The World Business

Posts Tagged ‘Resources’

If you’re a student and you need some extra money, there are actually ways on how to make money without sacrificing your time from school or leisure. Instead of taking part time work tutoring other people or taking jobs watching over other people’s kids or pets, you can actually do that by just staying within the comforts of your home. With that, you don’t have to spend extra for transportation fare or just energy moving around. All you need is your computer and an Internet connection and then you’re set.

If you have a knack for selling, then websites like Ebay, Amazon or other similar ones are just the thing for you. Find something from your closet or anywhere that’s still in mint condition and may seem worth a certain price. You can post an ad online and see people bid for it. Many, at present, resort to online shopping rather than going out of their way to malls. It’s a great way to earn money and simultaneously, removing clutter from your home; only this way, you get paid for fixing your room. Isn’t it great?

Another solution is through writing articles. If you’re more of the paper and pen type, then it’s best if you start from there. There are actually websites that offer free blogging service. You can actually use this to earn money. It doesn’t take too much time and you’ll be working at your own work station. If you research on how to make money using blogging, you’ll get tones of money. So, what are you waiting for? Start browsing for resources!

One of the most difficult aspects of operating a small business is attempting to decrease your customer acquisition costs to improve profits and in many cases high acquisition costs are what prevent the business from being profitable at all. Most small businesses do not keep track of acquisition statistics so they are unsure of how much it costs for them to acquire each new customer. Without knowing this statistic, it is impossible to truly measure the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing.

One of the ways to help reduce acquisition costs is to use free advertising resources to increase your customer base. With these resources the primary cost is time, which for advertising is a relatively low price. Here are a few resources that small businesses should be taking advantage of to grow their customer base as it will definitely give you a competitive edge over your competition:

Craigslist - Craigslist.com is an online classified website that is free to post listings. Craigslists is one of the top 10 visited websites in the United States and can drive a tremendous amount of traffic to your business. Craigslist has a services section where local businesses can list the products and services that they offer for potential customers. Craigslist is organized by local geographies, therefore you have the potential to drive very local customers to your business. Total time to post an ad on Craigslist is probably about five minutes and will be less once you get the hang of it.

Google Base - Google Base is a free online classified that benefits from the large amounts of traffic generated by Google.com. A simple listing on Google Base can help to drive traffic to your website and although Google claims that it does not make a difference, it is a good bet that the more activity you have on the web properties, the better you will rank in their primary search engine.

Press Releases - The days of needing to be a professional writer to submit a press release are long gone. Now anyone that has knowledge of a product or service should submit press releases to media outlets and can be done easily with free resources. A couple of the sites that I recommend are prleap.com and prfree.com, but there are many others. These services submit your articles to the Associated Press which in many cases will be a distribution of 40,000 subscribers. If only a fraction of the subscribers pick up your article, you benefit. It first establishes you as an authority on the subject matter, but it also generates links back to your website which will increase your search engine rankings. The benefits of these free services can be massive in reducing your customer acquisition costs.

Merchant Circle - Merchantcircle.com is an online business directory that is focused on offering small business websites to promote their business. The main benefit of their service in my opinion is that their pages rank highly in the search engines, therefore, increase the ranking of your website in your local geographic ares. To set up you page only takes about ten minutes.

These are just a few examples of free resources that your business should be using. Think out of the box and do a little research to find out other free resources that will benefit your business. With only one new customer, this form of advertising pays for itself.

Entrepreneurship and Human Resources

Through many years of working with entrepreneurs, the thing most likely to bring success to a sudden stop is the lack of attention to the area of human resources. Despite the fact that people costs of the growing business are the biggest single expense, very little attention is paid to this area until the entrepreneurial train hits the buffers.

Whilst I can see why this happens, it is still an inexcusable error by the would-be entrepreneur. When the business first starts there are usually only a small number of people involved and they are usually highly committed to the new venture and interact on a daily, and often hourly, basis. However, as the business grows so does the number of people. Moreover, newer employees are more likely to join because they want the job rather than because they have the evangelistic zeal of the entrepreneur. Add to that the increasing difficulty of communicating with a larger group and human resources is now a time-bomb waiting to explode in the entrepreneur's face.

With employment training costs on the rise, it is more important than ever for employers to carefully screen prospective employees to avoid wasting resources on candidates who will not ultimately succeed in passing a drug test. Employers also need fast turnaround and accurate reporting of drug testing results to avoid wasting time waiting for results and wasting money on errors. Employers need reliable, accurate information from quality vendors communicated quickly to keep the process moving.