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Information is power.
To succeed as an entrepreneur, you need not only have talent and
experience, but the ability to leverage information for your
business. The more you know about your market, the more you
are able to grab opportunities that may be beneficial to your
business. There is a definite need to use business information
to understand your customers and partners better and to
support the volume of decisions that now need to be made at
the new speed of business.
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The Internet offers invaluable business information that
could empower even the smallest entrepreneur. There are a
variety of useful sources of information, some even for free,
that could help small entrepreneurs compete for business
against bigger fish. The right information can help you
analyze the competition, put together a branding strategy,
find demographic information and statistical abstracts, check
out advertising and marketing publications.
Forget about the high-end market research and consulting
agencies that can set you back at least $1,500 per report to
as high as $25,000 for one year subscription. To get the
information you need at a price you can afford, try out these
online services:
News Sources
Individual.com's NewsPage (http://www.individual.com) is a free service that offers business news across a variety
of industries. To keep you on top of current industry
headlines, you can individualize the news by filtering it by
company or industry.
Yahoo Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com) offers a convenient and searchable resource of market and
company information, as well as Wire-service feeds and press
releases — including Businesswire, Reuters, PR Newswire, and
the Associated Press.
Lexis-Nexis (http://www.lexis-nexis.com) is a powerful searchable database containing news, company
profile, demographics and market statistics, even legislation.
Its Company Dossier allows researchers to enter the name or
ticker symbol of a company and pulls together a report that
provides a snapshot of the company, related news articles,
management information, pertinent legal cases, and patents and
trademarks. The price is steep, though: access to its
newspapers, business and financial databases is $129 per week.
Company Research
For a fee, Dun and Bradstreet (http://www.dnb.com) can provide you with information on companies relevant to
your business. It offers searchable databases of companies in
the United States and around the world, including prospect
lists and market research.
Hoover's Online (http://www.hoovers.com) provides in-depth profiles of more than 50,000 public and
private companies, market data, financial data, business news,
upcoming IPOs and stock quotes. Free membership gives you
limited access to Hoover's resources; a personal membership
includes a wealth of additional business information for
$14.95 per month (or $124.95 per year).
Reuter's Stock Overview (http://www.marketguide.com) offers company-specific financial data, mostly compiled from
Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The best part in
using this resource is that it formats the raw SEC data so
it's easier to analyze.
If you are in the trading business or want to establish
business relationships with other companies, Thomas Register (http://www.thomasregister.com) is an invaluable resource. This site provides listings to
thousands of companies in various industry categories, offers
supplier catalogs, even CAD drawings. Best of all, the site is
free.
Do-It-Yourself Market Research
If market research packages are too pricey, there are other
ways you can mine information online.
SurveyKey.com (http://www.surveykey.com/
) At SurveyKey.com, you have much greater flexibility and
control over the overall appearance of your survey. It’s
incredibly easy to use and all surveys that you create are SSL
secure using 128 bit encryption.
Zoomerang (http://www.zoomerang.com) is a template-based survey generation and management tool.
For an annual fee of $599 ($350 for non-profits and
educational institutions), you can have access to survey
templates you can customize with targeted questions to
understand your customers and gather the critical feedback
necessary to make important decisions. Their free version
"allows to easily create and send shorter, less complex
surveys and view up to 100 survey responses per survey
online for 10 days after the survey is launched free of
charge."
SurveyMonkey.com (http://www.surveymonkey.com) is an
inexpensive tool that allows you to create and publish custom surveys in
minutes. It allows you to view results graphically and in real
time, and you can publish results of your survey to an
unlimited number of recipients.
SurveyHost.com ( http://www.surveyhost.com
) provides the location as well as the technology to create,
conduct and analyze surveys online. They offer a range of
standard services, including weekly data files and welcome and
exit pages, and will work with you to create and manage custom
projects.
Updated February 2006
For a step-by-step guide to starting a
business, order the CD-Rom or Download "Power Home Business
Ideas" from PowerHomeBiz.com at
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/Index/practicalbizideas.htm
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