LSQHA Blog Reviews

Today I spoke with a diverse group of new entrepreneurs as part of my ongoing Online Strategy Roundtables . Together, this group illustrates how a business depends on how sharply the target market is defined. One entrepreneur is well on her way and another needs to focus more on his strongest market segment. Like many entrepreneurs, the other two are clearly accomplished people, but don't come from a business background. For such entrepreneurs it is often worth looking for a cofounder who can fill in with expertise in areas where gaps exist. Sponsor Guest author Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy . She has a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her three books, Entrepreneur Journeys , Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction , and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea To Market are all available from Amazon. Her new book Vision India 2020 was recently released. Mitra is also a columnist for Forbes and runs the 1M/1M initiative. Julie Goldman did a nice presentation of her company The Original Runners . In 2003, she was the first to offer non-slip, high-quality fabric aisle runners for weddings and special events. Through her website she offers gorgeous hand-painted runners wholesale, and business has been growing to a revenue of $700,000 last year. I really like how tightly focused this business is. Niched wholesale businesses are great! Her main concern is that two dozen lower-quality copy-cat competitors have popped up over the years. To stay ahead of her competition, whom she describes as mom & pop at-home operations, I suggested she work with bloggers who are influencers with wedding planners (her main customers) to help specifically articulate why her product is superior. She has already relocated the business from New York City to New Jersey to reduce costs. To further counter the pricing pressure she is feeling from her competitors I suggested she look at relocating somewhere where it will be even less expensive for her to operate, like Vermont perhaps. She plans to launch a new brand as an accessory line and we discussed how it is only when she markets this new brand to her list of existing runner customers will mentioning "from The Original Runners company" hold any weight. New customers will not recognize the name and its association with quality products. We also spoke about SEO and search engine marketing, on tightly focusing pay-per-click campaigns on higher-end markets rather than going broad with a worldwide campaign. So far Julie's is a great case study of a growing niche business. Next up was Sonali Roychoudhury presenting for Pursue Natural . Sonali is a scientist who is working with a team that is conducting research to find and bring natural medicinal plants to market that are not in the mainstream. Like many entrepreneurs who do not have a business background, Sonali is risk averse, unwilling to make assumptions, and uncertain as to what the next steps should be. We discussed the natural breath freshener that they have produced. It seems like the cost of entry into this small niche market is too high for this to make sense. She then explained how a small but loyal customer base has grown for this product through their process of testing the marketplace. By just setting up a direct Web sales business targeting their existing fans and the extremely high end natural product boutiques, I believe she could build a very nice small business selling small quantities month-to-month. As long as it is profitable, a small business is more than worth building. Lorenz Lannens and his company Online Design Bureau started as a consulting business that grew into to a Web solution for small and medium sized companies that helps them to develop their Web marketing strategies. His product and service enables clients to set up their Web marketing system, and he has metrics from early customers showing the system works. As we discussed his current customers, it became clear that his service is not really for startups, but more for businesses that are not Web savvy. I believe if he goes after companies that are not doing Web marketing as his segment and targets the verticals that his current clients fall in (like architecture firms), his list of customers will grow. I liked this presentation and clearly there is a need for this service. Many entrepreneurs who have pitched at these roundtables could probably use Lorenz's help. In fact I suggested that both Sonali and Felice tap into his expertise. Lastly, Felice Gerwitz presented Scholar Square , a beta site targeting the homeschool community. She is an educator and author who specializes in homeschooling and hopes to sell a wide range of presentations and seminar classes through this site. As Felice explained her ideas, it became apparent that she is trying to do too many things for too many people, the classic "spray and pray." I may have been a bit hard on Felice when she told me she did not go through the Clarify Your Story questionnaire as she was asked to on the roundtable registration page, but I think it needed to be said. There are no shortcuts when you are an entrepreneur. You need to do your homework. Felice needs to focus on the segment of the home school market that she tackles the best and is passionate about, and let the other ideas go. This should help her site find its center of gravity and its customers. These roundtables are the cornerstone programming of a global initiative that I have started called One Million by One Million ( 1M/1M ). Its mission is to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. In 1M/1M, I teach the EJ Methodology which is based on my Entrepreneur Journeys research, and emphasize bootstrapping, idea validation, and crisp positioning as some of the core principles of building strong fundamentals in early stage ventures. If you are an entrepreneur working on an idea or an early stage business, I am also very interested in hearing what you are looking for from 1M/1M. Please weigh in here . We are crowdsourcing the design of 1M/1M, and requests that have come up include Receivables Financing as a way to bridge to a validated business without giving up precious equity, I would love to hear your thoughts. You can find the recording of this roundtable session here . Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here . You can register for the next roundtable here . Photo by Nick Cowie . Discuss

Original post:
Startup Strategy Roundtable: Well-Defined Niches Work Best

Apple unveiled the 4.0 version of the iPhone operating system yesterday and a big part of the announcement was about a new advertising platform called iAd . Apple will soon provide an easy way for app developers to put advertisements in their mobile apps and keep 60% of the revenue. Tech financial analysts are going bonkers over the news , with one headline-grabbing prediction putting the opportunity at $4.67 billion per year for Apple. Why? Because the platform has the potential to change online advertising like nothing else has in a long time. Sponsor Cullen Wilson offers this explanation on the Austin Startup Blog : The reason iAd has a chance to change how users interact with ads is simple: The fear and unknown of clicking on an ad is gone. Apple is throwing its brand behind an entire ad network to create the perception that if you trust Apple, you can trust these ads too! Worried about installing malware from clicking on that ad? Hate that ads open up a new window? No problem, Apple has solved this by keeping these ads within the app itself and vetting all of the ads on their network. iAd reminds me of two ad networks I'm already a fan of, The Deck and Fusion Ads . Their ads are well designed, they advertise in applications I use and love, and they vet everyone on the network before accepting them. If you've ever used the free Twitter clients Tweetie or Twitterrific, you've seen these ads. If Apple can convince its users that it's safe to click anything with the iAd logo they will have single handedly changed the perception users have of ads, resulting in more clicks and more money made by both Apple and developers. They will have done this by taking advantage of a closed system, their own brand, and a platform that their users already love (the app store). The iPad is clearly changing peoples' experience with computing - take one out around non-geeks and you'll see strangers clamor to get their hands on it. But if Apple can transform mobile advertising from an annoyance to a trusted, appealing experience - that would be huge. The iAd platform could impact advertising more than the iPad impacts computing. It may very well generate more revenue, too. Wilson points out that though many people complain about the closed nature of the App Store, this is the other side of the coin and is worth considering. One question I have about this is how scalable vetting such a huge ad platform could be. Where there's money to be printed, there must be money to pay ad examiners, though. If the platform can prove effective and make app building all the more financially viable, then we as users can cheer for a new world of apps that will be built in the future. If Apple can deliver a high-quality experience on the iAd platform, then we as users can cheer for a less grating experience than a wild west of mobile advertising would likely deliver. There is something a little frightening about Apple's end-to-end control over the platform though, isn't there? What do you think about iAd? Do you think it will be effective? Revolutionary? Do you think it's fair? Discuss

Link:
Why iAds Could be Bigger Than iPads

Many people think that they have an idea that will make quite a commotion on the internet. They build a business plan, create a professional looking website, and then they are confused and dismayed when they evaluate their web traffic and find out that almost know own is taking the time to check out their pages. These people forgot (or never knew) that the most important tactic for building consistent web traffic is web linking.

Many people don’t realize how integral web linking is to the success or failure of a particular website. In order to build a successful brick and mortar business, people will ask their friends to spread the word via personal communication, or they will put up signs or take out an ad in the newspaper. In the world of online business, web linking is the same type of strategy.

One of the most important factors to getting noticed by thousands, if not, millions of viewers on the internet are web linking. And this is a term that is used to imply how popular you are amongst viewers, other sites that have strong web traffic, and most of all, how well you are ranked in the search engines.

If you’re going to leverage web linking as a tool that will help to increase the popularity of your site, you’ve got to create a strategy for getting other sites to include links to you on their most popular pages. This can be hard, as all sites know that it is more advantageous to have an incoming link than an outgoing link.

Another thing that you have to think about when you are building your web linking networks is that you only want to build back links on sites that have something to do with the product or service that you’re offering.

The major search engines will notice if you are getting web linking from random sites that have nothing to do with your mission, and they will drop you down in the search results as a punishment for this sloppy tactic.

The best way to execute a web linking strategy is to hire an internet marketing firm that has experience promoting sites and businesses like yours. This way, you can be sure that you will get targeted exposure that will deliver the traffic you need.

Traffic is the lifeblood of a healthy website, and if your numbers are struggling, it’s time to try something new. Click here to learn about how web linking can increase your profits.

Have you ever wondered how those internet business success stories happened? People that seemed like they were ill-suited to the lives of an entrepreneur suddenly found the correct combination of determination, product development and internet savvy to attract thousands of visitors to their site and make a comfortable living for their families.

There are many different reasons why these people are successful, but one of the most important is their intelligent use of targeted website advertising. Many people think that all internet marketing consists of annoying popup ads or email spam that will just fill up your inbox with links and offers that you never wanted, but this just isn’t true.

Just like highly sophisticated marketing campaigns that are used by large corporations, targeted website advertising requires that you do research on your audiences, and learn how they like to be communicated with.

If you’re interested in using targeted website advertising to get the most out of your marketing dollars, you should know that there are many different tactics that have been found to be effective in increasing traffic to web pages. You’ll have to decide which will work best with your company mission and the types of people that you’re hoping to attract.

One of the most important things to know about targeted website advertising is that it’s important to make wise decisions about where you place your brand name and logo. Don’t just sign up for an advertising service that pushes your banner ads to just any site.

Dumping an advertising campaign off on any group of websites might confuse your viewers, and convince them that you are just eager for anyone to click on your links. Targeted website advertising will only display your banner ads on sites that have content that is relevant to your business.

If you’d like to develop a targeted advertising campaign, but aren’t really sure how to get started with the services that you’ll need to make it successful, you might want to consider working with an internet marketing service that has experience promoting companies like yours. These services are going to cost

No one likes to feel like they are spinning their wheels and spending money on advertising that just doesn’t work. Click here to learn about time-tested techniques that can propel your business to the top.

Are you the proud owner of a website or blog that you would like to turn into a source of steady passive income, but you’re struggling to maintain a high volume of traffic to your web page? Many people think that they will be able to launch a website and instantly turn it into a work at home source of income, and they don’t understand when the money doesn’t come flowing in as fast as they wanted.

One of the things that people often fail to realize about developing a website or blog is that you have to spend a considerable amount of time seeking out targeted traffic. While some people might find your site through online search engines or recommendations from friends, what you really need is a way to capture audience members that are already looking for what you’re offering.

There are many ways to go about driving target traffic to your website, and many people are often overwhelmed by the different options that are available. If you are unfamiliar with the world of search engine optimization or web development, you might feel like you want to give up before you’ve even started.

One of the best ways to start driving a high volume of quality page views to your website is to work with a professional service that already has the infrastructure in place to allow you to access the type of audience members that you need to start earning money from your traffic. These services are typically very affordable, and they will save you many frustrated evenings as you try to decide which of the many methods will be best for your site.

Capturing targeted traffic through redirect advertising is one way that many web site owners have found very useful for getting people that are interested in their content or products to click through to their main pages.

Targeted traffic through redirection is accomplished by signing up with a service that has the experience and network connections to send visitors to your site from a variety of different locations. This network of sites agrees to install code on their sites that will automatically redirect visitors to your page when they click on a link that is related to your topic area.

The reason that this kind of traffic redirection is so important for the success of your site is that it will provide you with unique visitors that might never have found your site otherwise.

Are you interested in learning more about how you can capture targeted traffic to make your site more successful? Click here to get started.