United States Charity

meeinter asked:


When you want to go into business, there are many things you have to worry about. One of the biggest things you should think about is what makes some new ideas profitable small businesses, and why others fail within a year. There are many things you can do to help get things going, but if you forget the most simple things, you are going to fail. Though you may think they are huge secrets, in reality, they are actually quite obvious. They cant save every single business, but they can give you a leg up from the start.

Most people think about inventory, but they dont know if they have what someone wants. The truth is, there isnt much that anyone needs to have, not really anyway. The basics are food, clothing, shelter, and water. Everything else is just gravy. You have to find ways to make people think that they have to have your product, even if you know darn well they dont. You have to make everyone believe their life will be better because of it, and if they pass, they are going to regret it. That might sound strange to someone selling stuffed bears or something like that, but thats the attitude you have to have. Its a great key to profitable small businesses.

You have to tweak this message and you have to advertise it everywhere you can. Dont just put a few different ads in a few places, you really want to make sure everyone in your projected demographic can get the message that they need to come see you right away. Too many potentially profitable small businesses end up going bankrupt just because they didnt bother to put enough money into advertising. You can have a great interior, amazing product, and the most highly trained staff in town, but you cant know that youll have one of the most profitable small businesses unless people know where to find you and what you have to offer.

Also remember to make customers the main priority once you get them in the door. Too many business are forgetting the fine art of keeping the customer happy once they manage to get them in the door. You might think that its okay to brush off one person, but you might find that this has a bad chain reaction. It only takes one disgruntled and very talkative person to drive away future business.

Jack Adams asked:


 

For small businesses, group health insurance covers are the most appropriate option. The group health plans are suitable for organizations that employ from 2 to 50 people. Due to the rising costs of health care in the US, group health plans have become essential.

This rise in healthcare costs creates a challenge for small businesses that need to provide health insurance is affordable to their employees. By offering an attractive health insurance benefit you will not only attract new talent, but will ensure that you retain the existing.

Options of Group Insurance Plans:

Diversifying the financial risk amongst the members, is the objective of the group health plans. This results in premiums for members of the group that are below those of individual plans for the same cover. The factors that determine the premiums are health status, occupational hazards, age and many more to a lesser extent.

There will be variations from state to state and service provider to another. The basic cover is generally the same for everyone, but for a slightly higher premium you may improve your cover by negotiated add-ons.

These health insurance policies for small businesses are available under many programs, like, fee-for-service, HMO, POS and PPO. The popularity of managed care plans over the group indemnity plans is the affordability of the premiums.

Designing Your Health Plan:

Ensure that you a very clear objective when you decide to get a health insurance package for your small business. Do a lot of research to ensure that the health insurance plan you select will meet both the requirements of the employees and that of the business.

You will need to provide the insurance service provider with the type of service required and the health and age profiles of the members. The exactness of the information will provide the service provider will decide the accuracy of quotes. The quotes provided will enable you to choose the payment options and the type of policy required. The employer meets from 25% to 50% of the premiums of each employee.

You may want to cover the spouses and children of the employees as well in which case you will be meeting part of the premiums although this is not a legal requirement.

Due to the publicity and bad publicity against managed healthcare, increasing cost of medication and an aging population has resulted in premiums rising sharply. Despite this diligent research can locate companies who have affordable plans. You manage to get good service providers through the chamber of commerce in your locale.

The small business health insurance plans lower the cost of healthcare to each individual in the group by spreading the risk. And affords employees an opportunity of getting better coverage. The health plans are now an critical to your business. Get for your business and employees an health plan that suits your needs.

Dee Power asked:


Common Finance Mistakes Small Businesses Should Avoid

More small businesses fail than succeed. Some studies show that as much as 90% of small businesses fail in the first five years. Don’t let yours be one of them. Avoid these common finance mistakes.

Lack of Sufficient Start-up Funding

Not having enough money is a major cause of failure. Unforeseen emergencies can eat up cash reserves. Establish a credit line or apply for a business loan before you need it. If your business doesn’t qualify for a loan, apply for a credit card in your name and keep it for business use only. This credit reserve, or credit card, will allow you to take advantage of opportunities that may pop up, such as supplying a new major customer, product introduction, or media blitz.

Underestimating Expenses

Entrepreneurs have a tendency to underestimate expenses, especially expenses they’re not familiar with. It can be a shock to find out that newspaper ad is going to cost three times what you expected or that the Pay Per Click (PPC) budget you though would last a week is used up in less than a day. When projecting expenses add in a contingency factor of 8% – 10%. Base your expenses on actual expenses. If you’re not familiar with the type of expense do some research.

Overestimating Revenues

It’s a double whammy. Expenses are more than you projected and revenues aren’t nearly what you’d thought they would be. You’ve spent more money and you’re getting less return. Be conservative when forecasting revenues. Use assumptions that are realistic and based on fact rather than hope.

Confusing Profit for Cash

Some entrepreneurs confuse being profitable with cash. You can take cash to the bank you can’t do that with profits. A profit is sales/revenues minus expenses. If some of these sales are on credit, or on payment terms such as payable after 30/60/90 days, the cash won’t be available when the sale is made, but the expenses will still have to be paid.

For example: Sales were $30,000 for the month of March. The sales were from an affiliate program that pays 60 days after the sale was made. Expenses for March were $20,000 so your profit would be $10,000, not bad. However, on a cash basis you won’t see the $30,000 until June, but the expenses still have to be paid. If March was your first month of business you’d be in a cash deficit position of $20,000.

Waiting Until the Last Minute

It takes time to establish credit whether it’s with a vendor or a bank. don’t wait until you’re desperate for cash before you start the process. Apply for a credit card for your company as the first step in establishing credit. Talk with your banker and see if it’s possible to establish a small line of credit. Use the credit and then promptly repay it within the appropriate time frame. After a year request a bigger credit line and use it wisely.

Don’t let these common finance mistakes hurt your business.

Mukti Sharma asked:


Transmission of voice as digital signals through the Internet provides protection from the shackles of wires. VoIP provides a cost-effective telephony solution to small, medium and large business set ups.

However, careful calculation is crucial before an organization decides to switch to VoIP telephony system.

1)when should a business switch to VoIP telephony system?

2)when a business involves significant call charges

3)when a business needs to make significant overseas calls

You can avail the benefits of the VoIP technology even with the conventional fully featured telephone system currently present in your set up. You need to use routers to achieve seamless VoIP integration into your business. It needs to be noted that VoIP routers are suitable for small enterprises that require a simple entry level VoIP solution. Routers will not turn out to be an effective solution where the organization involved is exceptionally large and operates a very complex telephone system.

VoIP for businesses (commercial VoIP) should be selected with utmost care. Selection of a right VoIP service provider is crucial as the success of the commercial VoIP will depend significantly upon the service provider you choose.

VoIP solutions come in many shades and flavors. There are fully hosted solutions, partially hosted solutions, locally hosted solutions, true VoIP, partial VoIP, IP-capable PBX units, softPBX devices, VoIP servers, messaging gateways and the list just goes on and on. The best solution for one business is unlikely to suit the business next door. So, the best first step is to seek advice from industry experts or VoIP solution providers and system integrators.

If you have a small business and your voice requirements are minimal, investigate what your ISP has to offer. Many ISPs are offering broadband-based VoIP solutions, and they’re generally pretty good. See what features you’ll receive, how the call costs compare to your current plan and whether you’d make savings over time. This way, you don’t have to worry about implementing a local solution when someone else takes care of everything.

For medium businesses and larger, the options are simply too varied to list comprehensively in one spot. Each vendor will offer you a different package, different solutions, different hardware, different software products, different features, hosting options and support agreements.

The best course of action is to approach a small number of VoIP integrators to get an overview from each one as to what is likely to be suitable for your business, and compare them. If they’re any good, the proposals should be fairly close to each other, which makes it easy to discard any obviously inflated quotes. Start with your current voice carrier as all major telephone companies now offer VoIP solutions for business.

However, you can start getting to grips with VoIP in the office by setting up a test environment and involving a few key users to test messaging functionality, service integration and hardware. You can easily set up a software-based PBX server for free, get hold of some handsets and softphone applications and start assessing their value.

Greg Heslin asked:


Poor financing is the number two reason small businesses fail, falling right behind poor management. Sufficient funding is paramount to the success of small businesses, and small business grants can be the answer to the problem. If business owners have the necessary knowledge about how to find and properly request grants, they have a better shot at creating a successful business that will be open longer and prosper.

There are over 300 different grants and loans available for small businesses that are just starting out. The grants range from $25,000 up to $1,000,000 depending on the size and projected success rate of the business. There are also grants available to help small businesses grow or expand. Grants are not the same as loans because they do not have to be repaid. A grant is considered free money, as well as an investment to promote the success of small businesses and the U.S. economy. Money for grants comes from income taxes. Obtaining a small business grant does not require credit checks or deposits, even if the owners have experienced bankruptcy in the past.

There are a number of helpful websites that send small businesses government grant packages for free, excluding the cost of shipping. These packages include information on how to find grants, how to prepare a grant request, and how to apply for grants pertaining to a specific business. Some of the providers are Government Funding Solutions, Grant Master, and Grant Wizard.

It is important to be familiar with the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) rules for receiving grants before beginning the process of obtaining one. Although the SBA does not provide grants to small businesses, they do provide helpful suggestions and resources on how to find grants.

In order to qualify for a small business grant, individuals must first become familiar with the 13 CFR 143 document that lists all of the requirements to be eligible for a grant. This document includes information on the pre-award and post-award periods and defines all aspects of applying for a grant and states who is eligible. The CFR is the primary source of rules and regulations for small business grants and must be read before starting the grant writing process.

After reviewing the requirements, prospective business owners must write a grant request. There are professionals who will write a grant proposal or the individuals may complete it themselves. The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance is a helpful site that links individuals to resources about federal grants for small businesses. Afterschool.gov gives helpful tips on how to write a small business grant and, although it is geared toward grants for after school programs, includes helpful information for grant writing in general.

Additionally, there are many well-established government and private organizations that provide grants to small businesses. The Department of Justice’s Ten Grant document gives access to grant opportunities for those conducting research in support of law enforcement. The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration has several grant opportunities for small business owners. They offer about $125 million to businesses that are based in a community setting with special attention to training programs. The Department of Transportation is another organization that offers small business grants. They offer grants to any business willing to help resolve the growing problems with the federal-aid highway program. The Department of Education has a program called e-GRANTS that locates electronic grants online. They have a detailed list of grants available and the necessary applications to fill out. There are a variety of grants available for different groups, all of which have detailed descriptions and contact information. Other organizations that provide small business grants include the EPA, the National Cancer Institute, NOAA, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Laurence Abbott asked:


Here are three common disabling beliefs which prevent people from starting small businesses because of the fear of failure.

Many think they are not well enough educated, come from a poor background which holds them back, or think they need loads of money to get started in a new small business venture.

Let me show you why I think these are not true.

Lack Of Education

Many believe you need a good education to make a lot of money or to start up successful small businesses.

Far from being held back by poor education, it may actually be an advantage. Just as blind people often have much better hearing, people who have less education often compensate in other ways.

They may communicate more effectively to a wider population, they often exhibit greater dexterity and ability working with a wide range of materials and have great ability to judge risk and reward.

A good education can even be shown to be a disadvantage to entrepreneurship.

It is normal for well-educated people to find it easy to get a job. This means they are making money for someone else, in exchange for a smaller proportion of money back. (If employers didn’t make more money from their workers than they paid them, then they couldn’t continue to employ them.)

Having had a good job for a while, to give it up on a small business enterprise usually means risking losing that job, and the money that comes in with it, which may be needed to start the new venture. This brings us to another myth-

Lack Of Capital

Many believe you can’t start a new moneymaking venture without a lot of money to get started. I don’t believe this!

The old saying “If you ain’t got nothing you ain’t got nothing to lose” really is true.

If you have a lot to lose by risking a new small business venture, you may be so cautious of failure that you fail to succeed.

So many seriously rich people started from flat broke or in many cases from serious debt, you have to conclude that a lot of capital is not necessary.

J. K Rowling is one of the richest individuals in the UK. While she was writing her first novel she had barely the price of a good meal to sustain her. She even had to type the book out twice (with a second hand typewriter!) to send a copy to the publishers because she couldn’t afford to have a photocopy done.

Living In A Poor Environment

Many believe you need to come from a rich background to become rich. Baloney!

People have worked their way up from living in tin shacks to owning hotel chains. It is just as easy to sell goods to people in the ghetto as it is in the richest street in town.

Indeed it is often much more profitable to sell cheaper goods than more expensive goods.

Here’s a few examples-

· Burger vans have far higher profit margins than many top restaurants. · Skateboards often have far higher profit margins than cars. · A bicycle sales and repair shop would find far more customers in a poor environment than in a rich one. · Trades and services (plumbers, electricians, decorators) will be more likely to succeed with the low costs of the poor environment and traveling to a better environment to provide those services.

Poor Education, No Capitol AND a Poor Environment!

A few examples of people who succeeded with their small businesses may help to prove my point.

With all three – poor education, no capitol and a poor environment, one guy in Africa has found great success. He lived on what most people reading this would consider to be a rubbish tip, but with very little education and no capitol at all, makes a great living for himself. With no more than a stout pair of ordinary scissors, he turns discarded empty drink cans into really stylish flowers. Selling them to locals and tourists, he makes a fine living.

Now I am not suggesting for a moment that this is a workable small business idea for you, but it does prove my point. If he can be so successful, by his terms, in Africa, then really it can’t be so hard for you can it?

Another example, which you are equally unlikely to repeat, is that of many ‘pop stars’. I won’t go into detail here because I prefer not to get sued, but if you look carefully at the early lives of, for example, Madonna, Eminem, Bob Dylan etc. you would find they have bettered themselves considerably with very few external resources. Lastly, how about Nancy Engel. Starting from flat broke with very little education, she bought $30 worth of assorted spices. Mixing them together, she labeled them Italian Spice Mix and took them to a local flea market the next day. By the end of the day, she’d sold all her stock and pocketed $200. By repeating this simple formula, her small business is a great success. What if you are fortunate enough to live in an outstanding environment, have received an excellent education and have access to seemingly limitless funds – would that ensure success? History is littered with examples of people in just this situation, who started business ventures which failed completely leaving them financially broke.

I believe you are just as likely to succeed, or fail, regardless of your environment, education or funds.

Small Businesses Idea, Plus Action

So enough of what you don’t need to succeed – what about what you do need? Almost every example shows that after an idea which the entrepreneur considered worth pursuing, action is required. It sounds obvious, but without action, all you have is an idea, and by themselves, ideas rarely make you successful!

By action I don’t mean simply telling everyone you know about your idea, I mean actually doing something to make your idea happen.

So now you see why I believe that it is quite normal for people to succeed without access to good education, good environment or good funding.

I believe you can change your life massively with no more than a few good small business ideas and a little action.

Noahgans asked:


Blogs are easy way to communicate with the customers, and employees. From past few years, blogs are continuing as one of the effective channels of communication when compared to other advertising channels. Blogs for business can help to strengthen relationships with targeted audiences. A blog can help in as many ways, from a business perceptive.

Reasons why a small business needs blogging

Small businesses need to be more effective in building a potential and loyal customer base when compared to large businesses. Blogs helps in increasing the consumer base.

•    Building customer relationships: Blogs are very helpful to increase the brand loyalty in customers by engaging with them through blogging on their favorite topics. Regularly updated blogs can help businesses in making readers to visit the website on regular basis. This may steadily enhance the business opportunities of the organization. Blogs became easy and effective medium to make the customers to join in discussions, providing tips, insights, etc., about the products and services of many businesses.

•    Blogs at workplace: Employees can write their opinions, views, and recommendations for any developments in the business. Blogs helps small businesses for effective cross-functional communication with employees. Companies can create internal blogs within organizations where project members and employees update project information along with reports without having to waste time for interaction and responses for minor updates.

•    For brand awareness: Small businesses can easily update their recent achievements in products and services in blogs and can create awareness to the customers about them. With regular reading of blogs, customers can know the latest developments in the business. Blogs help small businesses to create brand awareness for the products or services they offer.

•    Better communication: Blogging for small businesses facilitate to increase the integrity in the organization with the easy communication process between the employees and the management. Blogs are also created to attract the readers of targeted markets. Companies update their respective blogs frequently with opinions and reviews of customers along with their new achievements in their products and services, and make them visible to almost everyone online.

Blogging enables the small businesses to stay in business, to connect with its customers, clients. This can indirectly help to increase their sales. Blogging can make your customers relate better to company on a personal level. Blogging is a great way to set your company apart from the group of small, and home based businesses through Internet.

Varun Pratap asked:


Continuing from my earlier article. If you haven’t read the article then I highly recommend you to do so. These tips will help you launch your freelance career or your small business with more confidence and surety.

# 4. Learn to Sell Yourself: if you are anything of geek like I was 9 years ago. selling, negotiating and marketing might sound like an alien words. But trust me, if you learn how to sell yourself, you’ll make 10 times of money you are making right now… Again, I can’t give justice to a topic like this in small list so I’ll write another post on it.

So far Here’s my advice to you. Go to Google and search for “Scientific advertising” by Claude Hopkins. Download this book(it’s free) and read it from cover to cover at least 10 times. It’s an old book, but it’s philosophy still applies and it’s universal. Doesn’t matter if you are from India, Slovakia or United states.

# 5. Network with like minded people: I so regret not trying networking when I was starting out. Find people who are freelancers in your niche. Get to know them and ask them if you could help them.

There’s good chance of someone giving you small projects from their own.

# 6 No Work is Small: Don’t mind doing small work like “assembling someone’s computer or speeding up computers performances”. Its better than sitting and doing nothing.

# 7. Think Obvious: Now too many people try to think out of the box. Trying to think different. Its not bad thinking different. But also think about the obvious. Lets say you are a computer geek and want some work.. What’s the most obvious thing to do?

You know what? Find people who have computer and solve their problems.

What’s the next obvious thing to do? Find people who own a small business running on computers and solve their computer problems.

If you don’t get people like these what’s the next obvious thing to do? Well, leave your card with all the people you found above & giving them assurance of fixing their computer even if its 2 am.

Are you still trying to be different? You better not.

# 8. Be frugal : If you are just starting out as a freelancer. The only money you need to spend is on your business card. Everything else like office space, fax, copier etc etc are just expense you don’t need right now.

Don’t make the same mistakes I did. If you don’t mind doing some grunt work, you might see yourself working on good projects in no time. Now print this list out and paste with your mirror. So that you slam these points in your mind.

LowCostPR asked:


Press and media coverage is an important part of the marketing armoury for start-up and small businesses attempting to get noticed and differentiate themselves from the competition. Many of them fail to use this powerful business tool simply because they can’t write the release themselves or afford professionals to do it for them.   

To help them achieve coverage, an online press release writing and distribution service has been launched, designed specifically for small businesses with small budgets.  www.lowcostpr.co.uk is the brainchild of Bedfordshire-based Ultimedia PR, which in 2008 was named as one of the top 10 public relations companies in the East of England, and was founded in 1994 by principals Val Jefferys and Colin Caldicott. 

Colin explained how the idea came about. “For several years we have run our ‘PR for Virgins’ workshop for clients of Business Link, East of England.  Many of the delegates realised the benefits of PR to their business and wanted to use our services, but at their stage of development, it just wasn’t viable for them to take on a full time agency and have to sign contracts and pay long-term retainers.”

“We researched different ways to offer a service that still provided clients with professional public relations support, but at a budget price.  Streamlining the service using the website as a vehicle for an online writing service, we can now provide a press release for just £195 plus VAT.”

The company also offers a menu of additional services clients can utilise according to their budget including press release distribution, writing case studies and more in depth press articles. 

Added Val,  ‘’Although we have only just launched this service, we have already had a significant level of interest from across the UK, in fact one of our first commissions came from Manchester.  I firmly believe that every business, no matter how large or small, benefits from positive exposure in the press. Lowcostpr provides an affordable, easy to use service to help them achieve it.”

For more examples of how publicity can help your business visit www.lowcostpr.co.uk for a free copy of the ‘A to Z’ of PR.

- e n d s -

For more information contact Val Jefferys or Colin Caldicott at Ultimedia Public Relations, tel: 0870 753 1199   val@lowcostpr.co.uk

 

David Ogden asked:


Today many small businesses are marketing themselves on the Internet. As a matter of fact many small businesses today are actually Internet businesses themselves. Here are 3 affordable small business marketing strategies and you can use to get the word out about your business.

1. The first thing we want to talk about is utilizing a pay per click advertising campaign. Google Adwords and Yahoo Marketing are the two most well known companies that offer pay per click advertising campaigns.

These are great because you control how much money you want to bid on a targeted keywords, and you also control how much money you want to spend every month. You know that the traffic that you are getting to your website is targeted because people are searching for specific keywords or keyword phrases.

What makes this affordable for many small businesses is you only get billed when somebody actually clicks on your ad. This makes it very easy for you to determine if this form of our marketing is the effective for you or not.

2. Blogging is another affordable small business marketing strategy that you must be using. As a matter of fact, you can blog and get the word out about your business and your only investment will be in the time it takes to write the blog articles.

The key point to making blogging work is to social bookmark your post to the proper social directories. The other thing is to write your blog articles to target specific keyword phrases that relate to the theme of your small business.

This may take a little while to get the hang of, but it is really quite simple to do. You must be consistent in how you blog and how often you blog as well.

3. A third small business marketing strategy that has proven to be very effective is ezine advertising. The reason this is so good is because there are many email newsletters today that have been around for several years and have very loyal readers.

This gives you an opportunity to get the word out about your small business to people that actually will read either your classified ad, your solo ad, or an article that you run that is picked up by the ezine publisher.

This is three affordable small business marketing strategies that you should be implementing to promote your business on the Internet today. You may not know how to do any of them right now, but you can quickly learn the ins and outs to make these strategies affective for your small business.