Today we’re going to talk about whether you should be in business and if you’re actually in the right business. Scary, I know, but it’s better to face these things head-on rather than try to ignore them and wake up in a few years broke and miserable!

‘The Missing Chapter’ covers the difference between a sustainable business and an opportunistic endeavour. It also looks at important factors in creating a successful, long term business: having a strong vision around your strengths and passion.

[This post has been expanded into a full article on ‘Vision, Strengths, and Passion.’]

Welcome back to our week of mindset improvement. Today a 20 to 30 minute video asking the question: “Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?”

It’s an important question for every business owner and while you might think the answer is easy, guess again. You’ll find this video interesting and informative while making you to question some of your beliefs on the subject.

Those of you who read regularly know that I love the mindset material. I think it’s the most important component in business and life in general. Without the right mindset, we’re doomed to be average. Quite frankly, that just isn’t good enough for me and if you’re reading this, it probably isn’t for you either!

This is the first ebook, ‘The Internet Business Manifesto’ that Rich Schefren released. It gives you a base of where he is coming from. It talks about internet business in general, what the situation is at the moment, and where it is going in the future. Also it discusses how most internet business owners are overworking themselves and how you should correctly approach building your internet business.

Really, I’ll let his ebook speak for itself. Of all his free material, it’s not as groundbreaking as the others, but it definitely has some valuable material to take away. Stay tuned for tomorrow when it gets really interesting!

Ever had one of those ground breaking, fantastic, epiphany creating days that get you to the next level of thinking about your business?

Well I just had one, well two to be exact, as I spent the entire weekend looking at my business through new eyes. What brought about this new level you might ask? An ebook, or three in the end, that are actually a few months old that I stumbled upon. They’re written by written by Rich Schefren and you might have heard of him if you have anything to do with internet marketing.

Now, rather than dump the links here and wonder if you read them, I wanted to pull out some of the key points before I let you loose. So I’ll be talking about those for the rest of the week and how they should apply to your small to medium-sized business.

First though, I want to talk about an older book that is a must read if you’re a small to medium-sized business. I was going to add ‘and looking to grow’ to that but really all businesses should be looking to grow. You’re either growing or your dying, there’s no third option. A stagnant business will be outperformed by its competition and die.

So, pick up a copy of ‘The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It’ by Michael Gerber. Buy the copy and read it every few months is my recommendation. It’s considered by most to be the bible of starting a business and you won’t be able to put it down.

It will introduce you to the concept of building a business as a big business right from the start and avoiding the common pitfalls of small businesses. If your business has even made you feel stressed, overworked, out of control, or unable to handle all the work. This book is a must read and making the time to read it will save your sanity.

Hope you’re excited about your week of business inspiration. See you tomorrow!

Or did you just put up a website and expect traffic and sales to start flowing in. If you’re like most people, you’re in the later category.

To successfully make money for your business using a website you need to have an Internet marketing strategy. You need to decide on objectives for your website and work towards them.

Without a strategy, you’re just another website that nobody visits. But don’t feel too bad, at least you have a lot of company.

[This has been expanded into a full article on Internet Marketing Strategy.]

I’m talking about banner ads here. Anything that is simply serving your ad in front of visitors and charging you for it isn’t worth your marketing dollar. No-one pays attention to TV advertising anymore, even fewer people pay attention to web advertising now.

What’s the answer? Pay per Click, Search Engine Optimisation, Viral Marketing, and out of the box thinking.

Welcome to the new world of marketing, it’s hard, but the payoff is worth it!

[This has been expanded into a full article on Internet Advertising.]

Webceo is a useful piece of free software I stumbled upon the other day. Of course, by free, it has an initial offering that is free and you pay for the extra functionality. However, the functionality of the free version is very good and I’m putting it on my “must have” list for search engine optimization tools.

The most useful functions I think are the ability to analyse keywords by number of daily searches and competitors and to analyse your pages for particular keywords and get feedback on how to improve.

I recommend you check it out as it’s very easy to use and will help take your optimisation to the next level.

GoogleGuy Matt Cutts did a presentation to bloggers about how to improve their search engine rankings. You can find the full hour long video here along with a nice summary of the key points done by Efren.

If you’re serious about Search Engine Optimisation, you need to listen to what Matt has to say as he’s a Senior Engineer at Google and works on keeping search results spam free. He’s basically the SEO community’s best insight into what Google are doing and how to increase your website rankings. Plus, he’s a funny guy and the video is quite entertaining.

So now you have your measurements and your goals. Are you being successful in working towards your goals? As mentioned before, you need to be checking this on a regular basis and adjusting your approach as necessary.

Use the information to find out what kinds of advertising work for you, what initiatives have given you more traffic, and where your website may have flow problems that are preventing sales. Always be willing to try new things, keep what works, and throw away the rest.

Be aware that search engines can take up to three months to notice changes made to your website. Optimising your website is a waiting game where you have to be patient to see results. That’s where a professional consultant can come in useful, they’ve done all the trial and error before and have a strong idea of what works and what doesn’t. If you’re going to do it by yourself, you need to have a lot of patience and it could be a year or more before you start to see true benefits. Also be aware that the way search engines rank websites are always changing and you need to keep on top of the current trends. While the basics normally hold true, you need to be flexible and looking for new ways to improve your website at all times.

A plan is nothing without its favourite sister, ACTION. They walk happily down the street hand in hand, earning massive amounts of money for your business. So once you have your Online Marketing Plan on the wall in front of you, you need to pin up another piece of paper. First write at the top in nice big letters, Action Plan. On this marvellous piece of technology you write an action you will do to improve your website, next to it you write the date it will be completed.

You will notice there is no excuse column on your action plan. I know other things come up in the line of business but you really must set aside time for improvement or things will never change. Saying “yeah, yeah, when I have time!” is the surest way to guarantee you’ll never have the time. The best way is to dedicate just ten minutes a day to improvement. It sounds like a small amount (and it is!) but you’ll notice a big difference in a short space of time. Surely you have ten minutes free in your day to achieve the results you want?