Advertising

[disturbedart]

What are the best ways to get a business going?

I have done abit with word of mouth, online advertising (free), fixed peoples home computers and i also am thinking of setting a ebay shop as well and also to pay for some advertising.

Anyone got any ideas?

[Fedlerner]

What are you trying to advertise?

[disturbedart]

Free computer advice and a community also sevices such as website setups, maybe hosting and also selling computer goods and proxy serivce once up and running

[Derek]

Make a web directory??/ kinda the same thing

[apple19]

well if ur trying to sell computer parts put up signs at like librarys and places where people use computers.

[disturbedart]

Thanks everyone the site is www.opensupport.biz im just trying to create a bigger community and more traffic, has anyone else got any ideas??

[Corey]

Focus on one or two things. Focusing on too many things at one time will cause a business to fail. You can add more things on as your business grows.

To decide what you should focus on you should take into account how much time you have to dedicate to your business, how much money you can put into it, and lastly, a business plan.

-Corey

[disturbedart]

Thank you corey. This will help me alot if you can go into detail please do thank you. This may benefit many more people.

[Chris Z]

nice corey, an old wise man told me that too, that is to put together a business plan, or else 90% of businesses fail or w/e, so basically, you wanna have like a web chart have your business or product in the middle, then around it list the objectives and such, then at the bottom, right how you would get there for each objective, i think that's how it goes, anyone else got anything?

[Corey]

The #1 thing is to be realistic. Stating your goals and your hopeful outcome sounds good, but it also sounds easy. Most people lack the skills or motivation to make a real business plan. Proper ones are quite in depth and very long. They also must be updated frequently.

What I would suggest to you is open up notepad. Type what you want to do, put down your goals. Also put down what you think it will take to get to those goals. Try to include everything.

Example:
I want to create a successful proxy site:
-Goals
--By Feb. have 300 Unique Visitors a day. <-- Realistic goal, not 50,000.
--Optimize google ads to make 50 cents a day.
--Be listed in Google\Yahoo\MSN

-What I need to do
--Post my link on 5 sites per day
--Submit my site to the search engines
--Spend atleast 3 hours per day answering E-mails or fixing stuff.
--Check Google ads and move them around to get optimal CTR
--Spend $20\mo on advertising.

Generally if you create a realistic goal and roadmap you should have no problem growing a business. After you hit your first goal you'll have a better idea on what you need to do to set your second one.

#2 thing is patience. 99.9% of businesses do not take off right away. Myspace was registered in 1996. It didn't start seeing any traffic until mid 2004. When did you first hear about it? Make a good site, keep it online, keep it changing or improve services and you'll be successful. It could take a month, it could take a few years.

-Corey