Jun
20
Internet Marketing Class Back Home
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I’m returning to Burley, Idaho to teach an Internet Marketing Class to interested students and parents from my Alma Mater, American Heritage Academy. I feel like it’s a wonderful opportunity to give back to the community. Sometimes I look at my home community and think, “they’ve only ever known agriculture and the farms are consolidating and even dissappearing.”
There is so much opportunity in our world and, though I haven’t mastered things on the Internet by any means myself, I think I can open their eyes at home to whole new possibilitiles. It’s the least I can do after others have openned my eyes for me.
I’ll either record my notes here or set up an ATutor system to teach the course.
Jun
20
Internet Commerce Kit
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I didn’t write this, John did when I missed our Internet marketing class. There are a ton of good links here and I want to record it.
Internet Success Kit
John from BackcountryStore.com spoke at Paul Allens e-business class at UVSC. He was amazing. He spoke about how to make money on the internet and about how very few people realize how cheap and easy it is to do. He gave us a piece of paper on it with a bunch of links that he called a "Kit", or, a recipe for creating a successful business online. Actually, what it is is a bunch of websites that are tools and reference points for setting up a successful business. I liked what he said so much that I’m posting it.
Here’s what he had on the paper:
"Poor people have expenses
Middle class people have liabilities they call assets
Rich people have income producing assets that pay for their liabilities"
-Robert T. Kiyosaki
Paraphrased from Rich Dad, Poor Dad
(I happen to be a huge fan of Rich Dad, Poor Dad)
Websites in no particular order:
www.backcountrystore.com — My Site
www.browserecam.com — Excellent web business
www.abestweb.com — affiliate community
www.cj.com — affilate network
www.webmasterworld.com — hardcore web geeks
www.notesfromtheroad.com — excellent affiliate
www.overture.com — pay per click advertising
www.google.com/adsense — get paid for pay per click advertising
www.skiersjournal.com — my affiliate site
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=us — a way to search for good markets
www.wordtracker.com — pay per click word universe tool. Difficult to master.
www.amazon.com — Top affiliate company in the world
www.nureal.com –reasonable multi site hosting
www.websidestory.com — Hitbox professional reasonably priced web analytics
www.atomz.com — inexpensive ecommerce search
www.oscommerce.com — open source ecommerce web store
www.elance.com — programmers bidding on doing web work
Jun
20
Do’s and Don’ts with Venture Capitalists – Dave McGinn – CFO Agilix Labs, Inc.
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Do’s
- Do 1: Good presentation that addresses
- Market Risk – The TAM (Total Addressable Market) should be at least 1 billion for VCs to pay any attention to you.
- Product Risk – Why your product has the qualities to capture the market share you claim it will.
- Execution Risk – Why your team can execute.
- Financial Risk – That’s what the VCs are for.
- Do 2: Have firm grasp on valuation
- DCF – discounted cash flows
- Training 12 month revenue – In technology, 1 million revenue trail makes the company worth 3-5 million.
- Projected revenues 1-2X value.
- Acquisitions – In the same industry with similar characteristics and revenue capabilities.
- It’s best to ues a triangular approach to valuation – Use 3 of the possibilities.
- Do 3: Nail the revenue! Understand your business projections because your reputation is on the line. You have to deliver or you lose credibility.
- Do 4: Smart Money – If I win, who else wins? Go for money from the companies that will benefit as you are successful.
- Do 5: VCs have two motives (Greed and Fear) – Use one or both. Always work with more than one VC firm at the same time and let the other know that you have options.
Don’t’s and Common Mistakes
- Don’t resist managment changes. “If someone can make me money better than I can make me money, why should I complain?”
- Not understanding valuation. You don’t want to lose more than 20-30 percent on the 1st or 2nd round. – “Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered”
- Not paying attention to the capital table. “If cash is King, equity is Queen.”
- Not growing/hiring the right team.
- Know when the founder should step down
- A players hire other A players and B players hires C and D players so that they aren’t challenged.
Jun
20
Bootstrapping Businesses
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In Paul Allen and Rick Farr’s class yesterday, they discussed some of the characteristics and statistics of good businesses for bootstrapping.
- Growing Market (at least 10 percent annually)
- Note: of all businesses, 60 percent survive. In a market that isn’t growing, only 20 percent survive. In a market that is growing, 80 percent survive. It is simply harder to take customers from existing businesses than it is to find new customers.
- High Margins (for Internet and Software companies, a company can’t survive bootstrapping with lower than 60 percent margins).
- Customize your product for a few and charge a ton for it. Retain the rights and then rebrand it and sell it to a larger market.