Tag: small business

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Review

Small Business Money

Start Ups (unless we’re talking about Silicon Valley creatures) usually financed through three main sources. They usually identified as triple-F: Friends, Family, Fools. However, when entrepreneur exhausts these sources, he may either go for debt (getting bank loan) or equity (inviting investors). Having debt is better for a small start, if the entrepreneur is sure that his venture will bring the money back. Equity means giving up part of the company, whereas even bad credit loans with high APR could be a better option for refugee entrepreneurs to retain 100% of ownership of the company.However, before agreeing to be hit with sky-high percentage rate on bank loans, make sure you get your credit history and score from three main credit bureaus. Personal or business credit cards may turn out to be a better option.

Categories
technology web

RSS Is Your Key To Success

Couple of months ago I did a little “research” – I asked people around to find out if they know anything about RSS. Turns out – none of my business-oriented colleagues knows that term. Even more – they have no idea what news aggregator/reader is and actually read news from all the web sites they are interested in by actually visiting those web sites.

Here is your chance to shine. Offer your clients/dealers/affiliates an RSS stream of company news, price updates, discounts. Make sure they know what it is. Make sure they know how to use it. Stress that RSS, unlike e-mail, will not be a stream of spam, so they can read your content free of spam and annoying ads. Customize RSS feeds so that it will supply different information to different groups – customers, dealers and affiliates.

Next thing you know – RSS may have a chance to replace e-mail in your company altogether. It’s cheaper, faster and more reliable. Too bad no one notices.

Categories
business

Offline-Online Promotion For Small Businesses – Part 2

Small business owners tend to make same mistakes, so it would be safe enough to assume that it wasn’t my other client only who thought he can get away with home-printed business cards. After all – he had a very good ink color printer and original ink, so it should be just a matter of getting a business card stock paper and aligning it in the printer properly. At least so the client thought.
Fortunately, he was stopped before ruining his reputation with such a rookie mistake. First of all – any person who held more then ten different business cards will be able to tell the difference. Home-printed cards, no matter how good the printer and the paper was, will never have a typography print feeling. Second – no matter how good you are with scissors and perforations, the edges will give you away.Of course, images we used on web site reprinted on the business cards with high-quality color print just swept prospective customers from their feet. Visiting client’s web site was a done deal.