How 100 Dollars Investment Turbocharged My Revenue
100 Dollars investment can make the difference.
Can 100 Dollars investment into my business ever make any difference? That was my reaction when someone told me that I just needed to make 100 Dollars investment to turn my business around.
I had spent more than that before and my business never made any tangible progress. There is nothing frustrating as doing the wrong thing. Sometimes, taking a bold step in doing something new can be fearful especially if you failed in your previous approaches. Everyone is bound to make mistakes but some mistakes can be very costly. Right from the days I was working as an employee, I had been very enterprising. I tried to lay my hands on few things. But the truth of the matter is that I have experienced many failures. However, I will not call it total failure. What made the difference was that I never give up. I had tried some business ideas in the time past. For every business idea that I had, I would rush to start the business. Despite all the zeal and excitement, some of the business ideas did not work out. That is not to say that they were bad business ideas. One of the contributing factors that led to their failure was that my job did not allow me to be totally committed to the business.
However, when I finally left my 9-5pm job to start my business fully, things were not going as I expected. All my projections seemed to be off course. To worsen the case, I lost my main two clients that were fetching me regular monthly income. That was disastrous as I could no longer pay my bills. However, I needed to keep the business going as I have vowed not to go back to any 9-5pm job. Even though I seemed confused and didn’t know how to keep things going in the direction I wanted, I kept pushing. I read a particular book on how to win clients for consulting business. Immediately I applied the insights I gained from the book. I started sending out proposals with a lot of follow ups. With this, I got few positive feedbacks. They promised to get back to me and few of them actually fulfilled their promises. But the problem was that the result I got was not immediate. What I actually needed were jobs that I could execute which could give me immediate cash. Let me use the word that I was very desperate. I think this was what I was lacking when I was moonlighting. My job was providing me regular pay check at the end of the month. This means that I did not depend on my side business to make ends meet. But now, the job was no longer there. If I must earn income, it had to come from my business. You can see why I was desperate. If I knew what I know now then, my initial business ideas wouldn’t have failed. Well, I counted everything as part of my learning process.
Let’s get back to my 100 Dollars investment. This amount may be very small to some people but 100 Dollars investment was a very huge investment to me then. But with the help of my mentor, I was able to see clearly that with this 100 Dollars investment, things will definitely change. This made it easy for me to close my eyes and went ahead with the investment. What is this 100 Dollars investment all about? I know you are eager to know. I did not invest in any stocks neither did I engage in any get-rich-quick scheme. It was absolutely an investment into my own business. If you like, you can call it an expense. I call it an investment because my mentor told me that if I want to succeed in business, I should learn how to make every expense an investment. That has been my guiding rule. I don’t throw money around. Before I spend any money, I ensure that I evaluate the needs very well. Nevertheless, I still need to balance the equation. That is, I know that if I want to make money in business, I need to spend money. But I need to spend wisely.
You can make money without spending money. That is true! But you can make more money if you spend money on the right thing.
That is the difference between an expense and investment. So, I will explain to you what I did with the 100 Dollars investment. It is simple and anyone can replicate it. I believe it will help people that want to start a side business. It will also help people who are fully into their business but are seeking for strategies they can employ to boost their revenue.
First step:
The first thing I did from my 100 dollars was to buy a domain name. This cost me around $10 that time. Top level domain names such as .com now cost between $11 and $15 depending on where you are buying it from. I will advise you not to rush to buy any domain name for now. This is because you can actually get this free. I will tell you how to go about it in the second step. I did not know this when I bought my own domain name. Otherwise, I would have saved $10. You need to understand that there are many domain names that have already been registered. Therefore, there is tendency that your chosen domain name may no longer be available. That means, another person has registered the domain name. That is why you have to be creative when creating your own domain name.
Second Step
I signed up for web hosting from a reputable company. Before you sign up for any hosting service, you need to be sure of their reliability. What is the point of paying for hosting service and your website is down most of the time. Another thing you need to consider is whether the web hosting company offer technical supports. In fact, this is very important. I told you that you should not rush the step one above. If you want to enjoy this free domain name registration, I just located a web hosting company that offers free domain name when you sign up to their web hosting service. If you are ready, you can sign up here. (Please note that I might earned a commission if you make a purchase via the link. However, this does not add to your cost. I get the commission from the hosting company as a reward for referring people to them)
The company does not only provide free domain name registration, you can get a lot of freebies from their platform such as free supports. This is why I said that you should not rush the step number one above. At least, this will save you minimum of $11. Apart from this, you can enjoy one-click WordPress installation from the control panel which the company will allocate to you after you must have paid for the hosting service. If you want to sign up, it is advisable that you go for the plan with least cost for now. They have different hosting plans. You can upgrade your plan any time if there is need for that. But for now, just go for the package with the least price. That is one thing I like with their pricing. They have small businesses in mind. Therefore, you don’t need to pay for the features that you don’t need for now. You may not need to spend up to $100 on hosting plan at all as the company is currently offering attractive discount to new customers. The discount ranges from thirty three to fifty per cent depending on the plan you choose. I don’t know how long this promo will last. I think it will be good if you can take advantage of this promo. When you are signing up, don’t forget to deselect the optional add-on that you don’t need. Every selected optional add on will increase the cost of the hosting service.
Third Step
After signing up for the hosting service, I then created a website for my business. Don’t confuse domain name with website. Your domain name serves as a gateway to your website. Your website will come up when someone type your domain name in their browser. With the help of a colleague, I designed my website with next to nothing. It was later I learnt that I could have done it myself too. This hosting company has free website builders which can help you build your website by choosing from their various ready-made templates. You just need to drag and drop to have your website built. However, if you want your website to be more professional, you can hire a website designer. The amount he will charge you cannot be much again having paid for the web hosting service by yourself. I always advise people to pay for their web hosting service by themselves. This will give you absolute control over your website and you can be sure that no one is intercepting your mails. If you are hiring a website designer, you will need to give him the username and password to your hosting platform. However, you will need to change your password immediately he finishes his job. Whether you want to design your website by yourself or you want to hire a website designer, it is safer to register your domain name and hosting service by yourself.
Fourth Step
Now that my website was up and running, I needed to draft traffic to the site so that people could get to know about my business. It is very important that you make your website rich in content. Give full and detail descriptions of products or services you offer. Also, you should let people know how they can contact you. How do you draft traffic to your website? You need to spend little amount on advertisement. What I did was to place adverts on the internet by using Google Adwords. You can also advertise on Facebook but I prefer Google Adwords as many searches are done via Google. The good thing about this advert was that I didn’t need to pay immediately. Google bills me at the end of thirty days. After creating my account with my credit information supplied, my adverts started running immediately. I was surprise when I received the first call telling me that they got to know about my business through internet. This worked like fire! It was better than sending proposals to potential customers. People that were searching were ready to do business immediately. Within a month, my business jerked up. Today, if I see any business that doesn’t have a website, I just shake my head. If you don’t have a website yet, you don’t know what you are missing. Internet is the main thing now. With the advent of Smartphones, more people now have access to the internet. If you know how to leverage on internet, you can easily start your business while you are still working as an employee. You can operate your business successfully from home without having to pay rent. If you are ready, you can still take the advantage of the ongoing discount by signing up here.
If I knew about this information you just read, my first side business wouldn’t have crashed. Truly, knowledge is power! However, what you know may not count.
It is what you do with what you know that will make the difference. If you have any question, you can drop it as a comment below.
Read Also: How to Create a Website Using WordPress