Start a Small Business Now - Brilliant or Barmy?

Starting a Small Business In a Recession

Is this brilliant or barmy? It totally depends what kind of business you want to start.

The Times Says Brilliant – If You Are Business-Like.

Lauren Tompson in The Times, last Saturday, discussed the fact that many people being laid off in the current recession are using their redundancy money to set up their own small business.  People are finding that it is harder to find a new job at the moment and 'taking the risk' of starting their own small business seems a good way to go.

Pros and Cons

There are many pros and cons to starting your own business

Pros:

• There are opportunities in the market for two basic reasons:  1.  The recession will have weeded out many inefficient businesses, and left a gap in their market and:    2.  Life is changing and opportunities are springing up that just did not exist 10 years ago.
• Banks are beginning to lend money again and interest rates are at a historic low.
• Starting your own small business could give you much more control over your life.
• You may be able to work from home, thereby cutting down on travel and child-care costs.
• You may want to create another income stream, not a whole business.

Cons

• If you do not plan, prepare and produce very efficiently, you are at risk of losing your shirt.
• You do need to produce a good business plan before the bank will even consider you for a loan.
• You may end up working longer hours for less money.
• You may find you hate being an entrepreneur.

7 Things you Must Do for Business Success

• Do your business marketing - make sure people will buy your product – even in a recession.
• Put together a good business plan.
• Make sure you understand all the different ways there are to run a business today.
• Understand what legal structure will suit you best
• Look for loans and grants through local and governmental organisations
• When going to the bank for a loan, don't forget to ask them about the Government's enterprise finance guarantee scheme.
• Take advice from everyone, especially Business link.

Business Link can help you achieve your business start up dreams. Use their online business start up guide along with the many other useful services they provide.

What Business?

The Times' article really focused on off-line businesses. Chris Simpson of Business Link (government funded adviser) said that he "had seen a growth in hair-dressing salons, fitness instructors, reiki practitioners and other well-being businesses."

If you are wondering about the best industry to be in, Check out our analysis on good industries to be in in 2010 to see what the experts said about this.

Online or Offline?

What Chris did not mention is that many small business start-ups can start their business from home and run it online. Why would you want to do that? Well, our website runs through 4 business models we think all of you could handle with not too much trouble. but in summary

• You get access to a huge market
• Your start-up costs are generally much lower.
• You can work from home.
• Small companies can look big online.

Susi Glennan, a work from home, teach at home Mom, tells how running an online business from home has helped her maintain an income while achieving the lifestyle she wanted. "I find time to keep my house somewhat organized (I like that Susi – Ed) and food on the table after a long day of educating my children and running my business."

Rob Marcus of Chat Moderator believes that the online business and the family mix very well after hiring his wife. "I admit that private meetings concerning strategic direction run on a shorter fuse than I'ver experienced in previous organisations, but this could be because of being married or simply being joint owners." Rob says.

So could an online business or money making activity be the answer you have been looking for?   Find out by reading all about it and by sending for our free introductory course to affiliate marketing Then join out 'Society of Small Entrepreneurs or SoME© to learn more about the subject.

Life Plans or Business Plans. Five Ways to Make Sure they Work

Writing Plans Can Be Hazardous to Your Business Online

When writing business plans, or any sort of plans, make sure yours work.

People like me (coaches, advisers and consultants) are always telling people like you (potential and actual e-ntrepreneurs©) to "dream big and set great goals". We are always encouraging you to create a vision of what you want to achieve as a person or in terms of starting your own small business online.

So you do that, then you are surprised and disappointed when things do not turn out just as they were in your vision.

Here are just five reasons why you may be having great difficulty achieving those goals and plans for a small business online.

1. Not your Vision: Your vision was not what you really wanted – you created it to meet the needs of others, not yourself.
2. Your vision was not clear enough. You did not see, hear, feel, taste and smell the reality that would exist when you had achieved your dream.
3. Focussing on the negative. For some reason humans are programmed to focus on negative things. When we are reviewing progress, we notice what has gone wrong, not what has gone right.   This means that people often focus on minor fire-fighting and totally miss the fact that their customers started using their product for something different. Launch the business in the direction you planned, but remember it is your customers that float it – make sure you are not fighting the current they are trying to create.  
4. Fear Factor. It is hard to break out of your comfort zones. Starting a small business online means you are going to have to do things you have never done before. We tend to focus on the fear we feel of doing different things, and ignore the fantastic potential outcomes of taking that action. 
5. Break-Down. Finally and most important of all, I find my friends are good at taking their visions and setting long, medium and short-term goals and action points. What they are not good at is applying their skills to visualising successful outcomes for those mid and short term goals. In other words they do not programme their brains.

Creating a good visualisation of a successful day, programme, plan, project or action can add massively to your success. Professor Richard Wiseman of Hertfordshire University in his book 59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lotadvises exactly that.

Working from Home to Build Your Business? Useful Free Gifts

Working at home to build an online business is hard. We would like to make the process easier for our friends out there with this gift of free applications and really useful stuff.

Everyone likes free gifts (is there any other sort?). And we were determined to find as many useful gifts for our friends who run or would like to run small online businesses.   Well, it is that time of year after all.

We know (because we have been there) that if you are working from home to set up an online business, every penny is vital. If you can do something for nothing, it might just keep you going.

So we dug through our own archives, and did a trawl of the internet to come up with stuff we thought would be useful to you as you try to set up your business online. I think you will like what you find.

As you "tear off the wrapping" we are confident that you will find something you can use to improve your business.

So dig in. Help yourself, and download, copy, pass on or just plain hoard everything you find through the links on this page.

Just one warning. Free stuff hardly ever really is free is it? So just be aware that you need to check Ts & Cs in case you end up with too many ads on your site or other conditions you did not want. Otherwise, enjoy!

Oh, and Happy Holidays everyone.

7 Great Links to Fantastic Free Stuff

1. Small Business Ceo:   This brilliant site has put together a collection of FREE management and leadership software that includes calculators, forms, plans, letters, training, spreadsheets, marketing material… The list just goes on and on. Make this your first stop and have a great Business New Year.

2. Inc.: http://.inc.com/tools/ also offers a range of free tips, tools and software. Their offering is divided into various sections including "Doing Business Online, Marketing and Performance Management.

3. Entrepreneur:   Provides a set of 12 free tools for online businesses. These tools vary from a toolbar that evaluates websites, image reducing tools and free keyword selector tool, to HTML tutorials and browser compatibility service (a tool that will show you how your site looks to browsers).

4. New York Times guide to marketing your business with Facebook. http://tinyurl.com/ykpa6yl Any hints and tips on using social media to market is useful, so go ahead.

5. Bookfresh.com blog:  A blog about starting and running your own business with loads of hints and tips – go check it out!

6. Web CEO: –  this is a great piece of software that has helped me loads in deciding on keywords when setting up my sites. It has all the SEO tools you could wish for. You can use the free version for ever, its really helpful.
7. Freeware Home:  is an indexed collection of FREE programs commonly found on the Internet around the globe. Fill your systems guys! http://www.webceo.com/cgi-bin/go/clickthru.cgi?id=Hathor

For even more great information  about starting different types of online business come and see us on our website!

Great Truths of Life - Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree!

Laura makes my life happier!

Laura is a dear friend of mine, who makes my life happier every so often by sending me emails that sum up life.  The contents of her most recent one (and I think the best ever) is below.  I do love receiving them.  Read this and you are bound to be cheered up. 

Thanks Laura, for being my friend, for sending these things though I don't send similar ones back, and for just being who you are.

 

Boost Your Pension - Make Money Online

Seniors - Add to Your Pension While Working From Home.

Have you ever wondered if you could make money online? You can – and with very little investment.

If you need to boost your pension, are over 50 or a senior citizen and have some time available, you need to read this.

How has the credit crunch affected you?  If you are like me, the stock market has left many of our savings in a laughable mess. House prices have crashed, wiping out our savings of the past years. There just is not enough money to pay pensions we have saved for never mind those we just sort of hoped would happen.

For many of us this is quite a frightening situation. I know I am worried about my pension and looking for ways to increase it. That is why I am here on the internet. That is why I am learning about making money online while working from home and passing it on to you.

Anyone Can Make Money Online While Working From Home

I completely believe that anyone (including seniors and those approaching retirement age) can make money online to replace their lost pensions or investments. Now almost everything you need to make money online is easy to do if you know how to use a programme like MS Word. You can build sites, put them on the internet, get people to come to them and update them with hardly any technical knowledge and very, very little money.

However… there is always that however. You will need to invest time. And you will need to invest determination and stickability. And you will need to learn a a few new things.

But hey, we aren't the same as our parent's generation are we? We know we are not old at 50 – no pipe, cardie and slippers for us. As seniors ( or semi seniors) we are brave, adaptable and we can learn easily.  We know how to change to face a different world.

The doctors say that when it comes to mental fitness and capability, use it or lose it.  Isn't it better to use it learning how to increase your own income rather than playing some electronic game that increases someone else's income?

Don't Get the Wrong Idea

I am not promising that you could be a millionaire overnight. I am not even promising that you will make more than a small extra residual income. But I am sure you can use the internet to increase what money comes into your household. And if you, like me, are dreading the heating bill  for the coming winter, that can only be a help.

Two Ways To Go

There are many, many different ways to earn money on the internet. But here are two that are simple to set up, do not involve you in any business dealing and can be based on any existing interests or specialist knowledge that you have.

1. Become an Affiliate

Becoming an affiliate is a fairly new way of making money online, but it is an interesting and very cheap way of doing it. This is how it works:

You find a subject that you are either really interested in or really knowledgeable about or both. Let's say you are passionate about cooking or car maintenance.

1. You find a company that is selling products or services that fit into that area. Let's say a great cookery book or a series of videos that show you how to maintain certain types of cars.
2. You sign up as an affiliate and they give you a link, personalised for you, to their web page / product details / service description.
3. Your job is to get people interested in going to the website where these items are sold.
4. But you do not sell these items. Your job is to interest and amuse and create a place where people who are also interested in these things want to be.
5. The best way to achieve your aims to set up a blog, a website or some other form of communication and make sure it is really interesting to the potential customers. As they read your content and take part in your discussions, they will begin to trust you and your judgement. So when you say that 'X Cookery Book' is great they believe you.
6.  In that part of your site where you say 'X Cookery Book' is great; you include the link you got to the sales page of X Cookery Book. If your readers click through to that page and buy the book, you get a commission.
7. No selling. No stock. No staff. No premises. No complaints. Simples!

 Of course it is more complicated than this. But this is the main outline. And I must emphasise, you are not selling the product. You are creating an interesting place where people who are keen on that sort of thing want to be. Your job is to make friends with a lot of people who think like you. Hard eh?

If you want to learn a little more about this way of doing things:

2. Drop Shipping

The second way to make money online that I want to talk about is drop shipping. This is a little more commercial but again can be set up with very little knowledge or money.

Drop shipping is more like a little business than being an affiliate. It gives you the opportunity to sell on auction sites and/or to create an online shop with a wide range of products without the hassle of having to hire staff, keep stock or manage deliveries.

How Does It Work?

• You set up an e-commerce website that has a suitable shopping cart and credit card processing facilities. Don't worry about the technical side of things because nowadays if you can read and type, you can do this easily. Or you can hire people on the internet for very little money.
• You use your favourite Search Engine Results Page engine (Google, Firefox Yahoo etc) to search for drop shipping agencies who sell things you are interested in. Drop+ship+cooking or Drop+ship+cars for example.
• Check out the sites that come up for the stuff that interest you, and choose those products / services you are interested in. Try to get recommendations from other drop shippers if possible so you know what type of customer service the organisations you are interested in provide.
• A great resource if you are looking for a drop shipper are drop ship resource directories. A good one is OneSource http://www.worldwidebrands.com/?kbid=6114. This website lists over 8,000,000 products from 234 categories.
• Open an account with the drop shipper of choice.
• Put images and information about your chosen products on your site and incorporate it with your chosen shopping cart. It sounds complicated, but if you have ever sold anything on e-bay you can do it. Actually, that is not a good example. Every time I put anything on EBay, it takes me far longer than I expect.
• Or sell on Ebay and/or other auction sites.
• Getting people to come to your site is one of the tricks of success. Don't worry about it how to do this though. There is loads of free information on our site and on the internet showing you how to do this, and you will find the whole process really fascinating.
• Now you just have to wait for people to buy things. Don't forget, they pay you as they buy so no worries about bouncing cheques. Crucially you get your customer's money before you have to pay the supplier. It is this fact that makes drop shipping a great route for people starting out in this type of activity. No need for big investments no left over stock; nothing wasted.
• Send full order details to the drop shipper company. They will bill you at the price you have agreed, and then they will complete the order sending it to your client. In most cases the labels and paperwork with any packages will indicate it comes from you.

A good drop shipper will provide you with everything you need to know in terms of how to pass orders and payment back, how to follow things up etc. Indeed a good drop shipper will work hard to help you create a great sales site. After all, for every sale you make, they also make a profit.

Do I Have to Pay to Join a Drop Ship Supplier?

A question that often comes up is whether you have to pay to join a drop shipping programme. The answer is that you do not with most programmes as their profit is already ensured.

Some programmes charge for joining 'higher' levels. Again I would think hard about this. If you are a good seller, they should pay you, not the other way around.

There are many ways of setting up your ecommerce website. You can use the standard templates offered by many Internet Service Providers, you could design it yourself or have it designed for you by a professional company.

The one thing you must ensure is that you have the appropriate shopping cart to deal with drop shipping. These range from free software like PayPal and Google to things with bells and whistles all over. Research and find the one that is right for you. The website  has a great page reviewing such software and there are many such sites around.

Ever Onwards and Upwards

Is Starting Your Small Business Online The New Black?

Online Literacy - A 'Must Have' Skill for Starting Your Small Online Business

Everyone used to be educated in the 3Rs.  Reading, wRiting and 'Rithmetic once upon a time was enough to get you a job for life.

But there is no such thing as a job for life today.  So what can you do to prepare yourself for our dramatically changed conditions?

Today a 4th skill is required if you want to be sure of maintaining your financial independence.  Today's 'must have' skill is Online Literacy. 

How To Start a Business Online-3 Absolutely Vital Actions

Learn How To Start A Business Online.

Create so much trust customers will roll in by making sure 3 vital factors are in place: transparency, trust and security.

Transparency

Up to 50% of your customers will be contemplating buying online for the first time. Let's imagine that Joe is in this position on your site right now. If you want to make the most of this opportunity, it is vital that you make it really easy for Joe to:

• Move around your site.
• Find what they are looking for
• Pay.

 Your E Commerce Site

Here are 13 fundamental questions to ask yourself about your e business. In fact this is so important to your success you might want to ask a friend to go through your site and ask these questions. You may be too close to see the problems.

1. 1. Is it clear, simple and easy to read? 
2. Is it free from too many wizzy bits and graphics that are likely to slow it down? Joe has an ISDN connection, and her brother Chris still has an analogue connection which are both a lot slower than broadband.
3. Is it free from links that will take Joe's attention off buying?
4. Did you do the planning so that Joe can find what she wants easily – i.e. through an in-house search engine and/or clear links?
5. Are there good, clear, accurate product descriptions and images?
6. Can/do you put information and advice on your website Joe will love? Because if you can, the search engines will love you too.
7. Does the product description include a notice that the product is out of stock if this is the case?
8. Does the product description include notes about all costs involved with the purchase (postage etc).
9. Can Joe put the product directly in the basket?
10. Can Joe continue shopping or go directly to check out as she wishes?
11. Is the check-out system really simple to use? If you have a system that shows Joe how many steps there are and where she is in the process, she is likely to feel more comfortable and is therefore much more likely to buy.
12. Can Joe have her basket beside her in full view all the time?
13. Can she change items at all times (deleting or changing quantities)?

Trust

Building trust is not that difficult. Deciding that you will fun an ethical and efficient home business will give you just the start-up impetus you need. There are x specific areas you can build and deepen the trust between you and your customer. These are guarantees, clarity and reliability.

Guarantees

Guarantees make your customers comfortable. Who do you trust the most? The site you stumbled across on the internet with no personal information and no contact details, or your best friend?

Stupid question huh? Well, everyone on the internet feels the same as you. So how do you go about creating that 'best friend' feeling quickly?

Give your customers exactly what they want to feel comfortable as quickly as possible.

For example on our online businesses we have a 100%, no quibble cash back guarantee. Our customers do not have to give a reason for returning the product. This means that they feel comfortable about ordering the products from the start – they know they will not be lumped with something they bought by mistake.

So has this policy cost us a fortune? No, because when we started our business online, we kept that 100% guarantee in mind every time we created and marketed products. We worked really hard at matching our marketing to our products and the products to our market. Result? Very few returns.

Confidentiality Counts

Fraud frightens people. Remember Joe? Before she puts anything about herself into the forms on a website, she wants a good, clear privacy/ confidentiality policy and statement that she can link to from every page on your website that reassures her.

But her brother Chris can't be bothered to read all that legal stuff no matter how clear it is. For people like Chris, wherever you ask for information from your customers, keep two points in mind:

• Wherever you ask for information include a short statement clarifying your attitude to privacy. For example:
• "We HATE spam and we promise NEVER to pass your details on to anyone else."
•  Ask for the absolute minimum of information. If you only need an email address, don’t ask for shoe size and marital status.

Clarity Counts

It is not just her personal information Joe is worried about. She is very concerned that her financial details may be lost or stolen. How can you persuade her she is safe?

• Show and Tell. Tell her she is secure and tell her how and why. Mention your SSL encryption and show her the little closed padlock in the browser proves it is safe. Flash the names and certification of whoever takes your payments.
• It could be a good idea to put a whole page on your site describing why it is safe to shop on your site for people who are nervous.
• This could include a description of your purchase, order and despatch process to increase the feeling of security for your customers.
• Point out any safety measures involving storage of her details and how her order is collated and sent out.
• If you can get your site tested and certificated by an independent body, do it and point this fact out to your visitors.

Reliability

Be the Small Business That Does What it Says on the Tin

If you promise to send stuff in 2 days, send it in one. If you promise 100% cash back guarantees, honour them quickly and gracefully.

All of us have had to battle with an anonymous on-line organisation to get our money back when their products were faulty. It often seems that the bigger the organisation, the worse they are at responding to complaints.

Which online business would you go back to? The one where you had to wear your fingers, ears and temper to stubs to get your cash back? Or the small business that sent a prompt response to your complaints saying they were really sorry you were disappointed; your refund is in the hands of a trusted 3rd party (e.g. PayPal) and you will receive it as soon as the unwanted product is retuned?

Very few of us running a home business can offer prices that are so low we can afford to ignore a customer's distress. Things will go wrong and you should have a process in place to deal with it. Just make sure the process leaves your customer feeling really good about you.

Turn the Tables

In fact, if you are really good at this you can grasp this opportunity to leave your customers feeling not just good about you, but indebted to you.

Let's say you follow the planning and put in place all the recommendations above:
You promised and gave full refunds.

• You responded quickly, politely and warmly.
• You apologised sincerely for the problem.
• And finally, you gave them a free gift to compensate.

 This does not mean giving something that costs you money. After all, you are a small business online, and you can’t afford that.

You could give something like an e-book or report either on the subject of their purchase or on something everyone is interested in.

For example, I have created a report on using the internet safely and generally keeping yourself secure in the digital universe. A report like this would be of interest to anyone using the internet, and could be used as the free gift you give your disappointed customer.

You are more than welcome to download the internet security report here (email and name) and to use it in the way I described as long as you leave accreditation details in it.

You have now given you customer more than they gave you. Research shows that all over the world, when people feel they owe someone, it makes them feel uncomfortable and they try to repay that 'debt' somehow.

You can offer them ways to help them do so and thereby feel better about themselves.

• Include links to your e business in all your communications with those customers so that they can go back easily and perhaps buy something else.
• Give them the opportunity (with links) to tell others what they think of you on your endorsement page or on any social networking site you belong to.
• Ask them if they want your e-zine or updates on your products.
• Ask if any of their friends would be interested in hearing about your products.

In Conclusion

Being an online business means your reputation is even more important to you than if you had an offline business. Pay attention to detail, design a great site and keep your mind on your customer.

Ever Onwards and Upwards