September, 2012 | BizSieve.com

Three Tips for Small Business Owners

There was a time when you couldn’t start a business without putting your credit on the line with a business loan. Today, all you really need is a two hundred dollar laptop or used smartphone and an internet connection. Here are a few principles to keep in mind before you get started:

A Word on Cost, Risk and Planning

Something to bear in mind when it comes to the concept of cost and risk: the more something costs you in terms of time, money and effort, the more planning you should put into it, the more research. When you pay for web hosting, for instance, you need to do you homework and make sure that you’re going with the right web host for your business. On the other hand, sending an email to a graphic designer for a quote takes about one minute, so you don’t need to spend all day researching graphic designers to make that choice.

The more something costs, the more planning it should involve. Maintain this rule of thumb in order to manage risk and to avoid getting hung up on the small stuff.

Plan to Fail

Big ideas are the only ones worth having anymore. You need to be the best at whatever it is you do, and that means thinking big. Making a modest profit on iPods on eBay isn’t going to work, because the people who already dominate that market will just cut their prices lower when you come in to compete with them. They have the access to greater bulk quantities of goods that they can sell for cheaper, so simply selling commodities won’t cut it, someone will always be able to undersell you in that area.

Big ideas are the ones with potential to fail. When you decide to be the very best shoe repairer in your city, when you decide to create a new kind of light bulb, these are the kind of ideas that will allow you to dominate that field if you succeed, but that always have the potential for failure.

Luckily, every failure is a chance to learn, to grow, and to try again. We don’t like the idea of failure, but anything that doesn’t kill us or bankrupt us is a failure that we can afford to risk, and more importantly, nobody ever succeeded without risking failure. Some of the most successful business people failed dozens of times and tried their hands at dozens of things before finding the niche where they truly excelled.

Selling the Story

What you’re really selling at the end of the day is not a better hair dryer, it’s not a nicer pair of athletic shoes, it’s a story. Your customers want to experience something through your product or service, some kind of adventure or competitive edge. Even someone who buys an energy drink isn’t buying caffeine, they’re buying an extra couple of hours partying or they’re buying greater productivity at work.
Stop thinking of your product or service in terms of commodity and start thinking of it in terms of the story.

About the Author: Charles Moore has the credit of writing articles on home organization and solution. He is also a regular contributor to Movingtips.org.

11 Ways to Make Your Small Business Successful

For most of us, starting a small business is no big deal. However, making it successful is the ultimate goal that everyone has in their mind. There are certain techniques that you can use to make your small business run in a smooth manner and earn regular income from it. However, you need to have strong willpower and determination to make your small business successful. Given below are 11 simple ways to do it:

1) Develop your emotional capital

Your emotional capital is the most important resource that you need to run your small business successfully. It is the combination of your zeal, love, and optimistic viewpoint about your business. You need to balance your work and family and also protect your health in order to be successful.

2) Affirm your entrepreneurial freedom

When you’re running a small business, you’re the boss of yourself. There should be equilibrium between arrogance and ignorance. You should understand what to know and what to ignore.

3) Know your clients

Identifying your clients is the most important thing that you have to do to make your small business successful. You should have a clear idea who your customers are. When you are manufacturing fashion accessories for teenage girls, then you should not aim the male teenagers for selling or promoting your merchandise. If you are an antivirus seller, then you should not target babysitters.

4) Have a marketing budget in place

You need money to promote your small business. Therefore, you should decide how much you are going to spend for this. Without customers, you can’t earn money and for getting customers, you have to adopt the right marketing techniques. There are various ways of promoting your small business such as flyers, pamphlets, postcards, and different online methods. You should not assume that your product will spontaneously market itself.

5) Know your competitors

Understanding your competitors well is the key to positioning your product rightly in the market. See what your competitors are doing to attract new customers and try to emulate them. If possible, do it in a better way.

6) Don’t hesitate to say no

Sometimes, a situation may arise when you need to say no to a prospective client or customer or partner. This is particularly important when you feel that entering into a new business venture or contract will not turn out to be beneficial for your small business in the end.

7) Know that “no” indicates not instantly

When a potential customer rejects your instant product or service, there is no need to be disheartened or lose hope. Try to understand why they did so and take the necessary measures accordingly. Keep in touch with them so that they can be approached in future. Take their contact details and inform them about special offers you are giving.

8) Use the Internet

In this age of information technology, the Internet is indispensable when it comes to promoting your business. Create a website of your business and equip it with sections like about us, products and services, testimonials and contact us. Make the most of the Internet to connect to your customers and make your business successful. If needed, go for various Internet applications that are available from free sources.

9) Don’t be extravagant

If you feel that any expenditure you are making is unnecessary, stop that immediately. Extravagance for a small business is a strictly “no-no” when you have a restricted budget.

10) Maintain your accounts well

You should maintain the following types of accounting documents and records:

Cash records
Cash payments
Sales records
Accounts receivable

11) Be a good manager

Being a good manager depends on the following factors:

Hiring the right workforce
Training them adequately
Suitable time management
Regulating absenteeism

There is no guarantee that your small business will be successful instantly. So, don’t leap before you look.

Make Your Small Business Slimmer with Cloud Computing

With cloud computing, a small business can reduce the amount of overhead it shells out in file collaboration, online backup and capital expenses. When using traditional computing models, a company would have to provide quite a substantial capital outlay just to get started. Not only were physical servers required, but everything needed to get them going would also have to be paid for in advance, including hard disks, memory, operating system software and user applications. In addition to the servers and their required components, all of the items necessary to create a data center would also have to be purchased up front. Equipment such as server racks, cabinets, networking hardware, power cables, cooling systems, security systems and other data center-related components can quickly blow a project’s budget. The initial bill alone is enough to put off many start-ups from even starting up!

small business cloud

You Get What You Pay For

Cloud computing changes all of this, providing a “pay-as-you-go” model for computing services. When using cloud computing, a company only has to pay for the resources it actually consumes. There is no longer a need to purchase, install and deploy massive amounts of hardware and software just to get started, only to discover one’s project is either over-built or under-supplied. This pay-as-you-go model allows a project to shrink and grow its demand for both processor time and network bandwidth. A company no longer needs to constantly pay for running idle servers days on end. When a cloud-based server is not being used by one cloud computing customer, it can be allocated to another. This trait, known as scalability, is a fundamental characteristic that makes cloud computing what it is. Why spring for server hardware when you can better use that money for VoIP phones or LiveDrive’s online storage solutions?

What Scalability is All About

Scalability works by allowing a cloud provider to share all cloud resources amongst multiple clients. With cloud computing, computing and network resources are housed in a data center just as they are in traditional deployments. The biggest difference is that cloud computing servers are typically hosted by a cloud provider who rents them to multiple clients instead of just servicing one client. Cloud servers tend to make use of virtualization software that allows multiple systems, known as instances, to operate concurrently on the same hardware. This scheme allows multiple customers to each have the appearance of running on their own separate computing servers even though all instances actually share the same storage, memory, networking hardware and processors being used by a single cloud server.

Cloud Computing the Timeshare Way

The cloud computing model can be thought of as being analogous to a condo timeshare. All timeshare owners claim title to a given unit but don’t actually make use of it at the same time. Each is given full access to the unit’s bedrooms, appliances, utilities and recreational facilities, but only for a certain time. When that time is up, they vacate the unit and allow the next set of owners to occupy the unit. The same goes for cloud computing instances; each instance gets to “occupy” the cloud server for a given amount of time before it must vacate and give way to the next occupant. The biggest difference between switching cloud instances and timeshare occupants is that cloud instances switch within milliseconds instead of days or weeks.

About the Author: This article is written by Danny Cheston

New trends to start a small business

Here are a few good businesses to start, based upon the most current business trends:

Green

Any and all green industries are doing very well, and you can blame it on fuel prices. Going green is good for the conscience but now it is also more economically viable. For example, organic food now costs almost the same as mass farmed food, because of the increased prices of fuel making mass farming methods more expensive.
Green energy is fast becoming the cheapest form of energy to use and create. Even recycled paper and managed forest paper is becoming cheaper to create than the paper made from rainforest trees.

Hairdresser

The beauty industry is still doing well, even during a global economic downturn. It is beating the pants off of the fashion industry, which has designers crying into their double lattes. People will always need a hairdresser and a lot of the more expensive ones have gone bust. Just make sure that yours appeals to both men and women and you are set.

Strategic Technology Consulting

The reason why is not clear, but businesses are not taking the time to train their staff in new technology. They are not setting up their own training programs, and are not forking out the cash to have their staff trained off site.

For some reason they are hiring technology consultants. The industry is starting to soar, thanks to many companies ignorance of cloud computing, virtualization, tech scatter, remote workers and low energy server cooling.

Setting up as one of Netsuite partners is beneficial for many reasons, such as gaining industry expertise from one of the leaders in IT consulting and increasing credibility by partnering with a big company.

business trends

IT Functions

Allied to their ignorance or unwillingness to learn about new technology (as mentioned above), many companies are outsourcing their IT functions. This may involve the bigger things such as data centers which do all of a company’s computing. It may also involve smaller functions, such as hiring outside offices to promote a company via social media.

A Directory Site

Finding a specific product or service should be easy, yet thanks to Google, it is getting harder and harder. The websites that produce lists of where you may get one product or service from multiple places are very unreliable.

They are often difficult to search too. The ones that are good are increasingly hard to find, but the market is crying out for them.

Financial Fitness

These companies are doing very well because so many companies are losing money and scared of going bust, so they are throwing money at financial fitness people and financial advisers, in a vain attempt to find an answer. When the economy picks up again then the bottom will fall out of this market, but until that day you should get in whilst the money is good.

Mobile Phones

Every company relating to mobile phones are doing well, except for phone manufacturers and network companies. Therefore, if you know how to make mobile websites, apps, themes, music, tunes, games, covers, protectors or glow in the dark additions, you will make money.

Online Games

There are so many of them that do not make any money, but that is because they are bad. The online games market is a great place to find a long-term income for just one game. If you create an online game that is good, it can easily be marketed for constant trickle of cash every month.

Create the game, add it to some merchant sites, and allow the first few levels to be played free. Then charge $1-3 for the access to play the other 100+ levels. So long as the merchant sites keep running, it allows a constant and seemingly endless trickle of cash all year round.

Everybody a celebrity

Companies that offer to make promotional videos for wannabe celebrities are massive thanks to the many TV shows with prepaid actors and singers pretending to be members of the public so they can win the singing competition. Many people are having demo DVDs and promotional videos made up, to send off to shows like X Factor.

Online accountancy

Many people have lost their jobs and taken up self-employment. Sadly, very few can afford an accountant. Online and cheap accountancy and tax return agents are very popular for the lower budget self-employed business.

About the Author: My name is Sonia Jackson. Welcome to my web-site www.custom-essay-writing.org

Company House: a Key for your Small Business

A company can leak out unnecessary cash-flow in a multitude of ways: how you deal with your suppliers and what you know about them can surprisingly make a big difference in the great scheme of things.

Sound and Safe Suppliers

‘You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends’. A more appropriate business maxim would be ‘You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your suppliers’. All new suppliers to the business should be examined in detail, to ensure that they are technically sound and have the experience and reputation to deliver on their goods or services. A supplier should also be financially stable and have a reliable payment history with their other creditors.

company house

Companies House is an excellent place to start investigating potential suppliers. A database of two million limited companies in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, it contains business documents that are up to date and is also an affordable way to ensure that the right supplier is selected. For £4 per month, the database of 260 million documents dating back 10 years is available here at the click of a mouse. There is also a free database that contains information about the company, such as the date of incorporation, insolvency history and previous business names. You can also source companies house information for free using sites such as Duedil.com

A credit check can also be an excellent way of getting an up close look at a supplier. Ask for references from previous creditors and follow up on them. Also, when you get a credit check you should always bear in mind that this information can be up to six months old. If the company is a part of a subsidiary, then consider asking the holding company for a formal guarantee.

Combining this process with a careful planning of the office and the workflow, checking up on competitors using Companies House are two ways that a business can avoid bleeding out money. So take control with these ongoing and vigilant processes.