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How to Be an Entrepreneur: 7 Traits to Turn Possibility Into Reality

Successful entrepreneurs are winners. They are the people who have great belief in their ideas and are driven to turn them into reality. They are the people who are willing to take risks in order to live their lives in their own terms and they have that mindset and ultimate of goal of becoming successful even before they begin.

So if you want to know the importance of having that desire to change the way you live, how much you earn and how you want to make an impact to society. It’s simply indispensable.

Of course, you don’t want to be just an entrepreneur. You want to be the best! It’s safe to say that most successful entrepreneurs learned something from someone who served as their mentor. Someone who inspires and believes that with the correct fundamentals and strategies combined with the right mindset, a person can and will be successful.

These are 7 traits you have to develop before you can become an entrepreneur:

1. Have a Vision. Visualize your success even before you begin, see yourself when you are successful, what will the business look like, how much you will be earning per month. It is important to visualize and picture it out in your mind how it’s going to look like when you achieve success. Doing this keeps you driven and determined in getting there.

2. Believe in your ideas. Having belief in yourself is vital to achieving your goal. Remember, if you yourself do not believe that you can, how can people believe in what you’re trying to sell or offer?

3. Be Passionate. In order for you to be able to willingly commit a lot of your time in to what you do, you have to be passionate about it. You will be engaging in a venture where you will be the one in control and if you want to make it last you have to love what you do and you have to be passionate about it.

4. Always have a Plan. Successful businessmen always have things planned out. Entrepreneurship is a field where you have to be equipped to get out alive or in business terms – to get the cash rolling in your bank account. Do your research, brainstorm, identify different strategies and make the most ideal plan and stick to it.

5. Be Goal-oriented. As much as it is important to have a vision and be passionate in what you do, it is vital to set your goals. Goals serve as the milestones in achieving your success. Having them keeps you focused, straight-forward and gives you a time frame of your desired success.

6. Take Action. In order to achieve your goals. Successful entrepreneurs take action. Time is valuable, and you do not want to waste it. While setting your goal gives you a time frame in achieving your business’ success, you need to move! Don’t waste any opportunity. Every little thing counts, write down business related activities and at the end of the day look at what you have accomplished. The effort you exert will also determine the result you get in return.

7. Be Resilient. In entrepreneurship, there will always be risk. Successful entrepreneurs are successful because they took risks. It does not mean that they became successful because they made a risky decision and everything went well. Believe it or not, all successful businessmen, professionals, entrepreneurs have risked and lost before. But even after failing, you have to be resilient. It is a valuable trait you must develop in becoming an entrepreneur, adversity and failure will always be there, they will always be inevitable so you must be able to bounce back after every failed attempt. The best entrepreneurs are those who can laugh at the face of adversity.

Effective Website Design: How to Turn a Visitor Into a Customer (Part One)

One of the biggest challenges of a business website is how to turn a visitor into a customer. You only have a few seconds to grab the attention of your prospect, keep it long enough to build your credibility, and make them choose you over your competition. How do we convert these potential customers into a sale?

You do it with effective website design.

Your website design determines whether they like you, and whether they want to do business with you. It’s as simple as that. If you can build enough interest, there will be a tipping point that turns them from visitor into a customer. I am going to share with you some effective website design elements that will deliver those customers. This article is part one.

Website Branding

When I sit down with a client who wants to build a website for their business, the first thing I ask them is if they have a logo. Why? Because this is a good starting point to see if they have created any kind of branding for their business. What’s a brand? It’s a visual element (or a group of elements) that helps your target market identify you from your competition. When the market sees your brand, they think of you. For example: When you think of the insurance giant Aflac, what comes to mind? The duck, right? You might also think of their logo with its specific font, specific shade of blue, and of course, the duck with the orange beak. Your website should be no different. When someone lands on your home page, you need to arrest them with a very distinct look and feel that sets you apart from your competition.

A recent example of this is from a client’s website we just launched a month ago. Even though he had been in the label business since 1995, he had absolutely no branding; just a really lame logo with no colors, and a lousy font. As I started researching the competition, I noticed that most of his competitors’ websites also had terrible branding (which made me happy), and were rather impersonal. Something I noticed about my client was that he had only one leg (he had lost it the previous summer from diabetes). So, I went for broke and said, “Let’s make you the icon of your business with your one leg”.

He loved the idea.

So, I took a picture of him with his one leg, and put it up on the site. I wrote a few paragraphs with the heading, “A Leg Up on the Competition”. It was written from his point-of-view. We had him talk about losing his leg, and not being discouraged about it. I then had him urge people to donate to the American Diabetes Association. Instant personality and branding. It was real, and real engaging. After doing some search engine optimization for his website, we now have it in the top 10 (nationally) for the search term, “labels for bottles” on Google. He is starting to get some good feedback from his site even though it has only been launched a few months.

By creating a good brand for your company up-front, you’ll have a much easier time building a website that connects with your intended audience. Good branding will set you apart from your competition, and make your potential customers choose you to do business with instead of other websites.

There are three other elements to capturing visitors to your website, and turning them into customers. I will be writing parts 2-4 for EzineArticles.com in the coming months, but if you would like to read about these three other elements now, you can visit my original article on the subject of effective website design (link shown below).

10 Key Steps to Turn Your Mobile App Idea Into Reality

Many people and companies are coming up with new mobile app ideas to make it big in their field. They either want to reach a new audience or better serve their existing customers.However, people are relatively unaware of the steps or process needed to turn a mobile app idea into reality. Due to lack of ability and information among startups and established companies, most of them don’t know how to go about shaping the app idea.

I have helped several companies build their mobile app. Here are the 10 key steps I have followed in my 6 years of experience. I believe that my list can help anyone from any industry get their mobile app idea turned into reality.

Step 1: Write down your feature list

Conceptualize your idea begins by taking some notes. Before doing anything, you should write whatever comes to your mind. Writing down the feature list on a piece of paper helps you focus on your idea and expand on it. I recommend writing your idea several times and in many ways. This list also will be helpful when you are discussing with your co-founders, designers, investors or developers; they all are going to ask for it. Note that you should have them sign an NDA before you share your feature list. Your feature list should be clean and easy to understand. Also make sure it has popular and unique features, which will play the major role in success of your product.

Step 2: Do the market research

After writing your strong list of features, you want to do market research to find the competition, trends and market needs. Make sure there are no similar apps in the market. If there are, find out their reviews, ratings, feedback, and what is missing in them. Add features in your app that would make it unique and more attractive to the audience. After doing market research, you should update your feature list.

Step 3: Identify the users/audience

It is very important to find who would use your app and who the audience would be for your product. Your users are from a particular industry, gender, region, age group, existing customers, income group, specific profession, or any other group. Once you identify some demographics about the audience, you can find out what people from these demographics prefer or like. Knowing your audience helps you re-engineer your app and the features in it to cater to them. Your whole project moves around user engagement. You can also conduct focus group studies to find out what your audience may like or dislike. Your audience will decide your product’s success, and this insight from focus study can go a long way in defining product success.

Step 4: Identify the monetization strategy

Making money is the biggest reward and energizes for your idea. You can make money from your app idea in several ways: subscription fee, in-app buy, in-app ads, user data, sponsorship. You want to know which one works for your app, audience and market. Launching a paid app does not work these days, but you can make the app free with in-app purchase option for more functions. In-app ads are also losing their shine these days due to user experience. Having user data is becoming a big monetization technique, as you can use it to make indirect money. You can find sponsorship for the app; this works for an app with a social mission. It is important for you to select 1 or 2 techniques that would give you good return on investment.

Step 5: Create a rough sketch/wire frame

You may not have done it before, or may not know how to do it. However, the rough sketch or wire frame helps you define the concept and refine the requirements of your product. You can draw a rough sketch using paper and pencil, while a wire frame can be created using online tools. When you start doing the sketch/wire frame, you will be able to polish your app idea and features list further. Also, this helps you decide the proper navigation of the application. You don’t need technical skills for this step, but you need to have a common-sense understanding of how navigation works. Your wire frames, along with your feature list, will create very good specifications for you to build the mobile app.

Step 6: Approach local mobile app developers and get estimates

Once you have your first version of the feature list and wire frame, you want to start identifying vendors who can build your mobile app in a high-quality, cost-effective way. You should search for local vendors and some global vendors and reach out to them. Once you shortlist 5 to 6 good vendors, have them sign the NDA and send them the project details. A good vendor should check your details and ask you lots of questions. You should make sure to answer them in detail so that your idea is fully communicated. A good vendor should also be able to give you some suggestions to improve your idea. You should get proposals from multiple vendors, with time and cost for development, and compare them. You should check the vendors on past performance, process, price, time, testimonial and their eagerness to work for you. Finally, you should be able to select one vendor and start working with them.

Step 7: Complete the UI/UX

Once you have selected the company, you should work with them to create the UI/UX of the app. You should have them first create the detailed wire frame of the application so that you can visualize each screen, function and flow of the application. After review, you can decide to add or remove features. Once the wire frame is complete, you want them to create the visual design of the application. It should give the color, theme, fonts and visual appeal for your idea. This step will give you a near-final picture of what your mobile app would look like and how it would flow. After completing it, have your vendor reevaluate the development plan, time and cost. If the first estimate of time/cost has increased, get more funding or cut some of the features. You want to pay the right value to your mobile app developer.

Step 8: Get the app developed and tested

Have your app developer start building the app for you. They should be able to send you the app (in progress) every week and you should be able to test and give them feedback. It is very essential for you to QA the app as they develop it, as this helps you control the quality, cost and timeline, and learn whether the mobile app needs some tweaks. You can involve your friends in the testing as well. If you come up with new sets of features during the development, discuss those with your app developer and get the time and cost estimate. If it fits your budget, get it done right away. If not, wait for the next phase.

Step 9: Launch the app and market it

Once you are satisfied with the app, launch it in the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store. You should also start marketing the app. Get some consulting from experts on app marketing. You can also do self-marketing. Start on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as this is an easy way to spread the word about the app. You should also reach out to reporters and bloggers who may be interested in your app and write about it. A press release on free sites or a paid site can be very handy. If you have more in your budget, you can hire a PR or app marketing company.

Step 10: Gather market response and prepare for the next phase

After the first launch and marketing, you can collect user data, market response and demand. If you receive a good response, you can plan the next phase for the app. Repeat Step 1 through 9 for the next phase. This time, you should be able do them a lot faster and more efficiently. If the app is not received well in the market, find out what is hampering growth and have a plan of action.

Turn $10k Into $1m in 3 Years – Vital Tips For ECommerce Success

The E-commerce world is one of the most profitable industries to be involved in, however the great rewards on offer have lead to immense competition. A quick search of online shops on Google reveals hundreds of stores selling the same thing. Some insider knowledge along with careful planning and dedication is all you’ll really need to become successful.

The best part of Ecommerce is the small capital needed to get going compared with the unlimited potential turnover. An initial investment of $10,000 can result in an annual turnover of $1,000,000 + in just 3 years. This may seem a difficult task, however this guide offers some handy tips that will help you reach this goal!

Website Design

You need a great looking website in order to be profitable. The competitive nature of E-commerce means that your website must stand out. All the successful online stores have functional and professional looking websites. They have spent years and mountains of money perfecting their sites so spend time going through the top online stores and incorporate their best features into your site.

Building a professional website for under $10,000

A premium Graphic design and Web development company will charge around $40,000 for a fully functional and professional site. You can get the same quality for under $10,000 if you follow these steps.

1. Find a local university which has IT courses and put an ad on their notice boards looking for people finishing their degrees. Post grad students have all the required technical skill and they charge a third of the going rate with major companies.

2. Use an existing open source shopping cart platform such as Magento, so most of the work will already have been done.

3. Spend time researching and designing the features of the site yourself. Have a clear vision of what you want, you will save thousands if you do it yourself rather than paying your designer for this.

Planning and preparation

One of the keys to success is to plan and prepare before you launch. Every minute detail of the business must be recognised and a course of action taken. Everything from dealing with enquiries, processing sales, through to organising returns must be planned out to the smallest details.

Strong relationships with suppliers

Once you join a distributor, make an effort to meet with them personally or at least spend time talking with your sales rep about your vision for your business. If you have a good relationship with your distributor, they will actively help you to succeed and achieve your goals. You can then ask for special pricing which will give you a competitive advantage in the market.

Repeat customers

As soon as a steady turnover begins to develop your focus should turn towards your customer base. The following tactics are a sold starting point in getting your customers to return.

o Weekly newsletters with discount coupons and specials

o Automatic emails sent 1 and 2 months after an order reminding the customer of your existence

o Referral programs which offer store credit to those who refer friends to your store.

By following these tips and by having a strong marketing campaign, you can turn an initial investment of under $10,000 into an annual turnover of $1,000,000 in just 3 years!