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No 3: You MUST OWN your own business
Why you must own your own business and why many people don’t make money on the Internet:
In this short section I am going to explain:
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Why you must not build Someone Else’s Business (but most people do)
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Why a downline has no value
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Why most on-line business people don’t own anything
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Why they are completely at the mercy of the business owner
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Why it is not only Web sites that go down with all hands screaming
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Why you must be different, and how to add value with your own perceived unique selling proposition (USP)
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Why Affiliates MUST have their own web site
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The Biggest Reason People Don’t Make Sales
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The single most important reason why Internet businesses succeed or fail
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Why you make sales or why you don’t
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How to build credibility
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Why you MUST Own Your Real Estate
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Which people will never make any money on the Internet and certainly will never build a worthwhile business.
Pulling it all together
The Internet today is awash with get-rich, MLM and money schemes all promising a life of wealth and richness for you. Most don’t work.
They don’t work because they ignore the basic principles of business, particularly the principles of doing business on the Internet.
You will never achieve financial independence with these schemes.
What I hope to do here is to explain why I believe this and why I believe you must own your own business if financial independence is your goal.
I will be covering:
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Why the primary purpose of owning your own business is to achieve financial independence.
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That to acquire wealth today, you must be in your own business.
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Why you must not build someone else’s business
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Why you must add value
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The biggest reason people don’t make sales
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Why you must own your own Internet real estate
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And finally where to find the resources to get started
What is the purpose of owning a business?
A business has to give you an income, but it should also give you more than that. You can get an income working for someone.
So what is special about owning a business? I’ve heard it said that starting a business is just “buying yourself a job”. Well that attitude is missing the point.
The Primary purpose of owning your own business is to achieve financial independence.
The Primary purpose of owning your own business is to grow it until it reaches a size that you can either let other people run it and you retire, or you can sell it for enough money to retire on.
To obtain any kind of benefit from building a business you MUST build it into something tangible with a value that you can sell. Otherwise it is just a job.
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“Rule No. 1: To acquire wealth today, you must be in your own business. “
“You may think that the corporate executive with a $100,000 salary is better off than the small shop owner, but the executive will be hard-pressed to double his income and taxes will eat up most of any increase.
The simplest peanut vendor has unlimited opportunity to expand his business and his income. Even salesmen, who in most cases are able to write their own paychecks, can control his sale increases himself. ”
J. Paul Getty
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Don’t Build Someone Else’s Business
Note that Paul Getty said you must be in your own business. He did not say you must be in someone else’s business.
But that is what most people “in business for themselves” are really doing – building someone else’s business!
This is particularly true on the Internet. There are thousands of “business opportunities” that con people into thinking they have their own business.
All network marketing (MLM) schemes fall into this category. In a network marketing scheme you are part of a downline. Who owns the downline?
Not You! If you disappear, your downline rolls up to your sponsor. Your downline belongs to your upline! In reality the complete downline and the complete business itself belongs to the original creators of the scheme. Nothing belongs to you!
Why a downline has no value. . .
You can’t sell a downline.
Now don’t get me wrong; you can make a lot of money in MLM. But few people do. There are plenty of reports on the %age of people who make it and those who fail in MLM. Only around 5% make it! (If you want to see some reports just email me.)
But whether they make it or fail, it’s still just a job. Even the top diamonds in MLM have to keep doing it. They can’t sell up and get out. Their collateral is the relationships they have with their downline. You can’t sell that. So they have to keep maintaining the downline. Churn is very high in MLM schemes so the dream of “retiring” is a bit far-fetched. All top MLMers have to work hard to make up the churn losses.
It’s even worse on the Internet. There are many schemes where you are required to pay a monthly “subscription” to remain in the scheme. If you miss your payment you’re out. What kind of chance do you have of selling a business like that?
Here is a typical one http://www.mysiteinc.com/. They charge $19.95 a month to rent an Affiliate web site. This is just a page on their site with your name on it. You can never own it, change it or sell it! You are just renting their space and throwing money away.
There are even more scams and cons on the Internet that take money from people under the pretext that they will become rich, but they never do. They will never own a business.
Even Affiliates, and I love affiliate programs, are often not building a business. If they operate primarily by sending out emails or posting banners they may make a decent living, if they are very good at it. But what are they building? Nothing. At the end of the year, they may have made a decent income, but that is all they have. They have nothing tangible to show for all their hard work.
Free Websites is another area where people think they have their own business. They don’t own anything. They are completely at the mercy of the business owner.
Don’t let yourself be at the mercy of someone else’s business
Over the last year I have seen several “businesses” disappear. Some are web sites in which gullible people will have invested a lot of time and money ‘building a business’ only to have it snatched away when the real business owner decides to close shop.
Here are some of them:
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Site 1: http://www.newagearena.com/ A 150 page web site. You can make a profit by selling the site. There are various entry levels. The cost of the site when we last checked:
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Level
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Setup Fee
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Hosting
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Total
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Starter
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$199.99
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$147 (3 months) **
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$346.99
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Supervisor
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$349.99
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$147 (3 months) **
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$496.99
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Minimaster *
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$1,749
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$200 (2 months) **
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$1,949
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Webmaster *
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$2,450
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$338 (3 months) **
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$2,788
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Now defunct
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Site 2: Ron Holland’s World Wide Wealth Club
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http://www.wealth.co.uk/
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Ron Holland is a millionaire who is famous for his best selling book “Talk and Grow Rich”. This site used to be his MLM business home page.
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When we checked a few days ago all we got was “Sorry the website you have requested is currently not available “
What happened to all those people who built downlines?
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But it is not only Web sites that go down with all hands screaming
A few years ago I built a sizable MLM downline with a company called TELINCO. The product was a five in one package including discounted telephone calls, free Internet access, freephone number, voice-mail and personal number. At the time it was revolutionary and I was enjoying the commission checks each month.
Then along came Freeserve (a UK free-internet access company) and TELINCO pulled the plug on our network.
All that work and effort down the drain! Even if it had continued, and I had built a huge downline and income, I still could never sell up and retire.
That’s when I decided to build The Affiliate Website Company websites.
You Must Add Value
To build any kind of business you must add value.
Most of the Free sites, MLM and money schemes don’t add value.
If you join one of these and do what everyone else is doing, sending emails (and very often spamming) with the same ad copy over and over what happens?
People get fed up with it.
The whole world knows about the ‘Sxx’ program. What is the point of sending me another email telling me how to get rich with the ‘Sxx’ program? Where is the added value? Zero.
(‘Sxx’ is a fictitious name, but I’m sure you can think of the kind of scheme I mean.)
What does adding value mean?
It means taking a product or service and making it more valuable than before. A piece of stone is just that, a piece of stone. Take a chisel and carve a shape into it and you have a statue. You have created added value.
To be different, to add value, you must have a perceived unique selling proposition (USP).
In Internet terms, where the product is mostly information there are many ways to add value. Here are some of them:
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Make it easy for people to access the information they want (search engines, web sites)
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Bring together valuable information into an easily accessible format (eBooks)
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Make services available to a wide audience (hosting)
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Create a product that people want. (computer software)
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Teach people certain skills and techniques (manuals and how-to guides)
The list is endless.
But you can’t add value if you don’t have your own unique selling proposition (USP). Without a USP you will just be another ‘me too’ emailer. So I suggest you don’t follow the crowd but find your own product and develop your USP.
Why Affiliates Must have their own web site
In most cases, the applicant for an Affiliate program is required by the affiliate company to have an acceptable web site. If you want to be an Affiliate and you don’t have a web site that is up to the standards demanded – tough.
But that is not the only reason. The most important job of an Affiliate is to build an opt-in email list.
Even if you can run an Affiliate program without a site you are wasting time and money if you don’t process clients through your site and gather their permission to send them information via email. If you do not do this you are committing suicide!
I cannot emphasize this strongly enough. If you join our newsletter, I will explain why this is so important in more detail. But believe me if you want to become an Affiliate you must have your own site.
Banners. Free advertising by banner exchanges is well known as a sure-fire and FREE way to generate masses of traffic to your site. It works very simply. You put someone else’s banner on your site, they put one on theirs. But it’s also more sophisticated – you can easily get your banners on 1000s of sites – all free! But you can’t join a banner exchange if you don’t have a real website. No website – no free advertising.
The Biggest Reason People Don’t Make Sales
This is true in a conventional business as well as an on-line business. But with an on-line business it is a thousand times more important.
I will let you into a secret that is worth thousands of dollars to those who take note.
It is the single most important reason why Internet businesses succeed or fail. Why you make sales or why you don’t.
It boils down to one word:
Credibility
Why should people believe your claims? They don’t know you, they can’t see your store, and they have no idea what kind of business you run. And they couldn’t care less about you.
If I receive an email sent by a spammer that doesn’t even disclose his email address, never mind his name and telephone number but claims to ‘make me $10,000 In 30 days without doing anything’, am I going to believe him?
Of course not. That email goes straight in the trash without even opening it.
But this is what thousands of people are doing every day and they think they are ‘building a business’. What a waste of time and effort.
How to build credibility
You must give people the impression that you are trustworthy and that your business is here to stay. You can’t make outlandish claims that you can’t meet and you must present your USP. You must give the appearance of being a solid and respected person and company.
One of the easiest ways to do this and one that most people don’t do is . . .
You Must Own Your Real Estate
If you’re in ‘bricks-and-mortar’ business is it likely you would have a business base? Of course you would. Would that base be a factory, an office, a spare room, a touring caravan or a tent?
It’s unlikely you will build a business that will give you financial independence or any level of security if you’re operating from a tent.
So why operate from a tent on the Internet? That is what most people do.
Building a business from a lap-top sitting on the beach is fine if you have your on-line Real Estate that people can see.
Would you buy an insurance policy from a street vendor? No. Would you buy it from a run-down corner shop? No. Would you buy it from a top-quality high-street shop with granite floors and air-conditioning? Yes, of course you would.
Why? Credibility.
So why do most people try to pretend they are in a business when they quite clearly are just cowboys?
Here are the signs and I’m sure you’ll recognize them:
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Sending unsolicited emails (spam)
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Making outlandish claims
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Not revealing their true email address
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Not revealing their name or contact details, telephone number etc
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Using a free email service
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Operating from a free ISP
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Operating with a free web page
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Using sub-domains
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Having no web site
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Offering a money-making scheme that requires a monthly payment
These people will never make any money on the Internet and certainly will never build a worthwhile business.
Remember credibility?
If you’re serious about building a business on the Internet you must not do all the things listed above.
Instead you must show people that you have your own Internet real estate.
You must:
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Have your own first level domain
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Own your own real web site (not a page on someone else’s site)
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Have a real email address
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Build your own email list
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Run your own newsletter
If you put all these things together and build a business on this solid foundation, you can create a business to last. You can create a business to sell and you can create financial independence.
How to go to the next step and build your business I will cover in other newsletters. In the meantime, get started with your own domain and web site.
Summary
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The Primary purpose of owning your own business is to achieve financial independence.
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To acquire wealth today, you must be in your own business.
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Don’t build someone else’s business
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You Must Add Value
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Build Credibility – Lack of it is the biggest reason people don’t make sales
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You Must Own Your Real Estate
If the whole of this article could be summarized in a sentence it would be:
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“If you want to build a lasting on-line business that can give you financial independence you must own your own business and website.”
(Philip Alger, CEO The Affiliate Website Company)
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