Business Development Advice

As I continue my review of the Nitro Blueprint System, this is where the Nitro Blueprint System gets technical in step 5 with “Creating your website and sales system.” At this stage you may want to hand over to one of Nitro’s outsourced service providers to at least get your website up and running.

You can then watch the Nitro videos and study your own site so that for your next website you can do it if you really want to.

But first the Nitro Blueprint System forces us to think about money and in particular collecting money. I like this bit as being paid is definitely what your online business is all about.

Before you create your website you have three main decisions:

1. How is your ordering system going to work and how are you going to collect payments?
2. How will you capture email addresses of people interested in your free offer but not yet ready to buy?
3. How will you process affiliate promotions and payments?

Good questions and the Nitro Blueprint System provides the answers.

Internet Payment Processing

First on the payment system you have a very nice “Fors” and “Againsts” for Clickbank, Paypal and your own merchant account.

I know you want the best system for the least money but unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. The best, most flexible system is the one that costs you the most but Nitro very fairly point out the issues and allow you to make an informed decision.

Email Hosting

You want an email solution which automates the creation of the email capture form, stores the email addresses and allows you to send out and track emails. I uses Campaign Monitor which is free to create but costs you to send emails. It works very well but I doesn’t have an auto-responder system beyond the initial sign up process so you can’t use it to deliver a seven email course.

The Nitro Blueprint System makes a specific recommendation which I will have to check out soon.

Affiliate Programs

You may not have considered having an affiliate program where you pay people a share of the sales proceeds in return for promoting your website but it is an essential part of Internet marketing.

Why rely on just your traffic when you can have ten or one hundred affiliates telling their readers about your product or service?

The Nitro Blueprint System again takes you through the options and what you should look for when choosing your affiliate system.

Putting It All Together

The best solution is a complete shopping cart but it does cost.

My Guerrilla Marketing friends recommend Easy Web Automation but Nitro recommend another solution and many of the Internet marketing gurus use Infusion. This is a big decision to make and will depend on how big you intend your Internet business to become.

Designing Your Website

Do you really want to become a web designer or do you want to master Internet marketing? My advice is to pass over to an expert at this stage but if you really want to do it the Nitro Blueprint gives you the step by step videos of formatting your sales letter and FTPing (?) files up to your website.

It then introduces the essential topic of monitoring and adding Google Analytics to your site.

Me, I’m definitely happy to pay someone else to handle what I think of as the techie aspects.

Conclusion

That’s it for step 5 and you now have a functioning website ready to take your customers money.

In the next few steps the Nitro Blueprint System goes into topics like split testing and attracting traffic.

I remain very impressed with the Nitro Blueprint System and regard it as the system to buy for move you from inception of the idea through to having a finished website which makes money. It saves you wasting time looking at what other gurus are offering when you could be taking the actions necessary to build your online business. Get your business up and running, get the most out of the Nitro Blueprint System and then start learning about other people’s ideas for generating extra traffic.

 Planning Your Business Strategy and

Creating Your Offers

This is step 2 in the Nitro Blueprint System for developing a successful online business and I continue to be very impressed with the Nitro system.

Business Plans Don’t Have To Be Long and Boring

Read any book or guide to starting a business and you will be told that you need to write a business plan.

I completely agree but often people fail to distinguish between two totally different plans:

1. A business plan to act as a guide to the entrepreneur/business owner as the business develops and to capture the current thoughts about the business and its future.
    
2. A business plan to take to a bank or other someone else to help you to raise finance.

These are totally different purposes.

If you don’t need to raise cash then the plan is for you and has to capture the logic of:

1. What you will sell to whom
      
2. Why they should buy
    
3. How they will find out about your products or service
    
4. How you are going to supply your product
      
5. How you are going to make sure that you make a profit and a reasonable estimate of your expected results over the first 12 months.

No over-complicated numbers, no summary of the management but a simple document that records your current ideas and logic.

Just writing down the plan will force you to think and the value is in your thinking and considering different alternatives and not in a fancy 50 page plan which changes within days of being completed.

Nitro Agree

I was pleased to see that in Step 2 Planning Your Business and Creating Your Offers Nitro agree.

In fact they don’t call it a business plan but a business map which is intended to be a fun way to capture the big picture of your business idea with 5 key parts including a few key numbers.

If you are scared of numbers and accounts then don’t be.

Just get a pen and paper or create a simple spreadsheet and start “playing with numbers”. I recommend that you wear different hats to do different forecasts:

1. An optimistic one which can be used to show how much your business could make if things go well (and if this doesn’t excite you then you have probably picked the wrong niche),
    
2. A realistic one of what you think may happen based on your research and
    
3. A pessimistic version where things take longer than expected, initial take up is less than you hoped and your prices are less.

Just focus on the major drivers of your business so it may be:

1. Number of leads
2. Percentage of leads converted into orders possibly with a time lag
3. Number of orders - this is 1 x 2
4. Average profit per order
5. Your contribution or gross profit = 3 x 4
6. Your overhead costs
7. Your net profit = 5-6

That doesn’t look too scary does it?

If you have a continuity program (recurring income) you would then have a separate section between 5 & 6 to capture the profit from the ongoing income which should build up nicely.

Creating Your Offers

The Nitro Blueprint System is keen to make sure that you have set a direction and also in Step 2, you are asked to start thinking about how your are going to pitch your product to prospective customers. It is revised and polished later but in this section, you are just asked to start formulating your ideas.

Conclusion

I remain very positive about the Nitro Blueprint System but I think I have said before, it is not a quick and easy solution as it requires focus and regular investments of time.

If you are thinking of buying, you can see the sales letter or the Nitro videos or wait as I continue my slower than expected walk-through of the process and my review of the Nitro Blueprint System.

Sorry about the delay in taking you through the Nitro Blueprint System Step 1 - Market Research: Discovering and Choosing Your Million Dollar Market. The StomperNet SMARTS coaching course is keeping me busy.

The Nitro Master Manual explains how you can find ideas to discover your market.

This is an essential step and people can make costly mistakes in this area very easily.

If you are setting up a new business, it is tempting to think that you want a market which is empty. A market where there are no competitors so all the customers will see you as the obvious and only choose.

There is one fundamental problem. No competitors indicates no customers. 

If you can’t find the “expert guide to choosing the best Bolivian blue goats milk cheeses” or equivalent available from anyone else, it indicates that demand is low and it will be difficult to make money.

This is not the time to aim for new unexplored territory. You can do then when you are established.

The Nitro Blueprint System is targeted towards helping people create an Internet business selling information products and there are plenty of ways for you to search to see what is available.

You then need to match the market opportunities to your strengths and interests. You don’t want to create a business that means little to you. It is too important.

The Nitro Master Manual takes you nicely through the process and then teaches you how to do keyword research for tools, demonstration video and practical help available through the members resources.

I can’t emphasise how important keyword research is. I was amazed when I first did my research and found out the difference in the number of searches between business planning and business plan. One is so much more popular than the other and in my ignorance I optimised around the wrong phrase.

It is not required but I do recommend the keyword research tools from Nichebot. It does cost you a small fee (how much depends on which option you choose) and it takes some time to learn how to use it. However effective keyword research can be the difference between success and failure for your Internet business and many people can’t be bothered. Don’t make that mistake.

The Nitro system then takes you through a process to find out how competitive those keywords are for pay per click adverts - good evidence that the keyword phrase is a money term and not kids researching school projects.

There is great advice in Step 1- do not ignore the keyword stage and think that you know best. You would be turning your back on one of the best features of the Internet in that you can find out exactly how people search for your product or service. If you don’t do it effectively, you can be sure that your competitors will.

Creating Momentum

Step 1B is a bonus issue called the 99% solution.

It takes you through the process of buying your web domain and web hosting. So my domain name here is www.businessdevelopmentadvice.com. The Nitro Master Manual gives you tips on how to choose the right domain name. I used to think who in terms of the name of the business. I now think what, in terms of the service provided.

So if you are looking for a business coach, the best domain would be businesscoach.com as people will find it easy to remember while paulsimistercoaching.com isn’t.

Thanks to the Nitro manual and videos registering the domain is easy once you have reached your decision and buying the hosting is simple. When you buy the name, you just get the name and you then need to pay someone else to host the domain on their computer and give you the space to create your web-pages.

You will feel very techie doing this and I thought something had gone wrong but I hadn’t read all the section in the manual including the “it takes 12 to 24 hours for the change to take place.” I am impatient.

The Nitro Blueprint System then encourages you to install a Wordpress blog in your domain to start creating content and training the search engines. It then teaches you how to start promoting the blog.

Good solid advice with the strong recommendation to develop certain regular good habits.

Conclusion

After Step 1, my faith in the Nitro Blueprint System remains very high. This is truly a step by step development system where they hold your hand through each stage.

I should make it clear that it is not a quick fix system. The Nitro Blueprint System builds up your business from the basics but don’t buy it if you think you are going to have a money making website after 3 or 4 hours of work.

You can learn more about the Nitro Blueprint System by reading the sales letter or through their videos.