Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Sorry about your situation. Here are ten points. Unfortunately their focus is not on what you really need, viz immediate income now, this month, this week. For what they are worth:

1) Do NOT buy a ton of products promising to teach you how to make money on the Internet.

2) DO look at the FREE content various Internet gurus offer about this subject. To give just two examples (of dozens) www.brendonburchard.com out of the U.S. and Sean D'Souza, originally, I believe, from Mumbai, operating out of New Zealand, cf. www.psychotactics.com.

Their focus is on selling information products on-line. However some of their free content relates to selling products as well, especially for a cause driven business. The story of the cause needs to be told. It has to catch the viewers attention quickly, be compelling, and lead to action (buying a product).

3) Should you be tempted actually to some guru's "how to make money on the Internet" product, FIRST, do some due diligence. Googel the guru and the product thoroughly, review the website, and check the Internet scam reports.

Among them are www.strategicprofits.com, the (rather garish, tending towards ranting) www.saltydroid.info and IM Report Card. IM's reports of the gurus are whitewashed. The product reviews tend to be more reliable.

4) Social Media can have a tremendous impact. A case study about a major effort for a leukemia victim (which unfortunately failed) and lessons learned is: The Dragonfly Effect, by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith. Read the reviews of it on Amazon.com for some ideas and then decide whether buying a used copy would make sense. (I am inclined to think you will garner enough information from reading the reviews.) Here is the long link:

https://www.amazon.com/Dragonfly-Effect-Effective-Powerful-Social/product-r...

5) Think hard about a) how you can provide value to your customers and b) what your unusual selling proposition will be.

6) There has been considerable press in Europe and the U.S. about giant companies in India having much more of a social orientation than U.S. ones. Think about doing some research about such a company whiich is in your area.

I would take two steps. The first step would be to seek senior managers of such firms to serve on an advisory board of directors for your on-line venture. Perhaps it should be a non-profit venture. (As a non-profit, you, as its manager, can still receive a reasonable salary.)

The second step would be to form an alliance with such a firm to support your cause driven business. Your business model is perhaps to help families facing the crisis of having to provide intensive care at home.

7) Consider somehow getting the support of a micro-lender. There are a number of these in India, such as SKS Microfinance (www.sksindia.com).

I have read its interest rates are generally 25% to 30% , which seems astonishlngly high. The concept is NOT to borrow money from the micro-lender. Rather it is to offer your website as a sales channel for some of the products made ("handcrafted") by the loan recipients.

You ask the micro-lender to promote your website, selling products funded by its loans. The people (largely from the U.S. and Europe) who support the micro-lending institutions through their donations now have another option. (And yes, I am aware that some of the funding is viewed as a small high risk investment and not as a straight donation.)

The first option is to invest/donate to the micro-lender. The second is to buy some product from the village entrepreneurs their loans support - via your website.

8) Point (7) above is a "big" idea, and you need revenues NOW. To help jump start your business, consider asking, not for time, but for service and product donations. See if you can organize some "pro bono" website design locally, etc.

9) Write down your story as you progress, day by day, for two reasons. The first is you want to write down hypotheses about your business model, about your customers. Test it on-line and by talking to people directly.

Then modify the hypothesis, and test it again. This iterative approach should lead, bit by bit, to sales and profits.

The second reason to write down your story is that you may well develop the material for an E-book to sell on-line, for on-line articles to publicize your business, for print journalists to write about in a newspaper or magazine, etc. Publicity can have especially powerful benefits for a "cause" business.

Publicity, for example, could lend to your receiving government support of some kind (preferential tax treatment, free access to certain government services).

10) Expect to fail, repeatedly, before your on-line business generates income. Therefore micro-manage your costs.

Sincerely,
JH