Web Design and eBusiness Marketing Tip # 2

Use Pre-Sales to Jump Start Your Digital Business.

My favorite technique is to finance your business with pre-sales. If you have a good product sell it on Ebay, Amazon (in a Zshop) , Ubid, or Half.com. If you have a great service try listing it with Elance, Creative Moonlighter, or Guru.com. By first trying to sell your products or services in these marketplaces you will get a good idea how successful your business will be on-line. These are great ways to finance your business by selling your products on these web site marketplaces, before you invest a few thousand bucks in an E-business web site, or even larger capital expenditure in a traditional business. These marketplaces will help you get an advanced indication of how viable your business idea is on-line. A good place to learn how to sell via auctions is Stephanie McIntrye's E Sales Unlimited. Stephanie makes about $150,000 dollars on Ebay and teaches a course to do so in New Jersey. I am trying to encourage her to run a class on-line in a webinar or telecourse.

Where there's a will there's a way!

Let me give you an example from personal experience. I sold Internet advertising, and built a business on the Internet, before I even had a computer. I would go down to the Library, and use the free computers, and then search weekly databases of print and Internet publications looking to hire sales reps.

Then I drafted up a standard sales letter template. Next I would use my broadcast fax (since I couldn't afford a computer at the time) and faxed all the publications that week looking for in-house sales reps. In the letter I sold them on the fact, it would be cheaper and more efficient, to contract the sales work to me instead of hiring in-house sales people. Furthermore, I sold them on giving me an upfront retainer to do the sales work, as an independent contractor. This was one hell of a sales job!

Of course I had good references (former employers) - as testimonials. It was hard work in the beginning. But in about 6 months I had clients, enough money for a computer, and other business equipment. Within a year I was making a few thousand dollars a month, moreover I made commission money on top of this income. In other words, pre-selling went on to grant me tens of thousands of dollars of working capital, before I could afford to be in business, or even own a computer! Pre-sales had granted me a business!

Do something while working on grants, loans, equity, or other forms of financing. Learn to pre-sell your idea. A good book on developing sales letters and sales copy-editing in the Web's text-centric environment is: Make My Words Sell . The Bible for developing a web site that sells with deadly effectiveness is: Make My Site Sell!

Pre-selling can be a powerful mode of financing. In many industries there are trade shows or business expos where you can display your wares - products - or services to buyers in your industry. This is a great environment to present yourself because, these buyers are pre-qualified customers.

Many times you will get real feed back on your product, and even a great deal of sales - if your product is really ready for prime time. Make up samples or prototypes of your products, or sales materials of your services and take orders at the trade shows. If you receive large orders, from established businesses, you can take your orders to factors (people who advance you financing based on your pending orders). Plus you establish the fact that you have a viable business with a real demand for your products. Then when you put the equity on your house up for a loan, or borrow from friends and family for a business endeavor, you are doing it based on the knowledge your business concept is solid and not just an illusion.

In my first business, I made samples of my product, did a lot of fashion shows - PR and advertising. When I opened the doors of my little shop - I made almost 5,000 dollars the first day and 12,000 dollars the first month in sales. I broke even with my initial investment within two months. So, I speak from experience.

FUBU, started with selling caps and tee-shirts on the streets, in my home town of Queens NY, and later started doing the major retail trade shows like the Magic. This exposure at trade shows helped to catapult them to become a major brand - doing hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly sales. These are just regular guys from the streets, without an MBA, so you can do it to. I hope this advice inspires other black business people - Hispanic entrepreneurs - and minorities business people to get out there and pre-sell their business concepts.

Don't forget other talents or knowledge you have to leverage to finance your business. In my first business after a recession, my partner and I were having a real tough time in keeping the business afloat. This was one of the most challenging, embarrassing, anxiety ridden points in my life. It was totally bleak. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, my contractors were giving me hell. My Apartment's landlord was ready to evict me. The landlord of the business retail space I was renting, was trying to shut me down. It was totally frustrating. I couldn't get any rest. In short - it was hell! This was one of the worst periods in my life.

Then one day my partner and I went to see the artsy movie called "Daughters of the Dust" (just to keep our sanity). It was a story about the Sea Islands, and my partner was from that part of the country. My partner was annoyed at the lack of accuracy of the film, in relation to the Sea Island's. I suggested that we sponsor a trip to the region since, the film was hot at the time. We would show and submerge people in the present day culture. We took our last bit of money, which we really needed to buy food, and had some flyers made up about a trip to the sea islands.

We then located all the movie theaters were where the film was playing. Our plan was to pass out flyers at the end of the movie shows. We decided to be at all the shows at two (2) places in the City where the movie was playing. We attended the movie theaters where Daughters of the Dust was playing and passed out the flyers, receiving a warm response.

Needless to say we were dogged tired, after a full day of walking throughout New York City all day - passing out flyers. We went home totally exhausted but noticed our message machine was all lit up with messages. My partner started calling people back. Needless to say a few months later, we had sold about $30,000 dollars in travel sales reinvigorating the cash-flow in our business. Again this is an example of using pre-sales and leveraging your knowledge to grant yourself a business.