What went wrong?

Right on target

Let’s sit down a little and analyze the situation above to see what went wrong and what prevented you from getting hard cash.

First the story you heard was simplified too much. How can you expect a 5-6 years period to be resumed in a 10 minute interview without loosing some big clue. Also after that you are also over simplifying the story by omitting clues that bother you like ‘I’ve worked hard for the first few years’ and you do that because you said to yourself ‘I’m smarter and I won’t need to work as much to achieve success’ but that’s wrong and you know it now.

Secondly, you try and copy the exact idea, replicate the same steps, which is also wrong because the situation has changed and it’s time to tweak things a bit. Plus the first man that landed the Moon appears in history books, not the second guy. Try and get your own idea and start putting some work hours.

Then there are factors like different environment that makes some moves obsolete. Try and identify what changed and see what you can do to take advantage. Me too doesn’t always work.

And probably, the most important factor is the fact you’re not ready to give 100% for the first years to achieve success. It’s a bad trade as you can secure your future in just a few years of hard work, followed by calmer periods after that if you play your cards right.

Listen to yourself

I don’t agree with people saying things like ‘if you didn’t get on the right path when you are young there’s no way you can be successful when you’re older’. There are plenty of stories out there to back up my belief but that doesn’t means the clock is not ticking, so get out there and get something done seriously. The pie is big enough for everyone. Don’t fall in the 9% who failed or the 90% who haven’t even tried.

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Even if what I said above is true there are options for finding good freelance writers on specialized forums. They’re not cheap but if you play your cards right the outcome can exceed expectations.

The question

Freelance Writing

I thing this situation makes people ask themselves the following question: is it better to write content as freelancer or build your own websites and monetize them? I don’t have the right answer, but I can make a list of pros and cons of doing so. The decision is ultimately yours.

So with no further talk here’s my take on making money by writing content: writing content as a freelancer means getting paid per article so your productivity is proportional with the money you earn. On the other hand you get a steady cash flow from the first months when you start writing. If you’re fine with this go ahead.

Building a website needs some additional skills. Promoting it needs other skills so your initial costs are higher (more details on how to do those things can be found on ehow.com). Couple this with the fact that money won’t start flowing in the first months (or years) and you get a picture of why people choose the first option.

But those are not your only two choices. You could take the middle road which means starting off with writing articles to get some money you’ll later invest in building your own website(s). Once you get some money from your own business you can start making the switch at your own pace.

If you are curretly employed and can’t leave the 9 to 5 race then you better prepare to do some extra work. Explain this to your family and prepare them for a 1-2 years period of time when you’ll be, let’s say, unavailable.

It’s important to realize that things won’t change for themselves. You’ll have to work hard to accomplish success online, but the satisfaction is worth it. After all this translates to a simple question: are you willing to trade a few years of your life for a good life or you like to crawl gently through life from one paycheck to another.

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The goal of this post is not to tell you what I did and did not all this years but to make a list of the reasons I believe things are not better for me and why probably many others have failed before me and will fail after me.

Why people fail online and what has to be done to accomplish success

• Read less and practice more – don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to read first tons of books and then get to work trying to deploy everything you’ve learned. Try and balance the time spent reading with the actual practice hours
• Have a goal (or more goals for short/medium/long term) -  If this goal is measurable it’s even better as you always know where you’re at compared to your dreams. No goal means no focus which translates in working in vain.
• Don’t give up – results don’t show over night, always focus on doing everything needed to build a strong business that will always stand the test of time and will get you a decent and constant amount of money.
• Work hard – this is very important as only hard work will give results, but also work smart as efforts without brains are no good and don’t guarantee success
• Know your niches – if you get into a new niche make sure you did research about it to ensure better exploitation. It’s best to spend more time researching then wondering what went wrong and why you failed.
• Make friends with same interests – the best ideas come when you talk with people having the same problems like you. Don’t fear your secrets will help others as it’s best to be part of a group: there’s more chance you will get up helped by the current.
• Monitor your business – even if things are fine keep an eye on everything vital to your business as once things get broken it’s hard to get them on track. It’s like confidence, which is earned hard but gets lost easily.

There are I think the problems and mistakes people do very often, all which translates in bad results or no results at all. Do you have anything else to add to the list? Feel free to share.

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This statistics makes me wonder if the same applies to movie downloads. I’m also sure it doesn’t fit with illegal software download, but none the less it seems that measures like cutting Internet access to pirates for life, as they intend to do in France if you’re caught three times, is not good for business, as you’re sending away your best customers.

Illegal file sharing

Of course, big music/software companies always say that they loose X millions from illegal use of their intellectual property, but forget to mention that they measure wrong: if I download music worth of 1000$ it doesn’t mean that I would buy it if I couldn’t download it for free (probably I would buy songs that cost 126$ a year, if this study is true).

The problem I see with illegal pirating is that it’s not really  stealing, nor correct, it’s something in between. I also hope things will come to a middle ground, where everyone will be happy, as it’s clear that stealing does no good to companies, nor does cutting access to those who steal (as they buy more that ‘normal’ users). If you have an idea I would like to hear it.

You might also be interested in what I wrote about online piracy.

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Shared hosting: my take on it

Shared hosting is probably the form of web hosting you’ll be using 99 % of the time, mainly because is cheap and doesn’t require too much knowledge to operate the environment. The drawback? You don’t have control on the server’s resources and it’s not your server, as it is shared with other people having their own websites up and running. If one of those websites goes berserk your’s won’t run smoothly or won’t run at all. If the administrator isn’t fast enough everyone has to suffer.

If it’s your website then probably it will be shut down, as it happened to me today on JustHost, who suspended my account and noticing me after all my websites went down. I managed to get things back on track, but I don’t have to tell you how stressing this was for me, as I couldn’t see what the problem, which script caused the problem. I managed to convince them to re-enable my account and move my files to another server (using my persuasion skills) but I’m already looking for another host (any advice is welcome).

So, when using a shared hosting always backup your data frequently, as you might need to pack your things and move at any time. That’s the price of cheap I guess.

Options to shared hosting?

There are options, better but expensive as you might expect. One is Virtual Private Server and the other is Dedicated Server. The first one is like a virtual machine with fixed hardware resources. When you exceed them your websites start to move slowly, but don’t affect other virtual machines on the same physical server. A dedicated server means exactly that: you’re getting your own physical server, with root access and all that and you’re paying a monthly fee for rack space rent, power, bandwidth and security (in case someone decides to stole a server from a database you’re covered). All the administration is done by your or someone you hire, so that’s the professional version.

There’s also a solution that makes you less depending on someone and that’s server collocation: basically it’s your server and the provider offers you a place to store it, powers it and connects it to a backbone (a subscription which you pay).

As you see the more expensive a hosting solution for your websites is the more resources you have and the more complex the administration is. So chose depending on your budget and networking/servers/Linux knowledge level.

Web hosts I’ve used

I can’t finish this article without making a short list of hosting services I’ve used, with a few pros and cons:

• Dreamhost (if you like them use promo code IONUT97 for 97$ discount the first year of hosting)- reliable, pretty slow connection from Romania, nice support (who don’t jump and suspend your account because you’re passing the 10% CPU load limit), doesn’t have on demand general backup (which is a nightmare as you have to do it manually) but have a one time general backup and save snapshots of your files on each FTP account (not including databases)
• Justhost - very cheap, fast, reliable, jumpy when it comes to closing down your account (but you can talk to them and get things back on track), has general backup feature which is great
• HostGator (see available coupons here)- I’ve used them for a few days so not a lot to tell about them (I’ll update the article at some point). They seem fast and have general account backup feature

PS. I also recommend giving a look at Website Hosting, Website Design, and Search Engine Optimization.

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Make money online only seems easy

What not to do if you want to make money online

1. Don’t SPAM: everyone hates spam, it costs us time and money. Don’t ever send SPAM
2. Follow basic social media netiquette if you want to make friends and promote your business with the help of social media
3. Don’t over optimize your website for SEO: it may penalize you in Google or other search engines and a very big portion of your traffic will get lost
4. Don’t copy content: search engines hate that plus it doesn’t give users a reason to come back again on your website
5. And last, don’t settle for what you get: always optimize and research to increase profit

This are I think the most important things to keep in mind if you don’t want to shoot yourself in the leg and kill your online business before it even starts.

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Working from home

Pros of working from home

1. You gain the time commuting time, which you can spend with your family or working a few hours more. For me that’s at leas 2 hours per day.
2. You can ‘mold’ the environment to suit your working style, make it more comfortable to get ideas and increase workflow
3. You spend less money on food if you eat at home versus going each day at the restaurant, plus you can cook what you wish at home.
4. You can make a more flexible working program, work at night, work early in the morning and in the evening with a big gap in between, depending on what’s best for you

Cons of working from home

1. Without a boss to tell you what you need to do today is hard to motivate yourself to get things done. That’s a big problem for me
2. At home there are a lot of distractions and things your family expects you to do, as you work from home and now you have time (that’s not true, but it’s what others think)
3. Having no physical contact with people can affect your character, as we all have social needs
4. If you’re not disciplined and organized you won’t make it on your own
5. Sometimes you need to exchange ideas with other people and that’s not easy using software tools. Don’t underestimate the power of a well planned meeting

I think these are the main advantages and drawbacks of working from home. You must think carefully what kind of person you are and what suits you best. Depending on the answer you can choose one of those options, but I highly recommend trying working from home for a few days before making  the big step into becoming your own employee.

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First let’s see what MailChimp can do for your website:

• manage multiple email subscriptions lists with sign up forms
• manage email campaigns for various email lists and websites
• design your own templates of you can use some of the predefined ones
• deliver emails without them being tagged as SPAM by major webmail providers (Yahoo, Google are the most important)
• track reports of your mailing lists and sent emails

MailChimp main screen, a little different graphics than other similar services

What I like about MailChimp is the fact that they offer a free subscription plan that allows you to have a list/or lists with maximum 100 subscribers and send 6 newsletters per months. If you don’t like what they’re offering you can stop using their service, export your current list and go use other email marketing services.

For paid users the pricing plan is like this:

Pay per month plans

• 10 $ for 0-500 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 30$ for 501-2,500 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 50$ for 2,501-5,000 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 75$ for 5,001-10,000 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 150$ for 10,001-25,000 subscribers and unlimited sent emails
• 240$ for 25,001-50,000 subscribers and unlimited sent emails

Pay as you go plans (1 credit = 1 sent email)

• 9$ for 300 credits
• 30$ for 1,000 credits
• 60$ for 2,000 credits
• 100$ for 5,000 credits
• 150$ for 7,500 credits
• 200$ for 10,000 credits
• 250$ for 25,000 credits
• 500$ for 50,000 credits
• 750$ for 75,000 credits
• 1,000$ for 200,000 credits
• 1,875$ for 375,000 credits
• 2,500$ for 500,000 credits

I’ve chosen the free plan at first and after that I went for monthly pricing. I even offered to translate the interface for Romanian (as what they had was not correct), they accepted and then credited me with 6 months worth of subscription. I say that is nice for one hour of work.

Now, about their service let’s see that I like and dislike:

• very easy to set up mailing lists, campaigns and import/export users
• nice clean subscription forms and campaign templates
• emails seem to get delivered no matter what
• good support – they’ve answered me fast and on subject to my email inquiries
• they keep adding features at a fast pace
• I don’t like the limited number of templates they have
• editor for campaigns doesn’t have too many options
• for your own template you can chose to use a very limited WYSIWYG editor or a code editor – there’s no middle way

I know I haven’t tried other paid email marketing systems (Feedburner’s included email subscription service is very basic so it doesn’t count as personal experience) but I like MailChimp and I think I’ll be using it in the future as well.

If you want to subscribe to MailChimp you can do that here.

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Go Gre$$n

Things change and will also change for the eco race when there will be a financial stimulus, a material reason to switch. Till we don’t have a cheaper alternative to what we’re using now we won’t switch to being ecosapiens.

The problem can be resumed like this: why is this home more expensive? Because is eco. But what does it do for me now? Well, it just costs you more. Till technology won’t evolve enough for eco to be a viable alternative I’m affraid people will not hurry buying eco products.

That’s how things work, money are running the show, it was always and will always be like this, this is buried too deep in our nature. Scientists and people promoting eco alternative should understand this.

A financial incentive always works. Trust me.

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Of course paying attention doesn’t make you competent, but helps you understand things better, makes the boss happy as he doesn’t have to repeat himself a few times till you understand what you have to do and helps you learn from what others are doing and saying to you.

At least try and focus on 'paying attention'

Not paying attention makes you look incompetent, not interested in your job/assignment and maybe a little stupid if you say ‘I understand’ and then act like you’re from another planet. Also you’ll never get a promotion in a position where responsibility is needed as you’ll never qualify as such a person.

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Without competition we would wear the same clothes

If you control a monopoly you control the price of the product/service you sell because you’re the only one selling it. You don’t do anything to improve the product, because you don’t need to, people will buy the same product over and over if it’s a demand for it and only you can provide it.

Now, let’s see what advantages the competition brings. First, competition is like a race where the best wins the most and the worst wins the least. Best means cheaper, more reliable, faster, you name it. All those attributes help you, the consumer, as you gen a better product for the same amount of money. Competition makes companies invest more in research, which leads to new discoveries, meaning new things that improve our lives.

I’ll give you only one recent example of the benefits of the competition: LG is the first big company that announce it will produce a watch phone, the GD910, which will launch shortly in UK and US for aroud 1600 $. Yesterday Samsung annouced the world’s slimmest watch phone, the S9110, that has better specs than LG’s product in a smaller case, plus it will sell for under 700 $. I bet that in the next 2-3 years we’ll get better watch phones for under 200 $. Wouldn’t you agree?

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Top 10 countries that lead in click fraud traffic

What’s the biggest growing danger for advertisers and publishers? Click fraud, which is an invalid click, on purpose (attempted click fraud) or not (innoculous invalid) to alter statistics or increase earnings for the publisher. Click fraud is also use to deceive advertisement programs (like Google Adsense) to exclude a certain publisher from the system because it uses unfair techniques to increase its earnings.

What’s the danger?

For the advertiser it’s hard to calculate its ROI and in time it will see that advertisements don’t result in sales increase. After it sees that the obvious outcome is that it starts paying less to publishers. As you can see this is a circle that affects everyone in long term as we all know that trust is gained hard and gets lost easy.

Click fraud statistics

A report submitted by Anchor Intelligence show that the percentage of click fraud in advertisements system reached a very alarming 22.9%. Vietnam is leading with a 49.7% percentage while, Canada is second with 28.7 %, while USA is third with 27.3 %, but it has the highest indexed volume of clicks and this makes it the worst.

A map of quality traffic on the globe shows that Russia, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America (minus Brazil) are the regions with less click fraud, but as traffic increases is likely the percentage of valid clicks will decrease in time.

Global report click fraud traffic quality

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Modern product launch

Things have changed lately, as companies have started to ‘leak’ Beta versions, to give to users free of charge technological previews and release candidates (Windows 7 is one such example). Stirring a Buzz before the actual/official launch of a products is now an active part of the marketing process.

That’s a good thing because now users are involved from the development stage and companies can adjust/rethink their products before it’s too late for them. Of course, you must be careful to not stir a Buzz and then not be capable of launching the product in time, see Sony Ericsson with Xperia X1, which made everyone droll but it came too late, at about one year after the first presentation, in which time other manufacturers launched better products to market.

This is what I call making good use of the social factor that seems to drive the web right now.

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An easy way to see what happened in tha past years is to use google trends, which I did. You can see what I’ve found by looking at the picture below:

It’s pretty obvious that the crysis is affecting Black Friday Sales, but at a less level than how it affects daily online sales. Now the tricky part is to guess how sales will go this year. My take on this is that if the crysis begins to end sales will go up a notch, but if not expect another 20-30 % decrease during Black Friday.

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Then, with time you start feeling the negative side and start wondering: if I had three monitors will I work more, and how more, or what to do to keep focus and not be overloaded by the information displayed simultaneous to me. Then you find yourself watching a movie and reading the news at the same time (yes, it happened to me a few times) si you ask yourself if that is normal.

Well, I don’t really think so. If initially it seems more space, more freedom, you see more distractions, more stimuli which overload your senses. My conclusion is that more visual space is better for productivity, but that’s true till a certain point, a point that depends on people’s way of doing things. I encourage you to try and find your point, not run from it. You may discover that you need a bigger screen of that two monitors are too much. So, what’s your take on this?

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Below you can find the list which, of course, is opened to suggestions:

• even if you are the boss, the owner can always come and tell you what he wants and pretty much all you can do is obey
• after a good year the boss gets a hefty bonus while the owner gets a new Ferrari or a new house
• if things get a little tense the boss can always change lanes to a new job, while the owner is stuck in the same company (supposing it doesn’t have several businesses and can afford to let go some of them)
• the boss can always delegate tasks while the owner usually is guided by the motto “if you want something to be done, do it yourself”
• finding good bosses for your business is not always a piece of cake as you’re getting caught between finding someone smart enough to run your business but not smart enough to run its own business

Did you have other reasons in mind why it’s best to be the boss or the owner? Please share them if you do.

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Even I thought that Nokia was a little behind of the times, but that last 6 months proved me wrong and, sincerely, I don’t regret it. It seems Nokia had aces in its sleeve, and I’m not talking only about the touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic and the recently announced N97 Communicator.

Nokia realised that you can’t just win with great hardware products. Without software and fans (see Apple here) to support your products, you can’t ever hope for world domination (or survival, in the context of the actual financial crisis).

Nokia truly made its first steps towards the “Life Connected” principle, some kind of Web 2.0 for “Nokia Connecting People”. Nokia had pushed the right buttons and now’s waiting for the people to come (a kind of “build it and they will come”, but more aggressively marketed).

Apparently Nokia is a good listener and watcher, following the footsteps of Google Earth, with Nokia Maps 3, that integrates web services from Ovi (Nokia’s social headquarters that allows file, contacts, calendar sharing plus games and music store – a sort of contender for iTunes + Apple Store + MobileME). Add to this Nokia Messaging and you have a solution that fits also businesses.

To keep it clear, Nokia want’s its smartphones to be really smart, to become the mobile cloud computing center of our social lives, seamlessly integrating fun with function. I do think they’ll be the next No 1 in the mobile world if Google doesn’t do something about it. You can count Android as “something” but I think Nokia has the upper hand, as it dominates in the OS+phones sales numbers, at least for now.

What do you think? Will Nokia hit the Jackpot or Mr. Do No Evil will win here too?

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In time thing got blurry and holiday season is now all about shopping. In US there’s Black Friday, the first Friday after Thanksgiving that marks the beginning of the holiday season, not an official holiday, but a day when people get the day off to get some shopping done for family and friends.

Black Friday is the day shops have limited offers with massive discounts and combo packages and it’s understandable why it became a special day in shoppers hears. Even with this years financial crisis that hit US and other countries there will be a shopping spree during Black Friday, as people managed to save money during last months, in expectation for e massive price drop for their favourite items.

I’m also chasing for Black Friday sales offers which apparently started to pop in shops like Amazon and Best Buy. What will you be doing during Black Friday? Shopping or working?

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Luckily I’m not too influenced about this, as I think (or hope) that my personal skills and experience will make a difference anytime. Even if someone would get ahead of me because of his connections then maybe I wouldn’t want to work in a place where this kind of behavior is encouraged.

So, let’s see why me and you wouldn’t want to take a job not deserved, or which is not suited to our actual skills:

• In the first day, people under you that know well what they’re doing will notice immediately your lack of expertize in what you’re supposed to be doing
• The second day the same people will start making jokes, without even trying to hide this from you
• The third day your boss will ask you why did you take the wrong decision the day before
• The fourth day you’ll start to hate everyone at work because they read you so well
• The fifth day, Friday, you’ll have to stay late at night to finish what you’ve supposed to by Wednesday

Now I didn’t find the sixth reason, the one that makes people unqualified for their jobs go th work next Monday. Maybe you can enlighten me.

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First, before Michael Porter’s presentation, some local speakers started the day, sharing with us they’re experience in the entrepreneurial field. Some were ok, others boring, but that’s not the point. The point is that I was impressed by the variety of people present there, from CEOs to entry level managers, from financial to clothing sector. Everyone paid 600 Euros to learn strategy from a two hours presentation of word’s number one business thinker: Michael Porter.

In the next few posts I’ll tell you all about setting up a strategy for your business and how to position and differentiate yourself from the crowd. I’m pretty eager to see your reaction and your thoughts for your experience, so stay tuned.

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Don’t expect me to give you ideas about your next business. I’m just trying to guide you a little and even tell you what you shouldn’t do in the first place. So, let’ begin.

1. Don’t try something in an area that’s already overcrowded. Don’t try to make the next Facebook, search engine or video sharing website. Look at Microsoft, they can’t beat Google in search no matter what they’ve tried, and they have power, contrary to you. You have greater chances of success in a niche business, where competition is not fierce. Too small and you’ll end up the sheriff in a two people town.

2. Double check before you start. Even if your idea seems brilliant, check if you’re the first to come up with it. The phone was already invented, you know.

3. Investigate the niche where you plan to start. Start checking your next competitors, make sure your idea is different enough so that you have an advantage. Also try to estimate how much money the whole niche is worth.

4. Watch trends and try to anticipate what people will need next. No, you don’t have to be Nostradamus, but you have be able to anticipate in order to plan your moves. Always be informed about what’s happening in your niche and try to imagine what will happen in short, medium and even long term.

5. Make a good business plan. Without it you have more chances to fail, as you can’t estimate your expenses and income. If you have to borrow the money then you definitely need a strong business plan to convince someone to invest in your business.

6. Plan at least three steps. Don’t try to do everything from start. Decide what’s essential in the first place then plan for other improvements, after you’ve started your business. Also make scenarios and plans when different things happen. You don’t want to be caught with your pants down, do you?

For me, those things are common sense, without them you’ll never be able to start and maintain a successful business. If you have any other ideas please share them with me, don’t be afraid as we’re all learning here.

If you fell you need to read more about online startups I recommend you read this: Internet Riches: The Simple Money-making Secrets of Online Millionaires

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That was till two days ago, when I realized I should write about what I do and I’ll be doing at work in the near future. I haven’t told you yet, and also didn’t wrote on the About page (hopefully this will change soon), I work in Romania at one of the biggest online publishers, MediaPRO Interactiv (official website isn’t online yet, so you have to believe me we’re big).

Here I’m managing Romania’s first gadgets and lifestyle website, go4it.ro. So I’m always connected to computers, Internet, SEO, web development, management and a little bit of marketing (you can’t promote your website if you don’t know how). I’m also working on finishing some other websites, but that’s not my main occupation.

So what I propose to you, on months to come, to compose a guide to making a business plan for an online startup. Why do you need a business plan is simple: it lowers the chance of failing, without eliminating it. Without a business plan you have great chances to fail if you invest your own money or you won’t get a loan, if you haven’t got the finances to start up your business.

So, for the next post I’ll prepare some short steps, like a summary. Bear in mind that I’ve did in past business plans, but nothing too complex or correct as I want to write on JohnPope’s. That’s why I need your help. I think we all have to learn something from doing this. So don’t hesitate to contact me, write a comment and of course subscribe to my feeds, to see when I’ve got something new.

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