Starting A Business - One Step at a Time or a Giant Leap Forward?
-SMEs Maximize Online Profits - Take Your Share of the Pie-
Here's a little incident that could very easily describe a day in your life.
It's 5 o'clock on a Friday evening. You were supposed to make a reservation to take your spouse out for a birthday dinner.
You don't even know which restaurants exist in your local neighbourhood. There's a panic button you can hit - it's called Google.
Ten minutes later, not only are you well informed about all the cozy diners around the block, you have picked "Italian"
from a choice of Portuguese, Chinese, Indian, Mexican and Thai cuisine, made a table reservation, ordered red roses for
the table and are on your way home to drive your happy spouse to dinner!
Ah, but you forgot to arrange a babysitter for the kids! Back to Google and you've located "Give Me a Break", a
daycare centre specializing in short and sporadic babysitting needs including evening hours. Their website gives you the
phone number and the nice lady on the phone tells you that your kids will surely have a great time because they are having
"Baking Day" at the centre. Wow!
Think about what you just did. You gave a whole evening's worth of good business to small local enterprises by just going
online to search for what you needed. Now look around you and think of how many others like you there must be who are giving
big bucks to small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) on the Internet.
Where's the opportunity for you, you ask?
As you drove to the Italian diner, you more than likely passed a restaurant closer
to home that didn't show up on your online search. The gifts you bought at the handicrafts exhibition were available at the
boutique store you passed by, for half the price. These are small businesses that have still not tapped the potential of the
Internet. Sure, many of them have websites that don't work, that don't bring them any business, where no-one ever visits them.
Their website is probably an electronic brochure that asks nothing and demands no action of the lonely, once-in-a-while visitor.
You could be their beacon as the Internet Marketing expert and show them the light at the end of the tunnel.
With Google, Yahoo, MSN and other leading search engines helping to level the playing field for all businesses alike,
online consumers like yourself don't surf the Internet anymore, instead you search to find exactly what you're looking for.
According to a study conducted by Hitwise in early 2007, small businesses depend more on search engine traffic than larger firms.
The firm measured the percentage of average monthly traffic companies in the Internet Retailer "Top 500 Guide" received from
search engines in 2005 and 2006. Half of the businesses ranked from the 400th to the 500th positions depended on search engines
for 50% or more of their total site traffic. By comparison, none of the top 100 retailers generated more than 40% of their site
traffic from search engines, and half had between 20.1% and 30% of their traffic come from search engines. Web-only
merchants averaged 64% their of monthly site traffic from search engines. Chain retailers and consumer brand manufacturers
averaged 28% and 27% of their site traffic from search engines, respectively. Let's face it, the money is online and small
and medium sized businesses are making it.
The bigger truth, however, is that the global SME market is growing exponentially and a recent study conducted by the Centre
for Future Studies found that one of the biggest obstacles to success for SMEs is technology. Many SMEs admitted that while
they accept that their businesses would not be able to operate without technology and that advanced technologies would further
their success they are not taking adequate steps to learn how to use these technologies or to integrate them into their business.
They see their potential, but they aren't realizing it.
Established writer and internationally recognized "millionaire-maker" Dan Kennedy says if you want to get rich and hit your
goals more quickly, you have to get over the whole concept of taking small steps on the "ladder" of entrepreneurial success.
Dan encourages you rather to choose to LEAP to your desired level of success in an instant. You don't have to wait for
permission to succeed. Franchising is one of the fastest and most effective ways to start your own business. For example,
over 1,500 entrepreneurs in 87 countries around the world have taken the leap by starting their own WSI Internet Marketing Consulting business.
Find out more on how you can become a fully trained and certified Professional Internet Consultant
Apply Today.
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