Jim Kukral – Small Business Consultant

Guest Post by BenSpark.

It seems that many of my posts lately have been inspired by Dave Ramsey and Financial Peace University. This one is no exception. My wife Allison and I have been working very hard at reducing our debts and we are currently working through Financial Peace University. The biggest thing that I’ve taken away from this process is the importance of writing down your plan. Putting your plan on paper gives you a solid goal to shoot for. We went from buying practically everything on credit cards to full on cash. I’m amazed that we actually have money left in our envelopes. We’re also not worried about what we are going to eat for the month because my wife wrote out a whole month menu plan. I feel much better about our finances because I can see things on paper. I am not overwhelmed by what we need to accomplish because we have a written plan.

Now that I have a financial plan and monthly meal plan written down I started to think of different areas where I need to set up a written plans. A major place where I am feeling overwhelmed is in my blogging and blog related activities. Right now I run one blog but I own 9 domain names but really blog on 1 blog while 8 blogs pretty much lay dormant. I write guest posts for this blog (JimKukral.com), Dad-o-Matic and The Coach Shoppe. I am a compensated writer for BloggingTips.com and Shuttercal.com. I’ve also started a blog consulting business and have 4 clients. One client has moved me up to running their Membergate site which means I now have to learn Membergate and get up to speed with that. I’ve created one course on Prfessor and need to create a few more. Oh yeah, I have two or three product reviews to complete as well and some contests to start. On top of that I have a full time job and a family.

Do you see how these priorities are a bit out of whack?

A written plan for my online life is in order. Trying to balance all of these responsibilities at once in my head and on a couple of docs is going to rive me right to failure. So, much like my Cash Flow Plan I am creating my Online Success Plan.

Steps in the Online Success Plan

1. Family First – The whole point of this is to create a better life for my family
2. My Job that actually pays or bills Second – Losing a major income source will hurt
3. List out all of my online commitments – Get it all out there, what to cut, what to keep
4. Set Goals for each commitment – What do I really want to accomplish?
5. Document how much time I spend on each commitment in an average week and determine where I am spending the bulk of my time
6. Are my priorities straight. – i.e. Am I spending so much time on things that don’t generate revenue at the expense of those that do?
7. Set up a plan for:
• writing – blog posts, guest posts, newsletters and sponsored posts
• creating – new Prfessor courses
• consulting – giving clients value
• reviewing – giving each product sufficient evaluation time
• networking – Being Social, replying to comments, tweets and Facebook messages

Am I missing anything? If so what do you think I should add?

About the author: Andrew Bennett aka BenSpark is a husband, father, blogger, photographer, Blog Consultant wired kayaker and an old school Transformers fan. He takes a photo every day and blogs about it on BenSpark.com. You can follow BenSpark on Twitter.

One of the biggest issues facing website owners today is that they do not know the value of their website. Some may ask, why? Who cares if I don’t know the value? All I care about is that it is making money now and I love what I do.

Sure, that is fine for now, but do you have an exit strategy? What if there are extenuating circumstances that stop you from being able to run your site the way you are right now?

Every website or business needs an exit strategy and it helps to be prepared from the start.

One of the problems that profitable site owners face is that they are disorganized when it comes to keeping track of historical data. They may have traffic statistics and some basic merchant account revenue details, but they do not have the complete picture.

So, my advice to all you website owners: Be prepared from the start as there are many potential investors out there who are willing to pay good money for a profitable web based business! There is a market to sell your site, and depending on the niche, your site can be worth up to 3 times your profit!

So how do you make sure that you can be prepared when a potential buyer comes knocking on your door? What metrics need to be tallied and what records need to be in order to ensure buyers can have a complete picture of your web business and make a realistic offer for purchase?

Here are the keys to be well prepared for any potential buyer:

1) Financial Records
Dollars spent versus dollars earned is probably the most important type of records one can keep in any business, not just online businesses. If you have already started your e-business and do not have these records in order or do not know how to, speak to your accountant and get that sorted out right away. If not just to position your website to sell, but to keep the tax man happy too. Investors need to see profit and loss statements from the past couple of years and they are really interested to see if there has been significant growth over those years.  Your website is only worth what it has done lately. For instance, if you made $35K each of the last 2 years, your income is fairly steady and your site may sell for $60-70K. Now, if you made $100K in 2008, but only made $35K in 2009, the value of your site drops drastically. Not only will an investor see a reduction in revenue, but he will offer less for your business than the first scenario. It is all about how you position your site!

2) Traffic Information
This one is fairly easy and MOST website owners do a pretty good job with this. Make sure you have your traffic in order. Use Google Analytics if you do not already do so and you will be able to provide historical traffic data at a click of a button.

3) Growth Opportunities
Constantly be searching for key growth areas on your site. Do this from the start. If you identify them, but never actually get to them, you at least give potential buyers some ideas as to how to increase the value of the website.

4) Prospectus
Put it all together! This is almost like creating a business plan. Firstly, you need to do a full SWOT analysis on your web business. For those who do not know, a SWOT analysis identifies any business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Once that is complete, compile your profit and loss statements for the past couple of years and work them into the document. Then, add traffic details from Google Analytics or any other program you may use. You also want to provide a brief background on the business that explains how exactly your website makes money, how traffic is acquired and what the history of the site is. By putting this document together, you will not only be in a great position to sell your site, but you will have a much better understanding of the value of your business.

So, these are the basics. If every site owner that approaches me has this information at their fingertips, it will certainly speed up the process of selling the site and it will also add value. Simply by being organized you can add intrinsic value to the business.

About the author: If you are a site owner and need help putting any of this information together, or are curious about selling your website, simply contact me and I would be happy to help you! As well, if you know anyone that may be able to benefit from a website broker, you can reach me at Michael@wesellyoursite.com or simply visit www.wesellyoursite.com.

Guest post by Dina Riccobono.

We’re in an industry that pushes ads for a living, yet we will fast forward through commercials. We create content we wouldn’t watch ourselves. We sell products we don’t use. This is terrible. The same people who want others to click for cash won’t click for cancer research. Commercials are outdated, banner ad blindness set in long ago, we’re talking, and no one is listening.

So why don’t we set a higher standard? Freshen up your brand. Change your images. Take a second look at your best practices. This should be common sense to marketers- online, offline, in shopping lines. Yet we stay in our safety zones, we can’t break the mold. Why not? We’re in one of the most groundbreaking industries that exists today. Some of the most successful businesses today didn’t exist ten, twelve, fifteen years ago. Let’s change the outlook!

What would really happen if you stepped outside your comfort zone? Take a look at some very successful examples:

Love them or hate them, do you know the following brands:

-Apple
-Microsoft
-Facebook
-WalMart
-McDonalds

Fifty plus years ago, meals were cooked at home. Eating out was a special occasion, and you had to use the library to do business research. If you wanted to buy a shirt, groceries, and a television, you went to three different stores. If you wanted to chat with a friend, you walked/drove to/called their house.

Now? We pick up our laptops and cell phones to do everything. The superstore is the only store. We eat dinner while we’re working, driving, reading the paper, and talking- usually at the same time. If we want to find a new restaurant, we don’t explore the city, we explore the newest app. Why?

Because our Macs, PCs, social media platforms, super centers, and yes, even fast food chain CEOs had vision. They took risks. They broke the mold. I’m certainly not saying there are no fantastic examples out there. Affiliate marketing is one of the most amazing opportunities out there. Kids who are still in high school are making more in a month than their retired parents did in their prime 20 years on the same job. With a few clicks and some technical knowledge, million dollar ideas are launched. It’s great…but it’s got to keep changing…we HAVE TO evolve. So try new things, and take a risk. Hell…take five. But please…

Don’t be the next Steve Jobs. Be the current you- but better.

About the Author: Dina is the founder of TheFreelancerNetwork, a national agency connecting clients with top online media consultants. She specializes in marketing, event planning and social media as part of TFN. Dina also works with MarketLeverage Interactive Advertising as their Marketing and Social Media Manager. Dina on Twitter. Dina on Linkedin.

The other day I posted about how to do a successful Webinar. One of the things we didn’t have time to cover in that podcast was passion, and how important it is for you to show it in your voice.

I do an enormous amount of online teaching as well as teleseminars, podcasts, Webinars, videos and online teaching for the University of San Francisco Online. If there’s one thing I pride myself on is my passion for the topic at hand, and specifically how I convey it through my voice when I’m speaking. On stage in person too.

When I’m talking to someone on a class who’s all the way on the other side of the world, I have to make sure they can feel my passion through my voice. Believe me, it resonates if done right. Students and prospective clients can literally feel it in the tone of my voice, and because of that, I come off as someone they’re more likely to listen to closely, and someone who isn’t just trying to sell them something.

You’re passionate about something. I know you are. What is it? Why aren’t you taking that passion and communicating it to your audience in a way that they can literally feel it oozing out of you? You can’t do that in text. Why not try podcasting, or Webinars, or teleseminars or video?

Here’s a good example of a Webinar I did this week. It’s about a half hour long. See if you can feel the passion in my voice.

Prfessor Jim Demo from Josh Walsh on Vimeo.

If done right, passion resonates as more than a sales pitch, it’s a belief. It starts with you, and ends with your new customer. Get it, and get it now.