Interview with John S. (GBO PR-manager)

About: GBO International Financial Services LTD (website) is fast becoming a world leader in providing financial services for online companies. These services include incorporation of companies, opening business bank accounts, licensing, payment solutions, nominee services and more. GBO offers the most innovative A to Z financial solutions for Forex, Lottery, Affiliate Marketing, Gaming, e-Commerce and more.

Interview about “How to start a forex site – funds, knowledge, time and resources”

The forex market in recent years is one of the most rapidly growing online industries. There are thousands of new sites, new platforms and new affiliates that appearing and conquering this huge market. With the dramatic increase in theforex industry, we also see a parallel increase in total infrastructure of starting a successful BO business.

We met with John S. – GBO PR-manager to discuss and learn how to start a forex business.

Profitf: In general, is it easy to start a forex business?

John S. – GBO PR-manager: No. Apparently, setting up a new forex business is a simple matter, but if you go down to the depth of things then the answer is no. To establish a successful forex operation, you need to invest resources, start the initial planning, establish the structure, raise funds for the operation, select a platform or a white label solution, select the payment provider, open the company bank accounts, set up a marketing and recruitment departments, and much more. It’s a multi-tasking project.

Each year we set up dozens of forex structures and after 8 years of experience in the field we are able to see a common ground for successful companies that do well and continue to work after a year or two – they approached this project seriously without cutting corners.

Profitf: What are the most 3 basic skills and resources in order to set up forex business?

John S. – GBO PR-manager: 1) Knowledge. You must have knowledge, primarily in online sales and online marketing. You need traders/players(FTDs – First time depositors) who will deposit funds in your site. Without traders/players you will not be able to generate income from the site. You must know, based on your actual experience, how to produce relevant traffic, how to do SEO, you must be familiar with leads buying and call centers companies, affiliate marketing, media buying, running campaigns and more. Without relevant knowledge it will be very difficult to bring players to your website.

People think it’s easy to bring the depositors but it is not and actually it is the heart of the business – everyone is looking for methods and ways to get those FTDs at low costs.

2) Financial investment. Today, given the insane competition in the Forex market, you must invest very large sums of money directly at the beginning.

Initial costs will be for establishing the overall legal structure: the establishment of the company, opening bank accounts and payments solutions. Then you need a platform or white label solution. The most important – you have to gain players to your site by: traffic acquisition, players’acquisition, purchase of leads, preparing marketing and promotions and more and we didn’t even mention the cost to obtain a gambling license.

Personnel –you will need trained personnel to manage the sales of new depositors and retention, back-office stuff, offices, etc.

Over all, you need today 200,000- 500,000$ to start and work for the first year, again, only if you are here for long term.

3) Working “by the book” with patience and long term planning – Like we have pointed out in the beginning – the common ground of all successful FX companies is doing the right things from the beginning, no shortcuts or cutting corners. It seems obvious but it isn’t since people find it difficult to immerse themselves into legal issues and long term planning.

Working by the book is reflecting on an important ability – you must deal and solve on a daily basis unplanned events which can arise from problems of chargebacks to SEO or personnel. Although it’s online business, you have real clients with real problems, even if we take things that seem obvious, like obtaining company’s bank account, out of the blueyou can get a notification from the bank saying that your company account is in pending and may be closed. Now you need to deal with it, find another bank, notify your clients, update suppliers, change payments etc

Profitf: Time to market – how long do you estimate that it can take to fully set up a functional forex website?

John S. – GBO PR-manager: The answer to that is comprised of a large number of elements that make up the company together, we will try to include the main “Mini Projects” in the setting up process you have to do to start:

There are 3 basic “Mini Projects”:

• Create the legal corporate structure and bank accounts – a full structure that includes formation of companies and bank account opening – this can easily take a few weeks.
• Choose a forexwhite label provider or platform MT4 – one of the most important components of your business, finding the best white label for you can take a few weeks and after you find it, it can take a few more weeks until your site is fully ready to work
• Choose a payment service provider – only after your site is live, you can approach a relevant PSP and sign an agreement with him. It can a few weeks until it is ready to use but it can take less time if you are very organizes and you have a good IT guy.

Overall it can take a month or two until you have an operational site.

Please summarize in one sentence the highlights of starting a forex site

John S. – GBO PR-manager: Think for long term, make sure you have enough money to work for a year, don’t cut corners and always remember that you have real live clients.