Foremost – determine your niche! You can’t expect to be found on the first page of search results if you do what other 10 million people do. If you create cell phone cases – maybe you should advertise as “pink cell phone case with sequins” or something equally unique and specific.
First – make sure that your site is visible to major search agents at all. If you’ve chosen spectacular Flash movie for your presentation – it may not be so obvious.
Secondly – start geo target your audience. Maybe you rather be seen in Toronto than Australia.
Thirdly – include paid advertisement, register with LinkedIn, Facebook and what have you, and have someone to become active in blogs of your industry to spread a word in a wide variety of mediums.

How to approach an optimization of your site? Be sure that everyone in your company will have their own opinion what looks or works best – it is politics, and it happens everywhere. No matter what your designer/developer will come up with – your CEO or owner will probably dismiss or try to edit in their own way. The only way to really optimize your site is through objective testing, not guessing. Changes to the website can be made/tested so easily and so often now, that testing is the only objective way to come up with a solution that WORKS – by bringing you new customers.
Experiment with new copies of the pages and check how these changes influenced your traffic.

There is not enough time in a day for you, business owner, to track visits to your site, monitor yours and competition’s rankings or plan for online marketing. Someone’s gotta do it, however, unless you give up on marketing all together.

hg

Funny to say so since barter is by definition an exchange without money.

Some companies will approach you with a proposition to barter their services or goods for yours. Others require membership to take part in barter.

It is hard to say if barter makes sense for you. Wouldn’t it be simpler to pay for what you need and get money for what you delivered? Financial benefit of barter is rare to be obvious. Why? Because companies offering barter for their goods and services usually set the price high.

I came across this company renting computers and laptops on a barter basis.
If you needed computer for a month, the price was almost equal to buying one from the discount store. So why bother? Well, maybe this company wants something that you produced, and your actual cost to produce it was low – like an artist’s painting… Sure, you spent time painting it and it contains your very creative idea, but you had plenty of time anyway, and you find it hard to sell your products, just for this simple reason that you are not a salesman and you can’t afford one at the moment. But you have this presentation coming up to a large corporate client, and you can’t go there without a laptop… In this situation you can set a ‘price’ for your painting at the market value, and get a laptop in barter exchange. You both benefited, because otherwise you could not get a laptop and that company couldn’t have afforded a great painting you made.

Try for instance B-Commerce. It’s a private, membership-based barter exchange facility. Who needs barter? Well, everyone needs plumber, electrician, dentist, florist or computer repair. There are many more categories of businesses that barter there. It does sound interesting and it’s worth checking.

Barter is also a good way to network. One more way to spread a word about your business – among others seeking services and goods, is to advertise on barter exchanges.

In Toronto you can barter on Craigslist, on U-Exchange, on BCommerce, and others.

Some great entrepreneurs like for instance Razor Suleman estimates that … “5% to 10% of sales by his Toronto-based promotional-products distributor, Snap Promotions, are in exchange for goods and services. Barter has generated sales Snap might have missed doing a straight cash business, and it has cut costs, too. “We’ve been taking the dollars we save,” says Suleman, “and investing them back into the business.” He said in an interview for Canadian Business online. “

Beware that some barter networks aren’t always as advertised: despite promising low fees and lots of liquidity, few of them have delivered the goods. “We started dropping them,” says Suleman, “because the time and energy to manage relationships with these non-profitable exchanges affected our bottom line.”

See this article about barter: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/entrepreneur/financing/article.jsp?content=20041027_115252_3420

Barter thrives on international markets, too. You wouldn’t believe how many barter offers is out there:
http://www.google.com/Top/Business/International_Business_and_Trade/Barter/
Maybe one of them will give your business that extra kick it needs to soar.

If you want to barter with me, my ears are wide open.

hg@minibizweb.com

Ancient Greeks had a simple model of decision making: Your mind and emotions react to your environment, pressuring your will to make a decision resulting in action.
Every decision has unavoidable consequences. No one can see all the consequences at the time of making decision. This cannot stop you, however from making decisions every day.

Here’s my list of tips for decision making process. Pardon me, if some of them are just too obvious for you – you are probably a good decision maker

• Include input from others. You can’t be right all the time.
• If a large group is a stakeholder in your decision making, consider methodology called: ‘Dotmocracy” (dotmocracy.org)
• If your decision affects your business direction, learn about process called: SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) and apply it in writing to your situation. http://www.ehow.com/how_2034214_analyze-small-business-swot.html
• Facing complex decisions with multiple variables, use computer software to evaluate choices by considering many variables at once, separating facts from value judgments, and explaining your choice to others. (http://www.logicaldecisions.com/)
• Research information on your alternatives but put an end to collecting information about your decision. Avoid thinking that with just a little more time and information, you’ll be able to make a perfect decision.
• Think honestly about any fears, motives or biases guiding your thinking. Recognize them for what they are.
• Make a list of options available, list possible consequences of each action and weigh the importance and likelihood of the various consequences. Can you synthesize the available alternatives into a compromise that maximizes the pros and minimizes the cons?.
• Try to gain some experience in the area of your decision: For instance if you want to set up an office in Dubai, go there yourself or at least talk at length to someone who has done it already.
• If all else fails, go with your gut feeling.

Sometimes you had an input, number of meetings, researched information and you’re further from any decision than at the very beginning. Maybe your picture isn’t clear enough?

“Whatever couldn’t be summarized on a single page is neither well thought out nor ripe for decision.” – said Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Look how Go4decision helps you bring all to agreeable decision fast: http://www.go4decision.com/index.php/shop/going-to-do-the-proper-thing

If you are keen to learn more about decision making try these resources:

Book: Get Smarter : Life and Business Lessons by Seymour Schulich
This is a mentoring book primarily for the 20-to-40-year-old with entrepreneurial aspirations. Many older folks will also derive considerable inspiration from the life and business lessons contained in Get Smarter. In examining his own life Seymour Schulich, a Canadian billionaire and philanthropist, realized that at age 20 he-like others his age-knew very little and was aware of that fact. At 30, he writes, one thinks one has acquired a lot of wisdom. Upon later reflection, however, he realized he knew very little at that age, too! In short, stand-alone chapters he covers such universal issues as: -How to make a decision -Manage all types of relationships -Choose a career -Deal with adversity -Key business issues -Investing lessons Website.

Course in Precision Management: http://home.mindspring.com/~ejaffa/courses/11.html by Dr Elliott B. Jaffa
Are you overwhelmed with multiple projects, missed deadlines, more and more unproductive meetings, people vying for your time, fires to put out, and piles of reading?
After taking this course you will be able to:
• Complete your top 3 priorities each day and avoid management by crisis
• Accomplish MORE in LESS time
• Handle a piece of paper (report, proposal, correspondence) only once
• Eliminate over two dozen of your biggest time wasters
• Eliminate interruptions from drop-in visitors and phone calls
• Make meetings - those you lead and attend - more productive
• Delegate to the person who can do it best
• Assert yourself and say “NO”
• Become a better decision-maker

Don’t doubt yourself! - If you made a decision, go with it. Don’t change your mind every time somebody says something that makes you unsure. It’s YOUR decision! Also, don’t let others make your decisions for you. If you do, you risk being controlled by someone who knows less about your problems than you do.

hg

If last year you proudly created a page on MySpace, this year chatting on the Facebook during business hours you’re not much of an avangarde of a web technology any more. There is bigger, more sophisticated, better… ?Hmm.
What and how fast do you adopt new now? Do you have to? Good question.

It used to be a little bit of a social network, and mostly alumni club to check out who gained weight and who became a millionaire. However, many of these technologies cross to business domain and are used now to enforce and grease the sales power or simply improve communications and efficiency.

If a large company has 2000 people in different departments on many floors, and possibly in many buildings, consultants are not enough now to tell the management who is doing what and why. In-house expertise is missed or resources mismanaged, costing that company lots of money. Until this new software that is, which (can you believe it) analyzes all the emails and network communications flying among the employees and charts out who is most often talking about this or that topic. It locates a real expertise in a snap, and you can image what else it does on the way.

This software is Aptima - it finds connections between people attempting to solve similar problems. It used to be called “organizational network analysis”. It’s just now it’s done quite automatically. This one is not very useful for a small selfemployed entrepreneur, but others are.

You probably know LinkedIn, Spoke, Technorati and Friendster. But did you see SelectMinds, VisiblePath and Tacit Software?
It’s not just who you know. It’s also who they know, and what they know. Online social networks have the potential to connect you to a vast world of people and resources. It will connect your list of personal contacts to the lists and profiles of others, giving you a bigger Rolodex of potential clients and suppliers. Visible Path doesn’t examine the content of messages; it only notes who sends messages to whom, when they send them, and how frequently.

Illumio, a new product from Tacit Software that is available to individuals for free, pores over the information on the PCs of everyone on your virtual network. Using data indexed by Google’s and Microsoft’s desktop search tools it identifies the people most likely to be able to answer a particular question.

Visible Path, which has made its software available to the public, hopes to create a mass cross-organization network, but only if it can get enough individuals to sign up to have their e-mail tracked.

Talk about tracking – I looked at Twitter time and time again, and still can’t figure out how this can be a fascination to anyone but a mother of a teenager… Texting your friends (or a network of customers) what are you doing this minute – who cares? Unless you are going to a cave and might need help any time. But does your cell phone work in a cave?

Have you tried SecondLife yet?

Starting to sound like a lost philosopher among all these new gadgets.

hg

A lot of calling cards are not really what they claim to be. You can encounter initiation fees and hidden charges before you know it. Some of the more sound options are: getting on the VOIP network, finding flat rate long distance plan, signing for free incoming calls plans with your mobile or buying virtual calling cards with unlimited number of calls or minutes.

So what is that VOIP )? Voice Over Internet Protocol allows to run your phone system on the computer-like network.
What are the advantages? Internet usage is non-expensive in Canada. Once you installed broadband internet connection, the rest is [almost] free. Of course, you need to purchase VOIP phones, and have some server of the phone system.
Further advantages are that VOIP phones can be moved freely on the network (from location to location), and the phone number (extension) travels with the phone, as well as all the messages stored on it. You can even unify all your communications (phone, voice mail, fax and email) in one box of Microsoft Outlook account. Neat.
It’s also very easy to add numbers to your VOIP network – as easy as plug in another phone and enter some data to a software program (providing you purchased a block of numbers from the appropriate company). A secretary can do it, without calling Bell technician to rewire anything.

Disadvantages? – VOIP network is as vulnerable as a computer network – can be hacked, infected with virus or worm or can be simply down, when internet service is down. This means that you are totally dependent on the reliability of your internet provider. This is serious weakness. When your internet is down and the phone is down, what communication is left? – just your legs, I guess… There are also some restrictions in using 911 service on VOIP.

One remedy to this is to install a semi-VOIP network. On such a network, on the inside it is a computer network with all the bells and whistles of VOIP technology, and on the outside all calls go over the plain old Bell network. This also can save some money if you are upgrading your old phone system to VOIP network, because in this solution you can use some existing Bell circuits and add new VOIP features,. It can be advantageous in a transition period from old to truly VOIP system.

VOIP is very advantageous for mid-size businesses. If you are a one-person orchestra in your small business, and are trying to run VOIP calls through your computer, you may find that often a quality of voice is poor. In this case you’d be better off using Skype. Skype is free between Skype members, and for a fee it would allow you to call landline phones. It is a very economical option, with additional perks of using video at the same time, if the person on the other side has a web camera too.

There are recently even better options than Skype for long distance calls. Pay attention to so-called virtual calling cards.
This prepaid phone service is a dream for big talkers with mobile phones. If you are not talking that much, but still would like to cut down on your phone bills, Telehop (http://www.telehop.ca/) can be an option.

And when you are yakking on the phone for hours, take a minute to count your blessings, because in many parts of the world cheap communication is still an unfulfilled dream.

hg@minibizweb.com

Control of the situation is in their blood, and comes first, always. Even if they lose, they lose in a controlled way.
Never ending demands off people surrounding them gets things done. Nagging, regulating the tasks, procedures, processes and constant monitoring of subordinates work. O, yes, they know very well that a soft-mannered employees can be conditioned to the routines of the way boss is doing the business.

A bully knows very well how to approach people. He/she plays on their weaknesses. If you want something badly, you know how to get it. “How’s your family doing? Is your [daughter] enjoying her school? How’s your weekend?…” they would often say passing you in the hall or at the coffee maker. How naive you would be thinking it was sincere.
It’s all part of the picture: their picture of you doing everything their way.

What’s wrong with that? You would say. “Everything” – is my answer. It’s not a leadership, it’s not a good governance, I hope someone one day has a courage to say in your face: “you are a bully and I refuse to work this way”.
Pushing technicians to the extreme and screaming at other company’s customer service will get you far in your endeavors. You may be even noticed as “dynamic leader” or “real achiever” when standing high enough on these bodies of little people who accepted or forgiven your behavior and have done everything you ever wanted.

“Bullies are usually good at “reading” people and “pushing their buttons.” They use techniques like leaving things to the last minute to block escape routes, and dangle carrots that won’t be delivered, and often use “weasel words” (words like “virtually,” “almost,” and “possibly”) as out clauses. They rely on a network of higher authorities—lawyers, accountants, politicians, and the like—but will avoid putting anything in writing.”

Someone who has pointed out a bully will have to leave that environment and make it on his/her own. Hopefully he will not become a bully as a boss in his new operation.

Next generation will not remember a successful businessman’s daily performance. They will only see his success.
“These […] tyrants didn’t need to read Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun—heck, they wrote it.” Says short “Allbusiness.com” article on Famous Bully Bosses.

Why we do what we do? – you may find a surprising answer here. Neat and funny. Educational, too.

Believe it or not, bullies cost you real money, even if the only bully around is … yourself. Disruption of business, lost productivity, and health are paid over and over again. So, if you encounter bully in your small business – let him/her go. Read about dealing with your temper in the Freestyle Entrepreneur.

We want to hear about bullies in your business, and how they affected your bottom line, financially and in terms of employees’ health and motivation. Do you know any technique that is transferable from one small business to another?
If you do, please do us all a big favor and share it.

I hate bullies.

hg

Knowing where you’re headed and why, would be much easier to evaluate if you are on the right path to achieve your goals.
What motivates you? Is it money, work-life balance, industry recognition, the opportunity to learn, or a challenge like turning a crippled business around? Can you make a list of motivational factors in the order of their importance to you?
If you have a great business idea, but hate selling – what do you need to do to make your idea a success?

A lot of great ideas did not get off the ground, because the innovator/inventor did not have a simple social skill to explain it to anyone or was not able to go out there and ‘meet and greet’ potential customers. He/she knew exactly how it’s going to work technically and that there is significant demand for his/her invention. Lack of project management skills and any social ability made it a failure.

So what’s a girl gotta do? Well, know your strengths and what success means to you and use Other People Skills to make yourself successful. Remember Danny DeVito in “Other People’s Money”? Your business success goes somewhat similar to that. Life is not fair. Use it to your advantage. No, I don’t mean exploitation or unfair practices. If you make yourself a good Project Manager, all the parties involved have a good chance to be successful.

It is structured knowledge. Get a book and start reading. It will be explained from A to Z how to execute a project. No excuses, you can buy it from $1.86.
“Projects have been around since ancient times. Noah built the ark, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine – all projects. Why then, is the topic of project management suddenly of such great interest today? The answer is simple. The audience has changed and the stakes are higher.
Successful businesses and organizations create projects that produce desired results in established timeframes with assigned resources. As a result, businesses are increasingly driven to find individuals who can excel in this project-oriented environment. And that’s where this guide comes into play. […]
By reading this guide, you’ll gain insight into beginning a project, supporting it throughout its life, and bringing it to a successful closure.”

How do you know if you can make it on your own? David Zahn — author, serial entrepreneur, and president of StartupBuilder.com – has identified various personal characteristics successful entrepreneurs share.

Some people are great leaders, organizers, workers, and followers, but the entrepreneur remains as one of the most elusive psychological profiles in the world. Everyone can point to an entrepreneur, but psychologists have had trouble profiling an entrepreneur.
If you want to re-affirm yourself that becoming an entrepreneur, at any age, makes sense, read this article.

hg

Partner offerings have definitely more value for the consumer. Let’s take a website for instance as a product: If you are a star designer, chances are you never developed technical skills to upload that design to the server, and you don’t have time to go out there and market the newly developed website to the target audience. But if you partnered with a techie, marketer and sales strategist, your quad can offer a pretty powerful product to your consumer.

The most commonly known partnerships of self-employed are medical doctor’s offices. Three or more doctors can share an office to provide full time care coverage and benefit from space and equipment sharing.

The same goes about bidding for government, municipal or national bodies jobs. Did you see this questionnaire? Inquisition about number of past projects, interdisciplinary experiences, bios of your staff, number of people available and so on and so on. You will never get through, even if you’re brilliant in your little area. But what if you had organizational and project management drill and were able to glue together a temporary ‘team’ of professionals, that can solidly account for all the experiences and powers required? – This next contract can be yours.

Because the truth is: it does not matter how many people work for you. In global contacts made possible by professional and social networks and information to be found at a snap of a finger: you are the boss of your dream project if you make an effort to create strategic partnerships with other self employed individuals.

Such a partnership can obviously span one project or years and years of successful business relations. Maybe even without a spare overhead burden. Would it eventually put out of business some well stuffed (I know… no, I did not mean ‘staffed’) corporations?

Partnering pays. But don’t ask me how to do it – this is something that I still have to learn.

Because a customer only cares about what you are going to do, before when and for how much.

Do you have a successful partnership story to share? Comment here.

hg@minibizweb.com

It’s about a real dream that moms know the best how to bring to reality. This is not the case of dreaming. It’s about acting, solving a problem – a small problem you stumbled upon in your life or a sudden idea you come up with when praised for something you did very well.

As a woman you can be encouraged (we need a lot of encouragement) that more and more often moms entrepreneurs ‘are making it’ better than their macho men. Stuck between a rock (corporate job) and a hard place (trying to serve the best their young families) they are able to find good, balanced life and financial freedom.

Think about Sandra Wilson and Nicole Garza, who’s both stories are so inspiring. Without Warren Buffet’s wits and funding of venture capital, they made, just recently, millions, by solving their every day problem.

Well, don’t quit your corporate job quite yet, and if you’re fired, get at least part-time job that can carry you out through the tough times, if you have enough discipline to get to greatness one day. Financing a startup from your current cash flow does not work, how found out the “Pasta Princess” – a woman who tried to start her dream pasta business. Graduated from university with $24,000 loan, she made a series of pasta dishes and went around the city restaurants and corners trying to get orders for her pasta and ending up only in free giveaways. Everybody loved her pasta, but nobody wanted to pay for it. Her loans ballooned to $40,000 in just few years and she was hiding from creditors. She desperately needed a business advisor who would put her on the right track of making, not losing money. Despite working very hard, her career was going nowhere. She could easily end-up on the street, if not for this make-over TV program, where she accidentally became an object of attention.

It’s not just about women who found it necessary not to rely on corporate job and government to raise their families.
Supposedly we became an Entrepreneurial nation, as elaborated upon in May 2007 issue of Profit Magazine.: “The recession of 1981-’82 shook the traditional economy to its roots. [..]Suddenly, Canada confronted an economic restructuring that few people understood. […]The result was an entrepreneurial revolution that changed the face of Canada—and just in time, too. The past quarter-century has seen shock after shock, from recession to NAFTA and globalization, from the PC to the spreadsheet to e-commerce. By pioneering innovation, new market niches and lower-cost ways of doing business, entrepreneurs helped the Canadian economy adapt to tough times and keep on growing. Since entrepreneurs shine in unstable environments, it seems likely that Canada’s entrepreneurial revolution will keep right on churning. With advancing technology, new competition from China, India and other “tiger” markets, an aging population and a tightening energy supply, Canada will face many challenges—but its entrepreneurs, if history is any guide, will lead the way by facing them first. “

Don’t pat yourself on the back, though, that it’s so great and it could be you who becomes entrepreneur tomorrow. While you’re waiting for your great idea at the company’s desk (when your boss in not looking, of course ;)), educate yourself about becoming one. Educated, qualified or not, you need to start thinking from the consumer’s point of view. Address a customer’s pain, and you’re on your way. Because sooner or later, you will be put on trial by fire. “The line between success and failure is so thin that the very wording of your message, or the niche you decide to attack first, could determine whether your business lives or dies.”

“If you’re looking for solid ways to send a new product or business skyward, Dragons’ Den is the most entertaining option around”. This business-themed reality-TV show is making rounds in more than 20 countries and debuted in Canada on October 4, 2006 on CBC. Watching Dragons’ Den could make a big difference to your business. Dragons’ Den involves real deals for real money, negotiated in front of the cameras. First thing you can learn from this show: if you don’t have your 30 second ‘elevator speech’, explaining to a stranger what you are doing, why, and how this can benefit anyone, don’t come out of your closet.

Moms entrepreneurs though must know what they are doing and why – a fragile body of a baby is in their hands and they’ll do anything to protect and nourish it’s best growth. Including launching big ideas that work – just before lunch. And on this positive note I can finish. Go on – dream your millions, too.

hg

It’s not as simple as taking your cost, adding some profit and voila. Do you even know what your cost is? Direct materials, yes, labour, yes, then overhead like office, bookkeeper, sales personnel, energy, equipment, interest on loans etc. etc. – you did not even count half of it yet. In meantime you checked, and competition is selling similar product for …this much.

Ok, sales volume, experience in cutting costs, carefully selected over the years vendors and other factors will adjust your price right to the market value. Otherwise you would be out of business before time, when reality checks in.
What if you think you’re worth much more than the competition? If your product is unique, in service, coaching, teaching special skills or enabling sudden high revenue growth in the industry? As a startup with ‘brand’ not developed yet you have to base then your contract on tangible results and guarantee it.

What if you are a designer and you worked hard and long on several samples for the client, only to hear at the end: “It’s not what we were looking for…”. But then you check in few months their recent project and your design stares right at you, only slightly modified. Different author name on it. How would you price your next project then and would you give away any free samples and ideas in initial phase? Would you risk losing a project just because you requested a deposit on your work?

In another scenario you just started a business with great enthusiasm, products are ready, labour is ready, but sales just do not roll into your portfolio as expected. Under time and living expenses pressures, you start to undercut your prices, just to beat up any competition. You know that others charge $500 for this type of product, but you’re happy to temporarily get just a $100, to finally make this sale. One hundred, another hundred, when you eventually want to raise the price, just to at least match your time and costs, it turns out, customer got used to pay only $100, and now the others who charged properly, are scrambling out of their minds to stay in business. Not you or the others are happy in this situation. Bnet says on this subject: “Undercutting your competitors is sometimes perilous; cost leadership is a difficult strategy for small businesses to pursue. Instead, aim to differentiate your product or service.”

So when it comes to basics, you really need a business plan. For those who succeed, it is a living document, often subject to revisions and rewriting. Pricing becomes much easier if you keep a spreadsheet with financial projections that also gets updated. As you go you will see exactly what your extended costs are and from where are you getting your revenues. Dropping then non-paying, cumbersome and low-profit customers, you will determine your exact business niche, where you can make your price right without undercutting others.

Forbes magazine – an authority in business worldwide, gives these 5 tips on pricing your product:
1) Focus on value, not profit.
In the beginning, figure out what your value proposition is and how to quantify it–explicitly–for customers
2) Then again, be sure to make money.
Once you’ve clearly defined customer value, balance the price point against the resources needed to sell the product.
3) Don’t reinvent the price.
Mind the prices for similar products–and don’t stray too far. Anytime you have to change customer behavior, you’re in trouble.
4) Test, test, test.
Intuition is often misleading. Get meaningful customer feedback by pre-selling the product at different price points in different regions.
5) Don’t sell yourself short.
Rather than cut price, convince customers your product has more value. Those improvement costs can be spread over a large volume, as opposed to eating a per-unit hole in profits.

“A lot of people try to give product away,” says Stern. “I find if customers don’t pay, they don’t pay attention.”

hg