Small Business News Feeds -
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About Us - Some of the products / services presently offered by us (Connect Online Svcs)
If you're searching the web for information and resources on small business, then you're bound to find a LOT of conflicting information and advice. In simple terms you need to be on the lookout for anyone that has a vested interest in a particular product or service that they're pushing, because obviously you'll be receiving biased opinion and advice. At Hitmine we're not here to try and sell you anything. As such, there really is no agenda, other than to try and help your business succeed. But how did we get to be where we are today? - In 1998 we started our first Internet business, much like you are today. We scoured the web for ideas, spent countless hours (and money) looking at "schemes" to make money online. Very soon it was obvious that we would need a website from which to launch a product or service, so we set about the task of designing our own. Our first site had limited success, it was a local business directory website, offering listings to other local businesses. We provided premium services by creating basic webpages for our customers and our website design services grew from there. It wasn't long before we realized that the biggest challenge for any web business wasn't building a website, but promoting it. We were continually asked by our customers to help get more people to their websites, and we had the same challenge with our own website. At this point, the year is still only 1999, pre Google and pre "Pay Per Click" advertising. Directories, FFA boards and Banner advertising were the only real options for promoting a website along with whatever fell by chance from organic search engine results. So we began to look more closely at what we could do proactively to improve our search engine rankings on websites like AltaVista, Excite and Yahoo (Google was still a twinkle in someone's eye). We found a couple of small companies who were newly formed and starting to offer "Search Engine Optimization" services. So we researched this subject extensively and soon offered search ranking services alongside our web design. We were one of the pioneers of search engine marketing services, only two or three competitors with which to share the market. The promotion services took off, and we started to move our focus away from design and onto search engine marketing. During 1999 we entered into a partnership agreement with the manufacturer of a range of vitamin supplements. We built and promoted their website, added eCommerce functionality and setup and managed their Affiliate program. The Internet side of this business was a great success, but poor management and a lack of new-product development saw them fold during the latter part of 2000. At this point we had a number of clients in our search engine promotion division who were doing extremely well as a result of our marketing and promotion services. It made sense for us to develop our own product lines. Following the collapse of the vitamin supplement company with whom we had worked for extensively without any financial reward, we decided to extend our business by offering a true product. We researched the market, applied the knowldege from our partnership venture and introduced a small range of niche supplements to the market in early 2001. To date we have sold almost $10M in products from a very small and streamlined two-person operation. We have continued with our successful design and promotion services and expanded our product lines to include fine art and jewelry and currently operate 3 retail locations in the US. We have agents and dsitributors for our products in 14 countries and have sold into over 45 countries around the globe, though the US is still our biggest market by far. Without doubt we've turned just about every stone to look for opportunities and outlets for our products and services. We still continue to expand, and are currently selling smaller assets to finance the growth and development of our primary business interests. If we could start over today, with the benefit of having all the experience of the past 10 years, I think we could possible have reached the same place we are at now in much less time. Hopefully we can show you the road to success and give you a map that will direct you via the shortest route possible. Finally, there are no "get rich quick" schemes for the masses. There are maybe 0.0000005% of people who stumble upon something that makes money with little effort, the rest of us have to work for it. People have asked over the years, how much money did you have to start with? The answer is simple, it was less than $5000 and that money was also needed to pay bills and rent. We were able to go from a standing start to making some money in little over a week. We've never borrowed a penny, our business is and always has been completely debt-free. When we started our vitamin supplement business we took our first order online within four days of registering our domain name, and did a little under $125,000 is sales in the first 12 months. It is possible if you are committed to and believe in what you are doing.
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