Last year the re-born Pop Shoppe sold over 6 million bottles making it Canada’s second largest selling premium soda. Remarkable enough though when you consider the man knew nothing about the soda business and actually has no empoyees you can’t help but admire him all the more. He runs the entire operation from home its all outsourced meaning his workload is really all about co-ordinating the efforts of the various partners involved.

Of course it was no easy ride to success, the article explains how Alger got started, the costs involved and the many failures and disappointments before the first glimpse of success. Now with sosme success under his belt Alger is looking to make a dent in the much larger US market!

This is a well written article by Joanna Pachner an inspiring story of how one entrepreneur’s journey had lows before the highs, check it out here.

What is such a service worth? Charge what you think you can! Personally having the driveway ready to drive out of and the car de-iced ready to roll would be worth a few dollars to me! The tools required to provide the service are minimal, some warm water and a can of de-icer for the car and a shovel for any snow clearing.

Now its outdoor work so obviously not true work at home as we normally talk about here but as most of this stuff is within a few doors of your own place we’re making the exception and mentioning it here.

In the southern hemisphere its mid summer now and schools are closed so people are on vacation which means their homes and pets are left behind. Again just in your own block you can offer houseminding services, clearing mail boxes, putting out the rubbish, maybe playing the stereo and putting a light on at night or parking your own car in the drive. It all makes the place look lived in and less attractive to thieves as well as keeping the fish fed!

You can extend the service to minding dogs at your own place if its suitable. There are many dog lovers who would much rather have their pet stay with a family than go to a boarding kennel and they’ll pay the equivalent of kennelling rates for it. They’ll even provide any special diet foods, shampoos etc where needed so all you have to do is treat the dog as your own for a while, giving it the attention and exercise it is used to. If you have kids they can get really into this!

There is of course a huge difference and if you’re looking for something that you really can do part-time, then its likely you’ll be looking for a work at home idea.

Let’s bear in mind all those self-employed electricians, carpenters, plumbers and gardeners are all working from home. They do not have an office in town with a staff to answer phones and take care of accounts etc. They probably have an office  (or something that substitutes for one) at home but the majority of their work is undertaken elsewhere. They are not working at home.

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Small business ideas tend to fall into three broad categories;

• Work at home
• Work from home
• Office or factory based enterprise perhaps with staff

So which category is really right for you? The answer will be at least partially determined by your personality type.

Those who need flexibility in their lifestyles and who can apply themselves and maintain personal discipline will find the first option attractive. They will however need to be happy spending long stretches alone without the company and stimulation of a team around them.

Those who can be flexible but who enjoy getting out and about mixing with different folk constantly will like the second category. They will however need to be very mindful of the other mundane tasks that need to be done, filing, book-keeping etc.

Those who like company around them, the buzz from good teamwork and the challenges of  maintaining and motivating employees will of course opt for the third category but may end up feeling they no longer have the flexibility that working alone offered.

So, there are pro’s and con’s to all small business ideas that can affect our success or failure quite apart from the basic business profitability. If we are to succeed with any small business idea we must recognise our own personality type and its strengths and limitations.

We can be successful in the short term with an enterprise that makes a profit but without a deeper attachment to the activity our enthusiasm will tend to fade and the venture suffer.

So sift through all the small business ideas you can find but don’t just pick something based on its profit potential. Pick an idea that is likely to work for you on a personal level and you will remain motivated enough to overcome the various challenges that will no doubt come your way.

There’s a whole bunch of work at home business ideas on the home business ideas page.

Its aimed at larger enterprises than most work at home businesses but the principles are the same no matter what your size. If you have a business in just about anything you can learn from this how to spread the word in a positive light.

Credit to http://ocondesign.com/?p=713

As any web designer who handles small business clients can tell you, there are a huge number of people out there who still believe in the maxim “build it and they will come”. This unfortunately is simply not the case.

Unless your site is one of a small few that deal in the subject matter you are fighting for attention with all the other sites out there that want to get listed for the same search terms entered into a search engine like Google. Even if you are one of a few, you still need to get the search engines to realise you exist.

That is where we start our search engine optimisation journey. So let’s look at what we can do to get listed in Google.

Probably the first thing to realise is that there are many factors involved in how Google chooses to list a site, so many that it is not worth you diverting attention away from your business to learn all about it – it’s a field of its own best left to the experts.

You can however achieve a lot with just a few basic principles!

Basic SEO 1

There is no point trying to get listed for very competitive terms.

Selling shoes on your website? Don’t bother trying to get listed for the search term ‘shoes’. Get really specific and you lessen the competition dramatically. Are you one of just a handful of sites selling ‘pink australian ugg boots’ – great, why not try to get listed for that. Fewer visitors, sure – but they’re more likely to be buyers using specific terms like that.

Basic SEO 2

Write some great content all about  your specific topic

Put the best webpage together on the topic you possibly can. Tell everyone why those pink australian ugg boots are so good, put some pics of them on the page, maybe even a little history of pink ugg boots, maybe even a little video clip from Youtube if you can find one.

Basic SEO 3

Use descriptive titles and file names

Optimise (there’s that word…) your page by making the page title ‘Pink Australian Ugg Boots by My Company.com’ and if you can do it, make the url of the page something like ‘mycompany.com/pink-australian-ugg-boots.html’.

If you can name those pictures you put on the page ‘pink-australian-ugg-boots.jpg’ and ‘best-australian-pink-ugg-boots.jpg’ even better. Same thing goes for the image alt tags if you can work out how give them alt attributes.

Basic SEO 4

Beg, borrow or steal links from other sites to yours

You’ve probably heard that Google likes to see links from other sites to yours. This is very true as Google sees links as a bit like votes for a site. Get as many links as you can from other sites to yours. Even better if you can get lots  of those links from sites somewhat related to yours, maybe the boot manufacturer? The shoe association? Furryfootwear.com.au if there is one!

Better still, if some of those links have words like “pink ugg boots” and “australian ugg boots” etc as their anchor text (Anchor text is the highlighted text you click on in a link, usually blue and underlined).

There you have it – the bare bones basics of SEO, its not going to make a professional SEO out of you but its enough to get you listed for quite specific search terms. Good Luck with it…