Posted by admin | Posted in Others | Posted on 13-08-2009
I mean no offense here, but Starting Online Business For Dummies in my opinion, is not a good guide for online business. For newbie, this book might get you excited, however, being an experienced internet entrepreneur myself, I can tell lots of information in this book is misleading and outdated. Plus, you can easily found such information easily if you search at Google for related blogs or forums. Or you can sign up for my mini course for better and practical step-by-step techniques. This review is based on my personal experience.
What’s inside
Basically, this book is about using the internet as a way to start, sell and connect with your customers with lower cost. It introduces lots of social media and business related website: Flickr, Microsoft business tools, eBay, Amazon, Social network like MySpace.
What to sell
This book highlighted a few business models including:
- selling on eBay.
- becoming Amazon and Cafepress seller.
- selling your knowledge.
The fact is, these models is not as easy as it sounds. Take example selling your knowledge. Of course, you know about something. However, does other people on the internet is looking for your knowledge anyway? While selling on eBay could be hard. How much profit you’ll gain depends on the demand and type of products.
Web hosting and site creation
Despite for dummies name, lots of methods inside this book is not doable, especially when you are a dummy. Also, some of the jargons inside is not necessary to start making money online. These are some jargons and methods related to website creation:
- Hiring technical experts to assist you.
- How to find a good web hosting service.
- How to use free Site Builder.
- Creating an AOL store.
- How to create a quality content for your website.
- Using Yahoo Geocities.
Site promotion
Based from my experience, site promotion is the most important part for online business. Too bad, Starting Online Business For Dummies doesn’t give much information for this part. You can still make money online without having your own product. You don’t need to master lots of site creation methods, since there are lots of do-it-yourself site builder available. You don’t even need to know how to handle customer support or setting up payment processor. However, without effective promotion, your online business is as good as dead.
The only promotion method being taught in this guide is search engine optimization (SEO). From what I can tell, getting good ranking in search engine like Google is hard. You need to learn lots of things, doing lots of works and waiting for months to see good result.
I found that the best, faster way to drive traffic from search engines is by posting articles to websites like Ezine Articles (ezinearticles.com) or Squidoo (squidoo.com). These websites are loved by Google, with lots of backlinks. You can post articles for free to these websites and get ranked in less than one week without much things to do and learn.
In my opinion, any books about online business should focus more than just search engine optimization (SEO) methods. Latest and sustainable techniques like video marketing, article marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and affiliate marketing should be highlighted.
Conclusion
Starting Online Business For Dummies could give you a brief picture on a few things involved when starting online business. However, don’t depend too much on this guide when you really want to start online business. This guide contains lots of outdated and misleading information. If you like Starting Online Business For Dummies, I guarantee you’ll like my mini course even more.
