So, you’ve got a niche business up and running that you want to grow bigger. New platforms has made it easier for people to try their hand at e-commerce, but only some have the skills to become a prominent and important store. How do you do it? Thankfully, there are some straightforward tried and tested methods to help you attract customers and become more of a leader in your chosen market. Here are just some of them.
First things first – choose a hosting provider
The very initial thing you need to do in the process of starting an online business is deciding upon a hosting provider.…
Being involved in SEO for the last 10 years, I have seen many changes as Google refined its algorithm to both tactics to manipulate the rankings, and the introduction of new technology. Here I highlight some of the strategies that were used and how Google brought in changes to counteract them.
Onpage Optimisation in 2007
SEO in the mid to late noughties was easy. You basically found out what keywords you wanted to rank for, placed them sporadically around the site, not paying too much attention to copy, grammar or calls to action and within 3 months – 6 months for competitive keywords – you could rank a site.…
How many times have you worked for an administrator who never seemed to know exactly how to communicate what needed to be done or never seemed to really hear what you were saying? Their minds seemed to be somewhere else. Perhaps they were thinking of everything they needed to do or perhaps they had never learned to stay on task. This could easily have been resolved if they had taken the time to get a masters in project and program management degree because those skills can be learned.…
In a world where information flows at the speed of bytes, where products get copied, prices matched and distribution is ubiquitous, culture is one of the few things – often the only thing – that competitors cannot match. In short, it’s a company’s one source of sustainable competitive advantage.
A great culture allows businesses to attract and retain A-grade talent and allows them to fulfil their potential. This is achieved by effectively distributing decision-making power through the organisational system, so that employees can fluidly respond to the challenges and opportunities that emerge every day, in the moment.…
B2B research from Circle Research have created this infographic to educate you just how hard it is to start your own business.
A really interesting fact that is definitely worth knowing, is that nearly 60% of all businesses fail within the first five years of starting up.
Different niches have different success rates. For example the top survival rate is Healthcare. All statistics shown, over 40% of all healthcare businesses survive, this is a massive difference compared to any other business niche.…
When you’re running a small business, you need legal advice just as much as a large, well established firm. It’s possible you need it even more so in the early days: established companies have well-worn procedures in place to deal with most easy to anticipate issues that may arise: as someone setting up a business for the first time you don’t have that luxury.
It’s equally true that you likely don’t have the resources necessary to keep a lawyer on staff ready for every situation that arises – even if you do, it would likely be a waste of your budget to hire your own corporate lawyer at such an early stage.…
Hiring the right remote virtual assistant is much tougher than most entrepreneurs initially think. Forget the fact that they’re often continents away from you, which presents its own set of challenges. Remote assistants are just like any other employee you hire – some are good and still others are a nightmare waiting to happen.
Like Tom Hank’s Forrest Gump character famously said “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” If you’ve ever hired employees before, it’s quite likely you’ve pulled a bad apple or two out of the bag.…
A virtual office is a great way to add legitimacy to an online business and gain access to physical office space when you need it, while saving loads of money you’d otherwise spend leasing or renting a permanent business location. While the selection process is fairly simple, there are a few things you’ll want to consider before making a final decision.
Here are 8 things to consider when choosing a virtual office:
1. Flexibility
Ask yourself what your virtual office’s ideal business hours should be.…
Superheroes are ridiculously awesome; I think we can all agree on that. But what if they had to work normal jobs like us average, non-super people?
Would they be able to cope with working 9:00 – 5:00 like Dolly Parton and us? Maybe, maybe not; but that’s not what we’re here to find out. We want to take an educated guess at what they’d be good at in the real world.
Nick Fury
Without a doubt Nick Fury would be in some sort of directing, managing job.…
In recent years, open source software has exploded into prominence. In 1998, only 10 percent of businesses made use of open source software. By 2011, that figure had grown to 50 percent. Today, the percentage is even higher; nearly 80 percent of businesses use open source software. When you consider the myriad benefits of such programs, it is easy to see why they are used so widely. Not only are they free, but they are also functional.
Did you know that WordPress is an open source platform?…
