One of my pet peeves is when I get emails from ‘Internet Marketing Gurus’ who claim that when I buy their course I will get all these ‘bonuses’ at greatly reduced prices.

Here are some recent ones:

Bonus #1: 1 Ticket To “GURU Traffic School”: VALUE: $2,500

Bonus #2: 1 Ticket To Any Live Event In 2010: VALUE: $5,000

You get the idea.

Newsflash

These courses are worth what people will pay for them. So – if you are giving them away for free, they are worth nothing. If you are selling something for $97 then it is worth, oh, I don’t know… $97? Not $2000 and we get 95% off.

And what is even more annoying that people doing this is people believing it! We have arrived at the point where pretty much we cannot believe anything that comes through our email – thanks in large part to idiots who make offers like this.

If you have read other articles by me you know I hate the whole ‘make a million online’ movement. It is – to be blunt – bullshit. Anyone who has done it could probably have made a million anywhere. They had a great business idea and spent thousands of hours perfecting it and their presentation. They did not buy a domain name, set up a wordpress blog, outsource to an article writer and collect a 7 figure sum.

I would challenge any of these gurus to prove

1. they have in fact ever made the money they claim. A tax return would be nice proof!
2. that any money can be made doing anything except selling the idea of easy money to desperate people
3. that anyone who has bought their product went from zero to hero directly because of it

Anyway, rant over.

Welcome to my blog where I will never sell you anything… though if you live in Spain you might want to sign up for FilmAmora.com – the best way to rent movies in Spain!

The Japan Times today is running a good article – not just about setting up a business in Japan, but about starting and running a business anywhere as an expat.

Inspiring!

Mobile game startup boss set own bar from ‘The Japan Times’

Ok, I’m assuming you’ve done what I laid out in the introduction as far as coming up with a business idea and model and you think you are onto a winner.

Now the fun begins. (Note: heavy sarcasm).

The first thing you need to do is decide on a good name for your business. You want something memorable, descriptive.. I don’t know! That’s up to you. But, don’t just choose one name. Think of several.

The reason for this is that when you go to register your business you will need to provide a list of possible names to the ‘Business Name Registry (Registro del Nombre Comercial)’. They will let you know which one is acceptable in their eyes, so, to save time it is best to give them a list (I did 5), in order, that they can choose from.

A word of caution: they are not fans of business names that have foreign languages in them. So make sure your list contains some business names that are entirely in Spanish.

In a couple of weeks Lord of the Rings finally makes an appearance on Blu-Ray (the delay caused in most part by legal wranglings).

Fans around the world are complaining that the editions being released are the theatrical editions – not the extended editions that we’ve been able to buy (or rent) for years. (God, has it really been 10 years since LOTR came out?!)

There really only seems to be one motivation behind this: greed.

Paramount knows that LOTR fans have been waiting and will buy whatever edition they put out. And then, in a couple of years, will buy again the extended editions on Blu-Ray. They did this on DVD with good profits, so why not do it again?

Here in Spain, to make matters worse, the LOTR BR Box will cost almost double what it costs in the UK and the USA. And they wonder why piracy is rife. Spain has the largest problem in the western world with movie piracy. And we have the highest average cost – as compared to average income – of DVDs. Hmm. Coincidence?

Do these people never learn? There is panic in the movie industry right now – companies are going out business left and right, people are losing jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars are not being recouped… it is mayhem.

We, as the consumer, of course have to foot the bill where-ever possible…but why?

Rant over.

I’ve talked a lot now about the getting the idea. One thing you have to look at to be successful is how other people became successful.

In generic terms – find someone or some business you really admire (for the right reason – because it interests you AND it made money, not just because it made money). See how they progressed. How the company started. What mistakes they made, what early successes they stumbled across.

After doing this with a few businesses you’ll start to see a pattern.

• Start small
• Work hard
• Look for sympathetic partners – be choosy!
• Don’t outsource core components – learn them yourselves
• Build credibility & reputation
• Be flexible

Those are the same for every successful business I know – big or small!

That should do it for the series on developing a business idea. If you want to chat, feel free to post comments – I’d love the feedback!

Don’t go into business thinking you know exactly what that business is going to do. The fact is that once you start trading and getting feedback from customers and seeing how your sector really operates odds are you will see signs of where you’d best fit.

Don’t ignore signs to change

Go where the market leads you – within reason of course. You may start a greeting card company, and then find that people really want local photos and content. Go with it. Odds are your ideas at the start were formed by little practical experience. Once you start getting orders in, look for patterns. See where you are making money that maybe costs you less (selling cheaper items or selling few big ticket items with great mark up). Focus on those areas.

CFIMITYM

Cash Flow Is More Important Than Your Mother

The best businesses can stand on their own two feet, at a small level, fairly early on. Venture Capitalists will like businesses that got a long way on bootstrapping (read: your money). Don’t go for big investment too early. The longer you go, and prove you can stay afloat, the more your company is worth.

Now, this step may appear to be NOT a start-up step, but something for later on. It is, in a way, but, the thing I want to get across is that from the start you have to be flexible. Don’t stick to your original idea if it is being proven to be flawed.

Following up on my last post – about there being many countries in the world – you should also remember that there are many languages. Just take a look at this:

There are 6,800 known languages spoken in the 200 countries of the world. 2,261 have writing systems (the others are only spoken) and about 300 are represented by on-line dictionaries

So – don’t think that your target market has to be in English. Even if you live in America remember that a huge section of the population speaks a language OTHER than English as either their first or second language.

I think that bears repeating:

In America remember that a huge section of the population speaks a language OTHER than English as either their first or second language.

1 in 15 in America doesn’t speak ANY (or very limited) English.  There are loads of stats I could throw your way, but basically, don’t think you need to do a site in English, even in America.

But, take a gander at these numbers:

Top 10 Languages On The Web

1. English – 479mil
2. Chinese – 384mil
3. Spanish – 137mil
4. Japanese – 96mil
5. French – 79mil
6. Portuguese – 73mil
7. German – 65mil
8. Arabic – 50mil
9. Russian – 45mil
10. Korean – 37mil

I think those are some pretty impressive numbers. And I can tell you from personal experience that the kinds of information that you can find on the web in English is sadly lacking even in the other top 10 languages.

Try looking up affiliate programs in a language other than English. Or Print on Demand. Or anything! Even with these staggering numbers (the top 10 represent 1.4 billion people) remember that those top 10 languages have 4.5 billion speakers! In other words, even in those languages, not even a third of them are online.

I hope you see what I am getting at.

If you string together my last post and this one it becomes – to me – clear. Learn the lessons of online business and development from the English speaking Americans. And apply it to other languages and locations.

Because remember this: your goal is to create a business you love and to make an income and a lifestyle. And, if you are a market leader in your country a larger company from a larger country may come along and snap you up when you get big enough to register on the radar.

The internet, and internet businesses, are decidedly America-centric. But, as most of us (i.e. the vast majority of the world’s population that doesn’t live in America) know that there is a whole world out there.

Don’t Forget About the Rest of the World!

The best thing about American businesses is that you can ‘adopt’ a whole raft of business ideas and localise them to wherever you live. America is undeniably ahead in its adoption of eMedia, eCommerce and all kinds of e-Things. But – the rest of the world will follow. Eventually.

And that means a great opportunity for you. Find a business – in the area of something you love – that is going like gangbusters in America and see if that can be adopted to where you are. Odds are that it can or something like it can.

Don’t worry about creating something that the whole world will love and use. And forget about creating something for America if you don’t live there. You live… somewhere! Make something for your local area – of even your country.

Again, as an example, this is what I did with FilmAmora. I got frustrated at hearing how my US friends had this great service (NetFlix) where they could just order any movie online and the DVD (i.e legit, high quality, all the extras like commentary tracks, etc) got delivered right to their door.

So I started my own.

There are things that are different about Spain, so it took some tweaking – localisation – to make it work. But it did.

And you can do the same. Get your inspiration from big US eBrands. See how they started out, what their good first steps were and what their early mistakes were. Learn from them, imitate them, develop and localise them.

Recently I read a great interview on JetSetCitizen.com. This is an interesting site that talks about people who are trying to create a business that will let them travel the world while still making (preferably a huge) income. Whether they intend to or not they prove just how difficult this is – on many levels. It’s not just the creating a business, but, if that’s not hard enough, a lot of people get out there and realise that they are not the type to travel the world ad infinitum or to even live in a place other than they grew up in!

People are creatures of habit. And some people – whether they want to admin it or not – like the habit they are in.

Right now you are doing what you want to

Anyway, on JetSetCitizen they have a great interview with Pat Flynn.

Now, in general, I am totally against this whole idea that you can make a fortune by doing next to nothing! All these sites – usually affiliate sites – that sell programs on how you can make easy money on the internet are really just going to tell you that best way to do it is to create some content about making money and sell it to other suckers.

But, Pat Flynn, I feel is in a different space. If you read the interview he started out by doing something he loved – creating a blog about Architecture. Also, he states:

“I believe that the more you can help others, the more successful and profitable you will be.”

So there you have it.

Pat’s a good example of following what you love AND providing a real service. I hope you can do the same!

So we’ve covered step 1. Your business should stem from something you love, passionately.

The next step is really to figure out what to do. And I believe that comes from discovering a need. Not a ‘nice to have’ but a real need. A gap in the market.

How to discover this? I won’t say it’s easy, but, if you really love this topic then odds are that you have the answer inside you. What do YOU want or need when it comes to this area?

Be sure that it is a real need.

For instance, let’s say you love cricket (the sport). And no cricket website let’s you find a player’s statistics based on name. This is not a need. Any existing sport website that carries cricket could add this feature. But if no one was writing or covering your favourite league, or doing it in your language, then THAT is a need.

I read some business book recently that said ‘you are not the customer’. And this is true, but, at the beginning you have to take that role. You have to satisfy your own desires for this topic.

The Greater Good

Even better than finding a solution that will satisfy you is to find a solution that will help society in general. If you can find something that will ease social problems, help underpriveledged people or societies then you are really onto something and a special person.

Fulfilling the need should be priority #1. That IS your business. Write it on a piece of paper and stick it on the wall.