Business and Finance Tips

Do you have plans of owning your own business? You may have a friend who has become successful through his own business and you would really like to make it big like him. Well, it’s not too late. Just imagine the possibilities of being self-employed and the potential improvement it could bring to your life.

Starting a small business can have its advantages and can be quite rewarding. For starters, imagine being your own boss. No more pressure from supervisors and there will no one to order you around. You’ll be able to work on your own time and meet your own deadlines.

So are you tempted to try? Starting a small business is entirely normal. Many people have been successful in this enterprise and all big corporations started out small as small businesses. Imagine being able to make all those important decisions yourself. But just how do you begin?

In starting your own business, its important to plan carefully. You need to decide whether your business should be about services or should you sell your own products. Do you plan on selling new design of home furniture or would you rather improve homes by redesigning people’s gardens. If you have doubts about the frame work of your business, you should try looking for assistance on the Internet. Cyber space has all the answers you need in planning your business.

Learn all about materials, marketing, and other elements of a business on the World-Wide-Web. Try to gain insight on starting a small business from those how have succeeded in getting their small businesses going. You can find tips, free data, and pointers online that may spell the difference between success and failure.

A friend of mine tried this idea and the Internet really helped his computer repair business took off. Now he works completely out of his home. Businesses nowadays rely mainly on the internet. A lot of business deals and transactions happen on cyberspace. So are you ready to begin changing your life for the better by starting a small business?

Many small businesses use competitions and lucky door prizes as a way of generating leads or building their data base. But if done incorrectly you will end up losing customers and could even find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

So how do you run lucky door prizes or competitions that are legal and get you brilliant results?
Top 10 Tips for competitions

1. Work out your intent. You need to know why you are running the competition in the first place. Is it to qualify leads, get email addresses for your database, get a new marketing slogan, and get feedback on your product or some other purpose? Start with the end in mind. When you know why you are running the competition you will adjust the prizes, competition form and process to best match your needs.

2. You need an entry box. A lot of people use clear bowls or fishbowls for people to put their cards into. These don’t keep the details private so could breach privacy regulations in some locations. The best option is a solid sided cardboard entry box. You can buy a gift box and cut out a hole or buy a blank entry box from a cardboard box manufacturer. You can of course get one purpose designed and built for you.

For online competitions I suggest setting up a separate email account just for each competition to keep your entries separate.

3. Somewhere to lean on to complete the forms. People need somewhere to lean on to fill in the forms. If the table you use is too low or you force people to sit down to complete the forms, many people won’t bother entering. Make sure your table is the right height for people to lean on (and no handing out clipboards with forms isn’t the solution. Many people are juggling bags and kids so can’t juggle a clipboard as well). Being comfortable also works for online competitions. If your form is tricky to complete you can expect people to click away rather than stay.

4. Make it obvious. Your competition needs to be located at the front of your trade stand or your office. It needs to be clearly and obviously signed so people can find it and are encouraged to enter. Put a banner on your website letting passing traffic know about your competition and where they can find you to enter.

5. Tell people about it. Tell your regular clients about your competition as well as your new clients. You could also tell some of the major competition sites – where the site collated competitions and lets their members know so they can enter them (my personal favourite of these is Luv2win).

6. Make it worth their while. Giving away a low value item is not likely to generate much interest in your competition. Make the offer enticing with high perceived value.

7. Protect their privacy. You need to make it very clear how you will handle their personal details. Will you pass on their information to other people? Will you contact them to send them marketing material? You need to tell people what you will do with their information. Give them an opt-out box for them to tick if they don’t want to receive any further information from you (and respect that tick in the box if you don’t want to fall foul of Spam Laws and Do Not Call Registers).

8. Sort out your legals. Many locations have strong rules around the operation of gaming including Lucky Door Prizes.

In Queensland the Office of Gaming Regulation Inspectors check every stand of almost every expo or tradeshow for compliance. You need to download the Guidelines for Promotional Games and comply with items such as retention of entries for 5 years, the order of drawing prizes, written terms and conditions which must include things such as:

a. the name of the person running the promotion
b. Eligibility requirements for players
c. Description and retail value of each prize
d. Closing and drawing dates
e. Order the prizes will be drawn
f. How winners will be notified
g. Whether the results will be published and where
h. What will happen if the winner is not present at the draw
i. Any elimination rounds

It almost goes without saying that of you run a competition you must honour your commitments and actually award the prizes (unless you get no entries at all). Running a competition and not awarding the prizes can see you before the courts.

9. Follow up promptly. If you are using the competition to generate leads or create a data base then follow up on all entries within 14 days of close of the competition. You may want to consider hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) to convert the entries or business cards into a database for you. Pre-book your VA so they have time to do your data-entry when it arrives. When following up remind the person where you got their details.

10. Trumpet the winners. If you can get their consent, get photos of the winners that you can use in your marketing and promote the details of the winners to your mailing list and local media. Most people love the spotlight (and other people love to know the inside of other people’s lives). Good news stories are great for business.

If you follow these top 10 tips you will improve the response to your competitions and lucky door prizes and get more “bang for your competition buck.”

Do you want to bring more traffic to your website? Are you looking to increase sales? If you have a small business website it is important that your site is just as helpful to visitors as the sites from larger businesses. This article will help you to create a great small business website that is sure to stand out.

1. A Clear Description of Who You Are

Visitors come to your site because they are interested in who you are or what you have to offer. Your homepage is the best place to tell your customers what you do. Remember, your visitors will quickly get their first impression and decide whether to stay or leave.

2. Real Content

Google will reward your site for having informative content in your niche or service. This high quality content will help your site to rank well with search engines which will bring you more site visitors. Having information about your niche will also build trust with your customer as they will see that you are knowledgeable about the topic.

3. It’s Not Just a URL

The domain name to your site is like your brand. Don’t make it complicated. It should be memorable so that customers will return. Your site should end in “.com” if you offer services or products. Don’t assume people will know how to spell your domain name, try not to pick a word that can be spelled multiple ways.

4. Layout

The layout of your website should remain consistent throughout your site. Having an unorganized layout will make it harder for your customers to find what they are looking for. Try keeping the header and menu, the same on all pages. You need to also offer a sitemap, this should list all your available pages in one place in an organized fashion.

5. Easy to Find Contact Information

You don’t want to lose customers because they couldn’t find your contact information. Every page should have contact information on it, whether it’s on the top left or top right of your site or on a sidebar. You should also have a contact page that offers more complete information.

6. Build Trust with Your Customer

You need to build customer trust. One way to do this is to have customer testimonials on your site. Another way is to add pictures of you or your team as well as a brief bio.

7. Call to Action

What do you want your customers to do once they are at your site? Do you want them to call, buy a product or fill out a contact form? Make it clear. Consider having a large button on the homepage that says something like, ” Call today for your quote.”

8. Solid Hosting Company

You need to make sure that your website hosting company will be able to grow with you. You won’t want to have to switch to another hosting company in the future because they don’t offer a service you want. Its important to have speed Google has said that the speed of your site will affect its page ranking. Make sure you know what you’re paying for when you purchase a hosting package. Are you paying for a static or non-static website? Will it include a customer database and email? Remember, all of these impact the cost. Don’t over pay the hosting of a site when all your getting is a simple page.

9. Email

Every small business needs a professional email address. Your email should end in your domain name. For example your email address should be contact @yourstore.com rather than contact @yahoo.com. You can have your own email with your domain for less than $15 a year.

10. Irresistible Offer

You got customers to your site now you need to convert them to paying customers. Your website needs to have an offer it needs to grab their attention, whether it is call today and receive 5% off or free shipping with any purchase. Having an offer helps to reel in your customers.

11. Social Media

Go where your customers are- whether that’s on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. You need to get them talking about you. You can offer special offers to people who follow you or special deals only available through these social media sites. Not all social media sites are best for each type of website. Do your research and find a couple you like. Then try to be strong and build up a prominent following on these sites.

12. Analytics Tracking

Your website should have analytics built into it so that you can track your progress and return on investment. Google Analytics is a great service to use to do this and, best of all, it’s free.

13. Easy to Edit Content Management

Having a site that you can edit is a must if you want to be able to make weekly changes and add fresh content without having to pay outrageous web design fees.

Travel can be a huge expense for any small business that does business in different places. If you are a consultant or if you are a self employed professional then traveling will be a huge part of your business. Although it can be mean a lot more business it can be very bad for your cash flow and making sure that you save wherever you can in really important – especially in this day and age. Another important thing to remember is to charge your clients for your travel expenses as its part of your service.

Finding simple ways to save on business travel expenses can make a huge difference. Saving a little on every trip can add up and if you have several employees then it can quickly add up. Here are 3 basic tips to help you get started.

1. Flights
Air travel, although convenient, can be expensive. With all the checks and regulations its not all that quick either these days as getting to and from the airport, checking in and checking out can be very slow. Its well worth looking into alternative means of transport. Driving or taking a rain can be a faster and more economical way of doing it.

2. Hotels
Accommodation represents a significant part of travel expenses and its probably the one area you want to try and save. There are quite a few alternatives that is well worth looking into. Guest houses are not only cheaper but offer a lot more comfort and value for money and is great for extended travel to prevent yourself from getting the “hotel blues”.

3. Travel Insurance
Taking out individual travel insurance for each trip can quickly add up. If you travel with valuable as part of your business then its an important consideration. Try and put your travel insurance under the same umbrella as your business insurance – it can save you quite a bit.

For small businesses there are some advantage that’s probably not available to bigger businesses. You can certainly look into business grants and government programs. Some programs allow you to write off your travel expenses and some even allow you to conduct business internationally and write off all the travel expenses. The point is that there are a great many options and exploring them all will help you save. As the economy continues to tighten up we all have to spread our wings and look for business opportunities elsewhere. Travel will continue to take a more prominent role in your business, so take advantage of these opportunities.

Small Business Tips For Success: The feast or famine business model

The feast of famine business model merely refers to my personal perceptions of certain prevalent business models you or anyone else might likely find while searching for a business to join online.

Most often employed by many high cost or “high ticket” programs and products online, this model for business would most accurately be described as a recipe for disaster.

The underlying premise being, at say $1000 a sale, how many sales would you need to make a return on your investment, quit your job, buy a house, etc., etc. Feast or famine…

For those with a proven track record of success online, more often than not the case for them will be feast. For those with the skewed perception that any kind of success, be it success online or success in general, happens over night; I see famine in you future.

small business tips #1:

Operating your business on the firm belief that x amount of traffic will generate y amount of conversions without the market research to prove it will cause you nothing but grief.

The best way to avoid falling prey to a feast or famine type scenario is to do your homework, and make sure that the numbers support your efforts.

For PPC (pay per click) marketing, be sure to track, track, track, everything. By using tracking links in your ad campaigns you can determine your cost per lead as well as your cost per sale along with your cost per click/click thru percentages provided by you campaign provider.

small business tips #2:

Next, estimate the value of each sale. If the income is residual, what’s the retention rate of your program or down line? Once you can place a decent estimate on how much each sale is worth and you’ve calculated your cost per lead per sale, then and only then are you in business.

Flying blind with your marketing dollars in hopes that good fortune will smile upon you is far to fanciful a notion to actually be effective. Be sure to track all your marketing efforts so that you can be aware of what works and what doesn’t; as well as what could use improvement.

small business tips #3:

To some, the entire notion of feast or famine may seem a bit much like some savage struggle for survival set in the most unforgiving of landscapes. To those individuals, I would suggest that in the time it’s taken them to form said opinion, they have most likely dropped an additional notch or two on the food chain.

Business is extremely competitive by nature. The best strategy for success is to always try to ensure you happen to be among the biggest fish in the smallest pond I can find i.e. research and niche marketing.

small business tips #4:

In summary, I’d say that most endorsements of unrealistic and unfounded business practice work off the premise that people in general will always take the path of least resistance; forever hoping to not only get something for nothing but, attain great success with little effort on their part.

A very lovely notion, but so is the lottery; and your odds would probably be about the same.

Unfortunately, I’ve found out (the hard way), that internet business is not the financial freedom vending machine I was led to believe it was. For every few dollars I put in I have yet to find happiness wrapped in $100 bills (although I do remain hopeful).

Be sure to treat your business more like a business and less like a lottery and you are sure to do well.