One of the most compelling reasons people consider “consultancy” is that you become your own boss!  As a result you may work from home.  This is attractive to those who hate the thought of driving to work every day – the rat race grind of being stuck in commuter traffic endlessly!

To work from home you need to have a business that will support you – or more than that provide you with an income satisfactory for you aspirations.  For some this may be just enough to justify not working for a wage every day – for others becoming self employed is intended to be a route to riches.

Choosing consultancy means that you are taking something you are good at, perhaps what you were doing as your daily job (e.g. as an accountant, lawyer or marketing executive, and providing advice and services to others for a fee.  For many this will just be an extension of their previous career, because they might have been responsible for winning work, doing it and then making the customer deliver payment!

However, going it alone as a consultant, even if you employ staff, means that the only support you have is what you put in or create yourself.  Therefore starting up as a consultant can be a very lonely business opportunity. 

My own experiences as a fraud expert and forensic accountant have shown that it is so important that you do as much networking, event attendance and coffee catch ups with business friends as possible.  This maintains a mindset that is strong enough to manage particularly the early days as a consultant working from home.

This can be supplemented by regular contact on relevant internet forums and possibly an occasional chat comment with a friend or two in a similar situation using Skype.

The message I would like to get across when considering the business opportunity of consultancy, probably working from home, is:

…don’t become isolated!  Just because you are not driving into the office every day does not mean that you become a recluse.  If you let this happen, your ability to win new work will suffer and your new business opportunity will be a failure…

Keyword targeting means finding what keywords people are using on the Internet search engines the most and then building a web site that targets those keywords.  However, as with all business opportunities it is not just the simple idea, but the way in which you apply the idea and the effort you are prepared to put in.

For example, you have to choose the correct keyword.  This means a keyword that not only has a lot of potential to earn money but is not contested in such a way that your efforts to raise its profile in the search engines is impossible.

I will illustrate this with an example.  I am very interested in Scuba Diving and think it would be a good idea to set up a site where I can upload interesting articles about the equipment used, places to go diving and other informative bits about the sport.  As a hobby site I could make a bit of money by placing Google “Adsense” advertisements on some of the pages.  Then, when a site visitor clicked on one of these from time to time I would receive payment from Google.

So I check out what key words I should be including in my narrative on my site and in my HTTP code in order to get ranked by Google.  I look at obvious word such as “diving equipment” and my research tells me that about 210,000 people are searching using these words every month.  Whats more, advertisers are prepared to pay £1.12 for each time someone clicks on one of their paid Google adverts.  This means that every month Google is paying out about £100,000 to web site owners just for this one little phrase being used to get traffic.  Wow!  Think of all the other words used by people interested in buying some “diving equipment”.  They could use Scuba equipment, dive equipment, scuba goods, wetsuit, aqualung …… the list is endless and for each of them there is a supplier willing to pay something to Google to get traffic.  The size of the Internet marketing spend is massive and the Google example is a huge part of it.

Wow again!

But try putting “diving equipment” into Google.  Look at the sites that come up.  These are sites that spend vast sums of money ensuring that they do rank with Google (not just for the paid adds).  Can you compete with them?  You need to know how to choose a keyword that is:

a) Valuable i.e. has potential …and

b) Has not been properly exploited by your competitors

So make sure you do not listen to anybody who says that keyword marketing as a business opportunity is an easy way to make quick money.  By all means listen to the person that says you can make money but you must work at it – that is different.  It is not a get rich quick scheme but is a business opportunity that is currently heading up the “Top 10 Potential Business Opportunities” ranking!

My first post for this new blog site is going to take a very general look at the problem of fraudsters in the business opportunity marketplace.  As a “fraudbuster” (people like to glamorize my role – it has its moments but work is work!) I tend to come into contact with a lot of marketing material for a whole range of dubious get rich quick schemes.  However, when I describe one or two of them I think you will start to see that the whole subjecy is a very grey area.  What is fraud and what is sharp business practice is not always clear – and many of the get rich quick schemes could work if the person wanting to get rich was prepared to work hard, perhaps invest some money and realised that “quick” could mean within a year or two (not overnight).

Many scams that I investigate are set up and run by very clever and enterprising people.  The only difference between them and (hopefully) you or I is that they want it quickly and easily without the slog.  If you are not prepared to put in the effort do not expect the returns.

I will digress from schemes that people are selling to schemes that people set up to get rich at others’ expense.  The example I have in mind is called “support publishing” and I have investigated several of these.  I will post a more formal article on the problem in a later post.  Support publishers ring around small businesses using yellow pages or contacts from the local press.  They pretend to be “supporting” charitable organsisations or good causes such as the police or fire brigade.  They offer you an advertisement in a booklet they are preparing on say “road safety for children” to be distributed widely around alll schools in your area.  You would feel mean if you did not take out an ad showing your support – anything from £100 to £1000 a time!  200 advertisements in a regional booklet, 50 regions – do the maths!

And the number of second rate booklets published (if at all) will be one for each advertser and maybe one or two to a school here and there.  Money for old rope and a waste of your advertising budget.  You will get no business from it and will have the satisfaction that you have funded the publishers’ lavish lifestyle.

So I hope to cover these scams as well as the money making ideas – as they are essentially get rich quick schemes that the police will chase you for if you start one!