Drive down your local street and you see the signs; the economic “recovery” is taking out a lot of your favorite businesses. Maybe even your own business is struggling. Don’t let it fail. Here are 10 things you could do right now to find extra cashflow:

1) Look in the couch for spare change. Seriously, look everywhere for any assets you can liquidate for a quick cash infusion.

2) Take the dead weight to the curb. Everyone in your company needs to know this time is crucial. You can’t afford to make any missteps, and anyone in it today must be aware of tougher times ahead. Sit your team down — or your family. Tell them the truth about what is going on. They deserve to know. You may lose some of your employees; let them go and wish them well. Payroll is one of your largest expenses; trim the fat in your schedule to the bare bones. No shift overlaps, no overtime, cut your full time people to 30 hours per week if possible.

3) Ring up old friends. Your current and former customers are leads you don’t have to cultivate. Create an unbelievable offer. Something they cannot POSSIBLY refuse — no matter how long you’ve ignored them! If it’s priced in the range of 10-20% of true value, you have a winner. You are doing two things with this exercise — you are determining who your active customers are, and you are determining who still has money to spend. The purpose is not to profit… yet.

4) Create an irresistable back-end offer that they would be CRAZY not to take. Think in terms of your customer’s bottom line, not yours. Really make it special. Show them the value of what you provide.

5) Create a one time offer that’s a whopper. The buyers of this offer will be your top-tier coaching clients, the best of the best.

Congratulations, you have just segmented your list! Now you have an asset. Go directly to #6.

6) Find more friends. You need Joint Venture partners, and now that you have an active, segmented list who are rabid buyers, JV’s will be inclined to take a look. Cross-promote and be generous in your affiliate commission to the JV.

7) Find minions. Set up an affiliate program with a 75% – 100% upfront commission pay-out. Again, you want the offer to the affiliates to be so lucrative they’d be crazy not to promote your product or service.

Announce. Create a sales page and series of videos promoting your product. Write articles relevant to your niche. Bring TRAFFIC.

9) Create a sign-up form for follow-up e-mails. 1 out of 100 will buy your product, 10-20 out of 100 will want to learn more before they do. The others… Let them go. They’re not your customers.

10) Double-check your site’s SEO. Make sure you are optimized for the right keywords, etc. This will improve the quality score of your pages.

After you have good conversion on your pages and start getting some sales, you’ll be able to start a paid search campaign.

More than anything, try to remain positive and determined to succeed. Your business has been very successful, it will be once again. Get through the crisis. One thing at a time. Eventually, all will work out.

Additional Resources

• PRESS RELEASE Millrock Commences Drilling at Council Alaska Joint Venture With Kinross Gold | Cmemarkets.com – Business News, Financial News, Stock Market Analysis, Technology & Global Headline News
• UrduMaza.com Blog » Zardari says ‘there will be tougher times ahead’
• Get A Faxless Payday Advance Loan Today | Updated Mortgage Information

Technorati Tags: Assets, Bones, Bottom Line, Cash Infusion, Couch, Economic Recovery, Exercise, Extra, Full Time, Joint Venture Partners, Old Friends, Overtime, Own Business, Payroll, Signs, Spare Change, Tougher Times, True Value, Truth About, Whopper

Black Friday is underway.  As I write this, millions of shoppers nationwide are stalking the best deals at stores.  Outlet stores opened last night; Kohl’s opened this morning at 4:00 AM.  WalMart is open 24/7 in response to last year’s stampede death of an employee, and customer injuries.  Old Navy opened on Thanksgiving, dubbing their sale “Grey Thursday.”  Black Friday, Grey Thursday or “Cyber Monday”… it all amounts to retailers willing to do anything to make it easy for people to part with their money.

No matter what your business, Black Friday can teach you a lot about being a good business person.  More on that in a second.

I have been to Black Friday events but I have never participated in one; I was a specialty retailer for nearly 13 years, and saw my share of aggressive customers fighting over “stuff.”  Most people are courteous, but there’s always those one or two… You know who you are.

Being a retailer isn’t easy.  You’re the last piece of the profit pie.  Manufacturers typically sell to wholesalers who then sell to retailers.  The storefronts are more expensive rent than a warehouse; plus there is payroll, payroll taxes, worker’s compensation insurance…  And INVENTORY!  The only GOOD thing about retail is that when you make a sale, you have your money.  There are no net terms on invoicing.  Other than that, it’s a hard day’s work for a nickel profit on a dollar.  You have to LOVE retail to do retail.

Now take that nickel profit.  Not a lot of margin for error.  You better be on your game every day if you’re a retailer.  You need to know how to get people in the door (traffic), and how to get them to buy (conversion) when they’re there.  You have to know product packaging, store layout, inventory management.  You need the right inventory for your customer, and you need the right amount.  Buying more inventory than you’ll sell that month — even by just a little — might put you out of business.  Retailers are extremely adept business people because they have to be.  Very thin profit margins.

So when I see a sale with discounts greater than 45%, I feel a little twinge in my gut for that retailer.  I know they’re moving inventory to pay a bill; they’re losing money on that sale.  They are trying to move product and dip a little less into their cash reserve, because if it doesn’t sell, they still have to pay the bill.  Lessen the loss, as it were.  You see, most retailers receive net terms on the inventory they carry; they buy it wholesale and have an amount of time in which to sell it, usually Net 30 (30 days).  Sometimes it’s much more; you might buy Christmas inventory in January from a catalog aggregator, have it delivered in July, and have until January 1 to pay the bill.  (You have to warehouse it all those months before you can display it — adding even more to your overhead.)  That’s unusual.  Smaller wholesalers can only give you Net 15 terms.

WalMart is an exception.  They run a store like a grocer.  The vendors stock the shelves with product, present an invoice, and when the product sells, they get paid.  If the product doesn’t sell, they replace it with something that does and mark down the invoice accordingly.  WalMart never pays an invoice before product is sold.  It’s the perfect business model.  They create a box, light it up, and then have others come in and operate their inventory.  They have removed one of the costliest and less predictable aspects of retailing.  Pretty smart business.  I admire the way WalMart re-invented the game for retail, but I am not a fan of WalMart.   They didn’t change the industry, they just changed the methods for themselves.  They used deep pockets to create an unfair advantage, and the market & the government allowed it to happen.

Let’s get back to retailers.  They take risk.  They have to have a pretty good sense when they buy something that they have a customer who will want it.  They have to know their market.

Even if you’re not a retailer, there are ways to benefit from Black Friday.  In my community in Santa Clarita, CA, I saw a smart restaurateur post a sign in his window advertising a champagne breakfast at 6:00 AM on Black Friday.  I hope some shoppers took advantage of that; it might mellow their frenzied desperation a bit.

If you’re in a business other than retail, study what’s going on today and this holiday season.  Get under the hood if you can and study the retail process.  It’s really a very fascinating and unusual business to be in.  You can learn a lot.

Technorati Tags: 13 Years, Black Friday, Business Person, Compensation Insurance, Cyber Monday, Good Business, Inventory Management, Invoicing, Kohl S, Matter What Your Business, Old Navy, Outlet Stores, Packaging Store, Payroll Taxes, Product Packaging, Stampede, Store Layout, Storefronts, Walmart, Wholesalers

I just love it when academia catches up to the real world…  In the past few years, we have seen millions of iPhone and Blackberry and Treo units being sold, and so somewhere some Big Brains got the idea that people might actually be using them… So recently we’ve seen a boatload of studies showing the increase in use of mobile devices, particularly when it comes to marketing messages and e-mail marketing.  This is very encouraging news and validates what we here at Kinetics Web Pro have been discussing with our premium level clients for some time.

Consider the following pieces of information:

• Nielsen Company recently reported that more consumers than ever are using smartphones, with a remarkable 72 percent increase in the number of owners between Q2 2008 and Q2 2009.
• A new e-mail monitoring application from Pivotal Veracity, MailboxIQ, has found that 9.44% of business-to-consumer e-mail is read on mobile devices, the company says.
• According to veteran Internet analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley at the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, “mobile Internet usage is and will be larger than we think.”

Meeker went on to share some additional facts about mobile marketing:

• Internet-connected mobile devices outnumber desktops by 10:1
• In Japan, access to their most popular social network (Mixi) is 65% on mobile devices, and only 24% desktop machines.
• AT&T has recorded a 50x increase in mobile data traffic in the last three years, a percentage increase of 4,923%

Meeker made the point that users are adopting mobile Internet at a faster rate than historically they adopted computer-based Internet.  Meeker cited data of 57 million iPhone units sold within the first nine quarters after launch, compared to AOL in the 90′s which only attracted 7 million subscribers.  However, while this data is compelling, we believe these numbers have to be weighed against the Internet culture in the 90′s being far different than what it is now.  We don’t feel you can make a direct correlation and calculate a 9x factor increase…  What is telling is the way AOL had to practically force-feed new users with free access CD’s, whereas the iPhone frenzy was more of a perceived need / customer-driven.  There is a customer-driven need to be mobile, which business would be smart to pay attention to.

Any time in a marketplace that customer momentum is clearly trending in such a definitive direction, businesses need to respond or be left standing alone while their competitors’ doors are bursting.  Some definitive steps need to be taken right away, or it will simply be too late to respond later.  If you are not already, you need to review immediately:

• Are your websites mobile-ready?
• Are you using social media to drive traffic to your key products?
• Are your marketing messages mobile-friendly?
• Does your e-mail response campaign assume a desktop experience or at least allow for mobile experiences?
• Do your video pages also have text summaries?

The fact is, your audience is highly complex and evolving daily.  You need to create a total marketing experience that touches your customers wherever and whenever they may invite contact from you.  We have taught for years that your approach to prospecting must be comprehensive.  Your follow-up campaign must also be comprehensive.  Customers will engage businesses who “get it,” who are willing to transact with them on their terms.  How is your business doing?

Kinetics Web Pro offers complete mobile make-overs, including mobile conversion of your website and mobile conversion of your WordPress blog at very low investment.  You are not re-inventing the wheel with mobile.  As with any other form of marketing, there are nuances you must deliver.

Technorati Tags: Boatload, Business To Consumer, Data Traffic, Desktop Machines, E-mail marketing, Encouraging News, Internet Analyst, Internet Culture, Internet Usage, Iphone, Mary Meeker, Million Subscribers, Mobile Data, Mobile Devices, Mobile Internet, mobile marketing, Morgan Stanley, Nielsen Company, Percentage Increase, Pivotal Veracity

As a small business owner, you’re feeling the squeeze.  When sales dip just a little, profits fly out the window; in a recession, you start looking at your reserves to calculate how many months you’ll be able to “maintain.”  This type of thinking is, unfortunately, not going to work in the current economic climate.  There won’t be a small business bailout until at least 2011, and no one even knows what that will look like or if you will qualify.  In blunt terms, they can’t make a lifeboat big enough to save everyone.  The best thing you can learn to do is build your own boat now.  You are your own best bailout.

Customers equal opportunity.  If you find your customer base is shrinking, get more.  I hate to be so simplistic, but that’s the success of your business in a nutshell.  More leads.  So what is the most effective leads generation you can do as a business owner? Develop an effective website.

Note that I said effective.  There are millions of websites on the Internet.  Billions of pages of content, videos, MP3′s, podcasts, tweets, etc.  It’s easier than ever to get completely LOST.  How do you maintain top Google (or Bing or Yahoo) position, month after month?  A big part of it is optimizing your website.  If you’re not optimizing your website, you will have zero opportunity for being on the top of any search engine.  Why?  Because search engines look at your content and your optimization to learn what your site is about.  If you are missing good optimization, they are not understanding your site’s intention, and therefore, judge your site to be “not relevant.”  You will fall in ranking.  With 98% of all internet search ending on page one, it’s crucial to optimize your site.

So you’re trying to generate leads with your website.  Let’s say your market generates 10,000 searches in a given month.  You are on page 2 so you automatically only reach 200 prospects.  A typical web conversion can be as low as .005, which means that out of those 200 prospects, you are receiving 1 visitor.  How much are you spending on your website or web marketing to reach ONE visitor?  If your site conversion is .01, how many months will you need to operate the site to receive ONE SALE?  Are you losing money with that site or making money?

Now, if you were on page one instead of page 2, you would have access to 9,800 more searchers; you would receive 49 times more visitors to your website!  It could literally be the difference of being #11 on a search engine versus #10.  One digit away from earning money every month with your website, or earning nothing at all.  No, it’s not fair.  But it’s reality.

Do you see the importance for being on page one yet? Now do a search for YOUR business.  Not the name of your business. Pretend no one knows you exist.  Search for what you do.

Are you on page one?  If not, do something about it immediately.  Fire your lazy website.  Create a highly optimized, search engine friendly website that will pull traffic like a vacuum.  Normally, you would need to invest a lot of money in this type of website — a minimum of $1,500.  But for an extremely limited time, join is in beating your recession — highly optimized website for just $499.

What would being on page one of Google do for your business?  Would having more customers help your business?  You’d hire a hard-working employee if you knew they could enhance your bottom line.  Hire a hard working website that will generate leads for your business 24/7, 365 days a year and never call in sick or complain.  Generate more leads for your business starting TODAY.

Technorati Tags: Bailout, Billions, Build Your Own Boat, Customer Base, Economic Climate, Equal Opportunity, Google, Internet Search, Leads Generation, Lifeboat, Nutshell, Optimizing Your Website, Podcasts, Recession, Search Engines, Small Business Owner, Squeeze, Typical Web, Web Conversion, Wh

Stork Craft Manufacturing of British Columbia (Canada), has announced the largest crib recall in history.  They are recalling 1.2 million drop side cribs due to an entrapment and suffocation hazard.  The affected cribs were distributed in both the USA and in Canada between 1997 and 2004, and have already resulted in four infants being suffocated, 20 falling and several others being injured.  Parents can order a free kit to modify the crib and prevent further tragedy.  The cribs were sold in major chains including Walmart, Target and BabiesRUs.

I’m not much of a complainer or curmudgeon, but the Stork Craft story irritates the crap out of me.  While my girls are well past the age of being in cribs, I appreciate Stork Craft recalling their product and preventing further tragedy.  But re-read the statistics of that first paragraph.  Doesn’t it seem curious that it would take a company 12 years to realize that their crib is defective?  Or more to the point, it seems curious that it would take dozens of children and families being injured (or dying) to realize that perhaps they need to investigate their product and make a correction.  Twelve years on the market; what happened during the testing and federal approval phases before that?

Call my cynical, but I’m seeing big retail chains driving 1.2 million product units on a very popular crib.  In the land of corporate business, Expediency is King.  When you’re moving 1.2 million units at $100 – $400 each, there apparently is not a lot of motivation to be self-policing and responsible.  Nor is there a lot of pressure from the Big Box retailers to get your dangerous product out of their stores.  What happened to businesses protecting their customers from predatory vendors?

There ought to be an outcry against a company that pushes a million-plus units of product without being proactive about its safety, especially where children and infants are concerned.  And there ought to be an outry against the Big Box retailers who let it happen.  Unacceptable.  The only reason the recall happened is because it had to; there were too many injuries and deaths for it not to happen.  And that is just plain wrong.  One death.  One injury.  LOOK INTO IT.  Two deaths?  Shut down fulfillment and FIX IT.  These are children, for goodness sake.

Our corporate culture has lost its compass.  We as a nation have lost our compass.  There exists an “Atta boy!” response if it generates profits, no matter the expense in human life or public health.  We are more concerned with doing for the bottom line than doing what’s right.  We need a deep cleanse of epic proportions.

I write a blog about online marketing of small business, so why am I so darned political?  Because everything the Government does affects you and I — small business owners.  We need to be political.  We need to enter into debate for the common good (remember, ‘We the People’?) — not Republican, Democrat, Independent or Rogue.  In order to debate, we need to be informed.  We can’t achieve anything while being stupefied and hypnotised by the latest dog & pony show.

In the past few days, we have had headlines about

• A man who kissed another man on the American Music Awards.  The NY Post summed it best: “The “American Idol” runner-up pelvic-thrusted his way through the four-minute, S&M-themed routine, taking time out from singing to grope a female dancer, kiss a male musician and, most shockingly, shove a male dancer’s face into his crotch, in an act that simulated fellatio.”  Adam Lambert’s defense was that this has been going on for 20 years between women on stage, so chastising his boorish behavior as over-the-top and in bad taste was “hypocritical.”  Apparently, people will do literally anything to maintain their 15 minutes of fame these days…? Personally, it made me glad that I don’t own a television, and vindicated my own decision years ago to cut the chord altogether.  Call me hypocritical.
• Sarah Palin promoting her book, “Going Rogue” and future Presidential ambitions, and the sexist Newsweek cover that used what amounted to a copyright-infringed photo of the former Governor.  I’m not one of the 300,000 Sarah Palin fans / customers / motorcade, but I did truly enjoy her dad’s quote about his daughter, “She’s not retreating, she’s reloading.”  Maybe her dad will run for President…
• The massive healthcare “reform” bill clearing the first hurdle in the US Senate.  I don’t like the bill for 100 reasons, not the least of which is that the Louisiana representative lobbied for $300 million in state perks for her Yes vote.  It is one of many things that prove to me that the bill is corrupt and a brokered deal, rather than something truly worthwhile for the American people.
• More soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq
• More pushing around and posturing between all the Middle East countries — because that’s what they do best
• Gold rising to a record high while the US dollar continues to fall — not surprising, considering every nation is running from the dollar before it crashes down upon them
• The Fed pushing back against mounting pressure to be audited — I can’t imagine why  :-P
• A lame announcement from Mr. Geithner and the Obama Administration that a bailout plan for Small Business is being considered for the end of 2010.  Pardon me, Mr. President, but I don’t think Small Business can wait another year to start discussing our recovery…  I thought Mr. Bush was out of touch when he wasn’t aware of rising gasoline prices.  Doesn’t seem like much has “changed” with the new Administration…
• Learned that in Washington this year, we will have a “holiday” tree but not a Christmas tree, and the budget has been cut for the Hanukkah celebration.  Meanwhile, major Hollywood donors were invited to dine with the President.  At least someone’s on the guest list…

This is in the past week, folks.  What’s sadly ironic about the above headlines are those that made the front page and those that were buried deep inside…

We have become so obsessed with the sound byte — with “managing the story” — that we’re missing the bigger picture.

We need to become a nation obsessed with the truth.  Compulsive about having a moral compass.  Passionate about leading and innovating.  Narrowing our recycling to metal, glass and plastic, but true innovators in products and ideas.  We must stop wasting precious time chasing headlines and stories that matter not.  Profiting on injuring others.  Lying and “spinning” and polling to determine how to execute the prescribed agenda.  Buying the right people and silencing the rest.

We should know what’s right after over 200 years of history lessons and practice.  We have a reference to consult when we’re not sure.  Our diplomats should wisely bend, but our Presidents should be strong.

Maybe it was Lee Iacocca who once observed that there will always be leaders and those being led.  I submit that the real leadership, the real engine of growth, will come from where it always has — small business.  We are the leadership of the new era.  We are change.

Technorati Tags: Box Retailers, British Columbia Canada, Complainer, Corporate Business, Crap, Cribs, Curmudgeon, Dangerous Product, Entrapment, Expediency, Federal Approval, Outcry, Proactive, Retail Chains, Stork, Stork Craft Manufacturing, Suffocation Hazard, Target, Twelve Years, Walmart

This just in from BusinessWeek:

Nouriel Roubini, the NYU economist who accurately predicted the financial meltdown, writes an important commentary in The Globe and Mail about two disparate American economies: “There is a smaller one that is slowly recovering and a larger one that is still in a deep and persistent downturn,” he says.

Roubini goes on to outline two separate Economies emerging within the United States — a smaller economy driven by large corporations that has slowly begun to emerge from recession, and the larger economy that is still in a deep and persistent downturn.

Echoing what I have been discussing in recent months with small business owners and in my Twitter postings, small business owners are reacting with extreme skepticism (even pejorative sarcasm) at the White House notion that the economy is improving.  It turns out, the “recovery” is only a half-truth and addresses the corporate sector which, as Professor Roubini points out, has been able to re-negotiate its debt burdens (or receive government bailout money to ease the pain).

Ironically, the largest economy is the small business sector.  It should be clear by now that the small business sector is not going to get any help from this Administration.  Yet waiting for a recovery is not plausible while one’s business is suffering repeated setbacks and declining revenues.

One of my suggestions would be to start thinking like a larger corporation.  Big business does not think in terms of its individual storefronts; even the storefronts themselves are 100,000 sq. ft. mega-boxes versus the mom & pop sized retail establishments we see in strip centers.  Wal-Mart is not thinking about its current inventory that’s on the shelf; they don’t even pay for current inventory until after it has sold…

My point is that small business owners need to get wise to the way the Government plays business.  The rewards are there for the biggest players, even though they make the least difference in the total economic scheme.  They are the BRANDS  in the marketplace that make the headlines.  Even the media (another mega-corporate empire) responds to this because it is a story that can be packaged easily.

The real story is you and I.  Small business.  We are the driving force of any economic recovery because we are the largest player.

The big players have websites and they transact far outside their neighborhood boundaries.  At the same time, they intend to OWN whatever market they are in.  They don’t play for second or third place; they realize that a loss these days equals death to their business.

How do you play outside your boundaries?  With an effective website.  Not just a “pretty” site that isn’t relevant to your market, but an SEO-enabled website that benefits your bottom line.

“Aren’t websites like that usually $1,500 or more?”  Yes, usually.  But right now, your friends in business at Kinetics Web Pro are offering exactly the right website for your bottom line growth — priced at $499.  Things are already looking up for your business.

Be your own bailout.

Technorati Tags: Bailout, Business Sector, Businessweek, Corporate Sector, Debt Burdens, Downturn, Extreme Skepticism, Financial Meltdown, Globe And Mail, Large Corporations, Nouriel Roubini, Professor Roubini, Recession, Retail Establishments, Sarcasm, Setbacks, Small Business Owners, Storefronts, Strip Centers, Wal Mart

I’ll keep this short and to the point.  The time is not for words, but for action.

For years, I have heard countless horror stories of business owners trying to succeed online.  I’ve heard a hundred excuses –No Time, No Money, Not Now, Not Sure…  For months, we’ve seen a nightmare of an economy unraveling.   Pundits are spinning sound bites, our heads our spinning, it’s hard to even LISTEN amidst all the NOISE.

Let me try to cut through some of this.

Regardless of your politics, you have to eat.  Your business needs to WORK.  If you wait for things to get better, you’re going to wait a long, LONG time — and history has proven again & again that people who wait are the ones who lose.  The stakes are too high.  We must take ACTION.

The TRUTH is, we had Recession in this country before, and we have had a Depression.  We have had tough times when all the odds were against us.  We have innovated and we have survived.  We will thrive.  But right now, we must INNOVATE and ACT.

With the Recession being what it is… while Washington fiddles in our pockets to see what else they can find…  with Recovery being a punchline on the late night talk shows…  well, I’m doing something about it.

I’m putting my money where my mouth is, and I guess in an industry FILLED with professional liars and people without integrity, that makes me different.  I have created my own Recession Buster.

What is my Recession Buster?  I’m glad you asked:

• A fully customizeable, professionally designed website WITH SEO
• Built with a premium WordPress theme (up to $197 value)
• Fully optimized with your business keywords, title tags and description
• Six months of webhosting (then just $8.95/month or $75/year afterwards)
• A complete do-it-for-you solution
• Just choose your design & colors, give us the content and we will do the rest!!
• Online tutorials if you want to learn more
• ALL FOR $625
• ORDER HERE

Bottom line — I know what it’s like to be a small businessperson because I’ve been in your shoes for my entire adult life.  Small business is what will get this country back on its feet.  I love this country and the freedoms we enjoy — the democracy known as the United States of America.  We are the bailout. Let’s make it happen.  I will do my part.

Would that help your business get on track?

Price it out — this is a $3,000 – $5,000 product that I’m offering for $625.  WHILE SUPPLIES LAST.  I am not a web mill with thousands of employees, I handle my clients personally.

Spread the word to someone you know who needs a helping hand. I’m here to help.

ORDER HERE NOW.

Thanks and God Bless.