Tag: Focus

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The Characteristics Successful Entrepreneurs Need

There is a common misconception that entrepreneurship cannot be taught. However, this is simply not the case. It requires a deep understanding of the different characteristics to be an entrepreneur. These characteristics can be worked on to grow into a successful entrepreneur.

 

The following are twelve characteristics you need to be a successful entrepreneur:

 

Goal Orientated and Competitive

Competition is a natural part of business and requires a goal-orientated mindset to power through and overcome them. Without goals in business, you will likely miss out on essential opportunities for engaging and providing value to your target audience.

 

Energetic and Focused

Business takes a lot of work which means you need to have a lot of energy and focus on getting it done — especially when you don’t feel like you. Having focus ensures you stay organized and on track to meet your goals and deadlines.

 

Self-Motivated and Confident

Entrepreneurship alone doesn’t mean you will always feel like working. However, you need to push through and work even while uncomfortable to be successful. If you constantly push-off work, you can’t expect results. Self-confidence can make it easier to motivate yourself, too, as you know you are the best one for the business and have value to provide.

 

Passionate and Determined

Passion and determination make it easy to fight through the feelings of demotivation. It also helps you get back on track when you experience a setback, a natural part of the business.

 

Creative and Strategic Problem Solver

Creativity and having proper problem-solving skills are required to provide value to your target audience. The most successful entrepreneurs understand that if they don’t provide value or solve a problem in some way for the target audience, then they don’t have much to offer in the first place.

 

Independence and Optimistic

Finally, being independent and optimistic about your business is essential to your success. Without optimism, you won’t get back on track when you experience obstacles or setbacks. Not only that, pessimism can easily cloud your judgment leading to poor decisions. Independence is required as you can’t expect people to have the same passion for your business as you. Even if you have people helping you, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t review their work or put plans in place to protect your business.

 

Remember, just because you don’t have all of these characteristics yet doesn’t mean you can’t become a successful entrepreneur one day. Instead, find ways to possess and perfect these skills before you take the entrepreneurial leap to be more successful in the long run. These characteristics work together to build the entrepreneurial mindset you need for long-term success.

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A Quick Guide to Starting a Retail Arbitrage Business

Retail arbitrage is not just a hobby or side business. It is a business model that many follow to run highly profitable businesses. Retail arbitrage involves finding products created by other brands and manufacturers and then reselling them on Amazon, eBay, or Walmart for a profit. The goal is to find a high in-demand product for an affordable price, buy it in bulk and then list it on one of these platforms. The more products you source and resell on these platforms, the more revenue you can make.

 

These essential tips will help you start and run a profitable retail arbitrage business:

 

Use the Amazon Seller App

The best way to ensure you are sourcing products with a high-profit margin is to take advantage of the Amazon seller phone application. This app allows you to scan items to see their current sales price, sales rank, and potential return on investment.

 

Shop More Than One Store

Find more than one store to shop from, even if it is the same type of store. The more deals you can find with the most units, the more profits you can make. For example, if you find a candle that people are buying for $2 at a local store but know you can sell it on Amazon for $10, you will want to purchase and sell at least twelve or more to make a profit worth the work.

 

Verify Your Profit Margins

In other words, find products you can sell at all different price points. However, beware of your limits. Anything that provides at least eight dollars or more in return is where you should start if you want to start and run a profitable retail arbitrage business.

 

Price and Ship Right Away

Don’t let the product sit once you purchase it. Follow the instructions on how to properly ship your items to Amazon’s warehouse as soon as possible. Be sure to price the items competitively but fairly. In other words, if others on the platform are selling the same thing, don’t over or underprice them, as this will only hurt you in the end. Keep the price the same by fifty cents to a dollar keeping in mind your profit margins.

 

As you can see, you can’t just post any product and expect it to be successful. It needs to be an in-demand product and offer a good return on investment after being shipped to Amazon then packaged and sent to the new owner. For retail arbitrage to be successful, you must sell at a profit and find more than one unit. This means most successful retail arbitrage businesses eventually open a warehouse and hire employees to source more products and get them shipped to Amazon quickly.

 

 

 

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Five Steps to Creating an Amazon Kindle eBooks Business

Kindle publishing has the potential to create a six-figure or more business. With Kindle Direct Publishing, any writer can now publish their books, grow their audience without an established publisher, and still generate large profits. In fact, Amazon allows writers to create the stories they want and keep control of their products. Making Kindle Direct Publishing a powerful business model to choose if you are a writer or desire to become one.

 

These five steps will help you to create and run a profitable Amazon Kindle eBook business.

 

Step One: Find Your Amazon Kindle Books Category or Niche

Research through the top sellers in the Kindle store to see which genre inspires you the most. These genres let you know what products are in demand. While you want to create your own story, you still need to find and develop one people search for on Amazon to build a profitable business. Even if you author a terrific book, you won’t have a great time selling it if people are not interested in the genre.

Step Two: Create an Amazon Seller Account

To sell your books on Amazon, you must own and pay for an Amazon Seller Account. This costs about $39.99 a month plus any royalty fees, depending on the size of your book. For example, if you price your book below $2.99 and above $9.99, you will be charged a 30% royalty fee for using Amazon’s services.

 

Step Three: Develop Eye-Catching Book Covers

The first thing readers see is your book cover and title, so make it eye-catching. Your readers should get a basic understanding of what genre they will read just by looking at the cover. For example, a romantic novel will have a couple cuddling, while a beginner’s guide to cooking will want to have food and cooking equipment to draw in the right readers.

 

Step Four: Write Quality Content and Descriptions

The most crucial step of all is to create a story or book worth reading. To make a profitable Amazon eBook business, you need to create a series or more than one book on related topics. This way, you create fans of your work who will read your new books no matter what as they know they will enjoy your genre.

 

Step Five: Tease and Promote Your Books

Before your book officially launches, let your readers know what is about to come. Take parts of your book and create short stories, guides, or templates that can be useful or valuable to your audience now or until they can purchase the full book.

 

Follow these five steps to launch and run a successful and highly profitable Amazon Kindle eBooks business. The more quality content you write and share on the platform, the more revenue you will generate.

 

Common Community Building Obstacles that Can Hinder Your Success

 

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How to Make Money Starting an Amazon Private Label Products Business

In 2020, over half of the private-label sellers using Amazon FBA earned five thousand dollars or more in sales each month. In fact, this business model is so successful that roughly seventy-one percent of sellers on Amazon use private label products. A manufacturer creates private label products that allow you to put your own logo on them and then sell it to your audience for a profit. With this method, the products you can create are endless, from beauty products to pet treats to kitchen utensils and more. If there is a product you want to sell, a private label manufacturer is waiting to make it.

 

These five important tips to follow to grow a profitable Amazon private label products business will expand your understanding and get you started right.

 

Source the Right Product

Don’t list the first private label product you find just because you think the product or idea is popular. You must first ask for samples to test the product’s quality and find the best version while keeping costs low. Private label products require purchasing large quantities of an item to lower the price per unit costs and increase your profit margins.

 

Design an Attractive Logo and Packaging

Just like any physical product on Amazon or in stores, you need attractive packaging to educate and entice people to purchase your products. In addition, sophisticated packaging and logo insinuate that your products are more valuable, thus allowing you to increase the price of your product.

 

Create an Amazon FBA Account and Optimize Your Amazon Listing

You can offer private label products without starting an Amazon FBA account. Once you open your account and verify your identity, you will start listing your products or registering for the Amazon brand registry that gives you even more control of your products. From there, you can start listing your products. Be sure to fill everything in as specified to the best of your ability, and don’t skip a box. The more information you provide, the easier buyers can find you.

 

Strive for More Reviews

It’s simple, the more reviews your product has, the higher you appear on buyers’ search feeds. Include inserts or automatic emails that go out once a purchase is made or delivered to ask for their review. Be sure to avoid exchanging reviews for free products or discounts as this is against Amazon’s terms of service.

 

Price Your Products Correctly but Competitively

Take a moment to research your competition on the platform and see what prices they are offering. Unless you have an obviously superior product with the information to back it up, don’t expect to exceed these prices too much. Remember, competition is healthy, and starting a price war is the last thing you want to do.

 

Finding valuable products is the first step to starting a profitable business. If you don’t offer the right product based on your ideal audience’s wants and needs, it won’t matter what you do after, as the product is the most important part of this business model.

 

 

 

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Essential Guide to Starting a Blogging Business

Did you know that in 2020 over four hundred million people viewed nearly twenty billion blog pages every month? What’s even better is that almost twenty-five percent of those who run a WordPress blog make a full-time living in the same year. These two facts show that creating a blog and turning it into a profitable or sustainable business is not completely out of reach.

Here are five tips to follow to grow a profitable blogging business:

 

Choose a Niche

While not a requirement, choosing a niche for your blog is the best way to turn your blog into a profitable business. This is because you can better perfect and target your audience when you don’t have too many topics to cover.

 

Develop or Invest in Quality Content

A blog is only as successful as the content it provides. If you just put up any blog post or re-share content others create without any unique twist or value, you won’t go anywhere. Successful blogs work because they know what content their audience needs or wants and delivers.

 

Be Interactive and Visual

While blogs are mostly written content, that does not mean you should avoid using pictures or infographics. Graphics add more creativity and interest to your post that keep your audience interested and engaged. Increasing audience engagement ensures your audience feels your offers are valuable.

 

Monetize Right Away

You don’t need to wait to start making money or develop ways to monetize your blog. In fact, monetization ideas should be created or at least thought of before you even purchase your domain or create your first blog. This way, you know the effort and time you put into your blog is a viable and profitable option. Waiting for your target audience to do the work for you won’t create the profits you need to be successful. Instead, you need to give the products to them.

4 Tips For Success In Home Business

Use Social Media and Email Marketing

The best way to promote your blog is through social media and email marketing. However, you can’t expect anyone to find you without a proper marketing strategy unless you create perfect SEO-rich content. Even then, relying on only SEO or keywords can be a slow and tedious process.

With these tips, you can grow the blogging business of your dreams. As long as you invest in the right content your target audience wants to read or consume, and use the right platforms for marketing your blog, you will be successful. Remember, blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes dedication, passion, and consistency to deliver content your target audience wants to enjoy continually to grow your business.

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Essential Community Building Statistics to Know

If you want to grow a community or build one around your brand, you must know the facts. Statistics show that if you’re going to start a business, building a community around it is vital if you’re going to succeed. Fortunately, many consumers are looking for more information directly from the source to build relationships with honest and valuable brands. They seek trust and validity before they can make a purchase or commit to a brand.

 

The following are some essential community building statistics to know to further promote and grow your brand:

 

  • Nearly a 1/3 of Users Follow Brands Using Social Media – Because so many social media users and those who love being part of communities follow brands using social media, it tells you that if big brands are doing it, it can work for you too. So, you really don’t have to be Red Bull to benefit from building community.

 

  • Ninety Percent of Buyers Report Using Positive Online Reviews to Make Their Purchase Decisions – Reviews work according to buyers’ own words. They like reading positive reviews to help make their choice.

 

  • Almost Thirty Percent of Online Customers Report Using Brand Communities for Research – Many people who want to buy things feel more comfortable going to a community run by the brand to find out what customers are saying and get a sense of the integrity of the creator.

 

  • The Common Community Objectives Include: Customer retention, lower support costs, and innovation – People who create communities cite these reasons for spending a lot of effort developing engaging and informative safe communities for their customers and interested parties.

 

  • Only 40% of Small Businesses Compared to 75% of Large Corporations Build Communities – This is likely because it can be a lot of work to set it up and keep it running. However, with the advent of so many options, it’s getting a lot easier to do it.

 

  • Over 95% of Adult Smartphone Users are Using Social Media and Brand Groups – Because so many people in the USA (77%) have smartphones having a mobile-friendly community will pay off since most users love being involved in brand groups using their technology.

 

  • Almost 90% of Business Leaders State Community Building is Essential to Growth – The main reason for this is that it’s one more way to help lead your ideal customer through the buying journey successfully.

 

The fact is, online or brand communities are what sets you apart from your competition and can further solidify your chances of success. If you want increased awareness, recognition, and loyalty, then running a community is vital. Overall, these statistics prove the power and benefits online, or brand communities can provide to businesses.

 

A Comprehensive Social Media Influencer Checklist

 

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Common Business Problems that Building a Community Can Solve

If you are struggling to build your business and looking for ways to improve, building an online or brand community may be the best solution. In fact, it is likely the tool you’ve needed all along.

 

The following are five common business problems building a community can solve:

 

Poor Return on Investment

 

While email lists, advertisements, and your blog are all fabulous ways to generate interest in your offers, there is nothing more effective than truly getting to know your customers more intimately. If your ROI is not what you want it to be, but your customers are otherwise satisfied, a brand community can help you fix that problem.

 

You can create the community free or for a fee. It’s up to you. It really does depend on your niche and your business model, but you can test out various ways to run your community. Once you have a captive audience that you can communicate with regularly, they will start buying more, and your ROI will improve.

 

Poor Cashflow and Intermittent Revenue

 

Whether you provide services or products, or you’re an affiliate with no products of your own, if you work within a particular niche, your income is likely not consistent if you have not built a community of avid and hungry buyers. Having a membership-based community, whether paid or free, can stabilize your cash flow like nothing else.

 

In your communities, you can offer them the first peek at new products and services, get more feedback, receive more customer reviews, and even get your members to become brand advocates and recommend you to others much easier than you can without having a community.

 

Poor Credibility, Trust, and Awareness

 

Communities humanize businesses, and once that happens, your audience will start trusting you more. The credibility that you end up with after creating more awareness through community building will jumpstart your creative juices and end up helping you become even better in the eyes of your customer base due to all the inside knowledge you’ll gain by being part of your community.

 

Poor Business Growth and Stagnation

 

If you have grown as far as you can with what you are doing, consider building a community. An active and engaged community can really boost your growth and end the stagnation you’re experiencing. Even if you haven’t sold a solitary product yet, building an active community will generate new revenue.

 

Finally, you can vastly improve your customer service by setting up an active and involved community. Not only will your members offer each other community peer-to-peer support, but you’ll also be much more in tune with what is going right and wrong and learn better ways to help your members in the way they desire.

 

 

Four Ways Community Building Improves Customer Service

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Four Ways Communities Improve Customer Experience

Just one bad customer experience can destroy your reputation as a brand or small business owner. Research suggests that consumers are willing to spend more revenue on businesses that have excellent customer service.

 

In fact, a report conducted by The Economist states that 59% of the consumers surveyed are willing to reach out or find other businesses in hopes of a better customer experience. Building a brand community provides the customer experience you need to prevent this from happening.

 

Here are five ways communities can improve your target customer experience:

 

Communities Humanize the Support Process

 

Most consumers are very tired of being just another number or worse, a wallet, and not even thought of as humans. Small business owners are uniquely positioned to offer customers the most human support possible through their use of communities. If you participate, they’re going to see you as a real human with real feelings, and due to that, they’re going to buy more.

 

Communities Improve Customer Engagement

 

Not only will your customers engage and discuss your products one-on-one within the community, getting current ideas and insight into making use of your products and services, but they will also be more likely to respond to you and answer your questions due to the ease of communication in a group environment.

 

Communities Provide Clear Customer Insight and Understanding

 

While the community is mainly for your customer, the truth is, you will gain a lot from having a community. You’re going to learn more about your customer, and that will help you understand what they truly need from you within the bounds of your niche.

 

Communities Streamline the Customer Service Process

 

Offering more avenues of customer care to your customers will make them feel even more heard. It’s hard to provide phone support as a small business, but the next best thing is a community that allows them to publish their questions and find answers in your FAQ or by using your bot. Plus, sometimes you’re going to be there live to help.

 

In the end, making sure your customers have the best experience possible when communicating or engaging with your business prevents you from destroying your reputation or business altogether. Remember, most businesses have to shut down within ten years. The major contributing factors to these shutdowns include poor customer service and not prioritizing your target audience. Building a community provides you more control and tools to ensure you give the best customer experience at all times, anywhere around the world.

 

Four Ways Community Building Improves Customer Service

 

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Brand Community Examples and Why They are So Successful

Building a community around your brand is vital in today’s marketing and consumer world. Consumers are looking for trust, credibility, and authenticity. Without these factors, you are unlikely to make any sales or make an impact within your industry, which is why many of the top brands today work hard to build a specific community around their values, products, services, and more.

 

Dissecting how the top brands take advantage of their communities can provide you with more tools and resources to grow a winning brand community of your own. The following are four brand community examples to emulate and why they are so successful:

 

  • Airbnb – You know all about this community because everyone talks about verified hosts. Verified hosts take part in this private community to learn how to make the most of their Airbnb business and rentals.

 

  • Once they make it to a certain point, YouTube- The creators on YouTube are invited to a private creator’s community that gives them motivation, tips, and more to make their channels better. In some communities, this is taken outside the online community right into co-working hubs.

 

  • Lego – This community enables enthusiasts to share what they are creating with Lego and helps drive product creation and innovation. Members can submit ideas, and they can win prizes and contests.

 

  • Airstream – They offer owners or wishful owners a community that allows them to share the interest and love of their airstreams. They can also learn about events and places to stay less expensively.

 

  • Harley Davidson – This close-knit community offers a sense of connection to Harley riders and their loved ones. They use the group to inspire loyalty, market the latest items, and more like big events and gatherings.

 

  • Trader Joe’s – You can join a discussion board, listen to their podcast, and find all about new products and how to use them before they come out. People love TJs so much that even in areas without a store, yet they build a fanbase using communities so that before they even break ground, they know they have enough customers to make it work.

 

  • Gone With the Wynns – This YouTube sailing couple spends a lot of time within their communities on YouTube publicly and privately within Patreon. Due to their active community, they have raised money to help animals and clean up the ocean.

 

  • High Carb Hannah – This YouTube star has a fabulous community based on her website where she has generated enough income through her offerings to build a house and live a very happy and active life outside of just work.

 

  • Apple – This community is very large and full of users and would-be users who love everything about Apple products. The community offers peer-to-peer support and a place to hang out with other like-minded folks.

 

Now that you think about it, you can find many communities for any product or service, or problem that you have. The advantage to creating a community yourself for your brand is enormous to you and the customers you want to help. The more they know about you and feel safe with you, the more likely they will buy and become repeat and long-term customers.

 

Top Influencer Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

 

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Three Important Brand Community Practices to Follow

A strong brand community increases your reach, business revenue, and loyalty. However, to achieve these benefits, you must nurture, support, and commit to providing value to it. Only when you do the right work for a community can you expect anything positive in return – adopting the common practices that many find success in can get you started in the right direction.

 

Here are three important brand community practices to follow for increased member satisfaction and success:

 

Listen to and Engage with Your Target Audience

 

Everything you do in your business is about ensuring you’re reaching your ideal audience. The only way to be sure is to actually listen to and engage with your members in a deep way that ensures you find out the information you need to help them most.

 

While you can outsource to a community manager VA to get help with your community, you are the one who needs to show up occasionally to engage with the target audience because it will make them feel like VIPs that you take the time to be with them.

 

Address the Needs of Your Audience

 

Once you realize what your audience really needs, it’s time to address those needs with your messaging, education, products, and services. Everything you do is designed to provide solutions to your audience to help them solve their problems as easily as possible.

 

Use analytics, surveys, questionaries, freebies, engagement, contests, and more to determine what gets your audience’s attention based on the information and data you collect. The data you collect will inform you what their needs are and help create amazing content for them.

 

Choose the Right Platform or Community Structure

 

Today, community-building platforms are ubiquitous. Because of this, you can choose your perfect community to help you promote your business to a captive and interested audience. It really just depends on your own criteria. Do you want a message board that can be threaded? Do you have concerns regarding using the technology? Do you want to allow your members to make in-platform purchases? Do you want the ability to accept uploads or provide downloads? Whatever it is that you need to deliver to your audience is out there.

 

Write down what you need in a community, and then compare your needs to what’s available. You can always start easy with a Facebook Group, but there are many other options. Don’t assume all the different options are too expensive. Facebook may be free for you to use, but there are compromises to using anything free, just like there are compromises to be made even if you pay for a platform.

 

Many brands can get a community started easily; however, keeping it organized, engaged, and beneficial to your core audience is where many fall through. Not following or incorporating these top three community practices will only lead you down one road: failure. Adopt them today to build the brand community you want to achieve all your goals and more.

 

 

Community Engagement is Key to Growing Your Business