Today’s ambitious businessmen might be asking, “Why a franchise?” What is it about a franchise that makes it such a consistently successful mode of operation for new business owners? The truth is that franchising has some distinct advantages over larger businesses that allow franchise owners to compete on much stronger ground than they would with a completely new small business.

Here are three reasons any businessman can say “yes” when asked “Is franchising right for you?”

Reason #1: immediate, established customer recognition. Each WSI franchise is an extension of the existing WSI brand, coming with a client or audience base built into its operations. By the time a new businessman is ready to open their own part of a franchise, the brand is already established in customers’ minds, and the new owner can draw upon the positive reputation that the brand has been building.

Reason #2: world class support. A franchise is similar to a regional department in a big chain store, but with greater flexibility. Within the WSI Internet Franchise, for instance, we provide on-going training to new digital marketing consultants. We also leverage WSI’s eMarketplace of proven, qualified production centers and suppliers around the world.

Digital Marketing is an essential part of the WSI franchise experience.

As with all of our efforts, this ties in to assuring our franchisees that they have control of their own business operations, but are not in business alone. They have the backing of a world-wide network as well as access to eMarketplace resources.

WSI already has a strong digital marketing presence. We have a track record of success and strong reviews from Fortune 500 sources. In your own marketing efforts, this is strong material that you can use in your favor, both in generating new clients and in serving your established customer base.

The owners of small – to medium-sized businesses, which are our specialty, are often very good at what they do, but don’t necessarily have the time or resources to effectively leverage online marketing. That’s where your WSI Internet Franchise comes in. You can offer them your certified expertise in online marketing strategies, and help them achieve the best solutions possible.

WSI franchises are all about one thing: profits.

We want to make money, and we know you want to make money. According to British franchising authorities, some 90 percent of franchises in the UK are operating at a profit, every single year. There are profits to be had in franchising, and it’s easy to see why — resources and training, combined with local independence and minimum of investment.

We offer our franchises a great many advantages in reducing the amount of investment required to get moving. Above all, a new business owner wants to get a return on investment as soon as possible, to start operating “in the black” and gaining those wonderful profits that are so important to making life go smoothly.

WSI franchises have access to training programs and support tools from the Corporate Office. We teach you what you need to know, without the fluff and time wasted that can come with other business training courses. After all, this isn’t an abstract course about the principles of business management — these are practical, focused training sessions about what you will be doing day-to-day as a businessperson. Your time is valuable, and we want to make the most of it in our training so you can focus on turning a profit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s an interesting time to be a WSI franchise owner. Does anyone remember Star Trek, with those touch-screen pads they used? Or the shows with tiny handheld computers that can do everything? Video phones? Voice commands, computers that play all kinds of music, wherever and whenever?

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t wish to alarm you, but it is definitely the future.

Smart-phones, tablet computers, 3D hi-def televisions and motion-sensitive gaming consoles are everywhere. And yet getting to the future doesn’t mean that it’s time to stop innovating — these wonderful inventions are just tools to the next great set of ideas and concepts to be discovered.

So what does this mean for someone who has a WSI franchise?

Well, as a digital marketing expert, it’s good to be up-to-date on concepts and ideas out there. Remember, WSI franchises are owned by people from all walks of life, from newcomers to savvy businesspeople with long track records.

Owning your own business is an exciting thing, and a WSI franchise lets you experience the excitement with a number of creative business solutions for your style of living.

Do you prefer to work a few days a week with long hours, so you can have nice, long days off? Or do you prefer to work a little bit early every morning and then have the rest of the day to yourself? Either way, you can schedule your days to take advantage of your best working hours, or to accommodate a family lifestyle.

Do you prefer to work with a lot of clients at once, or are you more of a single-client, hands-on kind of worker? Once again, you can choose your workload to suit your desired level of income and time investment.

When considering the potential rate of the return on investment (ROI) on your WSI franchise, it’s important to remember that the ROI of any company is broken up into several types. Returning to a recent article in Entrepreneur magazine, we find a good overview of how to break down the parts of a return on investment into easily-understood categories.

First, there is the return on the monetary portion

This is the lion’s share of most people’s concerns when discussing investments. You sink a lot of money into starting up a business, and you want to be sure that it will pay back out and keep you comfortable. The simplest way to consider it is in terms of percentage. If you invest $50,000 and want a 10 percent annual rate of return, the business will need to pay back $5,000 every year.

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.

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.

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.

As we’ve discussed before, lead generation is an important element of operating a WSI franchise.

You need to keep people interested, and while most business for franchisees comes from repeat customers, you’re always going to need to bring new and interested parties into your sphere of expertise.

Owning your own business – rather than working for someone else – means you can perform lead-generating efforts based on realistic information you have, rather than some abstract numbers that corporate insists you meet.

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.

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.

Obviously, when someone buys a WSI franchise, he or she wants to make money.

Profitability is the bottom-line factor of anyone’s consideration of starting a small- or medium-sized business; how much money are they going to bring home, and how often?

So it’s crucial that a person understands how to define profitability.

The first way is to consider the return on investment (ROI). Investing $10,000 and getting back $75,000 is a very clear gain. Though again, one must make sure to consider the rate of return with the ROI. Getting that $75,000 over 75 years might not seem as desirable or profitable as getting it over 3 years.

Lead generation and WSI franchises go together perfectly.

You need new clients to keep getting work, and they need your services to maintain their own advantage in their personal businesses.

One option you can use for lead generation is social networking. Today, there is no excuse whatsoever for any business not to take advantage of the power that social media offers anyone ready to invest a bit of time.

WSI franchise owners know that one of the best arguments in favor of the franchising model is the excellent return on investment it offers.

After all, many franchises reach profitability within one to three years. But sometimes a bit more detail is needed to clarify just what the return on investment for a franchise looks like.

We’ve discussed the comparison between franchise self-employment and working for a traditional company. A good way to look at the breakdown is the wage by hour comparison. How much were you making per hour at your previous job, and how much per hour now?

The reason that this is an effective way is that an hour of work is an understandable, easily-grasped measurement. You know how much you could type, data enter, manufacture, bake or sell in an hour of effort, and you know how to break down hours on the job versus pay in a period to figure out hours. It makes the concept simple to relate to.

A WSI franchise is all about having the flexibility to respond to what your customer needs and desires.

Sometimes they may think they want one thing out of digital marketing, but you can convince them of a more effective strategy or a more important goal. Other times they may clue you in to trying something more ambitious than you had planned. Either way, there are many, many ways to do the digital marketing “thing,” and you will find each of them rewarding in its own unique fashion.

Social Media
Twitter microblogs, Facebook friending circles, StumbleUpon notices, ReddIt campaigns — each of these offers a unique way to reach out and touch someone. Google+ has now joined the scene as well, so you can expect a new range of options that you can help your clients implement there.

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 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.

Operating a WSI franchise is an exciting thing to do.

There’s virtually no way to get into a rut while working as a Digital Marketing Consultant because of the unique combination of skills and tasks that are required to make a franchise run just right. It’s an exciting and interesting experience, and here’s why:

Customer Service

As a digital marketing expert, you will be using proven WSI tools & technologies to provide high quality advice and interacting directly with the clients you’ll be serving. There’s no separate marketing department talking to the customers for you — you get to interact with the clients on your own, talking about their needs and helping them meet the online goals they have as you get to know them.

Work Online

The online world is a unique opportunity to get involved in. Social media networks, video blogging, traditional blogging, advertising campaigns and more await those who dive into the Web. You’ll have the chance to learn all about these things, and provide your expertise to your customer base as well.

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.

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?