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Start ups ain’t what they used to be. . .

It’s been a while since easy money was easy. The days of nailing an investment round with a clever idea and a quick pitch to a VC or investment banker flush with cash disappeared to the same bright Camelot as did all the weekend symposiums teaching the perfect elevator speech. There was market tolerance for investment risk that simply doesn’t exist today. If you think funding will flow your way because your concept is irresistibly brilliant, think again. These days you need more – a lot more. The investment landscape was different in the last century. Between biotech, dotcoms and internet hardware hucksters, there was so much opportunity on hand that failure of most start-ups was acceptable. One Yahoo made up for six bad shots. Rapid growth drove short-term investment strategies. In their haste to claim market share, Investors often plunged headfirst, then left the party fast, moving on. Concepts trumped execution.

So failure is okay, you may ask? In case you haven’t heard the news from Lehman, those days are over.

Don’t get the wrong idea: There’s still plenty of money. It’s just that investors have matured beyond dating start-ups. Now they want to marry them. Flash and sizzle no longer count. Results and a track record do. Proven execution means reliability and shelter in the storm, and it is stormy out there. Investment will follow a solid opportunity, but it’s up to you to start your own enterprise, because in this economic environment, investors won’t.

So, after you’ve begged, borrowed and stolen enough to get your company going, to get your horse out of the gate, where do you go from there?

Reliability means executing a business plan with meat on its bones, a credible plan with vision, accurate numbers, and down-to-earth assumptions. Investors will make you prove you can execute to your plan, too, even if you’re just starting out. They’ll demand evidence you practice what you preach before throwing initial funding your way. Then, in order to lock up continued funding, you’ll be on the hook to show an expanding customer base, market leadership, increased sales and margin. Credibility means realistically planning your growth. If you can’t do that, you’ll never grow.

Credibility with investors also mandates a clear, detailed, nuts-and-bolts vision for evolving your corporate structure as you grow. These guys think big: How will your financial, ERP, CRM and other systems evolve with the business? Quality? Business continuity? Customer experience management? How do you support these critical functions when you’re small? What will you look like three years from now? At what stages do you add headcount/cost? Where are self-sustaining plateaus, the steps in between? When? How do you rationalize vertical markets, going global? Just like investors have grown up, what do you want to be when you grow up too?

A winning technology or brilliant idea is just the beginning. Partnering with experts like Thomas Financial Services, LLC, www.thomasfinancialsvcs.com who specialize in connecting you with the investment community, can get you off the launch pad faster, get you to market in time to claim the top of the hill. Business insight helps you tell a better story, build a bullet-proof plan, makes you a better company. Of course, connecting companies with investors is more than just tuning up an enterprise; Playing from the money side, savvy investors rely on such experts to offer insightful, fast, third-party analysis of emerging opportunities and the people who run them.

Great concepts fall flat in the hands of losers. Weak concepts usually thrive with a winning team. Proving you’re capable of sustained, incremental, planned success is your single greatest keystone to credibility. Growth has slowed today. Investment is tough. Make investors believe in you. Getting help by partnering with a winner in harsh economic conditions may be the best investment you make.

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Filed under: Computers & Technology

So how will you squeeze time to work from home into your already crammed day? The first thing is to identify how much time you can give over to your ‘work-from-home business’, then create a work plan and/or schedule.

First, set some ground rules with yourself, family and friends. Regardless of whatever you home business is, start adopting the attitude you have a ‘business at home’ and as such you (and those around you) need to respect this. If you have children at home, you are now a ‘working father’ or ‘working mother’, even if your office is “home”.

One of the first things to set up is your answering-machine. Use your answering machine consistently to screen calls and prevent interruptions. Learn how to say: “Sorry, I have to work!”… because you do.

Next, set ‘office hours’ – times when you solely focus on your work. You could decide on regular days and times or, if your life is more unpredictable, identify the times when you will be able to do some work, even if these are different every day.

Structure and being consistent with your ‘work times’ is key and (this bit is vital) when work time comes around, turn your back on other demands. Don’t start washing the car, going to the shops, cleaning the house, etc – go to your work space and go to work! You may find it helpful to set exact times so that you carry on working for an allotted time span.

Draw out a week’s agenda or calendar as a Work Schedule and be sure to factor in… – times of day you’re naturally most productive – times when there are least amount of distractions – other priorities, like time with partner and kids, – consider other draws on time like making time for health and fitness, and of course social time with your partner and family.

Identify right up front what might knock you off your work schedule and be prepared for those factors; possibly build in some spare time to allow for eventualities that you hadn’t planned for, which always crop up in life. Think about what factors could prevent you from achieving the work schedule that week, and try and to build in a ‘plan B’ if they do crop up. Also be realistic with yourself. If you only have three hours a week to work on your business, then that’s what you schedule. Just make the most of that time, and ensure you use every minute in a productive way.

You may be reading this saying “but I can’t find any free time?” If that’s the case, answer this question honestly to yourself “Which is more important to me – earning an income from home, or all the “other stuff?” Never forget we all have just 24 hours in a day – it’s how we each choose to use that time that makes the difference. You need to decide that ‘working from home’ IS important. I suspect you’re filling all your day right now as it is, so If you want work time you’ll have to spend less time doing some things, or completely eliminate some activities from your schedule. You won’t be the first facing this dilemma – what you need to ask yourself is … “what am I prepared to give up to give my business time and move it along the road to success?” …and yes you will have to and cut down on…

…TV-time – aren’t there shows you could live without? …E-mail and Internet surfing – if they are not related to your business. …Kids’ activities – review and consider dropping all but the essential ones (probably some the kids don’t enjoy anyway!) …Shopping – do it one swoop, or order online and have it delivered. …Cleaning – delegate chores, hire help, create a system

Here are some other terrific ways to free up more time, and just an extra 15 minutes a day can make a big difference: – Practice saying “no” more often – it’s hard I know, but it will be an invaluable lesson to getting better control of your time. – If your home role involves doing much of the cooking, then plan menus, prepare food ahead of time and max out your freezer. – Create a regular “Daddy/Mummy Night”, when the kids get quality time with their Dad or Mum, while you get to work uninterrupted. – Use a daily/weekly/monthly planner that works for you and your personality (paper, electronic, scraps of paper… just make sure it helps you stay organised). – Schedule regular “work retreats” …go to a relative’s home, or hotel, and work for one or more days without interruption.

For all of us that ‘work from home’, finding time to work – and sticking to it – is about the most challenging aspect of working from home. It will be an ongoing struggle but the better structured and organised you are, the more likely you are to achieve your weekly work schedule. In the end, it will be clearly worth with everyone in the family benefiting as you enjoy the fruits of your success. Just roll up your sleeves, stay focused and just do it!

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Filed under: Home Based Business

Everyone knows that marketing a home business is one of the most tricky things about having one. You have to be sure that you are doing it correctly, because no matter what your business is, chances are good that there are a lot of people who have home businesses that are going to be able to compete with yours.

You will find that because the internet is so huge, and there are so many businesses out there, people choose the businesses that market themselves the best. Hurry And Make YOUR Mark!

How can you make your mark? You have to be unique, and creative. You have to have something that no one else has. Because there are alot of people out there who will have the same idea as you.

So you have to make yourself unique, something about you has to be one of a kind, your product, your business ways, or the website that you create. You also have to be sure and promote being unique, but you have to make sure that it is true.

If you accomplish this, you are on the right track. Market! Market! Market! Market yourself too.

No matter what it is you do there will be somewhere that will be able to market you. You have to do your own research and figure out for yourself where the best place to market yourself is.

A good way to get started is to research your product online. Find your competition and investigate there marketing strategies.

Now get your name known out there and get where you want to be in the home business field. Remember, your marketing has to always be creative.

This could even be the thing that sets you apart from all the rest. If you can be sure that you really know what you are doing, you might be able to find your way to the top of something, and you might be able to be more of a success than you ever thought it would be possible for you to be.

Get out there and market yourself, in the best way possible, and see if you can bring yourself to the forefront. The better your marketing the more profits and sales you will make.

We hope you liked this information, we always try to inform you the best we can regarding your home business and home business needs. Market! Market! Market!

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Filed under: Marketing

No one doubts how effective good content is to your website. It is not only of value to your visitors but other websites will seek you out looking for sites to link to or from or to which they can set up RSS feeds

Be wary of link farms – services who offer to attract 1000’s of free links to your website. Most of these deeply “black hat” techniques which will result in your website being penalised or black listed by the search engines.

While there are many who are understandably wary of link requests they receive, it is suggested that you do not avoid these altogether. If used correctly, link requests can produce very powerful results and considerably enhance your web site optimisation. Search engines place significant importance on the quality and number of links you have into and out from your website. These links impact your search engine ranking and PR score.

The following are however offered as simple to follow guidelines to assist your link building program.You should not be off handed to your handling of requests you get from web administrators seeking a link to you or you linking to them.

1. Check to ascertain if the site is diluted by a multitude of outgoing links and few inbound links. This is particularly important if the outgoing links are unrelated to the site’s own content.

2. Check the relevance of the site’s content and theme to your own internet site. Unsuitable links do you no favours with the SEs.

3. Don’t consent to any request unless you have proved the website’s current details and its history. What is being displayed at the domain now may be quite different to what a former owner of the domain had on the web site.

4. Be careful with requests received from any link farming web services that is free. If you wish to these types of services, be sure to pay the subscription and then rigourously apply filters carefully to the sources of any request.

5. Be careful with requests received from any link farming web services that is free. If you wish to these types of services, be sure to pay the subscription and then rigourously apply filters carefully to the sources of any request.

6. Ascertain whether the outgoing links have the NOFOLLOW tage. If they do then you’ll get restricted value (if any) by the search engines for such links.

Be prepared for the long haul. Backlink building is not a quick fix solution to optimising your web site. The results will come and they will be rewarding but it will take time. If you are not interested or do not have the time to do this yourself, some SEO specialists provide this service as an addition to their usual SEO services.

Owners of well ranked websites will receive many requests for backlinks each day and as such you need to submit your request in a way that will attract their attention. The best advice would be to ensure you personalise you request and where ever possible address you request to a real person. Get hold of the person’s real name and personal email address. If you can not find it on the website itself, then do some research to locate these details

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Filed under: Traffic Generation

When you do search engine optimisation, you are increasing your website’s rank among search engines such as Yahoo, Google and MSN. In Australia, Google is the main search engine with over 80% of the search engine market share. Tests have also revealed that Google searches almost always become either sales or inquiries much more often than searches by other major search engines do. In other words, this means that Google gives you the most high-quality search traffic. This is why you should focus your efforts to optimise on Google.

With Google, you’ll find that you rank quite well as compared to the others. For this, there’s a three-step process by which you can perform search engine optimisation. This topic is fairly complex and companies spend a lot of money getting this done for them. However, you can do this with three relatively simple steps.

Step 1: Perform Keyword Research Establish keywords and phrases that are relevant to your services or your product so that you can focus your search engine optimisation efforts on those particular keywords or phrases. For example, if your business operates within a local area, your keyword research is normally going to be pretty easy. It’s likely to be that your keywords and keyword phrases will simply include what you do and then your area. For example, if your business is as a carpet cleaner and you operate in Sydney, your keyword phrases likely to be something to the effect of “Carpet cleaning Sydney.” You can also use keyword and search tools like inventory.overture.com, which is free, or keyworddiscovery.com or wordtracker.com; the latter two are paid search tools, but they’re also somewhat more sophisticated than inventory.overture.com.

Step 2: Optimising on Page Optimise your webpage content. For the best search engine optimisation and rankings, you have to make sure that the right keywords appear on your webpages. This is part of the story, true, but it’s just part of what you have to do to optimise your webpages. Here are some other things you should do to make sure you optimise effectively.

1. Include a Keyword Rich Title on Your Page. The title is the label that appears in the blue bar at the top of your web browser. It also appears as the title of your webpage in Google’s organic search results. The title should be short, concise, keyword-rich and you should put the most important keywords at the front. Take the example of a print shop located in Surry Hills, in Sydney. A good tile for them might be: Digital Printer Sydney – Colour Digital Printing Surry Hills Sydney. As you can tell its pretty keyword rich, there’s a little bit of repetition there, not too much and it doesn’t sound too weird.

2. Your Description Should Be Keyword Rich. The description is also called the “meta description tag.” This is part of your website code and describes the page’s content. Write descriptions in complete sentences and make them keyword rich. For the carpet installation service in Sydney, for example, it could read something to the effect of, “Surry Hills, Sidney Carpet Installation. Installing Carpet at a Reasonable Price.”

3. Pay Attention to Headings. Headings are very important for search engines because they seem to help them find page content is important, too. Make sure that your subheadings and headings are keyword rich for a good start, for example, using a heading such as “Carpet Installation Services in Sydney.”

4. Page Content Matters, Too. Your page content needs at least one keyword rich textual paragraph per page. You can repeat keywords used in your headings in the content. Use a mix of related keyword phrases, such as, “Carpet Installation Sydney, One-Day Carpet Installation, Fast Carpet Installation,” and so on instead of repeating the same phrases over again.

5. Look At Links. Links are another important indicator of page content. You should avoid generic words and links such as, “Find out more” or “Click here”. Instead, use keyword rich link test such as, “View our complete range of digital printing services”, with “digital printing services” as a link.

Step-3: Optimise Off Page As Well Utilising off page optimisation or linking strategies is the third and final stage in making sure your website is search engine optimised. When people link to your website, these are known as “incoming links,” and Google considers these as votes for your website. Many businesses fail because they only focus on using keywords and webpages but don’t utilise a linking strategy. Here are a few things you can do to start making sure your site goes up the ranks with linking strategies:

1. If You Can, Have People Who Link to Your Site Use Keywords. Let’s say a client of yours is going to link to your website. If you can, ask them to use keywords like “inexpensive carpet installation” instead of your company name or a directive like “click here.”

2. List Your Sites on Authority Directories. Listing your website on website directories which are well regarded by search engines can help to improve your rankings. Most of these so-called authority directories charge a fee for listing. A fact that serves to keep out lower quality websites. Three of the most important authority directories are: Yahoo.com.au, botw.org and business.com. Please note that I’m not talking about email scams that offer to submit your site to 34 million directories for $49. You should only bother submitting your website to directories that are well regarded by search engines.

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Filed under: Marketing