So you want to be an Internet marketer. Your first thoughts about Internet marketing may have been to simply add a few dollars to what you are already earning monthly. Then you began to get more aggressive thoughts and start thinking that you might want to quit your day job and work from home. Next thing you know, you are dreaming about making a fortune on the Internet. Well guess what? It is possible. But then, all of the realities of this choice you are making sets in as at this point you don’t even have so much as a simple goal or marketing plan.
So that being said, a goal and plan is where you will want to start for building your business. This is going to be true of any business, be it the Internet and virtual real estate, or the existing business down the street. Without a plan, you will be spinning your wheels in no time, as you aimlessly wander through the maze of all the things that need to happen to run any successful business. It won’t matter if it’s a “brick and mortar” or virtual business marketing adventure, you will need to know where you want to go and how you “plan” to get there. This doesn't mean the plan and/or the goal won’t change as you go, but you need a goal and a plan to get started in the right direction.
The first part of any business plan is develop your goal. Without setting a goal, you won’t know what it is that you are after, and consequently you won’t be able to build a successful plan to get there if you don’t. Many times people think that goals are complicated and meaningless. They shouldn't and don’t have be. A goal is as simple as following these three rules.
Rule #1 - It must be specific
Rule #2 – It must have a time frame
Rule #3 – It must be attainable
It could be as simple as stating that your goal is: “I want to earn $10 a month in less than 3 months from today”, It could also be much more complicated such as: I want to have a company that is earning $1,000,000 a year in sales, selling blue widgets, by the end of this calendar year. So using that thought process you might have the following:
It must be specific – I want to earn $XXXX.XX per month
It must have a time frame – I plan to accomplish this on or before XX/XX/XXXX
It must be attainable – this is the most complicated part and where your business plan will come in.
In it’s briefest form you will need something that outlines your plans to reach what you stated in Rule #2. You’ll need to know what method you are planning to use to earn money, i.e. affiliate programs, AdSense, software product, a service, or even all of them together. Once you have decided that, you will need to develop all of the items needed and get them ready to provide to your customers, websites designed and built, and so on and so forth.
You will also need to understand the time commitment that your are able to make to your project. If you only have one hour per day to devote to your project, it will obviously affect the rate at which you are able to meet your goal versus being able to devote ten hours a day to it. Ultimately there are lots of decisions to be made before you dive into this adventure. In the majority of cases, you aren't are going to be able to quit your day job right away to start your new adventure and will need to start building your income slowly. Set smaller goals and as your reach one, set a new one a bit higher and just keep going.
If getting rich quick is your goal, most of the time your will fail, but if building a thriving and growing enterprise is what you want, you can get there. Most people that fail in marketing, do so because the goals they set were not realistic for their situation, and not reaching goals becomes discouraging so they give up. Take smaller bites at a time and you can become successful if you have a good plan, set a good goal, and keep moving forward.
Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, Business Plan, Goal Setting
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