Business Pre-Flight Check Lists For My Internet Business

by Trisha Frauenhofer

NASA and jet liners use a pre-flight check list to make sure that everything is ready to go before a jet liner (or the Space Shuttle) is ready for launch. When starting up my internet business, that same “dot the “i”s, cross the “t”s mentality is also important. You don’t need to look like an extra from the Apollo 13 movie to make this work, but that sense of organized planning is going to serve you well.

The overall structure of my internet business check list is the business plan. It should cover the steps you want your business to grow through, factoring in cash reserves, cash outlay, marketing budget and operating capital. Fortunately, internet businesses are low overhead operations.

A good web designer, I have found is always a valuable asset to My Internet Business Pre-Launch plan. If you want a professional looking online shop or firm then you will need to invest in a reputable web design firm.

Conversely, you’ll need to park your domain name; this we recommend doing yourself, and taking good notes. Domain names and domain name registration are sort of like potato chips. Once you start building web sites and making money off of them, you’ll find that you’re spending odd hours looking at interesting domain names with an intention to park them and use them later.

The other place where my designer helped a lot was getting me to realize that More isn’t always Better. She took out her laptop, hooked up a cellular modem to it, and we loaded my old site. There was time to grab a cup of coffee and watch the birds before enough of it loaded for me to be able to see what the site was about. Dulls ville. By using Cascading Style Sheets (the CSS stuff I mentioned earlier), she was able to make it dynamic and much more attractive. (I was still using JPEGs of titles in a fancy fontoy.)

When designing the site (or working with the designer), remember the KISS principal: Keep It Small, Stupid. No matter how shiny the graphics are, no matter how whiz bang the Flash animation is, your goal is to have something that loads almost instantly. Take the time to hit your site with a dial up modem; if it takes long enough that you wouldn’t wait for it, make a low graphics main entry page and work from there.

Once I learned how to set up a maintainable web site, it was time to focus on marketing. I started marketing last time by taking out radio spots, in part because a friend of a friend got me a deal at the local radio station. Since the spots were local, I got no coverage outside of local broadcast range. Not a good idea when I’m trying to sell things on the Internet. Now, I focus on building up web traffic.

Related to Ad Words and related ad proxy systems is getting social networking sites to drive traffic to yours. Focus on getting people who have credibility in their online community referring to your products and web site, and you’ll build a nice stream of ready traffic to your site - and eventually, to your affiliate sales or your products.

About the Author:

Trisha Frauenhofer is an online marketing professional who loves teaching her most potent online secrets including the My Internet Business