Local Businesses and Web Sites

It seems that most successful businesses these days have web sites, even businesses that service only certain geographic areas. On the web, where the market place is global, localized businesses can be at a great disadvantage.

A Local Business Web Site Example

Lets use the example of a car cleaning businesses. The business only cleans cars in a specific city, yet wants to use their web site to create more business. Time and money is invested in marketing the site in the search engines, paying particular attention to marketing the site for the specific geographic region the service provider covers. Nonetheless, many visitors from around the globe are likely to stumble across the site if it is well marketed.

Offer Non-Geographic Specific Products and Services

If a local business does not offer some sort of product or service that is available to the global market, than these web visits are wasted. The solution is simple. Local businesses that expend effort marketing their web site should also consider offering additional products or services that can be purchased by the global market.

Product Options

Options for our example - a car cleaning service - could include T-shirts, hats, cleaning cloths, wax and/or soap. Even just T-shirts could be an additional source of revenue, whereas the seller benefits not just from the direct sale, but the advertising the wearer of the shirt will provide.
Drop Shipping Makes Offering Products Easy

To the busy business owner, offering additional products for the sake of web sales may seem like an extra burden rather than a hidden source of revenue. Yet adding products to your web site can be very easy. By using a drop-shipper, inventory is not required. Services such as Café Press allow products to be made as they are ordered.

Affiliate Systems

Also, if the site owner does not wish to deal with inventory and stocking products, affiliate systems can be used for revenue. Affiliate systems allow site owners to signup for revenue sharing programs with other companies. An affiliate program allows site owners to offer the products or services of other companies while getting a commission on sales generated from the site owner's site.

In short, if you run a business that operates on a local basis only, and also maintain a web site, it may be well worth your while to expand to the global market by adding products or services that can be sold around the world.

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The Benefits of Outsourcing In Small Businesses

Before we can begin discussing the benefits of outsourcing especially in small businesses we must fully understand what outsourcing is and what outsourcing is not (as many people often confuse it with off-shoring, a similar but different thing).

So what is outsourcing? A fairly recent addition to business terminology, outsourcing in a business is the delegation of certain non-core operations to other separate entities that specialize in those operations. Put very simply, outsourcing means giving away certain tasks which though imperative to the actual business, can be better managed by another industry which specializes in that task.

Outsourcing entails transferring management control and decision making power to the other industry as well. This means that there is a lot more interaction, and information exchange, coordination and trust between the outsourcer and its client, making it different from the established buyer-seller relationship.

Now that we have established what outsourcing is, let's focus on what it is not. Outsourcing is commonly confused to off shoring, which is the relocation of an entire or part of a functional unit of the business to another nation, whether it remain in that business's control or not. Outsourcing is usually limited domestically. In many cases, such as telemarketing, the company wishes to employ the service of overseas call centers. Thus when outsourcing crosses national borders it is called offshore outsourcing.

So why should companies outsource? There are plenty of benefits of outsourcing, especially for small businesses. The main reason for outsourcing is the cut in costs, as they don't have to provide benefits to their workers, and have fewer overhead expenses to worry about. Many businesses prefer offshore outsourcing, as it allows them to utilize the low labor costs of countries such as India and China. Not only that, the relatively high exchange rates in these countries makes offshore outsourcing more advantageous. In India, the dollar exchange rate is 45 rupees per every American dollar. Thus the average American worker who would take (for e.g) $5 per hour can be replaced by an Indian worker employed at $2/hour.
Outsourcing also allows smaller businesses to focus on core competencies, and relieve themselves of the peripheral ones. Thus they can concentrate on providing better quality products and service. Even if the quality does not improve, the cut in cost allows for greater productivity. This increases the overall economy in total. Not just that, the business can produce good quality products without having to employ a large amount of people. Thus lowering their overall labor charges and employee benefit.

The best facet of outsourcing though is the ability to employ professionals to get the work done. In areas such as advertising and telemarketing, it is usually more cost effective, and productive to hand over the task to a separate company and pay them accordingly. Thus instead of handling their own affairs in a substandard manner, they can employ professionals to carry out the process efficiently and effectively. And once the outsourcing company is assured that its client is managing perfectly, it can focus on creating better products and services.

For small businesses, outsourcing allows them to work with the minimum of labor and equipment expenditure. For example, a small firm outside city limits can outsource its transport, thus making it unnecessary for it to acquire buses, cutting the cost of fuel and saving its resources. Another prime example is telemarketing and advertising. Many companies prefer to outsource this facet of marketing to professional call centers and advertising agencies, thus eliminating the need to form an entire unit devoted to this task. Not only that, but because the outsourcing client has a fully established infrastructure devoted especially to the service provided, there is no necessity for a small business to invest in developing its own internal infrastructure to accommodate that service.

In small businesses there's only a limited access to resources and ideas. Outsourcing allows the business to garner new ideas and innovations. It could also result possible cash influx due to the transfer of assets to the new provider

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Internet Productivity--Lofty Goal or Oxymoron?

When you work for yourself and do business on the internet you have to be a great strategic leader and a skilled tactician; even under the best of circumstances, it's hard to be both.

In the corporate world, goals and milestones are the absolute measure of productivity and success. But when you work for yourself there's no objective-other than to hold you to your goals and keep you on track. Add to that the untamed complexities of doing business online and suddenly setting and achieving goals takes on the magnitude of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Despite its promise of efficiency, the web has for many home-based and small business owners become a seductive quagmire of distracted action, chaotic click-thrus and paralyzed productivity.

It's natural to look to others for advice and information on how to navigate the landscape, but in the process, you often get distracted, take detours, follow the road that leads to nowhere, and before you know it you've lost sight of your ultimate goals.

What does it take to get where you're going

No one knows for sure "where" success lies in wait for you. But we do know the road is often longer than the Nile, more twisted than San Francisco's Lombard Street and only partially paved to boot. Factor in the occasional mud-slide or wash-out that's bound to crop up along the way and the battle to overcome loss of focus and lack of direction soon becomes a way of doing business.

As the commander-in-chief and your most loyal employee, you have to be able to flip your view between the big picture and all the personal and professional micro-tasks that have to get done in order for you to realize your goals.

You can try grabbing a map and some tips from those who've made it and come back to share their success secrets. But separating myth from money-making often takes as much time as blazing your own trail. Not to mention, one person's treasure map quickly becomes a roadmap to mediocrity depending on how many people are all trying to play and win at the same game in the same space online. Golden nuggets gleaned from your success mentors need to be adapted for your journey and your circumstances.

Without knowing how long your journey is going to be, it's important to establish milestones that stretch you beyond your comfort zone, but are still attainable with the resources you have at hand. Short-term wins create wind-at-your-back-momentum to keep you pushing forward instead of crumbling in a heap of disillusionment or even disgust.

Before you get on your way you also want to take stock of what you've got. Now's the time to be brutally honest with yourself about what you're good at, what you love doing, and what you'd give up in a quick click if you thought you could afford to never do it yourself again.

Every hour you invest trying to accomplish non-core tasks or working in areas where your skills are weak has an exponentially negative effect on your results. Not only are you depleting your precious resources, you're unlikely to see a return on your efforts that provides sufficient reward and motivation to keep you moving forward.

What you need is a system that's structured enough to keep you on course, fluid enough to alternate your view between the big picture and the micro-tasks at a moment's notice, and flexible enough to adapt to the unforeseen and the unexpected as, and when, they inevitably arise.

Using an e-business Goal and Productivity System (GPS) can help you:

* Establish realistic goals and immediately set a course for action from right where you are.
* Balance your business and personal values and desires when defining your goals.
* Hone in on your own strengths and pass off as much of the other stuff to those whose strengths better match the task at hand.
* Provide direct access to quality knowledge, resources and tools that can help you prioritize and achieve your goals.
* Know where and how to multi-task, undertaking several projects simultaneously to gain leverage and when to focus exclusively one project at a time.

Rarely is there ever just one right answer to the challenges you face in your e-business or only one path to your desired goals. You don't want to become so mired in the task or problem at hand that you lose your way or your will to continue on the path to your success.

Using a GPS can help you quickly view and investigate all aspects of running a successful e-business and fluidly guide you from "know-how" to "take-action" and ultimately to your goal.

Small Business

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