Required Reading For Your Online Business

Home-based entrepreneurs have more than they can do all the time. How in the world can anyone expect a person so overwhelmed with work to do more, especially a trivial and unnecessary task like reading?

Well, reading is not trivial, and to succeed you must read everything about your business you can find. You can’t afford to not know about some important aspect of what you’re doing, and often reading is the best way to learn what you need to do or know. Some recent studies indicate as many as 86% of new business owners have no previous business experience at all.

That means most are OJT (on-the-job training) entrepreneurs. This might be good because the best way to learn is by doing something yourself, but you have money and time invested! You need to get up to speed on a lot of issues as soon as possible. You’ve got to do a crash course in taxes, legal issues, business tools, marketing, finance, and customer relations. 

This is in addition to learning all you can about your products. You’ve got to read, read, and read! Once you get in the habit, you’ll find a few reliable sources of information to which you’ll return over and over again. Use your bookmarking capability to store these sites where you can find them readily. Use the bookmark bar to put the ones you use all the time right on top of your browser’s page.

The Internet has opened the information gates to one and all. There is so much information in cyberspace that one person can become overwhelmed and get nothing from it. “Information Overload” is a very real thing, and it can be almost paralyzing if you don’t make up your mind to get on top of it. Besides, much of what you are exposed to is useless and irrelevant. Take SPAM, for example: A major problem I’ve seen repeatedly is loss of focus. When you are on the Internet doing anything at all, what happens? You are flooded with pop-ups, pop-unders, and all manner of banner-type pages you did not request.

A lot of people don’t have the self-discipline to concentrate on their main reason for being on the Net—their business. They waste too much of their limited time resources chasing all over the place trying to look at everything. So my first advice to you is to stay with your business and put aside all the distractions. A little practice at this will make you much more productive.

Good sources of information you need to read on a regular basis don’t just happen. What you need to do is determine areas where you need more knowledge or where there is constant change and pursue these on a regular basis.

The focus of this article is on Internet resources, grouped into general subject areas primarily related to activities you will normally perform almost daily in carrying on your business. Your time is limited, so you must decide what is most urgent for you to know. Place priorities on reading and learn to separate the important areas and leave the rest. I suggest you use this article as a flexible guide. 

Here’s the way I use many “How To” articles that contain lists (like this one) and the idea may help you, too:

1. Print it out so you can manually arrange the priorities of items and perhaps delete information you don’t need.
   
   
2. Copy the article to whatever text editor you use (MSWord, Notepad. etc.) Make the changes you have from No. 1 above and move items around to meet your needs.
   
   
3. Schedule a little time daily or weekly to pursue the items that are important to you.
   
   
4. Make yourself do these things regularly. Habit is hard to break, just like I HAVE to read my e-mail before doing anything else every day.

Here’s a list of some important articles and reports I found that relate to your business on the Internet. Many of them also sell services you need; go back to these every few months to see if new products are available to help you. A lot more useful Websites are out there; read and study as many as you can:

DOMAIN NAMES:

Wikipedia: Domain Name
Provides in-depth discussion of what a domain name is and how it is used. You can find out about registrars, top-level domains, subdomains, and other domain uses. There is also a discussion of commercial resale of domain names.

InterNIC: Public Information Regarding Internet Domain Name Registration Services
This is a US Department of Commerce site providing information about domain names, complaint resolution, and other domain information. The FAQs answer many questions about ICANN, the governing body of domain names, and there is a WHOIS service which will tell you who owns a particular domain name. They also have a complete list of registrars (companies selling domain names); use this to find an affordable provider, perhaps one that includes hosting or other services.

Checkdomain.com
This site offers the ability to examine and manipulate domains in many ways. You can search for an available domain, find out who owns a domain, purchase one, transfer a name, and perform many other services related to domain names. They even have a way to use all these functions from any wireless device like a cell phone or PDA.

Webopedia: Domain Name
This site is another source of domain name information. What is helpful here is many links are available to help you find name extensions and details about how to register a domain name. If you are new to domains, this is a Website you should visit.

Instant Domain Search
Had I known about this site years ago, much time would have been saved. It takes a lot of effort to find the right domain; one must think about search engine recognition, telling customers exactly what you do, and ease of remembering the name, among others. This site tells you immediately if your name is available; if it has already been taken you will be instantly provided with a list of alternates. All the search functions I have ever seen make you enter each prospective name and then view the results. This saves a ton of time. VERY USEFUL!

The Site Wizard: Tips on Choosing a Good Domain Name
This site gives you information about issues to consider when choosing the best domain name for your website. Some things to consider are length, whether to use hyphens or plurals, which extension to use (.com, etc.), and other considerations.

WEBSITE DESIGN:

How To Article: Website Design
Here is a discussion of usability, the ability of your visitors to use your Website with ease and in a way to help them get what they want. You also help yourself if your visitors are happy.

Website Tonight® by GoDaddy
Here you can create your own Website using templates. They offer three different plans beginning at $4.99 per month. The cost includes hosting and some e-mail. Some benefits included in these plans are RSS feeds, forums, Flash, Video, guest book and a lot more. This is an inexpensive, easy way to make your own Website.

Homestead: Create Your Own Website
Here you can get a domain name and create your Website for $4.99 a month. Options available are E-commerce with ability to accept credit cards, professional site design, and help driving traffic to the site.

WEB HOSTING:

Top 10 Web Hosting: Comparison of sites
Here you can see a comparison of 10 popular web hosting companies starting at $4.95 a month. There are reviews available for most of them. This will help you choose the best host for your Website.

Best Web Hosting 2007: Feature Comparison
Some of the hosts in this list are similar to those above, but there are several different sites listed. In addition, here you can find a comparison of host features that could be helpful in making your choice. I have used both of these in the past; both are very helpful sources of information.

Google search terms like those we have used as subject titles above, and you will find an inexhaustible supply of excellent advice and “How To” articles related to Internet business. You should read as many of these articles and reports as you can. The entire knowledge base of the Internet is at your fingertips...just be sure to make regular business reading one of your habits.