Business Magazines a No-No???

Let me ask you something straight. Why do you subscribe to a business magazine?

Here are some of your possible answers

1. To know more about business.
2. To get the latest industry news.
3. To read it at my own free time.
4. Book collection.
5. I love to read.
6. I want to show my boss that I am a business savvy person and so that I will be promoted to the area managers post.
7. I am not sure. Maybe because I felt that business magazine is the next big thing.

I cannot probably think of any other reasons. If you can do feel free to comment about it. So coming to our point about why you should not subscribe to a business magazine. I know that many people will be against my opinion of the business magazine subscription but here are some points I feel why you need not subscribe to these magazines.

1. Business magazines cost money.
2. They do not deliver all the relevant news.
3. They do not have an index (How I wish these books have some search engine built into them).
4. Some magazines are so cluttered with ads that I cannot differentiate between news and advertisements.
5. Most of the news I see in business magazines are tweaked to meet the advertiser’s tastes.
6. Most of the news you find will be irrelevant and not the kind of news you are looking for.
7. Learning about business cannot be the outcome of reading a business magazine. It is intended for business owners who already understand the concepts of business.
8. The views expressed are of the particular author and need not be correct always.

So now you might ask me, then how are you going to keep ahead of the industry on business. The answer lies in the very same procedure you followed in getting to this article.

THE INTERNET!!!

There are reasons why I suggest the internet will be a better source than these business magazines.

1. If you are a complete newbie to the field of business and you pick up a business magazine and you suddenly begin reading about forex, stock market and so on without the slightest hint of what these are. You still need to get on to the internet or ask someone about these basic things. So if you find time to surf for the basic meaning then why not read the rest here itself when everything is available for free.
2. The business magazines can be compared to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a place where bloggers upload articles on a niche collected from various sources. These articles are written by independent blog owners and showcase their opinions. The same as what goes with these magazines. Again if you are searching the internet you can get varied opinions on any subject.
3. When I said about the business magazine owners tweaking the contents to advertisers needs, what I really mean is the articles are pre determined either to suit the needs of a particular advertiser or to target a group of advertisers. A recent article I read in a popular business magazine was about MBA. The article was spread over 10 pages, but composed mostly of 3 MBA coaching institutes owners saying that their students did this, that etc. A clear advertising strategy disguised as a useful post for the reader.
4. To learn about a business you need to have books on that genre and these magazines are not going to help.
5. Coming to the latest breaking news. Yes they do deliver quality and relevant news many a times. But the fact that web 2.0 is here and people update blogs almost instantly with news means that news reaches you in far lesser time than a magazine can get to you.
6. Even when you are roaming if you have a mobile with internet facility then that makes everything more easy. Information is just a few clicks away.
7. Save the money. You wont be saving much by cutting down the subscription,s but still any saving is a saving.

You can always subscribe to my blog to get the latest business news and learn more about business. I am not saying that I am an authority in this niche so here are a few extra sites you can add to your business news sources.  Here is a list of business blogs you can subscribe to.

There are still disadvantages like you need to have a computer/ mobile device with internet access to resources. But that is not a problem these days as almost all people have a computer or a mobile handheld device with net connection. Hey book publishers don’t get angry on me. I just shared my thoughts on this subject. I am leaving some topics in this subject untouched to get feedback from readers on those. Do pour in your suggestions.

Advertising is an effective method to promote your products and services. Therefore it is considered the key to a successful business. Mostly advertising is a costly business activity but there are many free and cost-effective (such as promotional items) advertising methods. A large number of media such as print, word of mouth, radio and television can be used to advertise your business.

Word of mouth is an excellent and everlasting method of advertising for your business but it is slow. It is better to know your target market because it can help to select a right medium to advertise your business in the right direction.

Following advertising strategies are tested and have shown good results for most of the businesses.

1. Yellow pages are very useful to advertise your business therefore you should get biggest yellow page to promote your business.
2. You can find cheap but popular newspapers to advertise your business locally at lower costs. They can convey your message to your target market effectively.
3. Email is being used to advertise and market your business in local and international market. You can target your market on geographical basis. Direct mail can also be used to promote your business.
4. You can reach your target market through a popular magazine but make sure that it should be related to your products and services.
5. You can use business cards to advertise your business in your local market. You hand out these cards to your clients and potential customers.
6. Professional and business organizations can also be used to advertise your business among their members. You can join them as a member to advertise your business free of cost.
7. These days, a new trend of vehicle advertising is getting popularity. It is very effective and visible for passersby therefore you can customize your graphics, colors or signs to promote your business. Be sure it is something that catches their attention and at the same time related to your business.
8. Business owners can advertise their products and services in cable TV channels. You can convey your message to people in their homes within a limited budget.
9. You can advertise your business on radio because it is an inexpensive and effective method.
10. You can advertise your business by printing information about your business on benches, buses and shelters at bus stops. People will notice your message since they have nothing much to do and so it is an effective idea of business promotion.
11. Internet has become very popular these days to market your business because people spend most of their time on internet. Companies develop their websites to reach your target market or different websites give business listings of local companies. You should try to get your place in it.
12. It is quite expensive to take part in big trade shows, but they are effective. So you should take part in trade shows to be known to your potential customers.
13. It is better to involve your community in your business because it can bring everlasting effects on your business. Start a blog to help promote your business by forming a community around your business blog.
14. You can use cross promotional techniques to advertise your business. It will promote your business with the help of other business ventures.
15. Ebay is a fast and cheap way to make your potential customers aware with your products and services. Providing your products for auction is a kind of advertisement.

These ideas can help in your business development but it is not sure that all methods will prove helpful. A business can use one or a combination of different methods to bring good results.

So what do you do for your business?

Online Internet Business That Will Allow You to Earn Money Even As You Sleep

There are a lot of online business programs that you can use for starting an online internet business. But you need to have the desire to be an entrepreneur and you’d have to put in a lot of work. Although there are a lot of success stories, an online business will not just allow you easy or free money. Hence, you should not expect to be successful overnight. But the thing is, a lot of people believe in the idea, turning it into an internet marketing hype. However, once you’ve found the right method and are willing to put long hours into it, you can expect to be better off in the long run.

One of the best online internet business schemes that you can get into is affiliate marketing. This business has a lot of advantages, which include:

• Having a passive income
• You need not have a customer service
• No need to create a new product
• The training is given for free
• Marketing materials are provided free of charge
• You only need to  work once but can expect to be paid over and over

Although the advantages of this form of marketing sound like Internet hype, they are real and have been enjoyed by a lot of online entrepreneurs already. The trouble lies in the fact that a passive income is taken with a grain of salt by most individuals.

As an online Internet business, an affiliate program works by first letting you choose a product to promote as an affiliate. You will then have to sign up with an affiliate program in order to get an affiliate link that is unique to you. This affiliate link will keep track of the persons that clicked on the product and will let the affiliate company know if they bought one. Once the action specified by the company is completed, you will get your payment. Usually, this action is a sale but it may also be an email sign-up, a click or a form that was filled up by a customer.

The beauty of this form of online internet business is that you do not have to be physically present to make a sale. There are online tools that will do the work for you, allowing you to work every day, every week. Even if you are asleep, someone can access your website, click on or buy a product or read your email, which will all earn you money.

Start a Franchise Business

Establishing a franchise setup has become a profitable and attractive mode of business. It is not possible for organizations to set up their own setups in different countries, as a result of  which the concept of franchise has been evolved. You can start a franchise business by finding the right kind of opportunity in your own city or country. You should consult experienced businessmen and professionals before the establishment of your franchise business. This is crucial if you have no experience with this kind of business.

Moreover, you need to set up contacts with more than one firm to get their franchise setup. It is not an easy and inexpensive way to set up your own business because you have to arrange a complete setup. You need to arrange a furnished office at good location equipped with furniture, computers, printers and staff to start your business. You have to fulfill many legal, accounts, system and management requirements for the establishment of your franchise business.

Requirements for a Franchise Business

• You have to prepare a legal document (disclosure document) to disclose your franchise operation. This document and its requirements may vary from country to country because rules and regulations of franchise setups change from region to region. Companies have to undergo a registration process in the country where they want to offer franchise opportunities. An experienced attorney can help you to decide if you can meet the entire legal requirements. This is an important issue in the establishment of your franchise business. Therefore fulfill all the legal requirements carefully.
• You have to prepare audited financial statements for the franchise company because it is one of the legal requirements. Audited statements are necessary, otherwise your disclosure statements are considered incomplete. You need to hire experienced accountants to prepare audited statements and also to tell you about the structure of the enterprise. Inexperienced or fresh accountants cannot handle the complex task of franchise business establishment.
• The basic thing in the establishment of any franchise company is its systems due to which all the operations of the business are completed. You will need to develop and document completely your own systems to run the process of business smoothly. You need to give training to your employees to work effectively in your franchise office. You have to devise new marketing plans and strategies to bring more and new customers to your new unit. You should be in touch with experienced people and business men to get full assistance in the development of your business.
• You should have right attitude and focus to develop your franchise business. In a franchise business you are a boss and you hire employees to get work through them. You need to have personal qualities such as confidence, self-esteem,dedication and skills to grow your business in the right direction.

You need good amount and hard work to start your own franchise company. At the start, you have to work very hard to meet your goals. First 3 to 5 years would give you  a tough time but your constant effort and struggle will lead you towards success.

Finding a suitable place for your business start-up can be a tricky question. Most products are region specific. What I mean is that some products sell well in some areas while the same product does not sell that much in another area. It is simply the demographics of the area which decided which goes where.

13 Factors for choosing a perfect business location

#1 Does the area you select have activities relating to your business core?

Would you be selling anything if you open a rock music shop near a temple? No. However if you have a pub or a night club near your sock music store chances are that your sales will go sky-high.

#2 Buy a location for your business or lease them?

Most start-ups prefer to rent spaces for their offices and not having land and building on their own. One such example is technopark in Trivandrum. Software companies buy space in this huge commercial area. Ready-to-use infrastructure and developed plots, enabling lower operational set-up time and cost.

#3 Virtual office space for start-up business

This is something like you own a business address anywhere in the world, you have your own private telephones, conference halls, mail forwarding and related. The only catch is that you are not physically in that office. This is the new era of virtual office. Normally this is for people seeking a cost-effective alternative to renting a conventional office. Read more about virtual offices in this Wikipedia article.

#4 How long do you plan to run in the present site?

#5 Transportation to the site

A very important aspect while choosing your business is transportation. It is really a no brainer. You need to have good access to the site. If you can’t get the raw materials or finished products for your business into your store/ factory then what use does it serve? You will need to employ people to carry the materials over to your site.

#6 Availability of workers

This is one that is mostly overlooked. You have to make sure that human resources are at your disposal. If not then you will have the extra cost of having to lodge your workers. It is also necessary to look into the average wage rate of the people in that location, the retention rate of the workers there. You also want to research about the level of education in the area, the number of educational institutes around and related to get an idea of the education background of the area.

#7 Economic condition of the place you selected

You can’t sell costly perfumes near slums, can you? So you must strategically place your business where it SELLS!!! It would be a good choice to place a medical shop near a hospital and so on.

#8 Is this a new growth area or target market for future business?

You must always target the future audience while planning a business start-up. Do you plan to start a business that is just a trend and will soon die off? Then think again. Normally a business takes time to flourish and hence you must target a business that could run for a long time. The location you choose for this is very important. If you don’t see a growth in the business in your present location, then you may consider moving to another location.

#9 Near your competitors?

You may find this absurd, but it is true. Sometimes placing your business close to your competitors can be your best free source of traffic, especially if you are near an established competitor. You will have a large amount of traffic to your business just because of your location and this is true in the case of businesses like shopping malls.

#10 Operating costs

• What are your country tax structures?
• What about business taxes?
• How much should you pay as compensation to your workers?
• How long does it take to get a permit and what is the process involved?
• Is sufficient amount of land and cheap fuel available?
• What about the building modification rates if required and electricity charges?
• Do you need extra utilities to work efficiently

#11 Factors relating to your environment

• Does your business involve chemicals or hazardous materials? If so choose a location that is strategically away from the townships. Each country may have specific laws that state that such industries must be located outside the city within a specific radius.
• What about the natural resources available? Do you need to import resources from other places which would incur added costs or are they freely or cheaply available locally?
• Ensure supply of clean water. If not then you have to set up water filtering plants.
• Do a research about the quality of the air around the region and noise rate. If you do not run an industry or your industry demands cleanliness such as in pharmaceutical industry, then this point is a must see.
• Make sure you analyze the environmental reports thoroughly.

#12 Business considerations

Most countries offer small business start-up incentives. These may range from cutting on taxes, allocation of area for development and so on. You must have heard about SEZ (Special Economic Zones) in India. Know more about SEZ here

#13 Other factors

• How much does it cost you to buy or rent a house nearby?
• What necessary facilities like hospitals, fire stations etc are available immediately?
• What is the geographical situation of the current location? Is it a zone where earthquakes or other natural calamities like floods etc occur?

As you know my blog runs on thesis theme. I have been a fan of this theme especially seeing the design customizations, SEO possibilities and other features of this theme. You might have comes across the blogussion theme which is a skin for the thesis theme created by Alex who runs blogussion as well as his personal blog Asino.com.

I bought the blogussion theme and decided to try it out on my site. But I didn’t want that level of design customization and wanted my blog to look simple. So I am giving away the blogussion theme for free (Worth $44.95). I have discussed this matter with Alex and he is pretty ok with this. What’s more is that the winner will be chosen by him too.

So What Are The Rules For The Giveaway?

I want to make this as simple as possible. So the rules are minimum and simple.

You need to re-tweet this post. You can do this by clicking on the twitter link at the footer. Remember to log in to your twitter account before clicking on the link. Only then will you be easily re-tweet this post. Else click on the link, go to the twitter page, sign in and then come back and click on the link again. This is worth 5 points. Make sure you DO NOT use the comment form. Instead use the other form provided to send me the details.

When Does the Contest End?

The contest ends on June 30th 2010.

Any additional chances of winning this contest?

Yes there is. You can obtain more points by doing the following.

These are optional and need not be done to enter the contest.

1. Talk about this contest on your blog- 10 points
2. Comment on my blog (Any post other than this one)- 1 point per comment
3. Comment on blogussion blog- 1 point per comment
4. Follow me on twitter- 3 points
5. Subscribe to my feed- 3 points

Fill up the details below with the required information and you will be notified when a winner is chosen.

Remember, the winner will be intimated through email and will have 1 week to claim his prize.

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs

Many search engine marketers often complain that blogs are taking out all the quality search results. This makes an important conclusion that one can hardly conduct a search without getting blog content in its results. There are many good bloggers who have excellent content or article writing ability and who deserves to be read, seldom get noticed because their blog-spot occurs way below in result pages.  Another important fact is, there are more than 1 million blogs and it is very difficult to find a place there. These days’ people ruin their entire blog-spots only to get so called “OPTIMIZED”. Optimization means “the act of rendering optimal solution”. Bloggers these days implement number of quick facts, get recommendations, add links, do optimization but forget the sole purpose of a blog. When I joined the training program SEO book by Aaron Wall, the first thing that came to my mind was “I have been lied to by the so called SEO experts”. SEO is a constanly changing field and you need to be adapted more.

Some of the simple ways, which can be used by bloggers or WordPress users to get their pages optimized, are listed below-

1. Keep the blog simple and provide good quality content on concerned topics.
2. Provide contents that are Keyword Rich. Use contents that get good indexing by Google. The main motto of the blog should be highlighted well. For example, if it is a blog about Satyam Scam, provide rich contents with high quality keywords like ‘Satyam’ , ‘Finance’ and ‘scam’.

A rich content blog is the best food for web spiders.  By providing keyword-rich content, it means to create a blog content that a search engine can very easily index and display when keywords are part of selection in search engine. Bloggers can very easily boost up their blog-spots by doing keyword research before they actually develop a blog and then the next step is analyzing the results of their research which can help them in content creation.

Some say keyword research is an art like forensic science. Many SEO professionals also recommend development of some additional content to fill keyword gaps. Blogging turns the typical keyword research process in all these aspects. Since, blogs are constantly updated with new and fresh content by bloggers; there remains an endless spectrum of opportunities for creating keyword-rich content.

Effective keyword research is required keeping in mind the target audience. Before starting the blog content, one should think about – Who is the target audience of this blog?  What are his expectations from this blog? What are the hot-button keywords for audience? Since most of the blogs are effectively on a single topic, they intrinsically have tightly controlled vocabularies.

As one decides the audience, he/she is by default, doing a preliminary keyword research. This researched keyword list developed during the audience-definition phase can act as a base to become a working modular guide for content development. Since these keywords reflect the actual topic and interest of the audience, they do not have to be forced or stuffed as page content. We mean effective blog writing is an essence of development of timely, accurate and topical content guided by some pre-selected and controlled vocabulary.  The content should never loose the main motto of its existence while optimizing and should propagate its idea without losing the free and natural voice of the blog.

Second most important thing is optimizing its audience identification. The blog should appear in result pages whenever a relevant keyword is searched in the Search engines.

Do Keywords really matter with Blog Usability?

Categorize the contents of your blog. Check if the blog technology or blog software in use locks the user into its own structure. Give permissions to users to define categories of their own for your contents. There should be ample scope to categorize the blog content. A well-categorized page remains in easy reach of web-crawler.

The ability to create categories and subcategories create wonders for improving the search engine sensitivity and the usability of the blog. These can reflect the interest of key audience and the content itself. Such text links are known as “keyword opportunity zones.”

When a blogger writes something, he is actually sharing his content with his audience. Using keywords in the content will ensure that web-crawlers and search engines find the blog easily. Remember using rich keywords in category architecture of a blog extends the real value of a blog and improves its effectiveness and usability/reusability.  After all, this is what a blog is all about – isn’t it?

1. Created a themed blog space. Make your blog specialized on a particular theme. Let it be related to philosophy, finance or love. Make website with 100s of pages on the same theme so that web-spiders & crawlers find it easy to reach.
2. Create good site design. The page should be indexed properly to help web-crawler navigate through pages easily.  Try to provide as much RELEVANT content as possible and make sure that all pages are easily viewable from web browser.
3. Keep blog design clear and simple
4. Increase the article content space.
5. Have a clear blog title
6. Attract peoples/visitors by your blog-content. It should steal attention within few seconds of visit.
7. When a visitor tries to find an article on your blog, the text of the blog should be visible instantly.
8. Create RSS. Try to create your own RSS for the blog space.  Submit RSS to My Yahoo, Google or other leading search engines.
9. Optimizing Pay Per click advertisement. To optimize your campaign effectively you need to use reputable Search Engine. One can come across several search engines that offer low-cost advertising but one can rarely think of rewards from these type of advertisements as they have relatively low volumes. SEO-ing also means finding good search engine like Google, Yahoo, and MSN to advertise with. High click ads should also take care of conversion rate. This can be done by filtering out browsers and identifying the need to pre-qualify clicks to attract buyers. Example: Add price of the product. This may decrease rates or number of clicks but will eventually make your blog-spot well optimized. Make sure the relative path mentioned in the URL of the ad should take the browser to designated place. This will avoid loss of interest. A key to success of PPC is to optimize each ad within individual ad group. In PPC advertisement, the primary aim of the optimizer is to create an ad, which is high performing and has high click rate. Once a SEOed PPC ad is created, you need to do small variation & further optimization to make it perform even better.
10. Create unique and accurate page titles. As a title tells the user what the article is all about, similarly it also helps search engines to understand and index the page properly. The
11. Take care of rel=”no follow” for all link. Set the “rel” attribute of the page link to “no follow”. This will help Google to understand that certain links on your blogs should not pass your page’s reputation to the entire website the page links to. This is very important for blogs where public comments are allowed and everyone can read them. Links within those blog comments or spam mails within chains can easily pass your reputation to pages that you would like to link.

Another use of “no follow” is when you are writing a new content and you do not want to pass your reputation to that page.

1. Make use of several free Google Webmaster tool. These tools help you understand what Google looks for when it interacts with a website.  It can also help you analyze your website in a professional way.
2. Be wise when you are selecting your Blog name/WordPress Theme name.  If it is a quality blog-spot with many inbound links, you can reap results by just having a good domain name. Understand your motto properly and choose the name of your blog-site wisely.
3. Provide just a topic for every post. This should be understood that more focused you are on the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes we start with a particular theme for a blog but end up providing much irrelevant information’s. Avoid this. They may give a loose & poor relation for search engine ranking.
4. Create Email Subscription on blogs. It may feel strange but emails are still most preferred way for people to receive alerts, information and new updates.

Free service such as feedburner can be used which manage subscriptions very easily. However, if a blog site owner wants more control on his web-links, he can use auto responder mails or customized auto responder system to follow-up with blog subscribers. This will also help in communicating new postings immediately to subscribers.

1. Use pings. There are various services like Pingomatic which update various search engines whenever there is a update in your blog.
2. Lastly, use WordPress as a blog tool and a platform for publishing.  For people who are not novice but not that capable of optimizing can use WordPress as a blog tool. WordPress comes with many inbuilt SEO tools like creating static URLs, pinging and blogrolling. Now a day, there are many third-party plug-in available which can be used as a plug-in for search engine optimization (SEO).

This post is about how your user (the common person who comes to your blog or website through a search engine result page) and not your regular users.

Landing page optimization and Readers

So we now consider how a searcher thinks, searches and moves ahead. As we all know the most preferred search engine is Google. I do not know if there are any search engines (including yahoo or msn) which even give traffic or have searchers. Yes they do, but only a very small percentage. Now let us come to some facts

• Most searchers use search engines to help them aid in their buying decisions (from purchasing and business point of view)
• Only 30-40 % people make a purchase online with the help of a search engine.

When targeting audience we should consider the buying behaviors of both men and women. It is generally seen that men have a pre determined vendor stores like eBay, Amazon etc while they do search. So if your website happens to show up in search they would just read on the info and pass on spending very little time on your site. On the other hand women are seen to make decisions much slower, spending more time on a site thereby giving you an advantage of making sales or getting a loyal reader.

What makes a searcher feel that they have landed on the correct page they might be looking for?

The answer is simple. Follow these simple rules

• What is your website blog about? Convey this directly to your user on your entry landing page and you are a winner. Do I need to say about the loss you might occur if people can’t figure out what exactly your website/blog is all about? You might see one thing increasing though. Bounce rates!!!
• Be sure to include the target keyword into prominent locations of your website landing page including header, and other prominent locations where they can be spotted easily
• Actions speak louder than words. So does pictures. Include picture of the item you are selling or if possible a picture gallery as well. Landing pages must be attractive and catchy as well.
• Be sure to add some value added services to your website/blog landing page. It may include anything like free bonus add-ons (Consider a set of eBooks as bonus if you are selling a main stream targeted eBook), free shipping etc.
• One thing you must be very clear about is your pricing. Most people do not spend the time trying to fill out forms asking you for a quote. Of course there are areas where you can possibly tell a definite price for your service like in case of web development service. But do give an approximation like “STARTING FROM 500$ onwards…” and so on. People might be looking for cheaper alternatives and hence they won’t bother to bother you. It is a win-win situation for both of you, saving your time
• Don’t feed your website with Junk. Make it a clean and professional layout. Don’t include advertising in your site if you are offering professional service. It will make your website/ service amateur.
• Trust. The most important thing. Suppose you sell goods like eBay. You have to give a strong reason for people you choose you over the so well established sites like eBay and Amazon. How do you do that? Well I suggest getting a private SSL certificate so people can securely buy things from your website. Please avoid PayPal at all cost. Well it may be free to use but from a customer’s point of view you are just being amateur again. Of course you can have PayPal as an additional payment option but never make it your main selling option.
• Comparison of different features of products in the same range. Give them this and your chances of making a sale boost to more than 300%.
• Make sure your website is easy to navigate with all the links following in and out in visible and important sections of your web page. I remember once when I tried to purchase a coffee machine online in a store other than eBay and amazon. It took me a lot of time to figure out how to order exactly. So I simply quitted the site and went over to eBay. See how they lost a SALE???? Not only buy now buttons, but your home page, about us, contact us all must be easily visible on your landing page.
• Reviews about your website are very important. Give client testimonials and reviews inside prominent locations on your website landing pages to give your sales a boost by 100- 200%. I strongly urge you not to cook up testimonials about your website or service. Most people are smart enough to detect them and will mar your reputation.
• Customer support- Adding live support would be a great advantage to your service. Most people prefer live chatting with company officials and not sending emails and waiting for reply. It is extremely important to do this if your competitors are offering this service as well. Make live support a prominent feature on your entry page. You can get LiveZilla which is a freeware application for your live support.
• Speed. The website must be sufficiently fast to load. This would mean code optimization of your website/blog, hiring a dedicated server if needed and so on. Normally it is seen that people won’t wait for websites/blogs which take longer than 10 seconds to load. So keep the important information on your landing page and give the add-on details on later pages.

The truth about searchers

It is generally seen that the searchers use the following patterns while searching

• Browse through the top 4 or 5 listing maximum
• Organic listing is that way to go. However, generally organic listing gives importance to how to, buying guides and stuff. If people are particularly into buying something they may look through the sponsored listings as well.
• Some people are having the notion that google is always right. They think that if a website/blog tops in SERP’s then they must be relevant. However search engines can be inaccurate and give you bad results. I have noticed visitors to my websites for keywords which are not even mentioned in my website once!!!
• If they don’t find what they are looking for on the landing pages of their website then they probably look down on the organic listings. Maximum they may browse the first page. Then they simply change their keywords to find more relevant searches and hence page 2 search result gives you little or no deal.

Business Exit Plan

Business, whether it is online or local, cannot be established without hard work, luck and proper planning. It is a truth that most of the businesses fail and business owners don’t have any exit plan for leaving their business. The idea that your business will provide you money without your presence is not a reality. Issue of death is mostly ignored in the development of business but it should be given importance especially in the establishment of a small businesses. In buying and selling agreements of your business it should be clearly defined what to do after the death of the owner. Who will be responsible for the whole transactions and business matters?

People must be ready to face all kinds of situations in a business venture. Exit strategy is required when the business is declining quickly or you have lost all the passion in it. Insufficient cash flow to manage your business operations can force you to think about the business exit strategy. Acquisition and liquidation are considered best business exit strategies. You can sell your business or liquidate your business assets to exit from the tough situation.

Disability can end up your business relationships quickly so you should consider it to handle such situations. Partners should be able to exit from a business without ruining economical condition of the other partner. They can leave your business for a better opportunity or to lead a simple life.

You need to under stand above mentioned situations to create a business exit plan.

1. It is necessary to know owners’ income needs and retirement plans to devise business exit plan. It will give an idea that how much money is required against the selling of your business.
2. You should evaluate your business annually to decide its current value. It can be done by analyzing business books. It will give an idea about the proper time of exit from business. You need to understand short-term and long-term financial plans of the owner to evaluate your business.
3. Once the exit time from business has been determined the owner should analyze pros and cons of selling the business to a partner, family member or an outsider.
4. In spite of a complete business exit plan you can have unexpected situations to quit from the business. The owner can die or disabled or it can be destroyed due to some natural calamity. Therefore you should plan employee incentive programs, buying and selling agreements, disability and life insurance plans.
5. In case of death, business can be sold to a family member or an outsider due to whom financial position of a business owner may change drastically.
6. Exit strategies also depend on the type of the business because in some types of businesses owners need to sell their shares. In some cases they can sell the venture to a new owner and in some types children inherit business.
7. Incorporate your small business to recognize yourself and your business as separate entities.
8. Develop a benefit plan for partners with their departure due to death, disability or retirement.
9. It should be clearly planned that who will keep the company and who will be paid off.

Business outsourcing is getting popularity in this world of globalization because business owners don’t want to hire full-time employees. They outsource different projects and tasks to save costs, improve product quality and efficient use of resources. They provide professional touch to their products and services in short time. Business owners outsource projects and tasks due to insufficient knowledge, skills and technology resources. Moreover they don’t have enough time and staff to complete those projects.

Outsourcing is a way of developing your products and services that cannot be achieved through the existing structure of your organization. You need to know following important techniques before making outsourcing decisions;

1. You should identify whether your employees have necessary knowledge and skills to build your desired products or services. If not then business outsourcing is the best choice instead of developing your own new setup because a lot of risk is involved in it.
2. If your employees have required skills then pulling them from their current jobs to new ones can be risky because they would not be able to complete their previous projects. You can decide on the priority and importance of your new project in overall goal of the company.
3. Business owners don’t outsource projects in which significant knowledge about the technology, business processes and organizational culture of the company is required. It would be wrong to provide such particular information about your company to another organization. If this information is about the products and competitive advantages of the company then the company will not transfer this information to any other organization. If there is none other solution then you should outsource such projects to an outside company for protection.
4. Employees that can manage your outsourced project might be involved in other core issues. At the start it will look like an easy decision to get more resources without disturbing your busy employees. It is clear that your new responsibilities will put strain on your current responsibilities. Your experts will have to spend a considerable time in managing resources, reviewing their work, writing specs and attending meetings. Their efficiency might be affected due to job switching and decreased concentration on their current jobs.
5. You should estimate implementation, management and reviewing costs of your outsourced projects. You should not exclude any internal or external cost from the total cost.
6. You should know your vendors’ responsibilities in the outsourced project. You should communicate with some of the vendors to select right one out of them. The outsourcing company should have good experience in its field. It should work as your guide in that particular project and be aware with its responsibilities. You can check your vendor by adopting different techniques else you can fall in adverse circumstances. It is better to put your efforts in the selection process of the vendor.
7. You should make sure that the outsourcing organization has enough time and staff to manage the projects and tasks. It should take charge of the management and functional requirements to satisfy its customer.