The 6 Best Ways to Build Website Traffic

The tough reality is, no matter how great your site is, chances are slim that a customer will randomly happen on to your site. So it’s imperative that you use a variety of strategies to get your website noticed by the nearly 2.5 billion people who now surf the web. They make up over one-third of the planet’s population.

Winning visitors becomes a matter of creative, persistent marketing. The good news is that it’s still the little things that will bring plenty of traffic your way. There are fundamental steps that too many businesses neglect. For instance? You should always put your URL and a reason to visit your website on all printed matter, including your business cards. You should also mention what people will get when they visit your site, such as a newsletter or a list of “Top 10 Tips” or some type of content that will pique their interest. That substantially increases visitors, and eventually visitors become customers and/or subscribers.

An email signature is also an especially powerful and absolutely free tool. Create a signature with a link to your website in it and have it automatically attached to every one of your outgoing emails. It takes only a few seconds to create an email signature, and it may bring in visitors to your site every day.

Another low-cost traffic builder is online discussion groups and chats. Where appropriate, give out your URL. Look for places in which you can join in discussions on topics that relate to what you sell, but don’t be a salesman. Be knowledgeable, show your expertise, provide helpful solutions, and point out great articles on the topic. Eventually, people will read your profile or ask how you know so much and then you can mention that you work in the industry. Make people want to come to you, visit your site, and buy. That’s what inbound marketing is all about. You put yourself out there, and people come to you, rather than the old-school advertising approach of chasing down customers and hitting them over the head with your advertising messages.

Similar advice is true for social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You’ll want to create a profile for your business, get active in the groups that cater to your web audience, and befriend other like-minded businesses and people. Like any community-oriented activity online, you don’t want to cross the line into spam. Only “friend” people when it makes sense. And keep your profiles updated. If you’ll be participating in real-world events with your business, put that in the “events” section on your Facebook page, for example. If you’ve updated a section of your site or added a new product or service, broadcast that on your Twitter feed to instantly alert your audience. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and other social media platforms are ideal ways to draw traffic to your website with links and content that tie into your site.

Another big-time traffic builder for any retail website is posting items for sale on the major auction and marketplace sites, such as eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon. Those sites let you identify yourself to viewers, and a few dollars spent on highlighting your items on those sites may just bring in lots of traffic from surfers seeking more information. Many small etailers tell me their entire advertising budget consists of less than $100 monthly spent on eBay, but they're nonetheless seeing traffic counts above 500 daily, with most of those viewers coming via eBay. Even if you sell those specific goods at no profit, the traffic increase your site may experience could well justify your efforts by leading to additional, or future, sales.

For many businesses, good old email may be the surest and certainly the cheapest tool for building traffic. And it gets results: Customized email can generate response rates upward of 6 percent.

A good way to get folks to opt in to your email list, which, of course, they'll have the option of opting out of, is to offer a free monthly email newsletter. Effective newsletters usually mix news about trends in your field with tips and updates on sales or special pricing. Whatever you do, keep it short. Create interesting lists, give them tidbits, factoids, trivia, or anything they can digest quickly. People don't even want to bother scrolling down, so give them as much as you can in the preview screen with a little more below the line. The sides and corners are for promoting your products and services.

Another key: Include hyperlinks so interested readers can, with a single click, go directly to your site and find out more about a topic of interest. And, if you provide great content, add “forward to a friend” so they can spread the word about your business.

Always think viral with online marketing. Whether you're emailing a newsletter or using Facebook or Twitter, you want to encourage others to spread the word, since word-of-mouth marketing is the best possible means of no-cost marketing. It is also how you use the power of social media to grow your following.

6 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Built a Marketing Department

A couple of years ago I was given an incredible opportunity to build a marketing department from the ground up. The truth is that I had no idea what I was doing.

Previously, I had dabbled in email marketing and web design before doing a bit of communications and branding for a nonprofit, and then I took a job as a social media marketing consultant. So I did have some marketing experience, but definitely not enough to seamlessly design and execute a complex marketing strategy while managing a team of marketers.

But those are always the most fun and exciting moments of your career, right? When someone believes in you and gives you once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something you might not be qualified to do on paper (even though deep-down you know you are perfect for it).

So I decided to jump head-first into my new role, give it hell and learn as fast as possible.

And overall it went pretty well. Sure, I made some mistakes, did a few stupid things and spent a lot of time figuring out stuff that now seems totally rudimentary, but I was also able to build a brand that is now well-known in our local market, create content that people look forward to downloading and set up a full-blown marketing automation system.

I often think about how much time I could have saved and stress I could have avoided had someone sat me down at the beginning and taught me the big lessons I muddled through along the way.

So in an effort to lend a hand to rookie marketers and new heads of marketing, here are the six big lessons I wish I knew before I built a marketing department from the ground up—the ones that will save you a lot of time, frustration and money.

Lesson No. 1: Marketing Does Not Exist Within a Bubble

For most companies, a truly good marketing strategy is one that integrates marketing into other key departments like sales, product development and human resources. But if you’re new to marketing or if you’re building a marketing department for the first time, it’s easy to adopt a bubble mentality and simply focus on the things that we traditionally think of as marketing: your blog, the website, content marketing, events, Google Analytics, etc.—things that don’t require much collaboration with other departments.

This is understandable given that most new marketing departments are short on resources, both in terms of money and people. Moreover, within technology companies marketing is often viewed as the bells and whistles you add to a product once it’s ready to launch, or even after it’s gone to market, when in factmarketing should be an integral part of the product development process from the get-go.

Treating marketing as something that operates completely outside other departments can lead to several problems: sales messaging that is out of line with the company mission and value proposition; a product that does not speak your customer’s language or address their pain points; a product development plan that does not prioritize the features that are most important to your users.

But there’s good news: the rise in popularity of the term “growth hacking” has made people in leadership, engineering and sales aware of just how crucial it is tointegrate marketing into product development processes from the very beginning (and it’s given marketing a much cooler name).

Since good marketing is interdisciplinary, marketers need to become expert relationship-builders. They need to make friends across other departments and learn how to influence people so that their colleagues enjoy working with them and are eager to make things happen in order to please them. Marketers need to be able to talk effectively to salespeople, engineers and graphic designers (which at times can feel like switching between Spanish, German and French).

Lesson No. 2: Keep It Simple, Especially In the Beginning

A common rookie marketer mistake is to think that a good marketing strategy is one that includes all the popular marketing tactics, like SEM; display; social media; a beautiful, responsive website; a blog; a full-blown content marketing strategy; and so on. Everyone is always talking about this stuff, so we should be doing all of it, right?

One of the smartest decisions you can make when building a new marketing department is to keep things as lean as possible. This way you can focus on quality over quantity, and you can put energy into the channels and tactics that will give you disproportionate results.

How do you avoid wasting money and time on things that won’t work? How do you know where to market before you even start? By talking to your target audience.

Actually, this should be the very first thing you do––design a survey for people who represent your target customer with the goal of understanding the following:

• Where do they get their industry news? What blogs, websites, newsletters and magazines do they read? Who do they follow on Twitter? Which brands and personalities do they follow on Facebook?
• What kind of information are they looking for regarding your industry?
• What are their major pain points? What keeps them up at night?

You can complement your survey results with online research about your target customers. Follow people who represent your target audience on Twitter, see what they’re asking about on sites like Quora or take a look at what they’re saying about competing products in reviews and write-ups.

You can do two key things with this information:

1. Understand how to market to your audience (what kind of language to use, what keywords to put in your copy, where to advertise, where to guest blog, which influencers you need to convert into product ambassadors, and so on)
2. Determine what features and benefits will make your product most attractive to your customer.

The book Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation has a great section on how to utilize a deep understanding of your customer to create a killer marketing plan. Read it!

Once you’ve identified the channels and tactics that are most likely to get your product in front of your customers’ eyes and designed a lean marketing strategy based on this information, you’re off to a great start. But starting simple is just half the battle; the other half is keeping your strategy lean over time. After all, opportunities to make things more complicated always come up.

What culprits are most likely to throw you off course?

1. Your boss – If you run a marketing department it’s quite possible that you report to the CEO or COO (i.e. someone who is not a marketer, and who is doing a million other things besides managing you). In this case, it’s likely that your boss will ask you, “Why aren’t we doing PPC?!” “Why don’t we have a blog?!” “Why don’t we have a fancy team page on our website with everyone’s name, job title and life story?!”
   It’s your job to explain to them why the company is present in some channels and not others, and why certain things are higher priority. Use the data from your marketing research to back up your position, and be adamant about keeping things lean.
2. Perfectionism – Whether it’s your own or your boss’s, perfectionism is your enemy. Why? Because it is the opposite of lean. Instead of proofreading everything a million times and obsessing over the color scheme of your new ebook, pick one or two things that you are going to do exceptionally well, and be happy with about 80% perfect for the rest.

Lesson No. 3: Customer Research Is Not a One-Time Thing

Once you’ve designed and executed an in-depth survey to get inside your customer’s head, don’t simply stop there; find ways to continue to learn about your customer and use this knowledge to improve your marketing strategy.

No matter how diligently you researched your customers in the beginning, there will be things you missed. Moreover, they’ll be things you will only be able to know by tapping your existing customer base or loyal mailing list down the line.

If people download content from your website, use progressive profiling in your forms in order to ask them new questions about what they do, who they are and what they want to learn about. Design periodic surveys for existing customers in order to understand how you can make your product better, and talk to leads who didn’t end up buying from you in order to understand why. You can also ask webinar attendees what they thought of your content.

Constant feedback and new information about your audience are key to tweaking your strategy in the right direction.

Lesson No. 4: Get A Solid Analytics and Testing Strategy In Place as Soon as Possible

In a field like marketing—where new social media platforms make their debut on a daily basis and algorithm updates constantly change how you should do SEO or what makes people see your social content—it can be a challenge to prioritize which areas of marketing you want to learn deeply, which you simply want to be proficient in and in what order you’re going to learn it all.

If I could go back in time I would make understanding how to do analytics well a top priority from the very beginning. Why? Because in order to create an effective marketing strategy you need to determine which channels work, and which don’t, as quickly as possible—something you do by culling insights from key metrics.

Otherwise, you’ll waste a lot of time and money on tactics that aren’t doing your business any good.

Analytics is an extremely complex topic, and you definitely can’t learn it overnight. Each channel has its own quirks when it comes to measuring, and there are many different tools for collecting data and ways to set up your digital marketing infrastructure.

Here are a few resources to get you started:

• Technical MKT
• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
• Digital Marketing and Measurement Model
• The Beginner’s Guide to Startup Analytics
• Marketing Analytics 101: How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Website

Lesson No. 5: Document Systems to Withstand Turnover

Even if you have an amazing company culture or are a wonderful manager, at some point a key employee is going to leave. It’s inevitable. Unfortunately, when someone leaves you’ll have to teach a new employee how your marketing department works, which can be incredibly time consuming.

If you’re managing a marketing team or even just a few freelancers that you work with regularly, you’ll want to invest time in documenting the key systems that keep your marketing machine running smoothly. This way, when a new hire comes on board you’ll have in-depth explanations of how things work that she can review and learn before coming to you with questions.

What does documenting a system look like? It can be anything from a detailed social media marketing plan laid out in a PDF to a flowchart explaining your lead nurturing strategy or a Google Doc outlining each step required to produce your monthly webinar.

Not only do these documented systems help you transition between employees; they also mean you don’t have to memorize every detail of your marketing strategy.

Lesson No. 6: Setting Up a Marketing Automation System Is a Ton (A TON!) of Work

One of the most laborious parts of building a new marketing department is getting the lead capturing and marketing automation system in place.

This was probably more complicated for us than it is for most companies since much of our material is in two languages (English and Spanish). Regardless, if you’re doing this for the first time you are in for a ride.

Designing a system for sorting and following up with new leads based on where they came from and what they are looking for is complex, especially when you’re integrating multiple tools, like a customer relationship management tool and marketing automation software.

If I could do it again I would have simply hired an expert in marketing automation to help us set this up and train the marketing team. It’s a little extra money, but it is well worth the time you’ll save trying to figure it all out on your own.

Building a new marketing department is both incredibly fun and incredibly overwhelming. Truth be told there’s no magic bullet that will make you get it 100% right the first time around, but if you keep these lessons in mind you’ll be well on your way to creating something amazing.

What Happens to Your Business If You Die?

During a meeting recently, a 6-year-old company with three partners told me they had been grossing $150,000. That's about $25,000 per person after expenses. Ouch! They had never written out their goals for the company, there was no vision, they were all working day to day and trying to make ends meet doing something they love. (Money wasn't the main driver, but to keep working, they had to start making some.) Asking about their ideal income, they seemed happy with a goal of $500,000 total. I asked the 60-year-old partner -- the oldest by 30 years -- if he ever wanted to retire. With their current foundation, it would never happen.

"But I built a lifestyle company." I hear this a lot from other business owners. I even thought that's what I did when I started my branding firm Sisarina. It's just a lie we tell ourselves because we forget that someday we could die or want to retire or want to just stop working so dang hard. We are people, not companies. Your company could easily outlive you, and it should be able to. It's up to you to make that happen.

As much as branding efforts, great graphics and a company-wide voice matter, growing businesses have a rock-solid foundation to keep up with the growth.

Here are a few tactics you can do to make sure your company keeps growing, even when you're no longer the boss.

Write your vision down-

You have the story of how your business started. Your vision is the story of your business in the future. Pick a date a few years from now and describe the day you're having. Talk about your coworkers and what they're doing now, your revenues, your business focus, how your office feels, what you're providing and where you're heading from there.

When Ari Weinzweig started Zingerman's farmer's market, he wrote a vision story that gave him a place to put down his hopes and dreams. He talked about what he was feeling, seeing and smelling. This gave a bigger dimension to his vision and allowed others to buy into it. When they opened, Weinzweig walked through the market and realized his vision had become reality.

Create Your BHAG-

No more thinking small or short term. What's that Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) of yours that you know will be a little bit of a stretch but, given enough time and resources, you can rock? Your BHAG is the ridiculously awesome goal set far enough in the future, say seven to 10 years, that you base all of your decisions on. It has to be tangible and trackable -- not "I want to be cool."

Our company's 2023 BHAG is to be a $20 million company with five offices and 55 employees all over the world. We base all of our decision making on this goal by setting our goals for hiring, revenue and opening offices in different time zones.

Set short term and long-term goals-

 You and your team have goals but your company needs to set goals to accomplish them. These goals will be based on your vision, and your 10-year goal should be in line with your BHAG. Creating goals for one year, two years, five years, and ten years from now will get you to your BHAG.

Your goals should include:

• revenue - net and gross profit?
• hiring - where current employees will be and who you are adding to your team?
• office - where will your office(s) be and how much space will you need?
• benefits - what will you offer and how?
• offerings - what will your services or products be?

Hire the right people-

Now that you have your vision and your goals, making sure you have the right people in the right seats is imperative. These are the people who could someday take over your company, so only hire those you would trust. Find the hiring process that works for you, and use it for every hire.

Zappos has every hire, even C-level, go through customer-service training when they start. If you're not willing to go through it, you can't work there. Zappos will also pay you to quit after you're done with your training. If you stay, they know they have the right hire.

With all the traveling I've been doing the last 12 months, I finally put together a will for the "just in case." I have a clear plan for what would happen inside my company, who would run it,and who would share the profits. With our vision statement, our BHAG and our growth plan, one or more of my colleagues could keep Sisarina going without me. Someone has to keep my imaginary friend alive.

4 Reasons Why Leaders Need More Wave Makers

I’ve yet to meet a leader who is not thinking and talking about innovation, change, disruption or transformation. These are the elements of company strategy and the agenda of the typical leadership retreat.

Yet, how can the intent to change and transform be translated so that everyone in an organization is ready to make a contribution? That's the hard part. For many leaders, this is where the breakdown occurs.

Leaders can’t possibly know the answers to everything. It’s just not possible. And the status quo is powerful the further away one gets from the executive team meeting.

Thus, leaders need wave makers throughout a business -- not at just the most senior levels -- who are in the game rather than just being spectators. They are the ones, regardless of title or experience, asking, “What can I do?” Or they might inquire, “How can I help?” or consider “what if?”

During the past two years I studied the habits and impact of wave makers who started changes in their markets, communities and organizations. In my book Make Waves: Be the One to Start Change at Work and in Life, I shared the fact that changes need not start with the CEO. 

Think of a "wave" as any change that begins with a person's decision to act and ripples outward like those patterns in the ocean. Or consider it as a transfer of energy that creates momentum and ultimately a positive impact. This may be a small decision or action at first but it gathers force like the wave in a ballpark that starts with just one person's deciding to act and that spreads. Some waves happen inside organizations, while others sweep over a larger community or marketplace. They start with one person's spotting a need or opportunity and deciding to initiate a change. 

Wave makers bring value by achieving results in doing the following:

1. Sparking innovation  Leaders can give inspiring presentations about the need to innovate for an organization’s future success. The hard part is passing along that philosophy to everyone who works there, not just the head of strategy or the chief innovation officer.

One such wave maker is Lois Melbourne, co-creator and former CEO of Aquire, in Irving, Texas, a company now owned by PeopleFluent. She created an environment that encouraged people at all levels to contribute and not have fear for doing so. She knew she couldn’t accomplish her goals alone. 

“You’ve got to respect people for taking the risk," she said in describing the connection between risk and innovation and creating a culture that encourages waves. "You have to give them the ability to fail and not take a hit. If an organization respects outside thought, then anyone can say, ‘Let’s try this.’ Encourage skunkworks, risk-taking, and exploration. Fear is anti-innovation.”

2. Driving up performance  It's amazing what two or three wave makers can do to raise the performance of a group or team. For small entrepreneurs, these measures are very real and have a very personal impact on them, affecting how much they earn or whether they have the funds to invest in basic items. Performance is improved when everyone involved asks, “Is there a better way”

A few years ago, I saw the impact of a recent college graduate on a team of a professional-services company, one of my clients and a firm that had conducted business much the same way for years. She didn’t judge or criticize but she did instigate a change in that team without a big campaign to do so. She started using technology to streamline and improve access to meaningful data, made suggestions on work processes once she had a full understanding of the goals and developed new techniques for packaging information. Her actions started to change the way the group worked, while raising the bar for the entire team’s performance.  

3. Accelerating professional development Hands down, one of the best ways to accelerate personal and professional development is by working on a "wave."  Employees develop the most when involved in a stretching assignment or something that takes them out of their comfort zone.  

When a person works on a "wave" or an initiative never undertaken previously, he or she learns and grows at an accelerated pace because the individual can’t rely on how things have been done in the past or what's most comfortable to do.

4. Shaking up the status quo If leaders feel that their organization has become too stale or needs an influx of new ideas, then a wave maker can help. Is the status quo ready to be shaken up? Entrepreneurs, by definition, shake up the status quo by redefining the market through a new and better product or service. Intrapreneurs can, too. Encourage new ideas and use them.

Any new change requires an influx of new ideas for exploration and discussion. Yet, the status quo is the only option that is usually not debated. It’s the choice that becomes the “best” option without a decision ever having being made. Wave makers diminish the power of the status quo and that’s why you need them.

5 Perfect 'Spare-Time' Online Businesses

With all the doom and gloom news about the economy, there's never been a better time to make an extra paycheck online with a minimal amount of time and effort.

If you have an internet connection, you can get started on the road to having the internet pay for your mortgage, car payment, kids' college tuition, or even that special vacation you've wanted. Now, don't worry that you have to be a tech whiz to start a business online--I'm a complete techno-dunce.

A perfect part-time business would have to be very easy to start, require little time and money and no technical expertise, be easy to maintain with just a few hours a week and have a proven track record with a high probability of success.

There's actually one other important criteria--it has to be perfect for you! Experience has taught me that it's different strokes for different folks, and there is no "one size fits all" perfect business. You're much more likely to be successful if you do something you find fun and interesting.

With that in mind, here are five of the best ways to make extra cash moonlighting on the internet:

1. Information marketing:  We're in the information age, and the internet provides you with the ideal medium to exchange know-how for money. Do you know the best fishing holes? How to play guitar? The secrets to a successful marriage? A recipe for moist and delicious brownies? A trick for saving gas?

Think about your career, your hobbies and your interests. Virtually anything you know can be turned into extra cash. And don't worry if you think you're not an expert--as long as you know more than the average person on the topic, that information is valuable.

However, if you don't believe you know anything that others would pay for (highly unlikely), you can take someone else's know-how and make money that way! It could be as easy as interviewing a veterinarian to help you create a dog-training product.

Ninety-two percent of people go online looking for information, and you could be one of the many people cashing in on selling it.

2. eBay : One of the largest online marketplaces makes it a piece of cake to get your own business going. You can open an account and start making money within hours on eBay!

While I dislike that whole "sell your garbage on eBay" thing, there is some validity to it as many people get their start on eBay by selling items from their garage or attic that pre-eBay would have been thrown out. This approach is fine, but where is the business once you run out of those items? If you want to create an eBay business that doesn't require tons of time and effort, you need to leverage products that can be sold over and over again.

This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of the "eBay seller for hire" kinds of opportunities, where you sell things on eBay for other people. You get access to stuff people want to sell, but because each item is unique you have to work to list each and every one. There's no leverage there!

Take a look at some of the largest eBay PowerSellers and notice how they specialize in very specific products (iPods, cell phones, dog grooming kits, etc.). This allows them to leverage their efforts. A listing is created once, and money is collected over and over again.

Unlike information marketing, this business requires the handling of physical goods, but even that can be automated, so it shouldn't prevent you from considering this idea.

3. Affiliate marketing:  This may possibly be the absolute laziest way to make money because it doesn't require you to have a product, make a sale or ever have any interaction with customers.

This is essentially a "referral" business, or as one of my book contributors likes to call it, "passionate recommendations." Basically, you can get paid a referral commission just for sending people to sites (or vendors) that are set up to pay affiliate fees once a sale is made. The vendor does all the selling, fulfills the purchase and handles any customer service issues--and you just collect your check..not bad!

Some people choose affiliates based on who or what is paying the highest commissions, and that certainly is a viable option. Most people opt to choose products or goods they are passionate about so that the process is much more fun and engaging.

Insurance and credit card companies pay high commissions for referrals that convert to customers ($40 to $150 and up), but the competition is fierce. It may pay well, but is this something you'll enjoy doing for the long haul?

Alternatively, you could take a look at your hobbies and other things you enjoy and see which affiliate programs are a good match. As always, do your research to verify the viability of your market. A good place to look for ideas (and downloadable products just waiting for an affiliate) is ClickBank.com.

4. Blogging: This business is best suited for folks who enjoy communicating about a particular subject. Think of blogs as journals of sorts. Although you can have a personal blog, writing about a particular topic will have a higher chance for financial success.

The range of topics is virtually endless--photography, sports cars, parenting, dieting, star gazing, the latest gadgets, Hollywood gossip--you name it, as there are blogs on just about everything you can imagine. Don't worry about competition. Folks who read one blog are apt to read others on a topic they're passionate about, as long as you have something interesting to say.

Once your blog starts getting traffic, you can make money passively with things like AdSense (Google's ad revenue sharing plan) or actively by doing a little bit of affiliate marketing. You can see both types of moneymaking strategies at SparkleCat.com, which is a blog about a person's cat. What makes it interesting is that it's written from the cat's perspective and often refers to her "human." At the top of the page are Google AdSense ads, and sprinkled throughout are suggestions for things like cat furniture and premium cat food, which are tied to an affiliate program. Pretty cool, no?

5. Yahoo! Store: This business is very similar to eBay in the sense that it's a monster-sized marketplace but more similar to a store in the true sense of the word. Think having your own retail outlet but without the hassles of rent, employees, utilities and all the other expenses of a traditional brick-and-mortar store.

The neat thing is that it can be as hands-on or as hands-off as you want it to be because of companies called drop-shippers, which can do most of the work for you. In fact, you don't even pay for the inventory until you make a sale. How cool is that?

Most people think the hard part of this business is creating your virtual store, but nothing could be further from the truth. Yahoo! has made the templates and wizards so easy that, dare I say, even a caveman can do it!

The best way to ensure your success is to do your homework and research what products people most want to buy. You need to find a niche. Once again, start with things you enjoy. Let's say you love fishing. What products do fishing folks want to buy most? (Or get even more specific, like, what are bass fishermen looking to buy?)

Then the task is to find the right source of those products so you can carry them in your Yahoo! Store. In most cases, you'll be able to pull pictures and product descriptions directly from your sources and plug them right into your store.

As you can see, this business requires a little bit more upfront work, but once it's done it can be maintained with very little regular input on your part.

There you have it--five perfect part-time businesses. Are you ready to start moonlighting on the internet now?

10 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Join a Startup

For the last several years the startup machine has been cranking out new ventures in a wide range of fields, from software to whaling. No matter where you look, an awesome new startup seems to be  popping up. And you want to be in on the action.

As luck would have it, you notice that a startup is hiring and you're more than qualified for the gig. You know going in that it's going to be tough and challenging, but you think the potential that lies ahead is just too good to pass up. It’s almost a no-brainer. You’re considering joining an exciting startup that will change your professional and personal life forever.

But should you really join a startup? While it is true that the position may be full of potential, more likely than not you’ve been sold a series of myths. So before doing drastic, check out the following 10 reasons why you might not want to join a startup.

1. You might not get paid

Some startup employees work with the understanding that they are sacrificing a decent salary in return for receiving equity in the business. They'll just work their tail off for a couple of years and then reap the benefits when the startup takes off.

But this assumption has two major holes: First, the startup may never succeed. If that’s the case, the equity in a failed or failing business really isn’t worth much. Second, startups are notorious for being frugal once they’re being funded. That money has to last for who know how long.

So if you take a position at a startup with the assumption that eventually the owners will feel favorably disposed to handing you a beefy salary or pay raise, you’re sadly mistaken.

Indeed you may want to second-guess your inclination to take that startup post if you’re content with your current position or have an opportunity to join a better-paying company.

2. You may not land a role on the executive team

 A reason some individuals gravitate toward startups is the idea that it might be easier to eventually land an executive position. But how many startups have high-level executives who are not the founders?

And the promise of an executive promotion down the road could be more of a ploy to compensate for low pay. You may end up not making a lot but have an awesome title. Such titles can also be offered during the initial recruitment. Since the startup owners are being careful with their money, the titles are used as bargaining chips.  

3. Startups typically fail

 When you join a startup, there’s a very real chance that it’s going to fail. That’s not being harsh. That’s just the nature of the beast, despite what you may have been told.

4. You’re going to work really hard

 You obviously intend to work really hard at any job you've lined up, but there’s something completely different about startups. You might work like a maniac for an excessive amount of hours each week because the startup is in a race to beat the clock, trying to create a product or service and establish a market before the money runs out.

If you enjoy that kind of pressure, then go for it. (Most people want to keep their heart rate and blood pressure at healthy levels.) If you're willing to work more than 12 hours a day for little to no pay, then the startup may just be your thing.

5. Your list of responsibilities may be lengthy

 On top of the stress, long hours and low pay, you will have a lot of duties. You may be asked to do multiple jobs. Some people enjoy wearing multiple hats. Others like to know exactly what they have to do during the workweek.

But, there’s a flip side to all of this. Startup jobs also include the same mind-numbing responsibilities that the big companies have. So, if you were expecting to try your hand at certain specific exciting tasks, you may be severely disappointed.

6. Everything can change quickly

 You may think that if things go south, you’ll have plenty of notice. But that isn’t how startups function.

What if the venture capitalists pull their funding? What if the competition demolishes your business? What if Google enters the space? Or what if another recession hits? Numerous factors can determine the success or failure of a startup. And when the circumstances change, everything changes. One day you’re working for a promising startup and the next you are let go.

7. It’s chaotic 

Steve Blank, a professor at Stanford and founder of several companies, asks those interested in joining a startup, “How comfortable are you with chaos?” If you’re joining a small startup, one with less than 10 employees, expect chaos every day you arrive to work. I've worked at several startups and it can be very frustrating some days.

If you’re not one who enjoys having to be on your toes every day, a startup is definitely not for you.

8. You'll still have a boss (or bosses)

One of the most enticing things about jumping on board a startup is sense that it means that you’re no longer "working for the man." 

But even startups have managers, CEOs and venture capitalists. If you’re lucky enough to have a great manager, that’s not a bad thing. This person will pull the team together and get things done.

And a startup funded by a venture capital firm is expected to deliver results on a deadline that the it probably set. It’s the firm's money after all. So, don't be shocked if the office dynamics change if the startup fails to produce results or there's been a personality clash between the leaders of the startup and the venture capital firm.

9. You have to build a company

 Say you're an engineer or a developer who has gained notice from a startup. Instead of accepting the job and going back to work in a specified field, you have to build a company. That may sound like an intriguing challenge, but it's not the job you signed up for. As entrepreneur David Bluhm notes, “All start-up people need to be ‘business builders’ versus single contributors and view building the processes around their job as a primary role of the job itself.”  

10. You may have to pay for expenses

 Forget getting wined and dined by a startup. The  young company probably doesn’t have the money. So who will pay for the expenses when it comes time to impress the media, investors and clients? Yep. This could be coming out of your own pocket if wining and dining is a part of your job description.

Everything from office supplies to cleaning services may have to be provided by employees because of a lack of cash flow. Though you could live without a cleaning service, will anyone really want to step into that workplace after a month or so?

A footnote:  I happen to love working as an advisor and investor for the startup SEO Engine and wouldn't trade this gig for the world. Every day is so hard and yet different from any other. (Some days I'm not sure if my credit card will even be able to pay for lunch.) I continue to work on this startup's team because despite all the drawbacks, the rewards far outweigh the risks. I wish you the best of luck in making your decision.

Why Entrepreneurs Should Plan for Failure, Not Success

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Starting three companies -- two of which didn’t take off the way I envisioned -- taught me that while entrepreneurs should dream big, it’s essential that we also plan for failure. More than 90 percent of startups fail.

And recognizing this right off the bat will prepare you intellectually, emotionally and financially, if your venture doesn’t succeed.

Planning for failure doesn’t make you negative or paranoid

It makes you smart. First, there's a huge difference between preparing for failure and thinking you’re going to fail. The latter is highly discouraging and curtails growth. The former, on the other hand, is about being practical and thoughtful about all of the possibilities that may occur. In some ways, it can even encourage entrepreneurs to progress because being prepared quells fear and prods you to keep going.

I always plan for worst-case scenarios, considering how they may affect my team, their lives and how to mitigate them. For example, I need to think ahead: What if we were to lose one of our largest clients? How would that impact our cash flow, company morale and what would my investors think of the company’s outlook? It’s difficult to think of these scenarios, but I believe it’s necessary to plan for it. In some cases, planning for failure helps me anticipate challenges so I can prevent them from happening.

Additionally, being honest with yourself and thinking about potential failure enables you to identify mistakes that you’re making in your business, so you can correct them more quickly along the way.

It helps you be more objective

Starting and running a business can be a very emotional experience. Your company is your "baby,” after all, and it’s something that you’ve poured a lot of heart and passion into. Forcing yourself to be prepared for the worst can help balance that out. How? Planning for failure or thinking of an exit strategy pushes you to be less “clingy” with your company. It forces you to look at the facts and unpleasant possibilities (no matter how difficult), thereby enabling you to be more analytical and objective.

Being a bit disassociated from your company also gives you more perspective because it allows you to look at it from the vantage point of your investors or customers. This, in turn, helps you generate ideas or even catch errors that you may have missed being too close to your business.

Toward the end of my first company's existance, my co-founder Andrew Waage and I forced ourselves to evaluate the business from a customer’s perspective, and we learned that the solutions we were building simply did not solve a problem that was big enough. We set our emotions aside and closed the business because when looking at the facts, we did not have a business. We would have not had the courage to face our failure so quickly if we didn’t plan for it.

Recognizing that you might fail keeps you on your toes

 Acknowledging the possibility of failure prevents you from being complacent. Knowing that at any point your venture could take a wrong turn keeps you from resting on your laurels, which means you strive harder and don’t let success lead to hubris.

Never became too self-satisfied. Remember it takes years to build a company and one simple mistake to bring it all back to nothing. Never lose sight of that. It's important to stay focused and hungry.

Planning for failure makes it easier to move on

 Preparation can help soften the blow in the event that your company hits the rocks. Looking back, I don’t think I would have been able to move on quickly from my unsuccessful ventures if I hadn’t prepared for the possibility of failure.

When my first startup didn’t take off, Waage and I were prepared to deal with the circumstances. We had planned for it mentally, emotionally and financially, and decided we weren’t going to take it personally, which was why it only took us two weeks to recharge and start our next venture.

No one wants to face the dreaded “F” word, but even the most successful entrepreneurs experience their share. It’s simply part of the game. And, who knows? It could even serve as the foundation for something far bigger and better.