Once again, these “rules” or guidelines can be
broken if you have a good reason, but the more you can incorporate
them in your business, the better.
1) Can and does your product or service
exist purely in an electronic form? (Are you able to
avoid inventories of goods, shipping or mailing your products
to your customers, or dealing with a physical product in any
way?)
2) Can your product or service be effectively
marketed by electronic means only? (Are you able to
avoid expensive or conventional marketing campaigns? Would
it be practical at least if not extremely effective for your
business to generate the vast majority of its business on
the web?)
3) Can your product be delivered or your
service rendered purely electronically? (Again, will
you be able to avoid shipping or delivering your product or
rendering your sevice each and every time an order is placed?
Can you eliminate all forms of “order fulfillment? Can
your product be delivered or render “hands free”?)
4) Can it be stored and maintained electronically?
(Once again, are you able to avoid having to keep an inventory
or fulfill each order? Can your customer service happen completely
via the internet? Can all questions, complaints, refunds,
and updates be handled over the web?)
5) Will it be practical for your product
or service to be offered to anyone anywhere in the world?
(Is your product geographically dependent, or can literally
anyone in the world with a computer and internet access acquire
your goods? Does it defy geographical limitations? You might
want to consider a means of accepting funds like a merchant
account or something similar, that can handle different currencies
and exchanges if anyone in the world is your potential customer.
)
THIS IS THE BIG ONE!!! :
7) Can it run on auto-pilot or have you
set it up so that is at the very least extremely low maintenance?
(Do you have to take action every time an individual order
is placed, or will your product or service sell while you
are asleep, while you are at the store, or even while you
are on vacation? You want all of your hard work to take place
in the beginning of your business, not after it is implemented
and running, remember? One reason that we chose to start an
online business was for this kind of freedom, right?)
This particular guideline is of the utmost importance not
because we don’t want to have to work ever again, but
because we want to be able to devote our energies into actually
marketing our product instead of continually re-investing
into the product itself. We want our challenge to be getting
our product in front of as many potential customers as we
can instead of having to work on order fulfillment or rendering
a service each and every time. This is the very reason why
so many “online businesses” fail. They work so
hard to deliver their product or render their service that
they have no time, energy, or money left to find or execute
the best marketing strategy for their product. This is where
so many of these businesses have gone wrong, but fortunately,
now that you are aware of this potential pitfall, you don’t
have to make this same mistake.
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