General Business and Finance Blog

The idea of starting a business is alluring to so many people.  There is the vision of wealth, providing opportunities and security.  Also there is pride and purpose- knowing what you’re doing is for you and your family.  And of course, one of the most appealing reasons is the freedom of being able to work from home and choose your own hours.  

These visions are wonderful and, in many cases, attainable.  In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, there are over 17.6 million businesses with one or more owners but no paid employees.      

So why are so many aspiring entrepreneurs left on the sidelines? 

It turns out, there are three reasons.  One, as you can imagine, is good old fashioned fear.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of failure.  Believe it or not, fear of success.  The second reason is a lack of knowledge.  “Where do I start?” “I don’t have enough resources.”  “I don’t know anything about marketing.” And the third reason, which I will be discussing in this article, is about the business idea, itself. 

Business Idea Paralysis

What is business idea paralysis?  Quite simply, it’s a condition that prevents people from starting a business because they get held back in the idea generation stage.  Basically, they are stuck in neutral.  Below are the two most common reasons why:

 The Pet Rock Syndrome

In 1975 a gentleman named Gary Dahl created a product called the pet rock.  Many of you have probably heard of it.  In case you haven’t, it was nothing more than a rock set in a box on some straw.  Within 6 months, Dahl had sold over 5 million of these pet rocks for .95 each.  It cost him less than 30 cents to produce the rock.  So, when you do some basic number crunching, he made over 15 million dollars in just 6 months – selling rocks.   

What does this have to do with anything?  Well, quite a bit actually.  Imagine how much your life would change if you could sell something as simple as a rock and become a multi-millionaire in just 6 months.  Pretty tantalizing isn’t it?  Unfortunately, it has tantalized people so much that they never end up starting a business.  They only end up chasing their own “pet rock” gimmicks that never catch on.

The reason is simple.  Some people just haven’t been blessed by the idea gods.  The gods have failed to spring upon them the multi-million dollar idea that they believe they need.    No matter how hard they try to come up with the next pet rock, they can’t.  If you don’t believe me, take a look at how many get-rich-quick schemes are being sold today.  If people can’t think of the next great idea, then they will buy the idea from someone else.  Well, guess what?  It doesn’t work.  Mr. Dahl was an aberration.  He hit the winning lottery ticket.  Chances are you won’t.

After you have wiped the pet rock syndrome from your head, beware of the next, equally as paralyzing syndrome that can keep you from getting to business with real, tangible ideas. 

Peace, Love and Happiness Syndrome

On the other end of the spectrum we have the peace, love and happiness camp.  This group is a little more realistic in their pursuit of a business idea.  Their problem, however, is that they love too many business ideas.  In fact, they love them so much that they can’t decide on the best one.  They become paralyzed by trying to figure out which idea is best, and ultimately, never try any of them.

These types of people, I have found, are extremely visionary.  They love to explore all of the different business angles and long term visions.  The problem is they don’t take action because their heads are filled with amazing ideas and forecasts for success.

If you fall into this camp, I have bit of advice.  Stop it!  You need to choose an idea and then let your mind run wild within the boundaries of that idea.

How Do You Find the Right Business Idea?

There are two schools of thought on how to come up with the right business idea.  I’ll discuss them below:

The Traditional Approach

The traditional theory for finding the right business idea states that you should find a need and fill it.  In other words, you need to pay attention to your surroundings and look to see where there might be an opportunity to offer a new product or service that people may need.  Once you do, that’s what you will build your business around. 

There is no question that this method of generating business ideas work.  It has led to many great inventions and innovations over the years.   It is for this reason that pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars.  They develop new drugs to satisfy a need, such as a heart condition.  You can also see the traditional approach at play with today’s green technologies.  New, “green” businesses are trying to fill the need for clean, renewable energy.

There is one problem with this method, however.  It can be quite expensive and time consuming.  First, you have to develop the product or service.  This includes spending a lot of time and money on market research and sampling.  Second, you have to spend a lot of money on marketing to not only introduce the product or service, but to also convince people that they really do need it. 

If you’re a typical entrepreneur with limited funds and expertise, this may not be the best method of generating business ideas. 

The Give Them What They Want Approach

There is a second school of thought about coming up with a business idea that in many ways is far less risky and is much less expensive.  This theory is based on the idea that you should come up with an idea that already exists.  Or, simply put, offer people a product or service that they are already buying. 

Wait a minute, you may say, but doesn’t that mean there is more competition?  Isn’t the market already saturated?   Um, I would reply, tell that to Netflix. 

In 1997 the originator of Netflix reportedly hit upon the idea for movie rental-by-mail when he was forced to pay in fines after returning an overdue videotape of the film Apollo 13.  Renting movies was not a new business “need” that needed to be satisfied.  In fact, Blockbuster had been renting movies for over 10 years, and in 1998 had served nearly 60 million people who rented more than 970 million movies and video games.  Netflix took a proven market (movie rentals) and simply enhanced the service by offering movie rentals by mail, with no late fees.  The result:  today, Netflix has over 10 million monthly subscribers while generating  an annual revenue of over 1 billion dollars.  Blockbuster, on the other hand, is struggling to stay afloat. 

The point is that if you know what people are buying, a good business idea is nothing more than simply enhancing the product or service and/or marketing message.  It’s a lot less risky and more often than not, a lot less expensive. 

The best links you should try to build for your best home business are definitely one way links. One way links are back links which link from another website to yours without any need for you linking back from your site. A lot of people with great home business ideas are unsure of reciprocal link exchange. Has reciprocal linking lost its value in search engine optimization?

Forget Traditional Reciprocal Link ExchangeBest home business owners have now realized that Google and other search engines do not favor the once popular traditional link exchange where webmasters used to just exchange links freely, mostly non-relevant ones. In fact it is possible that Google may well penalize those webmasters who have excessive non-relevant links using this method. Internet marketers are now resorting to smarter home business ideas to obtain relevant links for their best home business.

How To Get Relevant Links To Your Best Home Business Site

Traditional Way To Get Reciprocal Links

Most internet marketers with home business ideas are still adopting the time consuming way of relevant link exchange even though they may have advanced SEO tools to help them search for link partners. Once a relevant link partner has been identified, the marketer starts to correspond with the potential link partner to obtain agreement on the link exchange. The whole process can be exhaustive, as most of us including me have encountered before. It may be weeks or even months before a link partnership is formed. Sometimes, even the best home business webmasters do not reply to such requests or they are simply not interested or found your link not suitable.

There are many other best home business owners who create a reciprocal link exchange page inviting all kinds of websites to link to them. This approach may have some initial success for some marketers to obtain some relevant links. However it requires the owner with home business ideas to exercise good control over whom he approves as link partners. It’s a very labor intensive process and most of times, the webmaster may well just approve all link partners including non-relevant ones too to expedite a tedious task.

A Smarter, Easier Way To Get Relevant Links

Relevant Link Exchange – Recently there have been a good number of new sites who offer fully automated relevant link exchange services. They provide best home business sites with link exchanges with hundreds of totally relevant websites, which in turn increase their optimization theme and allow them to rank higher for targeted keywords they rank for their home business ideas website.

1. Select Your Keywords used in best home business – Once you have registered with the relevant link exchange, which usually offers both free and upgraded services, you will be asked to provide about five of your keyword phrases which you currently rank for your website. These keywords should be found in your website and well optimized too example home business ideas.

2. Website Description – The next thing you are required to do is provide a service category example home business ideas and one or two descriptions of your website or best home business using these keyword phrases. This will increase your keyword search engine marketing efforts.

3. Install Service Codes Into Website – Finally you will be given some html codes to install into your best home business website.

Once you have completed your submission for your top home business ideas site, the relevant link exchange with link partners is fully automated and you may start to obtain many relevant links from your partners without doing any real work. Over time as the registered number of websites increases, your links to your best home business site increase too along with your page rank.

As a registered member of the relevant link exchange site you can easily check from the website’s control panel who your relevant partners are, their page rank and if they fall into the keyword phrases category you have selected. A good relevant link exchange site should provide you with the capability to cancel any links with your partners for whatever reasons you may have, for example low page rank. You therefore still maintain full control of which website links to your best home business site and that is important.

Most of these relevant link exchanges will accord these back links to your best home business site only on a weekly basis to ensure natural link building growth and to avoid Google and other search engines deeming it as spam.. Depending on the link exchange you join, some of them provide your home business ideas site a link page listing out your partners in such a way that it appears as another natural page of your website.

It’s a simple concept that can boost your home business ideas, which may eventually get you many relevant links from similar niche partners who have similar keyword phrases. As it is fully automated, there is no real effort required and quite different from other link building activities. I think most best home business owners would welcome such services and agree it is a smarter way to get relevant links in order to rank higher in the search engines.

The idea of starting a business is alluring to so many people.  There is the vision of wealth, providing opportunities and security.  Also there is pride and purpose- knowing what you’re doing is for you and your family.  And of course, one of the most appealing reasons is the freedom of being able to work from home and choose your own hours.  

These visions are wonderful and, in many cases, attainable.  In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, there are over 17.6 million businesses with one or more owners but no paid employees.      

So why are so many aspiring entrepreneurs left on the sidelines? 

It turns out, there are three reasons.  One, as you can imagine, is good old fashioned fear.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of failure.  Believe it or not, fear of success.  The second reason is a lack of knowledge.  “Where do I start?” “I don’t have enough resources.”  “I don’t know anything about marketing.” And the third reason, which I will be discussing in this article, is about the business idea, itself. 

Business Idea Paralysis

What is business idea paralysis?  Quite simply, it’s a condition that prevents people from starting a business because they get held back in the idea generation stage.  Basically, they are stuck in neutral.  Below are the two most common reasons why:

 The Pet Rock Syndrome

In 1975 a gentleman named Gary Dahl created a product called the pet rock.  Many of you have probably heard of it.  In case you haven’t, it was nothing more than a rock set in a box on some straw.  Within 6 months, Dahl had sold over 5 million of these pet rocks for $3.95 each.  It cost him less than 30 cents to produce the rock.  So, when you do some basic number crunching, he made over 15 million dollars in just 6 months – selling rocks.   

What does this have to do with anything?  Well, quite a bit actually.  Imagine how much your life would change if you could sell something as simple as a rock and become a multi-millionaire in just 6 months.  Pretty tantalizing isn’t it?  Unfortunately, it has tantalized people so much that they never end up starting a business.  They only end up chasing their own “pet rock” gimmicks that never catch on.

The reason is simple.  Some people just haven’t been blessed by the idea gods.  The gods have failed to spring upon them the multi-million dollar idea that they believe they need.    No matter how hard they try to come up with the next pet rock, they can’t.  If you don’t believe me, take a look at how many get-rich-quick schemes are being sold today.  If people can’t think of the next great idea, then they will buy the idea from someone else.  Well, guess what?  It doesn’t work.  Mr. Dahl was an aberration.  He hit the winning lottery ticket.  Chances are you won’t.

After you have wiped the pet rock syndrome from your head, beware of the next, equally as paralyzing syndrome that can keep you from getting to business with real, tangible ideas. 

Peace, Love and Happiness Syndrome

On the other end of the spectrum we have the peace, love and happiness camp.  This group is a little more realistic in their pursuit of a business idea.  Their problem, however, is that they love too many business ideas.  In fact, they love them so much that they can’t decide on the best one.  They become paralyzed by trying to figure out which idea is best, and ultimately, never try any of them.

These types of people, I have found, are extremely visionary.  They love to explore all of the different business angles and long term visions.  The problem is they don’t take action because their heads are filled with amazing ideas and forecasts for success.

If you fall into this camp, I have bit of advice.  Stop it!  You need to choose an idea and then let your mind run wild within the boundaries of that idea.

How Do You Find the Right Business Idea?

There are two schools of thought on how to come up with the right business idea.  I’ll discuss them below:

The Traditional Approach

The traditional theory for finding the right business idea states that you should find a need and fill it.  In other words, you need to pay attention to your surroundings and look to see where there might be an opportunity to offer a new product or service that people may need.  Once you do, that’s what you will build your business around. 

There is no question that this method of generating business ideas work.  It has led to many great inventions and innovations over the years.   It is for this reason that pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars.  They develop new drugs to satisfy a need, such as a heart condition.  You can also see the traditional approach at play with today’s green technologies.  New, “green” businesses are trying to fill the need for clean, renewable energy.

There is one problem with this method, however.  It can be quite expensive and time consuming.  First, you have to develop the product or service.  This includes spending a lot of time and money on market research and sampling.  Second, you have to spend a lot of money on marketing to not only introduce the product or service, but to also convince people that they really do need it. 

If you’re a typical entrepreneur with limited funds and expertise, this may not be the best method of generating business ideas. 

The Give Them What They Want Approach

There is a second school of thought about coming up with a business idea that in many ways is far less risky and is much less expensive.  This theory is based on the idea that you should come up with an idea that already exists.  Or, simply put, offer people a product or service that they are already buying. 

Wait a minute, you may say, but doesn’t that mean there is more competition?  Isn’t the market already saturated?   Um, I would reply, tell that to Netflix. 

In 1997 the originator of Netflix reportedly hit upon the idea for movie rental-by-mail when he was forced to pay $40 in fines after returning an overdue videotape of the film Apollo 13.  Renting movies was not a new business “need” that needed to be satisfied.  In fact, Blockbuster had been renting movies for over 10 years, and in 1998 had served nearly 60 million people who rented more than 970 million movies and video games.  Netflix took a proven market (movie rentals) and simply enhanced the service by offering movie rentals by mail, with no late fees.  The result:  today, Netflix has over 10 million monthly subscribers while generating  an annual revenue of over 1 billion dollars.  Blockbuster, on the other hand, is struggling to stay afloat. 

The point is that if you know what people are buying, a good business idea is nothing more than simply enhancing the product or service and/or marketing message.  It’s a lot less risky and more often than not, a lot less expensive.