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John Gottshall

John Gottshall runs Internet Marketing Debunked a new blog dedicated to dispelling the myths about internet marketing and revealing what works to make you money. John Gottshall doesn't sell anything related to internet marketing. His blog is dedicated to helping you make money without wasting your money on most of the junk that's being sold that's supposed to put money in your pocket. Get his new free ebook - it's not a sales letter in pdf format, it's a true roadmap for success.

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Organization: A Key Component to Your Online Business Success

John Gottshall

July 28, 2006

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Believe it or not organization is one of the most important elements for success when it comes to making money online. I’m a kind of guy who likes things to be in order anyway, but I’ll tell you about a few key secrets that I believe will contribute to your success online.

First and very important it’s an absolute must that you keep your business finances separate from your personal finances. I recommend having 2-3 credit cards that you use for business purchases only.

Yes I’m a big fan of credit cards as long as you pay them off monthly. If you don’t plan on paying off your business credit cards monthly, then you should plan for many headaches. That’s all I’m going to say about that. Get just about any book on responsibly managing your finances from Amazon or your favorite bookstore and the author will say the same thing. Paying off your credit cards every month is just as important for your business as it is for your personal finances.

I also highly recommend getting some type of financial software as soon as possible. I started out with Quickbooks about 4 months after I started my business and have loved it ever since. I also recommend some kind of Quickbooks for Dummies or Bible type book to help you get started.

Many people complain about the complexity of Quickbooks, but hands down I believe it’s the best program for online business accounting. If you can’t afford Quickbooks then use a spreadsheet. There are a couple of other tools that I believe are more important before you buy Quickbooks.

Whatever you do, try to keep business stuff separate from personal stuff, including your time. This isn’t an article about time management, there are plenty of those out there, but just do whatever it takes to schedule time to develop your business and schedule personal time to do other stuff. When you’re scheduled to do business stuff, don’t go searching on ebay for that widescreen TV you’ve been wanting.

I also highly recommend getting some type of filing cabinet to keep track of your records. Some people think that there's not much to keep track of if you've got an online business but that's just not true. If you sell some type of product in your business then you're going to need to keep track of orders that customers have made for you as well as orders that you've placed with vendors, as well as credit card and bank statements and several other miscellaneous items. Even if all you do is affiliate marketing then you still need to have a filing system to keep track purchases you make like an autoresponder, web hosting, software that you purchase like SEO Elite etc.

If you plan to have a successful business then it's very important get these organizational issues in order. Everything doesn't need to be done right away but I would get it done as soon as possible.

Organization will take some practice and diligence and not being too hard on yourself when you mess up, but you can do it. Don’t give up.