Moonlighting | Employee by Day, Entrepreneur by Night

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

Every employee that decides to start their own business venture does so because they perceive entrepreneurship as the shortest route to self-actualization. In other words, they wish to unleash the entrepreneurial potential deep inside themselves and seize control of their own destinies.

Yeah, right. In reality, almost everyone who starts their own small business does so for two reasons. First, they think they’ll get paid their true worth. And secondly, they relish the freedom where they aren’t answerable to someone else.

Budding entrepreneurs need to find work that they can do during the flexible hours that make up their spare time. That way, they can deliver that much-rehearsed speech to their existing boss only when they’re sure they can afford to.

Here are 10 new business ideas:

1. E-Commerce

If you’d like to own a retail store, but can’t afford either to pay the rent or to put in the hours, then e-commerce is for you. It takes very little investment to start up, you can begin on Amazon and eBay, and you can expand with your own e-commerce website as you start generating revenue streams.

The principles behind e-commerce are exactly the same as those for other forms of retail:

  1. buy cheaply, usually in wholesale and bulk;
  2. sell the products for less money as there are no overhead costs;
  3. make sure that the difference between your buying and selling prices (your profit margins) is enough to cover your costs, and deliver a healthy profit stream.

It ain’t rocket science, not least because someone who builds a successful e-commerce web site design can often make more than a rocket scientist.

2. SEO (search engine optimization)

If you like the online world, you can specialize in the search engine optimization (SEO) field. This requires specialist skills, which helps a web site to appear higher in search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. With search engine optimization services, you need to be able to identify keywords and write rich keyword based website content without repetition becoming too obvious. You see? The keyword “search engine optimization” appears three times just in this short paragraph.

3. Telemarketing services

Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Maybe it would suit you better to find part-time work that you can do from home around hours that largely suit you. In that case, why not investigate freelance telemarketing opportunities?

Of course, you’ll only succeed if you’re good with people, and don’t mind the occasional bit of ripe language from callers whom you’ve dragged out of the john. You won’t make a fortune (most telemarketing companies earn $6-$12 an hour) although there may well be commission opportunities as well.

5. Call Center Services

Providing you have a broadband connection, you could always think about offering inbound call center services. This is quite similar to telemarketing services, but you’ll be handling inbound calls from customers and the public, so it better suits people who can’t cope with cold calling. You just log on to the call center using your home computer, and calls are automatically routed to your home. And you have exactly the same applications, on-screen scripts, and information that someone based at the real call center has.

Just think. You might end up working for your voip services provider, bank, or credit card processing companies.

As if you aren’t already.

6. Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay Per Click Advertising is all about pay for performance marketing. This is when advertisers don’t pay a flat rate to have their banner appear on a Web site. Instead they pay for performance – every time someone clicks on the banner and links through to the “landing” page.

It’s absolutely essential that these banners and text ads are constantly monitored in order to make sure that they continue to perform well. This is called Pay Per Click, and takes the form of someone analyzing volumes of data. If you love data analysis, this may be an ideal entrepreneurial business for you.

7. Website Design

It was only recently that Web site design was an incredibly difficult job that required many skills and much specialist knowledge. Nowadays, anyone with a good eye for layout and a professional web design software can build very appeal looking websites. To check it out, just type “easy Web design application”  in Google.

Of course, large companies still need specialist web designers, but with mom-and-pop stores going online all the time, there’s plenty of demand for talented small business website design companies as well. You’ll do even better if you team up with a graphics designer.

8. Tax Preperation

Entrepreneurs are often bad at keeping their books in order. So there may be plenty of small businesses in your area that would welcome help with their tax preperation.

You may have to offer to pop in every week or two to pick up the latest invoices, receipts, bank statements and so forth, but the work itself can be done in your own home at times that suit you.

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The Grammy Goes To…

Monday, February 1st, 2010

 The web has been a blessing for small business owners and entrepreneurs, providing them with numerous opportunities such as access to new markets, elimination of barriers to existing markets and providing a platform for innovation like never seen before. In the spirit of the upcoming awards season, small business experts and entrepreneurs offer their version of the grammy awards to the best web strategies that have helped them innovate, create awareness and sell more products and services online:

Search Engine Optimization for Best Performance

With or without sizeable marketing budgets, SEO is still the best way to attract customers to your business’ website. Effective use of relevant keywords in your website content and link building leads to high natural ranking on search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!. SEO companies are a great help, as they understand the search engine algorithms and the white hat SEO techniques to optimize your website for high search rankings in organic seach results. SEO has delieverd the best performance results in driving qualified traffic to your website, but trying to get there without white hat SEO tactics can get your website blacklisted by search engines.

Social Media for Best Innovation

Social media websites are powerful amplifiers and viral agents that can spread awareness and build a loyal customer following overnight. Blogs, wikis, consumer review sites and social bookmarking ane networking websites are all places businesses should venture into to reach their target audiences,  serve customer needs and build strong customer loyalty. As social media websites are accepted by the users as genuine word of mouth, aggressive marketing or selling of products and services can turn off customers in a hurry. On the other hand, genuine customer engagement and relationship management can get you brownie points and build strong followers of your business. Social Media Marketing wins the best innovation web grammy award because of  its viral nature and high amplification power that can make or break your business’ reputation.

Viral Video for Best New Kid On The Block

Viral Video Marketing has exploded onto the web scene. There are millions of short videos on the internet today, produced both by professionals and amateurs. The amateurs publish their videos for fun and recognition, and the professionals produce and publish them to acquire traffic and sell more products or services online.

Millions of people watch these short videos, but how effective are they at creating brand awareness or driving qualified traffic to web sites? The question, for many small businesses, is how to take advantage of the viral video marketing opportunity to sell more of their products online.

Have you ever watched a video with 1MM impressions and thought to yourself: “How the hell did that video get so many hits?” The chances are pretty good that it didn’t happen naturally, but some marketing company must have launched a viral video campaign for it to have received so many impressions. 

In light of the recent sucess of viral videos sponsored by companies like Levi’s “Backflip Into Jeans,” Gatorade’s “Ball Girl,” and Nike’s “Kobe Jumps Over Car,” marketers and advertising agencies are adding viral videos to their online marketing strategies for 2010.

As we emerge from this deep recession, businesses are seeking new ways to engage with web audiences in a cost effective manner. Viral video – which is generally less expensive to produce and distribute on the web than traditional advertising is fast becoming in vogue.

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Entrepreneurs Threat From China

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Many executives and small business entrepreneurs are of the opinion that China is growing into a major threat. IT services, Energy and Manufacturing industries are particularly concerned about the unfair competition due to China’s undervalued currency that has been artificially pegged to the US dollar to help prop Chinese exports to US and Europe. A G-7 meeting in Canada will most likely be a forum for discussing remedies for global currency imbalances, with a focus on the yuan. But can outsiders really do anything to influence China’s exchange rate?

China has also made signifcant changes in its education system. English language has become part of their core syllabus and students are much more fluent in English than a few years back. Add to it the advantages of subsidized government infrastructure, low cost labor, friendly taxation rules, and qualified young talent – China is most definitely a competition to take seriously for outsourcing services such as payroll, call centers, medical billing, answering services, etc.

Products and equipment are being manufactured in China and sold at lower costs than the cost of raw materials to manufacture in the US or Europe. Mining equipment, toy supplies, air conditioning and refrigeration equipment, and a slew of other products are manufactured on Chinese soil and exported all over the world to US, Europe and Asia. Recently, China just became the largest automobile manufacturer in the world overtaking Japan and Korea.

At the same time, China’s purchasing power has increased over the years, and in the global marketplace that is good news for all businesses as China becomes a consumer market for US companies and businesses to sell their products an services. However, can the rest of the world simply afford to wait for Beijing to make the decision to revalue the yuan and open its markets?

 America’s economy has been driven by its entrepreneurial spirit. Let there be no mistake, it is the spirit of its entrepreneurs and the infrastructure that made US an economic super power and juggernaut for the past century. However, the American entrepreneurial spirit is driven by freedom of expression, value creation and the betterment of our lives while Chinese entrepreneurs work within a social framework that includes an element of government control and lack of self expression. We just recently witnessed Google’s commercial retreat from China highliting that freedom of speech and privacy has limits in China. The US State Department has had talks with the Chinese Ambassador in Washington regarding the troubling issues related to cyberattacks on Google and that a “blanket denial” by China on the issue would not be helpful with regards to the broader aspects of US-China relationship.

However, the Google-China spat is unlikely to have any adverse impact on US’ broader relationships with Beijing…It is far more stable than it has been in some time. There are a range of issues where the countries have disagreements. But, there were many facets to the US-China relationship and a cross-cultural understanding could create healthy co-opetition which could help speed up a global economic recovery.

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The Road to Entrepreneurial Success

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Every business is the brain child of an entrepreneur. The recession may have put a cap on spending limits and risky initiatives, but it is still a good time for entrepreneurs to thrive. Entrepreneurs with a finger on the pulse of latest trends in the market can leverage technological advancements to their advantage.

The internet is a power-packed tool that enables businesses to sustain profit streams with minimal upfront investments. Small and Large businesses can acquire and reach customers in new markets from their living rooms or office or from their mobile RV as did Philip May who left a middle-management job at Hewlett-Packard (HP), moved his wife and two kids out of their Silicon Valley home, loaded them into a 37-foot RV and hit the road. The plan?  Tracey and Philip started a mobile, RV-based business. (OK, they’re on their third business, but this one, Philip says, has legs.)

The Mays have been to the 48 contiguous states while discovering the freedom and terror of running their own business — TechnoRV, which sells gadgets to the RV community on the web and at number of RV shows held nationwide. Their income is substantially less than it once was, but the Mays’ new gig has its perks.

E-commerce

E-commerce websites are ideal storefronts. Without incurring the overhead of sales people, real estate, equipment and utilities, businesses can offer their customers better deals while making sizeable profit streams. E-commerce solutions companies can help you offer your products and services online by launching your online storefront within hours instead of weeks or months. Customer friendly features such as live chat and online product recommendations can be incorporated to improve customer experience, move products and encourage repeat visitors.

E-commerce solution companies make sure the technology behind the website is robust and can perform with thousands of visitors a day. They also make sure the website design looks appealing and attractive to the target audience. Website designers can also help develop the right look for the business.

Internet Marketing

However appealing and high performing an e-commerce solution  may be, it will not deliver the expected profits without internet marketing. The website’s presence, products and services need visibility to attract the target audience. Search engine marketing and pay-per-click qualify customers and direct them to the website. Businesses can also use social media to spread brand awareness. Customer issues can be handled in forums and discussions. Social media marketing is an effective way to reach your target customers on the internet. Internet marketing firms take advantage of these latest internet trends such as social media, viral videos, seo to acquire and reach customers for small businesses that are on a tight budget.

E-commerce solutions and internet marketing are two of the most important  areas that small business owners can implement to get ahead in 2010. Research from surveys conducted by interviweing small business owners and partners  indicate  internet marketing firms are set to thrive in 2010.

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Top 11 Relaxing Vacations and Getaways for Entrepreneurs

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Entrepreneurs are an important element that drive local and global economies. More than 50 per cent of employees in Canada work for businesses with less than 100 employees. According to a global study on entrepreneurship from Babson College almost 15% of the US population is working for startup companies that are less than 3.5 years old. To successfully get these companies off the ground, entrepreneurs face tremendous challenges; building social capital by continously networking in the business community, qualifying business leads to acquire customers, raising capital, hiring talent and navigating the big competitors — while trying to maintain a work-life balance for themselves and their teams.

Entrepreneurs have a grueling schedule with 90 hour work weeks being the norm instead of the exception. One way by which entrepreneurs can alleviate some of the pressure off themselves is to take a well-deserved break before starting a new venture or after a successful exit.

Here are the top 11 vacation destinations for entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives to get those beneficial stress busting neurochemcials flowing in the brain.

1. Bay Of Fire, Tasmania: There is a possibility that you would not have come across this little paradise that is located off the coast of St. Helen’s, a small town of Tasmania. Tucked away in Tasmania’s remote north-east is the holiday heaven, the Bay of Fire. Sparkling turquoise blue waters, pristine private white beaches as far as the eye can see, tranquil coves, capped off by the distinctive fire orange lichen covered granite rock.

2.  Turks and Caicos Islands: Previously a drug smuggling den, this group of 40 islands offers a memorable experience. Home to the Best Beach in the World, breathtaking hues from inviting waters, and legendary diving, snorkeling and fishing, a throwback in time where relaxation is unavoidable and rejuvenation ensured.

3. The Chiloe Archipelago: Chiloe in Chile’s Northern Patagonia, has long been a place of mystery and mysticism. Famous for seafood, handicrafts, and the warmth of its people, Chiloé is a scenic and an increasingly popular destination for walking, biking, fishing, paddling and birding.

4. Bora Bora: Bora Bora island is possibly the single most famous island in all the world. The legends, mysteries, and romance associated with the words “Bora Bora” bring an almost mystical presence to the island. Part of the allure has to be its almost unbelievable beauty. Two towering peaks of sheer black rock dominate the center of the island and make an impressive backdrop to an assortment of blue waters that will dazzle the eyes. Bora Bora’s lagoon is its most treasured feature, and allows the traveler many opportunities to experience it in a variety of ways. Windsurf, jetski, scuba dive, swim, bask in its warmth… the list goes on.

5.  Ko Tao, Thailand: “Discovered” by travelers in the 80’s Ko Tao (literally translates as “Turtle Island.”) has been gradually gaining popularity. Once the haunt of sea-turtles, this small island with its quiet beaches has become a favorite getaway both of paradise seekers and divers who come for the best coral diving in the area. In recent years word of Ko Tao’s natural beauty, beaches, coral and marine life has spread attracting more tourists and visitors to this remote island.

6. Basque Country: The Basque Country (Basque: Euskadi, Spanish: Pais Vasco) is a region at the north of Spain, bordering the Atlantic Ocean and France. It is defined formally as an autonomous community of three provinces within Spain, and culturally including a fourth province and a small portion of France. Basque Country is one of the world’s top gastronomic destinations, with key gourmet centers in San Sebastian, Hondarribia and Bilbao. In Basque culture, fine dining is a means of cementing relationships and building new ones. The northern coast offers sandy beaches and high bluffs overlooking the bay. As important, the Basque culture supports a tradition of self-sufficiency that has spawned a multinational business built around the notion of cooperation rather than competition that might serve as a model for others to follow.

7. Nam Ha, Laos: Nam Ha is surrounded by mountains, waterfalls and lofty plateaus, coupled with the culture of some 30 ethnic groups, creating the ideal landscape for eco-trekking. This place is ideal for extreme adventurers who can handle leeches and the steep slopes on a true jungle trek.

8. Whistler, British Columbia: Over two million people visit Whistler annually, primarily for alpine skiing and mountain biking at Whistler-Blackcomb. Its pedestrian village has won numerous design awards and Whistler has been voted among the top destinations in North America. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, Whistler will host most of the alpine, nordic and sliding events. However, this Canadian resort town is also popular for mountain biking furing the summer months.

9. Languedoc, France: Bas-Languedoc has long, sandy beaches and dynamic towns like Montpellier, Sète and Nîmes. This place is split by deep gorges and topped by wild upland plateaus for outdoor fun. It also had some exotic hotels and cruise options that will take you along the Canal du Midi which is a nice alternative to the usual French getaway.

10. Yunnan, China: Yunnan is the home of famous tiger leaping trek, jungle tours and the scenery of the sunsets. This environmentally rich land is scattered with ancient temples and small towns and undoubtedly one of the hottest Asian vacation destinations and getaways in 2010.

11. Svalbard, Norway: Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean north of mainland Europe, about midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. There are no roads connecting the settlements on Svalbard. Here you will find untouched arctic wilderness. In the summer, beautiful colors and contrasts provide the frames for dramatic glaciers, majestic mountain formations, buzzing bird mountains and endless arctic tundra with its diverse flora and fauna. The light lures us to this unique place in which the midnight sun shines from early spring till fall. During the winter, the northern lights cast sparkles of light across snow-covered, pointed mountain peaks and an infinite landscape. A stay on Svalbard is the perfect vacation if you want peace, quiet and space for thoughts and dreams.

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