Another Interesting Business Idea For Discussion

This is another episode of Tuesday With Kenneth where I help our members with their challenges. Today we have Jane, who shared with us her interesting business idea.

It’s an interesting concept, though I’m not too sure how profitable it will be.
From the look of your website, it seems that you are not too competent in web programming. It’s okay, but you must keep in mind that if you want to grow, you must take one of the 2 paths:
- Master web programming yourself
- Outsource web programming and learn how to manage programmers
That is something you need to keep in mind and work on consistently. For now, you just need to promote your website and measure the response.
Promoting your website is pretty straight forward. You can go to various book forums to spread the words out. At this stage, you need to know what is the market response to your service.
Bear in mind that market response depends on 3 factors:
- The effectiveness of your sales letter (in this case, your homepage)
- The source of your traffic (whether it’s targeted)
- The business model
If you are not getting response from your promotion effort, it must be due to one of these 3.

About your sales letter / homepage

My assessment is that your homepage is weak and it needs some major improvement.
You need to ask yourself an important question, “What do you expect your visitor to do when they visit your website?”
If you want them “to buy a book from you for $1″, then you need to show them what book you’re selling.
If your objective is to get them to sign up your newsletter, you should include the signup form on the same page and give them a good reason why they should opt-in.
Remember, when people visit your website, it’s your job to arouse their interest and give them a clear instruction on what to do next. If not, they will just do one thing – leave!

About your business model

As I said in my earlier post on How To Start An Online Business, never reinvent the wheel.
Your business is actually buying and selling cheap books. A simple search for “buy cheap books” and “sell books” returns several established websites that are already doing that.
As an entrepreneur, your job is to think of how to make your service better and different from other competitors.
For now, it’s apparent that you can’t win them in terms of popularity. You also can’t beat them in terms of website features and design. But there is one thing you can be better now – you can have a better business model, since you have the advantage of evaluating and improving their business models.

Do not be intimidated by these established sites. Start with whatever resources you have now. As long as you keep upgrading your skills and keep moving towards the vision of a better business model, your business must grow and prosper.