Okay, so you’ve picked a niche to make your killing in. You’ve done your research, found something that has lots of monthly searches and not a ton of competition. The only thing you have to do is put together a game plan for promoting your niche to the masses. Of course, before you even do that, you have to figure out how you’re even going to get your niche up on the Internet. But before you even do THAT, you better be prepared to do business online.
This is where most people get caught with their pants down.
Why?
Because they don’t realize all the things that they can run into.
Why?
Because they’re brand new to this. They’re entering a world that is so foreign to them that the things I am going to list here wouldn’t even dawn on them. So, in order to keep you from waking up one day and wishing you had this stuff, I am going to outline for you a few things you may want to get BEFORE you actually start thinking about building a web site and advertising it to the masses.
1. You’re going to need a backup for your computer. I don’t care whether you get a zip drive or an online service or duel RAID drives. If your PC crashes and you don’t have all your important files saved somewhere, you are going to be in for some serious hurt. I am speaking from experience. I never thought of these things until they happened to me.
2. You’re going to want to get a professional email account. You’ll normally get one of these with a hosting package. Why do you want a professional email account? Without going into a long boring rant about spam and spam filters and how tons of email just simply doesn’t get delivered to these free email accounts like AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo and on and on, just do yourself a favor and get a pro email account. The last thing you want to happen is somebody writing to you inquiring about your business and their email either lands in your bulk folder or doesn’t get delivered at all. Get a pro email account.
3. Get a safety deposit box. If your house burns down, no backup is going to save your valuable papers and contracts, not to mention all the passwords you’re going to accumulate for all the sites and services you’re going to subscribe to. And make no mistake about it, you’ll have TONS of passwords. Write them all down and maybe once a month, go to your safety deposit box and put the updated papers in it. This way, if you have to start from scratch, you’ll at least have every site you belong to, along with your username and password on a sheet of paper. Saves a ton of time.
4. Get a business phone. If you’re going to communicate with potential JV partners or customers, the last thing you want is for somebody to call home and have your kid answer the phone. If you’re going to run a professional business, get a business phone. Even a private cell phone is fine.
5. Anti Virus and Firewall protection. The Internet is a nasty place. The last thing you want to do is go online to any site and risk getting hit with a trojan or worse. It happens. Not to mention some of the things you’re going to find in your email. In today’s Internet, going online without anti virus and firewall protection is like sending a blind man through a mine field.
There are other things that you’re probably going to want to get over time such as a text editor, a budget and expense program, a filing cabinet and high speed Internet connection, but the 5 things I mentioned above are a must. It’s just plain suicide not to have them and they’re not very expensive.