Are You A Copycat With Your Business
By Alan Cheng

I guess the majority of people reading this article will be looking for tips on how to be original with their home business.
I'm so sorry to disappoint the Smart Alec out there because I'm going to tell you to do the opposite. Everyone thinks they have to be original to succeed with their business. Well let me tell you that you don't.

Reinventing the wheel and coming up with something original will
waste a lot of your valuable time. Some may hit the jackpot with
their ideas but the majority fails and start all over again.

What you should learn to do is to think of a profitable business
you like and then find ways to improve it. This is the key to making a living with a home business.

This applies to everything in business. Whether it is adverts, products, concepts, tools used etc...

Let's discuss advertisement. How do you write your advertisements? Think of an idea from scratch? What you should do is copy other people's work.

We see a lot of adverts in magazines, newspapers and classifieds. Some adverts appear every week over a long period of time. These ads are successful and you should take note of them and use it when appropriate. Use a notepad and continue to write down all ads which you like. When the situation requires choose one of the many ads you have written down and improve it.

For example "The leather chair designed for the hardworking Dad" can be changed to "The classy sunglasses designed for the fashionable father". Get the idea? The notes you keep for ads will be valuable to you and can give you inspiration in times of dumbness. This is called a Swipe File. All good copywriters have their own Swipe Files.

Other business' tools or systems should also be copied and used to improve your own business. For example you see online businesses use Paypal and other Credit Card merchants at the same time - copy them. Some use certain autoresponders to automate their businesses - copy them.

The rule is, copy other businesses' way of doing business and see if their success rubs off on you. This is how I do business.
Copy from the best because what they are doing is working for
them.

Nowadays you see that a lot of web sales pages omit the graphic header at the top. The reason was because it improves conversion rates as the headline is what attracts the user to read on and not the graphic header. Additionally, because there are no graphics the web page loads more quickly so less chance of dial up users getting frustrated with waiting.

The person who announced this testing to the public got a lot of respect for this finding. And guess what? The majority of well known marketers copied this approach. If well-known marketers unashamedly copy other people's ideas, shouldn't you start doing the same and earn more money. Follow the proven way of success instead of re-inventing the wheel. Modify it slightly to adjust to your own business model.

This is the same approach I take for my own online business which you can check out at my resource box at the bottom of this article. I basically think of other people's businesses, copy them and modify it so that it becomes my own thing.
You will be amazed at the amount of ideas you'll get during this copying process.

Let's take an ebook on ezines for example. A lot of people sell this type of information product because the market is quite big for it. What you can do is choose 2 or more of these type of ebooks you like, combine the good stuff and then improve it by adding your own ideas. You could offer an additional report on "Effective Ezines To Advertise In" as a bonus for example. The possibilities are limitless.

Successful people copy of other people and apply it in their own business - why shouldn't you? You are following a path which others have proven for you. Why blindly find your own way?


Alan Cheng, is the owner of www.onlinemoneymachine.com the membership site with everything to help beginners setup a profitable online business website. You can contact Alan at eMail

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