If you have good credit, a WSI franchise can be an excellent opportunity to leverage that credit into the kind of career you want.

Franchises, both abroad and in the United States, are some of the fastest-growing business opportunities in the word, as we’ve said before. So if you want a better-than-average return on investment, take some time to consider using your resources to give yourself a profession where you can turn a profit — and where you’re doing so as your own boss.

Credit companies like to see people using their credit. Every loan that’s being used is an opportunity for a bank to make money via interest, after all. The key is for you to treat the loan as the same opportunity — a chance to make money, while working at a job where you set the hours and make the best choices for your lifestyle.

Because of the extensive support that’s being offered from WSI’s Corporate Office in setup and in your operations and training, you can rest assured that a WSI franchise is a stable investment. It can be extremely easy to turn a profit with a franchise, and once you begin doing so there is a great sense of security that as long as you keep doing what it is you’re trained to do, you will have a secure position and unstoppable income growth. This will translate into greater job satisfaction and happiness, giving you more energy to take on projects, expand your business and generally improve your working situation to your own satisfaction.

Every job offer out there, whether it’s a traditional employment situation or a self-start business, has its criteria for what makes a good worker. A WSI franchise is no exception — there are people who are particularly suited to the kind of work a franchisee will be doing.

So to see if the WSI Internet Franchise opportunity will fit you, consider these qualities:

• Are you the kind of person who looks for more work, and tries to get ahead of large projects instead of waiting on them?
• Do you volunteer to take on extra duties even if they aren’t strictly in your job description?
• Do you excel at working independently?
• Do you do well operating to specific standards and within a set method?
• Are you able to handle a very diverse set of tasks such as customer service, looking for leads, completing a project and balancing financial concerns?

If so, then a WSI franchise might indeed be right for you. A WSI Internet franchise requires all of these attributes in order to be successful. You have to manage your own budget, because you work for yourself. You have to handle customer service, because you’ll be working directly with your clients. You need the initiative to take care of things, because you are the boss — you don’t have the luxury of waiting for someone to hand you an assignment.

As we’ve mentioned before, it can take as little as a year for a franchise, especially a WSI franchise, to become profitable. To some, a year seems like a long time; it can be difficult to get your head around how fast the time can go by until you’ve been there. So let’s have a look at some things you can’t do in a year.

Pay Off a Car: According to statistics, the average car loan in the United States lasts 70 months, or just under five-and-a-half years. It’s rare that people even get a two- or three-year loan, let alone a single-year loan. In most cases, you’ll still be paying for your car when your WSI franchise becomes profitable (hey, now you know where you can send that extra money you’ll be making!).

Earn Money on a CD: The average rates on CDs are pitiful right now. They outdo savings accounts, but still offer less of a return than a strong WSI franchise will. For example, a $10,000 investment at 2 percent interest compounded monthly for 12 months will offer a profit of $201. Is the price of a business-class plane ticket really worth not having access to your money for a year?

Starting a WSI franchise offers more opportunities than simply being your own boss.

It’s a chance to be a part of a field that’s grown steadily for the last ten years — and is projected to continue growing at a ferocious rate.

According to a study done by Zenith Optimedia, roughly $54 billion is spent on online marketing efforts each year. Direct email, surveys, pop-up advertisements, pay-per-click, search engine optimization — all of these things encompass a budget comparable to major military procurement decisions.

Further, the same study predicts that by next year, spending on this field will reach $77 billion. That’s a 43 percent increase in just three years!

The reasons for the boost are pretty simple to understand. There has been no tool in the world as uniquely suited to get into peoples’ homes and lives as the Web. Traditional commercials on television, radio and even billboards are pretty static affairs — perhaps they’ll hit, perhaps they won’t. But online advertising is flexible, allowing marketers to reach people through social media, direct contact, newsletters and more.

One of the facts of traditional employment is that most people can’t choose the pace at which they work. Even a store manager at the retail level works at a pace dictated by the level of customers coming and going from their store, and the concept of “guaranteed hours” all too often comes to mean “guaranteed overtime without extra pay.” In other cases, high-powered individuals who are only happy in the thick of constant work and buzzing business all too often get left in slower-paced departments by managers unable to recognize their talents.

By contrast, a WSI franchise makes you the boss — no more basing your workload on what someone else thinks you can handle.

Take as many clients as you feel comfortable with. If you like being kept busy, or prefer a slow and steady pace, there’s a franchise for you. Pick a specialty you prefer to focus on, such as medical or automotive clients, or branch out and cover a wide array of options.

People looking to make the switch from traditional employment to self-employment – including those looking to start a WSI franchise – have a valid concern when they ask “Is this for real?“

There are shady operators out there, fly-by-night outfits that promise the moon and leave you holding a handful of sand when the time comes to try to cash your hard-earned profits. Fortunately, WSI Internet Franchise is a company that has been around for a while, and is absolutely not anything like those scofflaws.

WSI has been in operation since the mid 1990s, selling website services and online marketing consultations. WSI is a legitimate, successful business model that has a lot to offer thanks to our unique approach.

Digital marketing is a rapidly growing field — in fact, analysts predict it will grow by at least one billion dollars in the next two years. Whatever one might say about the economy as a whole, the digital marketing field has room for new players.

A WSI franchise is often referred to as a “white-collar franchise” when discussed online. There’s good reason for the distinction, we feel. When most people hear the term “franchise,” they logically think of a restaurant, or perhaps a bookstore or auto parts shop that’s part of a larger chain. In short, food service and retail tend to dominate the franchise business model.

Such franchises are defined by their blue-collar aesthetic, by and large. Large shipments of inventory moved around, lots of time spent on your feet preparing and organizing supplies, orders, purchases, hour-long opening and closing procedures — and don’t even get us started on the holiday rush!

A WSI franchise is called white-collar for a reason.

It is a rare type of franchise that mimics the traditional business place atmosphere, and lets you have more control over the timing of important factors such as schedule and approach.

We’ve talked before about what kind of candidate makes for a good WSI franchise owner, but those were admittedly somewhat generic qualifiers. After all, just about anyone can be a good “people person” with a bit of training and personal effort. But let’s talk about specific steps you can take to successfully transition from being traditionally-employed to self-employed.

1 - Start with our 90-day quick-start course.

All good jobs come with good training, and we’ve made it simple and easy to engage with our training program even if you’re already working on a job. For a little extra time each day, you can get the tools you need in order to run your WSI Internet Franchise.

2 - If you have a manager or supervisor, observe what they do.

Take the time to ask them how they handle things, and why they approach things the way they do. There’s a reason they’re in charge of the tasks they’re working on, and if approached in a friendly way they can probably be quite inclined to share their methods. This kind of information can be very important to you when you’re the one who has to manage things yourself with your franchise.

Previously, I blogged about the importance of face-to-face contact in generating leads for your WSI franchise. This is a good, long-term tactic to adopt because once you get used to it; the process is very easy to maintain as a habit, and really lets your clientele get to know you in a sense. However, it isn’t the only way to develop such “face time” when promoting your business.

One tactic that can really work out for you is to host small, informal seminars which review what you offer to local businesses who might be interested in your services.

There are really two ways to go about the seminar process today — on-location and online.

An on-location seminar is fairly straightforward: Invite local business owners to an area you have designated for your presentation, be it your office, your town’s conference center or your own home if you have sufficient viewing space. Do make sure you can afford to provide refreshments (even a cup of tea or coffee goes a long way in keeping people content while they hear you out). The advantage of this is it really allows the natural flow of the Q&A that comes at the end of a seminar.

There is a sense of security that comes from owning a WSI franchise.

Anyone who owns their own business will tell you the same:

Even when times are hard, there’s something both personally and practically satisfying about owning your own business that isn’t quite the same when you work with or for someone else.

In a traditional employment arrangement, even fairly high-level employees can be kept in the dark from time to time. Consider what happened with Enron, MCI-Worldcom and so on. For a more humorous example, consider the movie Fun with Dick and Jane starring Jim Carey. Even as the company was imploding all around him, he was “promoted” to be the company spokesman and take the heat. Funny yes, and a bit of a stretch, but really it was only amusing because to at least some extent, we certainly can imagine it happening!

A WSI franchise represents much more than just another job — it represents a totally new set of options you’ll have once you get started. In a traditional employment arrangement, you’d be surprised at just how many of your options are dictated by your employer.

When you’re working for someone else, they dictate:

Your vacation time…Sick days…Bereavement or maternity leave…And, of course, how much money you make!

Sure, there’s flexibility built into any traditional employment system, but the fact is that they have an extensive amount of control over how you live your life. It doesn’t have to be that way, and with a WSI franchise, you’ll not only have more control over when and where you can do these things, but you’ll also have the money to make the most of your new options.

Given that the current economic downturn seems content to carry itself on for at least another year, why would starting a WSI Franchise right now be a good idea? Times are risky… isn’t that the time to play things more conservatively?

The fact is, owning your own business comes with a certain level of security that other options simply can not offer.

With your own business, you can secure better sources of credit, improve your general credit rating by making good investments in your business needs and gain a number of skills that can be of help to you in the future.

WSI franchises offer one of the best things about owning any business — the chance to be your own boss.

Sure, there’s the WSI advanced technologies and practices, and the contract you have with the entire WSI network for properly running a franchise, but at the operational, day-in and day-out level, you are 100 percent in charge.

You get to pick what clients you want to work with. Do you prefer offering consultations for people in technical trades and professions? Or do you want to specifically take on people who have careers in the service industry? Either way, it’s your call. Find out what you’re best at doing, and you can tailor your business to servicing the clients you’re most comfortable with, instead of the ones management says you should be most comfortable with.

Franchising with WSI isn’t just about making profits, though there certainly are enough of those to justify it. It’s also about the flexibility to live a lifestyle of your choosing. One of the ways people can embrace this is by developing a “family business” lifestyle.

We’ve talked before about bringing your family in to work at your WSI franchise, and it’s a wonderful option for a family that wants to make money and still have time to be together.

So let’s consider a few of the advantages that the family-model business can offer.

Vacations — Flexibility to take a vacation at convenient times for you and your family is a big perk of the self-ownership business model. If the money’s there, you go! No waiting on someone else to clear it. What’s also nice is that it doesn’t even necessarily require closing down the business if you have enough employees in the family. The parents can head off for a two-week getaway on their own while the kids hold down shop, or the young student can take an early summer break for a week at the Florida beaches while the operation stays running.

So, we’ve mentioned a few times that the average franchise posts a return to profitability after the initial investment within one to three years. But what exactly does that mean to you? Sure, it means that’s the point where you’ve made back your initial investment and can start saving or investing money again.

But what exactly does it mean compared to a more traditional job?

Let’s start with a fairly common area of measurement: retail service…

…It can take a year of working as a cashier to be promoted to specialist or low-level management positions.

…It can take as much as five years to be promoted to higher management positions.

…There is no guarantee of being promoted, even if you work hard.

…Your hours, even after several years of work, are dictated entirely by the needs of management.

When discussing a WSI franchise, one of the first things people tend to be concerned about is the return on investment, or ROI. After all, we’re in business to make money. Providing excellent customer service and being a digital marketing pro is a great deal of fun, but it’s also nice to be able to pay the utility bills at the end of the month.

That said, the monetary concerns aren’t the only way to measure ROI, and the absolute value of the money isn’t the only question to consider, either.

First, you have to consider the rate of return.

A franchise is a considerable investment of initial money, and no matter how much it pays out in the long run, that’s not going to help if it doesn’t pay the money out quickly enough to meet your expenses and standard of living. If your rate of return isn’t quite what you need, it is time to consult with your mentor and with our guidance programs to try to change your strategy.

Transitioning from traditional employment to owning your own WSI franchise can be daunting.

Many people every year miss out on the chance to have the life and employment style they most want because they aren’t sure they can make this transition. Admittedly, it does take work, and it would be a lie to say everyone is successful. However, there is nothing innately impossible about it. In fact, with the right mindset and approach, most who make the leap do so quite well.

With that in mind, here are a few concrete things you can do to help yourself make the change.

Contact people — You know people at your job, most likely. Managers, administrators, financial officials and so on. Talk to them. Ask them what their advice is for managing a department or maintaining a schedule that lets them accomplish things. Furthermore, talk to small business owners in your area. Ask them what short, straightforward advice they have for running a business. People like to help others, and you would be surprised what a short interview with someone who knows what they’re doing will tell you.

Part of owning a WSI franchise is that you get to design your own perk structure!

Normally, the perks of a job are dictated by human resources, finances and the needs of the company. When you own your own business, you have power and are in complete control of this situation. Thus, your perks are determined by your needs and your understanding of reality, rather than what some administrator feels is best for you. For example…

Vacation Time — Maybe two weeks every year isn’t cutting it for you. Maybe you don’t want to take a whole two weeks just because some bureaucrat insists on it, and you’d prefer a few small weekend excursions spread throughout the year. Alternatively, maybe you just want a nice month off around Christmas time, or to enjoy the waves in the Bahamas during the summer. If you have the finances and the freedom to do it, it’s yours to do.

When maintaining a WSI franchise, lead generation is an important part of the process. You have to drum up business in order to survive, after all, and getting people interested is part and parcel of your success.

That said, it isn’t necessarily new contacts that provide the most resources. Oftentimes it is the existing clients you’ve worked with before that provide the best business overall. Study after study shows that repeat customers are the ones that tend to supply businesses with their best revenue, so it’s important to understand ways to take advantage of this fact.

One thing to consider is how to bring back existing customers with whom you might not have had contact for a while.

Perhaps they were happy with their site and didn’t see a need to get more information from you just yet, or maybe they didn’t quite realize you offer more services than the initial campaign you provide. Whatever the reason, it is quite likely you still have many of your older clients’ contact details if you’ve been building a proper email database.

One of the most unique things about having a WSI franchise is that while you are part of a larger organization, your franchise is its own entity.

You use the WSI Digital Marketing System, but you will have your own stylistic approach to things, your own way of connecting with your customers. To make the most of this effect, you should consider blogging as a means of developing that personal identity and boosting your credibility.

A blog is an interesting way of promoting yourself and maintaining your own vision, even within a franchising framework. A blog allows you to share your personal thoughts, keep your readers up to date with what you’ve been working on, adds another venue for promotions and information about your business to clients, and so forth.

I’d like a job where I call the shots for a change.

With a WSI franchise, that’s exactly what you get. Once you’re trained in our core approach and become a Certified Digital Marketing Consultant, your franchise is just that — yours. You make the money, you get to decide what to do with it. You’ll set your own hours, make your own decisions about staff, and in general it’ll be your baby.

I don’t want to deal with inventory.

Done deal. The WSI approach to franchising is just what you’re looking for. WSI franchisees provide their clients with expert online marketing and branding consultation services. This approach doesn’t require any kind of supply or physical products, just innovation and dedication.

WSI franchise owners value their independence and direct control over their own business.

At WSI, we recognize that people have their own ideas about things — what a novel concept, right? Some of those ideas tend to involve ways to increase revenues, as is the case with all small business owners, because a profitable business is one that is going to stay around.

The thing is, not every business allows you that kind of freedom. We’re willing to bet that a lot of good ideas for bringing in new revenue got crushed at your prior jobs. These ideas get put down for a lot of reasons — office politics, personality clashes, the management not quite getting the idea or sometimes even because it doesn’t work out due to reasons that the employee knows nothing about. Even when good ideas do get used, the credit doesn’t always go to the one who came up with it so much as their managers.

Digital marketing with a WSI franchise is a proven path to an exciting and satisfying career.

Consider it: The division of labor makes modern society possible. We’d never have all the wonderful diversity of options available to us if we all had to focus on, say, subsistence farming. When one group of people can specialize in one thing, other groups can specialize in others and the choices for everyone begin to multiply.

One maddening aspect of traditional business that we hear about from our non-franchise friends involves things their company does that make no sense at all.

Department shake-ups that come randomly, management saying the client asked for x number of changes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the original product, bonuses being cut for some reason and so on. Honestly, the number of things that seem to happen to people for no adequately explained reason is enough to make our heads spin, and we don’t even work for them. It’s not just that the changes happen — the fact that there isn’t any sense of connection to why they’re happening has to be disheartening.

This is another reason why franchising is such a wonderful job — you don’t have to put up with that kind of thing with a WSI franchise. You’re in direct contact with your clients, so you can talk to them about what they want and why they want it, getting the big picture instead of piecemeal little alterations. You have control of the finances, so there are no surprises at the end of the year. You can make plans for your money in the long term without worrying that betting on your bonus might not pay off.

Digital marketing with a WSI franchise is a means of investing in the future — specifically, the future of your clients.

Think about a major brand… We’ll consider Geico. Have you noticed how they have used several advertising campaigns over the last few years? The Gecko, the Caveman and so forth? Very rarely does a company stick with any one advertising campaign for particularly long. There are some exceptions, but by and large there is a trend to try new campaigns every so often.

The basic idea with your clients is to do an outstanding job that they can appreciate — help them understand the why and the how, give them the ability to examine their metrics and see the effect of their advertising campaign.

Owning a WSI franchise is about more than just doing business — it’s about lead generation, knowing how to increase revenues and organizing your life so that you can handle the very real task of doing everything for yourself.

One of the advantages of traditional employment that self-employment tends to lack is division of labor. In a traditional setup, you have marketers, developers, analysts, investors, financing and other departments that break up the task and allow people to get more done overall. If you’re considering going into business for yourself, it’s important that you understand this option is not necessarily going to be available to you. Sometimes several people buy into a franchise together, but by and large the individual operator is the unit of ownership.

When presented with the options a WSI franchise offers, many people are initially skeptical, especially given the times we live in.

“In an economy like this, why would anyone take a risk and try to own their own business?” they ask.

Well, it turns out that there are a lot of reasons why someone might want to take on a WSI franchise, even in days like this.

One of the most important is that a WSI franchise does not prohibit you from taking on other work. Are you an aspiring writer looking for more time in your day to pursue your passion, but not ready to take the plunge into living on your writing fees alone? A WSI franchise allows you to control your schedule so that you can balance work and your passion on your terms, not someone else’s.

A WSI franchise is owned and operated by a digital marketing expert. So what is it about digital marketing that makes it such an attractive tool?

One of the most overlooked areas is the interactive nature of the experience. Look at some of the most successful marketing trends of recent years — alternate reality games (ARG), flashmobs, viral video and so on. The common element of these is the interactivity they offer.

Many people can play in an ARG, and just as many show up to numerous flashmob events. Even viral video has the participatory angle of each viewer of the video sending it onward to others for their own enjoyment and consumption.

One of the upsides to a WSI franchise is having a complete picture of what’s happening with your business.

This is an innate advantage that small businesses have over larger ones — the “big picture” can be examined by one person and understood clearly. Not so with particularly large businesses.

How often have we seen this trope? Someone is content in their job, going along doing their thing, when suddenly without warning they’re fired because the business is in a crunch, or something goes wrong that no one knew was coming or could prepare for because someone higher up covered up things? We’ve seen it with Worldcom, Enron and other businesses, so this is clearly not just disaster mongering.

Going from a traditional job to owning a WSI franchise needn’t be an overnight jump. Many people choose to make a transition from employment to self-employment.

One of the best ways to prepare for the transition is to do a lot of research. There is a lot of material out there, both WSI-specific and about franchises in general, that can really give you a good sense of what to expect.

For example, one could research the rate of return on investment of most franchises. It’s one thing to understand that a franchise is typically profitable within the first one to three years. However, knowing the typical curve from month-to-month can help you paint a more specific picture of what sort of money you can expect to have and when.

At WSI, we want to help our franchisees make good decisions that will help them see a good return on their investment (ROI). Part of that is knowing just what a WSI Franchise requires, and the sort of person who is a good fit.

Franchises are by nature service-oriented businesses. A WSI Internet Franchise also is this way, focusing on letting our expert-trained Consultants provide advertising and marketing services to clients with these needs. So, the first qualification is to be a service-minded person, eager to provide the customer with the best experience you possibly can.

Another element is for someone who wants a balance of responsibilities. A classic example of someone who can thrive while operating a WSI franchise is someone who has some management experience in a larger business, and wants to test the waters of running their own organization. They have the experience and know-how to operate on their own initiative for a lot of their work, but are also comfortable working within a structure that can provide assistance and advice if necessary. They get the benefit of working for themselves, but not by themselves.

A WSI franchise is a chance to become a digital marketing expert, very much on your own terms. The work you will be doing is straightforward, easy to learn and the kind of material that will let you develop your own style within our market-tested, proven-effective formula.

Yes, there are lessons to learn in operating a WSI franchise — we provide the training that will get you off the ground quickly and understand how to deal with the majority of situations you encounter in operating your business. If a problem comes up, you can easily contact home office for advice and guidance, and the company guidelines assure you that you’ll never need to worry about whether an action you’re taking is within our policy.

Even though we all dream of being our own boss one day, it has to be said that the idea can be a little daunting. What if we make mistakes? There’s less of a support structure to help you out if you fumble an important job in your own business, after all. That’s why a WSI franchise is a good choice for your transition from employed to self-employed – we make sure the process is easy to understand and readily accessible.

Training

We provide each WSI franchise owner with the training they need, just like they would receive in a traditional employment situation. Our 90 day quick start course is easy to understand, can be taken either on its own or on the side during a regular job as you prepare to make the switch. Either way, you learn the skills you need to run your franchise, with nothing hidden.

A Proven Approach

The WSI method has worked for hundreds of WSI franchisees since we entered the digital marketing game in 1995. We consistently update the specifics, but our core approach remains the same and provides a strong foundation for you to set out and bring in the revenue you expect out of a personal business.

Mentoring

Some training inevitably has to take place on the job, of course. Even with the quick start program and the proven method we provide, some situations will come up that surprise anyone. That’s why we have our mentoring program, so experienced franchisees can share their insights and ideas with new entrepreneurs eager to do things right.

We’ve made it clear that having a WSI franchise can be tremendously rewarding — you can make money, have fun and develop the kind of lifestyle you want to lead. It almost seems like there’s no downside at all; clearly, there has to be a catch, right? After all, we’ve heard too-good-to-be-true news before.

What evidence is there that someone like you should still consider WSI a sound investment for the future?

Well, WSI franchises specialize in providing business solutions through digital marketing. In 2009, people spent $54 billion dollars on advertising — that’s billion with a “b.” Further, it’s expected to grow to more than $70 billion by 2012.
To make a comparison, the United States military spent only $7.4 billion on missile defenses in 2002.
To put it another way, the amount that people increase their spending on online advertising is more than the largest military in the world spends in total on a major military project.
So clearly, if people wanting to raise the awareness of their online presence can grow faster than the military’s budget, there’s some room for new players to the field of digital marketing and business solutions.

So, you’re considering a WSI franchise, because you’re a smart and able-minded person who wants to get into the world of business ownership.

But there are the lingering questions, smart questions that anyone with your good sense would ask.

• Is franchising really a viable model of business?
• Is there really a market for these services?
• Does it really work?

Well, rather than just tell you “yes,” let’s take a minute and look at some of the numbers involved in the franchising world in general.

Did you know:

• That there are more than 825,000 franchises operating in the United States alone?
• That these franchises operate within a $2.1 trillion market?
• That 1 in 12 U.S. businesses is a franchise?
• That a new franchise opens every 8 minutes of each business day?