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Don’t Make the Mistake of Not Updating Your Skills

Most people have the ability to offer some kind of service or product online. If someone is looking for what you do and it’s something they can’t do or don’t have the time for, they will pay you to do it. But you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. Demand for skills change, and that’s why it’s necessary to make sure you can offer multiple sets of skills. For this, you need to keep updating your skills.

Even when you outsource services to clients, you want to have knowledge of the basics on whatever you are offering. You never know if an out-sourcer fails to complete a task or does it incorrectly. You may not have the time to have them correct it due to deadline pressures. It’s during these times that knowing about what you are offering can help you to step in and finish the job. You want to avoid missing deadlines as much as possible. That is a difficult situation to reverse.

Of course, having dependable resources in the first place will limit this situation from arising. When considering outsourcers, have them do some jobs that are exclusively for you, in the beginning, to see how they per-form. Again, having a grasp on the basics of the task they perform will help you evaluate their skills. Once you are confident of their abilities, you can use those resources to perform work for your clients.

For the most part, the internet has made it quite easy for people to keep their skills up-to-date and learn new ones. There are plenty of websites dedicated to learning. Some have specific subjects while others are gen-eral purpose. You may need to pay for some courses, but you’ll be able to find plenty of them for free. YouTube is one place to look if you can get past the advertising and offers. Another free place that expands fre-quently is Khan Academy.

When you feel comfortable with your new skill sets, you can offer them as standalone services, or you can use them for add-ons. If you already have an existing client base, simply let them know that you can perform these extra services when they need them. Also, ask them if they know of anyone who may be looking for such services. You already have proven yourself to your clients so they should have no problem recommending colleagues. These types of referrals are your best sources for new jobs.

Even Online Businesses Need a Plan

As Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” One of the greatest reasons to start an online business is, it is easy to do. But that ease often comes with a price of not making a plan of how you will make it work. The dynamics of online businesses are easy. The execution is what throws a lot of people off. Trying to make it without a plan is at best, an uphill battle.

The plan doesn’t have to be an elaborate business plan. Keep it simple by specifying the type of people you are targeting (your ideal customer) and what kinds of products you are going to offer. Come up with a list of so-cial media platforms that would fit with what you are trying to sell.

Determine what kind of marketing channels you are going to implement. It may be content creation for your website, videos, instructional mate-rial, etc. Don’t rule out traditional offline methods like direct mail and flyers. These still work better than most people realize.

Whatever methods you choose, make sure you track your efforts. If you don’t know where your sales are coming from, you won’t be able to in-crease spending on those methods. And you will also be spending too much money on channels that are not as effective.

Another common problem when it comes to planning is not knowing what you need to do to become successful in your online business. When you first start out, you won’t have enough experience to determine the best path to execute. If this is the case, find a qualified program or mentor to get you on track. You can choose to use this just long enough to come up with a plan, or you can continue so that you learn the appropriate meth-ods and techniques to help you.

One of the biggest problems when seeking out help from others is whether or not they truly are qualified to give that help. Ask for some proof of what they have accomplished. If you get any feeling that they are not who they say they are, don’t be afraid to move on. It’s your money, and you don’t want them jeopardizing your chances of success due to a lack of experience.

If you come up with the right plan for your online business, you will in-crease your chances of making it work. It still will take a lot of effort, but the journey should be much quicker than trying to make it without a plan.

Getting Less Done By Trying to Do Every-thing Yourself Starting an online business is easy. Running an online business success-fully is a whole other ballgame. One of the biggest mistakes online busi-ness owners make is they try to do everything by themselves.

You believe you know what is needed to make money online, and you start to perform tasks to get there. But then, other things come up that get in the way. Bills arrive in the mail, so you pay them. Perhaps you get a phone call from someone who is interested in what your business has to offer. You spend an hour with this prospect. They decide to hire you. They ask for contracts and other documentation. Before you know it, your day is finished.

The next day, you are excited to get started on work for this new client and decide that you also need more clients. You do some prospecting online and send out some emails. You get a few nibbles from prospects asking for more information. You have to do some research to answer their questions. By the time you are done, your day is half over, and you haven’t done anything for the new client.

As you can see, running an online business often entails much more than you signed up for. You will continually find it difficult to manage actual work with prospecting. Something has to give. Either, you spend the ma-jority of your time with prospecting, or you spend it working for your cli-ents. You need to offload whatever you decide not to do, to someone else.

If you have enough work to justify hiring someone, then by all means, go ahead and do so. Of course, this means you may need to deal with payroll and offering benefits, etc. An alternative would be to outsource, so you don’t need to pay those benefits. Another great benefit to outsourcing is when you find someone that doesn’t work out as intended, you can choose someone else. The break is much cleaner than hiring an actual employee.