One of the best things about a WSI franchise is that it offers a combination of the benefits of being in business for yourself and having a traditional employment situation. Every franchise is part of the WSI family, able to draw on resources such as training, common information sources, and so forth. However, each is also a business unto itself, and a franchise owner is able to look at the profitability question in a whole new way — as the boss!

In a traditional employment arrangement, there is a certain amount of job comfort. After all, there is a clearly-defined set of goals and rules that have to be met, and the employee gets paid for doing so. As long as the parent company remains profitable, the employee should have a job.

However, that statement right there shows the nature of the beast: the parent company’s profitability is the key concern. Many middle managers who were doing quite well, have found themselves out of work in recent years, because the company as a whole needed to cut back. Many of us – in one way or another – have felt the pressures from the economic challenges of recent years.

WSI franchises offer a lot of opportunity for today’s independent-minded businessperson — not the least of which is the chance to make a good Return on Investment.

Of course, ROI can refer to a lot more than simply the money returned, although that is definitely part of it. Time is a particularly hefty investment in any business, and anyone who’s even considered the process knows that the time you invest into your business can sometimes take you right past normal business hours.

The strength of a WSI franchise is that a lot of the leg work that goes into start-up has been done for our franchisees. We’ve looked into the market, and we have done the market testing and discovered the online strategies that work best. Our franchisees don’t have to invest valuable time into researching their demographics, lead generation strategies or in creating advertising material — we’ve handled that part, so our franchisees can focus ROI efforts on other matters than time.

Franchising = Operating at a Profit

While every country is different, consider that in the United Kingdom, some 90% of franchise businesses turn a profit every year. This isn’t a case where someone can say “most franchises make a profit,” when they actually mean 50% of them do but the other half tend to fail — it’s outright almost ALL of them. In this global downturn of big business, the smaller business owner is well-placed to take advantage and grow his own organization effectively, and the ROI is there, just waiting for discovery.

WSI franchises offer businesspeople both support and independence in equal measure. Many of us can imagine a time when we had a really outstanding idea. We had a project in mind, a plan to implement it and the desire to go for it. But, alas, ideas take time and money, and in a traditional employment arrangement, the company tends to want to play things safe, leaving the ideas of many excellent people on the draft board rather than the project table.

With a WSI franchise, you can be more flexible about how you approach revenue growth.

Every owner’s style is different. Sure, we have a tried and true formula that we have tested against the market, but each franchisee can implement it in different ways with his or her own personal touch. Some owners are idea people who want to grow their revenue by trying out new things. Others are people workers who excel at assembling a good, small team of talented individuals.

A franchise offers a lot of leverage to handle things your way, allowing you to focus more on revenue growth and increasing your profitability than on poorly-worded requirements from upper management.

Further, a franchise offers you a lot of support in achieving your ideas and goals. We have a good idea of what the market wants and needs, and what approaches work best for our customer base. So if you have a good idea, and share it with home office, we can give you guidance for how to implement that idea, and how to get the most out of making it work.

Like all franchises, a WSI franchise offers a number of advantages over going into business completely solo.

This comes with a few compromises, inasmuch as you’ll be working with our training department and learning to use our tested and developed formula for serving your clients. But the advantages in security and understanding what you have to do far outweigh the few concessions you’ll have to make, and here’s one of the reasons why.

With any other small business opportunity, the market is something of a murky affair.

Perhaps you always wanted to open a computer repair shop, but don’t see any in the city you live in. Is this because of the Best Buy around the corner? Or is it business regulation in the city? Is there a thriving “do-it-yourself” culture in the city where people trade knowledge and perform computer repairs among themselves? How would you know any of this? Where would you start?

With a WSI franchise, you have the opportunity to research what we’re all about right up front. Your fellow franchisees can share their insight with you, all the costs of starting up are laid out right for you in a clearly-explained package to purchase — even the training schedule and materials are put up for you to look over from the beginning. There are no secrets or hidden gimmicks that you have to stumble over in surprise later; we’ve done the research already and can answer any questions you have.

So some of you may be asking, what exactly makes a WSI franchise worth it? Sure, there are the general franchising benefits, but what is it about WSI itself that makes it such an attractive franchising option?

For starters, it’s a chance to work with a world leader in the field of online business solutions.

A WSI franchise is geared toward providing business solutions to other small and medium-sized business owners, particularly those looking to establish an online presence. As the web has evolved and businesses have adapted to its ever-expanding capabilities, WSI has consistently been at the leading edge of development, upgrading security features and providing first class digital marketing solutions.

After all, one of the biggest advantages of a franchise is the support provided by the home office. WSI provides expert training to its franchisees, not just at the beginning stages but through the life of the franchise. We keep our owners up-to-date on our latest developments and provide accessible training options so they can stay abreast of the newest developments online and off, ever refining and solidifying our successful approach to providing successful online business solutions.

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?

One of the most important benefits of a WSI franchise is that its profits are your profits.

In a normal employment situation, this isn’t ever completely the case. There are situations that get close, such as salesmen making commissions, or bonuses for a department performing over expectations and under budget, but these aren’t really the same thing at all.

In a commission, you get a part of each sale, yes. But you don’t get to dictate what is done with the remainder of the profits. That’s up to management, corporate office, district or whatever chain of command is above you to decide. You might have a killer idea for how to re-organize the store, or present a better face to the clientele, but you might not get to initiate it because someone else is pulling the strings; you do not own the business.

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.

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.

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.

More than anything, a WSI franchise offers its owner a degree of flexibility that isn’t available to most people.

Most businesses exist in fixed models that can’t really be customized in any meaningful way. Not so with the WSI franchise, where you can set up the lifestyle you want in relatively short order.

Are you the kind of person who enjoys working several jobs? A WSI Internet franchise can be tailored so that you don’t have to invest all of your time in it at once, allowing you to pursue other hobbies and employment alongside your franchise and marketing work.

When we talk about owning your own WSI franchise., we often mention the security of owning your own business.

There’s a lot to be said for it, including the financial security, the emotional security and many other elements of the idea. However, one of the most important is the security that comes from being able to give a quick response to unexpected changes.

Large businesses end up being very bureaucratic. This is a necessary process, because large businesses have a vast amount of information to handle — financial, personnel, public relations — it all adds up. Thus, large businesses build up a layer of red tape to control and organize the collection of all this information and all decisions that come with operating a business. The problem is, anyone who’s dealt with red tape understands that it leaves very little discretion to any one member of the organization. Procedure must be followed, even if it’s clear that the solution lies slightly outside the manual. This is why when you call technical support places, you always hear, “Have tried turning it off, then on again?”

A WSI franchise is a unique investment in the world of franchising, because the focus is on online marketing

Rather than providing a storefront stocked with supplies that are provided by distributors, you are digital marketing expert presenting WSI’s solutions to clients — YOUR clients. That’s the key here: Most small businesses are risky ventures because there isn’t a guarantee of a market or clients. At WSI, we’ve tapped into one of the largest markets out there: small and medium sized business owners. And we can assure you there are plenty of business owners who need your online expertise!

Digital marketing is a huge field, and everyone is trying to get in on it

Social media marketing, lead generation, content marketing, website promotion — every business is coming to understand that an online presence is essential to compete, and simply having a webpage about their business is not going to cut it anymore. Just typing ‘online marketing’ into ehow.com and other article aggregator sites generates dozens of hits, ranging from how to build an online marketing campaign to general marketing advice to even asking whether online marketing is right for a particular business.

There are a lot of things a franchise owner can talk to his or her mentor about. There’s always something out there you can chat over via messenger, email, the phone or even face-to-face over a cup of coffee now and then. So why is it that many mentor/protégé relationships feel a bit awkward and at a loss for words?
Well, people get nervous for all kinds of reasons. You don’t want to give the wrong advice. Maybe a topic you had planned to share might not pan out just right, or you could just genuinely be stuck for words. So, with that in mind, here are a few really good sources you can check out for topic details.

The WSI Coffee Break

— Our monthly webinar series which explores topics of direct interest to WSI employees, like the products and services offered in the WSI eMarketplace. Whether heavy or lighthearted, the material covered in this series is a gold mine of potential discussion topics for you to ask your mentor about. It can serve as an icebreaker to lead on to other topics, or be the whole discussion itself.

The WSI Internet Franchise Blog

— Same idea, though with less video! The written form is a bit different from the visual, so the ideas conveyed can be a bit different, and the net is cast a bit wider for topics. Check out the blog when it updates, and if something sticks in your mind, ask your mentor about it.