Watch Out For The Overhead

A large overhead has the ability to kill even the very best business ideas, furthermore large overheads create unnecessary pressure on your business and also your own personal life, so they need to be avoided at all costs. For example even Facebook as a business would have failed if they could not afford to keep the servers up in the first 12 months of their business.

Anyone who has already ventured into setting up their own business will understand this fact much better than any brand new business men or women looking to start out. Outlined below are a few fundamental pitfalls that you need to try to avoid and they could really help you maximize your first 12 month profits, which after all is the aim for all businesses large or small.

Necessities Come First

When you are first starting out whether it is with a very small budget or even with an investor, try to keep the overhead down by looking at what your business actually needs for the first 12 months. So for example if you can do a lot of your business over the phone and via email then you might not need a company car.

Also your business will more than likely need a web presence no matter what size of business you are but the first 12 months you might only need a small brochure website rather than a full blow e-commerce website which would cost thousands to develop and promote.

The idea is to decide what you business really needs and the best way to do this is to outline what you need and why you need it. If there is anything that you can make do without then do because all these costs soon add up and you can be many thousands down before you even start trading if you are not careful.

Do You Need An Office?

An office is a very big cost for a business especially in the first 12 months of trading, so you need to analyze whether you can operate from home initially because this could save you a large amount of money.

If you do need an office because of lack of space at home or for clients visiting you, then make sure you shop around to find the very best deal. Try to negotiate breaks in the contract term because the last thing you want is to be tied up for 3 years especially if you want to expand or downsize. If you do get an office and employ staff this means you will also need to look at health and safety procedures as well which can also bring with it additional costs.

Shop Around For Everything

One of the worst things you can do is to go with the very first quote you get for anything related to your business from offices, marketing costs, website design, to advertising options. As a business owner it is down to you to get the very best deal for any product or service you need and that means going for the best quality, most flexible contract and lowest price. Remember while getting the lowest cost is always a good target, do not compromise quality or your business and brand can suffer as a result of poor quality goods.

About the Author: Jonathan works with Veritas Consulting who are specialists in health and safety services and fire risk assessments.

Good Quality and Interesting Content

Having interesting content on your website, guarantees that customers would visit your site more than once. Organizing the content is also of great importance because it should be easy for the visitors to read and find older posts.

Consider the Recommendations from the Visitors/Clients

If you already have community, even if it is a small one and consists out of few regular members, it is recommended to listen to their opinions. Adding a comment form or some kind of poll, should improve the connection between you and the customers. You would know exactly what the visitors are expecting from your website.

Track the Usability of the Website

Tracking the customers is essential. This gives you the opportunity to see what the visitors like and what they don’t. For example, using Google analytics could give you information – which are the most visited pages of your site and from which region the customers are coming. Knowing those basics you can concentrate and optimize your site so the visitors come back.

Be Active Online

When you are reading an interesting article, you could try to leave a comment related to it and end up with your e-mail or link to your website.

Think about Using the Services of SEO

Not only it is one of the modern services, but it is now an essential part of the improvement of your website. The effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and web standards are closely connected. The idea is creating clean code for your website. Optimize your pages using meta tags and keywords – make your content more accessible. Use quality links and promote your website to popular and connected to your market niche sites.

How About Paid Advertisement?

The PPC advertising or in other words pay-per-click, is a great option for you to increase the traffic to your website, of course the key is to use the proper keywords. Placing advertisement banners on trusted sites will increase your chance to be noticed online.

Write Articles

Writing articles in other sites, not only in yours – is also a great method to gain better visibility. Think about some useful topic that you can write and post afterwards, it could be “how to” lesson for example. At the end of the article you can leave your name and link to your website, so if there are some interested customers they can easily reach you.

Create a Blog

As you probably know, blogs are very popular and they continue to develop. Blogs are among the best sources that people use to gain short information about new products, services or important news. Use WordPress – we can refer to it as the basis of the blog networking. Not only it is free, but there is a great variety of widgets, plug-ins and SEO – friendly applications you can use. This way you’re the content in your blog would be fresh and interesting for the visitors.

Use Sites like Twitter and Facebook

There are different opinions when it comes to social media sites and the effect they have as good marketing tools to get noticed. But it is recommended to use them for your better online acceptance. There are a lot of tools that offer you to build connection between your website and the social media sites. Sharing your news, reviews and helpful information is surely a key element. Furthermore, having more friends/supporters would immediately improve your brand online name. Gather as many friends/connections as you can in your market niche, thus improving your visibility for the potential customers.

Author Bio: Peyo Peev works for a search marketing agency in Bulgaria called SEO PAL. The company is offers wide range of SEO and SEM services mainly to business owners in Western Europe. You can read more quality advice about search marketing if you visit the official SEO Blog.

Call on Your Family and Friends

Starting your own small business will be a very stressful experience and you will need the support of your family and friends. If you have a husband, wife or children then invite them to help you. You can either bounce ideas off of them or ask them to help complete tasks, such as decorating your new office. Do not underestimate the power of having someone to talk through your problems with.

What Kind of Person are You?

Like all professions, running your own business will be more suited to some personality types than others. You need to think about whether you are the kind of person who will be able to work long hours or will be able to handle financial insecurity? These are not easy things and you need to think about whether you can deal with these things. Don’t lose sight of why you decided to do this in the first place.

Make Sure There is a Market For Your Product

You will like your product, but you need to make sure that other people will like it enough to spend their hard earned money on it. Do your research and perhaps even carry out some surveys to see how much people want your product. Demand is the key to the success of your small business.

Your Product Doesn’t Have to be Unique

It is always difficult to sell a product that has never been done before as you have to try and cultivate interest in something unusual which is always hard. Don’t worry about selling a product that is being sold by other businesses, but maybe try and put a different twist on it. You can make your product stand out from others like it by doing this.

Do your Research and Test Run Your Ideas

It is absolutely vital that you know the market for your product. Find out who your competitors are and how they are selling their products. Talk to distributors, suppliers and potential customers to see how you could improve what is already being offered by your competitors. The better you know the market, the better you can shape your business to what your customers need. It might be wise to think about testing your business whilst keeping your current job for a short time. This way you can iron out any teething problems before you make your business your only source of income.

Identify your Weaknesses

Everybody has them and when starting your own business you cannot avoid addressing your own. If it is finance or management, you need to know which areas of running a business you might find difficult. Once you have done this you can look into getting support in those areas. Be honest with yourself, it will be pay off in the long run.

Don’t be Afraid to Seek Advice

It is never a bad thing to seek advice from people who are more knowledgeable. Track down individuals who have either successfully set up their own businesses, or people who have experience of helping others do this. Don’t think of seeking help as being a weakness; you are doing the wise thing by asking someone who has been through the same process. Ultimately, it will help make the process smoother and hopefully less stressful.

About the Author:Steve Waller is an entrepreneur himself and set up his own small business over 5 years ago. Since then he has helped many people who struggled to find jobs start their own ventures either full time or to make some extra cash on the side.

* 31% have plans to insert adverts and links into social media sites and blogs.
* 32% have plans to set up pages on Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn.
* 39% have plans to implement customer reviews on their own sites.

With this information provided, is your business strong enough to allow competitors to attract your potential clients? Let’s look at five ways you can help ensure your business takes advantage of exploding social media campaigns to be better able to succeed in today’s markets.

1. Don’t Pigeon Hole Your Business Campaign

There are different social media campaigns to be considered when promoting your business. Whichever you choose, it is important that you analyze the results after 4-6 months and decide whether you need to spread your efforts out over other sites as well. This includes looking at your target market and where they tend to visit most often in order to get you business name in front of the right market. It can also mean looking at stronger social media sites that simply get more through traffic.

Focusing on one site solely can affect your business traffic and profits in a negative way. However, being flexible in your promotion campaign, analyzing the results you are getting and being committed to promoting your company to it’s best advantage should help you reach the potential clients you need to reach. This may also positively impact your company’s profit margins.

2. Building Trust With Your Clients

Using social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and MySpace will help build your customer base, but it is important to understand this may take some time and dedication. If you are a company that has a product you need to move right away, this can mean slow sales for quite some time. Understanding your business and being aware of whether or not it can handle slow growth and building solid relationships and trust with clients is important.

3. Have A Solid Plan In Place

Being prepared with a solid plan for approaching social media campaigns is another important, but often overlooked, step in promoting your business. There are many social media sites available for business owners to choose from. Taking the time to become familiar with the different variances available in this medium will help you locate and attract potential clients, but also define and reach the your business goals.

4. Keep Track Of Traffic Received From Social Media Sites

One of the first steps to be taken before choosing a social media site is to have a system in place to monitor results. To analyze this efficiently you need to be able to view things like the number of visitors received via links on your social media site and the number of visitors that actually purchase from your business once directed through the site. This helps you track revenue generated from the social media site campaign.

To be able to receive this information easily, there are some great resources available at no cost that allows you to track the traffic generated from your social media campaign. Some of the most commonly used are:

* YouTube / Facebook data tracking
* Google Analytics along with Google E-mail Alerts – Easy to install and available at no cost
* Twitter addons – Hootsuite and Seesmic let you track messages, replies and discussions of your company products and site.

5. Managing Your Time Effectively

It is easy to get drawn into constantly monitoring your social media site checking for notifications. This typically leads to early burnout and ineffective time management. Using your time efficiently by paying attention to other things that will help promote your site is important. Content generation and regular updates to your site will help keep your information fresh and interesting for visitors and fans. These types of tasks also help boost search engine rankings which in turn, will help generate more visitors. Keep this train of thought in mind:

More content = Better search engine rankings = More visibility online = More traffic generated = More sales = More profits!

Social media is a great way to promote your business and reach business goals both in business growth and profit margin. Learning to negotiate it with a solid campaign will help your business attract clients and increase revenue.

Author Bio: Brian Flores is a blogger/seo/social media strategist for InMotion Hosting, a Los Angeles-based webhosting provider whose customer base is primarily small and medium-sized businesses.  You can follow him on Twitter @BrianAFlores

Quixey has come into the game with the intent to make a new sort of search, molded specially to the exclusive characteristics of searching for those omnipresent but sometimes mysterious apps. Their search engine, named “functional search”, which not only searches the main application stores, but crawls social media sites, apps review sites and blogs to construct a really widespread image of what an application can do through word of mouth, reviews and demos.

Quixey’s search engine permits the user to search in queries such as “Wimbeldon Champions” etc and gets a listing of applications that offer just that which they can then filter by platform. The greatest part is that this search engine supports Mac and Windows apps, iGoogle and much more. It is more than Android and iOS.

Although Quixey would appear to be contending with the likes of Chomp and others, this startup also has the additional value intention of being proficient to power search for other application stores, websites and search engines just like Google, to assist publicize its search engine on third party websites across the World Wide Web.

Biz Stone, the Twitter co-founder who left his every day responsibilities at the microblogging website to start again Obvious Corporation, a corporation which gave life to Twitter, exposed information of the incubator’s first project these days.

Their initial project is a joint venture with Jon Crosby (Path, Songbird) and Tony Stubblebine (CrowdVine, Odeo). Their new startup is Lift, “an exciting new app for unlocking human potential via positive strengthening.”

Crosby and Stubblebine will be the motivating factors for the project, while Obvious will assist with application’s design, approach, financial support and employing. In exchange, Obvious will be holding justice in Lift.

Obvious and Lift are not giving any more information about the app  as it is in secretive Alpha but the website requests people to sign-up to get more information when it will be accessible. Lift possesses an all star group, and the support of Twitter’s co-founders will give it an instantaneous viewers.

New product development (NPD) is required to keep pace with the rapid changes in customer tastes, technology and competitions. It is a critical area within product development. The term new product can mean different things to different people. According to the categorization scheme presented by Booz, Allen & Hamilton Inc (1982), new products can include ‘new-to-the-world’ products. These products are inventions that create a whole new market. The examples can be Sony Walkman, Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Printer and so on. ‘New-to-the-world’ products require the consumers learning an extremely new technology. New products may refer to ‘new product lines’, which means the products are not new to the world but new to the firm. The products can be imitated from competitors to enlarge company’s current product line. For example, after Hewlett-Packard launched the first LaserJet Printer, Canon followed and introduced laser printers into its own product line. Compared with ‘new-to-the-world’ product, ‘new product line’ concerns less risks, since the performance of that product can be identified in the marketplace.

Many new products can also be considered as ‘additions to existing product lines’ or ‘improvements and revisions to existing products’. Take Apple Computer Inc. as an example. In 2003, with the new iPod and the iTunes music service, with this Apple moved aggressively into the on-line music business. ‘Improvements to existing products’ are often applied within the computing industry. Apple keeps constantly upgrading the Macintosh since it launched. In one recent study (see Crawford and Benedetto, 2006), ‘additions to existing product lines’ and ‘improvements to existing products’ are the two most innovative categories, accounting for about 30% of new product launches, but about 60% of the most successful products. Moreover, new products can also mean ‘repositioning’, where products are retargeted for a new use or application, or ‘cost reduction’ where existing products are modified for similar performance at a lower cost.

NPD is at the forefront of competitive advantage. It helps to achieve longer term growth and profits with existing products will provide current growth and profits. It avoids product obsolescence by replacing obsolete products. All of above sound great to an organization, however, developing and introducing new products concerns high costs and risks.

NPD projects have not had a high rate of successful completion. Thousands of new products are introduced annually, and some estimates the product failure rate is as high as 60~90% (Dibb 2006). New products fail for a number of reasons: Firstly, new product development is very expensive. It cost Tate & Lyle around £150 million to develop a new sugar substitute. For pharmaceutical firms, an average of £200 million is spent to develop a new drug. Secondly, new product development takes time. In many industries, such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, NPD cycles can be as long as ten to fifteen years. The uncertainty and unpredictability of market environments might further raise the risks. Thirdly, unexpected delays in development sometimes happen. These delays may cause the new product failed to meet the original customer needs and expectations, as the customer tastes and preferences change rapidly. Moreover, such management problems as lack of research and problems in design or production may also cause failure.

Harmsen, Grunert and Bove (2000) state that the actual contribution of product development to company success is difficult to measure. They argues that ‘product development is only one of many areas of competence that a company must balance in it’s strive for competitive advantage. Top management will prioritize the various areas according to their perception of how important the competence is for achieving the objectives of the company’. In other words, it is not only important to know how to optimize various elements of product development, but also to know which other competencies must be addressed to achieve good results.

This is a guest post by Ying, who works for RNA Automation – a world leader in handling and feeding technology including vision inspection systems and bowl feeders.

Business Structure

Are you a sole proprietor? Do you have partners? Do you want to go all the way right out of the gate with a corporation? Each business structure has positives, negatives, tax implications and degrees of difficulty in execution. Do your research and decide which is best for you.

Trademark and Name Registration

You can’t just set up shop and start doing business under the table. Check with your chamber of commerce to find out how to register a business in your area. There are paperwork and fees associated with this. When naming your business, it’s important to search your state’s business name database to make sure the name you want is available. To trademark your business name, look into your state’s particular guidelines for this. If you are doing business nationally, check with the U.S. patent and Trademark Office.

Zoning Laws and Licensing

When running a business out of your home, you need to look into local zoning laws. Each municipality has its own rules for what sorts of businesses can and cannot be run from home. Neighborhood associations can also get involved with this. Find out well ahead of time if you can run your chosen business out of your home, and what licensing and permit-related hoops you’ll need to jump through to do so.

Startup Costs

Sure, the lack of a storefront means starting a home based business is cheaper, but you’ll still need a fair amount of funds for startup. You may need to purchase inventory and equipment. There are fees, permits and licenses to be paid for. Advertising and the cost of starting a company web site, including paying for a domain, hosting and site creation, all have their associated costs that can eat into your funds quickly. Plan your startup costs carefully and decide if you can truly afford to get into business for yourself. But there also may be help in the form of…

Business loans and Aid Programs

New businesses help stimulate the local economy and your local government may offer financial assistance, aid programs, tax breaks and more to help you get started. The government frequently offers extra assistance to female- and minority-owned businesses, too. Banks also offer many loan products to home based businesses to help with startup costs and ongoing expenditures. With help from banks and the government, home based business owners aren’t completely alone in their quest.

When planning your home-based business, it’s crucial to consider the financial implications before you hang up your sign or put that ad in the paper. Your business structure, name registration, laws, permits, fees, startup costs and assistance are all important financial aspects to consider ahead of time in order to make your home-based business the best.

There are definitely benefits associated with home business ownership, but you’ll definitely need an accountant to minimize your tax output.  If you don’t already have an accountant, you might want to speak with the folks at http://accountingresume.ca.  They’ve got accountant salary guides, and people who’ve spoken to the most talented accountants around.  They’ve also written some of the strongest cover letters around, and can help you with your hiring decision.

Decide upon the project and business opportunity

First, you have to identify the right type of business. It can be a big puzzle as plenty of business opportunities are available out there. A person can come up with hundreds of business ideas which can be turned into a venture. You have to realise where your passion and skills lie so that you love the work. ‘Once you love your work, work becomes fun’ so goes the saying. Based on your abilities, knowledge, skill and passion you have to choose the right business opportunity.

Prepare the Business Plan

This is the most crucial part of a new venture. You need a detailed Business Plan not only to take the venture forward to the next level, but to attract investors as well. And while talking to the investors you will come across people who will say ‘I am not interested in your B Plan, but in your Plan B’. When you create the business plan, consider the pros and cons of the business, potential risks, perform SWOT analysis and come up with a Plan B as well.

Capital – Get fund to get started

Capital is a must; no business plan can be implemented if you do not have fund. Think how to get the startup fund. There are several ways; however, you have to consider the pros and cons of all the business startup funding solutions before deciding which one will best fit your requirements. Equity release loan, borrowing from family members, credit card, bank loan etc. are the common ways of getting initial business capital.

Choose a Name for your Business

Are you one of those who believe that ‘what’s in a name’? Let me tell you that business name plays a crucial role and highly influences the success of a business. It’s the name that helps you stand out of the crowd. Moreover, you have to choose a business name for which you can get a domain – business without website does not make any sense any more. An easy to remember and easy to spell business name, such as Google, can make your business and domain popular.

Deciding the Business Structure – Another important part of startup

You have to decide whether you will make it LLC, Inc or a sole proprietorship firm. If you are planning to get investment in future and you have a target to get the business listed in the stock market, then you have to choose the business structure very carefully. You may want to consult an expert or a lawyer before taking the final decision.

Have a System in Place

It is very important to have a system in place – without proper planning and system you cannot develop your business and may get stuck in a hole. System for the members and clients will be required once you start to expand.

Set up your Office

From finding an office space to buying equipments and furniture – you have to do everything to get started with. Choose the location in such a way that your members and your clients find it easy to reach there. If you are planning to set up a home office, you only need to buy some set of office furniture.

If you choose to be a freelancer and start contracting for several companies, then you are creating job for yourself, not building a business. You will have multiple bosses and you will be working on multiple projects.

But an entrepreneur builds a business. If you want to build a business in the fields of technology, here are some ideas worth trying.

1. Become an Internet Researcher

Can you search things fast on the internet? Do you know the special search operators supported by the search engines? You can become an internet researcher and help companies find relevant information quickly.

2. SEO Company

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the popular ways of promoting businesses online. If you understand how search engines work, you can start your own venture in this field.

3. Social Media Guru

Do you spend most of your spare time on social media and you simply love it? Take it as your profession, start your own social media consulting firm and help businesses promote themselves on social media.

4. Offer Consultation to Bloggers

If you love to blog and have been exploring various blogging opportunities then you can take up this profession. Help people to set up their own blogs, make minor tweaks, start a hosted blog, take classes and organize workshops – this can be a profitable business for you.

5. Web Designing Company

Are you an expert web designer? Do you know how to design web pages, slice the PSD files and then code it in XHTML/CSS? You can start your own web design company – almost all businesses have their websites and need web design related help these days.

6. Start your Own Hardware Business

Some people are blessed with mechanical skills; they can understand the functionality of technical products very well. If you are one of them and have a knack for computer repairing, you can take it as your profession. People will never stop using computers, not in next 10 to 15 years at least. You can provide computer repairing, maintenance and installation service to individuals and companies.

7. Explore Data Entry Business Opportunities

Many businesses outsource their data entry task; see if you can get a long term data entry project and get it done by hiring some expert computer operators. There are some authentic data entry business opportunities available out there; but beware of scams.

8. Be an eBay Mentor

Are you an eBay pro? You can help others generate money from eBay by helping them know how it works and by showing them various opportunities associated with this platform. However, you must be an expert in this field; otherwise you cannot be a mentor.

9. Start a Computer Training Institute

If you are a tech savvy person and well versed with various software applications and programming languages, you can start your own computer training institute. OR you can take classes personally at your home. You will always find students who are willing to learn application software, programming languages such as C, C++, Perl and scripting languages such as PHP.

10. Desktop Publishing

You will need a few computers and certain software programmes that allow to create the layout of various business documents, brochures, marketing materials, banners, leaflets, logo etc. Books are also designed with desktop publishing software. If you are familiar with these software programmes, what is stopping you to start your own desktop publishing business?