It’s going to be a big year for you! You’ve decided it’s time to step up and into your own small home based business – but you want to make sure you get it right so you don’t suffer financially, right? It’s common knowledge that many small business start-ups fail quite quickly, and home based businesses are no exception. There are many reasons why home based businesses fail. Here are just two things that can contribute to the failure of a home based business:

Inability to attract clients – particularly corporate ones – due to a perception of the business as a small home based operation;
Poor customer service including a failure to respond to prospective clients in a timely and professional manner, leading to a loss of business;

If you’ve done your market research and you’re confident you have sufficient funds to survive the early growth stages of your business you’re well on the way to success. The next step is to ensure that your business appears professional and that you’re able to attract good clients and communicate with them in a professional manner. A NYC virtual office from VH International Business Solutions can help you with that – and from as little as $25 a month!

With a NYC virtual office you can:

Have a physical NYC office address for your business. The address can be used on your business cards and clients can send mail to you at the address. Any walk in clients will be able to leave a message for you at our staffed reception area.
Have a New York telephone number. Calls to your NYC virtual office number can be forwarded to you or to a message bank. Alternatively, you can arrange to have a live operator answer all your calls during business hours and take messages personally.
Arrange meetings or presentations at your New York location – we have meeting rooms and offices available for short term hire at inexpensive rates. That means that when you need to be “at the office” physically, you can be.

You might be years away from being able to afford office rental in New York – and perhaps you don’t aspire to that at all – but a NYC virtual office from VH International Business Solutions can give you many of the benefits of a great office address without the expense, or the need to travel to the office!

When you read any piece of information on search engines, you will more often than not see most people referring to Google. Granted, with the boom earlier this year and the surprising success of Bing, this is coming into its own more. However, Google is still the one that everybody refers to the most. The even stranger thing about this is that quite a lot of the time this is not done intentionally. Somebody may be genuinely discussing search engines as a whole, yet automatically the word ‘Google’ rolls off the tongue.

At seoconsult.co.uk we are fully aware, as most people are, that Google is the number one and not only is it the leading search engine, it leads by miles and miles and miles. For this reason, it is of course obvious that Google would be a major focus in your search engine optimisation, but surely the others are still worth it? A small percentage of users may choose to search through Bing, yet that small percentage of people could in fact be millions of potential new customers. When put into perspective like that, it is worth looking at the others too. If you want your company and brand name to be well known then you need to have your fingers in as many pies as possible, and favouring one search engine alone will not perceived as positive. Social media optimisation can be a step in the right direction to help you stand out from the competition, especially when combined with effective SEO and link building strategies.

A company of course needs to determine what their business goals and objectives are before they decide how much time and money to invest in all the various search engines. When you hire a search engine optimisation company you will usually go through a process where you discuss your main needs. If you are looking for a quick fix to drive as much traffic as possible to your website and increase your click through rate for a specific period of time, then this is fine. Perhaps you are running a promotion or have a limited sign up period for something, so the key is large numbers in large quantities. In this circumstance you may want to put all your eggs in one basket as it was, and focus on giving Google a large and heavy hit in a short space of time.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you want to create a long lasting and loyal brand perception, work on your search engine optimization and want long term status over a quite fix, then you need to cater to a wider audience. People are quick to pick up on things and once you are seen to be isolating a specific group of search users then you are heading for trouble.

One aspect of online marketing where perhaps you could argue more focus should be on Google is within paid advertising. As this requires staff input and resource you do want to get the best out of what you put in. That being said, with a PPC campaign you only pay for those who click, so if you do have the resources then there is nothing to lose.

Even as the economy begins to turn around, banks remain hesitant to extend credit to small businesses.  After a lengthy application process and rigorous audit of the business’s financial documents, many business owners are coming up short in finding the capital they need to grow their business.  Without stellar credit and healthy financials, your chances of getting access to capital from traditional funding sources are slim.

Many retail business and restaurant owners have turned to the business cash advance as an alternative.  The cost of the funds is typically higher than what banks would charge, but it comes with certain benefits:

- The application process is very simple.  There is minimal paperwork required.  Pre-approvals can be provided within 24 hours, and funding often takes place within 5 – 7 business days.

- Approval rates for qualified applicants are as high as 90%.

- Good personal and business credit isn’t required.

- There is no  need to pledge any assets or collateral (business or personal) in order to secure funding.

- The methods by which advances are paid back make repayment very flexible.  A percentage of the business’s future credit card sales, typically between 10% and 20%) are withheld by the merchants credit card processor and applied towards the balance of the advance.  A slow month in credit card sales results in a lower amount paid back towards the advance.  This makes it easier to cope if business slows down a bit.

- Businesses typically qualify to receive an additional advance before the first advance is entirely paid off.  This varies case by case, but once the balance is down to about 50%, many merchants qualify for additional funds.

There are many merchant cash advance providers out there.  Each has their own strengths and weaknesses.  Companies like Sure Payment Solutions are able to find the right match for each business based on each owner’s particular situation and needs.  Visit www.surepaymentsolutions.com. to learn more.

Unless you have been living on a desert Island you will know that many people are becoming very rich through making money via the internet. If you are also trying to grab your stake in this huge business I hope this article can provide a decent introduction for you.

Perhaps the most popular but not necessarily the best way, in my opinion, is to join some sort of MLM scheme. There are SO many to choose from. This business is huge and feeds mainly on the desperation of people who want or need to make money fast. These business tend to have very similar websites that have pictures of cash and flashy cars and stories of people who have made their fortunes using their system.

They are all basically the same. You pay a fee to join (either one time fee or a monthly fee) and you convince others to do the same and they in turn do the same. It’s appealing to many people because theoretically you only need to introduce a few people and get them to do the same and so on and the effect snowballs. So theoretically a little bit of work and getting a few people on board will snowball into $1000s or more and you can retire as the snowball grows by itself automatically.

The reality is this is simply theory. It very rarely actually happens that you invite a few people and watch the snowball grow. I have tried a few of these MLM’s for fun really just to see what this market is really all about and they all pretty much turn out to be the same. A company is getting ready to launch so they contact all the people they know and hype it up as the answer to their online income dreams. People get really excited and chat on Skype all day long about how their marketing plan is coming along. Then the company launches and things are going great this guy has a new recruit that guy has a new recruit, maybe even you have 1 or 2 in the first month. It all seems to be going according to plan. But then a month or maybe a few months in the momentum begins to slow. Not so many new people are coming in and the recent recruits get impatient and upset. They then start to get angry with whomever recruited them and start to accuse those recruiters as scammers because they promised them financial freedom and it hasn’t happened yet. So then they go around every forum and start slandering the program saying it’s a scam etc but then somehow those same people find another new start up program and they foolishly believe that this next one will be the answer to their prayers.

It’s almost religious because a lot of these MLM’s have a “leader” and the people follow him almost like a cult. He was able to recruit maybe 100 or more people within a short period of time and he is normally very charismatic (otherwise how could he recruit so many so quickly). Whenever anyone says something bad about him the followers are quick to defend his reputation because they have somewhat fallen in love with him and believe that he is their “savior”.

I’m not saying that everyone is like this but believe me I have seen this phenomenon at least twice in my travels.

In saying all of that you can certainly make money with these MLM’s, and you can also certainly become rich as many have. But you are basically doing it via a legalized pyramid scheme. Many people think these MLM’s are illegal or dodgy but they aren’t in the slightest. All you have to do is give a product for the money the members pay and you are totally legal. So what you find is many MLM’s give webhosting which is of course a staple product for any internet user. Reality is perhaps 90% of the members don’t even use the webhosting. They are only in it for the business opportunity.

The fact is this market is huge. It isn’t about to die anytime soon and the market is growing. More and more people come to the internet in search of an online income so this is certainly one way to make money online but in reality it isn’t stable and your business is being built on sand as it were.

Another online money making business idea is to become a ghost writer. If English is your native tongue there are many online marketers that need people to write articles for them about anything. They normally tell you the topic they want you to write about and how many words etc. Depending on how fast you can type and think you could make anywhere from $10-$30 per hour doing this work. If you have an above average knowledge of a topic then you are able to give superior quality content on that topic you could make more. The problem with this business is there are already many people doing this and it could be hard to get your foot in the door. You need to build a reputation before you get decent work so your first 100 jobs will be a real struggle. However if you do a good job you will get a lot of repeat business and eventually be able to work completely form home using only your computer and your writing skills.

The final online income method I will talk about here is called Niche Marketing or Affiliate Marketing. Essentially you create websites focused around a certain theme. If the theme is computer mice then you have a website all about that topic and you feature all kinds of mice on that site which link to sites like Amazon where you will get a commission if someone actually buys a mouse. You can also put Google AdSense on the site and earn money simply from people clicking on ads. This has been my preferred method and it is the one method I will stick to for now as it’s working well and doesn’t require me to recruit others.  Some of my niche websites include Wedges Sandals & Mother of the Groom Dresses

My success or failure purely depends upon me and no one else. When I did the MLM’s they just kept failing because people would drop out and I felt like I was constantly bailing water out of a sinking boat. With the website business it’s the opposite. The costs of running this business aren’t very high. Just need webhosting which is about $5/month and $10/year for each domain name you buy. Currently my income is growing by about $75 per month so its working well and the growth is stable. However doing this business takes a lot of learning. During my first 6 months I earned about $100. But after that it started to be more consistent and started to grow at a decent rate. There are many courses you can buy that will show you the basic ropes if you want a head start. Otherwise just search the net and learn as much as you can for free and give it a go. About 80-90% of websites fail so be sure to try as many websites as possible before you give up. Most people have 50-100 sites before they have a few successful ones.