Today we want to talk about your business model. Now that you have decided on your target market, identified a raft of potential products and figured out how you want to build your list, you need to create your business model.

Your business model
Your business model is the package you design to bring your market, products and list together to turn them into a profit-making system. We might use all sorts of scary sounding words like formal organization, strategic plan and tactical steps. But we dont need to profit-making system will do.

One of the problems you have been faced with is the vast amount of information you have been hit with as you try to build your business (we talked about this in the Introduction). Your problem is not enough information, but rather, what looks like too much information.

When you review everything you have read by all the different people you hoped might help you, you end up being overwhelmed by it all. All of it is good, all of it is useful, all of it can make you loads of money. Your problem is how to make sense out of all of it.

Lets say you have looked carefully at the successful models of five or six of the gurus people who have really made it big in this business. These are people who are really excited about what they are doing, who really seem to be having fun doing it and who are earning big bucks along the way!

One tells you search engine placement is the most important element of a successful business. Another seems to ignore search engine placement altogether and talks about the importance of classified advertising. A third tells you to concentrate on your sales copy and headline while a fourth emphasises your bonus offers.

How to do you sort this all out?

My suggestion is that you pick out one guru one of these many who all are offering you very good information. Choose one and copy his or her model. Copy it letter perfect from one end to the other. (Remember, this doesnt mean you blatantly pirate sales copy or newsletter content and pass it off as your own, this means you copy a successful model.)

By copying a business model, I mean you use as your market the one your chosen guru uses, you identify the same sorts of products and you build your list in the same way he or she does.

If your chosen guru has built his or her list by writing content-rich articles and posting them to discussion groups, then this is what you should do. If your mentor has been successful by emphasising high search engine placement, then you do the same.

Pay-per-click advertising, subscription newsletters, classified advertising in Sunday newspapers, rented mailing lists, members-only websites, ebooks, product licences, software, Google AdSense, and the list goes on and on.

My point is that your chosen guru will tell you that doing some of these things is the way to make money in this business and that others of these things are not necessarily all that profitable. This is because this is what works for him or her; these things are parts of his or her model.

For now, copy this model to the letter. Later on, when you are earning big bucks , you can start to experiment. You can begin to venture beyond your original business model.

Then and only then can you start to use all this very useful information you received from other of the gurus: this information you filed away for future, profitable reference.

Thats all for this time. See you soon.

Next time we shall talk about some of the nuts and bolts you need to think about to make it all happen.

Thanks for listening

William Rice-Johnston

Copyright 2006 Mary Rice-Johnston & Golden Goose Direct. All rights reserved.