Business Tips

5 Cool Research Tools for Niche Online Businesses

by cyrus on Dec 11

So you own a niche online business? Whether you are selling your own product, own a niche portal, or a niche affiliate marketer, you are going to do your research and put real effort into it if you want succeed online. So investing in a research tool to help you along the way is not such a bad idea. The good news is that there are a few free tools that you can use to help you get a more comprehensive research done. The bad news is there is no way around the process. So if you want to succeed online, you’ve got to do your research and keep track of trends.

If you are a niche business owner looking to take your research to the next level, here are 5 research tools that you should take advantage of:

Facebook Lexicon: a lot of newbie niche marketers are not paying too much attention to social networking sites such as Facebook. But these sites are great places to look for trends and find out valuable information. Facebook Lexicon lets you do just that.

Twendz: Twitter is another place to look for trends and find out what people are talking about online. Twendz is a cool free tool that lets you do your research on Twitter and keep an eye out on the upcoming trends.

Market Samurai: an Adobe Air application designed specifically for portal developers and niche marketers. It’s not a free tool like the above tools, but it brings a lot of things together and lets you better manage your content creation and promotion process. [click to continue…]

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3 Business Plan Software That Help You Write a Killer Plan

by cyrus on Oct 9

In order to get your online business up and running and keep it on track, you are going to need some sort of a business plan. Many entrepreneurs end up keeping things in their heads instead of writing them down. That doesn’t quite work the way you expect it to. It’s always helpful to have your business plan handy so you can optimize it, and even show it to potential investors. Writing a business plan for your business not only help you put your best effort forward, but it will keep you on track and help you get out of those sticky situations.

A lot of small business owners assume that you need to be a genius to write a business plan. It’s true that many business students do learn how to write an effective plan when they are in school. At the end of the day, it’s all about quality and not the format of your document. Besides, why would you want to focus on things that do not matter when you can use the following software kits to outsource that process:

Business Plan Pro 15th Anniversary Edition

Business Plan Pro: the best business plan software on the planet. It comes with a very easy to use interface and a whole set of useful documents that you can study to develop a killer business plan all by yourself. It’s a bit pricey, but nothing else on the market comes close.

Quicken Legal Business Pro 2009

Quicken Legal Business Pro 2009: many small business owners have trouble dealing with those legal matters on a daily basis. You can always hire a lawyer to manage every little detail, or you can use this software package to ge informed.

Ultimate Business Planner 4.0

Ultimate Business Planner 4.0: not as sophisticated as business plan pro, but a decent software package to help you get a head start with your business plan. Remember, it’s all about content and the merits of your plan not the paper it’s written on or the software you use to write your plan.

You don’t necessarily need any of the above software packages to write your business plan. But if you have time constraint, these software packages can help you save time .

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5 Ways To Make Money On Facebook

by cyrus on Oct 2

Facebook is a great community to be a part of to catch up with old friends, keep up with the current ones, and even find contacts and new friends. A lot of people do use Facebook to just waste their time, and there is nothing wrong with that. Everybody is responsible for themselves and their own times. If you are a business owner or want to start an online business, you can’t afford to do the same. There are plenty of ways that Facebook can help you take your business to the next level and make some money in the process as well.

Paul Dunay has done such a wonderful job with his presentation on this topic, that everyone should take time to go over his recommendations on this subject.

View more presentations from Paul Dunay.


But while Paul talks about top level strategies that you can use to make money on Facebook, here are a few guerilla style methods to make money on Facebook:

1. CafePress: I have talked about CafePress and how you can make money from it in the past. By using Facebook, you can sell products on Facebook and put more money in your pocket. Here is the app that lets you do just that. [click to continue…]

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Starting an Online Business? Choose The Right Web Host!

by cyrus on Jul 24

management 2

Starting an online business is one of the best ways to get on the road to financial freedom. A lot of people dream about having the ability to work for themselves. But before you can even think about getting your business off the ground, you need to pay extra attention to the web host you are planning to choose as your business partner. Not many businesses afford to have their own servers, so if you are just getting started with your online business, there is no shame in partnering with a third-party service provider. But what you don’t want to do is jump in and choose the first web host that you find online.

Choosing a web host for your business is a big deal. It’s not an issue that you can take chances with. In the start, you may not get too much traffic, and your site could do fine even if it went down from time to time. But once you start getting a real following, your readers are going to expect your site to be up at all times (or as much as possible). It would look poorly on your brand and your business as a whole if your site was down frequently. Unfortunately, choosing a good web host is not that easy. There are many companies that promise you 99.9% uptime and all these great features, but once you put some load on their servers, they start to fail on you. You may not catch the issue when your site is young. But when you do, it’s going to be the wrong time. So you do want to pay extra attention when choosing a web host for your business to protect yourself and your business against service outages.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind if you are looking for the best business web hosting:

  • Bandwidth: if you have grand plans for your site, you want to make sure you get enough bandwidth with your hosting package to handle all your traffic. You don’t want your site to be down when thousands of people rush to check it out.
  • Storage: if you are going to have a lot of images, files, videos, and so on, you want to make sure you have a place to store them. So don’t settle for packages that don’t come with a reasonable level of storage capacity.
  • Resources: there are a lot of web hosting companies that offer unlimited shared web hosting. That’s really not the way it works. If your site is very popular, you are going to get a lot of hits and put extra pressures on your host’s servers. You can be sure that your web host won’t do you any favors, and your site will go down. That’s why private web hosting services are far better solutions for small businesses.
  • Databases: if you intend to start a blog network or a comprehensive product portal, you may need more than a few databases. You should look out for limits that are put on your account as far as your databases are concerned.
  • Reputation: the most important factor of them all. Don’t ever sign up for a web hosting service without Googling the service first to find out about the company and its reputation. There are a lot of companies that offer too good to be true offers. And they are usually that. Make sure you know the facts before giving your money to a company that doesn’t take care of its customers.

There are many other factors that you need to consider before picking a web host for your business. Price, scripts, and e-mail features are all important. But in my book, you want to sign up for a web host that guarantees your site being up and ready to be served to your readers. There is nothing more frustrating than buying ads, driving traffic to a website, and have your site go down in the process. Choosing a reliable business is not only helps you grow your business but it also helps you save time and money. Choosing the right business partner can be the difference between succeeding and failing in your business. It never hurts to take time to choose the right one whether it’s a web host or an e-mail service provider.

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10 Ways To Get Your iPhone Application Business Off The Ground

by cyrus on Jul 10

As someone who has been involved in the online marketing business for years, I hear from people who have started their iPhone development business from time to time and try to help them out get more traffic and sales. Developing a killer iPhone application may sound difficult, but promoting it could be even more troublesome for iPhone developers. A lot of these folks are not online marketing experts, so they find it difficult to figure out where to spend their effort on. After all, you only have 24 hours a day and limited resources when you start your venture, so you want to make sure you get the most out of each and every minute everyday. But there are a certain things every application developer can do to promote their apps more effectively and get free leads.

Online marketing may look complicated on the surface, but there are a lot of tactics that everyone can adopt to generate leads. Sure, there are more complicated strategies that are better left to professionals but creating a Twitter account, a YouTube video, or a Facebook fan page is not that difficult to do. If you are an application developer, here are 10 tactics you should adopt to push your app and generate more sales:

  • Video Review: creating a video review for your app can help others find out whether your app is worth trying. It’s easy to tell people what your app is capable of. But it’d be all more effective if you show people what your app can do in a video. You can even give applications away in return for video reviews. You should at least try to create a YouTube account and post a couple of videos from your app to show what your app can do. There are many other video sites that you can be on, so make sure you take advantage of what’s out there.
  • Lite Version: one of the best ways to show people what your app can do is by giving others the opportunity to test your app for themselves. That’s why it’s a great strategy to create a lite version of your app and give it away for free and encourage your lite users to make the move and buy the premium version.
  • Facebook Fan Page: one of the best ways to get connected with your fans and build a real community around your application. Don’t forget to register a catchy name for your Facebook page when it’s eligible.
  • Twitter: if you have an iPhone application that you are selling online, and you are not on Twitter, you are missing the boat. Twitter is a great community to find people who are interested in all kinds of products. Use Twitter search or these twitter tools to figure out who may be looking for your app.
  • FriendFeed: may not be as popular as Facebook and Twitter nowadays, but it certainly has a lot of potential and a bright future. You should take time to sign up for an account, connect with folks, join rooms, and be involved.
  • Ning: Ning is a cool web service that lets you create your own social community. If you have a niche app, why not create a social community around your niche and push your app that way. Ning doesn’t cost any money (unless you go with premium features) so it’s worth a try.
  • LinkedIn: now this is a bit more tricky to pull off, but you can always try to reach out to folks in your niche or industry on LinkedIn and either push your app or ask them to spread the word around. You do want look useful on LinkedIn. So don’t hesitate to post polls, ask questions, answer questions, and work on your profile.
  • Giveaways: once you have your social media accounts ready, you should try to make things interesting by giving away copies of your app to your followers and Facebook friends. Freebies are a great way to go viral, and people who win these competitions can help you spread the word around and gain more leads.
  • Bloggers: reaching out to top bloggers is an amazing way to drive lots of traffic to your app and make a killing on iTunes. If you happen to get featured on Engadget or any other top blog, you are going to get more traffic that you can handle. Don’t be afraid to reach top bloggers and ask for their reviews.
  • Press Releases: press releases can drive you lots of traffic if you play your cards right. Ask any search engine optimization professional, and he/she will tell you how important press releases are to their overall strategy in optimizing a site for search engines. Just choose keywords that can help you make sales and include them in your press release. It’s easier said than done, but there are plenty of sites that can show you how to go about writing a killer press release.

There you have it. You don’t have to be a genius to pull the above tactics off. These tactics, if implemented correctly, can get you a lot of traffic and sales. The first days of any venture can be difficult but once you tough them out and gain momentum, who knows where your business can take you.

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5 Must Have Software For Startups

by cyrus on Jun 26

If you have been lucky to be involved in a startup venture, you probably know you need to wear multiple hats to get things done. Unlike what you get in the corporate environment, you don’t have the luxury of time in a startup. You have to move fast and be agile if you want your startup to survive and grow. That’s why most successful startups use software to save time and get more things done. Every business uses software packages such as Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint. But a startup needs more than that. It’s nice to be able to draw charts or collaborate with others over the Internet, but you are also going to need software to develop business and marketing plans and find answers to your technical questions. After all, you don’t want to waste the time you don’t have looking for answers in the wrong places.

The following software packages not only allow you to get more done in less time, they also let you save a lot of money in the process. Remember, running a startup is not easy but you can do more by using the technologies around to your advantage:

Palo Alto Business Plan Pro Premier Version 11.0

Business Plan Pro: the software that got me started with my own startup. I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do, but going through sample plans offered with this software helped me develop my own business plans in a more effective fashion. And it saved me time too. If you are working on your start-up plan and need guidance, this is the best software to own.

Palo Alto Marketing Plan Pro 11.0 Powered by Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Plan Pro: very similar to Business Plan Pro in design, but it addresses your marketing needs. If you are looking to manage your own marketing plans more effectively, this software is a good option to consider.

Quicken Legal Business Pro 2009

Quicken Legal Business Pro: truly a life-saver. When you are trying to start a business and form a company, you are going to have a lot of questions and challenges ahead of you. You can spend hours on Google to find credible information, or your can just use Legal Business Pro to save time. The documents included are truly life-savers.

Peachtree By Sage Professional Accounting 2009

Peach Tree Professional Accounting: the software that I use to manage my financial information. It’s always good to track how much is coming in and going out, and what you can do to grow your business. Peach Tree helps you automate your invoices, checks, and employee payroll

Adobe Captivate 4

Adobe Captivate: a great way to save time training new employees. You can easily record screen-casts, videos, and so on. You can also develop interactive training sessions for your employees. Not cheap but saves you money in the long run.

There you have it. These packages are by no means all you need, but they do increase your productivity when it comes to running your startup. You may have to wear multiple hats but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use technology to your advantage.

Your take: what’s your favorite startup software?

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Online Business 101: Outsourcing Is Key

by cyrus on Jun 12

So you take the risk and start your own business. You want to control everything and put your business in the best situation possible to succeed. But you can’t do it all. You can try, but it’s not possible. There is just too much work to do to get a business of the ground, which means you are going to have to delegate non-core activities, and divide and conquer the rest with your partners.

So what should you outsource? Anything that is not mission-critical and of high importance to your business. In other words, you don’t want to outsource your core activities – what you do best. But you can always outsource parts of your promotional activities (SEO, SMO), and your programming. The same thing can be said about IT, legal, and other business activities that may not be core to your business. Thankfully, there are many places that let you outsource your tasks and get your work done faster.

Here are a few ways to outsource your business activities:

Coding and Development

  • Rent a Coder: RAC is a great place to find coders, writers, and everything in between. Anything that you want to do is covered here. There are hundreds of categories to choose from, and these guys take care of you. You won’t be robbed on this site.
  • oDesk: oDesk is another one of those top outsourcing sites that is designed to gain you access to the global markets. They too provide you with tools to manage your projects more effectively.
  • Guru.com: Guru.com is a great site to reach out to start-ups and smaller companies and get more sophisticated projects done. I have seen highly complicated projects posted there (e.g. Web 2.0 start-ups).
  • LivePerson: LivePerson a great place to outsource programming. If you are looking for coders, this is a decent place to look.

Freelancers for Misc Activities

  • Elance: Elance is not only a great place to find work but also those who provide services.
  • Virtual Employee: Virtual Employee helps you find virtual assistants and all kinds of help.
  • Freelancer China: looking for Chinese employees? Freelancer China is the way to go.
  • TheFreeLanceNation: TheFreeLanceNation is another place to look for programmers and elancers.
  • HireMyMom: HMM is a great place to find professional moms.
  • iFreeLance: if you are out of luck so far, you cna give iFreeLance another try.

[click to continue…]

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