What is free government money? Here are a few facts about federal government grants. These grants truly are free government money. You do not have to repay this government grant money. You are not charged any interest on these government grant money. The grants are totally tax free money. You do not require any credit history or banking record to receive these grants.

All the facts above are very good reasons for ordinary people to pursue government grant money.

A commonly asked question is, are there really any government grant programs for the type of business I want to start, an online business?

The Answer, Yes, there are lot many government grant programs or free government money for all types of small businesses, including home based internet businesses.

But before we go into details about government grant programs or free government money for small business, let me caution you about some things.

The money is free but it is not free from government regulations and rules. The first thing you must know is that there is full monitoring and auditing of these government grants. You are expected to spend the money you request in particular manner and for the particular purpose that you applied for.  Read more...

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Small business marketing is small, as noted by the name, but too many times business owners think that small business marketing is too small for planning, budgets, or strategies. Since small businesses usually have little or no marketing budget and are concentrating on just keeping the doors open, owners, more times than not, neglect their marketing planning. No business should exist without marketing planning and strategies!

Actually, small business marketing requires planning and strategy more than major companies.

When the marketing manager of a large corporation has a $20 million marketing budget just for print ads, they have room to make mistakes, produce the wrong ads, and even scrap the marketing plan half-way through completion. Small businesses don’t have such freedom and liberty. Small business marketing should contain a plan before anything else happens in the company in the area of sales and marketing. There should be budgets and strategies created as early as possible and reviewed as often as possible.

Create a marketing plan as soon as you decide to start a business.

My company specializes in helping small businesses with marketing and design, and we encounter many of the same problems, and they all stem from lack of early planning. Once you decide to start a business, start creating a marketing plan.

Who are your customers?

What are their needs and wants?

How will you acquire new customers?

What kind of customer relationship management systems will you use?  Read more...

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

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

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

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

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

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Trying to measure performance, in general, is a difficult task for scholars; the difficulties intensify when the subject is the measurement of small business performance. In this article, which is the third in the series, an overview of the major obstacles for measuring small business performance is presented.

Time is a substantial factor that needs to be taken into consideration when trying to measure performance in small business, because measuring the profitability of small businesses in their first years of operation can be misleading. Mcdougall, Robinson and denisi (1992) state, that small businesses are usually not expected to generate any profit in their early years of operation. Biggadike (1979) define a milestone of eight years in operation, in average, before new venture is expecting to generate profits.

Growth rate is not equal in all businesses; moreover it varies substantially between businesses and across industries. Cooper (1979) has related to the potential influence of rapid growth, and noted that operational losses or poor profits in small businesses with growth orientation can’t be used as an indicator for management failure, if the cause for the result is heavy investments in new markets or products. If at different industries we’re expecting different growth rate, then as Miller and Tolouse (1986) states, the industry in which the business is operating in is affecting the level of business performance in general as well as the small business performance.

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The failure rate of small businesses is painful to see. With a little preplanning and consistent efforts in the right areas …. this doesn’t have to happen.

 

First, I see far too many people who think starting a business means the till is their personal money and owning a business means not having to work. They don’t come into prepared and give up far too easily when they realize people are not beating down their door to do business with them.

 

So what are the biggest reasons behind the high failure rate of small businesses …. and what can YOU do about it?

 

1. early burn out (poor planning)
2. no capital
3. no business plan / expectations / strategy

 

Burn Out:

 

Owners try to be both managers and technicians in the business and it drives them batty. They love doing something, so start a business, but then find that as it grows they have no life. You must be ready to start a business and then step out of the “do” part of it so you can remain energized and expand efficiently.

 

One useful metaphor is to think of your business as if you were going to franchise it. You will need to hire relatively unskilled people to operate the business – you cannot be at 20 locations at once. So you develop operations manuals and specific processes that are easy to train new people on. This lets you step outside the operation and assign it to someone. You can then use your time for strategy, growth, or personal development. You won’t burn out.

 

Capital:

 

You need money to grow a business. The presence of ops manuals and a clear business plan are impressive to those who provide money. Getting capital will be vitally important to your success. Getting yourself set up with a Dunn and Bradstreet number, a business specific credit card, and other credit-building assets is urgently important.

 

Business Plan:

 

You’ve heard this before – no business plan, no success. It doesn’t have to be formal, but it must be well thought out. Get help if you can. There are links in the Recommended Resources at Small Business Resources Cafe which can help with that.

 

Looking from a different view …. many small businesses are actually quite successful, IF, they have a good product or service at the right time and have good luck. Seriously, alot of small business success happens because of timing and luck than skill.

 

The trouble starts when those two run out. It is usually timing that goes first : The economy changes, a better widget comes out after yours, your product/service/industry gets bad press, etc. This is when the business spiral downwards. This is when you have to use your brain and know when to seek outside help.

 

It’s rather easy to make a go of a small busness with luck and timing on your side. It takes a solid plan, discipline and strong problem solving skills when you lose those two attributes.

 

My best advice is to build your business to grow. Then plan that it will dip …. and plan for the dip by reinventing your business with new ideas and thoughts. Often these innovations come from an outsider, such as a consultant who can view your business objectively. Then, your job as the owner is to listen and respond accordingly!

 

Above all though, never forget that business is about making money, and making money is about sales. If you concentrate on sales and manage cash flow, then you should be able to make it out of the start up phase and grow a very healthy business for the long run.

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Natural website optimization service is the most cost-effective form of online marketing. The small business SEO service, an integral part of your marketing campaign, meets the needs of start-up businesses as well as fully established small businesses in the United States.

Any small size business can be substantially improved through small business SEO services. Search engine marketing and placement services promote and grow your business community depending on the site’s competition, target market and present popularity.

The small business SEO service providers turn more visitors into paying customers by increasing your search engine rankings on leading search engines such as Ask.com, AT&T Worldnet, Comcast, BizRate, Alta Vista, Microsoft Live and more. To move a website higher up in the search engines, small business search engine placement service providers use world-class Internet marketing techniques and ethically proven SEO strategies. A successful search engine optimization strategy involves several key elements. Understand your small business goals, the search engine marketing and placement service providers,

• Do effective keyword research to select proper keywords

• Do competitor analysis (server and website) to shortlist targeted keyword, where various parameters are taken into account including keyword proximity and density checks, frequency, number of indexed pages, back links and pages cached on search engines

• Do website analysis to analyze your competitors’ website by checking parameters including layout and site architecture, web crawl errors, number of inbound links, keyword density and frequency and number of pages indexed  Read more...

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