Capitalist or Socialist? What's your business style?

You are doing business or you want one..
How do you feel about it?
What's the reason behind?

Are you acting like Capitalist? or Socialist? [and don't confuse the socialist by the USSR or the communism]

Are you Capitalist?
Do you want to maximize the profit? Find the cheapest resources in the market? even outsource to overseas?
Do you want to get your employees work 12 hours a day weekend included? Don't pay them annual leaves?
Are you doing everything to get more money for your own? And fire the guy who want's a raise?

Or Are you Socialist?
You decide what's the best for the whole company, and the employees benefit?
Do you give loans to employees who are in difficulties?
You do offer them free days to feel comfortable and relax?
Do you care what employees feel about the company? And how they are attached to emotionally?

WHAT DO YOU CHOSE?

My arguments are making socialism kind of perfect while capitalism as an evil.. But I would like you to give me your arguments and point of view!

So, what's your model??

I think what I wanted to show and compare to the pure liberal capitalism in the business level is not to the socialism that we often hear about, but something like Democracy in the business! That would be different, and means that everyone would have his word to say and not considered as a slave!

Do managers have to be busy?

What a strange question!!

I really mean it, and the real question is:
"Should a manager deal with huge number of email? reading email during the night and during weekends and holiday??"
One day I get an answer from somebody: "Yes he does, that the price to pay to get a privilege to be Manager"

What the HELL!! Believe me that's true!!

What you think yourself about this? Is it necessary to be busy?

Let's sum up the thing

Why we have managers? I think that because we are so focused on our tasks to not have a clear vision on the whole system! so managers are here to have a larger vision and make the right decisions to lead the work of the team!

Do you agree?

If yes, than, I guess managers should have free time to think and to observe.. than make the right decision, because a busy manager will never bring a new to the team, but will deal of a day to day tasks

And that's against the target of having a manager.

What's the solution

I think the missing point here is that managers want to show that they are not lazy, they are always involved, they are in the action.. This why they keep control of the situation.

What if this manager will be sick and in hospital for 3 days? probably the whole business will stop, only if there is wireless access in the hospital .. Grrr

The solution is to delegate, not tasks only, but positions.. and give power of decision to others.

DO YOU AGREE??

What mean for you doing Business??

Actually this is a question I'm asking..

Most of the time that seems obvious, very obvious.. FOR MONEY

But I think that if you think closer, you'll have a second reply like, don't wanna a Boss, Wanna freedom.. and may be few others.

This because the main reason to keep a business running, is money, profit and cash flow are both in relation with money. Without those, you'll die in business. But not if you're not free to decide or you're not doing perfect work.

So the real reasons are: to be rich, to feel free to decide, to realize a dream..

• For the first, I'm tell you now, if you want to be rich, and this is your motivation, better go for gambling or play lottery! You have no future in the actual business world.
• If you want to be free, think twice, you'll work twice as if you're working at other's businesses. Also you'll be responsible for your employees tasks.
• Finally, if you are motivated by realizing a dream, make your ideas real.. Than, probably this will be the reason for you to run a real, successful business.. and you'll end up RICH!

The flow is working in the opposite sense than what most want.. Dream will lead to Money, not the opposite way!

So, what is you business motivator??

The cloud will reduce your stress

That seems that more we acquire technology, more we become stressful and busy.

This time things seems to be different, I tried it and I feel less stressful, and in constant peace.

Move my data to the cloud, what ever it is, Google Chrome Sync, Google Docs, Dropbox, BOX.net, 4Shared.. and there is more while Google, Apple, HP and Microsoft want all focus on the cloud.

BUT WHY??

If you ever read the book GTD, you'll directly understand the relation between Syncing your data and keep it in the cloud and reducing the stress.

In fact, the stress comes from a fear or losing control. And if you are working with a non reliable technology as if you're keeping your critical data in your laptop, where you are afraid if you HD crashes??! or lose your smartphone with all your contacts??!

Actually you know that where ever you are and no matter the device you are using, your data is there somewhere waiting for you.

Or waiting for some other hacker guy?


That's another point that I don't want to focus on right now. But in most cases, which is also for me, even if my data is personal, but i don't care if I put in at somebodies server where there is a minimum trust.

Are you keeping the manager position in your startup?

Startups needs Entrepreneurial spirit and imagination, something that we miss usually in big corporate environment.

Now, how if your startup passes the startup phase and things are going just find, you're hiring more people, getting new customers, suppliers are coming to your door. At this time you may feel that you're OK. Your entrepreneur task is over (waiting may be for future moves) and now you need more a manager to keep things turning around.

YOU CAN NOW THINK ABOUT TWO OPTIONS

Wear the Manager hat

This may be the most obvious choice as you cannot think you're giving away wait you built by your own (or with your own team). Probably you're the kind of guy who knows more about the secrets of your business.

Check out the E-Myth Revisited book, and you'll see it clear that Michael E. Gerber encourage you to build your own system. Put in a model that all the business will work on. This requires a continuous work and improvement, but it will guarantee that you'll keep enjoying your business without depending on it.

This way you will be the master of your business and the trigger of your success, that's not what you run a business for?!

At one time, you may feel limited with your capacity and your ability to do things by your own.

Or,
Bring external Manager who already proved skills


The second option, is the corporate way thinking. Don't know how to do it, hire someone. Don't learn accounting, hire an accountant!

Richard Branson, one of the well know and the most successful entrepreneurs. Said one time (I guess it was on the Entrepreneur Mag) that when building Virgin, He said that at one time he found that he will not make a good manager, so he found out a good one and hire it.

Pretty easy solution to put all the commands on somebodies hands, you trust him and his skills. But be sure that he will not do all the times things that you like and you agree on.

What to chose?

To chose one of the ways, first you have to know what you want really from your business? a small successful? or big with changing the world?
I guess you have the reply!

Reduce your business software bill with Apptivo

I discovered by chance a new software platform that will be the center of most of small business owners.

You usually was trying to find out what kind of software or tools you should use to mange your products? track your expenses? manage payrolls? manage your warehouse? and more, and more.. and sure the biggest problem is how to put that in one direction and make all work the same way!!

Big question and I was very happy when I saw that with Apptivo!!

If you want, specially if you are already asking the previous questions, don't continue reading and go take a look, you'll never regret it.

If you still not convinced, I'll explain to you why I'm so excited talking about this even that I don't like making Ads but only because I'm finding it very attractive, and almost free.

This application is cloud based, so you have to be sure that all your employees will have Internet connection where they are supposed to work. And Apps are classified in categories:

Project Management
A project management tool that can manage tasks, milestones, team members. It's not very powerful as PM tools, but believe me, as a small business you'll enjoy it as simple and integrated with all other Apps.

Human Resources
HR needed tools as recruitment, candidates, payroll for employees and holidays dates. Pretty attractive for a small business with only one not so well experienced or even no HR-guy where not yet hired one so you have to do the job. Easy tools to keep track of everything.

Marketing
Tools for Ads, promotions, surveys. I would appreciate if that can include kind of social media marketing where you can automate your tweets or Facebook page. You can easy than spread the word about any promotion, reply to customer questions.

Sales
You can manage customers, contacts, sales reports and even more with many applications. It can be a way to attribute applications by department. as each profile will enable the App that he want to use, and disable the others.

Financials
Great tools are available, and same as all, integrated with others. You can find Apps about customers payments, supplier payments, employees expenses and invoices App.
Some Apps can belong to other categories as employee expenses that can be HR also.

Product management
You can manage your product list and details and check inventory.

Customer service
The cool thing that I found here is the RMA where shipped goods can be returned and an App will manage that. So no problem to keep your inventory correct and up to date.

Supply chain
Managing shipments and freight. And all is related to warehouse, customers and expenses.

Sourcing
Apps that works with suppliers, and manufacturers.

Website management
You can integrate it with wordpress. And also can be used with your website, domain or even Google checkout integration. Sounds great, and I'm eager to test this tools. (I think that it would be much more interesting if it can be with PayPal too).

Fundraising
Mainly about dealing with your investors and communicating documents with them.

Innovation management
Contains cool Apps about how to create and track new ideas internally, than getting patents and manage all.

Asset management
As it sounds, you need this App to manage your assets.

Employee services
You can find here Apps that manage payroll, vacations, employees evaluation and more Apps.

More
There some other payed services as eCommerce hosting, shipments and payment gateways.

After seeing those tools, I think that as I did and will do, don't look for tools that would help me or try to do mines with hundred bugs software.

What I noticed that the whole Apps would need speed enhancement, but it stills not bothering you if you are not running a big business as it saves you thousands of dollars! I would just hope that it would be little more optimized.

CAN WE FOCUS ON THIS FOR THE LONG RUN??

It's the real question I was asking from the beginning as no one want to put all his effort to use those tools to find out one day that it will stop to develop because some failures of the company building it!!!
And the reply is related to Apptivo itself if it's able to keep business running, and if its business model is going to succeed.. So you'll be sure of making the right choice.

Without looking for much details about it, I'm guessing.. If I'm using many of the free application with Apptivo and I would require an SMS gateway to notify customers of shipments for example? Would I buy a service from other than Apptivo? Same for web hosting and development, banking services, shipment and the list is long.. It's up to them to find out what value they can add so the customer is willing to pay for it rather than looking outside.

Use Social Networks effectively

We hear more and more about social media and networking. And for many business owners specially start-ups, this is a non-expensive way and also a very effective to expand and do business.

'Social Media' is a name that don't agree with as it may be more than a media! It's a complete life style, a Way of living!

Any definition to use, the Social Media Networks are actually having a very great impact on everyone's life. And for sure, businesses are using this tools to reach a maximum of customers' niches. And if you are thinking about running a business, I bet that you're including in consideration going online.

Few years ago, it was about getting a domain name and being present there. Now without even thinking about a domain, you'll think about a Facebook page or a twitter account. Actually Logos are so important as names, sometime more.

WHAT IS GOOD WITH SOCIAL MEDIA?

What's great, is that all the social media is almost free. You can advertise something, talk about your product for free (email and web are too, but it's comparing to the old TV and Magazines media). So small business and big ones are at the same level. You can compete with a billion dollar company even if you are working from your mom garage using your brothers laptop!

This is opening a new dimensions of marketing and positioning on almost every market.

WHAT PROBLEMS YOU ARE FACING?

I said that the Ads and reaching the customers is not expensive and in some cases free. But, remember! if you were able to reach people easily than other will be able to do the same. The competition is getting bigger.

This is the challenge of Social Media and mastering it is key to the success of your business using those tools.

Social science specialist are using their tools and all what they read years ago, and no one was interested in. And they are putting all that in an applied form on Social Networks.

Take a look at Klout. Actually I find it a great tool that you can use to see more in depth how you are using social networks. If you are a person or a business, it will help you see your social impact with Internet.

It's not the only tools that you can find but getting there will give you a very good ideas about how to deal with social media that most people new know about.

KLOUT, WHAT THAT ABOUT?

It's a tool that analyse your Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and more social networks accounts and calculates based on your public activity:

The reach
It based on the people are getting your post. People included are from your direct network and the network of others who are broadcasting your post. This will calculate the number of people who sees your post even if he is in your network.

Amplification
It's how much your post is impacting people so they broadcast it. If someone do that means as both you are doing that your are doubling the effort. And the same if others are sharing. So the more people are sharing your post the most it's amplified.

Impact
Is the effect that you are making by your posts. You have more impact if people are reacting more to your post, commenting, sharing or doing something.

As you can see, the number of Facebook friends or Twitter followers can help but it's not a target itself. So, after seeing your profile and how you are affecting your networking you can see if you need to make a higher quality posts, seeking more followers or focus more on a segment of people.

Klout also offers a way to see on what topics you're more likely to influence on others. So use this wisely in order to focus on your business related topics.

Social Media Network is opening great doors to everybody, so, stay focusing to not loose control. And excel in something would help better than getting few from everything.

Outsourcing to a Virtual Assistant

I want to talk today about something recently is becoming not limited to executives and very busy guys. PERSONAL ASSISTANT, in a virtual way.

You may or may never imagined that you'll need somebody to help you, if you have the habit to work, mean that you are a technician in your field and you are working in an already established company, you are used to do things by yourself, or let it to the one who is supposed to do.

In the case of your personal life or entrepreneur business life, things are different, because you are the one who tells what to do and who will do it. In the simple case, You Will Do It.

SO, WHY NOT HIRE SOMEONE TO DO FOR YOU?

That's not so far as you may imagine. Not so expensive. And saves many time and stress.

NOW, you can hire a personal assistant for long time contract or per task. Thanks to the low outsourcing in India and the whole region.

You can know get help from someone starting from $1 per day! Yes that's true. Sure that it will depends on the tasks you're requesting, the skills required and the quality that you want. Starting from filling out forms, checking and classifying email to do business plans and project management.

If you want to check all that, you can see on Freelancer (picture bellow) where you can do both, working for others or hiring someone. Where now we are focusing on hiring. You can see on the first page all the skills list that you can get.

This website and some others similar are peer-to-peer linking which means that you'll ask for a freelancer, than you'll get replies and you chose the best one where you are responsible for the decision. (you have some tools as feedback from previous recruiters or some test scores that will help you see if the guy is able to help you really).

Others are a business that provides VA or other kind of help as BrickWork India OR Your Man In India which attributes to you a person to do the task. The good thing that you have the guarantee of the company, and if you're not satisfied with one VA they will find you another, or in case of someone is sick, they will find you one.

OK, BUT HOW CAN THIS HELP?

Sometimes you see that you have to do just the time you have, so no need for anybody that you pay!

But take a look, you are payed $20 per hour in your job and you have to book for a restaurant, check emails, make a reservation for your holidays.. and more. So why not hiring someone who can do that for you at $5 or less??

You'll save few time, and it depends on your vision of life.. You may see that you are saving $15 per hour while you'll not doing boring things! but you're hanging out with your friends, or having ice cream with you child?!

HOW ARE YOU SEEING THIS??

Sell a Service or Goods?

There is a big difference when you have an idea for a business.

You may know how to do something, you do it for others and get payed. Or have something to sell and deliver.

Each will give me some advantages but has it's cons.

Sell Services
The great about selling services is that you can run this kind of business with a minimum budget. No need for big investment. You still may need to pay for some charges like phone, transportation or printing..

Usually you have to start with a minimum experience that your customers will pay you for it. You may have to offer something that others can't do it, or you know how to do it better or in less time. If you can't provide that, than probably this is not the suitable business that you may run.

Another point to focus on, is that providing a service is related to the time spending. If you're the only person in the business, than you cannot serve 10 customers a day, each with tasks of 2 hours!! You may require to hire somebody. And hiring means you need to find the right person to provide a similar quality service than yourself.

Most of service based businesses fail because of this point, they start providing high services, and when growing the quality decrease. The main reason is that expanding the workforce, they are not able to keep the same level of execution. [If you come back to the book I mentioned before, E-Myth, you'll understand better what I mean].

If you could get through all those disadvantages than you can see a great profit. Usually profit is very high on any invoice!! Almost all the money paid by your customer is yours!!

Sell Goods
The classical way to do business, buy something and sell it with a profit.

You'll need first to buy something, manufacture or assemble it. So you'll need to invest money to buy. And not only that, as you're not sure that you'll sell all what you have and when.

You should know that selling something after 6 months and getting $6,000 in profit means that you have only $1,000 a month. and meanwhile if you have a 30% profit of the selling price, you are investing around $2,000 by month, means $12,000 is the money you are getting stuck in your warehouse until the deal is made and the payment received.

Some points will help you run your business faster:

• Get a product that sells fast and payments
• Not expensive goods with high profit margin (between $50 and $100) will be the best
• Goods that are not subject to expiration will help in the case you'll not be able to sell them.

The price of the final product is critical, you should be in the interval where customers are paying enough to get profit for you. And not be so high so the buying decision is not easy. This why a $10 product is not good because you're not able to get profit more than $5 per unit. And a $500 is difficult to sell, people with think twice before making the decision.

COMBINE

Mature businesses are usually combing both. They produce something, sell it. Than offer you to buy a warranty services. And guess what?? Warranty is much profitable as producing even if you'll find the prices are very low comparing to the product itself.

Today, with outsourcing, and virtual tools, you may run a Goods based business in a similar what than you run services! I don't mean the functional way but in the advantage.

You can outsource production, product development, warehousing, customers relationship, orders management. Your role will resume to your capacity of setting all this up and coordinate. And you'll pay your  partner as you go, when there is orders, mean that you're getting profit, than you pay per order all your partners. This model will be valid in someways and you can personalize it depending on your capacities, skills and location.

Do we should Trust Google?

After the lunch of huge concentrations of Data as Google, Facebook or Twitter. All those are becoming huge center that may know about you more than you best friends. And with some analysis, they may know about you even more than yourself.

Google with the lunch of Google+ and Chrome browser stills the biggest data concentration in the world.

So we may start thinking about how it will use this so powerful tool, Data about us?

Who is afraid
Sometimes we are paranoid more than ever, so we start to think about Big Brother, and how Google will lead the world in the way he wants. Those I'm not talking about, but talking about serious persons who is saying that all that data is money, and Google may sell those data for billion of dollars to marketers.

Also,Governments are very active and usually want to know as much as possible about people. And they can force in some ways and situations Google to give access to that immense mine. This can be a serious problem.

Another issue is security, and no one in the world is 100 percent secure, so is your data. We saw the Mark Zuckerberg personal pictures published after a vulnerability in Facebook privacy settings.

Who thinks that it's not big problem
We are giving Google our records, and they are tracking almost all our move with laptops and now Android  phones. But don't you see that google.com is the most expensive place in the whole Web? And google is not even using it for Ads.

Also Google proofed that it's not as any kind of business, and long term relation is the key. So, securing the data collected from users is the key of success of Google, and if lost, no one will trust Google and it will fall.

Personally this what keeps me using Google products without much thinking and being afraid.

Who don't care
There still some Internet users who don't care, and don't even think about the risk. And if you are one of those, you may even ignore this article.

And I think that this kind of people are whom we should be afraid of because of their ignorance of that risk which almost all believe that it exists. -even if we think that it's not big problem- but we should ask the question!

So? how about you?

7 Softwares tools that you may need in your business

Your start-up business needs powerful tools, at the same time you want you are so limited in the budget.

So here is some great free tools or at very low prices:

1. Google Apps
My favorite applications when I'm looking for something free and most of the time with basic features.
With new interface upgrades of all Google Apps, many are being very interesting, also this would be your first step to the cloud computing. If you are asking how this will looks like? Just see how Google Docs are, you will understand.
Now, Google Apps is offering great tools with mail, calender, Docs (text editing, tables, presentations..), translator.. and more. The best thing is that all are connected together. And you can share between co-workers without even getting a server.
You can also use Google to host your business domain mail, and getting all Apps linked to it at a low cost.

2. BOX
This is growling fast. basically it was just a kind of document hosting. And it getting new features where you can sync your documents with local computer, phones and manage sharing.
Actually BOX is boosting the usage in a corporate for their services. So keep an eye on it, you can find your way with.

3. Insync
Great tool that sync all your documents on Google Docs right on your computer.
This works great, you can see updates almost in real time when you work on your documents online.

4. TeamViewer
It's a great tool that you can you to remotely access a computer where already installed.
Even iPhone or Android versions are available, so you can use your phone or touch pad where you're out to log in your computer/

5. SugarCRM
An open source CRM solution.
If you're providing customer support so you should probably think about a CRM. And if you're so limited financially than nothing is better than a great working open source.

6. Prezi
Great tool to make presentations.
It's very creative tool to make presentations, and download them to be run on your computer with Flash.
Great animations, and motions that you can use.
For free you can do that but you have to keep all your presentations public.

7. Zoho
Complete suite that included meetings online management, files management and mail hosting. And you can find much more.

What's an Offshore business?

You heard about OFFSHORE before?

It's used in oil companies, and you think that it's not related to you?

Check at Wikipedia and you'll find:


The term offshore company is ambiguous. It may refer to either:

• A company which is incorporated outside the jurisdiction of its primary operations regardless of whether that jurisdiction is an offshore financial centre (sometimes known as a non-resident company) i.e. a Canadian company may be 'offshore' for the purposes of a USA citizen ; or,[1]
• Any company (resident or otherwise) incorporated in an offshore financial centre, i.e. offshore jurisdictions

And what's interesting for me now is the second definition.

So, why going somewhere other than your place to register your business?
And what makes offshore financial centers so special?


The main thing is that those countries, in order to attract businesses, they don't collect taxes if you are not resident doing business registered in those countries but your business is out.

As example, if you are a US citizen resident there. And you have a business registered in Seychelles. Than all business activities are tax exempt.

That should be great if you want to move goods through countries as in the case of online business, consulting business and some authors and artists would do the same.

So what you'll really win?


Let's see a case closer..

Imagine that you are an author of a book, and you are from the EU.
Your books will be published through the world in other languages.

So in this case, you'll make a business which will own the rights of publishing your book. You gave it to your own company. And your company will sell those rights to publishers and get profits.

By the end of the year, you don't need all your profit as salary! You are hiring Consultants, Publishers, Ad campaigns or what ever.

Regular businesses will pay taxes from their benefits, in this case, you'll save this parentage of the profit.

Note. you should not forget about your personal revenue taxes in the country you're living in. This is something different from your business taxes.

If you think that off-shoring your business and you want to get in, check this, you'll be able to do all that even without leaving your home:
http://www.offshore-professional.com/

How much you should know to make the Move?

You want to be an Entrepreneur?

You dreamed all your life about being a Business owner?

You are learning all what relates to business and start-up, this post included.

BUT WHAT THAN?

Do you know enough to go for a trial?


Many people never run a business not because they don't want, but because they think that it's not a suitable time Right Now!

Did you ever said that you'll get some more experience, than running your own business? Statistically, you'll probably never gonna do that! Unless, may be get FIRED?! Because you'll never get enough experience, always there is something to learn, someone to learn from..

Most successful entrepreneurs never worked at any company before, or get fired. Why?!

Working and Learning from big corporation may help, but ignoring about how business is doing will let you think in a wide space, and force you to innovate your own way!

Don't be confused, what I said in my last post was about copying and you may say how I'm talking about doing things from scratch?!

Both are good in someways.

Because innovating will never guarantee that you'll be in the right way. And copying will not let you special.

Innovating is not about doing all from the beginning but about introducing innovating into something already done.

The world now is in a very developed situation and it's never gonna be easy to innovate and succeed unless you're very specialized.

Back to knowledge..

So what I should say that, if you're thinking about business, and you have some experience at any kind of business, that should be enough. Use your experience you have and start dreaming.

Dreams is the engine of all the innovations, and learning will come by time.

What's the next move for starter Entrepreneur?

If you are just making the first move, you may have a lot of ideas in mind, many ambitions and dreams that you want to realize as soon as you'll get chance.

If it's your first time doing that, doing your stuff, running your business. You may worked in many companies before, or may be only one. And now you want your own One. You worked with others, now you're alone.

So..

Where to start?

I can imagine, that if you worked for few companies before, than you're thinking to copy one of the tricks, some procedures, or may be copying templates of invoices, presentations and so on.

The thing that you are not starting for the ground. And don't care, everything starts with some Copy! Even Japan And South Korea did a lot of copy before doing their owns.

Copy others will save you much time, so don't be afraid of doing that, but be careful to not do illegal copy! That would returns you to the ground and it will be much difficult to start over.

Now, you may be imagining how your business will look like..

Copy the colors of McDo, the menu of Quick and something else from someone else.

All that still mind modeling you are doing, and you have to start..

You need execution, how you can make the move?


Doing things is much harder than making it in a plan, or imagining it. Because doing something requires the question, WHO?
And that may be you, or someone else.

There is few scenarios to think about:

1. First step is usually doing things by your own

This should be the case if you are starting a new business with a minimum budget. You don't have choice, your time is the only wealth you have.

2. You have much to do, and you need more time?

At this time, you'll understand that you are probably in the right way. You are generating work, and all your time is full. You time costs you money at the moment. You are doing extra hours, sleeping late, waking up early. Now, you need more time. So getting time of others is the solution. You have to hire someone!

3. You hired people, they are doing the job. What else?

At this time most of businesses stops. And this is the major error that keeps the life of the business short, Very Short sometimes.

At this point you are running your business as a machine. You ask someone to do something and he will do it. So, what will happen if you don't ask him? May be he will do, may be not!

A running business can be shown on a diagram. What ever the diagram is. They should be one. And it works!

But the business is called so only if by his own is able to continue living.

Take a look at your own diagram if you have one..

Now, define all the elements in.

If your business revenue is $X per month and you want to multiply by 10..

Than be sure that each element in your diagram can be too.

If you are the commander in your business and you have to orient everything, than you are an Element in the diagram.

YOU HAVE TO MAKE 10 OF YOURSELF.

To learn more about what I'm talking about, you may read this book:

Run your web store? All 5 steps

I already talked about some ways and steps that you may follow if you want to run a web store.

I want to make all that is a complete way to get all information gathered.

1. Run your Web Store.. it's possible

Sure that you need to believe that you're doing something possible, unless you'll do it in a wrong way. You have to see the whole concept and be sure that it's something doable.
You need to focus on all parts of the process and imagine yourself doing that. Is it possible? Read it


2. Get you Web store? Where to start?
You would need after to have a starting point, I tried to give you brief information about how to get your first step. Read it

3. Get your Web store? What to sell?

A critical point for some starters, is what product to sell? Marketing gurus say that a deal is made not with good product but a good marketing even if your product is not the best one! So focus also on your marketing tools. Read it

4. Run your Web Store? How you deal with stock?

If you want a home based business, sure you don't want to get confused how do you want to stock your goods, deliver, and guarantee all the success.
Outsource all that, and you'll be able to enjoy your home job. Read it

5. Run your Web Store? Manage payments?

Same here with payments, you have only to monitor all that and get everything automatic.
You have many options to use, go with the easiest way without make it hard for your customers. Read it

More options:

eBay or independent site? How to decide

You'll get chance to use eBay, it's easy and not expensive, check this and see if it can fit your expectations. Read it

How to be effective with Facebook Ads

Put this online, and make people know about you. Run an Ad! Read it

How to be effective with Facebook Ads

Facebook actually is the most visited website, and almost everyone is in and for long hours. So that's obvious that Ads there are very helpful. So let me give you a brief about how to use FB Ads to promote your website or Facebook Page.

Bellow on the Facebook page you'll find the link to advertising, which guides you to the list of all your current and previous campaigns.

Now you'll create your Ad and you'll be invited to mention the following:

• Destination which is the link you wanna ad, could be a page URL or even an external one, in the case to want to forward the clicks to your own page
• Type can be a Facebook page or event, or you can make it personalized as the latest post on your page.
• Bellow you can see all the details needed and also a preview that helps you get an exact overview.

Now the most important part in the Ads is the targeting, this should be the critical one in your whole campaign.

You'll need to mention:

• The countries where you want your Ad to be shown. You have at least to chose one.
• The age and the sex which depends on the content you have. This will help you make your audience the smallest possible.
• All the following will be good to make your Ad targeting a precise audience

The less audience you'll have the less your Ad will cost, just remember this

Many will think that getting a bigger audience is good, but that usually not True unless the content you have will interest all kind of people. And this is rarely the case.

Now, it's time to talk Money:

• Budget, which you can manage as a whole life time of the campaign or per day limit. This can help you get a close vision of your money spending.
• Schedule will help you focus on dates if you have an Ad about a special event, like Christmas shopping, which is not interesting showing it after Christmas Eve.
• Than, The pricing which could be by Click, or by 1000 impressions. The first will charge you if a user clicks on the link and the second will charge you once your Ad is shown 1000 times on any of your audience pages.

CPM and CPC are not so different as their costs are usually calculated to make a click cost close to 1000 impression.

But, I believe it could be used in your advantage if:

• You are sure that your logo and message are enough attractive, so you use the CPM rating.
• If not the case, better to go through CPC.
• If you're not sure that both can be OK for you.

To make the best choice, I would recommend you to use both, within two campaigns with the same message. And you compare the results after one week.

keep an eye on the up right of the page where your audience criteria are shown. And the total audience too.

It's usually recommended to create more than one campaign, up to 5 or 6 while trying to change:

• Picture on the Ad
• Message in the Ad
• Target audience
• Budget and Bid

Now, you can order your Ad, and wait for a while until it will be running.

Than you can follow all the campaign advancement:

• The impressions on the target pages
• The Reach which is the number of individuals who get your Ad (many be more than once)
• Clicks on your Ad
• And more details in a form of graphs

I hope that you enjoyed this, I wish I'll give more advice so you will make your campaign very successful.

eBay or independent site? How to decide

You are actually looking to lunch a small business? You have something to sell?

Probably the first idea to show up is when you see how individuals can buy effectively on eBay. And that may be true, and you're trying to compare that to yourself and saying: I CAN DO THE SAME.

eBay is great, you can in a second open an account, put your product and wait for bidders of fix your own price. Sure that there is some points that I'm ignoring that can increase your chances to sell as confirming your account, putting well taken pictures, and provide a complete description.

You may ask why than thinking about create a website, and so a web store from scratch?

So I would reply to this with the following points:

1. Kind of product
  If you are providing unique products or selling your own used stuff, or those you bought and didn't use, than for sure I would recommend eBay. Also you can consider it if you are producing something and you don't have enough budget to go for your own.

2. Your vision
  If you are looking to sell something to get some benefits, or, you want to do a real business that can grow? This will change your decision for sure. When you create your own site, you are creating your own brand, and if you know how to market, people will buy from you as a business not as an individual. And also they are expecting business interacting and not one-to-one.

3. Your budget
  This may be the point that can force your decision, because when eBay lunch is for free. Creating your own site should cost you much, starting for $500.00 up to much more. While you have to pay for the development of the site, the hosting, the domain name, and you need to think about PayPal or your local bank to receive the payment.

4. Competition
  If you are selling conventional product, may be phone accessories, that would be very hard to sell on eBay because of the rude competition. Every one can provide the same product with very competitive prices. Which will not allow you get a good profit. Unless you believe your prices are very good, or you're providing special features as free shipping or worldwide shipping.

Those point at the major differences that you can face. So think wisely before making the move.

You should may in the case you have a limited budget and your vision is you go for a real business, than you can consider taking that into separate steps. Start selling you products on eBay while building a simple website. If you are not including selling features to that it will be cheep to build. Or consider social media to promote your brand as this is a free way to do.

As you may see, it's very easy to start a business, but because of the numerous options that you have, it's not easy to decide where to go and how to start. So I hope that this will give you a better insight.

7 steps to make your webstore a SUCCESS

I talked before about some critical points that you may think about and well plan to run a web store.

Now, you should consider those points in order to maximize sells:

1. Define the right target: today the mass media is almost dead, and thinking about selling to every body every where is not the smartest decision you're taking

2. Define your products: with precision, you have to define your products, options available and ones not. All that in clear web pages with all details included. Customer can be confused if there is something not clear or undefined. We all want to buy something that we can expect and get the right feeling and experience we want when we see the description, photos and details. And never forget to give a clear insight about delivery cost or if the case if it's included in the prices, that's important.

3. Clear website: you website should be clear and easy to navigate. For a better experience for the customers, all that matters. For a customer it's important to see at which step he is, is he still selecting, paying or giving his delivery details. All that matters.

4. Find the right domain name: It's for sure important to get the right domain name for your web store. And you should consider the country name .com .ca .co.uk or else in the case you're focusing on a region, better get a local domain name. Also the place where the website is hosted can make a difference, if you're expecting that you'll focus on sales in Australia, that's not a always good idea to host your website in UK. better keep it local to get better performances.

5. Be social: Never forget the importance of social media. I would suggest to go for Facebook pages or Google+ pages where it's a good way to promote your website for free or with paying Ads. Social networks also can help you keep in touch with your fans and followers so you can easily promote promotions and new products.

6. Spread the Ads: Finally as your website is ready and all features are working, you can use AdWords for a payed Ads on Google. This could be a great way if you know how to use it. Many way are available to keep your cost low as focusing on precise area, and more than one key word. Because the word 'electronics' would be expensive Ad compared to 'electronics buy online'. All because AdWords is a bid system, so you have to be more focused to reduce the cost or your Ads.

7. Still in touch with your old customers: It's usually much important to keep an old customer and less expensive than to find a new one. So rather than looking for new customers all the time, focus more on the fidelity of already acquired ones.

Run your Web Store? Manage payments?

Today I consider this a very easy task to ware about!

Everyone is buying through Internet on eBay or Amazon. Why will not be the case for you too?

Most banks can offer merchant accounts and you can get payments through Visa or Mastercard or even more. BUT you have to think deeply about how much that it will cost for you. If the consumer pays 10$ for something, you'll love 1$ to 2$ only for banks fees! Think about it.

Did you ever tried eBay? Do you trust the payment method? I believe most of us DO! So if you do than probably other do to.. So it's nice to follow.

LESS OPTIONS, MORE CHANCES..

Savvy Marketers knows that the less chances you give to your customer, the less he is willing to spend time on taking the decision to BUY.

Is it weird? May be. But if you know that purchase decision is taken only few seconds, and if we have lot of work to do after making our last decision, usually we end by giving up and delaying more making the decision.

When there is less options, all is clear. If we want to buy we manage how to, even it needs that we create a PayPal account! (And eBay is fully integrated with PayPal)

WHAT I RECOMMEND is that you consider the case for PayPal or Moneybookers accounts. But only few small amount transactions. The reason is the fees that you have to pay! And for goods which are of 100$ and more, that could be better to focus on Visa, MC or other Credit/Debit cards because the fees will be of small amount that you're willing to neglect.

What I want to clarify is that actually we have so much option to use for the payments, but not all of them could fit in your case.. So think wisely before deciding what option to use.

Run your Web Store? How you deal with stock?

That's my favorite one!

As we all know about retailing business, is requires a good stock management while it should me a least to not delay on delivery, and at the same time, goods in a stock are catching money there as long as it stills. It's complex! But with simple model with few products in your offer, it would be easy to manage.

Another issue here is also how to manage INs and OUTs with all the delivery fees. this one requires a good position of the stock, and a flexible, cheep and quick delivery system.

More than that, don't forget damages in the stock, managing returns from unsatisfied customers, than returns to the manufacturer.

BRIEFLY, you as a fresh in business and with limited capital, you may find out a way how to avoid all that complex system, and never pay more that what requires, in other words, I mean that you want to pay if you SELL to keep your balance positive.

I was thinking about that, and you may do that from the basement of your home, and this will cost almost nothing to store with a limited capacity, and it stills working. BUT, how if you are living in a place where it's not easy to get access to delivery? or where it costs a lot?

NEVER WORRY! you still can outsource that! REALLY.. Yes!

If I tell you about delivery, you may think about DHL, UPS.. right? those are not similar to USPS which is related to EMS worldwide mail system standing for Express Mail Service. But the previous one are specialized in logistics which obviously means managing warehouses and adding the classical delivery services.

To sum up all that, if you run your web store, you can instantly deliver worldwide only with outsourcing the logistics tasks. Of course that will add the cost of your goods and services. But don't forget that you're running all that with reducing the most complex part of retailing.

I recommend this one too (warehouse and virtual mail services):
http://www.earthclassmail.com/Virtual-Warehouse