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10 Businesses Facing Extinction in 10 Years

Thinking of starting a new business ? Entrepreneur has a list if 10 that you should probably avoid.

One interesting one that I never thought of was crop dusting. I did not know that the commercial airline are getting into the business. I think we will always need crop dusters, but just not as often as the agri business is using technology to grow disease resistant food.

One thing that I think the list forgot is Modem Manufacturing. Most of the country now has access to high speed connections. If you don’t, you can get it a the public library.

Know of anther industry that will die in the next 10 years ?

I kind of fell into blogging several years ago. although I did not realize that it was called blogging back then. I had a small business with a website and I decided to utilize the website to keep my customers informed rather than the old paper newsletter that I used to send out.

For the past year now I have wanted to get serious about blogging and truly make a career out of it. But as most people, I thought I knew enough to make a go at it and make a little money.

Well, I must say that the blogging world has changed quite a bit. It seems everyone is blogging and making 6 figures with their blog. At least thats what it seems with all the “Make Money Blogging” websites out there.

Being realistic, I doubt that all those people are making that much money.However, I do believe that one can still make money blogging, if done well and professionally. That means I will need to learn from the most successful bloggers out there and emulate them.

Are there course for this kind of thing? Fortunately there are and I have narrowed the literally hundreds of courses to just three which I feel or the best produced and most professional

So, in no particular order, I have the following courses to choose from by the end of the month.

1. BlogMasterMind — This is geared towards the new blogger and takes you step by step to developing a blog that will generate income.

2. Internet Entrepreneurs Club- This is targeted toward internet marketing in general, This course seems more on the selling and marketing side of things. Not only blogs, but websites in general. This course also discusses how to develop products, build e-mail lists, and other things that go into a successful website marketing campaign.

3. Six Figure Blogging - This is more of a home study course but also takes the beginner step by step and develops a professional blog.

Soon, I will be making a decision on which one to start.

I will be posting my progress and I go through the course and will see along with me, how a blog or website is developed from the ground up.

I will update when the decision is made next week.

Business rises and falls on leadership. According to business guru, Brian Tracy, “Leadership is the most important single factor in determining business success or failure in our competitive, turbulent, fast-moving economy.” Still not convinced? Based on a study by Jessie Hagen of the US Bank, here are the main reasons why businesses fail:

* Poor Business Planning
* Poor Financial Planning
* Poor Marketing
* Poor Management
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1. Use a “P.S.” at the end of your ad copy. This is were you either want to repeat a strong benefit
or use a strong close like a free bonus.

2. Publish a free ebook and give it away from your web site or in your e-zine. This will increase your traffic, sales and e-zine subscribers.

3. Create multiple streams of income with your web site. You could sell your own products, join affiliate programs, sell advertising space, etc.

4. Give your visitors compliments in your ad copy. This can earn their trust and put them in a good mood, in return they will be easier to sell too.

5. Create new products or services only if there is a strong need for them. You won’t have anyone to sell them to if you don’t have a market.

6. Sell your backend products to your customers right after they order. Take them to a “Thank You” web page that includes other products you sell.

7. Sell a few products on your web site instead of selling a large amount of products. To many choices can overwhelm your visitors and they won’t buy.

8. Include content and free stuff on your web site that promote the products you’re selling. If they don’t read your ads, they may read your offerings.

9. Remind your visitors that you’re human not just a web site. You could publish information on your family life, a picture of yourself , a profile, etc.

10. Provide a “Contact Page” on your web site. Give your visitors as many options to contact you as possible. This’ll add credibility to your business

You’re a smart, hardworking entrepreneur, and you’re moving fast. You are highly educated in your field and your business is growing and getting busier each day. But somehow, you find yourself stuck. You’re doing more tasks that take you away from your core business, you are working more and earning less. You need help. Wouldn’t it be great if there was someone, anyone out there who could help you take away some of the daily tasks so you could focus on the things you really love?

Maybe you’ve looked, tried to work with or even hired people to help you manage your business. But somehow, every time, things just didn’t go right, and there you were, left again with the mounds of paperwork, details and projects to manage. Alone.

“No problem,” you tell yourself. “I can do it faster myself anyway.”
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No matter how good your product or service is sooner or later you’ll face an angry customer. Sometimes it will be your fault it, sometimes it won’t.

So how should you handle their complaint?

1.Say Sorry - It doesn’t matter if you are in the wrong or not, just saying sorry can go a long way to pacifying an upset client. If you believe it’s not your fault then by all means don’t apologise for the problem, instead apologise for the fact that they are not happy with the product or service. For example “I’m sorry to hear that you’re not satisfied with our service”.

2. Ask For An Explanation - Ask them to repeat the problems. No matter what they say don’t answer back, now is the time to listen carefully and take notes. When they have finished read your notes back to them and check you have correctly documented their complaint. By now most people will have “gotten it off their chest” and will start to calm down.

3. Make It Right - Take each of the issues you’ve noted in turn and resolve them, where there’s an obvious solution there’s a fly in my soup - we’ll get you a new soup just do it. Where the solution is not so simple you’re hosting a wedding and you print the couples names incorrectly on the menus but it’s not spotted until all the guests and the happy couple have seen it and it’s too late to change, firstly say sorry. Then offer the customer something as compensation. If the customer is not happy with your offer, or you can’t think of a suitable offer, ask the customer what they would like you to do to resolve the situation. If what they ask for is unreasonable the entire wedding for free smile and explain that you understand their disappointment but you can only offer them a solution that is fair to both of you. If needs be ask if they truly believe their suggestion is reasonable.

4. Make Sure They Are Happy - If you’ve listened to their complaints and dealt with them, make sure they are happy with the resolution you have agreed with them.

5. Follow Through - Make sure you follow through on the actions you agree to take.

6. Offer Them A Reason To Come Back - Even after resolving all the issues it’s worth going that step further and offering them a good reason to use you again, for example a discount on their next purchase.

7. Improve - Evaluate how you can improve your business so you don’t get the same complaint again, then make the change.

What you should never do is:

1.Respond in kind to aggressive or abusive behaviour, if they shout, don’t shout back. No matter what they do, try to stay calm. If they continue to be abusive ask them to refrain and refuse to deal with them until they calm down.

2. Blame them if it’s clearly your fault.

3. Lie.

4. Ignore them.

Remember how you handle it however can have a huge impact on the success of your business. If you’re forever dealing with upset customer in a confrontational way you’ll soon lose interest in the business and the business will gain a bad reputation. On the other hand a customer who complains but then has their complaint dealt with promptly and in a fair manner will often become a regular customer and an advocate for your business.

A stand-up guy - July 1, 2007

This is an interesting article on how one person decided to order a tall desk so the could stand instead of sit. The unexpected benefits is the interesting part. He found himself to be more productive and the people around him more approachable.

Interesting read.

Let em know what you think

Top 10 Ways to Fire the Client From Hell - Inside CRM

Some of the best decisions I have made have been saying NO to a client. Here is a great article on how to do that with tact and diplomacy.

Clients are the lifeblood of any business. Without them, your venture simply doesnt exist. On the other hand, some clients are so bad that your business, not to mention your personal sanity, is better off without them. So what do you do when you have a client that pushes you to the brink? You fire them Heres how to give 10 of the worst offenders the pink slip without burning bridges.

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and these results to the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income generating site; it also takes money to make money.

BUT, it doesn’t take a whole caboodle of cash to generate website traffic for your site.

Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmickries. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, big hitting websites.

You don’t have to do this if you don’t really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don’t have or can’t afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

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“How to get a million dollars and NOT pay taxes— First, get a million dollars.”
Steve Martin

The top 10 ways to get wealthy

Marry someone for their money
This is a very popular way of becoming rich. However, do you really want to try this?

Be a crook
The problem with being a crook is that you hang out with crooks and you can never trust them. Sooner or later, one will rat on you or kill you. Not much of a retirement plan.

Be greedy
Greedy people or one of the most despised people in the world. You will be very lonely.

Be cheap
People who live by being cheap often limit themselves by living below their means rather than trying to expand their means

Via hard work
Although this is very noble and an honest way to make a dollar, hard working people very often do not have the time to enjoy the money they are earning. They are too busy with the job and career.

Be exceptionally smart , talented, attractive or gifted
The world is full of UN-employed and poor gifted and talented people. Its a long shot at best.

Be lucky
This is as popular as being cheap. Millions of dollars are spent looking for the big payoff in the lottery and gambling.

Inherit Money
By the time you are in your 20’s, you should know if you are going to inherit anything. Otherwise you will need to find some other method of getting rich.

Investing
This takes money to invest and also the risk is high if you do not know what you are doing. Education is needed.

Build a business
This is probably the most riskiest of all the ways to get rich. Even purchasing a franchise, which is less risky, takes a large sum of money. Statistic say that 1/3 of all franchises eventually will go broke.

Build a Network Marketing Business
If you glance over the first 10 ways of getting rich, you will notice that they focus is self-centered. Even a big business is focused on getting a few select people rich.

A network marketing system is setup to make it possible for anyone to share the wealth. This is a very democratic way of wealth creation.The systems is open to anyone who has drive, determination and perseverance. A network marketing system does not care what college you went to, who your parents are, or how popular you are.

Network Marketing systems are primarily about how willing you are to learn, change, grow and if you are willing to stick it out through think and thin while building the business.

There are many ways to become rich. However, only one of them is focused on sharing the wealth in a democratized fashion. Anyone, regardless of background can become wealthy in a network marketing system.

For more information about Network Marketing and how it can help you, please e-mail me at jeff.christman (at) gmail(dot)com

Bootstrapper » Startup Required Reading: Top 100 VC Bloggers
Securing venture capital is often an integral part of the success or failure of any startup business. This article presents a lits of the top 100 venture capital blogs. All very much worth reading.

The list is categorized and include foreign investors as well.

Do you have a Blog or Personal Online Journal? If the answer is yes, did you know that it’s possible to earn money from your Blog? I earn plenty from my own Blogspots – maybe not enough to think of retiring in the near future, but enough to allow me some extra luxuries in life and who knows how much I’ll be earning in a few years or even just a few months!

I love writing Blogs because I love passing on information that I’ve researched myself. Best of all, I only spend a couple of hours each week writing on my blogspots – I spend several more hours researching information because I also love to learn and believe that no matter how much I think I know about a subject, there’s always new stuff to learn – I’m a bit of an information junkie!!

If you already know plenty about a particular subject then it won’t take long at all to write a few paragraphs about it and have your blog up and running. Obviously, writing about what you love helps because, in the beginning, the money you earn is a bonus rather than an income that will allow you to give up your day job. Mind you, I’ve read about many people that earn fantastic incomes from their blogs so maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones that can give up the day job in the very near future.

Search engines visit blogs so your site will probably get listed quickly – Google actually own www.blogger.com so if you want traffic this is a good site to start your blog on. It’s a good idea to also insert GoogleAdSense and even a Google Search box because you’ll also earn money when any of your visitors decide to click an ad or do a search – more bonus cash for little effort. Blogger also has a tool that you can use to notify all the search engines when you update your site. Make no mistake, this is a very powerful tool because the search engines take a look at your blog and follows the links to other websites. This makes getting listed on the top search engines like Google a breeze.

Another way to make cash from your blog is to add a few affiliate links – find products that fit in with the theme of your blog, sign up as an affiliate, put a link on your blog and hopefully watch some more bonus cash roll in – again, it’s simple but effective! If you’re not familiar with affiliate marketing then let me tell you right now that this is an extremely good earner. I usually get my affiliate links at www.cj.com, www.clickbank.com and www.affiliatefuture.com so pay them a visit and get some links to get started.

I recently set up 2 new blogspots and you are welcome to take a look by visiting www.mindpowersuccess.blogspot.com and www.jibechick.blogspot.com. These are 2 completely different subjects but I’m really interested in both so enjoyed creating them.
I also post my monthly JC Newsletter at www.jugglingmumsclub.blogspot.com and always invite people to take a look at the current JCN before signing up.

I’m not worried about getting competition from anyone looking at my blogs – there’s more than enough blogs, niche markets, etc. to go round and if it helps you get ideas then that’s great. Remember I’ve already stated that “I love writing Blogs because I love passing on information that I’ve researched myself.”

Another way to get traffic to your blog is to ask visitors to sign up to your own newsletter and then send them a link each time you make a new post. – once a week is plenty otherwise they may get fed up with you bombarding their inbox.

That’s about all there is to it – it’s quick, it’s easy and it has the potential to earn you a fairly decent income. If you have the time to spare then don’t stop at one blog because the more sites you have the more visitors you’ll get and the more money you’ll earn.

There are many people earning a very good living writing their blogs. The biggest tips are to find niche areas that not many others are promoting, get some affiliate links and some good quality content information. Remember to add GoogleAdSense and possibly a Google search box to your site and then just check your visitors and earnings each day.

Big WebOS roundup - 10 online operating systems reviewed

Is it possible to run a business without buying software? Here is a list of the top 10 Web OS’s that quite possibly will let you get away with it.

Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Franchises That Are the Web Worker’s Best Friend «

I found this interesting. Its a list of the best franchises for web workers on the go. I had not thought about this but I do some of my work at Panera Bread not only for the free wireless , but it has pretty good food also.

Have any favorites that are not on the list ? let me know

The Profit Calculator — New York Magazine
The wild risks, unexpected niches, and day-in-day-out grind behind making a dollar in New York…for everyone from a drug dealer to Goldman Sachs.