Accounting
The first thing you need to do for your business is come up with a system of processing and keeping track of payments, both incoming and outgoing. Say, for example, if your business revolves around buying and selling domain names. My suggestion would be to make a spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel or a similar program and make a separate category for names, how much you bought the domain for, how much you sold it for, how much profit you made or loss you took, and how many domains each person bought. This way, you can not only keep track of how much money you’re making but you can also keep track of who’s buying what so that you can adjust your dealings with that person in the future. You’ll also want to setup some sort of system for your clients to purchase domain names from your website and pay by credit card or paypal (Paypal offers a checkout system specifically for businesses like this one and they accept most credit cards while keeping personal data secure). Keep in mind that if you use paypal, you’ll lose 30 cents plus something like 0.02% (2 cents on every dollar) for every incoming transaction. You can make this money back by including that expense in with your price for the domain.

Advertising
Advertising is a key feature of every business. No matter how small or large a company is, all companies need advertising. Many large companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year on advertising alone. Luckily for you, however, all it takes is a little bit of brain power to generate completely free advertising. Bringing back the domain name business from before, you could promote your business but swapping adspace on other websites. A lot of webmasters are looking for free ways to get more viewers and swapping ad spaces helps everyone out. All you have to do is include a little section off to the side or make a whole new page for it labelled as “Supporters” or “Our Friends” and include as many ads from other websites as you want. Likewise, the people that you are promoting on your website will do the same for you on theirs. This way, you’ll get loads of people coming to your website from all over the place. You can also make a youtube video about your business and upload it. Millions of people watch youtube videos every day and a few thousand are bound to run into yours and go to your website. You can also take out a listing on craigslist or any number of other social websites like it. If you have some startup cash, don’t spend it on an ad in the paper, instead put it towards Google Adwords which will list your website among the paid listings section above all other search results. If you do all of these things, or come up with a few of your own, you are nearly guaranteed a giant amount of traffic.

Marketing
While you may be thinking that advertising and marketing are the same thing, there’s a slight difference that separates them. While advertising is getting people to come to your website and getting your name out there, marketing is what you do once the viewers find you. You see, there’s hundreds of millions of people using the internet everyday but only a small percentage of those are going to see your ads and only a small percentage of THOSE are going to come to your website. It also stands to reason, then, that only a certain percentage of the people that come to your website are going to purchase something. That’s where marketing comes in. Marketing is what gives these potential customers a reason to buy a service or product from your company. You need to related to these people and make them feel at home. Don’t try to push your products on them because then they’ll just get scared off. Instead, let them come to you. Don’t be too eager to make a sale but also try to coaxe them into making a purchase. It’s like putting cheese out to catch a rat. You wouldn’t stand around and wait for the rat to see you holding the cheese, would you? Of course not. Instead, lay down the cheese and hide the trap and let that rat come to you.

Content
The content, while seemingly the biggest part of your business, is actually just the meat of your pot roast. It doesn’t really matter what you’re cooking…beef, pork, turkey…people will eat anything they can get their hands on. It is important, however, to spice up your content by providing a decent number of products and/or services and keeping up with them. For example, if I were to buy a zippo lighter, I would go for the most stylish one that I could get for the cheapest amount of money possible. However, if I saw that there was a much cooler zippo that was a bit too much out of my planned price range, BUT it came with a 30-day money back guarantee and a lifetime warranty (that I’d probably never use), I’d buy that one. That’s how everyone is. Business is mostly about keeping the style:cost ratio as low as possible but little subtleties like lifetime warranties make a big difference even though hardly anyone wants to have to mail something back in and wait for it to get fixed and returned. Most likely, they’ll just buy a new one. Another important thing is to keep upgrading your content. When people hear that there’s a better version of their product available, they rush out to get it. Especially if the new version is the same price as the old one.

I hope that by reading this article you have learned something about the key elements of business. By breaking the business system down into its core elements, you can piece the whole scheme together bit by bit. Take things slow and do the little things right and I guarantee your business will end up exactly how you want it to in the end. Keep focused and don’t let the rainy days get you down. All you have to do is stay motivated and concentrate on the task at hand to succeed in both business and in life. I hope you have a wonderful day and a wonderful life and that you succeed in all things