He just did it...

There are many small business opportunities right under your nose. But you have to look at the world around you with fresh eyes and listen with newly tuned ears. New local ordinances may help you come up with an unheard of business. Where others see trouble, look for opportunity to start a new service or to make an innovation in an old business model.

To help yourself with finding the small business opportunity that's right for you think about these personality traits and see which is like you.

• Are you concerned with improving the things around you? Maybe you can modify some type of business to make it better.

• Do you like to give advice? Perhaps you can teach people to do something and sell your e-book. It could be a small business advice book.

• Do you have a dynamic personality? Then as a small business entrepreneur, you're business will be branded by your charisma.

• Are you creative? Your small business opportunities are available on the internet at sites where you can sell, photography, music, screen savers, and your writing skills.

 

 

Many colleges offer a small business advice service so be sure to check out what is offered locally. These are usually free of charge. The internet offers a variety of advice that may help you. These cover areas like start-up plans and marketing, forums, proposal writing, branding, various ways to use the internet to advertise and grow your business.

The Small Business Administration is chock full of help for the small business entrepreneur including a plan tutorial and outline, financial assistance, local resources, and a lot more. There are many ways on the internet to promote your small business online. You can post ads, talk in forums, join social marketing sites, use traffic exchanges, and banner exchanges, add your signature to all of your emails and so forth. Linking is a good way to get traffic to your site whether you're promoting your internet business.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.....so just do it. A single step rings you closer to your desired goal, so just do it. On the internet, you will find a whole world at your fingertips.

It is worth nothing, however, unless you take action.

Below are some guidelines that will help further your success:

This is written for printed books but it's the same with an e-book.

While publishing is all about creative expression, it's also about business and it's those business save authors who will succeed in the end. Now you don't have to be an MBA to be a great business person, you simply have to understand that the choices you make relative to your books future should be based on strategies that will enhance sales not just drain your pocketbook. So, how do you do this? First, take a long, hard look at your reader.

1) Reader profile: create one of these at the beginning of your marketing campaign and keep refining it as you move through the process. Refine and redefine who and where your audience is and how to get to them.

2) Time commitment: determine what you can and can't reasonably do. If you have a full time job it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to commit yourself to forty hours of marketing a week unless your boss is on vacation.

3) Investment: how much are you willing to invest in your future? Are you willing to invest money without seeing much in return knowing that you are building a foundation or do you want to see immediate monetary results? Most authors don't see a return on their investment for a year or more. Are you committed enough to yourself or your project to keep this investment going?

4) Reality check: what's realistic for the industry you're in? Are you latching onto a fad or something with more longevity? Are you getting into a brand new market that will require lots of reader education? Or are you trying to go mainstream with a non-mainstream topic? While this is an admirable goal, it can be like swimming upstream.

5) Budget: while we encourage authors to invest in their future, we've also seen a number of people go into heavy debt, quit their jobs and even sell their homes just to promote their book. While that kind of dedication is certainly admirable, remember that although you have the potential to make a great deal of money it's not going to be overnight. The lure here is of course that "If I stick with it, this next sale will make me famous." Well, maybe or maybe not. If you've been plugging away for a while without any significant success get a professional to give you some honest, constructive feedback about your plan, your market, and your book. It might be that a poorly designed cover is the reason you're not making sales, or a topic that's fallen off of the public's radar screen. In the meantime as you're waiting to hit the big time you'll still need a place to sleep and Uncle Vinnie's couch will get old real quick.

6) Burnout: we hear this term often, even to the point of being overused. What we're really talking about here is author burnout. We've found that the average author only markets their book for ninety days. That means ninety days of day and night marketing, radio interviews at 3am and a book signing every weekend. On day ninety-one they are so tired, so discouraged and so broke they quit. You can avoid this by giving yourself realistic goals and a realistic timeframe in which to complete them. There's nothing in the world like seeing your book in print. If approached realistically, objectively and with sound business sense, it can be one of the most exciting times in your life.

It is worth nothing, unless you take action !

 

 

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