The Maverick Marketeer


Small Business Tips For Success: The feast or famine business model

The feast of famine business model merely refers to my personal perceptions of certain prevalent business models you or anyone else might likely find while searching for a business to join online.

Most often employed by many high cost or “high ticket” programs and products online, this model for business would most accurately be described as a recipe for disaster.

The underlying premise being, at say $1000 a sale, how many sales would you need to make a return on your investment, quit your job, buy a house, etc., etc. Feast or famine…

For those with a proven track record of success online, more often than not the case for them will be feast. For those with the skewed perception that any kind of success, be it success online or success in general, happens over night; I see famine in you future.

small business tips #1:

Operating your business on the firm belief that x amount of traffic will generate y amount of conversions without the market research to prove it will cause you nothing but grief.

The best way to avoid falling prey to a feast or famine type scenario is to do your homework, and make sure that the numbers support your efforts.

For PPC (pay per click) marketing, be sure to track, track, track, everything. By using tracking links in your ad campaigns you can determine your cost per lead as well as your cost per sale along with your cost per click/click thru percentages provided by you campaign provider.

small business tips #2:

Next, estimate the value of each sale. If the income is residual, what’s the retention rate of your program or down line? Once you can place a decent estimate on how much each sale is worth and you’ve calculated your cost per lead per sale, then and only then are you in business.

Flying blind with your marketing dollars in hopes that good fortune will smile upon you is far to fanciful a notion to actually be effective. Be sure to track all your marketing efforts so that you can be aware of what works and what doesn’t; as well as what could use improvement.

small business tips #3:

To some, the entire notion of feast or famine may seem a bit much like some savage struggle for survival set in the most unforgiving of landscapes. To those individuals, I would suggest that in the time it’s taken them to form said opinion, they have most likely dropped an additional notch or two on the food chain.

Business is extremely competitive by nature. The best strategy for success is to always try to ensure you happen to be among the biggest fish in the smallest pond I can find i.e. research and niche marketing.

small business tips #4:

In summary, I’d say that most endorsements of unrealistic and unfounded business practice work off the premise that people in general will always take the path of least resistance; forever hoping to not only get something for nothing but, attain great success with little effort on their part.

A very lovely notion, but so is the lottery; and your odds would probably be about the same.

Unfortunately, I’ve found out (the hard way), that internet business is not the financial freedom vending machine I was led to believe it was. For every few dollars I put in I have yet to find happiness wrapped in $100 bills (although I do remain hopeful).

Be sure to treat your business more like a business and less like a lottery and you are sure to do well.

David Ogden


The ways to start a small home business on the Internet continue to increase almost daily. There is no doubt that anyone that truly wants to can make money online.

However there are a few things that you must personally be accountable for to ensure your success. We are going to look at three of those in this article.

1. Are you in it for long term income or short term cash? This is a question that I do not see asked very often, and yet it’s very important point. The type of small home business that you are going to run should be determined on what your goals are.

If you just need to make some money right now to pay some bills how you go about that on the Internet will be different than if you have a long term goal to quit your job for example! The way that you approach working your small home business on a daily basis will be determined by what that goal is.

2. Because there are millions of small businesses you can start it will be important that you take the time to research everything thoroughly. Even starting a free home business is something you should research inside out.

Your research should include determining what market you want to be in, what product you are going to sell, and how you are going to structure your business to accomplish things every day. If you put together a solid game plan in the beginning you will be way ahead of those who don’t.

3. One final thing that I also do not see discussed a lot is that you are going to have to educate yourself on running a small home business on the Internet. Not only will this mean developing the skills it takes, but it also means keeping up to date on what is going on in the marketplace.

How business is conducted on the Internet is constantly changing. Popular ways to promote your business today may be out of date tomorrow! Staying on top of it and being educated is an extremely important facet of running a home business.

These are three small home business tips that you definitely need to be aware of and work at all the time. Keeping your goals in front of you, researching the proper business and how to run a successfully, and staying educated on rapid changes in the marketplace, are all extremely important.