<span class="title">Making Money Online</span>

Making Money Online.
Introduction

Introduction Making Money Online is an essential reading and business planner for anyone wishing to make a success of their website. Making Money Online takes you and your business through the critical pathway of activities that we have found lead to the generation of wealth. It is both detailed and specific and will guide and direct you at each step.

Making Money Online will save you huge amounts of time by borrowing on the substantial experience of the AWP team. The publications author, Kerry Plowright, was the first in Australia to offer an affordable, packaged ecommerce solution to small and medium business. Since then Kerry has helped thousands of business make hundreds of millions of dollars on the internet and is arguably Australia’s leading authority on small business and the internet. Kerry recently sold his software business which is now the most widely used solution in Australia in addition to being sold in Japan, the USA and UK. Kerry now offers his expertise to any business desiring to establish or improve their online presence.

Who is Making Money Online designed for?
If you are a micro (1-2 people), small (3-12) or medium (13-50) business, this planner is for you and suits new or established businesses which are intending to create or improve an on-line business. We also assume you:

wish to be conservative or have limited funds but still want results,
do not want to go into debt (or if so risking as little as possible),
want to create a solid foundation, and
be positioned for growth if the early stages go well
can pull-out easily if things do NOT go according to plan.

We also understand that some businesses will require the establishment of a merchant account with a bank for either manual or on-line credit card clearance. A condition of application for a merchant account with most banks is a business plan which is considered in the approval process.

Why look to AWP for guidance?
AWP has been providing software and support services to help micro, small and medium businesses establish a web presence and to trade on-line, for over nine years. The management teams services and products are the most widely used ecommerce solutions in Australia. The result of fostering Ezimerchant™ users has realised the installation of the companies flagship solution into thousands of businesses world wide in several different languages. Some of these entrepreneurs have created solid businesses while others have failed to reach expectations.

AWP offers no guarantees of success but is confident that the advice in this approach is pragmatic, driven from enormous experience as a leader in this field, and will assist in bringing success and minimising the risk in moving to internet sales and order management.

The AWP management team has enabled many thousands of businesses to:

create their presence on the Internet,
establish a successful trading business or extension of their existing business and
take advantage of on-line payments through obtaining a Merchant Account from one of the Banks.

It is this experience which has resulted in our providing information for the preparation of business plans to help make the exercise successful, less costly and time consuming.

What is It You Wish to Achieve?
What are your objectives in going online?
Before going any further we need to decide where it is you actually wanted to go. In other words what you want from your new business and its website, (looking at other websites can be helpful). It is most important that the objectives for the business are clear and an understanding of how a website will help achieve your overall business goals. Among others they could be:

Creating an income
Passing on information about your products and services;
Improving your operational efficiency through better communications with your customers, suppliers and government; to
building your revenue through online sales.

Who is your customer?
You also need to decide who is the target audience for your website. You may wish to target new customers or provide additional service to your existing customers. You should also decide the area for your potential market, it could be global, limited to Australia or a particular town or city. Is the timing right for an on-line business in you area of interest? There are a few basic questions which you need to think through.

Do your intended customers have access to, or use, the internet at the moment, if not then take-up may be slow.
If your customers or prospects only like doing business face-to-face at their premises, then it’s unlikely that filling out a form on a screen is going to be very attractive to them.
If your customers or prospects are required to do business in certain ways, then you had better to be sure that you understand what that is and that what you will be offering will meet those requirements.
Check out what your competitors are doing, or have done. If they have introduced a webstore, has it been successful, how much did they pay, what does it cost to maintain the information …. All important questions for your own business, or, If your competitors have not gone on-line, why not? Maybe they do not have the foresight and skills of your organisation so you will be able gain an advantage over them.

If others have tried what you are thinking of in a different geographical area or similar business setting and succeed, check out what worked for them; if their efforts did not succeed, find out why.

Risks.
For many people starting a new business, the biggest risk is that they do not write a business plan and keep it up to date. What seems like a good idea for a business will take on a new light as the issues are worked through – BEFORE you start spending money. NEVER get anyone else to write a business plan for you if you are going to own and run the business. It is not what is written down that is necessarily important but it is thinking through all the issues in the first place. Thinking through the issues, testing them out, realising new ones and changing your mind are an essential part of the process. The highest risk is spending too much money without the income to pay it off.

The basis for the risk is promising yourself too much and delivering too little. One of the greatest advantages of the internet is that you can start a business with very little capital, test the waters and allow the business to grow. Some companies have spent millions of dollars and have lower revenues than individual stores paying less than $500 getting started with Ezimerchant.

Home truth
It is critical that you:

know what you want to do,
listen and
make your own decisions and understand why you made them.

Having helped establish more online sales operations than any other individual or group in Australia, The AWP and Myshophosting team have the unique advantage of helping more people in this space than any other provider. As a result we have greater hands on experience, watching and helping these businesses for over five years. We have achieved a level of understanding of what does and does not work that we would like to share with our merchants to help them achieve success.