12 Sep 10 Why Should a Small Business Consider Going Online

A small business is small only till it intends to remain small and unfortunately most of the small businesses decide to remain small, consciously or unconsciously. This is such a shame. If it wants, a small business can break away and become big, and for that they need to break free from the tyranny of physical space.

Unlike big businesses, customer base of a typical small business is located in one particular area. A small business need to break the spell and stretch its wings to reach out as far as possible should it want to become a big business.

And how can one do that?

A small business can break the tyranny of space, time, and working hour by going online. Just take your business online and see how your business fares. There are measurable benefits of taking your business online, which I am going to show you below.

Benefits of taking a business online

You will not be dependent on your clock to open your shop. Your business will remain open throughout, and it can take order 24X7.
You can exponentially increase the reach of your business by going online. Your business will not be confined to one geographic location, nor will it be dependent on local buyers for profit.
By going online, you will level the playing field because the Internet offers you the same opportunity that any big business gets over here.
Your online business will help you maximize the return you get on your investment by opening doors of new market for you.

By going online, you will add wings to your small business, which will help your it fly higher and higher. And taking your business online is not that big a deal. It is just a three step process.

You buy a domain name
Purchase web hosting account on a reliable server, and
Find someone to design, develop, and deploy your online store.

Yes, the process is this simple, but it will take some time for you to get hang of. But, it is worth the effort. And if you want to save some money on web hosting and domain name registration then you should consider going with Gossimer.com. The web hosting plan of Gossimer will cost you a mere $4 a month, and you will get everything that you will need for successfully running your online business.

Tags: Business Fares, Business Need, Business Online, Clock, Customer Base, Domain Name, Fly, Geographic Location, Measurable Benefits, Opening Doors, Physical Space, Purchase Web, Small Business, Small Businesses, Space Time, Such A Shame, Tyranny, Web Hosting Account, Will Take Some Time, Wings

Filed in Small Business with 0 Comments

13 Feb 10 A Job-Search Guide to Help People Over 45 – X

We have reached to the tenth installment of the series that is meant to help people over 45 getting job for them. In this part, I will discuss about variety of things from starting a business to letting go of title to exploring options. The focus of this article will not be on one thing but on all three things. So let’s begin.

Explore options

Being in job is not always good, at times it is confining. It limits your thinking to paychecks and 6PM (when your office bells calls off the day). Now as you are out of job, you have an opportunity to explore many more options, at least until you again get into job. Thinking of things that you can do apart from the job that you have been doing till date. Who knows you end up finding something that makes your heart racing.

Title, what title?

Title means nothing. I know you find it hard to believe it, and especially if you had been in the habit of being referred as senior manager, or vice president direct sales, or whatever. But, the fact is title means a dime. Do not chase titles, rather chase your heart, and find something that you like to do. If work is of your liking then why do you care if you are called a manager or VP?

Start a business

We all have a self-starter within us; all we need to do is give a shout to call it out of the closet. If you are not getting a job then take it as a blessing and start doing something that you wanted to do all your life. Did you want to go knitting, gardening, etc.? Take up this opportunity and start your own small business.

You will be your own boss, and no one will fire you from there. Make a business plan, find an investor (if you need one), and get going.

This marks the end of this bite-size post of the series. I have kept each post small so that you can chew the information provided in its perfectly, assimilate it, and put each tip to use.

Tags: 6pm, Bells, Bite Size, Boss, Business Plan, Getting A Job, Habit, Investor, Job Guide, Job Help, Job Search, Liking, Paychecks, Search People, Self Starter, Shout, Small Business, Tenth Installment, Vice President, Vp

Filed in Career Management with 0 Comments

29 Dec 09 3 Marketing Tools for Small Business

A small business differs from a big business largely on the scale of operation. A small business does everything that a big business does but only on the smaller scale with a more personal touch to the activity. Still, there are tools of big business that a small business can also use. In this article, I will talk about 3 such tools. How you use these tools will determine how much you succeed in your marketing effort.

SWOT

SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and threat. Strength and weakness is internal to the product, whereas, opportunity and threats are external to the product. We use this matrix to find out strengths and weaknesses of our product, see what opportunity (matching our ability) the market is presenting, and gauge the threats presented by the market.

PLC

PLC stands for Product Life Cycle. A PLC study of your product gives you an idea about what stage your product is in, and what marketing channel and strategy to use. We divide PLC in following parts: introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline.

Introduction is the phase when the product is introduced to the market, and the organization is striving to create awareness about the product. Profit in this phase is either negative or low.

Growth is the phase in which the product gets acceptance, which results in increase in sales. Profits are high in this phase, and to cash in on the momentum the product has got, organization tends to invest some advertising dollars.

Maturity is the phase when sales start slowing down because most of the buyers have your product. Sales and profit has already passed its peak. Sales and profit may not be increasing but they are steady.

Some marketers divide this phase into early maturity and late maturity to figure out how close the product is to decline phase.

Decline is the phase when sales and profit both starts falling. It could be because the need of the market has changed and some better product is fulfilling that need, or because some other product is meeting the same need at lower cost.

From this phase either the product dies out in oblivion, or get reinvented, reintroduced and pushed on the growth track.

PESTEL

Some call it PEST while other calls it PESTEL. I have taken PESTEL because it is more complete a matrix then PEST. PESTEL is a macro-environment scanning matrix that helps a business find out how the various external factors going to affect it. PESTEL Stands for:

P: Political factors (Policy changes and how it is going to affect you)

E: Economic factors (economic growth, exchange rates, inflation, interest rates, and taxation changes are going to affect your business)

S: Social factors (How does social changes like, education, demographic, occupational, etc., going to affect you)

T: Technological factors (How advent of new technology will affect your business)

E: Environmental factors (How change in climate or rising temperature can affect your business)

L: Legal Factors (how change in legal environment going to affect your low. How much will your business suffer if the carbon emission level is set lower, and government pension plan is made mandatory for every organization, regardless of size?)

PEST matrix analyzes all the factors we discussed above except for the last two.

Tags: Big Business, Decline, Marketers, Marketing Business, Marketing Channel, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tools, Matrix, Maturity, Momentum, Opportunity, Peak Sales, Personal Touch, Product Life Cycle, Profits, Small Business, Strength And Weakness, Strengths And Weaknesses