True
e-business: working smart so your e-business works for you!
I want to share some extremely important concepts with you
that you need to grasp firmly to make the most of your e–business.
This is one of the most important aspects of our book, "How
Ordinary People Make Extraordinary Money Online!". At
the end of the book there is a summary that we call “The
Rules of Success on the Internet”. We encourage you
to get our book so you can refer back to these rules frequently
as you hone your online business concept to better ensure
the success of your online venture. While you do not necessarily
have to adhere to these rules as strict requirements, the
more you are able to stick to them the better the better off
you will be. These rules can be broken slightly sometimes,
but if you do this, make sure you have a good reason or that
you can compensate for the compromise. You’ll want to
do your very best to avoid “breaking” them if
you can.
Often in describing to others what I do with my web-based
businesses, many get excited about the prospect of starting
their own e-business and begin to come up with online business
ideas of their own. But since e-commerce itself is such a
new concept to all of us (literally a little over a decade
old), most individuals are still not really grasping what
e-commerce truly is or at least should be ideally. They often
arrive at ideas like marketing a certain physical product,
or offering to render a particular service over the web. While
employing a solid internet marketing plan can really compliment
a conventional brick-and-mortar business, this type of move
does not actually make a business a true eBusiness in its
purest possible form. There are some really important and
clear advantages to keeping your pure eBusiness as digital
as possible, and I will be illustrating these advantages a
little later in the book.
Slow down, take a deep breath, and really take
in what is about to be described to you. It will save you
a lot of time, energy, and heartache if you do.
Most of us are so used to the concept of conventional business
that we have a great deal of trouble of thinking outside the
box and maximizing the “e” in our eBusiness. We
attempt to come up with a potential eBusiness idea, but most
of the ideas that come to mind are still just traditional
businesses with a little internet marketing “kaboose”.
One terrific example of this type of eBusiness today is Amazon.com.
Amazon is one of the longer lasting of the .com’s, but
over the years even big ol’ Amazon.com has had its share
of problems and they are still struggling because they are
still forced to maintain a huge physical inventory of traditional
products (this breaks one of our rules and I will tell you
why in a little bit) and must ship these products to their
customers. Isn’t this just using the web to market traditional
goods or services? Yes, it is. I believe that this really
more “e-marketing” than it is true “e-commerce”.
Wouldn’t be wonderful if you could find a creative way
to avoid doing a lot of that extra work? There is nothing
necessarily wrong with running your business this way, but
what if you didn’t have to? You don’t! There is
a better way!
Really putting the “e” in
your e-business!
If simply marketing and selling conventional goods with some
help of the internet isn’t truly “e-commerce”,
then just what the heck is a real eBusiness?
Think about what the “e” stands for in “e-commerce”,
“e-business”, “e-zine”, or “e-book”.
What truly makes them different from regular commerce, regular
magazines, or regular books? For those who are not already
aware, the “e”
stands for “electronic”
and refers to the digital aspect of your business, and this
is what makes an eBusiness different. Why is this so darned
important? Well, think about what could possibly be so advantageous
about an “e-newsletter” over a conventional newsletter
just for one example. Ponder it for a moment. Conventional
newsletters must be printed on paper with ink, of course.
This process can cost quite a bit of money. The companies
that produce these newsletters have to charge for the expensive
equipment they are printed on. The more newsletters that printed,
the higher the cost of the newsletter becomes because more
materials are used and more time is needed to produce them.
And think of the cost of postage for all of those newsletters!
Are you beginning to get a feel for the huge costs involved
with this type of business? It is really expensive for both
the business and the customer alike! The sad part is that
I have read in many sources that this type of newsletter marketing
only gets between a .5 and 1.5% response! Some companies spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars or more just to have their
conventional paper newsletters designed, produced and distributed!
All for only a possible .5 to 1.5% response from their customers!
Now think about an “e-newsletter” or “e-zine”.
There is no paper (which eliminates costs and is more environmentally
friendly), no ink is used to print them (eliminating the need
for expensive presses, press setup, or even ink which all
add significantly to the cost of a newsletter), you can send
as many as you want (whether you send two newsletters or a
million, theoretically there should be no additional cost
since you send them all as an electronic file), and there
is absolutely no cost for postage since you sent them electronically
via email! As you can see, the difference in cost is absolutely
amazing!
Keeping your e-business as electronic as possible has many
huge advantages over more conventional approaches. Low cost
is at the top of them. You don’t have to have millions
of dollars to invest to reach millions of people … repeatedly.
Reaching out to people electronically is also much faster
as well. All you need is a computer, an internet connection,
and a little bit of “know how”, and you’re
ready to go!
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