Regardless of how wrong some experts think about starting a business from your hobby, it is probably the most effective and efficient one. There are some reasons to that…
Firstly, you don’t have to learn about anything from scratch. It’s YOUR hobby; you ARE the expert; even if you need to learn the technicality of your hobby, you are half-way there.
Secondly, it’s YOUR passion. People can be passionate about entrepreneurship; but if you are passionate about entrepreneurship AND everything you do and every product you create/service you offer, you are taking shortcut.
But still, just like any other business, you need to take some steps to startup right. Make it Cheaper, the business cost-saving expert, publishes this interest infographic about turning your talent or hobby into a business – check this out (please click on the infographic for the original size…)
Some may say that a business is only as good as the tools it uses. If you don’t start out with some form of efficiency, you could be doomed to fail. There are several initial investments you could purchase in order to start your business off on the right foot. While you don’t have to spend a great deal of money to provide stability, an investment of some kind is still required for immediate success in specific areas.
1. Quickbooks – For the small business, Quickbooks can be one of your greatest assets. Not only does this program provide tracking for your bank accounts, but it also handles a large amount of your business practices. Inventory control, payroll, bills, and more can be tracked from Quickbooks providing a wide range of reports to help you analyze what areas your business needs to improve on.
Taxes and end-of-year business can be easily compiled and printed without putting much effort into it. As long as you entered the data correctly throughout the year, taxes could take you a fraction of the time and 1099s could be quickly produced for any contract labor you employed.
2. Computer Network – Having a computer network should go without saying. As nearly everything we do in today’s world requires access to the Internet, having a computer system can save a great deal of time and money. However, does your small business need an expensive server and network in order to function?
A file server could be beneficial if your organization uses a lot of files that need to be shared with one-another. For this purpose, a small $600 desktop server would suffice. Essentially, these servers are nothing more than a regular computer with a server software installed on it. It may not be a bad idea to increase the hard drive size as much as possible, but a file server doesn’t need to have a lot of power behind it.
For a small business, gigabit Ethernet capabilities are more of a luxury that shouldn’t be required. Again, this could greatly depend on the type of business you are starting. The basic 10/100 Ethernet network is far cheaper to build now-days and could serve your business purposes well. Unless you are planning to hammer the network bandwidth using a lot of streaming content, game playing, or other function that requires faster speeds you should save your money.
3. Website – As a large amount of people use smartphones to search for local businesses, you should have a website with all of your products and services described in detail. For less than $120 per year, you could have a website that could generate its own income or simply provide information about your business.
If you’re not interested in hosting eCommerce, your website could still serve a purpose to supply information to potential customers. With enough content, your website could generate revenue with Adsense by receiving money for hosting advertisements of other companies. There is a great deal of potential with a website and if nothing more, it can serve as a great way to advertise your business to the local community.
Although you can still start your business without any of the above tools, they are still a very wise investment. They can save you time, money, and stress from having to alter your methods of conducting business. As long as you track every dime and where it is spent, you can have a handle on how your business functions.
Author Bio: Nancy provides feedback on all elements of the site “www.enannysource.com” helping us to really make sure that we are making it as easy as possible for caregivers to sign up and find work. In addition, she spends quite a bit of her time on freelance writing tasks.
Do you know the bottom-line of running a business successfully? No, it is about being proactive or possessing a go-getter and killer attitude. It is about generating leads.
If you are incapable of generating leads for your business, your business is not going to make it. And probably for this reason, business owners go extreme and start doing weird things when they fail to get their business going.
They send their over-confident marketers to attend seminars to rub shoulders with marketer leaders with a desperate hope that they will be able to seal some crazy deals. Nevertheless, it rarely works. However, some others go extra miles. They invite affiliate marketers and try to make them believe that their product is going to change their lives for once and all. But this is not the way you should be marketing your business. This is definitely not going to help you generate any leads rather it will diminish your prospect.
Rather than chasing your customers, you need to know how to provide value that will eventually draw more customers and businesses. And this can easily be achieved with eBook marketing. It is simple, cost effective and of course, it is environment friendly. However, before you jump onto the bandwagon, you need to know the rules of ebook marketing otherwise all your efforts will go wasted.
When you pay a visit your nearby shopping mall, I hope you have certainly seen shop owners trying to sell their products by offering some samples to try. By doing so, they are trying to provide instant value to their targeted audience and thereby making a huge stride to get them converted them into customers. Now, you can apply the same tactic while promoting your service. Since there is no option available to let your customers ‘taste’ your service, you can offer them a small eBook that will help them come to term with your offer or service.
And you know eBook is being considered as a powerful marketing tool because people do not consider them as a marketing tool. They usually take it as a source of information and therefore, you would not have to persuade them.
eBook comes with a unique benefit. Since traditional forms of marketing are proving less effective, ebook marketing is capturing the attention of all. As I have already said, it does not even look like a form of marketing. However, ebook does not need to be informative only; you can change the tone to suit your purpose. Just do not overdo things because it will defeat the purpose of launching the ebook.
The biggest benefit of using eBook as a source of marketing is that it is highly cost effective. Compared to its physical counterpart i.e. print magazine, ebook will not cost you an arm and leg. And the best part of ebook is that it does not necessarily have to 100 pages long. In fact, if you make it 100 pages long, no one is going to read this. The shorter, the better. Since people do not have much time in hand to go through a 100 pages long ebook these days, you need to make it short and sweet.
eBooks can be made a bit more interactive. Rather than making it another book with dry information, you can add videos, cool graphics, interactive pie charts and more. And if this is not enough, you can email your customers if you happen to update the ebook that will give a nice feeling to your customers that you care for them.
Since all things digital can be tracked or at least to some extent, you can measure the success of your ebook marketing campaign quite efficiently and precisely. If you have added links of your website in the ebook, you will be able to track how many visitors are actually coming to your website via ebook and how many of them are making the purchase thanks to the powerful tracking application – Google Analytics.
You can include call to action in the middle of texts in your ebook and believe me it can help you see some conversions. Since here the readers do not have to memorize the coupon codes or the long URLs or any other complex thing. They have to do far simple thing. Yeah, all they have to do is to click on the link and there they go. They will get landed right on your website and if the lady luck favors you, you will see more conversions and more business.
However, just publishing an ebook is not end of the task. You need to make sure that it is well written and the presentation is good enough otherwise it will not click. Here are the few things that you need to be careful about to make the ebook acceptable to your audience –
Quality of images should not be compromised. Since most people are going to scan the pages, your ebook should look presentable with loads of interesting images. As the ebook is going to be your brand ambassador, you have to make sure that the formatting, writing, presentations etc are at par with market standard.
You are free to add logo or other brand-based images in the ebook but make sure that they are not making it look like a promotional pamphlet.
Do not ignore the difference between a traditional book and ebook. For say, if you are converting a slide presentation, you should not ignore the importance of incorporating images with the texts so that the readers can have the feeling of seeing the presentation. And the same goes with when you are converting spoken content. The conversational tone should be kept intact.
So, if you can manage to follow these simple tips, you will be able to make the most of ebook marketing campaign. It is powerful and highly effective and all you have to learn is to how to use it.
Author Bio
Stark Jensen is a passionate writer and he has written several articles on web hosting. You can check his latest articles on Hosting Review: iPage.
Conflicts will always arise at the workplace. Irrespective of how much we hate it, it is a universal truth that there is no organization in the world which is free of conflict.
It may be a small matter that can be easily resolved, or it may be a major conflict that threatens the existence of the business entity. This does not mean that the organization has to be in a chaotic state at all times. Conflict can be the beginning of interesting relations at work. The managers have to be meticulous in dealing with it. They must do so in a manner that is fair to all and the means used to arrive at a solution must be void of bias or prejudice.
Here are a few tips that are useful in minimizing and handling work related warfare.
1. Define what is acceptable
This is the first step in avoiding unnecessary rivalry. Ensure that all employees understand the kind of behavior that is expected of them. Clearly define a framework that highlights code of ethics. Let them know what will not be tolerated. In the same light ensure that everyone’s job description is crystal clear to avoid situations where there is conflict arising from ambiguity in roles. This framework should be used whenever there is a conflict, and the employees have to be aware of its existence. The policies which have been set up have to be utilized as the basis for conflict resolution.
2. Deal with conflict as soon as it arises
Tugs of war at the workplace should not be ignored for too long. Ignoring such clashes will only give them time to flare up. It may spread like bushfire, and before you know it, it is all over the organization. This particular reason necessitates prompt confrontation of the conflict before it goes out of control. Do not let it escalate to a level where you cannot effectively deal with it. Do not bury your head in the sand. A few conflicts will calm down naturally, but most conflicts do not die down without some sort of intervention.
3. Listen to all parties and then act
It is only fair that both parties are accorded an audience before action is taken. Sometimes it is not necessary to do so, especially when it is quite obvious that one party is on the wrong. However, it is only right that both sides of the dispute are heard so as to arrive at a conclusion that is free and fair. Listen to what each party has to say before taking any serious action. Ascertain the facts and then act accordingly.
4. Request a third party to intervene
Whenever there is a conflict, it is important to ask an impartial third party to mediate. This is particularly important when you have made attempts to resolve the conflict without any significant progress. A third party will bring in some fresh ideas and give the parties concerned a notion that someone has listened to them, which is a crucial step towards healing.
5. Aim at finding a lasting solution
The idea behind conflict resolution is to come up with a lasting solution. You have to be solution oriented. As much as you acknowledge the problem, you have to suggest possible solutions which will bring the dispute to an end once and for all. This will help the parties to open up as they give their opinions about the suggested solutions, which should improve the situation.
6. Keep emotions away from the process
The greatest mistake people make is to let their emotions interfere with their decisions. The same applies while solving conflicts. Emotions will only aggravate a bad situation. Try to remain sober and to think as straight as possible. Ensure that emotions are kept off the bay so that they do not interfere with the process.
About the Author: Suzan Morley has over 10 years of HR experience.
Google has been cracking down on duplicate content rules and penalties more and more each year, so it’s important to really understand what does and does not count as duplicate content. You never quite know what Google is going to pull next, so you can never be too careful or ask questions that seem too obvious. In other words, if you’ve ever wondered about quotes and how they pertain to duplicate content, don’t hesitate to ask.
Matt Cutts Explains Quoting and Duplicate Content
Someone finally did ask Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, this question, and he had a few different things to say and rules to explain:
Always link back. First, you must always include a link that will send readers back to where the quote was originally published. If you do this, you’ll likely never have to worry about getting penalized. Cutts explained that they have good ways of detecting if you’re doing this without any issues. Keep the quotes short. Although linking back to the original source is great, that won’t be good enough if you’re quoting an entire article from a site. You want to keep your quotes short to avoid changing your sites reputation in the eyes of Google. Offer your own thoughts. You don’t want to have a quote, a few words, another quote from somewhere else, another few words, etc. You have to have “attribution and insight” as Cutts would say. You need to have your own opinion that is more than two or three words.
The moral of the story is that appropriate quoting is completely acceptable. Many great sites do this and Google has said it’s extremely legitimate. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the video that Cutts created in response to this exact question:
About the Author: Amanda DiSilvestro is a graduate of Illinois State University. Although she graduated with an English Education degree, she found herself working as a full-time blogger in the SEO/social media department at HigherVisibility SEO, a leading franchise SEO company.
