Blaine561's Canada, eh!

News reports often tell of the struggle to lift Africans out of poverty. One entrepreneur is doing her part to bring hope to that continent through a business endeavor that is now bringing its products to the world market.

The desire to help others is what originally led South African Elmare Lombard to leave her successful psychological practice after 15 years to start a natural aromatherapy line.

From experimenting with essential oils and plant-based oils in her kitchen to eventually seeking international markets for the line, Lombard has made her dream a reality today. Her Molo Africa line is now being distributed in the U.S. by BioPharmetics Inc.

But her company, founded with family members and community leaders, also helps establish farming projects for disadvantaged people in her native South Africa. Molo Africa has a proactive employment policy that helps single parents get jobs with the company or affiliated businesses. This initiative is designed to promote self-sufficiency and brings a sense of pride for individuals.

Molo Africa supports the independent farmers of Africa through advice and assistance; the purchase of raw products at fair market prices; and through education initiatives that help impoverished South Africans develop skills in agriculture, basic education, entrepreneurship and computer training.

The company’s product line includes pure essential oils, natural aromatic room sprays, massage butters, shea soaps and scented candles. Molo is an African greeting meaning “hello.” Bearing evocative African names such as “Hamba Suka” and “Sefako,” the products contain essential oils that were extracted from exotic plants farmed and processed naturally in African countries.

Gertrude Mewy is an example of the kind of success story Lombard’s company helped to create. The single mother from Guguletu, Cape Town, was raising her four children on a small salary as a domestic worker. But she dreamed of being an entrepreneur. With the help of the Foundation for Economic and Business Development, she started her own pottery business.

Her hard work paid off when she became a supplier of ceramic beads to Molo Africa. Its contract with Gertrude enables her to employ two full-time workers, both of whom are single mothers. Her business now supports nine people and there are plans for more business deals between Gertrude and Molo Africa.

Do you really want to change you financial landscape within the next 12 months?

Because if you do, I’m going to tell you how.

You MAY not want to read what I’m about to write because it WILL remove excuses you have. In fact, after this very simple tip, you will no longer have the ready-made excuse that perhaps you’ve used in the past. I will strip it away like Dad rips off the warm covers on a winter morning.

The most common excuses that I hear folks offer for not getting off their duffs and starting their investment careers are (1) time and (2) knowledge. (The number one unspoken excuse is fear.) For this article, I am REMOVING the time and knowledge excuses. I’ll get to the fear part…briefly.

Okay, if you’re still reading, here goes…but I warn you. You may not like it.

Turn off the stinkin’ TV!

I mean, avoid it like the plague! It’s robbing you blind. To be precise, it’s costing you tens of thousands of dollars per year if you are like most Americans and tune into TV or watch movies for 1-3 hours a day.

What a country we are. The average American buys a TV and then that TV costs many times more than the cost of the set per year in opportunity loss. We buy, bring it into our homes, and give it a place of prominence, and let it steal from us!

As many of you already know, I boldly say you and I can make an extra $10,000-$50,000 per year on a mere 10 hours a week by rehabbing real estate. I know this because I do it.

A little math…let’s say you watch TV a mere 1.5 hours a day on weekdays, and sports on the weekend at 2.5 hours a day. If you give up all TV, that’s 12 and a half hours a week.

In other words, you can watch a game on the weekends and STILL have 10 hours a week to devote to a real estate investing career.

Let’s say you are someone who is on the LOW end of American TV watching habits and you watch an average of 1 hour of TV a day. (Which means you probably don’t watch sports.) In that case, turning it off means you need to invest a mere 3 hours a week. Do you have 3 hours a week if it pays $10,000-$50,000 per week?

Reality check. If you watch football, you probably watch a college game on Saturday, a pro game on Sunday, and Monday Night football. In that case, that’s a minimum of 7 hours per week of the 5-month season…gone! Many football fans watch more!

So what could you do with that time? Get the knowledge you need to start with. How many books or courses can you work through if you honestly devote 10 hours a week? Since the process of rehabbing real estate isn’t rocket science, it’s a process that must be learned, it isn’t going to take many weeks to be flush with knowledge and ready to put a business plan into action.

There will be a few reading this that don’t watch much TV at all. (You are rare indeed!) Examine your habits and see where you time is going. There is often time sinks that you can capitalize on by changing your habits. Do you surf the net for hours on end? Do you spend 2 hours a day pumping iron.

Or…oh, this one might hit close to home…do you sleep 10-12 hours a day?

Chances are there is a way to eek out some hours by a relatively minor change in habits.

I can hear it already…GIVE UP TV?! That’s not a minor adjustment!

Baloney.

Let’s see how important TV really is to you. There are two ways to think about this.

Approach number 1:

Let’s say I knock on your door and wave ten thousand dollars in front of your face. All you have to do to get it is give me your TV for a year. Would you go for it? What if I offered you twenty grand?

Approach number 2:

Let’s look at what giving up TV would mean to you.

– You wouldn’t be able to talk about what happened on TV last night at the water cooler at work. I mean you could, but you would not have watched it.

– You would miss seeing first hand who beat who to a pulp on the field, or on the court.

– Shows will come and go, and you will have never have seem them.

Perish the thought! You’d miss stuff on TV, but the sun will continue to come up, the Earth spins, and your financial picture gets a lot rosier!

Is the time you spend in front of the TV really worth what it’s costing you? $10,000 or $20,000, or even $30,000 or more…every year?

I’ll go a step further. You could stop watching all your favorite programs and guess what, your life would be unchanged. If you did something positive with that time you spent watching them, your life will be changed for the better.

For you sports fans…Let’s say “your” team wins the championship this year. Does that change your life in any way? Do you get a raise? Do you move into a better house? Does it really change anything that matters? Sure, you get to tell folks that they are “your” team even when they aren’t and nobody on the team knows you from Adam. In fact, if “your” team wins you will probably be even more into them, spend more time watching TV, so the cost to you goes up!

I don’t mean to sound like I’m on my soap box, but there are many folks who need a wake up call. Capturing TV time and using it to your financial benefit is a relatively minor habit adjustment that can result is some serious financial gain. Spend a month learning, then put a plan into action. That’s how things get changed.

My close friends and family know that I rarely turn on my TV. Years ago, I made the commitment to use my time better and since I have improved my life immensely by doing so. So, I want you to know that I am living my own advice. While it’s true that I’ve never seen a minute of “reality” TV, and I prefer to see my sports live, my life is quite different now! I’ll never look at TV the same again!

You can do the same. This minor habit adjustment can mean you take the reigns of your financial future and drive it where you want to go.

I knew some of you would not like it, but there it is…the formula to free up a LOT of time and how to gain the knowledge you need to make this coming year the most profitable yet. Will you do it?

Now, what about the fear part? This article is getting kind a bit long, but I have written a six part set of articles to help in that combat fear. I encourage you to click through to my website and click on the “Nothing Held Back” newsletter. There you will find out how to get the articles, or mini-course I call it, at no cost.

Know one of those brilliant brains that can’t have a sustained human conversation because their mind races too fast? They may suffer from a not-so-rare disorder. And you hold the cure – if you print out the following article and hand them a copy.

Entrepreneur SASS

We may have an epidemic among us. At the next networking meeting you attend, wash your hands immediately afterward – maybe five times for good measure. Despite medical evidence to the contrary, a previously thought incommunicable disease is spreading faster than copies of Who Moved My Cheese?

The disease is Short Attention Span Syndrome, or SASS.

Perhaps someone you know and love is affected. Perhaps you yourself have noticed some of the following symptoms.

-Shifting in your seat and coughing just a little too loudly during a boring meeting.

-Saying to your significant other, I’m sorry, honey, could you repeat that? I wasn’t paying attention.

-Going to sleep while mentally rifling through a mile-long to-do list

Many with these symptoms joke, “I must have ADD!” However, only 4 to 8 percent have the genetic condition referred to as ADD – more correctly termed ADHD, – which is present from birth and, while treatable, is permanent. The dreaded disease of SASS, on the other hand, develops over time.

Symptoms begin to appear around the teenage years and slowly accelerate until they become a frenzy of activity and mental noise. SASS is viral. It passes from manager to employee, from spouse to spouse, from parents to children and from children to parents.

Most common is the passing of SASS from entrepreneurial types: business owners, risk-tasking executives, sales professionals, visionaries. Entrepreneurs develop SASS themselves, typically in the incubator of their own ever-changing minds. While most everyone has a lot to do, entrepreneurs have the tendency to pick up a lot more “To-Dos” than the average person. They then pass the virus on to those around them.

Entrepreneurs pass SASS to their employees in the form of altered objectives, multi-tasking, bold initiatives, training meetings, revised agendas, organizational restructuring, innovation after innovation, and of course, more meetings. They pass it on, unable to listen to the comments of others as they continue to create more to-dos in their mind.

Then they return to the quiet of their own homes and continue to think about more changes and more To-Do’s deep into the night. They are often oblivious to the peas and carrots on their plate and the 8-year-old wanting to play Bob the Builder.

There is hope. SASS is a curable condition. Those afflicted by SASS usually have developed an altered sense of reality. Recommended therapy is as follows.

First, have the subject look in a mirror. Ask them, How many of you are there? Sometimes, the SASSy individual thinks outside the box to the point that they insist there are two of them. In this case, have them repeat 50 times the phrase, “There is only one of me. There is only one of me.”

Second, have the subject look at a clock. At the beginning of a minute, ask the subject to count each second as it passes. At the end of the minute, as them how many seconds there were. If the number is anything other than 60, repeat this exercise 59 times. At the end of the hour, ask them how many minutes there were. If necessary, repeat this exercise another 23 times and ask them about hours in the day.

Finally, find the subject’s calendar. They may have more than one calendar. Explain to them that, since there is only one timeline in the real world, they can only have only one calendar. Next, look for double-bookings. Again, explain to them in a firm but loving tone that, since there is only one of them, they can only be in one place at a time. If travel time is not properly scheduled, explain to them that, since faxing one’s self has yet to be invented, they will be unable to magically teleport from location to location.

As therapy continues, SASSy entrepreneurs will gradually overcome their delusion that their disease makes them more productive. They will come to learn the truth of the proverb, “man who chases two chickens catches none.”

There is hope for the SASSy entrepreneur. With your help and the help of professionals, they can and most often do come back to reality.

Mastercard International is targeting a 40 per cent growth for the financial year

2004-05. At present, it has 7 million debit cards and 5 million credit cards. …

People will always need credit cards; it seems the average person has about 4 cards in his pocket, a card for gas, a card for a major department store, a card for groceries, a card for jewelry, and a couple of cards as spares just in case cash is needed and in short supply.

Now if you have a website, ANY type of website, you can become an affiliate for one credit card company, or up to 100 credit card companies, for absolutely free!

To give you an example as to what is available:

You can feature more than 100 credit cards with several companies by just placing a simple link on your web page for free.

These companies will also help you set up your website.

Credit Cards offered are Visa. Mastercard and American Express.

Commissions to you when somebody fills out an appication range from $20 to $80 for an approval.

They provide affiliates with all credit card content, such as reviews, ratings, APRs, fees, etc. All information is provided FREE to affiliates to incorporate into their websites.

Some companies will actually supply you with access to a database which consistently updates any information that may change such as interest rates and terms and conditions.

There are at present numerous different types of cards the majority of which fall into 2 classifications:

Credit Cards based on good credit history.

Interest and transaction rates should be relatively low.

Credit Cards based on not so good credit history.

Interest and transaction rates will be relatively high.

It would be perfect as an affiliate to be able to offer both.

In order to convince people to subscribe to a certain credit card you can actually promote on your website various types of rewards offered by the credit card companies.

A prime example of rewards of course are airmiles.

“Get 15,000 miles free when you apply for this particular credit card.”

How about these rewards:

“0% intro APR for 15 months.”

“Instant approval”

“5% cash back”

“Free movie rentals”

“Bad Credit OK”

“Low Interest”

“Purchase and transfers at 0%”

“Free rewards program: Home, electronics, dining, travel and more”

” 5 points for every $1 spent at supermarkets, drugstores & gas stations:”

” Earn 1 point for every $1 on all other purchases”

” 0% APR on balance transfers for 12 months”

” No annual fee”

“auto rebate cards”

Faster Cards

There are now new cards , where cardmembers simply hold their card near a point-of-sale reader at a checkout, instead of swiping their card or handing it to a store employee. As cardmembers hold their card with this feature near the point-of-sale reader, the reader will quickly emit a tone and light up to signal payment confirmation.

“We believe the innovative cards with this feature provide merchants and cardmembers with the increased speed and convenience they want at the point-of-sale,” said a senior vice president of a company’s credit card division.

“With this feature, cardmembers can save time when making their everyday purchases.”

So you could use any of the above incentives to promote your affiliate credit card link and earn additional Internet Income.

If you’re just getting started, what do you need to know about the business aspects of being their own boss? It really boils down to two very straightforward things. You need to have some basic business skills and knowledge and you need the motivation to become a computer consultant.

Motivation

You have to really want to become a computer consultant badly. Think about anything you’ve ever really achieved in life. Whether it’s graduating from school or passing a test. Maybe it was getting your driver’s license, getting married, maybe buying your first car or home, maybe becoming a parent.

Whatever it is, it took a lot of motivation and determination. There’s always going to be ups and downs, some tough days and some tough weeks, but in most cases it’s probably going to be well worth it in the end. There are tools and tips you can use, but ultimately the drive and the desire has to come from within.

Step By Step Plan

The second part is knowing the key steps that you need to do week by week as you get through your first few months. You need to know what to get for your office, what to have in the car with you, what to do when you’re setting up credit policies, what to do to scope out the competition, what to charge, who to network with, who’s worth sucking up to and know who you’re wasting time with. All these things can be taught.

You’ll need to figure out your expenses, what you need to bill out at, how to organize everything, what to buy, and probably just as important, what not to buy. You’ll need to figure out how to work more efficiently, get paid for your time and get paid well for your time working as a computer consultant. The great part is that these are all very teachable things.

You Can Become a Computer Consultant

If you manage to master various software applications and network operating systems and hardware devices over the years you can definitely get your hands around a handful of important business skills that you need to become a computer consultant.

Business plan outlines vary in their complexity. Depending on your situation you may just want to follow a very basic business plan outline. Regardless, the process of sitting down, creating a business plan outline, and writing a business plan is one of the most valuable exercises you will do.

Basic Business Plan Outline

List your business credentials – why are you qualified to start this business and sell your products and services?

List your staff: Is it going to be just yourself, or do you have a definite plan in terms of when you are going to hire sales, technical, or administrative staff?

Project revenue: Will you be selling services, products, or a combination of both?

How much revenue will come from products? How much profit will come from products?

How much revenue will come from services? How much profit will come from services?

Sales and marketing plan: outline your major sales and marketing activities – the things that you’re going to do to bring in key, sweet spot clients. Talk about what you’re doing on a month-by-month or week-by-week basis. How much time you think it’s going to take up and how much money you think it’s going to cost to execute.

Operations: Where will you be located? Home office or rented space? How will you get to your clients’ places of business? Personal car or leased vehicle? Will you need to rent facilities from time to time for meetings, seminars, etc…

Finance: What capital do you need to start? Where will you get this capital? Where will you get additional capital during your first year in business?

Salary and Payroll: What are your expectations for your personal salary or drawings. Do you have to pay staff as well?

Expertise of principals: What makes you and/or your partners qualified? What kind of skills and experience do you bring to the table that will be of valuable to this business venture and valuable to the clients you want to pursue?

The Bottom Line On Business Plan Outlines

Business plan outlines can be as detailed as you want. The most important aspect is that your business plan outline covers off the basics. Make sure the business plan outline you adopt allows you to answer the five W’s and provides you with a plan for how you will start and operate your business.

The EDC Gold and diamond were brought originally in the 2006 by two internet entrepreneurs Craig Garcia and Michael Corcoran. Garcia and Corcoran’s EDC home based business is to assist people who join the EDC program, helping them to be a success in the field of home based business. So the question is, is it a SCAM? Does it really work like people say, it would be capable of earning thousands of dollars just by working at home in a week. In general, the Edc system does for members, was providing member instant access to thousands of software products to sell and market online that claimed these products enable to have you achieve an unbelievable income in short amount of time (3 weeks to a month).

Unfortunately, majority of people interested in EDC were most likely blind sided by these commitments presented in the EDC site, that they did not go digging for further info. The truth to the matter is thousands of EDC products offered to consumer really have no essential consumer beneficial with no actual high yield or high profit value. In addition of the low value given products, EDC does not provide to its member a proper marketing training program in terms of successful online marketing. Basically EDC hands you the stuff, letting you do the rest without a sense of knowing where to begin the marketing road. Maybe you could contact David Dubbs for direct assistant, but odds are David Dubbs most likely isn’t available at anytime. So does other top internet entrepreneur like Chris Campbells, Tim Rohers, Matt Sunderland, Lance Frisbee. Why? Because these top internet entrepreneur can spend time with you due to there entire income is generated from one specific program, NOT members.

So what makes the wealthfunnelsystem differentiate itself from other thousands of internet marketing business? Simple, Derrick Harper and wealthfunnelsystem earn profit by primarily focusing on training member into pro and not the product alone. The Wealthfunnelnetwork delivers to you of 7 streams of income. First stream of revenue guides you to all the fundamental knowledge regards of how to successfully market the potential products properly. Once all of the essential skills has been adapted progressively then the wealth funnel will put you immediately onto streams of 2 3 4 5 6 where these products and services contained of high affiliate rates and sales than EDC GOLD or any other internet market product. These products possessed of quality potential market along with high market saturation and are consumer driven. So there is no need to ever worry of questioning the product if able to market online successfully. Besides of marketing the high potential product you will also given the job to develop your very own team guiding them the same way as the mentor of your have taught you so.

Besides of just earning feasible sells of 997 dollar, you’ll additionally receives half of the commission of your team member for every sale being sale when mentor actually didn’t contribute anything except providing specific guidelines and instruction. If you ever struggle in a problem require some help immediately, your mentor and Derrick Harper will always be reachable through phone call or leave messages which will respond as soon as possible. Bottom-line, the wealthfunnelsystem does NOT re marketing a business opportunity over and over again going nowhere, plus is MONEY BACK GUARANTEE.

The conversion rate is the key stat for a website. As long as you are paying for clicks, the efficiency with which you convert those clicks to sales is really the only measure that counts in determining your website design. When I started my UK silk tie website it took a while to get enough data to start tracking and conversion rate as you need at least ten sales to get any sort of statistically valid result. It took a couple of weeks to make the first ten sales and I calculated my conversion rate at 0.5%. As I was paying 25p per click, this means that it was costing me £50 per customer. Even with an average order size of £30, this was a long way from profitability. Luckily, conversion rates can change quite dramatically with things like the website design, sales copy, products on the front page, range of products, product descriptions, guranatees, pricing, ease of payment etc. etc. In short there are many things you can do to get conversions up.

The great thing about internet businesses is that you can make a change, measure the result and if it doesn’t work, then change it back. I am constantly trying new things to see if it affects the figures. Initially I changed too many things too quickly and it was very hard to unpick the results of different factors. Also the Christmas period started when I was one month in and conversion rates rose strongly and then fell back after Christmas, it was hard then to unpick the seasonal effect from my changes.

One of the first thing I experimented with was pricing. From my initial prices of about £9 for a woven silk tie, I tried cutting them to £8 for a few weeks and then putting them up to £11 for a few weeks, then cutting back a bit, until settling on prices about 15% higher than my first try, just over £10 average price. Cutting prices below this point did not seem to increase sales.

I also looked at which ties sold well and put them on the featured products list which are then randomly selected on the front page. I worked a lot on the cataloging of the ties by colour, style etc. and added keywords so that people could find what they wanted easily.

I also experimented with my sales copy and have made the money back guarantee more and more prominent. One of the first things you need to establish when people visit your site is credibility. So I have the address at the top so that people know we are easy to physically track down, I have put the Visa and Mastercard symbols near the top for legitamcy, I have signed up to affiliate programs for upmarkets shirt makers so that I can display their ads to add credibility and as I started to get a few pieces of nice feedback from people, I added them to the site. All of these changes have pushed the conversion rate up to over 1% and I am now targeting 2% with my next wave of changes which will try and capture email addresses for follow up mailing by offering a free ebook on a mens fashion related subject. More about that another time.

There is a feature in both AdWords and Overture which, once you have inserted a piece of html code into your payment page (or, as I did got your web site supplier to do it) will allow you to track conversion rates by keyword. I am only now building enough data to do this justice, but it allows you to cut out keywords which don’t convert well. For example, I had been buying the keywords “how to tie a tie” and was getting 50 clicks a day at a bargain £0.02 each, however after 1700 clicks I still hadn’t made a sale, despite making sure there was sales text in with the tie instructions and ties shown either side. Not entirely surprising as people searching for tie instructions were not looking to buy ties, but clearly they do wear them and I thought some people would buy one. Not so. So now I am saving that money.

I recently received an email from a reader of my previous articles, Louis Roberts. It’s great to know that people are reading my blog already. Louis asks “I first read your article on “ezinearticles” and it brought me to your site; I like your online store. How are your online businesses doing? Are you hitting your goals of $1000 profit per site? I am very interested in opening a store myself. Since you seem to enjoy sharing advice; I was wondering of you could recommend some good products to sell, suppliers, dropshippers, etc. that carry as you would say “healthy margins”? “

These were good questions, so I have devoted this post to answering them.

Thanks for the note, glad someone reads the articles. In answer to your questions:

No I am not yet anywhere near reaching $1000 profit per site per week. I expect it to take a year to reach that figure. As my sites are less than four months and one month old respectively there is still a way to go. It is easy, reading some of the web business sales pitches out there to believe that instant riches are easily achievable. This is not true, it takes hard work and dedication to make money. I have reached the break even point on both sites which was the first milestone – initially I was losing $500 per site per week as the cost of advertising on Google AdWords way outran my sales.

It is hard for me to tell you what to sell, but I can recommend the criteria that I used to rate a product:

Niche product where there is not a major house hold name supplier (i.e. don’t go into the book business against Amazon)

Must be being sold on the internet already (you don’t want to have to create a whole new market by yourself)

Must have keywords that people searching for that product would use but that are not shared with other products (for example “silk ties” and “oil paintings” are good “gifts” would be bad)

Do a search on Google for the product. If less than 5 advertisers come up on the right hand side, then chances are you can get reasonably priced traffic

Must not need a support to get it working. Things that need technical support are too problematic. You want things that are easy to use and where you can sell and forget.

I have also made it a rule that I will not hold or carry stock at least until I have strong sales and good demand already. So need a drop shipper or a make to order product.

A final point that I have learned from trying to do ties, is that you need a $50+ margin per product. The cost of attracting customers for paintings or massage chairs is not much higher than the cost of getting customers for ties, although the conversion rates are lower. It is easier to reach break even with higher ticket price items.

It also helps if it is a product that you have bought yourself and get interested in and passionate about.

Based on these criteria I have gone for silk ties with www.tiespecialist.com, oil paintings with www.artspecialist.com and soon to be launched a massage chair website. I tried selling cuff links on my tie site but the AdWords competition was so fierce that I needed to pay 75c per click to be on the front page and there was no way to make money, I dropped that idea quickly.

As for good drop shippers, I search for reviews or feedback on any supplier I am thinking of using and then do a trial order with them to make sure the quality and service is good. However popular drop shippers will have lots of people selling their products and it will be hard to make money. Always check eBay to see what prices the products sell at.

Another option is to find suppliers in China of make to order or high value products I used www.alibaba.com to find suppliers and have dealt with them by email. I hope this helps. I hope you have found this useful.

So what exactly is a “Small Business Lone Ranger?” A “Small Business Lone Ranger” is a business owner who does all the work themselves.

No matter how big or small the project, the Lone Ranger handles 100% of it. Either because they’re afraid to let go of control or because they feel they can’t afford to hire help. Can you relate? I know I can!

So what’s wrong with doing everything yourself? Well it’s tough to grow your business if you’re busy managing every single detail. I know it’s a bit scary to let go of control or to consider actually hiring help, but I also know it’s necessary if you want to grow your business to its fullest potential.

Take my 10-question quiz to determine if YOU are a Lone Ranger. And don’t worry if you are, I’ve got some suggestions to help you rid yourself of this business-stifling affliction!

1. Do you work alone?

2. Do you feel no one can do your work quite as well as you?

3. Do you often feel there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done?

4. Do you maintain your own website?

5. Do you do your own accounting and billing?

6. Do you write your own sales and marketing copy?

7. Do you get your own mail?

8. Do you buy your own office supplies?

9. Do you create or deliver all your products and services by yourself?

10. Do you fulfill and ship all your sales yourself?

I think you can see this list could go on and on and on, but you get the idea. So if you answered “Yes” to most or all of these questions, guess what, YOU ARE A LONE RANGER! That’s okay, I’ve been one, too.

When your business is small you have to wear many hats because you can’t afford to hire help. But at what point do you make a decision to start delegating tasks to someone else? ANSWER: When the time you’re spending on administrative tasks involved in keeping your business running prevents you from spending time growing your business.

As a business owner, you should aim to spend at least 60% of your time marketing. You are the BEST person to market your product or service. And marketing is the only way your business will grow and flourish. So if you’re too busy paying bills, getting the mail, responding to email and running out to pick up office supplies, then guess what? You don’t have time to market. And your business cannot grow.

So what’s a Small Business Lone Ranger to do? Here are 6 tips:

1. Make a list of all the tasks that don’t require your specific expertise or talent (things like sorting mail, buying office supplies, and filing).

2. Make a second list of the tasks that consume a lot of your time but are OUTSIDE your specific area of expertise (things like maintaining your web site or managing your business finances and accounting).

3. Determine how many hours per week you spend doing these tasks.

4. Determine what additional sales and marketing, or other business-building activities you would have time for if you didn’t have to do these other tasks.

5. Estimate how many additional clients or sales you could generate with this extra time spent on marketing and building your business.

6. Make a decision to hire an assistant, bookkeeper, web site manager or whatever specialists are appropriate to handle these tasks. Determine what you can afford based on your results in Tip Number 5.

I know you’re probably wondering how you’ll be able to afford it. But really, we can’t afford NOT to hire help. Unless we are satisfied with keeping our business small. And don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that — I’ve done it for seven years. But if you have a bigger vision (like I do now), then you need a team to help you make that vision a reality.

To start with, your team should include an assistant to do the work that is not a good use of your time. This doesn’t have to be a full-time employee; I’m starting out with someone just a few hours a week. You’ll also want to get a bookkeeper and a CPA to manage your finances — they’ll not only free you up from your accounting tasks, they’ll also help you keep more of what you do make.

So take a moment to get a clear vision of what kind of business you want to create. And if that vision is larger than you can accomplish on your own, take the six steps above to get a team to help you make it a reality.

How much money can you make online? Are there really online millionaires?

Of course there are, but is it reasonable to expect that you can be one of them. Don’t let the hype surrounding the emergence of opportunities cause you to lose your common sense. Millionaires are made by effectively assessing the needs of a market and having a product or service that addresses those needs.

The internet can greatly expand your ways to sell products or services. Some people have been able to use this to make a great deal of money. Some companies that operate only on the net have made online millionaires of their founders.

Before the internet there were auctions, but no eBay. With thousands of items sold daily, each one making a profit for eBay, there is no doubt that the founders must be online millionaires.

Before the internet there were bookstores, but no Amazon.com. Amazon is now outdoing traditional bookstores. Don’t you wish you were the founder of Amazon?

Online millionaires start with an idea and a belief in themselves. They find a way to set themselves apart from the rest. Like real world millionaires, they often have enough faith in their ideas that they risk their own money and even seek additional funding elsewhere. Once they get started, they make themselves big enough that the other competition does not threaten them.

Online millionaires start early in the game. For example, now that we have eBay, people often forget there are other auctions. The only real competition Amazon has is traditional bookstores that were always there.

If you want to be an online millionaire, think of a need that is still largely unfulfilled. After that, you will probably have to believe in your idea enough to take some financial risks. If it doesn’t work, you lose your investment. If it does, you might join the ranks of online millionaires.