How Successful Entrepreneurs Rig the Game

As a blogger who cares about traffic, chances are you have a profit motive. Although you might enjoy it greatly, you aren’t just blogging for the fun of it. You’re an enterprising individual who wants to make some money as a result of your hard work, and you should! Unfortunately, money doesn’t flow just because you want it to.

To give yourself the highest likelihood of success, you can’t just roll the dice and hope to get a return on all your hard work, nor can you simply adopt others’ plans and follow suit, like it’s a sure thing. The most successful people are the ones who figure out how to play the game the way they want to play it, leaving little to chance. Here’s how to do just that.

1. Survey the business landscape.

What do you know about the industries in which you want to participate? Have you identified one yet? In order to make money, you will have to deliver a product or service of value. There’s no way around it. Has your interest in one industry or another been mostly informed by marketing and training content that is designed to get you to sign up for something? Or, have you developed a keen perspective on how things work in your target market through experience, objective analysis and personal insight?

As a business owner (which is how you need to think of yourself), your strategic decisions should not be made from a consumer’s perspective. That is to say, successful business owners don’t spend their time trying to decide what program to buy, which gurus to follow, or which “turn-key” marketing system is going to make them millions. Leaders lead. They figure out what value they want to create for buyers, then they figure out how to market it.

Just because you launched a website, doesn’t mean you launched a business. What is the value your business brings to the market? What makes you different? Don’t let function follow form and develop a blog, e-commerce site, affiliate campaigns, squeeze pages, etc., without having a very clear idea how your approach supports your business objectives.

Replicating another business’ approach can be useful after you figure out what your business is here to do. You can only make that assessment once you know something about your target industry.

Many people develop their business ideas over the course of years, not a few late nights online. Take your time. Make sure you’ve got the lay of the land, so you now where you’re going.

2. Find your sweet spot.

What do you know about your area of expertise? How can you bring your own skills and experience to this new venture of yours? The excitement of striking out into what feels like uncharted territory can easily blind you to the limits of your abilities. While the internet is a platform of astounding opportunity, it is also more competitive than you might imagine. This is no time to handicap yourself.

Identify your strengths and use them to your advantage. At the same time, avoid spending a lot of time, money and energy making up for your shortcomings. You can always find help to take care of the nuts and bolts of running an online business (or any kind of business) but you can’t outsource the decision-making and the passion that you bring to the enterprise.

Your sweet spot really boils down to how you like to spend your time throughout the day. It’s terribly difficult to be successful if you have to will yourself into doing tasks necessary to maintain and grow your business. Entrepreneurs find ways to  make their lives easier, and to do the things that they find energizing, not draining.

3. Learn the business models that could work for you.

The specific business model (how you’re going to make money) is really about identifying your niche. How you understand the industries in which you participate, and how you personally want to focus your time and talents, together, will determine what your money-making venture should look like.

If you hate writing, developing your site around a blog to drive traffic to informational products and to raise the value of your ad space probably isn’t such a good idea. On the other hand, if you do love writing, what about? Supposing you can create a following, your target demographic

should naturally build out of the writing that gets your juices flowing, and will help you determine what (and how) to sell them. Whether it’s your own product or service, an affiliate arrangement, e-commerce or an ad-driven concept, the decision should pair your industry insight with your personal talents.

4. Test the waters.

Do you have something you could sell to prospective clients right now? Have you tried? If not, why not? Is it because you are still unclear about what you want to sell, how and to whom? Or is it just because you want “traffic” to do it for you? Like I mentioned above, function should not follow form– a website does not a business make!

My business partner wrote a great guest post about Michael Masterson’s book Ready. Fire. Aim. here. He makes the point that you don’t really have a business until you have sales. Getting started online is so easy, we often forget that all the pretty pictures and “branding” don’t make us money. In fact, the time and money spent getting ready to get ready is a major contributor to business failure: Entrepreneurs run out of time, money, energy, or all of the above, by focusing too much on things that don’t contribute to earnings.

My challenge to you: Whatever it is you want to sell, go sell it. Now. If you can’t manage to get anyone to buy before your whole internet apparatus is in place, why do you think they will buy after it is? Does it need to be puffed up that much? Or is it that you simply aren’t sure whether it will sell, and you have yet to admit that to yourself?

Look, I understand that some types of online sales are generally made through ads and landing pages and so forth, but there are real people buying real services there. If you can’t convince a handful of people to spend money on something before you have all your ducks in a row, why are you doing all that work? How have you validated your concept? This might be the most essential step you can take before rushing headlong in one direction.

Two months ago, my business partner and I decided to launch a new business in the most direct way possible: We made cold calls. We had an idea and we pitched it to people. When they started saying “Yes” we had the green light to begin developing the business. I’m actually proud of the fact that two months in, the site still isn’t done, nor is the back end software that will help us scale up. You know why? Because our clients are happy and we’re growing fast. (In case you’re wondering: It’s called GuestBlogGenius, and it helps SEOs in their link building efforts.) I have no doubt that some prospects have looked at the site and thought twice. So what? Our image will catch up.

Having tested the waters first, we can make better decisions about each of our next steps, not only because we have sales that help to fund the continued development, but because we know what our prospects really want.

5. Refine your approach.

Online business is data-driven. It has to be. No one develops great business ideas in a vacuum. Being online provides powerful opportunities to measure, track and respond to every piece of evidence in ways that business owners never could before. And yet, because business is and always will be conducted between people, actual human conversations are immensely important to iterating your approach.

Our first conversations with actual prospects gave us great insights that we could not otherwise have had. Those conversations allowed us to shift some of our plans before they were even under way. In a few more months, we will no doubt make more adjustments as our offerings progress.

Everyone loves the romance of overnight success, set in motion by some incredible new idea, but that rarely happens. Most successful entrepreneurs rig the game in their favor. They know what they’re getting into because they know the industry and they mold the project to fit the market niche, as well as their own passion and talents. They learn fast, and adapt faster. Sometimes, they even quit while they’re ahead. Who says your first foray into business ownership MUST be the one that will succeed? Figure out how to play the game the way YOU want to, then go play it!