Starting up an online business is very easy to do: all you need is a domain name, hosting, a webdesign or a WordPress blog, an autoresponder and some cash for advertising.The topic or niche you choose depends on your passion that you would like to share with the world. As soon as you chose your niche for your online business, you need to decide which one of the many available business models – and there are as many models around as Internet & Affiliate Marketers you would like to use.This initial challenge will keep you busy for quite some time – I even dare to say that your first 6 to 9 months will belong to this first phase of your online business plan. And you have to consider this learning phase in your plan.The next phase will be to focus on creating good and valuable content. Content is everything you leave on the Internet. It ranges from blog posts to tweets, shares, articles and products. During your second phase you should endeavor to find your own little spot within your chosen niche. Just imagine that you should develop yourself into the Go-To-Guy (or Girl) for 1 particular question within your topic.The third phase will actually be already part of running your online business. So your Business Plan for your online adventure is divided into 3 parts:
Choose niche and initial set up plus learning the rules of Internet Marketing
Create good and valuable content and share it around
find your final place within your Niche and establish yourself as the Go-To-Person.
In contrast to Business Plans for brick-and-mortar businesses, the plan for your online business is slightly different. You don’t have to define your 5 year strategy, don’t define your business processes and all the human-, technical- and product development resources you will need.You could define all this right from the start but I dare say that this procedure would be a complete overkill for your online business idea and robbed you right away of your motivation that you will need for your first 6 to 9 months.Instead of writing a ‘commonly known’ business plan for your online business, choose to focus on planning your marketing campaigns: Return on Investments and Break-Even Calculations are your focal points of interest while running your Online Business.Planning your Online Journey this way allows you to stay flexible to different ways of doing business online, but creates a stable management tool to secure your financial success.
Monthly Archives: May 2023
How Telecommunications Consultants Analyze a Company’s Telecom Expenses
Telecommunications consultants usually are the people to whom corporations outsource the work of Telecommunications Expense Management (TEM). Telecom Expense Management deals with collecting data about current telecom expenses and finding new methods of reducing these expenses. Telecom consultants use several methods to obtain data about the current telecom bills and see where most of the money is being spent. They can ask the designated telecom service providers to provide the telecom invoices for the company as well as the applicable telecom tariff. The telecommunications consultant can then use the invoice to see if the charges made to the company were abiding by the rates on the tariff.Another method of evaluating the expenditure of the company on telecom expenses is by installing telecommunications management software on all the corporate systems which are attached to a company phone. This is particularly useful for call centers as nearly all of their phones are connected to a computer. The software could be bought off the market or could be made on order by a person or a company. What the software would do is that it would present you with the expenditure on a specific service such as the worldwide and local calls as well as calls to landlines or mobile phones. All of this would help the Telecom Expense Management Company get insight on the spending pattern of the company which would in turn help in planning the steps that should be taken to reduce the telecommunication expenses.Telecom Expense Management companies take a look at the individual expenditures of the people of a company on telephones to gain data about where calls are made and which departments or posts have the highest usage of telephones. This may give them info about the fundamental workings of the company and provide them with valuable information such as which person is using up more minutes than necessary and in which department can there be changes made to reduce the number of calls. If the company has handed out personal wireless phones to employees then the TEM Consultant will have to use Wireless Expense Management techniques to gain info about the calls made by the employee. Information of the calls made by employees can be gained by asking for statements from the service providers and checking if the person is not abusing his mobile phone usage for personal purposes. An example of this would be that if a person makes several lengthy international phone calls to non-company numbers, it is most likely that the nature of the call was personal.Companies wanting to hire a Telecom Expense Management firm may also provide the information and data about the company’s telecom expenses themselves which is a good cost–cutting measure and it helps reduce the time taken for the TEM firm to gather all the data. The telecommunications consultant then uses this data to give a breakdown of expenses which he or she thinks is either not of much use to the company or where optimization can occur and if he/she believes that the expense is fundamental to the working of the company, the consultant may leave the expenditure as it was. The analyst can also compare the tariffs of the telecom company to the competition to see if its rates are good enough or the contract should be awarded to another company.
How To Get A Finance Job From An Engineering Background
“It’s something very personal, a very important thing. Hell! It’s a family motto. Are you ready Jerry? I want to make sure you’re ready, brother. Here it is: Show me the money. SHOW! ME! THE! MONEY! Jerry, it is such a pleasure to say that! Say it with me one time, Jerry.”-Rod Tidwell, “Jerry Maguire” (1996)”If I’m an engineering major, how can I get into finance? Show me the money!”I find myself answering this question a lot, possibly because I’m from a non-finance background myself. Or maybe just because everyone wants to get into finance.How you can leverage your technical background to land a job in the jungle of finance? As a technical person right out of school, you have two ways of breaking in:
Get an investment banking analyst position in the technology or TMT (Technology, Media & Telecom) group of a bank. You will use none of your quantitative/analytical background and instead use your interest in the industry/work ethic to get in.
Get a quantitative job at a hedge fund or doing trading/fixed income at a bank. You will leverage your quantitative and probability skills to get in.
Of the two, the second is easiest for most engineers. Wall Street has never been more quantitative, and it’s only getting more quant-focused each day. Even with some recent problems in the credit market and some high-profile difficulties at prestigious funds such as Goldman Global Alpha, this trend will not stop anytime soon.Hedge Fund And Related JobsOn-campus recruiting for these positions is less common than it is for banking analysts, but it’s there if you seek it out. Citadel, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, does undergraduate recruiting for its rotational program, as does Jump Trading, based out of Chicago.The good news is that if you’re an engineering major at a top university, you have a good chance of landing one of these jobs, even with no previous finance experience. If you’re in this position and go through on-campus recruiting, you need to emphasize your interest in finance because this is how they select candidates. Here’s a direct quote from a Citadel recruiter:”To be honest, we know you’re all pretty good quantitatively… after all you got an engineering degree at one of the top programs in the country. You need to show us that you’re interested in finance because that’s what differentiates you.”During interviews they will ask you quantitative questions but it’s crucial that you show them you have had a strong and consistent interest in finance. Have some good stories prepared, especially on personal investing and why you’re particularly well-suited to be a trader.For trading jobs the “fit” part of the interview is even more important than it is for banking. If you don’t trade stocks in between classes and wake up early each morning to read financial news, gambling is a good hobby to mention. I was asked if I played video poker/online poker and other casino games when interviewing for hedge fund jobs. You want to emphasize hobbies/interests that show you can think about risk vs. reward.No Thanks, I Really Want To Be A BankerFull disclosure: you can do this, but the hours are going to be far worse than trading, the pay won’t be much better and you’ll have to do truly menial, low-value-add work. The advantage is you do have a wider variety of exit options – doing engineering and then banking sets you up very well for venture capital, for example. And the perks are nice.As a technical person, you have several things going for you right away: no one will question your intelligence, and they probably won’t ask you brain teasers or math questions. If you can get a degree in Electrical Engineering, you can do Excel calculations in your sleep. And no one will question your attention to detail (or at least not as much as if you were an English major).What you will need to focus on in recruiting and interviewing is demonstrating your 1) interest in finance and 2) ability to handle the hours/stress of the job, which are considerably worse than those of an engineering/tech company.A few more specific tips: when you discuss your interest in finance you need to mention tech companies if you’re applying to a tech group in a bank. And don’t just mention Google or Facebook. These are the most visible tech companies by far, but anyone can learn about them by reading TechCrunch or by listening to friends.You need to show real interest in the industry, which means taking the initiative and talking about less well-known companies. Before my interviews at tech groups in banks I made a list of less well-known startups/other companies I found interesting and had a story prepared around each of them. You should do the same.As far as the second point about handling the stress/hours, as an engineering major you should have had many extended project classes… these are all good to mention, as are any internships where you launched a product that required “crunch time” at the end.