Avoid Home Business Scams
April 22, 2008
Avoid Home Business Scams
by: Kenny Anderson
Many websites claim to offer home business opportunities. Some people do make money at home through online jobs, but many of these so-called opportunities are scams. How do you know the difference? Here are some tips for avoiding home business scams.
First, use some common sense. If you are looking because you’re short on funds, it can be easy to talk yourself into believing the promises you will read online. Try to look at the offers objectively. Many scams try to convince you that you will become wealthy with little effort, and you might even see on the website that this is some “secret” for making money that is just now being revealed. Much later they reveal the cost for learning the secret. Before buying this kind of information, take a moment to wonder why it’s being sold. If it’s really that effective, the person selling it should be wealthy and not need to sell anything.
How A Tiny 10 Year Old Girl Can Throw A 20 Stone Man - 3 Key Lessons In The Gentle Art Of Business
April 21, 2008
Half my immediate family trained in Judo and excelled in competition. I was always fascinated by the way in which my younger brother and sister (who were small for their age) were able to throw much bigger opponents with seemingly little effort.
I remember vividly watching a training session where my sister easily threw another student flat on his back. What staggered me though was the size of the student.
He was huge.
But she didn’t strain or struggle. She simply appeared to step calmly backwards as he approached and let him fall over her in a big circle to land flat on his back.
I was amazed and by the look on his face so was he.
You may be mistaken in thinking he was going easy on her, but he wasn’t. There was something in the way she reacted to his movement which gave her this enormous power.
Something in the technique she used that enabled her to lift a 20 stone man off the ground and plant him flat on his back.
I’m now going to share her secret with you with ideas for applying these principles to your own business…
Just The Facts
April 20, 2008
Attitudes are more important than facts.
Dr. Karl Menninger
Attitudes are intangible and highly personal. They’re based on your experience, but more importantly, on your interpretation of that experience. That is, how you understand the "facts" of a given situation. People who interpret the facts of their experience positively tend to be self-confident. Not surprisingly, the best predictor of success is your level of confidence. Confident people tend to initiate action and control their environment–even under difficult conditions. Your degree of self-confidence will determine the kinds of risks you take, the amount of effort you’ll expend, and the strength of your perseverance in time of trouble. Your confidence will determine the amount of flexibility you creatively apply in new situations. Your confidence will promote either optimism or pessimism and will dictate the degree to which you are vulnerable to debilitating stress or depression. No one can give you confidence. You must create it yourself. You can start by discovering your strengths in the "facts" of every situation.
5 Steps To Help Fail-Proof Your Growing Service Business
April 19, 2008
Business startup and failure rates are scary…
In The USA…
- Every Year Over 1 Million People Start A Business
- By The End Of The First Year 40% Of Them Will Be Out Of Business
- Within 5 Years More Than 80% (800,000) Of These Businesses Will Have Failed
(Source: The eMyth Revisited, Michal E Gerber, US Department of Commerce)
In The UK…
- 2003 Saw 423,100 New Businesses In England & Wales Startup
- Over Half of All New Firms Fail In The First 3 Years
- At Least 211,550 Of These Businesses Will Have Failed Before The End Of 2006
(Source: Barclays SME Market Research Team England & Wales Statistics Based On Business Current Account Customers)
Unfortunately more and more people are being encouraged to go it alone by government agencies and banks while being given out-dated advice that doesn’t actually work.
The advisors in these organisations typically have experience in larger production / manufacturing / financial businesses and share marketing advice that really doesn’t work for the majority of small service-based businesses today.
Their text-book marketing principles simply do not translate to businesses with limited money to invest in advertising, direct mail and telesales.
What Makes An Entrepreneur Tick?
April 19, 2008
It is only natural that when you start a business, you are doing something different than most people. They not only will look at you because you stick out like a sore thumb _ but human nature will cause people to naturally ridicule what you are doing. They will tell you all types of things like: “You’re not business material.” “You can’t make a living working for yourself.” “You’ll fail because nobody can ever make any money that way.”
Entrepreneurship is not just about having a lot of ideas or business sense. It is also about having a lot of guts. You have to build self-confidence in yourself. You have to only be concerned with pleasing yourself and your Creator (God) _ not mankind. Then, when (and if) you should fail with this particular venture, you’ll just dust yourself off and start again. It doesn’t matter if people “think” you’re nuts! They aren’t paying your rent and running your life. Don’t be concerned with what people “think” you should be. Just please yourself and do what you feel is right. People are too busy competing with society and “keeping up with the Jones’s” that they do things they are not comfortable with just to appease them and look “normal” (whatever that is.)
Small Business Computer Security, the Basics
April 18, 2008
Anyone in business today realizes both the natural dependency on computers in the workplace, and also the potential dangers associated with storing important data on them. Today’s business owners are constantly being reminded that their company’s data is at risk by the daily reports on various news stations, or even their favorite business-related website.
But what can a typical small business owner do to protect their network from these threats that are broadcasted in so many ways? Dangers lurk at every turn on the Internet. There are thousands of attacks or areas of security that could be discussed, but I am going to try and focus on three general nuisances associated with today’s computers: viruses, spy-ware, and traditional "hackers" that will intentionally try to exploit your computer systems for various reasons. All of these attacks, although different, serve a specific purpose for the attacker, yet basically translate into three things for a business: lost productivity, lost data, and the end result? lost money.
Here is brief descriptions of what the aforementioned attacks are, consist of, and what a typical small business can do to protect their technology investments.
Living Life In A Time Starved World
April 17, 2008
Recently I saw an advertisement for a time management booklet: “Shorter deadlines, competing priorities, endless meetings, interruptions and even higher quality expectations are just some of today’s time challenges. And yet the number of hours in the day remains the same.”
As entrepreneurs we all struggle sometimes with managing our time effectively. I once heard an entrepreneur say that of the people he knows, his entrepreneur friends are the worst people when it comes to managing their time and priorities. Too often we fall prey to the misguided notion that being busy is the same as making progress.
There are many areas involved in effective time management:
? your attitude
? goal setting
? setting priorities
? planning
? scheduling
? analyzing your progress
? dealing with interruptions
? meetings
? paperwork
? delegation of tasks
? taming procrastination
? time teamwork
KEY PRINCIPLES
Here are some key principles I have found to help me manage my time more effectively:
1. Good habits are the key to good time management.
A Smart Internet Marketing Strategy: Targeting Niche Markets
April 16, 2008
A Smart Internet Marketing Strategy: Targeting Niche Markets
by: Humaira Aslam
The World Wide Web has captivated my attention ever since I was introduced to it by my mother (another WWW freak!). That was about 10 years ago and ever since that time, my interest about all the different things that can be done through the internet has continued to grow.
For the last couple of years, I have been grappling with the idea of making money online. Although I searched and found a lot of information, but most of it was vague and did not give me any concrete answer to the most important question: what to actually DO to make some money on the internet.
During my quest of getting answers, I came across a very informative video on the internet which gave me a lot of information about internet marketing and gave me some pretty good food for thought. The video talked about “Niche Markets”; what they are and why they are important to any person who would like to make money on the internet by selling a product or service. In fact, the concept of Niche Markets is applicable to any business or service provider, whether they operate on the internet or otherwise.
Resurrecting the Perfect Resume, Part One
April 15, 2008
Is your resume dead? Don’t be so quick to say, "No way!" Of the hundreds of resumes I’ve seen written by job seekers of all backgrounds and educational levels, easily 95% qualify to be labelled as dead-but-not-yet-buried.
A dead resume lacks a clear structure or chronology, does not present or quantify achievements, fails to offer a "big picture" of what you would bring to the employer and is impersonal rather than expressive. Worse yet, a dead resume fails to win you the response you’re hoping for from the employer: an invitation for a job interview.
To win more job interviews and dramatically increase the quality of opportunities your resume can help you attract, strip your resume down to bare bones and resurrect it using the same techniques professional resume writers use to reposition job seekers whose own job search campaigns have failed to yield the results they need.
Problem #1: Resume Lacks Structure
You cannot create a resume without first creating a structure for it. Resumes are complicated documents that include different types of information which they communicate to different types of readers. If your resume has a poor structure it will make no sense to the reader; he or she will simply discard your resume and move on the next one in the pile, and you will count yourself lucky to even get a rejection letter.
Three Ways to Put Fresh Spins on Old Marketing Concepts
April 14, 2008
Are you struggling to find a new twist for old advertising or marketing campaigns?
If you’re a small business owner or a copywriter/coach/other creative professional, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Having to come up with new ideas for a long-term client (or even your own business) can be overwhelming.
As much as you love those long-term clients or established products, because of their longevity, it gets harder and harder to come up with the next brilliant product.
But never fear. Here are three ways to get those creative juices (and new ideas) flowing.
1. Study other ads. Flip through a magazine or turn on the television, except this time focus on the ads and not the content (I know, I know, this is counter to what you usually do). Which ads do you like? Why do you like them? Is there something that those ads are doing you can modify for your campaigns?
