small business, Self improvement, working at home, mental health, cooking, hobbies, gardening, wellness, health, fitness, motherhood and raising families

MOST SMALL BUSINESSES CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY SOMEONE TO SET UP A WEBSITE

This is a fact of small business in the early stages.  Unless you are going to have an internet business, then a website will be one of the last projects you will probably tackle.

BUT having a website is almost essential to help your business along.  So what can you do about it?

SET UP A WORDPRESS BLOG

Because so many people face the same problem, finding money to set up a website or having the expertise to do it themselves, thousands of small business owners are using the absolute power of the blog to promote their business and their products.

This is such a fantastic way to do it.  It means that you can build up some communication with possible clients, interact with fellow business people and develop many other great ways to use a blog.

At Wordpress you can set up a blog for nothing and not pay any hosting fees either.  With the free blog at Wordpress it just means that from the site you cannot actually sell a product or put advertising on the site, but you can link to other sites and you can talk about your products.

Blogging is about helping your clients with helpful information.  Most people wont look at a blog if it is all about yourself.  So when you set up a blog pick topics that you can talk about and give tips to your clients.  That way they will learn to trust you and will be looking to buy from you as well. 

Blogs don't need to be long, and in fact they are better to be more frequent small ones that long wordy ones.  People searching the internet like to be there, have a quick read and be gone again.  Therefore your blogs need to be short, interesting and engaging.

Try setting a blog up on Wordpress, it really is not too difficult.

Have fun.

PRICING YOUR PRODUCTS CORRECTLY IS CRITICAL IF YOU WANT TO STAY IN BUSINESS

There is no mystery about the fact that you need to make a profit when you run a small business, but what eludes some small business owners is the knowledge on how to price their products.

I remember many years ago when I was early to the retail trade and I wanted to run a special.  I had products that I had paid $10 for, marketed up 40% to $14, and without working out the price thought I would sell the items and cost and took off 40%.  Silly me, that meant that I was selling the product for $8.40.   Such a simple mistake, but one as a business owner you could not afford to make too often.

So many times I have seen products priced incorrectly through either lack of math knowledge, not concentrating on the job at hand or lack of knowledge. 

I remember talking to one giftware retailer one day who said they mark up 110%.  I was rather taken aback until she explained that they have to run so many sales to compete that if they did not mark up that much initially they would not be able to give attractive discounts.  It then started to make some sense because they were in a shopping mall competing against the big corporates.

When pricing your products you need to give some thought to the costs of running your business, the turnover you need to make, the client base you are attracting, the volume of stock turnover you have, the originality of the products you sell and other influencing factors.

Consider all these points when working out your pricing strategy.

 Kaye Dennan

 TIME MANAGEMENT HAS GONE OUT THE WINDOW.

GETTING HUBBY'S SEMINAR ORGANISED, THAT'S WHERE TIME HAS GONE!

It does bring to mind though how much work there is in organising events. 

With your small business marketing do you do a special event a couple of times a year to promote your business?  Say, something like a coloring competition for kids, a fishing competition for the family, a sausage sizzle, the best pot plant, the best sand tray (for kids) or anything at all.

Running an event has two achievements:

1.  It gives you a reason to promote your business without necessarily discounting something;

2. It gets your customers talking about what is happening.

To run a successful event though, it needs to be properly planned, no hit and miss stuff.  That would do you more harm that good.  Small businesses would benefit from running at least 2 events a year.  I know it is a lot of work but it can create quite a buzz about your business.

If you run a competition of some sort you may be able to get the local paper to take a photo and run it in the community section which will give you free advertising as well.

Put your thinking cap on, have a look at what other larger businesses are doing and emulate their strategies.  Plan it carefully, cost it effectively (they can actually be quite cheap to run) and have fun.

I'VE GOT TO SAY, I DO.  I FIND IT HARD TO FOLLOW THROUGH BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY OPPORTUNITIES

My focus should be small business but there are so many opportunities with internet marketing that in my learning I come across so many opportunities that I find it hard not to wander off from what I am doing. 

 Before I started internet marketing I never realised the possibilities that there are for making money on the internt.  I have an entrepreneural mind anyway so can see many different ways to make things work.  This is good, but it can also be a hinderance.

I really don't have the answers here.  I wished I did because then I could be more focused.  I feel half my problem is chasing the dollar.  I am so keen to get everything up and running and I have a mind like a sponge at the moment that I am finding it difficult to make the money I wish to.  Still I will keep working at it.

How do you go in your small business, do you find it easy to stay focused?

Cheers

Kaye

HELP YOUR ACNE AND HELP YOUR SELF – YOU WILL BOTH BENEFIT

If you have ever felt uncomfortable about going out in public and worried about people staring at your acne blemishes, then this is a Must read for you. Get back your confidence, don't be self conscious about how you look and enjoy life again knowing that you really can have beautiful, clear skin with people openly giving you compliments on how you look. People will think you are a different person and your self esteem will soar.

Suggestions on treatment of acne by a retired dermatologist go to:

http://www.acneassasin.com 

Suggestions on treatment of acne by a retired dermatologist

DISCOUNT TRAVEL TO ITALY, OR ANYWHERE ELSE, IS GREAT TO OBTAIN, BUT LOOK OUT FOR THE PITFALLS!

Travel has become quite reasonable nowdays, and many people travel far and wide, not because they have big bucks in their bank account, but because they have sought out the cheaper travel rates.   However, with more and more companies selling discount airfares to Italy, practically anyone can afford to tour Europe. Seeing the world is no longer an activity exclusively for the wealthy. Cheaper flights do not always mean poor service or uncomfortable accommodations. But you will definitely have to sacrifice some of the perks that come with traveling first or business class on luxurious airlines. 

There have also been a few reported cases of lost luggage when traveling on flights with discount airfare to Italy. If you are going to travel at a discount, you have to prepare yourself for such situations and take extra caution with your belongings.  Travel light and keep your valuables with you in the cabin.

 You must also expect to take several stops when paying discount airfare to Italy. Saving on travel expenses usually means going on multiple flights instead of just sitting comfortably on the plane until you reach your final destination. For instance, if you are coming from the United States, the cheapest way to get to Italy would be to fly to London first. Cheap tickets from the US to London are much easier to obtain than discount airfare to Italy. When you get to London, there are a few small airlines there that can take you to Italy for as low as $30. It is advisable to check out these airlines first before buying your discount airfare to Italy. The most popular ones for tourists on a budget are RyanAir and EasyJet. However, these cheap airlines may not be traveling from the same airport that you arrived in, so you would have to take a cab to a different airport. This will usually cost an additional $50, not to mention the number of hours you would have to spend traveling by car. These are the types of consideration you need to give careful attention to when travelling on any discounted airlines and to any destination. 

If you add all in these types if expenses and you still save a considerable amount, then by all means, buy the discount airfare and spend the rest of your money on your actual vacation. Just make sure you are up for the adventure, and that the minor adjustments will not stress you out and take away from the enjoyment you will otherwise have from your Italian vacation or any holiday that you have.

ITALY HAS SO MUCH TO OFFER TOURISTS OF ALL AGES AND CULTURE

and for visitors on every budget

• Take a private tour of Mount Etna and browse through the local craft stores along the way at leisure. The private tour often allows for many photo opportunities as well the option of a traditional Sicilian meal in a mountain village.
• Visit Forza D'Agro and Savoca, both of which were used as the backdrop for several scenes in "The Godfather.
• Go scuba diving in the waters off the Aeolian Islands. Among these, one can find the Stromboli Island, which has a small active volcano-a beautiful sight to behold on a clear night.
• Try each of the bars that cater to a different demographic. Some bars cater to a mostly German crowd, while others serve a more Irish or American clientele. All the bars are likely to be frequented by tourists rather than locals since the local women tend not to visit these venues unaccompanied.  Singles love to visit these places because there are so many peoplel who are wanting have a good time and meet people who are travelling the world.
• Visit L'Angolo del Papiro and learn how to turn papyrus (the plant) into paper using the same methods that were used 5,000 years ago. The workshop in Siracusa is located opposite the Greek Theater. Handmade products made with the papyrus are sold to those who take a tour of the premises.

HAVE YOU FOUND THAT BUSINESS IS A LITTLE TOUGH OUT THERE?   OF COURSE YOU HAVE!   JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE HAS!

SO WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?

There has never been a better time to improve your skills with new techniques, or to expand your present skills with totally new knowledge.  You can access so much information on the internet that you just cannot say that you can't find out about anything.If you have a retail business for example, you have to have your business open certain hours of the day and you will probably find that there is some time that you could put aside to learn these new skills.

NOW is the opportune time to find out what your competitors are offeing, what they are NOT offering and find out what your customers either cannot get or cannot get enough of and set out to CORNER THE MARKET.

Don't dilly dally, get stuck into it and make it happen.  Take hold of the opportunity and run with it in both hands. 

Don't make the mistake I sometimes did, getting myself so excited by something and buying too much, only to find it took me so long to get rid of it.  The initial flush can sometimes be deceiving.  Not that the product won't keep on selling, but it can give you the wrong impression of how much you will sell on a regular basis.If you have just started out in small business it would pay you to download my FREE EBOOK.  It is written with home based businesses in mind, but it is still a good read for all small business owners. 

YOU HAVE PUT A LOT OF VALUABLE TIME INTO WRITING YOUR BUSINESS PLAN, NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH IT.

KEEPING FOCUSED AND SOLVING PROBLEMS 

Firstly, without doing anything, you are going to know your business so much better and do not blow this idea away.  So many people (and I am guilty of this) rush in because they are so excited about their idea that they just cannot stop themselves.  Before long they are saying to themselves, "what did I do that for?", "why is that not working?", and other such questions will arise.  It they had done the business plan first, then those problems may not have arisen anyway.

So, having your business plan is going to help you stay focused.  When ever you start having problems, either in your business, with advertising agents, staff, the bank etc. you will be able to refer to your business plan to help you work out the problem.  You see, many of these problems will have been addressed in the business plan while you had a clear head and while you had time to assess the situation. 

Once you have started your business you can get so busy and so swept up in the day to day running of it that you can start swaying around like a ship that has lost its sail.

FINANCE

Should you need to get finance at any stage, you can take your business plan to your proposed lender and use that in your application for finance.  If your business plan is a year or two old and you need finance, it will take you very long to up date it, whereas if you did not have one at all you would have to spend hours doing it, and who has time to do that once there business is in full swing and in the first couple of years whilst you are building it up.

MARKETING

Having your business plan prepared, with the attached marketing plan, you will be able to keep in mind what your marketing is all about.  You should have a short marketing plan made up for 3 – 6 months ahead, but your business plan is your long term goal with marketing and it will help keep you focused.  You can, of course, always update it if the business take off is a bit slow, or if you find you have extra funds to allow for some more paid advertising.

YOUR BUSINESS IN GENERAL

Other items in your business plan will help keep you on track, such as the number of staff, the type of product, your product expansion, your competition and how you will differentiate yourself and your business.  Remember if  you have a really good business idea it will not be long before someone copies it, so keep those good ideas flowing and put them in your  business plan.

If you would like a copy of my FREE EBOOK on How to Have a Successful Home Business just visit my site Home Business Success.