Business Startups

Pat Flynn - SmartPassiveIncome.com - studied website design, affiliate programs, and shared for free, grew an audience that trusted him. Later, wrote Powerup Podcasting course.

Nick Walter - studied iOS app development, and made a course as he studied. Launched a kickstarter that offered the first 5 chapters of his course as a benefit, and the whole course.

Sloane Alex - built a TikTok following with beauty videos, and then pivoted to teaching cash flow startups on social media, which even further fueled her success. Grew a support-environment of enabled young women. Empowering Girls to believe in themselves, overcome negative thinking, obstacles, bullying, detractors, envy, find themselves, develop a plan, chase their dreams, start a business, succeed in school, make friends.

Business Plan

Your business plan is a snapshot of your business and associated financial goals. Before launching a business, research your target industry and competitors, and if you need outside funding, financial projections that support your request will be required. Make use of templates online to assist you in writing an original business plan. This will serve as a roadmap, laying out how you plan to start and run your enterprise. Choose a realistic location, first and foremost, to give yourself a chance at success.

Doing Business Online

Courses in E-commerce can help you master website design and digital marketing strategies such as SEO and PPC. Learn to create e-commerce websites using HTML and CSS, implement secure payment systems, and leverage platforms like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.

• Web Design Principles: Designing user-friendly and visually appealing e-commerce websites.
• Responsive Design: Creating websites that adapt to different devices and screen sizes.
• HTML and CSS Basics: Fundamentals of HTML markup and CSS styling for web development.
• E-commerce Platforms: Setting up and customizing online stores on platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce.
• Payment Gateway Integration: Integrating secure payment options for online transactions.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimizing websites to rank higher in search engine results.
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC): Running effective paid advertising campaigns (Google Ads, Facebook Ads).
• Social Media Marketing: Leveraging social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) for brand awareness.
• Email Marketing: Building and nurturing customer relationships through email campaigns.
• Content Marketing: Creating valuable content to attract and engage target audiences.

• Google AdWords: Creating and managing PPC campaigns on Google's advertising platform.
• Facebook Ads: Designing and optimizing ads on Facebook and Instagram for targeted audience reach.
• Advertising Strategies: Budgeting, bidding strategies, and measuring ad performance.
• Ad Copywriting: Writing compelling ad copy that drives clicks and conversions.
• Analytics and Optimization: Analyzing campaign data to improve advertising ROI.

• Payment Gateways: Integrating secure payment options like PayPal, Stripe, and others.
• Transaction Security: Implementing SSL certificates and encryption protocols for secure transactions.
• PCI Compliance: Adhering to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).
• Mobile Payments: Facilitating payments via mobile wallets and contactless technologies.
• Fraud Prevention: Strategies and tools for detecting and preventing online payment fraud.

• Mobile Commerce (M-commerce): Strategies for optimizing e-commerce websites for mobile devices.
• Voice Commerce: Utilizing voice assistants (like Alexa, Google Assistant) for shopping.
• Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: Exploring blockchain technology for secure transactions.
• Ethical and Sustainable E-commerce Practices: Promoting ethical sourcing and sustainable business practices.
• Augmented Reality (AR) in E-commerce: Enhancing customer experiences with AR product visualization.

Marketing and Promotion

Marketing plays a crucial role in driving traffic and sales to your ecommerce website. Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that incorporates a mix of digital and traditional tactics to reach your target audience effectively. Invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to improve your website's visibility in search engine results and drive organic traffic. Create compelling content such as blog posts, product guides, and videos to engage and educate your audience.

Utilize social media platforms to build brand awareness, foster community engagement, and drive referral traffic to your ecommerce website. Leverage paid advertising channels such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and influencer partnerships to reach specific audience segments and promote your products or promotions. Implement email marketing campaigns to nurture leads, retarget abandoned carts, and reward loyal customers with exclusive offers and discounts.

Monitor the performance of your marketing efforts using analytics tools and adjust your strategies based on insights and feedback. Test different messaging, creatives, and targeting parameters to optimize campaign performance and maximize return on investment (ROI). By adopting a data-driven approach to marketing, you can effectively allocate resources and drive sustainable growth for your ecommerce business.

Business Contracts

The key to a contract is that there must be an offer, and acceptance of the terms of that offer. An offer is a proposal made to demonstrate an intent to enter a contract. Acceptance is the agreement to be bound by the terms of the offer. Offers must be made with intent, must be clearly expressed for it to be enforceable, and must be communicated unambiguously. An acceptance must demonstrate the willingness to consent to all of the terms of the offer in good faith.

A genuine agreement, also known as a meeting of the minds, is also required. Agreements can be destroyed by fraud, misrepresentation, unintentional mistakes, duress, or undue influence. Some measure of consideration must be included in contracts, a standard of value promised in exchange for something else of value, although not necessarily in monetary terms. This mutual exchange binds the parties together in a contractual obligation.

Capacity to contract is the next element required for a valid agreement. The law presumes that anyone entering a contract has the legal capacity to do so. Minors are generally excused from contractual responsibility, as are mentally incompetent and drugged or drunk individuals. Finally, parties entering into contracts that involve illegal conduct may not expect judicial relief to have that contract enforced. This theory has also been applied to conduct that would be considered in opposition to public policy.

Business - Practice Tests

This section offers practice tests in several business areas. Each of the following multiple-choice tests has 10 questions to work on. No sign-up required, just straight to the test.

Canva

Paddy Galloway

Shark Tank

Jack Ma - Success Plan

Business Administration

Business Startups

Doing business online is one of your best options to raise extra income. Success is governed by two main factors, visitor traffic and sales conversions. How many of the right people can you attract to your site, and how many of those people can you persuade to take a given action? There's no rent to pay when starting a business online, unless you count yearly domain name registration and monthly website hosting, both of which are minor. Basically, you need to register a domain name describing the type of business you want to start, and then build the website using a template in HTML, adding a database and programming routines as needed.

The easiest way to start is by opening a Wordpress blog, and monetizing with Google AdSense pay-per-click ads. If you've tried Adsense before, but only made a few cents per click, you have a lot of learning to do. Adsense works great, in fact, but you have to understand the concepts, especially how text-ad bidding works, and how the Adsense code interprets your page text. You can drive targeted traffic to your website at a reasonable cost, by learning search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, and writing hundreds of pages of high-quality content.

Just making a website isn't enough, if no-one can find it. You'll then need online marketing skills, and the ability to drive conversions, like encouraging a sign-up for paid membership, purchase of an item, clicks on advertisements, or other money-making events. All of this takes work, and the learning curve is steep at first. Google Analytics provides free tracking of your visitor traffic, enabling you to monitor growth, and find out what works. After you copy the code to the header on each of your pages, this free stats package displays great graphs, going far beyond the number of visitors to your page, into user flow, what links they clicked on, how long they stayed, bounce rate, the percent of repeat visitors, search traffic, and referral traffic.

Pat Flynn - Income Reports

Pat Flynn made a comprehensive review of the LEED Architecture exam for his own study, and subsequently started sharing links to interested parties within targeted chat rooms. Because of the interest people expressed, he wrote an eBook which was a summation of his prior work. It sold well, thereby helping other to pass the exam. The success of his eBook startled Pat, who then decided to concentrate on online business, and created the website SmartPassiveIncome.com (SPI).

Initial income stemmed from GreenExamAcademy.com eBook Sales and Google Adsense earnings. Pat ran SEO, added a buy-it-now button, landing page optimization, did marketing, bought a microphone, video, and started podcasting. After intial growth, he started a limited liability company to protect personal assets, and met with a CPA to standardize tax reporting.

Gained first 1,000 email subscibers to SmartPassiveIncome website. Started offering an eBook how to succeed, attracting subscibers via a free eBook sent to their email (with an approved newsletter agreement). Started moving the focus from teaching people how to pass the LEED exam through an eBook towards teaching how to succeed in eCommerce. Pat earning affiliate income, with links worked into the text of articles ('BlueHost', 'Market Samurai' niche-site SEO and Keyword tool, 'Internet Business Mastery Academy').

Bought Audio Equipment: A Heil PR-40 Microphone, a Heil Mic Arm, a mixer, and some mic cables. Started Podcasting. Doing appearances on other sites, TV, podcasts, YouTube, sharing what he learned via consultation, coaching, and public speaking engagements, Pat Flynn becoming an expert in the field.

Wattpad

Wattpad is a website and app for writers to publish new user-generated stories. It aims to create social communities around stories for both amateur and established writers. The platform claims to have an audience of more than 90 million users, who can directly interact with the writers and share their opinions with fellow readers. Although available in over 50 languages, 77% of its content is written in English. A number of Wattpad users are translating stories to continue to build the platform. Wattpad announced the launch of Wattpad Books, the company’s first direct publishing division that will bring Wattpad stories to bookshelves everywhere. In January 2021, Wattpad announced that it was to be acquired by Naver Corporation.

Wattpad’s work in machine learning, deep learning and recurrent neural networks have also enhanced its ability to discover stories for adaptation and content trends that are now used across the entertainment industry. Wattpad has major TV, film and digital video partnerships with Universal Cable Productions (UCP), a division of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, eOne, CW Seed and others. The company works with publishing houses such as HarperCollins, Hachette Audio and Hachette Romans. Hundreds of Wattpad stories have been published as traditional books, many as best-sellers.

In 2017, Wattpad launched Tap by Wattpad, an immersive storytelling experience that delivers short, conversational-style narratives. Tap offers interactive entertainment experiences that digital natives love, using a chat-style format, combined with multimedia innovations designed specifically for Tap Originals. Since launch, users all over the world have devoured Tap stories, with more than 3 billion taps to date on over 300,000 stories available.

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