In the first of a series of interviews with our entrepreneur members, bloggers and pals, here?s Nicola Cairncross, Internet Mentor, who describes herself as your own personal gelignite. I asked her five key questions which reveal what her business is all about. Light the touch paper and retire?boom!
Nicola got into the internet really early in her career, marketing a record label via a website. She believes the internet is a tool to market a business more effectively and has used the internet to market all her businesses, ?from a seaside hotel to a financial coaching company.
In your experience, Nicola, what kind of businesses do best online?
?Having a great business to start with is one of the best foundations for building a business online and making money from it. It?s a common misconception in real-world businesses that it?s a waste of time but I believe the more local you are, the more you help your clients with a good website before they pop down to see you. Local businesses can increase profits by dramatically improving their online presence and interacting with clients on Facebook and Twitter. If you have a great product or service of real value to real people, taking it online only enhances that. Also you can create digital products which means that your customer base can expand beyond your usual geographical reach.?
How many hours a week does it take to do this internet stuff and how tricky is it all to learn?
?Everyone always wants everything yesterday and initially they worry unnecessarily about how beautiful their website looks. I?m running a programme at the moment where it is possible for someone to take a week to immerse themselves in a 7-step process and take their existing business online very quickly in just 7 days. ? Each step is one hour to seven hours long. Seven days is fast and sexy obviously, but equally it could be done in 7 weeks or 7 months. ? The ability to master each step depends on your mechanical bent. If you like to know how things work, you will pick it up very quickly. If you are more into concepts, like you Judith, you might need to direct the project but work with a techie partner, or outsource bits of it.?
What types of businesses are amongst your clients right now?
?I?ve got the most marvellous selection of clients right now running the gamut from fertility to cement, to book-keeping, natural mineral make-up and men?s fitness. The local fertility expert?s website enables her to take her concepts to a global market. The book-keeper in Ireland wants more clients and of course her work can be done virtually. Mr Cement gets 15,000 visitors a month to his niche website and he?s written two books about his topic and is teaching people in India and Africa via Skype and a series of How To videos. They all share a passion for their topic and their first online business enables them to learn the ropes, give up limiting beliefs and acquire a skill set which they can replicate over and over.?
Isn?t this all just a Get Rich Quick scheme?
?There?s no doubt the internet marketing world, like any other, is full of snake-oil salesmen ready to take money off the gullible who believe you can get rich quick. They will sell their dream to the deluded, ?no doubt. It?s rubbish! Like any area of business, there are always people who?ll buy because they don?t want to do any work, they think they can buy success and not have to do anything with it after purchase. But without a doubt there are lots of little (and big) success stories of people earning anything between ?2k and ?10k a month, building a list, writing an ezine, getting traffic to their site to buy products and services and enabling themselves to make a living, create an extra income for luxuries or savings. You have to look at it as at least a part-time job.?
So, why then do some people still never manage to create a business online?
It takes graft. You have to carve out the time from doing things you love. There are sacrifices which some people are not prepared to make ? in turning off the TV, finding someone else to walk the dog sometimes, re-organising family responsibilities. But like learning anything, there?s a steep learning curve initially to master skills you are going to be able to re-use again and again. It might take you 7 months to master my 7 steps, but next time it will take 7 weeks and the next time only 7 days. Yesterday I created a website in under five hours including design, content and search engine optimisation. Once you?ve done the work, it just sits there on the web doing it?s job for you. You don?t have to repeat it.
Napoleon Hill said in Think and Grow Rich that if you can find the greatest number of people to serve then the rivers of abundance will flow to you. There are five billion people online. How many of those do you think you can get in front of with your range of products and services which will improve their lives? You do them a disservice if you don?t.?
Read more from Nicola and how you can take your business online in just 7 days at?TheBusinessSuccessFactory.com?
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Source: http://entrepreneursoul.com/internet-mentor-nicola-cairncross-your-own-personal-gelignite/
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