How to Perform a SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business Idea

If you have an online business idea, chances are that you want to protect that idea. You will also want to do anything and everything you can in order to make that business strive and thrive.

Using a SWOT analysis for your online business idea is a great way to assess your business idea. First, however, let us examine what a SWOT analysis is. Put simply, it involves assessing these factors:

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

A SWOT analysis is valuable in evaluating a product, service, new business endeavour or even an employee.

Strengths – By evaluating your company’s strengths, you do yourself a great service. By looking through a microscope into what is working, you can enhance that performance and its progress and multiply it.

By mimicking a proven formula that already works, you increase your success two-fold. You can also pinpoint specific areas of success and magnify them innovatively in order to grow those strengths.

Weaknesses – The whole point in evaluating weaknesses for your online business idea is to eliminate or at the very least minimize them. Weaknesses are in every aspect of business and if unaddressed, those weaknesses can fester and grow. Eliminating or minimizing those weaknesses will keep them from detracting from your success in an online venture.

There are two major categories of measurement – internal factors, which are within the organization, and external factors, which are outside the organization – with strengths and weaknesses belonging to internal factors.

Opportunities – Evaluating opportunities is useful in seeking knowledge on how those opportunities are useful to gain momentum for your online business endeavours. Taking advantage of any existing opportunities and expanding them to greater heights will provide more success for your business idea.

Threats – Evaluating threats in the environment is crucial to the success of your online business idea.

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SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business

Opportunities and threats belong to the external factors category. If you are on the lookout for threats, warding them off before they occur is key to maintaining optimal success as a line of defence for your project or business.

Evaluate your online business idea for its strengths by highlighting the areas that receive the most positive response. If you have done a test market on a product or service or have a website with a comments section, check to see where the positive highlights are for your online idea.

Evaluate your online business idea for its weaknesses by answering a negative comment on a website, asking for the opinions of others, and checking the competitions’ websites.

Seek out new and innovative opportunities based on existing ideas that you can expand. Search out opportunities within other businesses to grow and expand your own.

By utilizing a SWOT analysis, you protect and enhance your online business idea.

SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business

30-Day Blogging Masterclass

The internet has an insatiable appetite for information. Billions of searches are conducted every single day looking for everything from how to bake an apple pie to why zebras have stripes. For anyone who conducts business online, these searches represent a steady flow of potential customers who are looking for what you have to offer. You just need to be very clear on what you offer, in order to be able to provide that value.

What you need to know:

Your Ideal Reader

Who is your ideal reader? What does she want? What are her questions? What does she find entertaining? What could help her right now?

Your Position

Your blog should position you as an expert and industry leader. Are you using your voice and personality to establish yourself as an expert?

Define your goals

What will separate your blog from the rest will be your ability to visualize a direct and coherent vision, with long term aims and strategies. So, be sure to establish your goals and have them tie into your blog’s brand and values.

Download the FREE Excercise Worksheet

Remember: Blogging is not a fast business-growth strategy but it is excellent for long-term sustainability. Those posts you write this month will continue to work for you many years from now, bringing in more and more traffic and potential clients.

Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to read 52 Blog Ideas for your business, who couldn’t use 52 blog ideas?

[Tweet “Quick Tip: Listen before you blog. It’s not about how smart you are, it’s about how well you serve.”]

P.S. Do you know someone that would benefit from this 30 Day Blogging Masterclass? Send them over to the TVS Classroom to sign up.

Blogging Masterclasslogging Challenge

How to Have a Stress-Free Business Launch

How to Have a Stress-Free Business Launch
Let’s face it, the last thing you want to do, now that you’ve decided to finally leave the 9 to 5 job, is to add more stress to your life. Isn’t that why you decided to build your own business in the first place? You’re looking for freedom from the stress of a fixed schedule, working with those you don’t get along with, and from the limitations of a fixed salary.

But if you’re trading all that in for a different kind of stress, what have you gained? Before you kiss your cubicle goodbye, be sure you first build a solid foundation—and we don’t just mean business-wise.

Build a Financial Safety Net

Nothing stresses us out quite like worrying about money. Whether you’re concerned about those college tuition bills you’ll be facing in a few years, or worse, not sure how you’re going to make the rent or bills, it’s easy to lose your business mojo. As a new business owner, you certainly don’t want money trouble casting a shadow over your entrepreneurial dream.

Before you turn in your resignation, set aside some cash in case of a rainy day. Aim for at least three months of living expenses but more is better. Hopefully, you won’t need it but having some cash on hand will relieve the pressure of having a new business that’s not earning its keep—yet.

How to Have a Stress-Free Business Launch

Make Sure Your Family is on Board

Money troubles are bad, but there may be one worse thing: an unsupportive spouse. And as any entrepreneur will tell you, not everyone understands the drive to be a business owner. Most people find it pretty scary to step away from that regular paycheck to chase after a dream.

If that sounds like your partner, don’t take it personally. They’re not making a statement about your ability. More than likely, they’re just worried about what the future holds. Do your best to understand where they’re coming from, and be sure to clearly explain your ideas, why you are confident it will work, and how you plan to cover the start-up expenses and manage the risk.

If he or she is still not on board, consider starting slow, with a part-time business while still working your day job. That will allow you to prove your idea is workable, and might just help your spouse get as excited about it as you are.

Read my article: How to Talk to Your Family About Working From Home – it may be helpful with this topic!

Take Time for YOU

No matter what’s going on with your money, your partner or your business, you need to be sure to schedule some “you” time. No one can work all the time, regardless of how driven you are. I am sure I don’t need to mention that no one can stay healthy while maintaining a nonstop schedule. Go for a walk, hit the gym, get a pedicure or just binge on your favourite brainless television show. The point is simply to take time away from your desk to rest and rejuvenate. Without it, you’ll soon find yourself overwhelmed and stressed, even if you truly love your new business.

30 Day Blogging Bootcamp – Now Available!

Blogging is a great way to grow your reach and engagement with your target audience. It’s also fun and easy to do and frankly, it can be quite profitable if you do it right. I invite you to join me for 30 days, inside the TVS Workshop for my Blogging Bootcamp. I’ll have a fresh new post for you each day that will help you accomplish two things:

1. Give You Plenty of Ideas for New Content to Help You Become a More Consistent Blogger

My first goal with this challenge is to give you plenty of ideas for things to blog about. Sometimes it is hard to come up with something fresh and unique to write about. So, when you’re stuck with writer’s block or just feeling a little uninspired, look no further than these quick and easy content posts.

Use them right away, or file them away for those days when you’re struggling to post consistently.

2. Tips, Strategies, and How-To Info to Help You Become a Better Blogger

My second goal is to help you and challenge you to become a better blogger. We all have things we can improve and strive to do better. Every other day I’ll have a new tip, idea, or strategy for you. Try them as we work through the Bootcamp and start incorporating as many of them as possible in your blogging.

The reward will be more engagement, more traffic, and more subscribers and hopefully, at the end of the day, more cash in your pocket – results will vary of course, but I promise to share my best stuff with you.

30 Day Blogging Bootcamp

How This Will Work

Once you sign up, each day for the next 30 days I will send you an email and share either a content or strategy tip with you. If you haven’t already, become a member of New Entrepreneurs Workshop in to find inspiration and discuss each day’s content with others that have signed up.

So don’t wait and start building your blog and your confidence online. Learn how to provide consistency, easily keep your commitment and find clarity.

I think you’ll love getting into the habit of blogging consistently and you’ll be amazed at how much your audience and your traffic will grow in those 30 days.

As an added bonus – be sure to bookmark 52 Blog Ideas for your business, to help you with some great content ideas for your blog!

Blog consistently with confidence by signing up for the bootcamp.

Build a Business, Not Another Job

Build a Business, Not Another Job
During this crisis, many people dream of working for themselves, being their own boss, and having the freedom to only take on clients and projects they love.

What they don’t realize, though, is that there is a huge difference between building a business and being self-employed. Because business is an art-form.

This is something I learned the hard way throughout my last 20 years of being “self-employed.” A term I no longer use, and you shouldn’t either.

Business owners scale their income. Self-employed people trade dollars for hours.

Business owners leverage the skills and talents of others. Self-employed people rely only on their own skills.

Discouraged yet? Don’t be. Every business owner started out self-employed. Just don’t stay there. These tips will help you build a sustainable business instead of just another job.

Don’t Try to Do It All Yourself

Building a sustainable business requires that you leverage the talents and time of others. While it might seem cost-effective to simply do everything yourself—especially in the start-up phase when you likely have more time than money—it’s a path to burnout and stress.

Instead, separate your tasks into those that you love and are especially suited for (such as marketing) and those you dislike and aren’t good at. Then make a solid plan to get those that you aren’t good at off your list of things to do. If you feel like you can’t afford to outsource it all right now, start with what you tend to procrastinate the most on, even if it’s just a few hours each month.

Don’t Allow Yourself to Work All the Time

The trouble with working at home is that you live at work. And that means that there’s no clear line in the sand between your workday and your home life. No transition from one to the other.

Since there’s always work to do, it’s easy to find yourself working every available moment—often to the detriment of your family relationships.

You can help avoid this by:

Setting—and maintaining—clear work hours
Having an office with a door you can close when you’re done
Scheduling time for family and other activities
Taking time for yourself

Vacations and Downtime Are Important

Don’t create a business that requires you to be “in the office” every day. At the start, you may need to be available more, but you should definitely be planning for the day when you can be “off the grid” for extended periods of time.

Have trusted virtual assistants who can handle things when you’re not available
Leverage automation tools such as autoresponders and auto-webinar systems
Create repeatable systems so you’re not always re-inventing the wheel

While you might not be able to hit the road with no internet access for weeks at a time, at the very least you should be able to reduce your workload to a daily check-in.

Sound impossible? It’s not. With some forethought and planning, you can create a team—and the systems they need—to successfully run your business without becoming overwhelmed and overworked.

Business is an art-form, it takes practice and consistency to ensure it’s a success. Go inside the studio and look into my Art of Business Startup Program. It is a crash course on starting your own company off on the right foot. This 5 module program walks you through big-picture dreaming and planning by helping you create a business plan, define your purpose, set goals and build a strategy.

Be sure to follow the Studio’s Facebook Page! We’d love to hear from you. The page is a free space where you will find business-focused training and support for female entrepreneurs, as well as inspiration and Studio updates!

Build a Business, not another job

3 Places You’re Leaving Money on the Table

Do you know the 3 Places you’re Leaving Money on the Table?
For any business owner with an online presence (and EVERY business should be online!), there are many passive ways to build income streams into your website and products that will bring in extra money while you focus on serving your current customers. Passive income is good and will help your bottom line while you actively market your business. You’ve invested good money into your business and your website; why not make it work harder for you?

Affiliate Marketing

This is a simple way to make a commission by recommending products or services to your audience. This process is similar to telling your friend or neighbour about the great pizza place where you just ate dinner. Simply sign up for the product’s affiliate program and place a unique link within a product review on your blog or on a web page listing all the business tools you recommend. Every time someone clicks on your link, they are brought to the product’s site and if they make a purchase, you get a commission. Affiliate links can also be added to eBooks or other digital products you sell. However, review the Terms of Service for all the social media platforms before posting an affiliate link.

Creating upsells in your sales funnel

Upsells are another overlooked place where you can bring in extra money. Do you have a basic sales funnel in place, where you make an offer to your broad audience and then have more focused, more expensive offers for them to choose from overtime? These additional offers bring your customers down the funnel toward your most expensive offer. Now, for each main offer in your sales funnel, think of an upsell your customer would find valuable. This may be free admittance into your private Facebook group or maybe it’s a report, checklist, form, or eBook for a nominal fee that is a no-brainer add-on to their order. For your more expensive offers, add a more expensive upsell, like a trial period in your membership site. The key is to choose relevant upsells that will benefit your customer and that makes sense to couple with the initial product purchase. In other words, don’t create an upsell that doesn’t make sense.

Back-end efficiency

Back-end efficiency is important to any business, whether it’s strictly online or whether you also have a physical location. A business coach can objectively assess whether you’re working most efficiently and can offer solutions to make customer service, billing, and customer fulfillment (just to name a few areas) quicker and more accurately. Very often business owners are too close to the situation to see how everything flows (or doesn’t flow) together, similar to why having someone else proofread your sales copy is ideal because they are more likely to pick up typos, strictly because they didn’t write the copy.

A good business coach will be able to look at your company objectively, ask pertinent questions, and guide you through the process of creating a plan for future growth. Consider me your objective third party, the one who can sort through the processes that work and those that don’t work and help mould your side hustle into a profitable business.

Book a discovery call with me and let’s go over where you might be leaving money on the table and start creating your passive income together.

As always, I think you should also join me and many others inside the Studio’s Study Hall Community! We’d love to hear from you on some other ways to generate more passive income!

P.S. Be sure to also check out my 30-Day Passive Income Challenge, it will also help you boost your income!

3 Places you’re Leaving Money on the table

3 Places you’re Leaving Money on the Table

Top Ten Home Business Ideas for Parents

Top Ten Home Business Ideas for Parents
If you are looking to start a home business and are a parent, you may have to make special considerations. You will need to be able to work without punching a clock or having to be available at particular hours, otherwise, you’ll have to get a babysitter. If you don’t want to hire help, you will definitely have some special challenges. But, it’s not impossible. In fact here are the top ten home business ideas for you that don’t require clock punching, or answering to anyone but yourself.

Stock Photographer

Stock photography is used in numerous applications, from websites and blogs to print ads. The demand is quite high for good and unique photographs to use for these reasons. Therefore, most stock photography companies allow independent contractors to upload pictures for sale on their websites. You can also start your own website offering the images for use.

Graphic Designer

Designers are needed everywhere; the demand is high. If you’re good with using creative software to make webpages, advertisements, banners, book covers (eBook and paper) and more, you can work for many companies at the same time performing these services. While it’s deadline based, you can still work at 3 am if you need to.

Freelance Writer

As a freelance writer, there are many different opportunities today based on your skill level. You can write for so-called content mills, individuals looking for writers, as a copywriter writing specific sales copy, or you can write for yourself and publish your own books as PDFs or via Kindle Direct Publishing.

Arts and Craft Seller

If you’re artsy and like creating art, you can do more than just create. You can sell, and you can make bank. Sites like Etsy.com, DeviantArt.com, and Art.com make it easy for individuals to upload pictures of their work to sell. You are responsible for shipping it on time, and you’ll give a percentage of sales to the website you list on. You can also start your own website but usually, you’ll make sales faster working through an established and trusted venue.

Amazon Seller

Fulfillment by Amazon has started a trend in individuals selling both new and used merchandise through their service. Learning how to sell on Amazon can take a little time but there are people who are making six-plus figures doing it, and you can too. This is something you can do on your own time, with your children in tow.

eBay Seller

Yes, eBay is still around, selling on eBay is a little harder than the other choices, but many people do it successfully as a full-time job. If you have access to the right products, you can do it too. Again, this is something you can do on your own time. The only thing that might take a lot of work on your part is packing and shipping.

Lifestyle Blogger

You’ve likely seen the movie, “Julie & Julia” right? Well, Julie started out as just another blogger, blogging about her adventures cooking from Julia Child’s cookbook. She became very popular, sold the rights to her story, and a movie was made. She made money off the deal, of course. Today, bloggers blog about all sorts of things and earn money through advertising, affiliate marketing, and product promotions. You can, too.

Herb Gardner

This work-at-home business takes a little time and work, but it’s healthy, the children can help, and you can make about 60K a year from your back yard if it’s allowed in your area. You can sell at farmers’ markets but you can also sell directly to restaurants if you plan and market right.

Virtual Assistant

If you’re detail-oriented and like to work at your computer, the life of a virtual assistant might be for you. Don’t want to be tied to one office or person all day, every day? Consider becoming a virtual assistant, which allows you a more flexible work environment.

Social Media Manager

If you love social media, consider starting a social media management business. You’ll be paid to hag out on your favourite platforms, all day! It doesn’t require a large investment or special equipment to get started, especially if you already have a computer and internet service.

Working from home is often a parent’s dream. They can be near their kids, not have to work by someone else’s clock, and still, earn enough money to not only pay for needed items but vacations, dream cars, and more.

It might be time for you to consider starting your own business. I know it was the best decision I ever made for me and my family! If you are unsure where to start, take a peek at the Studio’s resource page, there is plenty there to help you get started today.

Tell me, if you could start your own business TODAY – with nothing stopping you, what business would you launch?

I’d love to hear from you, tell me in the comments or join us over in the Studio Workshop, my free Facebook group for women in business!

Top Ten Home Business Ideas for Parents

Are You Using Blog Drafts To Get Ahead?

Are You Using Blog Drafts To Get Ahead?
I have a quick tip for you today that will come in handy as you’re working on getting ahead on your blogging. It’s using the draft feature. Yes, it’s handy that WordPress and most other blogging platforms have a way to save your posts as drafts so you can continue to work on it over the course of a few days. It’s even better that they usually auto-save for you – at least it is in my case. But there’s another great way to use the draft feature.

You can use drafts to get ahead of the blogging game in several different ways.

Let’s start with the most obvious one.

Use Drafts to Work on Your Next Blog Post (or Two)

The most obvious way to use drafts is, of course, to work on your current blog post until it is ready to publish. But don’t just stop there. If you know you have a busy day tomorrow or later on in the week, go ahead and give yourself a head start by creating a draft and working on it here and there as you can fit it in your busy day. You’ll be glad you did when it comes time to wrap up that particular post.

Use Drafts to Plan Out Your Week

You can also use drafts to plan out your blogging for the week. Let’s say you want to post 5 times per week. Come up with 5 topics and create a draft for each. Then start working on them, making sure you wrap up and publish at least one of the posts on each of your publishing days.

Not only will this keep you on track and show you at a glance what you’ll be blogging about this week, but it also allows you to work on multiple posts throughout the week, giving you options when you get stuck on writing one post.

Use Drafts as A Way of Storing Blog Post Ideas

Let’s wrap this up with my favourite way to use the draft feature. And that’s to use it as a storage container for ideas for future blog posts. Here’s how to do it. When you get an idea for a blog post, go ahead and create a draft. Come up with a working title and make a quick note of what your blog post will be about. If you’re feeling ambitious, go ahead and write a quick outline for the post. Then save it as a draft.

To be honest, I have over 75 drafts sitting in my post calendar! Some are just titles, some are full blow written blogs that just need to be formatted. This makes it super easy when I am “not in the mood” to write, I can choose one, format, and publish.

Do this anytime you come up with an idea and save them for later. Then whenever you need something to blog about, browse through your drafts and pick one of these.
The idea is there and you may even have done some of the writing already. These drafts make for fast blog posts and are just the thing when you’re suffering from writer’s block.

Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to read 52 Blog Ideas for your business, who couldn’t use 52 blog ideas? Or just head straight to the Classroom to download the PDF!

Now, hop into the Studio Workshop and let us know, have you always been a drafter?

30 Day Blogging Bootcamp
Are You Using Blog Drafts To Get Ahead?

P.S. Did you know I offer a 30 Day Blogging Bootcamp? The Bootcamp provides you with 30 Days of tips, tricks and tools to keep your blog working. In it, you learn how to provide consistency, easily keep your commitment and find clarity.

So, why not sign up and start building your blog and your confidence online.

30 Day Blogging Bootcamp ($27)

Do you have a Vision Board?

Do you have a Vision Board

Do you have specific goals? If so, do you have a Vision Board?
If not, think about what you want simply by asking yourself some questions:

• Where do you want to be with your business in the next year? In 5 years? In 10 years?
• How much money do you want to make in these same time frames?
• Do you want to hire employees or a virtual team?
• What services or products do you want to offer your clients?
• Where do you want to live?
• What’s on that bucket list?

One friend of mine who is in sales told me he likes to have two vacations booked a year with his family because he needs something fun to look forward to and the single summer vacation wasn’t enough anymore. Another friend in direct sales recently told me that she stopped dreaming big a long time ago because she got depressed when she couldn’t make those dreams a reality. Now she’s found great success with her company and has started dreaming big again.

I’ve also seen some gurus online say they are motivated to earn more because then they are able to give more to their favourite charities and causes that are close to their hearts. Again, there are no wrong answers when defining your goals. It’s more important to have them defined so you know when you reach those goals so you can find something new to achieve.

Create a Vision Board for Daily Motivation

Jack Canfield, the New York Times Bestselling Author of the “Chicken Soup For The Soul” book series, is a big believer in the power of vision boards.

Canfield said “Creating a vision board is probably one of the most valuable visualization tools available to you.” The Law of Attraction is a powerful thing. Our thoughts can lead to amazing things.

Simply put, the Law of Attraction is the ability to attract into our lives whatever we are focusing on. The Law of Attraction which uses the power of the mind to translate whatever is in our thoughts and materialize them into reality. In basic terms, all thoughts turn into things eventually. If you focus on negative doom and gloom you will remain under that cloud. If you focus on positive thoughts and have goals that you aim to achieve you will find a way to achieve them with massive action.

This is why the universe is such an infinitely beautiful place!

I adore creating vision boards because they are visual reminders of what you want to achieve. They also serve as a daily reminder of what makes you happy and they are meant to give you motivation when you just don’t feel like working that day.

Take those answers to the goals questions above and find visual representation for each one. In today’s digital age, most of us use Pinterest and create a vision board there. Some still love to use photos and magazine images onto poster board or even to paste images into a Word document. Do what works for you – what will motivate you. What you will see every single day.

When creating your board, take notice of photos that catch your eye, even if it doesn’t specifically answer a goal question. There’s something that attracted your subconscious to the photo so it’s worth posting on your vision board. Post your vision board prominently in your office or as your computer wallpaper so you can see it every day. And remember that action is mandatory in order to reach those goals.

[Tweet ““Creating a vision board is probably one of the most valuable visualization tools available to you.” Jack Canfield”]

P.S. It is also a great idea to check out this blog post about goal setting and happiness!

https://www.thevirtualstudio.ca/how-goal-setting-can-help-in-the-pursuit-of-happiness/

Do you have a Vision Board

Do you have a Captivating Vision Board

Adopt a mantra and live by it.

Adopt a mantra and live by it

Building your confidence is not easy. Doing it so you can magnetically attract new clients or customers is even harder. One small thing you can do is to adopt a mantra and live by it.

In the 1999 movie, “Galaxy Quest”, an entire civilization bases its core values on a cheesy TV sci-fi show from Earth. They take the series hero’s glib motto, “Never give up; never surrender” to new heights—and achieve peace within a warring society before teaming up with earthmen to defeat a supervillain.

This is what happens when you adopt a mantra, motto or slogan—and live by it.

“Never give up; never surrender” is a great motto, when you are trying to build new habits that increase your confidence.

P.S. Come on – admit it. Galaxy Quest is one of the best bad movies ever made! You love it as much as I do.
Do you already have a mantra? I’d love to hear it, leave a comment and tell me what it is!

Oh and don’t forget:

NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER

P.S. Have you joined us over at the TVS Workshop Community? If not, stop by and share your mantra with us there!

Adopt a mantra and live by it

What you need to know:

Your Ideal Reader

Your Position

Define your goals

Blogging Masterclasslogging Challenge

Build a Financial Safety Net

Make Sure Your Family is on Board

Take Time for YOU

1. Give You Plenty of Ideas for New Content to Help You Become a More Consistent Blogger

2. Tips, Strategies, and How-To Info to Help You Become a Better Blogger

How This Will Work

Don’t Try to Do It All Yourself

Don’t Allow Yourself to Work All the Time

Vacations and Downtime Are Important

Build a Business, not another job

Affiliate Marketing

Creating upsells in your sales funnel

Back-end efficiency

3 Places you’re Leaving Money on the table

3 Places you’re Leaving Money on the Table

Stock Photographer

Graphic Designer

Freelance Writer

Arts and Craft Seller

Amazon Seller

eBay Seller

Lifestyle Blogger

Herb Gardner

Virtual Assistant

Social Media Manager

Top Ten Home Business Ideas for Parents

Top Ten Home Business Ideas for Parents

Use Drafts to Work on Your Next Blog Post (or Two)

Use Drafts to Plan Out Your Week

Use Drafts as A Way of Storing Blog Post Ideas

30 Day Blogging Bootcamp Are You Using Blog Drafts To Get Ahead?

Create a Vision Board for Daily Motivation

Do you have a Vision Board

Do you have a Vision Board

Do you have a Captivating Vision Board

NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER

Adopt a mantra and live by it

30 Day Blogging Bootcamp
Are You Using Blog Drafts To Get Ahead?