no fixed office

Something that is often on my mind is how people assume that they need much more then they really do. The most obvious example i can give here in this blog, i suppose is an office, how do you know you need one if you have never had one in your own business. You really don’t know you need one and could not actually differentiate either way without trying both.

Of course though trying both will cost you time, money and a lot of wasted effort on whichever option you do not end up choosing. For this situation if you could take a choice, what would you try first. Working with an office, that has a lot of fixed expenses, is likely to lead to more expenses, in staff, a perceived need of stationary, and technology. Or maybe try working with no fixed office, with very minimal costs, no excessive leasing, or staff costs, that need to be offset.

At the end of the day really if you decided to try both options you would be spending a lot more to try the idea of having an office. Potentially anywhere form 10-times what you may have to outlay for no fixed office. It is hard to ignore this sort of cost for something that you may be just trying and ultimtely not continuing with. More so something that you have never had, so really will you actually miss not having an office.

Twitter is no doubt a popular tool, and many people do use it quite a lot. I would think that i potentially land some where in the middle, i do use it daily, however for short times. Just check any messages and respond to a message or two. Maybe update once or twice, each visit. Overall i may be on twitter for 5-10 minutes a day.

This could be a lot more though and it can get really hard to not visit the site every 5 or 10 minutes to check what is happening. I have had to take a number of measures to try and keep my usage to a reasonable limit. Maybe the surprising part is that i really only make use of three things in my twitter use.

1. The Twitter Website (www.twitter.com) – While many people do make use of a seemingly endless range of tools to send tweets, track tweets and otherwise manage twitter, i have personally found that the Twitter website is actually the most straight forward. I have tried programs such as Tweetdeck, however find that due to the limits of the API and such it can be difficult to truly arrange everything to see everything you want to.

2. Tweetburner (www.tweetburner.com) – Due to the potential length that links can get to on occasion i have found that using a link shortening service is quite beneficial. Tweetburner has been my choice primarily due to the tracking capability, to see how many people are clicking through on the links.

3. Tweet Later (www.socialoomph.com) – The time that can be spent in getting your links together and sharing your content, can take time. In fact if you do it on a one off basis every time you want to share something i imagine that it could easily take three or four times as long to get the same amount done.

Making use of automation tools like SocialOomph can greatly increase your effectiveness in using twitter. However it should also be used wisely. For example if you make use of the auto tweet feature and schedule the same tweet every 15 minutes, chances are good this will not provide much if any benefit. Where as if you use it more conservatively and schedule tweets that change from a post you have been to quotes and just comments,you will build more of a interest, and not be annoying people with the same link over and over again.

In reality i find that these are almost the only three sites i need to use for twitter. At least to use twitter the way that i am looking to use it. There are odd other tools that i use from time to time however almost all of these are purely one off tools i may use just once or twice.

When it comes to the internet there are many blurry lines, between what is and is not acceptable. For the most part many people should be able to quickly distinguish between what is and is not acceptable. For the most part it should appear to be common sense. However it does often seem like some people have just totally forgotten what is right and what may be not so right.

When it comes to twitter, this comes to a whole new level sometimes. Even though i am writing this post, i have a good feeling the only people that will read it are the people that are already following it, the people that already know what is right and what is wrong. This does not really surprise me though. However the main reason i wanted to write this post was to try and help some of the new comers to see points that they may be able to avoid and get off to a much better start.

Really good etiquette should be something that is used in most all situations. It can help you to achieve much greater things, with much less resistance. This i believe can be just as true with Twitter as it can with anything else. Following just a few simple points can quickly and easily make you appear more friendly, interesting and above all a valuable person to follow. Ok so lets get in and look at some of the things you should consider when using Twitter.

Be aware of ratios – With twitter there are a few key numbers, being followers, following and tweets. While in natural course these will not always stay in balance, and it will entirely depend on why you use Twitter, how they stay in balance. Initially there is one or two specific ratios to consider. Getting followers almost always requires you to follow people, some people will follow you automatically, while others will consider if they want to follow you or not. The ratio between followers to following is one of these considerations. The other can be the number of tweets you have made, in comparison to how many people you have followed and that are following you.

It may sound complicated, but the simple idea to follow in regards to ratios is don’t expect people to follow you if you have 1 (one) tweet and you followed 1,000 people and have no one following you. Yes you will get a certain amount of followers, but few genuine followers will stick around. Especially if the one tweet is self promotional, or what could be seen as spam.

Don’t over do self promotion – Following on from the last point above, try and keep self promotion in check. While yes to some extent Twitter is about sharing what you are doing and what you are working on. However at the same time, you need to consider what people who are following you will want to see. While they have followed you to hear about what you are doing on your website, there is every chance that they do not want to see it 50 times a day.

To provide truly valuable experiences on twitter, you need to engage with your followers. Meaning that you need to join in conversations, and initiate conversation with your followers. Doing this and sharing about your own projects occasionally will keep people more engaged and interested when you do self promote.

Provide Valuable information – The information that you provide people, especially on the internet becomes the impression that is framed around you. If you continually share information that adds a lot of value, and is interesting and what people want to see then they are going to be hanging to see more information from you. However if on the other hand you are sharing information of now use, people will quickly disappear seeing that you are just wasting their time.

Join the conversation – The best thing about twitter is the number of people that are always there. Lots of people sharing what they are doing, what they want to know, as well as a very wide range of other information as well. Joining in and sharing valuable information is one way, sharing what others are talking about with your own followers is another (or retweeting), replying to questions, and in general being a participant in different conversations that are happening.

Follow people with similar interests – Finally and possibly one of the more important points, is to follow people who have a similar interest to you. If you want to be heard, and you are sharing what you have to say with people that do not have  a similar interest, then there is every chance that you are going to have many followers for a short time. This can be best displayed with a simple example. If you are interested primarily in cars, then you should work to find people with this similar interest to follow, because you may find that if you follow as many random people as possible that you will end up losing a lot of them quickly because they do not want to hear about cars.

What using Twitter really comes down to is using common sense. Being aware of what you are doing and saying and how it may be perceived by the people following you. Can you imagine walking down the street and telling everyone about your new car blog, some will show an interest and as for more information, while the vast majority will probably try and avoid you and walk faster or try to avoid you. This is just like building a big random following of all different people on twitter, and sharing one topic which they may not all be interested in.

So enjoy your time on Twitter and don’t make it a chore, by over doing things the wrong way.

If you have not heard of it Twitter is a big part of the current Social Media scene. There are many people from individuals to business people and celebrities using it. Some for no particular purpose other then to share what they are doing, some to share photo’s, video’s, information, and then others to sell their products. The spread in age, nationality, and content that people share is about as broad as you can possibly get.

Potentially more so though is the ability that is created by Twitter to create a live ongoing conversation between literally anyone. On any topic. It has been used as a tool by many to keep others up to date and by many to stay up to date on events that are immediately happenings. How though can you make use of it yourself, well in a few different ways.

• Keep in contact with exisiting customers
• Make it easy for new customers to contact you
• Share information about your product with everyone
• Connect with potential business partners
• Find friends
• Find the most up to date information on a topic shared by others
• Share your photo’s
• Share your Video’s
• Improve the accessibility of your business
• Get instant feedback
• Meet interesting people
• Create a global business from a single location

While there are many other ways to use twitter, you need to really find what best suits your own purpose and how this can be translated into 140 characters. It can be a very powerful tool, but it does really come down to using it right.

I have discussed in a couple of previous posts about adding a revenue stream to your website to generate profit. While in both the previous articles i have mentioned adding a product, it has been just one of the few options i have mentioned. So i thought it was about time that i put in the time to give you a little more information about this idea, as really it is one of the more beneficial options which can often far surpass the potential of placing ads on your website.

In the first post (Adding a Revenue Stream to your website). I included sell a product as an option. Then i followed this up with an updated post (Adding a Revenue Stream, Updated). I brought the idea to the top of the list and focus on the idea of an electronic product, and expanded to the idea of adding further products and making the site easy to use and easy to buy from. I want to expand on these ideas even more now, and hope that you will find this a useful place to start in adding a product to your own site.

The first place that you want to look to giving some time in adding one or more products to your website is creating a plan to do so. While in theory it is possible to just take a product and put it up for sale, this is hardly the way to build a valuable place to bring customers. So while the plan does not need to be really structured or overally detailed there are a couple of good ideas that you should include;

• Does the product fit – If you have a website or blog that is about starting a business, then selling a weight loss e-book is probably not the best idea.
• What sort of product is it – Are you looking to sell a physical or digital product? Will it be a product of it’s own or have accessories?
• How will you sell the product – Will people buy online via your website? Will it redirect to another site? or, Will people purchase it offline in stores?
• What future potential is there – Is there potential to offer follow up products, or add-on’s later on. Or will this be just a single one off product without much scope to offer more later on.

Even if you do not answer these questions within a plan as such. It is worth being able to actually answer them though. This will give you at least a good idea at where you are starting from and what you may be able to do in the future.

What about if the product does not meet some of the above points. Well all is not lost really, however it could potentially be setting up roadblocks that you may not want to or may not need to deal with. Selling a product that is completely different to the topic of your website is immediately a hurdle. People very rarely will go looking for something they want on  site that is about something completely different. Additionally it will lead people to question the validity of what the product is being sold as, if it can actually provide what is promised.

Depending upon the type of product that you are offering and the way you have your website set up can make a big difference in how sales will flow through. A dedicated landing page which is aiming to sell the product, will sell both physical and electronic products. However Often electronic products will sell better, as there is the ability to offer the benefit of instant gratification. Which can be a big selling point. If you can create the need to have something, within people, and then provide it instantly once they pay, you are likely to generate more sales, then if you are able to create the need but, it takes time to get it to them.

Finally being able to create a product that inevitably leads to another product, you can create later on, can generate plenty of return sales. As such you do not want to put everything into a product the first round. In other words, if you want to write an e-book, you may be better off writing a short report to start with maybe 20-30 pages, and selling this first, to test the market. Then you can either follow it up with a full e-book or maybe a second 20-30 page report. Continually building upon your base.

Adding a product to your website can be the most profitable way to build an income from the internet. While there are some benefits from creating websites with advertising and such. These ways of making money often require much more time and money then they will generate as a return initially. The best thing about products is the ability to tweak the offer, know what you are promoting. Where often with advertising on your site, the advertising it can be far from know what will be shown.

If there is one thing that is almost always available in ample supply, is “Advice”. There are many types and levels of advice and sometimes it can be quite difficult to actually work out what advice you should pay attention to and what advice you maybe shouldn’t. The big question is how do you know the difference.

I suppose the best place to start is with the obvious example. Would you go to a Dentist to do your accounting, or would you go to a Financial Planner with a broken arm. Of course you wouldn’t you would go to an Account for your accounting needs, and you would go to a Hospital with Doctors, for a broken arm. So the next question which begs asking is, who do you go to for business advice? Everyone will often have an answer here, however is it a suitable answer, take a look at some of the possible answers and see if it fits.

• Family and Friends – If you answered with Family and Friends, then you are potentially getting you advice from the wrong place. The reason often lands to emotions, and a will to protect you. Often the advice that you will get from family and friends is advice that will to some extent help you to justify taking the risk is a bad idea, or may be advice based on an opinion or view that may not be completely valid in a business sense. There is however one exception, and that is if your family or friends are running a successful business them selves.
• People at Work – Especially if you are thinking about starting a business and you are still working in a job, you will often find that the advice you get from people at work will also be placed in the wrong area. Often their thoughts will be on not wanting you to succeed while they are still stuck in a job. Or even sometimes thinking how if you start a business and succeed they will have to do more work because you are not there any more. So you may find plenty of negative stories or advice coming from people you work with.

Both of these area’s are where you probably do not want to be getting advice, and of course there are always exceptions to the rule. However before listening to anyone in these area’s give advice look at what gives them the credibility to provide that advice and what if any motive they have in giving the advice. It may not always be the easiest thing to see, however it can save you a lot of grief down the road. Now I don’t want this post to be completely negative, so here are some suggestions on more positive places to get business advice.

• Find a successful Mentor – There are a lot of successful people in business, of these people that are successful in business, there are any number of them that are happy to give a little advice.If you can find two or three, that you can talk to for a little while. While you still need to take all advice you get with consideration to your own circumstances, often advice you get in this manner can be much more powerful and useful.
• A Business Coach – While there is a potential to get some good free advice, at some point you often find to get the help that you really need, you may just have to pay for it. Possibly the most difficult part of finding a business coach will be finding one that you will be able to work with. On an ongoing basis your business coach will be on the most important business relationships that you have. As such two things to keep in mind are they someone that you feel comfortable working with? and Do they have the experience or knowledge to help you lead your business in the direction you want to take it?
• Other Advisers – The fact is that no one person knows every tiny detail of business expertly. This is why there are so many different areas of specialty, so that people can focus on the one area that they know best. Finding the range of people that can provide this different functions will of course depend on your business and your own skills, however some will include, Accountant, Solicitor and Bank Manager. As well as consultants in different areas such as marketing, import/export and construction, just to name a few.

Whatever the path you eventually choose to gain your advice, just be sure the question the validity and reason for any advice you may be getting. Especially if it is given to you without being requested and most important confirm the advice is being given in good nature to help you rather then hinder you. But possibly the most important part of advice it self is learning what it is you need to listen to and what you should ignore, if you can learn this skill properly you can start to listen to all advice and be able to discard that which is of no use.

Every business relies to some degree on customers. Different business rely on customers in different ways and different capacities. Some rely on the customers being consistent, and buying frequently, while others may only see a customer once or twice. There are a number of different ways that can be undertaken to work towards generating more consistent and long term customers.

TRACKING YOUR CUSTOMERS

The essential first step is to find ways to track, where your customers are coming from, how often they purchase, and any number of other key points that you feel will provide a benefit for you in looking to grow the loyalty of your customers. Some of the simple ways that you can track your customers are through your marketing (tracking return from marketing). Or another way if possible is to include customer details on invoices. Or finally through a short customer survey.

ONCE YOU HAVE THE DATA

Once you have put in the effort to track your customers, and to find out some information about their buying patterns. You need to actually put the data to use. Of course how you do this will depend upon what data you have managed to collect and what you want the eventual outcome to be. But for example if you tracked where you customers were coming from you may find that you are getting 80% from one source and as such better utilize your marketing dollars. Or maybe you have found a way to track how often the customers purchase, by looking at this trend you may be able to rearrange your marketing to increase the frequency of purchases.

OTHER METHODS

While you should be looking for ways to track different aspects of your business, there are other methods which can not only help you track your customers buying activities but also help to encourage them to purchase from you over a competitor.

• Discount card – Customers love a discount. You can find any number of ways to provide this type of card, maybe give them to your best customers, sell the card for a nominal fee, or give them away in a weekly business card drawing. Whichever way you choose to do it, you need to make it so that the card shows reasonable value to your customers, while not impacting your bottom line to greatly. For example, customers will not see a 1% discount as good value (unless maybe your products are high ticket items), where as offering a 20% discount will potentially impact your profit a lot. Often 5-10% are good points, or maybe a fixed dollar amount off when spending a certain about maybe $5 when you spend over $50.
• Rewards card – This type of card can be a little more flexible and help to encourage customers to purchase over a longer period or more frequently. Often they are cards with spaces for a set number of purchases, and a space is filled in for each purchase over a certain value, and when the card is filled a reward is available. For example Every purchase over $10 gets a stamp, and when the card is filled with 10 stamps, you get the reward of a $10 gift card to spend in store, or a free bonus on your next purchase.
• VIP Newsletter – Rather then offering a card some business prefer to offer special offers, just to a select group of customers, or this can even be anyone that wishes to join the list to receive the newsletter. What this often help to do is share products with customers who may not have otherwise known about a specific product or may allow you to promote product more frequently to your customers. You can include vouchers, or other newsletter only offers to ensure that customers have some motivation to take action. The only warning is that you do not want to send information to frequently.

While it can be quite a task to build your cusomter base, it is often easier to sell to an existing customer then to gain another. The added bonus is that often a small discount or reward for loyal patronage, can cost your business less then the marketing costs involved in gaining a new customer.

There is no doubt in my mind that just about anyone in business that deals with customers has had to deal with a rude client at some point. Maybe you were able to avoid the conflict, or maybe you just gave into whatever the client wanted. Or maybe it came down to that you just could not stand it and told the client exactly how you felt. Whatever the outcome, there can be some ways that you may like to use to help avoid potential conflict later on, especially if you see the signs early on in the sale.

While rude customers can happen in many forms, and in many different type of interactions with many different businesses. the main focus i want to deal with today is rude clients within your business providing a service as a consultant or contractor. This is where you can have a lot more control over the situation and there are more steps often involved that you can put to use to help you to avoid rude clients. Where as in an environment like a retail store, the interaction can happen quite quickly, and the rudeness displayed by customers cannot always be directly altered, as it is not always a result of you or your store.

One of the first things that you need to remember, when you come up against a rude client is “Don’t take it personally!” What it comes down to is the reason they are being rude may have nothing to do with you at all. It could just be a side effect of something else either in their personal or business life. By taking it personally and acting accordingly, you my just be making a bad situation even worse. One of the best things you can do at this point is to just listen.

The second thing to remember is possibly more something you need to do before it even gets to the pointof the customer being rude. It basically comes down to being sure before you begin a project that you are both on the same page. There are a number of ways that you can do this.

• The first point is a little repeition, but you basically need to be sure that you are listening to the requirements. If you do not hear what the customer wants how can you expect to deliver the correct result.
• The second point should be seen as part of the listening, and that is taking as many notes as you need, to be sure that you will understand the requirements.
• The third step is possibly the most important, at this point you need to review your notes, and clarify your understand of what you have heard, and what you have made notes on with the client to ensure that you are understanding it in the same way they are explaining it.
• Finally create the contract for the consulting/contracting work around this brief. Look to set things like milestones, and clear points of everything that you see as being involved. This can make it a little easier for you both to see clear boundaries within your relationship, and understand what both of your expectations are.

Your finalstep if you can see the potential of a rude customer before you even start doing business is to basically just not take the job. If you can see the making’s of a rude customer even before you start working with them, there is often little chance that you are going to be able to change this. So while you may be thinking that the you need the work and you can change the client, the chances are slim that you will be able to change them enough, and if you find yourself getting stressed over rude customers, then is it really worth that stress just to get a job you may not even make money on trying to solve all the problems of a rude customer.

If there is one thing that i believe should be part of everyone’s day is making a little time to learn something new. This is primarily because in the current times if you are not learning then you are not growing. It can happen amazingly quickly that you can lose that edge you once had.

The time that you dedicate to learning can be as little or as much as you like. There is only one sort of need that i figure should be placed on this time. That is to ensure that you are learning something that is going to be worth the time to you. So you may be thinking what is worth learning and what is not worth learning. A lot of this decision comes back to What your most valuable task is. Because in reality what is the point in learning something that is not really worth your time.

A good example of this may be the manager of a reasonable size company, wanting to learn how to create websites, so that he can create one for the company, and save money. In reality this is not the most important thing that he could be learning. The first point is that his motivation to learn this is misplaced. The reality is the time he may dedicate to learning this and the final result is very likely to not show the value for what his time is normally worth. As a thing to learn, it would be a good start, but not really the best use of time.

Making the best use of your time is also a big consideration when you are learning. Using your time a little more effectively can not only increase the potential value of your time, but it can also potentially save you time dependant on what the task is.

When you go into business there are a lot of different things that you may find that motivate you in business. There will be the original idea or concept that got you interested in start the business. There will be goals that you set that give you a sense of where you want to take the business. There may even be people around you that are helping you through support, or any number of other means that are part of your motivation.

Although all of these things often create artificial reasons for why you are in business. The original idea is really just something that guides what the business does, or what products it offers. The goals that you set, are a target and will mostly be guided by what the business does and what the expected work load will be. Finally the people around you that may have invested or be offering support otherwise are a guiding part of the business as most people don’t want to let these people down.

All of these things though are not specific to your believes. What you need to look for and be aware of is the specific things that guide what you do. Why you do it. How you do it. The way you make decisions. Essentially what makes you want to be in business, how you actually come to be doing what you are doing.

These guiding principles are something different for just about everyone. Of course there is going to be overlap, just like in appearance of people, everyone is different, but many people share similar features.