Small Business Man's Blog

Struggles of a novice entrepreneur

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:18:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaIts not easy starting your own business, never mind making a success of it. According to a recent BBC news report, four out of every five business start-ups ends in failure and one of the main reasons comes down to either poor planning or a total lack of it.

That's quite a startling failure rate! How can one avoid being in that 80% and instead be in the 20% who make it? Certainly, our first year has been a struggle. I am not going to divulge every last detail of the first 12 months of our business, nor will I give details of our financial performance. Rather I want to focus on some general points based on our experience.

First, the biggest problem we have faced has been capital - raising enough of it to invest in the business. We made a conscious decision at the start not to get into debt with the banks. Instead, thanks largely to some friends willingness to invest in our business, we started off with a small amount of capital and have financed the business with that initial investment and two further small injections of capital. All told, we have invested less than £5,000 from friends and our own resources. However, the downside of not going to the banks has been the fact that the initial capital investment has been relatively small. With hindsight, we should have started off with a larger initial investment. This would have helped us invest in marketing and in stock instead of waiting for profits from sales to allow us to buy more stock and market the business.

Another problem has been what is best described as a lack of planning. As te BBC report points out, poor planning is a major factor in a business failing. In all honesty, a lack of planning has been a factor in our struggles. Bearing in mind that when we started out we only knew one thing, that we had a great product and that it had high profit margins. However, what we needed to do was market that product and that is where we had no idea how best to do this. We had no desire to open up a physical store and instead we were going to focus on online sales. The question was, how to go about. Of course, there was eBay, but also Amazon and the option of building our own ecommerce store. In the end we started off with our own store (built using RapidWeaver) and an eBay Store. Later on we added Amazon to our channels. We also tried advertising in a computer magazine, as well as local advertising.

However, we faced several issues:

Both eBay and Amazon charge monthly fees (as does PayPal, who process our payments)
We had problems with the shopping cart plugin on our own site (fees were small but the plugin didn't work properly when it came to discount voucher codes - something we needed to work)
Advertising doesn't come cheap - especially AdWords and the like. We tried Facebook Ads only to find them very expensive and not very effective. This meant we were using most of our profits on advertising, hampering our attempts to introduce new products.

We made a mistake in not sticking with our original product and instead adding new product lines in a mistaken attempt to attract more customers. All it did was reduce our cashflow. We weren't patient enough to wait for the business to grow with just one product. Adding additional products meant that funds were unavailable, being locked up in slow-moving stock.

So, that's just an insight into our tribulations in the first year. Hopefully, it will help soem of you avoid making the same mistakes.

Bookkeeping for the small business

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 22:35:00 +0000

One thing every business needs to get the hang of is bookkeeping. For the uninitiated, bookkeeping is basically keeping track of all expenditure and income of your business. If you wish to keep control of your business then you need to be able to do this and so you need some method of recording all those transactions. This is the art of bookkeeping.

Years ago, double-entry bookkeeping was introduced, possibly as early as the 12th Century in the Islamic world. At the time of course, computers didn't exist (unless you believe in Aliens!) and so it was all done in written ledgers. Nowadays, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of software packages that promise to simplify your bookkeeping and believe you me, it needs simplifying!

Now, there are some free (open source) bookkeeping packages but most will cost you anything from a few pounds. However, more important than price is what you require from the software and what features it has. If your business is relatively straightforward (perhaps you are not VAT registered and have few customers but high value sales, or perhaps you are a consultant rather than buying and selling goods) then you won't need a software package that has tons of features and costs a pretty penny. However, if your business has a high volume of transactions involving lots of customers, products and suppliers, and you need to keep track of VAT, then your needs will be more sophisticated.

Another factor to take into account is who will do all the data-entry. Will you be doing it yourself or employing someone else to do it? If doing it yourself and you are not a computer expert, you will want something that is simple to use and hides all the complicated stuff behind the scenes. Chances are that if your needs are complex then you will probably employ someone with the requisite skills and they will be familiar with software packages like SAGE.

Another option for the small business is to go online. Software packages such as Kashflow are an ideal choice for the small business owner who is unfamiliar with bookkeeping software and can't afford to employ anyone to do their bookkeeping for them. Advantages of going online is that your data is available wherever you are as long as you have internet access. This is ideal if you use a laptop for running your business or move around and not always in the same geographical location.

Most online bookkeeping packages come with support and various features such as built-in reports and the ability to submit VAT Returns and the like from within the software. Most are reasonably priced and don't lock you into long contracts. Kashflow for instance has a fixed monthly fee and you can benefit from a free 60-day trial (no credit card details required). It also has a wide selection of reports to print or download.

Now I must declare a personal interest here, in that I am currently using Kashflow to manage my bookkeeping. I settled on Kashflow after trying various ways of managing the transactions in my business. The problem I had (and am still grappling with to some extent) was that I sell on eBay, Amazon, my own website and to the odd personal customer. The sales on eBay and my own site go through PayPal, and I then manually transfer money from PayPal to my business account. It gets complicated because PayPal and eBay both deduct fees. Also, if I purchase goods I usually pay from my PayPal account which, if there are insufficient funds in my PayPal account, they will also transfer money from my bank account. This makes it difficult to keep track of what money comes from where. As I import goods from abroad and also sell around the E.U. and elsewhere, I have to take account of import duty, VAT and currency conversions.

It was a nightmare trying to do this manually in a spreadsheet, even one put together by my accountant. Even in Kashflow it hasn't been easy but I am on a learning curve and not being an accountant I still find the principles of double-entry bookkeeping hard to get my head around. Kashflow does try it best to make this easier than it would otherwise be and at the moment I feel that over time I will get the hang of things. Support is free and there is a very active forum so there is plenty of help available. The fact that you can pay a bit extra and have Kashflow automatically import your PayPal transactions is what convinced me to go with it. You can also import your bank transactions in .csv format for free.

All in all, you have nothing to lose by taking advantage of the free 60-day trial and there is no need to hand over your credit card or bank details. Whether you stick with it after this period is up to you but you have nothing to lose by giving it a go.

YSlow provides useful information on your site

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 20:28:00 +0000

YSlow is a Firefox add-on from Yahoo Developer Network. It provides a way of analyzing your site and suggests ways you can improve the loading of your site. Now that Google pays more attention to how fast a site loads when ranking the site, it's even more important that you work on this aspect of your site's performance.

YSlow grades web pages based on one of three predefined sets of rules (or a user-defined set of rules). It will offer some suggestions for how to improve your page's performance, summarize the page's components, displays statistics about the page, and provides tools for performance analysis, including Smush.it™ and JSLint.

Once you have installed the add-on into Firefox and re-started your browser, you will see the YSlow icon at the foot of your browser window. When you click on this you will see the following:

After choosing the option to run either the latest version, a previous version, or one that takes account of your site being a small one (or blog) you then click the 'Run Test' button. After a short while, the add-on generates a report:

You will see that the page is given a grade (in this case its B - not bad) and an overall performance score (this page scored 82 out of 100).

In addition, you will see that there are various scores for each area of interest and tips on how to improve the performance of your page. you will see that some areas were graded A, whilst some were as low as F. Your overall score takes each individual score into account and if you want to improve your page's score then the first place to look at is your lowest scoring ones, i.e. where you scored F (or E if no F's).

So, you can see that YSlow is a useful too to check problem areas with your site. It's also interesting to check other web pages and compare their performance to yours. You will be surprised how poorly some sites do. Even Yahoo's own page about YSlow only scored a B (and 87%) when I tested it!

Useful tools for your website

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 11:32:00 +0000

Most businesses have a web-site and so it's important to know that your web-site is working properly. After all, if there is a problem with your site's potential visitors won't be able to find it and so can't become customers and your business will suffer. The problem is that it's difficult to know if your site is working properly just by typing it's url into a browser. It may come as a surprise to many but you might be able to see your site but it may be invisible to others in other countries. Reasons for this can be varied and it's quite a technical issue. However, you don't need to be a geek to know how your site is working, just the right tools. The good news is that there are lots of them available, for free.

My current favourite is http://internetsupervision.com/ where you can check to see if you site is available around the world. It's a handy way of checking if your site is available form seers around the world. Not only that, it will tell you have quickly your site loads, important when Google ranks sites partly on the speed at which they load.

The basic service is free and you can check your site numerous times manually. They also offer a fee service that includes the following:

• One HTTP monitored service (HTTPS not included)

• Loading headers only (no content)

• First 90 days: Checking every 15 minutes

• After 90 days: Checking every 24 hours

• Email notifications

• Fully upgradeable to any of the paid plans

Requirements:

1. Link to InternetSupervision from your website [get code]
2. Respond to one brief web-related survey per year.

Paid packages range from $2.95 per month to $24.50 per month, so there is something for everyone, whether you have one site or several.

There are plenty of other free services too on the web so you could always do a Google search for "web-site monitoring" or "network tools". Whichever tool(s) you use, it's important to check your site on a regular basis. Arguably, if your business depends on your site then you should sign up for an automatic service that will email you or send you an SMS so you can sort out any problems quickly.

Light at the end of the tunnel!

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 21:22:00 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Finally, after some minor hiccups I have successfully migrated to my new (dedicated) server with UKFast.net.

As I say, it didn't all go smoothly. For one thing, I needed to sort out the DNS settings for both the sites (www.newbeltane.com and www.bestcoolerprices.co.uk) so that they point to the right server. Having done my usual thing at the domain register and in my server's cpanel, I thought all I had to do was wait for the new settings to propagate themselves around the net and we would be away. But, it wasn't to be that simple. When I rang my new hosting company's support desk I discovered that as I was now on a dedicated server and not a managed server I was on my own, at least officially. However it was the middle of the night and I was feeling tired and fraught, and as I had only just received the server form the engineer I had some sympathy from the guy I was speaking with.

After some confusion over what I was trying to do (my tiredness didn't help) I managed to get him t understand my predicament and at that point he suggested that trying to handle it all in the cpanel was probably not the best approach and he suggested using SafeDNS. As it happens, they offer the service for free and after talking me through the steps we were away. All I needed to do now was to wait for 24-48 hours and all should be well.

Next task was to set up Wordpress on the server for both sites and again I hit a barrier. I discovered that neither Fantastico or Softaculous were installed with cpanel. This meant I would have my work cut out. I tried initially installing it need 'by hand' but it wouldn't work properly for some reason. Time to call support again. Only now the person I emailed responded that would need to purchase a support credit (£60 plus VAT for 1 hour's work!).

However, after much discussion on the phone and explaining that as I am paying for the cpanel (£30 pcm plus VAT so it's not cheap) I had expected it come fully configured and my experience was that on or both packages were installed by default. However, despite my protests of 'daylight robbery' it seemed I would have fork out the £60. I was not a happy bunny, I can say.

After making a call to my account manager (the guy who had sold me the dedicated server package for a not inconsiderable sum) I received an answer that was not the one was expecting but worked out a lot cheaper, i.e. free! I could install Softaculous for free myself. I visited http://www.softaculous.com/docs/Installing_Softaculous_in_cPanel and read how to do it, followed the instructions and it was easy peasey, so to speak. However, a word of warning. Wordpress doesn't come with the free version of Softaculous and you need to buy an annual license. Its only $24 a year per server but it's worth it as it means you get all 150 scripts and Wordpress is so much easier to install (and delete if need be).

Once I had done that, installing Wordpress was easy and I was starting to cheer up. However, there were still some hurdles left to over come but more on these in my next post.

Oh dear... no end to the misery of hosting!

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:32:00 +0000

Well, I had high hopes that my move from a reseller hosting account to my own VPS with WebhostUK.net would work out and that finally I could focus on getting my hosting business up and running. Sadly, it was not to be. As said in my earlier post the staff at WebhostingUK.net have been very friendly but despite their best efforts I have had no end of problems.

Here are just some:

• Site not visible by others in different locations around the world
• Wordpress 'fatal error: out of memory' errors
• Wordpress dashboard crashes
• Images failing to be loaded by the server
• 500 error messages (signifying a server issue)

I spent most of my time trying to resolve these issues, posting support tickets and trying to get the staff to understand exactly what was happening, replicate the problems and solve them. In spite of several staff trying and assuring me the problems had all been solved they just kept coming back.

As I was also trying to develop a website for a client at the time it was extremely frustrating to say the least.

In desperation I started looking around for another hosting company and in the end I have settled on UKFast. This time I avoided a VPS package and gone the whole hog and chosen a dedicated server. Hopefully this will avoid any issues with virtualisation. It's more expensive than a VPS but from a business perspective something that works is better than something that is cheaper but doesn't work. I managed to negotiate a good deal (a mix of a cheaper price and some extra features for free). They have won several awards and are used by the likes of HSBC and UKTV.

I am waiting for the engineer to setup my new server and once it is handed over I shall be able to configure my various accounts and packages. I will let you know how it goes. All need now is for confirmation that my existing account has been cancelled.

My experience of hosting reseller account

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 23:18:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

A while back I decided I'd jump on the web hosting reseller bandwagon. I looked around at several reseller accounts and in the end plumped for Heart Internet, I signed up for their reseller account at £29.99 pcm plus VAT. For that you basically could host unlimited sites with unlimited features (web space, bandwidth, email accounts and so on).

First thing I did once I signed up was to create an account for myself and transfer my web site across. This is my default site (www.newbeltane.com), and not my ecommerce site (hosted with BigCommerce). No problems there (at least not initially).

The next thing I did was to set up some web hosting packages, decide on features for each one and a price. I then had to set up another web site to sell my hosting packages. I had already registered a domain for this purpose (www.newbeltanetechmedia.com) Once this was set up (again on my Heart Internet hosting package) I then logged into my reseller account to set up the white label pages so that when people clicked on the links for any of the hosting packaged they would see my corporate identity and not that of Heart Internet. This is how most reseller accounts work. You can, of course, leave things so that folk soon realise that they are actually hosting their site with the same company as you yourself and this in essence, gives the game away that you are not an independent web hosting company but actually a reseller.

Whatever one thinks of the ethics of white label reseller accounts it is how most resellers work. Not everyone can afford to have their own real servers in a modern and expensive data centre and pay the enormous fees that it costs to have a direct connection to the network.

Once I had done all this I was ready to start marketing my web hosting services. Right away though I hit some major problems. Whenever I would log into my reseller account and tweak one thing or another (and there is a lot of tweaking to do in the early stages), I would get a lot of timeouts. This is where the page refuses to load and your browser instead gives you a blank page and error message. This would happen on a very regular basis and soon became most frustrating. I flagged it up with Heart Internet and they tried to resolve the issues. However, they couldn't and to cut a long story short, even after giving me 3 months for free, the situation did not improve.

I decided that I had instead to look elsewhere but the problem was, would I hit the same issue elsewhere? Could in fact the problem lie with my connection to the internet or my computer> Well, having tried on two different internet connections I was pretty sure the issue lay with Heart Internet. Now I know it did. How do I know this? Well, I decided that the normal reseller option was not for me and being a little uneasy about the ethics of being a reseller who goes down the white label route, i had decided to change tack somewhat.

Instead of being a reseller in the normal sense I decided to rent a Virtual Private Server (VPS) and host client's sites on this server. A VPS is basically a marketing term used by Internet hosting services to refer to a virtual machine for use exclusively by an individual customer of the service. The term is used to emphasize that the virtual machine, although running in software on the same physical computer as other customers' virtual machines, is functionally equivalent to a separate physical computer, is dedicated to the individual customer's needs, has the privacy of a separate physical computer, and can be configured to run as a server computer (i.e. to run server software). The term Virtual Dedicated Server or VDS is used less often for the same concept.

Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system and can be independently rebooted.
The practice of partitioning a single server so that it appears as multiple servers has long been common practice on mainframe computers and mid-range computers such as the IBM AS/400. It has become more prevalent with the development of virtualization software and technologies for microcomputers.

In my case, I decided to go with WebhostUK Limited. For £39 pcm (inc. VAT) I would have a VPS offering:

Ram - Guaranteed

384 MB

Ram - Burst

768 MB

Allocated - CPU

533 Mhz

Disk Space

30 GB

Bandwidth

300 GB / mo

IP's Available

Operating System

Centos 4.x

Free Control panel

Cpanel / Plesk

All in all, this struck me as a good deal and although Heart Internet's Reseller account gave me unlimited features, in reality, these are not actually unlimited (there is always a 'fair usage' clause). Also, they had not actually delivered on their promises and the account I had had not been usable, so no matter how great it looked on paper, in reality it was useless to me.

Now you may ask how I could be sure that my new account would be any better. Well, I had no guarantee and that's why I choose WebhostUK over some others, as they offered me a 30 day rolling contract without locking me into a long contract. there are some keen prices out there but when you dig a little deeper, you find that you need to sign up for two years to get that price.

As well as looking at the contract, I did some online searches for reviews and found a great site that does reviews of all sorts of things, including web hosting companies. The reviews are written by the site's visitors and so reflect the experiences of real individuals. Check out their review of WebhostUK here at http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews245701.html and you will see that score 4.0 out of 5, based on 13 reviews. Heart Internet by comparison scored only 3 out of 5 based on 85 reviews.

Now, to be clear, my experience is such that I would rate them just 1 out of 5 (the 1 is for their helpfulness in trying to resolve the issues I had and their friendly manner). However, some folk give them 5 out of 5 so my experience is far from typical. However, if I had come across the reviews before I signed up i have to say I would have avoided Heart Internet. I guess my affection for Suzi Perry of The Gadget Show clouded my judgment!

Another thing I dd before signing up with WebhostUK was to install YSlow, an extension for Firefox. This allows you to check how fast a site loads and so gives an indication of any issues there might be, with a detailed analysis available for things like JavaScript and style sheets. Bearing in mind that Google places a great deal of emphasis now on how quickly sites load, you want your site to be on a fast server. Interestingly, when you check the default page for Heart Internet it scores 80% (Grade B) but my site hosted by them scored only @ 60% (Grade E). However, now it scores 79% (Grade C).

Finally, I have to say that the staff at WebhostUK have been amazing and extremely helpful. They even send you the transcript of any chat you have with them by email! Also, setting up and configuring your VPS is more complicated than setting up a normal reseller account and so I needed to ask lots of questions. Each time they responded quickly and were very helpful so I can't fault their customer service.

I future posts I'll go through in more detail my experience of setting up my VPS and share any tips along the way. In the meantime, if you are interested in checking out WebhostUk and their services, why not pop along to http://www.webhosting.uk.net

The steep learning curve that is Google AdWords

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

If you have been reading this blog since the start then you will know that I sell electronic goods (mainly computer related ones such as the Wi-Fire). I do so mainly through my own online store (hosted by BigCommerce), although I also have an eBay Store and an Amazon Store.

Marketing is mainly via Google AdWords though I have dabbled with eBay's version (initially known as AdCommerce). Now as anyone who has ever run a Google AdWords campaign for the first time, it is fiendishly complicated and enough to turn the most sane person into a mindless and emotional wreck. It's not just the steep learning curve of doing it yourself, it's also the veritable plethora of 'experts' out there offering to make it all simple and effective, all for a King's ransom of course.

So I did what a lot of people do and read a lot, especially blogs and online articles, especially Google's own. In addition I dabbled with running my own campaigns and tweaking them in an effort to improve my click through rate (CTR) and conversion rate, whilst keeping the cost of each click as low as possible.

Now, it doesn't take a genius to realise that I made many mistakes. Expensive ones too. However, I have certainly learned a lot and improved my performance. In the early days I was seeing CTR's in the region of 0.1 - 0.5% (yes that low). However, by the end (I recently finished my last campaign) I was seeing CTR's in the region of 2.25% on some keywords. (I saw CTR's at times of up to 100% on some keywords but I am not counting those as their total impact was minimal due to very low number of clicks).

As to what I learnt and how this improved my performance, here it is for what it's worth.

I kept search and content campaigns separate.
I only had 2 adverts per ad group and only 2 keywords per ad at the start.
After each keyword has reached at least 100 impressions I stopped the worst performing one and added some more.
Once a keyword passed the 100 impressions level I kept only the best performing ones and paused the rest, adding new keywords again and repeating the experiment.
Likewise with adverts in an ad group, I would check which was the best performing one and pause the other. I would then duplicate the winner and tweak it slightly and wait and see whether this improved or worsened it's performance. Once it was obvious which was the better ad I repeated the process, all the time trying to up the performance of each ad group and ad.
I kept my budget low initially, at about £10 a day, only increasing it to about £15 a day once my CTR starting climbing.

In addition, I monitored my site in Google Analytics for its performance as regards ecommerce, having previously set up sales as one of my goals.

I am no way an expert but I think I have learnt some valuable lessons and so I wanted to share them here. I feel that come my next campaign I have a much better idea of what to do and that my limited funds will go that much further. I intend to post later about my experience with Google Analytics, once I get the hang of setting up conversion tracking.

Twitter for Business - Twitter's Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 18:46:00 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter is fast becoming an essential tool for business. So, if you are a complete newcomer to Twitter or have wondered how to use it for boosting your business, where do you start? Well, the first port of call should be Twitter itself. They even have a 101 guide for getting the most out of Twitter for business. Check it out at http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/

There you will find example of businesses that have used Twitter to their advantage and some of these are quite creative. For example, when people working in the Empire State Building twittered that they were craving ice cream delivery, New York local chain Tasti D Lite was there to listen and meet their need.

There are plenty of tips on how to use Twitter for your business and what constitutes best practice so you don't turn your customers away or fail to get any in the first place! You can even download the guide from Twitter 1001 - download

That way you can refer back to the guide or even share it with your colleagues or business partners.

Perils of Microstock Photography

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:03:00 +0000

Once you start your own business you soon realise that you are going to need photographs, whether for use on your web site or in publicity, such as flyers, brochures and print advertising. Now, many businesses do not have huge advertising budgets and let's face it, hiring a photographer to shoot some pictures every time you want to use some photographs in your publicity is going to be expensive. So, what does the average company do (and not so average, as we shall see)? They turn to stock photography.

Now, a decade or so ago, stock photography was expensive but not as expensive as hiring a photographer (along with assistant, make-up artist etc) to do the shoot. That's why stock photography became a multi-million pound business and it still is. However, along came micro-stock. Now what exactly is micro-stock? Basically, with the advent of very clever cameras that almost guarantee a 'perfect picture' there has been a veritable explosion in the quantity and quality of images available.

This has led to non-professional photographers entering the market, previously the preserve of photographers who have spent years refining their art and using expensive camera equipment (usually costing in the thousands of pounds, particularly medium and large format - think Hasselblads). Now, with the technological improvements brought about by digital photography its much cheaper to to obtain hi-res images and this has led to thousands of people thinking they can be a stock photographer or make some money from the thousands of digital files now sitting on their computer hard drives.

Now, as a photographer who has been taking images for several decades and who has dabbled in the field of stock photography, I well remember having to cart around my portfolio to stock libraries as the internet was very slow and scanned slides were huge, too huge to send via the net. This put off most folk from even trying to become a stock photographer, that and the fact you often had to submit a minimum of hundreds of high quality images to even be considered by the stock library.

Today though you can upload images over your high speed broadband connection without leaving the comfort of your own home quite easily. Also, the submission process is relatively anonymous, no waiting in reception for your appointment with an art editor! In addition, you can submit just one image or several, no need to have hundreds. As well as this, digital photography and the internet go together perfectly - no more hours spent scanning slides, cleaning them up in Photoshop and sharpening them etc.

Granted, micro-stock pays little per image (often mere pennies) but the average person uploading to a micro-stock site is very happy to earn anything. They are not usually a professional photographer and there livelihood doesn't depend on them earning thousands from their images. So, micro-stock sites have flourished and they market themselves on the low price of the images they have available. Now this brings us to a very important point, namely that most micro-stock sites offer royalty free images without what are called 'rights management'.

What does this mean? Simply put, it means that anyone can download the same image and use it for whatever purpose they wish (except re-selling the actual image) and as often as they wish. So for example, several companies can pay a small fee (usually less than £1 an image) and use the same image all over the place, be it the web or in print. Does this really matter you might ask? Well, possibly not if you a low profile company and the image(s) are going to be used in a flyer that only a few hundred or few thousand customers are going to ever see. However, remember that with the web (you did after all download the image from a micro-stock web site) its quite possible to see the same image used on lots of sites, some not very reputable ones at that.

Does this actually happen you might ask? Well yes. In one example, the Hilton Hotels chain used a micro-stock image on its main site of a woman with a headset (think receptionist) on its 'About Us' page. Nothing unusual about that you might say. Until you realise that the very same image has been used elsewhere, in particular by on site selling Viagra over the internet! Now do you see the problem?

So, the moral of the story is that if you are happy to use images that anyone else can and is likely to use, be prepared for some unfortunate associations to be made between your business and other less salubrious ones!

If you would like to read more about this subject, check out this excellent article on Photographers Direct (not a micro-stock site!)

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 10:54:00 +0000

BigCommerce: The Easiest Way to Sell Online

I Rate BigCommerce 5 out of 5 Stars

Would You Like to Sell Online?
With BigCommerce anyone can quickly and easily create their own online store without any technical experience. Unique features such as Drag & Drop Design Mode make it easy to completely customize the look and layout of your store using just your mouse. BigCommerce has built-in search engine optimization features which help your online store rank at the top of all major search engines including Google and Yahoo.

BigCommerce Featured Store: HarrisLevy.com

"BigCommerce has been fantastic in terms of usability and features. It enabled us to design and develop a custom site that embodies the history and physical store in New York. The order system makes it easy for staff to process and ship orders out and keep track of what's going on."

- Jeff Kastning, HarrisLevy.com
Voted #1, Find Out Why!
Here's why over 8,956 successful online retailers have chosen BigCommerce:

It's very easy to customize

Designers have full access to HTML and CSS via FTP, as well as the QuickEdit and diff tools. Business owners can choose from over 50 store designs and use the Drag & Drop Design Mode to customize the layout of their store.
Sell products online, no learning curve

It couldn't be easier to sell products online with BigCommerce. The getting started wizard helps you get your store up fast and there are dozens of step-by-step videos if you get stuck.
Our software is optimized by SEO experts

BigCommerce is the only ecommerce software reviewed by the world's #1 SEO guru Aaron Wall. Aaron's feedback was incorporated into the software, meaning you've got a better chance of outranking your competitors on Google.
Reports to make you more money

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Pitfalls of online marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:58:00 +0000

Image by larryosan via Flickr

When you decide to take the plunge in the maelstrom of online marketing you soon discover that the waters are infested with plenty of sharks! There are lots of people online offering you every kind of 'sure-fire' 'get rich' scheme or system, simply guaranteed to earn you a fortune whilst you sleep!

Of course, the truth is is completely different. So, before you take the plunge be sure to ask yourself a few questions:

1. What are other people saying about the individuals making the claims - check on Google and elsewhere but be sure to check out sites that aren't just repeating the claims. Many of these schemes are like multi-level marketing scams and so there are lots of folk promoting the schemes hoping to earn referral revenues of the back of them.

2. Also, do they have a proper business address and contact details? A genuine business will have these displayed on their site. Do a search in business directories for them and you can check out UK companies on the Companies House website. Basic searches are free so you can find out of the company is real and some basic information about it.

3. Check them out on WHOIS to see who owns the web domain as it will list some contact info. Does this match up to what is displayed on their site?

4. What are they actually claiming - and are they asking you to pay a fee for their product (DVD's, eBooks or even 'turn-key' solutions). Usually, the claims will be extravagant, offer lots of resources for free or at greatly reduced prices, and have lots of pop-ups when you try to close the page in your browser. All these shout out 'STAY AWAY', so move on and avoid them in future.

So, how do you find genuine online marketing help and advice? Well, like anything worth having you pays your money and get what you paid for. Nothing worth having is going to be free in the world of business. So, you will have to pay and the question is 'what will I get for my money?'. Be sure that you will get something worth having before handing over precious cash that your business needs.

One way to find advice and service worth paying for is to check out reputable sites such as The Guardian and The Times, as well as business sites such as Business Link or Federation of Small Business. Look for articles on marketing companies and then check out their web sites (usually listed in the article). Also, visit your local library and check out business directories or visit your local Business Link centre.

Another way is to network with other local businesses and ask them who they recommend. Certainly, you need to do lots of research before leaping in and spending hard-earned cash on engaging an online marketing company or signing up for some scheme you came across on the web.

Your first business web site

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 10:42:00 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Every business needs a website. Gone are the days when you could get by without one and so the question is, where do you begin? Now most new businesses don't have a big budget for a website unless the web is their business. So, how can you get a great web site on the cheap without paying thousands out to a web design agency or hiring your very own web developer?

Well, let's start with the basics first. Before you can have your own web site you need a hosting package (you can of course go with one of the many 'free' web site deals around but they're not really ideal and you will eventually outgrow them). You will also need at least one domain name. Lets take them in turn:

Hosting packages:

Web space - you will need a package that offers a decent amount of web space (100MB is good for starters and you can always add additional space for a nominal fee).
You should also have a decent amount of bandwidth available (usually expressed as MB or GB of traffic per month) and I would say that 1GB/month is the minimum for a business web site.
Database - MySQL is popular and you should make sure you have at least one in your package. You will need it for most business web sites, especially if you a Content Management System (such as Wordpress or Drupal or Joomla).
Reliability - Look for a guarantee on uptime and avoid anything that is less than 99%.
CGI Scripts - look for one that allows you to install scripts and comes with easy installers for the popular packages such as Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal.
Stats package - most packages come with the option to download raw server stats but ideally you want one that offers a more graphical way of looking at your stats, such as AWStats. This will help you to see who is visiting your site, where they came from, who referred them, which pages they look at and how long for.

Domain names:

You should register a domain name with your business name in but this should not be the domain that you use for your actual site... I'll explain why in a minute.
You should also register at least one domain name that contains a keyword for your business (see below).
If you are in the UK its important to register a co.uk and probably the .com version too. You may want to register the .info and .biz variants too, if only to stop others registering them and confusing potential customers.
I recommend using the same company to hold all your domains so that its easier for you to manage them, rather than registering through a variety of companies.

Now, a word or two about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Now, I am no expert but have picked up one or two tips along the way, usually the hard way. One of the most important aspects to SEO are keywords. Keywords are used by Google to decide where you page should rank in its search results. Let's say that you sell houses (i.e. you are an estate agency). When thinking of what keywords you would use on your site you would of course include 'house', 'flat', 'apartment' etc amongst them. You would also want to include 'buy' and 'sell', maybe 'rent' too if you do also advertise properties to rent. Now, if you are an estate agency and none of these keywords appear in your site then its unlikely that anyone will find your site! So, think about what your key business activities and objectives are and choose relevant keywords.

The whole area of SEO is huge and even keywords are a complex area and not easy to get right. Trial and error will be required. Some research tools are available for free, king amongst them is Google's Keyword Tool, but there are others (just Google 'keyword tools'). There are hundreds, possibly thousands of companies selling their services as SEO experts but they will charge you for their services. Expect to pay around £200 a month minimum! For now, I recommend reading as widely as possible (there are plenty of free articles on the web and Google has lots of free resources). Do this before you spend a penny on advice.

Finally (for this article) lets talk about choosing your actual domain. I said earlier you should choose at least one doamin that includes your company name but not to use this as your 'public; url. What do I mean and why? Well let's say your company name is Ace Estate Agents. You would try and register this as one of your domains, so www.aceestateagency.co.uk or www.aceestateagents.co.uk would be your starting point. You may want to look at www.ace-estate-agents.co.uk and www.ace-estate-agency-co.uk too. You may feel the latter ones are easier to read but without proper research its almost impossible to tell. Cheaper to register both variants than make the wrong choice in my view.
However, these may not be the best domain names for your site. Remember that you want keywords relevant to your business on your site? Well, it so happens that your domain name is an important factor in how Google ranks your site, so ideally you want a keyword in your domain, Now, estate agent and estate agency are indeed keywords for our example business so we could leave it at that. However, there are zillions of estate agencies on the web. A quick Google search shows over 81 million sites for the search 'estate agents' and 120 million for 'estate agency'.

So what about other keywords? Well, most estate agents cover a specific market, either geographically or type of property. Let's say our example company sells and rents property in London. A quick search for the keywords 'London property' produces over 93 million hits so we can see that its too general. However, lets say that the company is in the market for premium properties worth over £1 million. Searching for 'Premium London property' produces just under 12 million hots, much better. So, using those keywords would rank you higher on Google when people search for properties worth over £1 million in the London area. In this example you would therefore want to look at domain names like www.premiumlondonproperties.co.uk or www.premium-london-properties.co.uk. You would then use this domain as your public url and have all you other registered domains for this business point to that one. This means that when someone searches for estate agents in general your general domains would appear in the search results but if they click on the link on Google's pages it would direct them to your public url, in this case, say, www.premium-london-proprties.co.uk. If they are indeed looking for a premium property in the London area, great. You got them to your site even though they didn't do a specific search for premium London properties. If they are instead looking for properties outside London, it's still of some benefit to you, especially if you AdSense on your site to direct traffic to other sites that aren't your direct competitors, such as sites that specialise in property outside of London. In that way you may end up generating some income for visitors who don't come to you for premium property in London.

Of course, your preferred domain names may already be taken, so you need to think creatively and to think carefully about your target market and your key business activities and objectives when choosing your keywords.

So, to summarise; you need to register at least one domain and to find your self a hosting package that meets your needs for the least cost. Be sure to check industry magazines and online for an idea of the best hosting companies around. .Net magazine publishes a directory of hosting companies and often does reviews too.

Is the recovery in the UK economy about to hit the buffers?

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:19:00 +0000

Today the news was full of doom and gloom as commentators speculated on the likelihood of a so-called 'double dip' in the economy. Certainly didn't help to cheer one up, especially as here in Colchester the heavens opened up and we saw more rain in a few hours than the whole of July (at least it seemed like that - not seen the official figures yet but if I was a betting man I'd lay a fiver on it).

So, will house prices fall, will inflation rise, will unemployment rise, will the pound crash against the dollar and the euro, will banks loosen the restraints on lending to businesses? So many uncertainties that its enough to make a grown man tremble. However, if you are a small businessman or businesswoman then its important to have a positive attitude. After all, the entrepreneurial spirit means taking risks when others run for the bunkers and hunker down until the storm clouds have passed.

If you are in business and you are not running a company of thousands of employees then you are crucial to the economy and any hope of meaningful recovery. After all, businesses of less than 20 employees make up about 97% of firms in the UK. In fact 95% of firms employ less than 5 people. 3 million are sole proprietors and 462,000 are partnerships. Small firms account for over 50% of the economic activity in the UK. Amazingly, over 2 million people run their businesses from home - so I guess I am one in 2 million!

So, its down to us folks to get things working and get this country back onto its feet. Question is, are we up to and what is the government doing to help us?

Firstly, lets take a look at that second part. The new government's first budget introduced some good news for small enterprises. The move to reduce the Small Companies Tax Rate to 20 per cent is welcomed and will help over 850,000 small firms. The Government also announced it will extend the Enterprise Finance Guarantee which was introduced following calls from the Federation of Small Businesses and will help many small firms who have problems in obtaining credit.

However, there were also some negative measures. The rise in VAT to 20% will hit business and is likely to hit many small businesses, especially those in the high street. In my view there will be a rush to the stores in the run-up to Christmas and in the first three days of the New Year as a result of the rise coming in on 4 Jan 2011. After that I reckon there will be a slump in demand. How long that lasts depends on other things such as consumer confidence. If job losses through the proposed cuts in the public sector start to bite and if house prices fall we may well see a real slump happen.

As to whether the small business sector is up to the task of turning things around, I personally believe that the sector has become better than ever at finding where the opportunities lie and of taking advantage of every opportunity, whether or not the government of the day helps or gets in the way. With the internet its much easier to find opportunities and to grow your business. Being creative is very important and being prepared to reach out to others across the globe, finding partners when maybe years ago, before the internet, it was much harder to this.Then you had to travel more and meet possible partners. Now you can do more from your desk and using the internet its possible to sign contracts without even picking up a phone. That's how I started my business of and its how I do most of my business, both in terms of finding partners and in terms of dealing with customers.

Remember, your future is in your own hands (as much as its anyone's) and the opportunities are there, you just need to find them and grasp them with all you might. No-one is going to hand things on a plate to you, so rise up and accept the challenge.

Tools to help you Business Grow

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:28:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

When you first start out in business, unless you are already wealthy you are probably short of cash. You may have some finance form the bank or other sources but if you are selling a physical product then you probably have lots of things to spend that money on, such as stock.

As a result, you may find funds a little tight for other things such as software, a computer and related hardware. So what options are there?

Firstly, lets take a look at most of the tools every business will need:

Telephone & Fax Machine - mobile will do but a fixed line is handy as some customers may not like ringing a mobile number. A fixed line number seems more trustworthy to many. Also, if you want a real fax machine (as averse to a 'virtual fax number') then you really need a fixed line, though you could share the same line for broadband, phone and fax by using VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) for the fax. BT offer this service with their Business Broadband option.
Computer with broadband connection - an essential item these days, especially f you are going to have a web-site and use email. Yes you can get email on your phone but its not as easy to write an email on your phone as it is on a normal screen! Laptops have the advantage that you can take them with you on business trips or when visiting clients. Desktops tend to be cheaper for the same features and power. Of course, if you have a computer then you will need other things like printer, back-up drive and monitor etc.
Office - you may work from home but you still need some dedicated office space, even if it's just as spare room or the garden shed! you need to be organised and have room for files, documents and if you sell stuff too, stock.
Stationery - such as letterhead, invoices, files, writing materials, paper and inks or toner for your printer.
Desk and comfortable chair (2 or more if you see clients at your office). Comfortable is very important and its worth paying a lot of attention to the ergonomics of your working environment - not just chair, desk height, monitor position, keyboard and mouse but also light and air, as well as heating. You want to be as alert and comfortable as possible when working. Poor environment can lead to health issues and tiredness.
Vehicle - not essential if you don't deliver anything to clients and you don't need to pick things up. You can always use public transport or taxis if you need to get from A to B and back. It's also much greener. However, if you do need one you need to weigh up the various features and costs. A family car may do for the occasional trip with stock but if you regularly need to transport physical items then a van may be more appropriate and if you are VAT registered you will be able to off-set the VAT. Also, leasing is an option for a business. A compromise may be an estate car which can double up for family and business use, though the accounting side gets complicated. This brings us to the next topic.
Accountant - every business needs an accountant. I recommend finding one before you even start your business in fact. They can help you decide what kind of business set-up is right for you (sole trader, partnership or limited company). They can even register everything for you, advise you about matters such as VAT, PAYE (if you employ anyone) and even register your company with Companies House if you decide to set up a limited company. They can advise you too about what software to use and may even have put together a spreadsheet you can use when first starting out that calculates things like your profit (or loss) at any given point in time. Some accountants are specialist so look for one that specialises in your sort of business.

These then are most of the essentials. If I have missed any out drop me a comment and I will add it to the list. Now, moving onto ways in which you can save money in these different areas.

Telephone and fax - when starting out its tempting to spend lots of money on gadgets. believe me, unless your business revolves around being on the phone all day or sending out hundreds of faxes a week then you just need the basic phone and fax machine. Also, check if you provider has any deals. if you have an existing phone line then you may find that they will install an extra line for business use free of charge and may even offer money off your broadband if you take all three as a package. Remember, you don't need to have a specific business package or contract. You can just add it to your household one and then claim just the business ones as a business expense. As long as you can show the cost separately, then the tax man will be happy.
Computer equipment - again, same rule applies. Don't go overboard. A basic computer and monitor with cheap laser will suffice in the early days. Only if you are somebody like a graphic designer or a photographer will you need a more featured model. You can save hundreds of pounds here by buying something that is sufficient for the use you will make of it and not getting the latest whizz-bang PC your teenage son would drool over to play computer games!
Working from home has its advantages and disadvantages - its certainly cheaper than renting business premises but if you need storage beyond the garden shed or garage amount of space, r employ people, then working form home won't cut it. Sure you can bring work home but beware the pitfall of not keeping work and home lives separate. We all need a proper work-life balance to keep our sanity. If you need to rent then look for places with short leases so you aren't locked into expensive long-term contracts. Also, check your local Business Link centre and see what deals are available for new businesses. Often the government or local authority will offer cheap office space or rent-free periods to encourage local enterprise. There may a local scheme where you hot desk and only pay a nominal fee to rent access to an office, photocopier, WiFi network and meeting rooms, paying only for the time you actually use the facilities. These are great if you spend most of your time out visiting clients and are able to work from home some of the time.
Stationery etc - again, the cheap brand of paper will do for the fax machine and the printer. Only use more expensive paper when its essential, say in preparing brochures in-house or printing photographs for clients. Places like Staples are a good place to buy, or order online for more savings still. Saves time and petrol too.
Office furniture can be horribly expensive - try second-hand when first starting out. Only if you need to impress clients should you consider buying anything but budget. The only thing is, make sure that your chair is comfortable if you want to avoid back problems etc. You can still buy second-hand and in fact, this is a good way to get a higher specification for the same price as new or less. Buy in sales too, as places like Staples often have sales with big discounts when product lines are changing. Also, if you buy everything at once when setting up form a place like Staples, but open a business account at the same time, you will usually get 10% or 15% your first purchase!
Vehicle - if you can't afford a new vehicle then buy one that's a couple of years old from a reputable dealer and save on the depreciation. Another option is leasing which means you save your capital for other things like stock. It can be tax efficient too.
Accountant - relying on personal recommendation is more important than just going for the cheapest price in my opinion. It will work out cheaper in the long run. Also, if you can find one that is familiar with your type of business that will also prove beneficial and there may other pluses too, such as more knowledgeable accountants familiar with your business may know of ways you can save money and of schemes that benefit your business.

Finally, I would encourage you to look at open source software rather than expensive software. For your word-processing and spreadsheet needs look at OpenOffice. For graphics software or web design software, check out sites such as www.download.com for software that is free for your particular platform. You can also get great software for free on computer magazines, especially the ones that come with a DVD full of free software. You can also benefit from upgrade deals that came with the magazines and save money that way. Another way to make big savings, especially if you have an Apple Mac, is to watch out for sales of bundles. MacHeist is a well-known one and MacUpdate also run them. keep you eye on the web and sign up for their RRS feeds.

That's all for now. I hope to cover software tools in more depth is another post.

Great resources online for finding postcodes of foreign countries

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:57:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

One thing that is a necessity when developing your website if you sell goods and ship abroad is testing the shipping options on your site, along with the shopping cart. Now shopping carts are quite complicated so I will leave them for another day. Also, if you use a turn-key solution (such as BigCommerce like I do) then the developers should have the basics pretty much sorted. If you use PayPal checkout on your site then they have done a great job of getting it work out of the box. If, however, you use a shopping cart by a small developer then you may find that there are bugs (as I did with Cartloom on my original site). Testing is very important in that situation.

However, shipping options usually come as optional components and you usually need to do some configuration to get them working just right. The big players (such as Royal Mail, FedEx and UPS) provide various API for you to add to your shipping options. For example, within the configuration for your BigCommerce store you can add various shipping methods. Now, as I am a UK company I use Royal Mail by default. I have been running my web-site for several months now and had no problems, until just the other day. A customer wanted to order two Wi-Fires but every time they tried to choose the shipping option, they got an error message saying it wasn't possible to ship to their destination. Where are they... no not some obscure country of the former Soviet Union. Nope, they live in Sweden. So, when they emailed me (big relief as they could have just gone elsewhere and I'd be none the wiser), I logged into my site and tried to buy something and ship it to Sweden. Yep, there was indeed an issue.

I tried a couple of countries, including Norway and the same problem came up. I tried changing the settings to calculate shipping based on the states within each country... still no joy. I even went and signed up for FedEx's web services (I already have an account) so I could add them as a shipping option. I went back and tried with shipping via FedEx and still no joy for Sweden. So, as I am no developer, I did three things:

1. I emailed the customer and agreed to send her an invoice via PayPal and for her trouble I would ship for free. She agreed and that's what I did. One very happy customer. I, however, was still unhappy as my site is supposed to handle all of this with no problem!

2. I submitted a support ticket to FedEx about the error messages I was getting.

3. I submitted a support ticket to BigCommerce outlining the problems I was having.

Now, to be totally honest I wasn't exactly impressed with the response to my support tickets. FedEx simply confirmed the error message I was getting and suggested I get in touch with BigCommerce. BigCommerce, for their part said.... nothing, nada, zilch. For more than 48 hours I had no response.

Once they did get in touch they initially did the same as FedEx and simply confirmed what I already knew. I therefore replied that I was a somewhat unhappy bunny and that as I ship to Europe I needed the shipping options to allow me to just that. They then went and looked deeper, did some tweaking and sorted the problem out as far as Royal Mail goes (at least for Sweden and a few other countries I have tested that all now work). As for FedEx as an option, still no joy so I have now deleted that option from my store.

In reality, although some customers may have liked FedEx as an option, I find Royal Mail is invariably cheaper for most destinations.

So, the title to this post talks about postcodes so why have I been prattling on about my trials and tribulations with shipping options. Well, there is a reason. As I said, its important to test things out to make sure they work as intended. However, when you test the shipping options out (either in BigCommerce or on the FedEx site) they ask you for a postcode (ZIP code in the US). Well, I am British and I know how postcodes are formatted here but for Sweden or Norway or anywhere else almost I am just guessing. So, where can you find a postcode for say Bergen in Norway? Well, you could do one of two things... use an address of a previous customer. But what if you don't have any customers from Norway? The second option is to use Google and find sites that provide the postcodes. Now, usually each country will have an official site that does this. For Norway this would be http://epab.posten.no/Engelsk/. this site is an great example of how every country should do it. Simply type in the first letter of the street name and it comes up with a list of streets in Norway starting with that letter and their postcodes. How cool is that!

For Switzerland and Liechtenstein try https://match.postmail.ch/match_zip?SIT_ID=5&SPRCDE=4
You can even download a pdf that explains how all the postcodes are structured. In addition you can download various data files. The postcode index MAT[CH]zip contains all postcodes in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein that are valid for addressing purposes. It is generated in various forms. This service is free of charge.

Using these resources its possible to test your shipping options with real postcode data and so be sure you are getting the right responses. All we need now is someone to create a site listing all the official sites that provide postcode data!

Small Businesses will lead the UK out of recession

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:03:00 +0000

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Companies House registered a growth in new businesses of 10 per cent to 362,300 in 2009/10, up from 330,100 in 2008/9. This compares with the previous years - 2007/8 company incorporations fell by 17 per cent to 372,000 in 2007/8, followed by a drop of 11 per cent to 330,000 in 2008/9.The emergency budget's changes to corporation tax should encourage entrepreneurship further. The 1 per cent reduction in corporation tax to 20 per cent for small firms and the threshold for entrepreneurs’ relief on capital gains tax rising from £2 million to £5 million can only help the growth of small businesses and is to be welcomed.

However, small businesses have not welcomed the planned increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20%. On average its estimated that the change will cost small businesses as much as £1,500 to make the administrative changes. It is also bound to put some consumers off making large purchases once its introduced, though expect to see a surge in sales in the run-up to Christmas as shoppers seek to beat the rise.

One other possible piece of good new is that the Business Secretary Vince Cable has announced the first phase of his plan to curb ‘excessive regulation’ of businesses earlier this year. If the coalition government keeps to its promises on this it may help to reduce the burden of regulation on small businesses in particular.

Free Business Advice Available Online

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:13:00 +0000

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For the small business or novice entrepreneur, finances are usually rather tight and you have to watch every pound that you spend on training and advice. So, where can you get high quality advice about matters related to your business? Well, although its often said that there are no 'free lunches', the internet does provide numerous free resources for your business.

One great source of free advice that is also high quality is podcasts. Now iTunes is the king of podcasts, so that's a great place to start. If you visit the iTunes site you will not only find great business-related podcasts in the general podcast area but there is also something called iTunes U. This stands for iTunes University and here you will find dozens of universities from around the world sharing course materiel, including lectures for free. A wide variety of subjects er covered, including business, finance and marketing. Example podcasts would be "Building a Business" by Oxford University. This is a series of audio podcasts covering good business practice basics and although has a science entrepreneurship focus, it has much that is relevant to general business practice.

Another example is "Web 2.0 Marketing Communications" by HEC Paris. This offers an introduction to the changing practice of marketing communications and covers word of mouth marketing, buzz marketing, social networking marketing, blogging and podcasting.

So why not check them out and see what is of interest to you. After all its free and comes from some of the best universities in the world!

Progress so far...

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:56:00 +0000

Image by newbeltane via Flickr

Well, its been an interesting month or so as regards the progress of our business (www.newbeltanetechmedia.co.uk) and I thought I'd share some of the things that have been happening and that I have learnt along the way.

Every business needs to market itself in order to find customers: marketing leads to customers leads to sales leads to profits. That's the theory, but how to make it happen in reality? Now, I have to say a bit about my background here, in order to make a point or two, and I hope it will be relevant.

Having worked in the non-profit sector for many years I have had to engage in marketing, promoting the work of the charities I have been employed by. Our customers were not just the people we provided services for, but also other stake-holders such as supporters, donors, statutory bodies, grant-making Trusts and local businesses. Each one of these expected and required different kinds of information and levels of detail. Some of this we provided in application forms for grants, some in our annual reports and other publicity material, some via our web-site and some in face to face meetings where we pitched for support.

I did once study for my Certificate in Management Studies (and passed!) at the City College in Norwich, but the course wasn't just about marketing.

Now, I wasn't trained as a marketing professional and as with many charities (at least here in the UK), I learnt "on the job" and did the best I could through networking, the odd course and by seeing what worked and what didn't. Sometimes we paid professionals to help us (such as in designing our annual reports) but mostly we did it "in-house". As you can imagine, sometimes it worked, sometimes it failed. Trouble is, we never had the time (or skills) to work out why.

This is perhaps the biggest problem facing the small business or novice entrepreneur - the lack of time. We are so busy trying to get our business off the ground that we lack time to sit back and take a strategic view and look at what works and why. So, you might ask, how do we do it? Well, we could make more time, by not doing things that are not really necessary and which we instinctively know contribute little to the business. We can work more efficiently by streamlining processes in our business and we can make sure our employers (and any contractors we engage) work as efficiently as possible when working for us.

So, what's been happening with marketing as regards our business? Firstly, I decided to start again from scratch. Almost from day one I had used online marketing to try and garner customers and grow sales and it had worked. Very quickly sales went from a handful to around 60 a month of our main product, the hField Wi-Fire High Gain WiFi Adapter. Not a huge number but nevertheless significant. The picture, from a marketing point of view, was complicated however.

I had originally started off with selling via my personal eBay account and a self-designed web-site on my own domain (www.newbeltane.com). The web-site used a shopping cart that was a Rapidweaver plug-in (Cartloom) and there were problems with it. One was the design; basically it didn't work from the customers point of view and secondly the plug-in couldn't cope with discount codes (it was supposed to but the developers didn't seem to understand the problem and didn't resolve it - big problem!).

So, I made the leap to BigCommerce for my online store and also to becoming a business seller on eBay with an eBay store. I also began using Google AdWords and eBay's own version of AdWords - AdCommerce. Both of these brought in significant visitors to both my eBay store and my BigCommerce store and that's how sales increased to around 60 a month of the Wi-Fire and a smaller number of sales of other products. However, it was starting to cost me, around £250 a month and I needed to either get sales up significantly or reduce my online marketing spend. Ideally, both!

So, I took the step of stopping all online campaigns with AdWords and AdCommerce to see what happened. Guess what, sales dropped significantly to around 30 (a 50% fall). However, my marketing spend also dropped to zero so the effects on profits was positive. The exact impact will be something I will look at in more detail at a later date.

So, what next? Well, having read up on online marketing strategies and looked at some detail at SEO and talked to an SEO agency I have come to some conclusions:

It's important to understand what works and what doesn't when it comes to online ads - you need to test different keywords compare conversion rates
You need to use negative keywords to improve your click-through and conversion rates
You need to focus on your most profitable product(s) and market them
You need to constantly be learning from others - read widely on the web (it's free!) and test, test and test again
Look at your marketing - does it talk about features rather than benefits? If so, replace text that does so with text that talks about benefits - how will your product or service benefit your customers?

That's it for today folks. I will share more soon about other lessons I have learnt and how I have changed my marketing strategy and its impact on my business.

Store on BigCommerce is doing well!

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:38:00 +0000

Since I moved over to BigCommerce I have been very pleased with its performance. As you can see from the snapshot above, revenue, orders and visitors have been showing a healthy growth. These figures compare May to April, but its important to realise that although April was a full month, the figures for May cover only the first 19 days. This means that the figures are even better than they look (assuming of course I continue to see visitors and orders in the rest of the month).

Speaking with a local SEO agency, it seems my conversion rate is above the norm, which they put at 2.2%. This is in line with what I have read elsewhere (2.0 - 2.5%). Obviously, I am starting from a low level as the store has only been live about two months, but its a healthy start. On the whole, I am very happy with progress so far and I intend to build on this early success. The question is, of course, how to do this?

Looking back at my experience so far I have learned some valuable lessons which I wish to pass on:

The design and the layout of your store is important. My original store (designed by myself in Rapidweaver) looked great but it had some weaknesses - namely it forced visitors to scroll down to check out the product range and there were issues with the shopping cart I was using. It was also limited in its features. The new site is much cleaner, it's easier to use and to find products. In addition, the back-end is much better, with more information on customers and options such as promotions, discount codes and administration options for dealing with orders.

The SEO options in BigCommerce are very good with fields for meta keywords and descriptions for every product etc. The way this works is much easier than coding it yourself and much easier to tweak.

Marketing need a strategy - my early attempts at using Adwords and eBays AdCommerce (similar to Google's Adwords but restricted to eBay stores only) were somewhat pathetic, I realise now. Although it's possible to teach yourself the rudiments of online marketing (and to pay out for all sorts of guides and e-books), its best to leave it to the experts. As a result, have decided to spend my marketing budget on using a professional SEO agency with the expertise to get the maximum out of my marketing spend.

So, all in all, I am very pleased with how my new site at BigCommerce is going. More feedback next month on how things are going at www.newbeltanetechmedia.co.uk.

Mark Prisk MP announced as new Small Business Minister in Coalition Government

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:39:00 +0000

The new Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition government has announced another ministerial appointment, that of Mark Prisk MP, who has been appointed small business minister.

The Tory MP for Hertford and Stortford will be responsible for helping to develop and implement a range of measures to support British small business, and he will report directly to his fellow Liberal Democrat minister for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable.

The new government has indicated it aims to reduce taxes on businesses, and to introduce a new loan guarantee scheme for firms that cannot secure commercial credit without government help. The appointment of Mr Prisk has been welcomed. Mr Prisk has personal experience relevant to his appointment, having set up his own firm during the recession of the 1990s, and he believes he has suitable experience for the role.

The new minister told the Telegraph during the election campaign: “What I am hearing from small businesses is ‘Get off our backs and let us get on with the job.”

New items listed on store

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:00:00 +0000

I have added several new products to my online store at www.newbeltanetechmedi.co.uk including the Emprex Advanced Cheetah Gaming Keyboard with anti-ghosting keys for enhanced gameplay.

Available now for £10.49 plus shipping.

In addition, I have added the Emprex Cheetah High Precision Optical Gaming Mouse. This comes with 5 programmable buttons, Accusense Technology with 2000dpi resolution, adjustable to 1000 and 500 dpi.

Available now for just £9.99 plus shipping.

Finally, I have added the SWEEX Dual Shock Gamepad (2 in 1) for the PC and the PS2. The GA101 Gamepad offers dual shock capability and can be use with both a PC and a PS2. It comes with 12 programmable buttons, 2 analogue joysticks and a 8-way D-pad. It has on/off switch for vibration function and also for LED. Comes with Turbo function on/off button.

Available now for just £14.99 plus shipping.

New blog focussed on Wireless networking | Wi-Fi Wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:08:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I have a new blog focussed on Wireless networking called "Wi-Fi Wisdom". In it I will be covering issues related to wireless networks (Wi-Fi) such as hardware, software, tips and tutorials. I will be sharing my experiences and snipets of news from around the blogsphere.

I hope you will drop by and add it to your feeds too. Of course, as the European reseller of the hField technologies Wi-Fire high gain antenna, I will be discussng its merits and giving first-hand experience on how to get the most out of it. However, I will not be confining myself to just the Wi-Fire but looking at other offerings, and hopefully keeping my readers up to date with trends and new developments in the field of wireless networking.

I will also be covering bluetooth technology so there will be stuff of interest to mobile phone users too. Bluetooth is also used in other devices such as mice and keyboards, so we will be covering that too.

I hope to 'see you' there and look forward to your comments and contributions.

Early days yet but first sales start rolling in!

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:17:00 +0000

I finally took the plunge with my switch over to BigCommerce and now my site has seen its first sales!

Visitor numbers are up but still at a low level. However, to have sales is encouraging and once I switch my advertising to point at the new site I am hoping things will be even better in a few weeks.

I finally managed to get my products listed on the Google Shopping site so that they show up in searches, with many of them appearing on the first page! All I need to do now is work out a keyword strategy for AdWords and build some reciprocal links.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes in future posts.

E-Commerce Conundrums Exercise the Mind!

noreply@blogger.com (Steven Dale) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:42:00 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Anyone starting out in the e-commerce world and trying to run an online business for the first time soon finds that its never as easy as all the articles in blogs and other sites would have you believe. Once you leave the protected world of eBay it soon becomes apparent that there is a lot more to it than anyone tells you.

Not only do you have the obvious questions of whether to host it on your own server or use a managed hosting service, you also have to decide which e-commerce package to use... open source or paid for?

Also, how do you know which is best value and how can you be sure it will do everything you need it to do, especially when you are not sure what it is that you do need from it?

Well, as always, research is the key, and I also believe, a little testing. Its important then to do your research thoroughly. I suggest dong a Google (or Bing etc) search for “ecommerce reviews” and “ecommerce packages” etc. One site I found useful was “TopTenReviews” at http://ecommerce-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

Also, recommend reading the press and I found an article in PCPRO very timely and useful. It shared the experience of the author in moving his own business site from one managed ecommerce package to another. You can read the article in the latest issue (May 2010) and visit his site here: http://www.makingyourowncandles.co.uk/

Its now hosted by MyBigCommerce and partly as a result of the aforementioned article and partly through my own web research, I decided to sign up for the 15-day trial at http://www.bigcommerce.com/

Once I had chosen my template for the overall look of the site and added some products, I then went to my own server cpanel and did a 302 temporary redirect so that anyone typing in www.newbeltane.com would be immediately redirected to http://newbeltanetechmedia.co.uk

Overall, my experience of setting up my new store (albeit still in ‘trial’ mode) was a good one. I like the ease with which you can add products, upload unlimited photos for each product, configure shipping and tax options and also have featured products. There are also SEO friendly options such as META keywords, page title and description fields you can complete as well as field for search terms for when visitor search your site for products.

The range of templates is good, with about 60 designs that are professional looking. More importantly however, you can edit the code quite easily and have full access to all the stylesheets and other pages used by your site, so its possible to completely customise your site very easily if you know any code or alternatively, you can download the code and edit it in a WYSIWYG editor or pay someone to do it for you.

Another plus is the fact that although I am in the UK, I had a phone call a couple of days after signing up from the company in the USA to see how I was getting on, offering advice, telling me about their free phone support and also offering to extend the free trial period and waive the sign-up fee if I moved to them (normally its $49.95)!

That brings us neatly to the cost. Obviously open source options are a lot cheaper but they do usually come without any support apart from the community support via forums etc. MyBigCommerce has several packages:

Bronze: $24.95/month

# 100 Products

# 3 Staff Logins

# 2 GB Bandwidth

# 200 MB Storage

# $50 Google AdWords Credit

Silver: $39.95/month
# 500 Products

# 10 Staff Logins

# 3 GB Bandwidth

# 300 MB Storage

# $50 Google AdWords Credit

Gold: $79.95/month
# 1,000 Products

# 20 Staff Logins

# 5 GB Bandwidth

# 500 MB Storage

# $75 Google AdWords Credit

Platinum: $149.95/month
# Unlimited Products

# 50 Staff Logins

# 15 GB Bandwidth

# 1 GB Storage

# $100 Google AdWords Credit

Diamond: $299.95/month
# Unlimited Products

# 100 Staff Logins

# 30 GB Bandwidth

# 3 GB Storage

# $100 Google AdWords Credit

There is also a $49.95 set-up fee but if you are moving your existing site to them you may find they waive this, as they offered to do for me if I eventually do switch.

Features that stand out for me are:

Fully featured across all packages, just the number of products, storage, bandwidth and staff logins vary, everything else is the same.
User-friendly set-up
Unlimited images (limited only by storage space I guess but as long as you optimise your images you shouldn’t have any problems). Come with SuperZoom to allow customers to zoom in on product photos.
Friendly support.
Professional-looking designs and that you can fully customise the look of your site.
Back-end admin including visitor stats, sales, inventory control, flexible returns system, Google Website Optimizer, SEO Optimisation, promotional banners, gift certificates.... list goes on! Check out their site for more information on features.
Direct link to shipping providers site for dynamic shipping quotes - this s perhaps the most attractive feature for me as their list includes not only US ones such as FedEX and UPS but also the Royal Mail.

Well, I guess its pretty clear that I am impressed and I will probably move over to them at the end of my (extended) trial. The fact that they come recommended by someone who’s opinion I trust and that they are highly rated in various reviews means that they should definitely be on your short-list.

I will update my blog with how things go if I do indeed sign-up.

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