News feed - PowerHomeBiz

What Changes Are You Planning for Next Year?

It’s the end of the year again, and it’s time to take stock of how our business performed this year and to take stock of what we did (and did not do). Then of course comes the exciting part — making plans for next year. The problem sometimes with being small or home based entrepreneur (moreso if you are a one-person business) is this tendency to forget to stop and review how the business is going. Who has time to think of what was done when there’s a million and one things that needs to be done — yesterday??? But

Research on Strongest Online Marketing Tactic

MarketingSherpa has a new report entitled “Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008” and one of the interesting data of the study is how the various online marketing strategies compare with regards to giving the best return on investment According to the report, the strongest tactics and give the most ROI are: House email marketing = 25% (strongest tactic) and 39% (good ROI) Search engine optimization = 18% and 36% Paid search marketing = 16% and 35% Public relations = 12% and 28% Direct mail = 12% and 27% Online banner advertising = 3% and 16% Print advertising = 4% and 13%

How to Form LLC as Parent Company with other Separate LLCs

Business Structure, Q & A

How do I form an LLC (limited liability company) as parent company with other separate LLCs? I then would like the new entity to be split off into 2 separate LLC’s, one to hold the equity and the other to hold the debt and income stream from the properties.

How to Improve Effectiveness of Your Email Campaigns

A home based entrepreneur who sells candles on the Web complained about the poor performance of his email campaigns. He finds it hard to get the response he wants from his email campaigns sent to his existing customers and newsletter signups, which suffers from low open rates to low clickthrough rates. My suggestions to him are: First, make sure that your list is indeed 100% opt in — without trickery. When you ask people to sign up for the newsletter, make sure that they actually not sign up and not have the newsletter signup box checked by default. By having

How to Use a Certified Constructor License of a Former Employee

Managing Employees, Q & A

We have a former employee that has gotten his Certified Contractors license, which my husband nor I have, that wants us to be able to use his license to further our business interests. How do we go about this?

Whitepapers on Doing Business Online

If you are selling or doing business online, you may want to check out the following white papers from different vendors/companies: Post-Holiday Paid Search Strategies MarkMonitor Brandjacking Index Online Businesses Discover Direct Response TV The Effect of DRTV on Search Engine Marketing The Evolution of Landing Pages 2008 ePayment Management Guide Some of the above will require registration, while some are direct links to the white papers. Skip through the promotional blah-blah, and you will find some gems from these papers. Be prepared though to get some phone calls from these vendors (umm .. “I just downloaded your white paper,

How to Build Your Brand

Many small and home-based business owners consider branding to be an exclusive domain of big companies. It is something that Coke, Nike, Apple, Disney and other companies with big marketing budgets engage in. And this is often a big mistake. Many small businesses unfortunately fail to reap the benefits of having developed a strong brand — or the process of establishing an emotional connection between the business and the customer. Jeffrey Gitomer, in his book “The Little Red Book of Selling” has identified several ways a business can build a brand, even for 1-person businesses, and these are: Create demand

Online Marketing Beyond Traditional Search

MoreVisibility.com has an interesting paper that summarizes options for marketing on the Web other than the traditional search, and these are: Contextual advertising = using pay per click at search engines partner sites (e.g. Google Adsense publishers) which are driven by theme or relevancy to keywords Second tier search engines = pay per click at the top 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) is getting expensive, so check out other search engines such as Ask, Miva, FindWhat, Looksmart, etc. While the traffic may be of lower quality and conversions tend to be lower, the price difference makes these second

How Important is College Education to Entrepreneurial Success?

How important is college education to entrepreneurial success? How much does educational background and knowledge contribute to success as a business owner? Do you have to enroll in an Ivy League school to be successful in business? Colleges and universities offer solid education, social network and access to resources to complement your studies. They take pride in helping ensure their graduates land top jobs, and much of the focus seems to be grooming young people for the corporate world and climbing the proverbial corporate ladder. BusinessWeek had an article (“Who Needs the Ivies?”) that looked at the correlation of education

Most Effective Web Tools for Online Selling

Catalog Success magazine has an interesting article on the web tools and features that can bring the most returns for your ecommerce website. According to the article “Maximize Your Web Tools” by Larry Kavanagh, here are the tools that your website must have in order to sell more (however, the article fails to mention vendors for these tools): 1. Customer rate and review feature increases product conversion 42 percent: Visitors to pages with highly rated products (between 4-5 stars) are 42 percent more likely to buy the product; while visitors to low rated products are only half as likely to

Money vs. Control: What Do Entrepreneurs Want

What is your goal as an entrepreneur? Do you want to get rich, even if that means getting investors on board? Or do you want control, meaning you grow your business by yourself albeit slowly as long as you control the business? Or do you want a little of both? This is a dilemma often faced by business owners. I know of entrepreneurs who welcome investors, even actively seek them, because they have grand plans for their business and know that they can only grow the business faster if they get outside help. There are also people who prefer their

Startup Grant for New Entrepreneurs: Intuit Contest

If you are thinking of starting a business and looking for startup funds, you may want to try your luck in the “”Just Start” campaign of Intuit, makers of the accounting software Quickbooks. The grand prize is $50,000 in cash Here’s the description of the contest from the Intuit website www.IWillJustStart.com Intuit Just Start Contest … is a skill contest in which participants can submit ideas on how they would resign from their job and what dreams they have for starting their own company for a chance to win the Grand Prize of $50,000 in cash and consulting services ($40,000