However, SIMPLE stands for a lot more than just an event. In fact, it’s a set of elements that guide how a business can be run.

If you believe like I do in helping people profitably, and you want to succeed based on your brainpower instead of gimmicks or fads, you should consider a SIMPLE business.

You’ll know you’re following this model if your business is based on these 6 elements:

• Specialization
• Intelligence
• Monetization
• Portability
• Leverage
• Experiences

Let me explain a bit more about each one.

Is It Specialized?

A primary reason businesses fail to get customers is a lack of specialization. When I first started my business, I was all over the map! Even my teacher friends asked me, “What are you selling this week, Bob?” Without a clear direction, I couldn’t build up trust in the market place. And because I wasn’t focused on one thing, I never practiced the patience I needed to see things through to profit.

Make sure your customers know “the thing” that you are great at. You don’t have to be the best when you start – but it should be clear that what you do is the best thing you should be doing.

What if you’re a Renaissance entrepreneur? There’s nothing wrong with offering a variety of services to the marketplace. But to the individual buyer checking out your sales page, listening to your teleseminar, or meeting you at an event, make sure one specialty is on the table.

Is It Intelligent?

With such a crowded marketplace, you have to give your customers something your competition can not: your intellegence. When your brain is central to your business, you make it very difficult to be ripped off.

Turn what you know into a business that actually helps people. Once you start marketing based on your own brain power and expertise, you will see much better results.

This is the power of information marketing, consulting and coaching. You’ll discover a faster rise to authority because you aren’t afraid to stand on your knowledge, experience, and passions.

Is It Monetized?

Do you know the #1 reason why businesses fail?

They run out of money.

So your business has to be monetized or else you can’t last! If people aren’t willing to buy what you’re selling, always expecting it to be free, then you won’t be able to survive your first year in business.

Sure, giving away some of your products for free is a great way to build rapport and attract more potential customers. I’ve certainly done well with this model. But that’s because I’ve always referred free customers to relevant and high quality products as an affiliate; and I’ve always offered premium products or services soon after they receive something free.

Don’t be afraid to ask for the sale. Then make sure you return to existing customers and provide them with additional products and services.

Is It Portable?

Some entrepreneurs are perfectly content serving a narrow geographic market, or working from an office.

But what happens when external factors interfere?

Having a business that’s portable is critical if you wish to enjoy more freedom than you would have with a job. With a portable business, anywhere you can connect to the internet, you can operate. Since understanding this principle, I’ve been able to “work” on cruise ships, in foreign countries, around the United States, and even at the neighborhood coffee shop.

Also, if you or your partner/spouse want to relocate (called by promotion, grandchildren, island living, Presidential appointment, etc.), you won’t be restricted to customer-based geography. And if oil spills, hurricanes, or other disasters strike, you won’t be prematurely shut down.

Is It Leveraged?

Most entrepreneurs escape the wage-earning life of a soul-sucking day job only to replace it with a time-for-dollars trap in their own business. So you need to focus on creating leverage in your business. This means a few different things.

First, a leveraged business allows you to get paid repeatedly for work you do once. So instead of trading time for dollars, you are earning dollars for products. For example, instead of being paid to speak to an audience once, you might give your talk on a teleseminar that can  be replayed by anyone anywhere at any time from your website.

Second, you’ll have a leveraged business if you can borrow attention and credibility from others in your field or in compatible industries. Instead of doing all the promotional work yourself, you’ll have referrals coming in from your partners.

And third, you can form joint venture relationships where you and others actually combine forces to serve your market with products and services.

Is It Experiential?

Like you, I receive endless emails on a daily basis that promise a 4 hour work week, auto-pilot income, set and forget profit machines – you name it. And while in theory those sound great, they really seem kind of boring to me.

Don’t get me wrong – I love vacations as much as you do (I spent about 13 weeks on vacation in the last year) – but like you I also enjoy working hard and helping people.

So it’s important that your business is fun to do. The more experiential you make your business for your customers, the more they enjoy what you do for them.

Don’t just create products that are essentially one-way streets. Incorporate interactive products and services to truly connect with your audience. These may be live workshops, teleseminars and webinars, or membership sites where members can participate in forums or within comment zones.

Do you have a SIMPLE business yet?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these 6 elements of a SIMPLE business. Comment below, and share which elements you’ve already mastered, and which you need help with.

And if you’d truly like to succeed with your own information-based business, learn more about my SIMPLE Training programs, where I teach you how to turn this theoretical structure into a practical, profitable business.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. You have plenty of choices for how to run your business. I hope this SIMPLE framework fits the way you think about the ideal business environment!

1. Getting a bigger list of subscribers
2. Generating More revenue for your business
3. Obtaining better visibility for yourself as an expert in your niche?

If you want all 3, you’re going to be very happy you found this blog post today!

I’ve got a great recommendation for you that will achieve all 3 goals above by automating the distribution of free reports.

In fact, I’ve already been using this system and it’s getting my report passed around faster than juicy gossip in a middle school lunch room!

It’s called Viral PDF Generator.

Let me tell you more about Viral PDF Generator

One of the VIP guests coming to SIMPLE 2 in September is a good friend of mine, James Grandstaff.

In case you don’t know him yet, he’s the creator of the Downline Secrets software which gave direct sales and home business team builders an incredible advantage in duplication and recruitment.

Today, he’s launching a viral ebook generator tool that I’m absolutely salivating over.

Since James is coming to SIMPLE 2 in Baltimore, and we’ve known each other since March 2006, I was able to get a sneak peek at how this software works.

Basically, you upload a report you’ve created (or a PLR report you’ve done some very minor edits to), fill out a quick form, and push a big yellow button, and voila!

… You’ve got yourself a viral marketing machine that turns any report of yours into a 24/7 virtual sales team.

Rebrand your ebooks

This would work for you if you:

• Are following my SIMPLE 3-phase formula and want to become the go-to-expert in your niche
• Have a product or service for sale that needs a lot more traffic
• Want to piggy back on the success of an affiliate product
• Build a network marketing team that wants an easy to use, duplication system without spending any money

Here’s an example of what you could do with Viral PDF Generator

Imagine you are trying to get known as an expert following my Connect, Create, Collaborate model (the foundation for SIMPLE).

You write a short report answering the biggest questions that people have about your specialty. In the report, you make a recommendation for an affiliate product.

The traditional method of getting eyeballs to read this report would involve you working really hard at driving traffic to a website. You might spend money on Adwords, Facebook ads, or banners. Or you could spend hours clicking around traffic exchanges. Maybe you comment on 100 blogs and forums to get links back to your site.

The primary method of this marketing: your own efforts.

With the viral marketing method, you create a useful report and empower your readers to pass it around. Even better, you give them an incentive for doing so.

Viral PDF Generator makes this really easy because your reports are delivered, rebranded, and hosted on the VPG system. Plus, James has included social sharing tools on the download page for even faster distribution.

Go get Viral PDF Generator

Viral PDF Generator Is Better Than Existing Tools

In the past, I was using ViralPDF to create rebrandable reports. And although that is a pretty good tool, it has one major downside: it requires too many steps for readers to rebrand the report.

With Viral PDF the reader usually has to:

1. Download a .zip file
2. Unzip the .zip file
3. Find and Double-click the .exe file
4. Enter the tags for rebranding
5. Create the rebranded report
6. Upload the rebranded report to their own server
7. Give out a link to the report

Viral PDF Generator goes the extra mile by skipping the complicated steps.

With Viral PDF Generator, the reader only has to:

1. Fill out a short form with affiliate ID tags or links
2. Press a big yellow button
3. Give out the automatically generated link

It really is that easy!

Here’s an example of the simple form a reader would fill out to rebrand one of my reports:

Test Out Viral PDF Generator

James Makes It Simple For You To Use His System

I mentioned above how many steps it takes for the readers to rebrand your reports using the best alternative software. But it gets even more complicated for you to create the rebrandable report in the first place.

James makes it really easy with Viral PDF Generator.

All you have to do is create a report using Microsoft Word or Open Office (James event gives you a fantastic template to work with for free), make sure you include a placeholder tag in the links, and upload it into his system.

You’ll fill out a quick form with default values for the rebrandable links, and set up the link to your affiliate program.

The system gives you a link to share to a rebranding page the system hosts for you (or you can embed an iframe on your own site like I’m doing for my report).

Everything is then hosted on the system – no download/unzip/upload nonsense required!

Phenomenal Tool For Product Owners To Give To Affiliates

In the above example, I actually sell rebranding rights for all 4 links for added revenue. But you can also simply give away rebranding rights for your affiliates if you are selling your own product.

Notice in the form above the “No ID? Click Here” area. Those are linked to the affiliate sign up pages to make it easy for people to get their links.

Your affiliate partners will love having a high-converting sales tool to earn commissions.

This Is A Refer 2 And It’s Free System

Another thing I love about Viral PDF Generator is the fact that James will likely pay you more to use his system than you’ll pay him.

Not only will you be generating more revenue from the content inside your report, James will share 50% of the revenue of any referrals you recommend this same system to. And with 4 different membership levels, you could actually have your own membership paid for with just 1 referring member.

VPG Gets My Highest Recommendation

The bottom line is Viral PDF Generator is an essential tool that you’ll love using for your business. I’m using it (and paying for the Gold level for now), and I know you’ll love it too!

Check out this video from James to learn all about Viral PDF Generator

Bob Jenkins

p.s. Set up your reports on Viral PDF and watch how quickly your list grows, your revenue jumps, and more people are impacted by what you do. Try Viral PDF Generator yourself!

p.p.s. Don’t forget – you can meet James Grandstaff in person at SIMPLE 2 in Baltimore!

As one of Bob’s Fast Track Masterclass Clients, I am thrilled to share the following with you. As a result of my work with Bob, I was able to achieve one of my lifelong goals of publishing my first full-length book. I am thrilled to share that my first book will be available on Amazon and at bookstores near you very soon. And I’m honored that Bob has written the foreword to my book! Plus, thanks to Bob’s SIMPLE seminar in February, I connected with Kristen Eckstein of UltimateBookCoach.com to help with the cover and interior design for the book.

Connect Communicate and Profit – The Essentials of Relationship Marketing Online

In today’s business environment you really need to be able to effectively combine online and offline marketing strategies. Even if you are really good at one or the other, you need the combination of both.

The business professional who has a vibrant brick and mortar business but does not have a Web presence is creating a handicap for that business. The day of relying on the Yellow Pages and newspaper ads as the most effective way to bring in new clients is long gone. Your clients are likely utilizing the Internet to do their initial research. If your business does not show up in their Google search, you are missing out on a lot of potential business.

At the same time, if you have an Internet-based business and you are not networking in person or doing anything to reach out through direct mail to thank and appreciate your clients, you are leaving a lot of money and potential repeat business on the table.

Even the savviest Internet marketers who have live events and online courses would benefit from keeping in touch with people through direct mail. In this way they will have the opportunity to stay at top of mind and get something in the hands of their prospects, clients, and networking contacts to let them know they care.

I remember the first time that I received something from an Internet marketer. I had purchased an online downloadable product and the person I purchased from sent me a DVD and a card in the mail. It caused me to sit up and take notice of this teacher and I wanted to know more about who he was and what other courses he might teach. This thought came into being because of how this teacher reached out to let me know that he cared and that connecting with students and clients was important to him. By providing me with a DVD of the course, he increased the likelihood of my participating and provided me with another way to consume the content. I was deeply impressed by this simple action.

Another way to strengthen relationships with your audience is to be very aware of what type of messages you are sending them when you communicate with them online. The best way to gauge the impact your email messages can have on people is to read through them and imagine how you would feel if you received this type of message from someone whose list you signed up on.

Food for Thought

• Just like in-person networking, building relationships with people online is not about trying to sell them “stuff.” Instead, sell them on “you” and create raving fans.
• As an example, think about the e-mails you receive and the messages you get on the social networks. Which are the ones you read and which are the ones that you delete?
• How do you feel about the person whose list you signed up on, with the expectation of receiving informative content, along with product recommendations, and you discover that just about every e-mail coming from that person is about them trying to sell you something?
• One of the best ways to become known, liked, and trusted is to become an authority in your field and find ways to share your knowledge and expertise with others.

As you apply these principles of relationship marketing and incorporate them into your online networking and business building strategies, you will be broadening the foundation of your business.

To learn more ways you can use relationship marketing for profit in your business, I invite you to receive a free chapter of Connect, Communicate, and Profit before it’s available on Amazon and in local bookstores!

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best!

D’vorah Lansky
The Relationship Marketing Wizard   |   Author   |   Speaker   |   Educator

p.s. By the way, I wanted to share a quick testimonial for Bob.

Bob lives the principles of relationship marketing. His ability to build community, give more value than expected and provide education that students can easily absorb and retain, place him at the top of his field. While Bob is a prolific writer and a living example as to the power of affiliate marketing, he clearly cares more about providing quality education than he does about making “the sale”. He demonstrates powerful ways to build community and both loyal and raving fans.

p.p.s. Hope to meet you at SIMPLE 2 in Baltimore!

Previous related article

Hi, D’vorah Lansky here again with my 2^nd of 3 blog posts that I’ll be sharing this week.

One of the most powerful things that an Internet Marketer can do to set themselves apart and grow their business at the same time is to send a note of appreciation to their online customers, clients and students.

Imagine signing up for an online course and a few days later receiving an actual card, in the mail.

You open it up and it has a smiling photo of the instructor thanking you for participating in their upcoming seminar or course.

What if the card also included the details of how to access the materials or member’s area and provided you with a few tips to prepare for the course, thus maximizing your experience and your retention of the materials. How would you feel about this instructor and how much more likely are you to participate more fully in their program?

By reaching out to your online customers and getting something into their hands from you, you have begun to build a deeper layer of relationship with these clients and the likelihood of them continuing with you in future courses or perhaps moving up the funnel into one of your higher priced coaching programs, is greatly increased.

As simple as that sounds, very few people will go the extra mile to put this type of system in place. Others might wonder why they should bother sending something through the mail when they can send something via email for free. My response would be to ask the question, “If it costs you a dollar or two per card, and you sent out a card to 100 preselected existing clients announcing a new course or product, how many pieces of closed business would you need in order to double the investment of your mailing?”

• If your new product was $47 and there was no new cost to you to deliver that product because it is digital and you’ve already developed an automated delivery system, then your profit on ten new units sold would be $470, more than doubling the investment of your 100 greeting cards.

• What if the cost of your product was $97 and you sold 10 units?  That would represent $970 in new business that you might not have received otherwise.

• Of those ten new customers, what if 3 of them became active affiliates simply because they gained more value in your program because you reached out to them. The impression you’ve made is that you are not just looking to make a sale, but that you are looking to build an ongoing relationship.  What also comes through is that your students’ enjoyment of your course and retention of the material is important to you. You just upped your creditability and people are much more likely to want to refer you to their circle of friends and colleagues because they have experienced first-hand your commitment to your program and to your clients.

• What if three of those new clients went on to take your upper level coaching program at $97, $197 or $397 per month for twelve months. What would this do for your business?

Can you see what an impact this tiny gesture can have on your business and on your life?

A simple way to put this type of keep-in-touch program in place is to begin by reaching out to the students or customers of your most recent or upcoming program. It could be that this represents 10 or 20 people. If you have an established business, this number could be much higher.

In any case, by starting with your current or upcoming program, you can develop a specific and targeted message that you can take action on right away rather than feeling like you have to figure out what type of campaign you’d send out and who you’d send it to.

If the mailing that you’ll be sending out is to announce the launch of an upcoming program, this would be a perfect opportunity for you to invite people to participate as well as let them know how they can receive their program for free by referring others. Some marketers use the slogan, “refer three and it’s free”. Depending on your commission structure, you can utilize this slogan or come up with one of your own.

A third type of mailing you could send could be an unexpected, heartfelt card. This campaign is very easy to put in play and requires less than five minutes of your time each day. Consider creating a new practice of sending out a heartfelt card to one of your prospects, clients, colleagues, friends or family, first thing in the morning each working day. By doing this before you check your email, you will be creating a new and very powerful habit. Try this for just two week and notice the positive impact and perhaps even miracles that come into your life.

There is nothing more powerful for building relationships than appreciating others. Consider reaching out to your current and past customers in one of the above ways, within the coming week.

I’d love to hear your results and welcome your comments and questions.

Here’s to your success,

D’vorah Lansky
The Relationship Marketing Wizard
www.CardsYouRemember.com

Previous related article Next related article

Hi, my name is D’vorah Lansky. I work with professionals to assist them in growing their business, both online and offline. I’d like to thank Bob for having me as a Guest Blogger on his site. I’ve been studying Bob’s online programs for several years and this past Spring I attended his SIMPLE (School for Information Marketing Profits Live Event) seminar.   Since I’m also a former public school teacher and a current business mentor, I was impressed and appreciative of Bob’s teaching style, the caliber of guest faculty and the quality of the training materials that we were provided with.

An essential aspect of the SIMPLE training program is what Bob calls “SIMPLE: Phase 1″. This is where we select a product that has an affiliate program attached to it which complements our product or program focus or one that would be of great interest to our audience. Here’s how I’m implementing this in my business…

In selecting an affiliate program to complement my program, I decided to select something to do with WordPress blogs and building relationships through blogging. In addition to being known as the “Relationship Marketing Wizard,” I am also a WordPress Expert. I’ve been building and designing WordPress blogs since 2006 and have had the opportunity to work with some amazing clients. In keeping with the assignment in SIMPLE Phase 1, I located a product with an affiliate program, that has to do with both blogging and relationship marketing – my biggest areas of credibility.

This very blog post, and Bob’s Guest Blogging articles on my RelationshipMarketingCafe.com this week is a direct result of the SIMPLE Phase 1 product that I selected. That product is Nicole Dean’s Blog Tour Planner. In her planner she outlines how she dramatically increased traffic to her blog through guest blogging on other people’s sites last summer.

I had the privilege of interviewing Nicole on the topic of Blogging and Affiliate Marketing, and posted it to my own site.

When I heard her describe her blog tour the light bulb went on for me and I knew that I had found my SIMPLE Phase 1 product. Nicole (who was one of the VIPs at Bob’s SIMPLE event) has been very encouraging of my blog tour. In fact, you can listen to the 15-minute segment of Nicole’s interview where she speaks specifically on the topic of guest blogging and creating content for your blog.

The site where this interview is housed is a direct result of my putting Bob’s SIMPLE Phase 1 program into action. This project has been a lot of fun, I’ve made some great connections and am amazed on a daily basis by the amount of traffic I’m getting and the number of new followers and people who opt-in for my Special Report – “Seven Tips for Maximizing Your Own Blog Tour.”

You can get your free copy of my blog tour special report, and learn how to get more traffic and subscribers to your blog.

I do want to share that the momentum and success that I am gaining in my business can be directly attributed to the knowledge that I acquired at SIMPLE as well as to the friendships and connections that I made with both attendees and with the Faculty.

I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.

All the best!

D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard   |   Author   |   Speaker   |   Educator
www.BlogWorldTour.com/blog

p.s. If you are looking to grow your business exponentially, give serious thought to attending a live event and if at all possible, a live event like SIMPLE. By spending time getting to know the other attendees and applying what you learn, you will accomplish more than you can even imagine.

Next related article

Got knowledge? Experience? Shortcuts?

Share your brain and find your business growing faster than ever.

People want concise answers to the challenges they are facing. And I bet you are in a position to provide those answers.

In fact you probably are already doing this.

How many times do you answer people’s questions at parties, family gatherings, random phone calls and emails? The questions seem simple enough. And you “thinking nothing of it” when you provide your knowledge without compensation.

After all, this is easy-breezy for you. The answers simply rattle off your tongue.

Well, my friend, that’s a good sign that you are losing an opportunity to “help people profitably”.

And one of the tactical ways you can turn what you know into an income stream is by creating a free report.

You’re already giving away this information – why not consolidate some of it into a short 6-10 page PDF that people can download?

I can hear you now – “But if I give it away, how will it be profitable? How will it make me money?”

3 Ways Free Reports Can Make You Money

The answer to that question is in what you include in your report. Here are 3 things to make sure you include:

1) A call to action throughout the report for people to hire you for the services you can uniquely provide; or for a product you have already created.

2) Recommendations of a resource that you use as part of the challenge the report addresses. With the right affiliate connection, you can generate a nice income from these recommendations without any additional work

3) Provide an opportunity for others to buy rights to the report so they can use it for their business. This could be reprint rights, resale rights, private label rights, or a hidden gem: rebranding rights.

Rebranding rights allow your readers to insert their links to your product or affiliate offers. See a case study video from my friend James Grandstaff on viral report rebranding profits.

Once your report is created, you can use it to generate leads and clients through a list building campaign. Since the report is more substantial than a blog post or an article, your status as an expert elevates.

The best part about a report you give away is it works for you 24/7. Regardless of what you are actually doing, people down the street, within 50 miles and even around the world can be downloading your report from the web.

Create a free report and you have a heavy-hitter on your automated sales team. And for solo-entrepreneurs, that’s not only a money-maker, it’s also a big time saver!

And here’s even better news…

Through the rest of this month, you can learn exactly how to put one of these free reports together. That’s because I’m giving away my Discover Product Creation: Free Reports course to all members of the IM Success Library, including the Silver (Free) members.

In this training, I’ll teach you

• How to create the content for your report even if you failed English class
• How to format your report to look professional
• How to publish your report for the web
• How to create a free report delivery system online (i.e., a mini-site)

This month, you won’t pay a dime for this training, even though it’s usually something I charge for. So if you’re reading this after August 1, 2010, you missed out on the free training, but you can still get other lessons when you join the IM Success Library.

Enjoy the training, and comment below on what your goals are with your report!

Bob Jenkins

p.s. Why am I giving this away for free this month? Four reasons really…

• I truly believe the strategic and technical skills I teach in this course will help you grow your business faster. As a teacher, I love living vicariously through the success of my students!
• You may not realize just how much you can learn from me inside the IM Success Library. By showcasing one of my courses, I hope you to prove how valuable the Gold and Platinum membership really is.
• I’m embarking on an evil plot to get you to attend my next live event.
• There’s an awesome viral report marketing system coming out soon that will be useless to you unless you can create the reports.

This training is sponsored in part by Viral PDF Generator

Felicia has assembled some great communication resources for you at the Effective Communications Giveaway (including one from yours truly!). Felicia is also the guest expert on June’s IM Success Library members only strategy call.

Below is an excellent set of tips from Felicia, who was a featured faculty member at my SIMPLE 1 seminar a few months ago.

Effective Communication And Solo Professionals – Communicating Optimism In A Negative Environment

Guest post from Felicia Slattery

Regardless of the method you choose, effective communication with your clients and prospects is the key to making your business successful. The first thing you need to communicate– and continue to communicate — is your credibility. Without credibility, your business will go nowhere. With it, you’ll automatically attract new clients and see positive cash flow.

I invite you to discover what you need to know about Credibility and Cash Flow now. Visit CredibilityAndCashFlow.com to get your free e-course that will help you customize a credibility plan for your business and get you more clients, more business and more money.

Felicia J. Slattery, M.A., M.Ad.Ed. is a communication consultant, speaker & coach specializing in training small and home-based business owners effective communication skills so they can see more cash flow now.

Also posted on EzineArticles.com

A business owner (let’s call her Nicole) decides she needs to get an office. She doesn’t want to buy space (for budget reasons or whatever) so she decides to rent.

One of her employees, let’s call him Tom, happens to dabble in commercial real estate and has space to let. The office seems to fit all the criteria Nicole wants in an office: great location, affordable, good layout, already wired and ready to go. She signs the lease for 2 years to get a great rate on the monthly rent.

They make some changes to the office, make it look even better by bringing in a feng shui expert and work flow designer. They get new carpeting, install better lighting, and go to town on the signage for the lobby and outside the building.

Everything seems perfect until about 3 months later, when Tom starts showing up late to work. Nicole starts to notice that Tom’s work is becoming shoddy. She meets with him, shares her observations and Tom agrees he’s not been doing his best. He promises to improve.

For the next couple of weeks, it seems like everything is back to normal. But then, Tom starts slipping up again.

Nicole reaches the conclusion that she has to let Tom go. She fires him on a Thursday afternoon.

Tom seems to take the news in stride. As it turns out, he’s been moonlighting anyway at a different job that he’s more energized about. His lack of focus and attention to Nicole’s business was an obvious symptom of this. In fact, Tom’s been working for one of Nicole’s competitors.

What happens next probably won’t surprise you.

As she learns more of Tom’s work for her competitor, and realizes just how poor of a job he’s been doing for her, she gets increasingly more furious.

She can’t sleep at night, and every day it seems like she finds out some other way that Tom’s actions (or lack thereof) really cost her business.

The next Wednesday, she’s going through all the invoices, paying the bills, and running the numbers. One envelope gives her an instant migraine: it’s the monthly rent payment notice on the office.

She realizes she’s in month 5 of the 2 year lease. She can’t seem to shake the thought that even though that jerk Tom turned out to be a horrible employee, she still has to send him a substantial portion of her hard earned money each month for another year and a half.

Nicole tries to reach Tom to break the lease, but her calls go unanswered. Her emails and even a certified letter get terse replies that she’s obligated under the contract to keep paying the monthly bill.

She decides that every time she goes to that office, her attitude and energy are so negative that it’s affecting her work, her employees, and even how she deals with her clients. So Nicole looks for a new office. Even though she’ll have to pay twice the rent, a change of environment is in order.

She finds a new office and starts the arduous process of moving. But most of the improvements they made to the office can’t be removed.

Horrified, Nicole realizes that she’s going to have to start virtually from scratch with the new place. Months of her business, and thousands of dollars in workplace design and expenses have been flushed down the drain.

It takes another year for Nicole to generate the additional revenue to pay for this mistake. She barely survives the situation, coming close to shutting the doors forever several times.

Fortunately, this story is fictional, although I’m sure there are situations like this that happen.

So what’s the point of this story?

Obviously, you shouldn’t rent an office from an employee. Which I’m sure you already knew. And there’s a good chance you don’t really care because you work from home, right?

But this is exactly the same kind of mistake business owners are doing with their “online offices”, i.e., their websites.

I see this happen way too often, and I hope it won’t happen to you. I can guarantee you that at some point in your business, you will fire your webmaster. As a former webmaster myself, and now an internet marketing teacher and consultant, I don’t know a single person in business who hasn’t had to change their webmaster for whatever reason at least once.

And yet, most business owners who hire a webmaster are actually renting their virtual office from them. Sure, a webmaster is typically not an employee in the IRS terminology, but they do work for you. And the way webmasters make most of their money is by the monthly (or annual) web hosting bill they add on to their services.

Just like Nicole and Tom’s situation above, things usually start out working really well. But eventually, the customer load of the webmaster makes your site less and less a priority to them. When you get fed up enough, you will want to fire them and move to someone else who can give you more attention.

At that point, you’ll have a serious problem because you won’t be able to easily move your website to the new webmaster. In a worst case scenario, the webmaster you fire can change all the account settings, disable your website, and essentially shut down your business. And if you registered your domain name with them, you may never be able to get that unlocked and put in your name.

So how can you protect yourself from a scenario like this destroying all your efforts of building up your online business?

Control Your Own Hosting

First, control your own hosting instead of falling for the “convenience” of using your webmaster’s hosting. Many webmasters will try to convince you of letting them host your site, but you need to stand firm on this.

Plus, when you control your own hosting account, you’ll probably pay less than what they’re charging you, and if anything like the scenario above happens, you’re in control of the accounts. I recommend Hostgator if you’re going to have less than 3 websites or blogs, and ServInt Hosting if you are going to have more than 3 or you’ll be running complicated scripts on it. Both of these have excellent customer service.

Register Your Own Domains

Second, be sure to be the one that registers your own domains. You can use my domain registration service at Shylar.com for great prices (and it’s powered with the reliability of GoDaddy). Some webmasters will register domains under their company name instead of yours, or using privacy settings that essentially lock you out of the picture. If you ever want to take control of it, you’ll have a terrible time getting what you want because you will have lost any real points of leverage.

Set Up Separate Admin Access

Third, when you hire a webmaster or virtual assistant to help you with your website, give them a separate administrative level account that you can terminate if necessary. Don’t just give them your username and password to your accounts if you can avoid it. At the very least, create a new temporary password that you can change easily if something goes wrong.

Know Enough To Get By In A Pinch

Fourth, learn how to manage your own website. You don’t have to become an HTML junkie, or understand all the PHP, MySQL mumbo jumbo. That stuff you can get help with. But learn how to make changes to your site, to upload your own files, to set up your own email accounts, etc. You can learn how to do all this and more at my site, Discover cPanel. This way, if you do ever find yourself in-between webmasters or virtual assistants, or simply in a time crunch where they aren’t available, you’ll still be able to run your business.

You can also download a free report of mine, “7 Questions You Didn’t Know To Ask About Web Hosting”.

The bottom line is, having your websites locked up in the hands of your webmaster is just like renting an office from an employee. It’ll start out problem-free. But eventually, you’re more than likely going to have some serious headaches down the road.

Be in control of your website so you don’t throw time and money down the drain!

Bob Jenkins

p.s. Have a webmaster horror story to share? Feel free to comment below!