15 Jan 09 Be a “Can-Be” Entrepreneur

Starting out with your own business will probably be one of the most difficult decisions you will ever make, but the ends will definitely justify the means if you can commit yourself to being successful. There are millions of people in this world that have made the decision to forgo their own dreams and entrust their futures to the corporate world. With insurance options, benefit packages and many other perks, this has always been considered the ‘responsible’ decision for educated people, until now.

Today the world is faced with failing 401(k)s, diminishing benefits and massive layoff’s. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in November alone, employers laid-off over 224,079 workers. This doesn’t even begin to touch the recent corporate layoffs for 2009, from such giants as Nortel, Microsoft, Google, and Motorola.

More and more, we are seeing an amazing trend coming out of this newly unemployed workforce, they are going solo and becoming the entrepreneurs they have always dreamed of becoming. CNN Money and the editors of Money Magazine recently created a handbook for Would-Be Entrepreneur’s that states:

If your career to date has been spent inside organizational flow charts
with more layers than baklava, starting your own shop is bound to be an adjustment.

It’s business time people! It’s time to quit being a would-be entrepreneur and start living out your dreams. Whether you want to create furniture out of recycled beer cans or you have a passionate desire to become the next Web 2.0 Guru, the world is rediscovering the Land of Opportunity that it once was, and the choice is now completely yours.

whether you’ve lost your job or you just want to switch careers,
creating a business starts with a unique idea and a solid plan of action.
- Joe Wallace, President of Growth Alliance of Greater Evansville

Once you have the idea and create your plan, success no longer becomes a matter of the economic situation, but a matter of self-discipline and ingenuity.

The future now belongs to you – where in the world are you going from here?

7 Important Questions to Get Your Business Headed in the Right Direction

Do you already have a business idea and think you’re ready to charge full-steam ahead?
Start Your Online Business Today
Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?
Take the Entrepreneur Quiz
Are you looking for business ideas?
Find Small Business Ideas
Are you looking for free information and resources to get started?
Find Free Business Resources, Courses and Start-up Information
Do you already run your own business but need to step-it-up online?
Get Started in E-Commerce
Do you have too much work and not enough resources?
Hire, Manage, and Pay remote contractors as if they were in your office
Are you looking for ways to tweak your customer service options?
Add Live Chat Services
Tighten Up Your Online Security
Online Data Protection

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Filed in Business, Domain Registration, Internet Security, Marketing, Technology, Web Design with 2 Comments

31 Dec 08 Domain Names and Your Business

Vital Steps in Getting a Domain Name for Your Website

A domain name is perhaps the most important aspect of your website. This is perhaps one of the first things they will see. The domain tells you about the site itself. Look at sites like www.foodtv.com, or corporate websites like www.microsoft.com, you know immediately what you are getting into. It is what your viewers will automatically relate your business to.

Your domain name is also referred to as your web address. This is basically your address in the World Wide Web. As it goes, the easier your address is to remember, the easier your viewers can get to your website.

We can help you get the best domain name to fit your business. It can help increase your revenues by bringing more viewers to your site. It can increase the value of your company by presenting it with the utmost professionalism. Read through and your web site will have a name that fits you and your business perfectly, like a glove.

Action Steps

Make a list.
It would be good to get a good long list of possible domain names. If you have a particularly good customer base, you can put out a contest to get the best domain names for your business. You can give a prize for the winner. You can also build a list of possible domain names by going through your employees. Set up a shared account where they can contribute a domain name while viewing other people’s suggestions.

I recommend. One way you can collaborate on a project is by going through a shared account online. The platform of Google Docs is perfect for this. You can set up a spreadsheet where your employees can view all the suggestions and contribute. If you are having trouble with the list yourself, there are online tools available like Gosimmer’s Domain Name suggestion tool to give you a list to choose from.

Follow these guidelines.
To make your domain stand out among the rest there are certain guidelines you would have to adhere to. To begin, you need to find a short domain name that is easy to understand. As long as you can convey your business in the least amount of characters possible, you’ll be fine. I would not recommend using initials because it comes out unprofessional, slang-like and un-customer friendly. The next factor you have to think about is if you are getting a memorable domain name. Domain names must convey who you are and what your business does.

I recommend. You can read through this article to see how you can think of great domain name for your business.

Protect your brand.
Protecting your brand is not a common thought that goes through someone’s head while he or she is shopping for a domain name. Some people who are starting up a new website might actually have an established business up and running. The motivation can be to prevent anybody using your established name to make money from your reputation and tarnish it.

I recommend. Read this simple article about protecting your business’s reputation. It also comes with cautionary tales and lessons in protecting the reputation of your business.

Does it sound and look right?
A lot of the business owners let their web developers choose the domain name for them. This can lead to a lot of problems when you notice that your domain name isn’t quite the same as what you had hoped. For example, it could be that your company “Pen Island” would have a domain name that would say “penisland.com” and that just does not sound or look right. Use a hyphen or think of a different name that would work better.

I recommend. If you don’t understand the difference, try reading the company name and the domain name slowly enunciating each syllable. Read through this blog for other funny domain names.

Use SEO experts in choosing your domain name.
Your domain name can also help pull up your ranking in Google. Google’s patented search engine takes into account several aspects of the domain including the legitimacy of a domain. Google records the length of domain registration, the address of the website owner and the administrator, the strength of the hosting company, and the number of pages of the website. The more favorable your website is, in terms of these factors, the higher your ranking should be.

I recommend. If you do not have a SEO consultant employed in the development of your website, it is best to get one now. You can go to http://www.seoconsultants.com/ to find one that is closest to your area. You also need a good web hosting company to host your domain name, such as www.gossimer.com.

Tips and Tactics
Think about several domain names and don’t fall in love with a single one. You don’t want to set your heart on a domain name only to find that it is already in use.

You don’t have to use your business name for your domain name. You can choose one that refers to your business but has better name recognition.

If you hired a person to develop your site for you, make sure that he knows about the English language and not just the proper terms. When you hire a person, make sure to double check the domain name to avoid untoward incidents like the example in the above section.

Shop around for better deals. Even if your domain is hosted by a specific company it does not mean you cannot transfer the rights to it after. Some providers have the capability of transferring the domain name to their company for a fee. You get to keep your domain name and still get a good deal out of it.

Best Blogs and Forums
If you want to ask questions about your domain you can also go to this site: http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/choosing-domain-name-223734.html.

You can post a question and most experts would answer you for free.

If you liked the funny domain names, you can find more at http://www.grupthink.com/topic/22

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Filed in Business, Domain Registration, How-To Guides, Marketing, Technology with 3 Comments

29 Dec 08 Making your Blog into a Money Maker

A short guide on the art of blogging and making money

The world of the blog has grown tremendously. From the humble origins that it came from, it has since evolved into a kind of release, so ingrained to our daily lives. Almost every person has a blog in today’s modern world. Doctors write their blogs to release tension in their daily lives and perhaps talk about interesting cases they encounter day to day. Sports Fans talk about their favorite teams. Fashion Buffs get to criticize celebrity fashions and promote new trends. And, normal day to day people just talk about what they see and do everyday.

Now, the blog has evolved to become a viable source of income. The internet has seen the demand for blogs and found a way to make money out of it. Hopefully, with this guide, we can teach you how to make money from it yourselves. So, sit back and relax for the guide to making money using online blogging.

Action Steps

Generate traffic

The most important thing about making money on blogs is traffic. About 90% of the income you generate through blogs is gathered through the traffic you create with your blogs. Before monetizing your blog, set it up to grow its traffic, because if your traffic doubles your income would more likely double as well. One way to increase traffic is by promoting your site through social bookmarking websites. Another way to increase your traffic is by improving your ranking in search engines. To improve your ranking you can employ SEO tactics that will create landing pages and increase your viewership.

I recommend. There are several ways you can generate traffic for your blog and one of them is through social bookmarking websites like Digg and Del.ico.us. Another way to generate traffic for your site is through SEO tactics. To avoid getting your site banned you can read through this article about avoiding Bad SEO tactics. You can also learn about SEO further through the experts in http://www.seoconsultants.com/.

Sell ad space on your blog

If you think you write well on topics that people want to read then you can use it to sell viewers of your site to companies that want to advertise through it. It is simple you write a blog, a viewer comes in and reads your blogs. They see the ad there and they click on it. After clicking on it the advertiser pays you per click.

I recommend. A great way to sell ad space is through Google Adsense. Google Adsense is the way Google sells their ads. The good thing about this is that the ads that are sold are relevant to the content that you put out making it more targeted to the specific consumer. In a way you are giving them a service.

Promote your site

You can make money blogging by promoting a site that you own. Most websites in today’s internet age have blogs to promote themselves. So if you are planning to set up an online store or promote your services online get noticed by maintaining a blog about your products and services.

I recommend. Look into free blogging software that comes with your domain. An example of this is www.gossimer.biz. Maintaining a blog with the same domain name gives your company instant name recognition. If you want to start slow, you can start blogging through hosted blog sites. Two of the more popular blog hosting sites include www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com.

Pay per Post blogs

Another way you can make money blogging is by doing it in a pay per post basis. There are many different pay per post blog sites out there. The way it works is that, first, you submit your blogs that tackle a specific niche, to “get paid to blog” web sites. After which you write sponsored posts. With this method, you don’t really need a large viewership because with even just 20 people reading your posts everyday you still get paid around fifteen dollars a day.

I recommend. There are several “get paid to blog” sites out there. You can try submitting your blogs to sites that include Payperpost and Blogetive. These sites have a large number of paid offers out there.

Tips and Tactics

Remember that blogs don’t have to be a Russian novel. It could be as short as 200 words. What is important is that you update your blog regularly. Search engines tend to favor blogs that are updated regularly.

You can promote your blog through other blogs. Most bloggers foster community. You have several options here. You can join a blog network and get base fee in addition to income from page views. You can also go to other blogs and comment. There is usually a space where you put in the URL for your blog.

Set your readers up with the ability to subscribe to your blog. With a subscriber button you can inform your readers when you have a new post and continue to increase your viewership.

Using SEO to grow your traffic is good and all, but do not do it by sacrificing content. You may get the traffic temporarily but what you should aim for is a loyal base of viewers. If you have a loyal following it is easier to grow it through word of mouth.

Best Sites to learn more

http://www.work.com/ is a great site to learn about blogging and ecommerce. If you are totally new to blogging, you can read through this short guide on blogging for non bloggers. You can also read through the articles about business blogging and marketing your business through a blog if you consider yourself business minded.

I you are totally unfamiliar with blogging and other internet related lifestyle, you can read articles in http://www.wikipedia.com/. This vast repository of information should have all the information you need.

If you want to learn more about ad placement through Google Adsense, you can go to Google’s Adsense page. This will walk you through putting ads on you webpage, where the ads come from and most importantly, how you will get paid.

Recommended Solution Providers

Not everybody can write, that is why you can always get someone to write for you. Online freelancing communities, such as http://www.odesk.com/ and http://www.elance.com/, are good sources to get writing talent at a cheaper price.

If you want to setup a domain to build your site or online store you can get domain names from sites like http://www.gossimer.biz/. They offer a free blogging software to help you create a blog for yourself.

If you want to do the writing yourself but you are not sure how, you can look into writing 101 classes like this article.