By Bernadette Doyle
Do you ever feel that there just aren’t enough hours in the day?
Are you frustrated because you are full of great ideas to grow your business that you just don’t have time to implement? Do you feel that you’re putting in long hours, yet still not getting the money or quality of life that you hoped your business would bring you?
You’re not alone. You’re simply caught in a position that most business owners find themselves in before too long. I call it the ‘time-trap’.
By Andrea Conway
It’s wonderful when business owners have family, friends and associates who believe in and encourage their business ideas. But what if you’re not that fortunate?
I’ve had coaching clients who blamed their lack of progress in business on unsupportive and even hostile family members. “My spouse thinks I’m crazy to leave a good job just to follow a dream that may never come true. And maybe he’s right.”
Does the Law of Attraction offer a solution to this quandary? You bet it does.
By VANA member Diana Ennen
For those of you who are still in the dark, a Virtual Assistant, or VA, is an executive level, administrative professional who works from his/her own office to support clients using some of the latest available technology. The Internet has brought many skilled professionals out of the corporate environment and back into their homes, enabling them to create a better work-life balance, while still performing in the roles they love. The VA is one such professional. Working from their home-based offices and making use of the Internet, telephone, fax and email, VAs are able to offer small and medium-sized businesses a quality of administrative support, previously only available to the corporate giants, in a cost-effective manner.
By Titus Hoskins
It always surprises me how much money you can make by selling other people’s stuff on the Internet. The real numbers never truly hit you until you fill out your taxes. Eight years in and the numbers still shock me. Always.
More than the numbers, what really amazes me the most is the lifestyle one can achieve from online marketing. You can be your own boss, work your own hours, carry out your business from anywhere in the world you want to live. You can create automatic marketing systems that work 24/7/365 days of the year. Earn money even when you’re sleeping, vacationing or out enjoying a gourmet meal at your favorite restaurant. Total freedom.
By Hunter Waterhouse
Article marketing continues to be a proven method for generating traffic to our websites and developing good search placement, even after all of these years. I have been reading articles online since 1995, and I continue to read a few dozen articles per week on subjects that are dear to my heart.
Some Claim That Article Marketing Does Not Work
Now and again, I will read a thread in a forum somewhere where somebody claims that article marketing does not work.
By Elizabeth Adams
There are many reasons why, each day, thousands of people are drawn to the idea of starting an online business:
* Existing business owners can increase their potential customers to include millions of internet users,
* Home-based entrepreneurs can cost-effectively advertise their products and services and build huge prospect lists, and
* All business owners can take advantage of online services that not only help to automate the sales process, but also develop lasting customer relations.
The complexity of starting an online business depends, to a large extent, on the degree to which off-the-shelf solutions are used to implement the sales process.
By Bernadette Doyle
A few years ago, I met one of the best known ’sales experts’ in the UK. He had authored several books, and provided motivational training for blue-chip companies in a career spanning decades. If you’ve worked in the sales world for any time, you have almost certainly heard of him. Now in the ‘golden years’ of his career, he could sit back and let the opportunities come to him, couldn’t he? Actually no. “We never kept a database, Bernadette” he privately confessed to me.
So at great expense he had to hire and manage a sales team to set appointments for him. If he had cultivated a list over the years, he would have had prospective clients knocking on his door.
By Mark Silver
It seems like such an easy fix: “25% off!” “Buy now and I’ll reduce the price by $100!” Discounting as a selling tactic seems as natural and easy as all get-out.
Which is why you should never, ever discount.
Discounting is a cancer in business, that eats at your heart, and at the heart of your customers. It is smoke and mirrors.
“Good ol’ Wal-Mart. That multi-billion dollar global company, which is the discounter of all discounters. They started with good in their heart. Sam Walton looked around him and saw lots of great things he thought ‘the little guy’ should have. Why should only the rich have luxuries, now that our great industrial society can produce so much so easily?”
By Janet Barclay, MVA
How green is your office? Do you regularly practice the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle? Listed below are ten strategies for reducing your office’s environmental footprint. How many of these do you do on a regular basis?
By Kimberly Clay
Before discussing the use of social bookmarking as a business tool, we should first have a quick look at the phenomenon and discuss why it has become so popular. By understanding that, then it will become easier to understand potential business uses. The uses outlined here are just that: outlines, since the particular applications to which these sites can be put will be specific to your type of online business.