When you want to go into business, there are many things you have to worry about. One of the biggest things you should think about is what makes some new ideas profitable small businesses, and why others fail within a year. There are many things you can do to help get things going, but if you forget the most simple things, you are going to fail. Though you may think they are huge secrets, in reality, they are actually quite obvious. They cant save every single business, but they can give you a leg up from the start.

Most people think about inventory, but they dont know if they have what someone wants. The truth is, there isnt much that anyone needs to have, not really anyway. The basics are food, clothing, shelter, and water. Everything else is just gravy. You have to find ways to make people think that they have to have your product, even if you know darn well they dont. You have to make everyone believe their life will be better because of it, and if they pass, they are going to regret it. That might sound strange to someone selling stuffed bears or something like that, but thats the attitude you have to have. Its a great key to profitable small businesses.

You have to tweak this message and you have to advertise it everywhere you can. Dont just put a few different ads in a few places, you really want to make sure everyone in your projected demographic can get the message that they need to come see you right away. Too many potentially profitable small businesses end up going bankrupt just because they didnt bother to put enough money into advertising. You can have a great interior, amazing product, and the most highly trained staff in town, but you cant know that youll have one of the most profitable small businesses unless people know where to find you and what you have to offer.

Also remember to make customers the main priority once you get them in the door. Too many business are forgetting the fine art of keeping the customer happy once they manage to get them in the door. You might think that its okay to brush off one person, but you might find that this has a bad chain reaction. It only takes one disgruntled and very talkative person to drive away future business.



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Today many small businesses are marketing themselves on the Internet. As a matter of fact many small businesses today are actually Internet businesses themselves. Here are 3 affordable small business marketing strategies and you can use to get the word out about your business.

1. The first thing we want to talk about is utilizing a pay per click advertising campaign. Google Adwords and Yahoo Marketing are the two most well known companies that offer pay per click advertising campaigns.

These are great because you control how much money you want to bid on a targeted keywords, and you also control how much money you want to spend every month. You know that the traffic that you are getting to your website is targeted because people are searching for specific keywords or keyword phrases.

What makes this affordable for many small businesses is you only get billed when somebody actually clicks on your ad. This makes it very easy for you to determine if this form of our marketing is the effective for you or not.

2. Blogging is another affordable small business marketing strategy that you must be using. As a matter of fact, you can blog and get the word out about your business and your only investment will be in the time it takes to write the blog articles.

The key point to making blogging work is to social bookmark your post to the proper social directories. The other thing is to write your blog articles to target specific keyword phrases that relate to the theme of your small business.

This may take a little while to get the hang of, but it is really quite simple to do. You must be consistent in how you blog and how often you blog as well.

3. A third small business marketing strategy that has proven to be very effective is ezine advertising. The reason this is so good is because there are many email newsletters today that have been around for several years and have very loyal readers.

This gives you an opportunity to get the word out about your small business to people that actually will read either your classified ad, your solo ad, or an article that you run that is picked up by the ezine publisher.

This is three affordable small business marketing strategies that you should be implementing to promote your business on the Internet today. You may not know how to do any of them right now, but you can quickly learn the ins and outs to make these strategies affective for your small business.



E Law Blog

College and college-bound families should be looking into a unique opportunity to save tens of thousands of dollars on college costs for school year 2007-2008.

For the very first time, there’s a loophole in the 2007-2008 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, (FAFSA). As a result, families who own and control a small business and who are only required to complete the FAFSA, have a rare opportunity to capitalize on a financial aid bonanza!

I direct your attention to a provision in the Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2005 (S. 9132), which was approved by the Senate on Dec. 31, 2005, by the House on Feb. 2, 2006, and signed into law by President Bush on Feb. 8, 2006, that states, “The net value of small businesses with not more than 100 full-time equivalent employees is excluded from the definition of assets.”

Accordingly, small business owners (parents, not students), or those who can legally set up a small business under the federal guidelines, will reap huge rewards in the form of untold thousands in financial aid previously unobtainable!

It is highly advisable to set up a C or S Corporation, LLC, or at the very least, obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) for a Schedule C business. In that way, the small business will have its own individual tax status. However, I recommend that a tax advisor be consulted before choosing any particular corporate entity.

529 Plan owners can benefit as well

In the financial aid formulas, students have no asset protection allowance, which means that for every dollar a student has, they lose 20 cents per year in financial aid. Parents fare far better and only lose 5.6% per year over their allowance which increases with age. Now that both 529 Pre-paid Tuition and 529 Savings Plans are considered parent assets. I recommend the following:

For 529 Plan owners, it’s a bit more complex. Those parents who own one can legally transfer the entire account value into a similar plan owned by their small business entity, but need to be aware of the downside. The transfer could trigger a taxable event, but only on the gains in the 529 Savings Plan. Once the transfer has taken place, if the beneficiary is ever changed, it could also result in a taxable event. Nonetheless, the strategy makes perfectly good sense, as the benefits far outweigh any modest income tax consequences. Go for it!



Giga Flux

Let’s face it; the average business owner has neither the time nor the inclination to learn the nuances of search engine optimization. When I was first introduced to the concept of search marketing, I spent endless hours researching forums and blog trying to separate the signal from the noise. There’s no shortage of information and advice for business owners out there in theinterwebz , but finding trustworthy and reliable sources is another monster entirely. I would estimate that I invested hundreds of hours researching reliable sources ofSEO and SEM information, and I am thrilled to this day when I discover new ones. This can be a daunting prospect for a small business owner, regardless of their current level of marketing knowledge. I know when I was trying to grow my first small business, I barely had time to eat and sleep…much less surf the web for hours on end.

The real key to local search visibility is to recognize that your location is your brand. In most cases, searches with local intent rarely reflect brand terms. In the research I have seen, most local searches are industry and/or service based with geographic qualifiers. For example, “boston emergency plumber” or “san diego pediatric dentist” are more likely to be searched for than “city name + your business name”. If people are searching for your business by name, that’s great! You’ve done a great job establishing your brand! But if your sole focus is on brand promotion, you are missing out on some great opportunities to develop relationships with new customers in your area. Recent research has shown that almost 40% of allinternet searches are local in intent. If you want to maintain a lead over your competition, now is the time to take action. The following short-list of actionable items will help get you started:

1. Get listed at all of the major local search engines and telecom directories. Start with Google Local and Yahoo Local. There are also services such as UniversalBusinessListing.org which facilitate your submissions to such sites for a minor fee. If you don’t have the time to manually submit your listings, this is an excellent option.

2. Get links from related local sites, industry associations, and the chamber of commerce. One thing to keep in mind is the importance of anchor text; the clickable words that link to your website. Ask your business partners to link to your website using the phrase you want to rank for as anchor text (ie. “boston emergency plumber”, if you are a plumber in Boston). You could even incentivize your suppliers to link to you in exchange for a discount, as the value of the links gained will far outweigh the short-term costs of discounting.

3. Get reviews from customers and/or suppliers. If you go to Google and do a search for “your industry +reviews”, you should come up with a decent list of sites that contain reviews of businesses like yours. Naturally, some industries are more popular than others. If you don’t find one related to your industry, consider it an opportunity and start your own review site To continue with the discount idea noted above, why not give your customers a discount for a favorable review? Note that businesses can be given reviews directly on Google Local, but you also want your reviews to appear on reputable third party sites like Yelp.com (for restaurants), TripAdvisor.com (for hotels, etc.) or RateItAll.com (for general consumer products).

4. Consider the impact of universal search. Universal search refers to the use of non-traditional media in standard search results. Search engines generally serve up hypertext search results. With the introduction of universal search, Google now serves up video, photos, news, etc. in addition to hypertext. Get your geeky nephew to help you produce a video for Youtube. Take some funny photos of the hijinks in your office and upload them to Flickr. Ask one of your industry bloggers if you can contribute an article to their site. Submit a press release. Write an article like this and syndicate it. The opportunities are endless, if you are motivated.

Jacob Davidson is happy to share his new found knowledge of search engine marketing with other small business owners. When he is not trying to stay abreast of the latest marketing and advertising techniques, he spends his time exploring the local yellow pages for new business leads.



E Law Blog

Do you provide small business IT services?

One of the best way to be successful in small business IT is to survey your prospects, customers and clients to find out about their true needs. This way, you can propose IT projects that will solve their biggest problems.

But how do you convince your customers and clients that they need the major projects you’re proposing? And how do you get them to agree to enter into long-term relationships with your firm?

The following 3 tips can help you understand why getting buy-in from customers — and building consensus — is so important to the success of major small business IT projects.

Know the Dangers of Not Getting 100% Buy-In. If a small business owner is totally gung ho about a planned project, but every other staff member is bitterly resistant, your life will be a complete nightmare. If not everyone is on board from the beginning, you also run the risk of having the owner pull the plug mid-project. Then you’ll have to either eat some non-billable hours or risk alienating a client with aggressive collection efforts. Either way, you’re much better off investing the time to ask the right questions, so you can uncover their true needs and build consensus right from the outset. Take Precautions Up-Front with New Customers and Clients. You can avoid major aggravation if you work hard at talking to all important people at a client site before starting any major small business IT projects. You want to make sure you talk to the owners/partners, internal gurus, mid-level managers/supervisors, power users and novice/beginner users. These talks will be your last chance to probe newly-discovered topics that need to be addressed and to ask for additional clarification. Make sure you completely understand their expectations and that they understand yours before proceeding. Remember, building consensus if crucial to your success as the project manager. Keep the Small Business Owner Involved in the Project. Make sure every client stays actively involved with any project you do. If the problem you are tackling is not urgent or important enough to demand the small business owner’s attention, or if the small business owner becomes disengaged, these are red flags that you may be headed for trouble. With small business IT projects, your clients can’t completely outsource decision-making, oversight and responsibility. You need periodic feedback and guidance at certain key decision intervals. Projects typically fail when the owner wants the project done immediately, but has no time to explain what is needed. You need to make sure your client is delegating responsibility to someone within the company that is authorized to make decisions.



In this brief article, we discussed 3 tips that help you improve the success rates and client satisfaction rates of your small business IT projects. Learn more about how you can attract great, steady, high-paying small business IT clients now at http://www.SmallBusinessITSecrets.com

Copyright (C), SmallBusinessITSecrets.com, All Rights Reserved



Giga Flux

One of your biggest worries as a small business owner is how to secure capital to expand the business. Commercial finance is one of the many options available to people in your situation. This sort of financing is also called asset-based lending, since it involves some form of a secured business loan. The borrower guarantees repayment of the loan by pledging business assets as collateral.

There are several types of commercial finance options available to small businesses:

• Accounts receivable factoring

Businesses can “sell” unpaid invoices to banks at a discounted value for cash, which can be used right away for ongoing needs. There are many benefits to this financing option such as not having to give up a share in the business as with equity financing, and doing away with the risk and hassle of collecting payment from clients.

• Purchase order financing

This short term commercial finance option is popular because it enables building up of cash flow reserves. A growing business is likely to be strapped for cash while trying to meet its objective of manufacturing and selling products. At the same time, suppliers usually want to be paid upfront or are willing to extend only limited credit to new firms.

If the business has a few purchase orders on hand, it can solve this problem by seeking funds against the same. The financing agency pays suppliers directly for inputs that go into the production of that particular order.

• Asset based loans

This form of financing is used to test the robustness of a business and evaluate how it would perform given a long term loan. The business receiving the asset based loan has to prove within a limited period that given adequate financing its business model would be effective, and that a long term loan would sustain business growth over a period of time.

This form of financing is perfect for the business that can’t afford to wait to establish creditworthiness. Assets that can be offered as collateral against this type of loan include real estate, accounts receivables and finished goods.

Some other forms of commercial finance besides those described above include:

• Bankruptcy reorganization

• Secured lines of credit

• Trade financing

• Loans against inventory

Financing a business is a tough ask, but there are ways to do it, especially if your business idea looks sound. At the same time, it is critical that your business establish its creditworthiness in due course. Only with a good business credit rating is it possible to obtain large loans and other forms of capital. Work on building yours up so that your business is not one among the vast majority that has a loan application rejected



Keywords Post

Press and media coverage is an important part of the marketing armoury for start-up and small businesses attempting to get noticed and differentiate themselves from the competition. Many of them fail to use this powerful business tool simply because they can’t write the release themselves or afford professionals to do it for them.   

To help them achieve coverage, an online press release writing and distribution service has been launched, designed specifically for small businesses with small budgets.  www.lowcostpr.co.uk is the brainchild of Bedfordshire-based Ultimedia PR, which in 2008 was named as one of the top 10 public relations companies in the East of England, and was founded in 1994 by principals Val Jefferys and Colin Caldicott. 

Colin explained how the idea came about. “For several years we have run our ‘PR for Virgins’ workshop for clients of Business Link, East of England.  Many of the delegates realised the benefits of PR to their business and wanted to use our services, but at their stage of development, it just wasn’t viable for them to take on a full time agency and have to sign contracts and pay long-term retainers.”

“We researched different ways to offer a service that still provided clients with professional public relations support, but at a budget price.  Streamlining the service using the website as a vehicle for an online writing service, we can now provide a press release for just £195 plus VAT.”

The company also offers a menu of additional services clients can utilise according to their budget including press release distribution, writing case studies and more in depth press articles. 

Added Val,  ‘’Although we have only just launched this service, we have already had a significant level of interest from across the UK, in fact one of our first commissions came from Manchester.  I firmly believe that every business, no matter how large or small, benefits from positive exposure in the press. Lowcostpr provides an affordable, easy to use service to help them achieve it.”

For more examples of how publicity can help your business visit www.lowcostpr.co.uk for a free copy of the ‘A to Z’ of PR.

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For more information contact Val Jefferys or Colin Caldicott at Ultimedia Public Relations, tel: 0870 753 1199   val@lowcostpr.co.uk

 



E Law Blog

There’s plenty of advice out there for job candidates who are submitting resumes to big corporations, recruiters, or even mid-sized companies that have HR departments handling the whole hiring process. I work for a small, healthy and growing business which currently employs about 12 people. Most of these employees are specialists, a couple are management, and we have two support staff members. We have a multi-functioning office manager (myself) who handles IT support, HR and hiring initiatives, as well as administrative, marketing and public relations support. It’s a pretty typical small business set up.

I read through information published to help job seekers sometimes and am alarmed at how many tips and techniques do not translate from being effective for big businesses to working when contacting a small business. For instance, I read an article on Yahoo yesterday about 12 Tips to Get Your Resume Noticed. I was totally on board with Ms. Johnson’s advice until I got to tip #9. And #10. And #11 and 12 as well. I sat there imagining what would happen to my productivity level if all of the sudden even a percentage of the 75+ candidates who email resumes to me every day for our current open position decided to – gasp – call me!

So, I put together a list of things to do, and not to do, when applying for a job at a small company:

Remember that the person reading resumes in a small company probably wasn’t hired for that sole purpose. He or she has plenty of other job responsibilities that are waiting until all these resumes are reviewed. Be clear, concise and on-point. Include any and all information that was asked for in the job ad. Stand out by preparing a short, detailed cover note about why, exactly, you are the perfect candidate for the position advertised. Don’t call. Please, please, please don’t call. I guarantee that it will only serve to annoy the already overworked employee who has spent the morning reviewing resumes and is trying desperately to catch up with his or her normal workload. Be extremely diligent in reviewing your resume for errors and be sure that it is written in a formal tone. If you give a reviewer any reason to toss your resume into the “Do Not Contact” file, that’s a great excuse to move on to the next applicant in that growing stack of resumes left to review. Don’t follow up unless you have been contacted. While larger companies may have the bandwidth and/or technical capabilities to respond to each and every applicant, small companies cannot always do so. If you haven’t heard back, send your resume again, but don’t call or send emails asking for an update. If you didn’t read anything about the job or don’t really have any relevant experience but are just applying to everything you find on Craigslist.com “just in case”, don’t expect a response. Big companies and recruiters have tools to identify candidates with the right background and skill sets without reading each resume that comes in. Small businesses do not, and I’m sure the person tasked with reading your resume does not appreciate the waste of time.

Really, the number one thing to remember when applying for a job at a small company is to be respectful of the hiring manager’s time. Show that you are by providing exactly what’s asked for and by making it easy for the hiring manager to quickly see how your specific skills and experience translate into the perfect candidate for the job you’re applying for.



E Law Blog

Most home and small businesses rely on classified advertisements to market their services and products. Getting good results with a classified ad isn’t as simple as it seems. There is more to it than just writing two or three lines of copy and placing it in the local shopping digest or weekly newspaper. A well-written ad in the wrong publication or under a wrong headline or a poorly written ad in the right publication will not get you the desired results.

Follow the tips we’ve outlined below when you develop a classified advertisement for a small business:

o Choose the right publication: Target your customers and post the ad in publications that they are likely to read. For example, a classified advertisement for a small business that is into beauty therapy or pet grooming is likely to receive a better response when placed in journals favored by upper-class communities.

o Do your homework: Look at other samples of classified advertisements for a small business that appear in the local media consistently week after week. What is it about certain messages that catch your attention? What sets them apart? Is it the way they are worded or placed or did you perceive value in the benefit that is being promised? Analyze these ads and incorporate their best features into yours.

o Think through your content: Before writing out a classified advertisement for a small business, one must know exactly what it is one wants to sell. Make sure the communication is very clear and specific. Once you have determined your message, draft it out in one or more complete sentences. Then, prune it to make it concise and effective. Be sure to include a phone number or other contact information.

o Make the first few words count: The first couple of words in a classified advertisement for a small business are equivalent to a headline in a newspaper. They should arrest the readers’ attention immediately and make them want to go further. In order to do that, those words must tell readers the most important benefit of your product or service upfront.

o Proofread carefully: Proofread the copy for typographical and grammatical errors very carefully. Just because it is a classified advertisement for a small business, and not a full blown campaign featuring a big brand, does not mean it can be dealt with casually. A badly written piece will certainly harm your reputation and make your business look shoddy. If you have drafted the lines, it is better to have someone else proofread the final version.

o Look at where your competitors are: Advertise in the same publications favored by your competitors. Look through the back issues of any journal that you are considering advertising in. If your rivals have been advertising consistently in that publication, your message should be in there as well.

o Test your advertisement in several publications: Place your ad in different publications to test which ones work for you. Use the same body copy in all of them. Run each one long enough to give it a fair try. Having your business ad appear on a regular basis builds name recognition and convinces prospective customers to trust you.

Even though internet advertising is here to stay, old-fashioned print ads can still produce results as long as you use them effectively. Remember there are still thousands of people who have no access to the internet and who depend on local newspapers and yellow pages to find the products and services they need. A classified advertisement for a small business can help bridge this gap very nicely indeed. What’s more, it is a fairly inexpensive way for small businesses to market themselves.



Photos Union

Donald Trump. Love Him. Hate him. Feel indifferent. Either way you know who he is — and so does the rest of the informed world. “The Donald” has lost fortunes larger than most of us will gain in our entire lives of earning. How has Donald become a household name that is worth billions today? Two Words: Think Big.

That is where most small businesses fail. I don’t know why I do it. Maybe I’m a closet masochist or something. But a couple of times a year I target 25-50 small businesses and send a carefully sequenced and timed series of letters explaining the possibility of improving the marketing they are already doing or expanding their small business. Talk about an exercise in futility. Most small businesses do not think big.

They have somehow convinced themselves that success will eventually come from putting out daily fires, and then the business with eventually take care of itself. They’re wrong. According to the IRS, 9 of 10 business will go belly up within five years. There’s proof the take-care-of-itself mentality doesn’t work.

What if Trump had decided two decades ago to only focus on the daily fires of running his businesses, where would he be today? Bankrupt. Just another nameless real estate speculator in the crowd. He would not have the success he has today. And he would not be enjoying the freedoms and attention he’s gained along the way.

What about you? Do you own or operate a small business? Have you taken time to assess where you are now, where you want to be, and what steps you are going to take to get you there? If not, you are thinking small. You are hindering yourself from reaching the level of success that could be yours if you were only to think big.



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