic to customers which is not necessarily the case. It’s possible to invest a lot of time and money into sending more traffic to a website that does not convert visitors into paying customers. So traffic is not always the answer. Here are some ideas of places to advertise: 1. Paid Search Adwords Bing and Yahoo 2. Display ads – AdWords, Bing/Yahoo, Facebook, AOL AdSonar, Adbrite, BuySellAds, AdBlade, Adknoweldge, etc. 3. Search Engine Optimization 4. Article marketing 5. Video marketing 6. Guest blogging, webinars, and speaking 7. Email list renting. 8. Affiliates/JV Partnerships and/or Affiliate Networks 9. Social media groups 10. Direct mail Keep experimenting with these medias until you find one or more that will convert traffic to customers If this is not working for you then you need to look at optimization of your website. This does not cost you more money. It just optimizes your convertion rate. t’s now dive into the 5 crucial elements to increase website conversions: 1. Relevant & Compelling Headline 2. Unique Selling Proposition 3. Social Proof 4. Irresistible Offer 5. Reason to Act Now Here are some suggestions to get you started. Not every idea will be applicable to your business, but I’m sure you can implement at least one of these to improve the lifetime value: Increase the price of your product or service – this is the easiest way to generate more money per sale Offer additional products and services after the first sale. For example, We are in the jewelry, clothing and accessory business. We can upsale by when we offer a pendant, offer a chain for that pendant, a jewelry box to keep it in. Offer a subscription or continuity service. Say offer a subscription for say jewelry, you get a deal on the first month and then the second month maybe you get a deal on shoes. Offer partner products or services after the first transaction is complete. If you don’t want to expand your own list of products and services, then partner with another business and receive a commission on each sale you refer. I hope this gives you some ideas of how to get your business going, to get traffic, convert it to sales and expand the life time sales to a customer.