A few days ago I warned you about ProfitRally and its payout problems. The mistery is solved and the cause of the shortfall is a classic example of a successful business gone south.

We all are so busy trying to make a few bucks that we completely ignore the fact that we are running a business. If you run a membership site like all the free traffic exchanges or the Power Blog, you deal with members. I handle member questions on a daily base. In fact, the more members sign up the more questions are posted.

If you fail to address your member's questions and concerns then your business will suffer. Having a few hundred members is one thing, trying to take care of several members by yourself is whole new ball game. Never underestimate what it takes to survive the fearce competition and making money in the long run.

Here's my top ten list of things you need to have in place to successfully meet the growing demand of a growing business.

1. Create a forum so members can help members.
2. Create a ticket system to keep track on requests and bug reports.
3. Get an email account from Google. You can create several email accounts from within gmail and send out emails from these accounts. The main reason is to have access to your email from anywhere in the world.
4. Get a laptop to keep in touch with your business. There is no business in the world that you can turn your back to and hope that it still will be there when you return.
5. Get a virtual assitant. This is not an employee, but a representative for your business when you can't be reached. A virtual assitant acts like an employee, but costs a fraction of an employee.
6. Make sure that your business is fully automated, so you can take a break once in a while. Manually administrating a membership site and an affiliate program will break your back and prevents you from enhancing your business.
7. Keep track of your finances at all times. Running an affiliate program has a lot of benefits, but many more responsibilities. Paying your affiliates on time is as important if not more than getting new affiliate signing up. Pay your affiliates on time and keep records for tax purpose are essential for your survival.
8. Choose your hosting company wisely. You get what you pay for. A discount web hosting for a growing membership site or affiliate program is a bad idea. Make sure that backups are taken daily and that you have full control over that server. You don't need to start with a dedicated server, but you need a web hosting company that is setup to meet your growing demand for bandwidth, cumputing power and storage space.
9. Pay your domain name registration on time. Nothing kills your business faster than an expired domain name. Imagine your raction when you realize that your website is no longer reachable and somebody else picked up your domain name.
10. Always plan ahead. Imagine your business twice as big as it is today and then check if you could handle a twice as large business. If you can't do it yourself, get help. The biggest mistake of online business owners is that they hang on to do everything by themselves until it is too late.

If you keep an eye on your growing business, you are all set to succeed in the future. Having owned a successful consulting company with over a dozen employees before I crossed to the atlantic in persue of a new challenge, tought me how to plan for success. I didn't know if my consulting business would be successful, but I planned for it and when it happened I was prepared. That's what you need to do. Just being prepared is half the battle.

Learn from the faith of ProfitRally and plan for your business. Visit ProfitRally and go to the forum. You will read all about what happened to Axel and his successful business. The raise and fall of the ProfitRally empire. 

My recommendation is to cancel your PRO subscription to ProfitRally with PayPal and remain a free member. There's not downsite by remaining a free member. Wait until the dust settles and monitor what happens to ProfitRally. If nothing else learn from what happened and prepare your business for success.

Take care,
Peter

Choose your favorite social bookmark site and share this story

Backflip blinkbits Blinklist del.icio.us digg technorati furl unalog yahoomyweb Stumble It! squidoo