Category Archives: Money and Business

Most offline businesses eventually become online businesses as well. It is not rare for offline businesses to establish an online presence in order to grow. It might not be beneficial for a business to get online for many reasons. If a company has been selling shoes for many years, for example, its owner might want to start selling the same shoes online as well. It means expanding his services. I believe that the day will come where almost all offline businesses are going to establish their online presence in order to expand. This is how things are going to be in the years to come.

Most businessmen have business cards, but not everyone knows how to utilize his business card the best way. If you want to supercharge your business card into a powerful tool, then you should read the next few paragraphs very closely:

-Use the back of your card to include some important information like sales info. While it is true that business cards are quite small, it is still possible to include some important information on the back of the card. Whenever a potential customer will check the back of your card, he will be reminded why your company is the one he should be doing business with. It is a great way to encourage sales and a great way to use business cards more effectively.

-Another way to supercharge your business card into a powerful tool is to use your cards as an appointment card. The back of your card will probably be the most suitable for this task, as it usually has a lot of free space. What is great about using your business card as an appointment card is that people are not going to throw it away at least until their appointment. This means that they will be reminded about your business a lot more often.

I sometimes wonder if it is even possible to save money in a down economy. Do you for example have any savings? When it comes to me, I do not know when was the last time I had some money on my savings account to spend on whatever I wanted to spend. One of my New Year�s resolutions is to have more savings. I know that the resolution might be a little ambitious, but I am not ready to give up just yet. This time I am going to try really hard to make sure that I accomplish my goals. I will try to go through the list of my expenses and see what I can reduce. I will try to let you know about everything I managed to accomplish.

It is not enough to plan your budget once and then leave it be. Your situation and your expenses might change often, even more often than you might expect them to change. You need to be flexible with your budget. I try to adjust my budget almost every month. I try to see if something has changed. Maybe I have one more extra expense or maybe there is something I decided not to buy anymore. If this is the case, it might be a reason to remove it from the budget and replace it with something else or nothing at all.

I think it is important not to forget about a �call to action� on your website. Creating a call to action does not have to be difficult and it might result in higher sales or in higher subscriber numbers. Let me give you an example. If you are a blogger, then there are a few things you may want to do. You can ask your readers to subscribe to your feed. This is a good example of a call to action and it often works if your articles are interesting. You may also encourage them to sign up to your newsletter or even encourage them to leave a comment. Do you have any thoughts what is the best way to achieve it?

As a business owner, you need to remember about separating your business life from your personal life. One of the ways to accomplish this is to use your business credit cards and your personal credit cards separately. Every time you decide to purchase something for your business, make sure that you are going to use one of your business credit cards. If you plan to shop in a grocery store, which has nothing to do with your business, always use your personal credit card. Separating business and personal life will allow you to keep track of your cash flows. It will be also easier for you to keep track of your taxes.

Do you think that your credit card details are safe at the restaurants you visit? Even though in most cases your credit card details are safe, hackers have ways to hack into cash register terminals in order to steal credit and debit card numbers. Such details are often sold later on the Internet, and you can imagine what problems it might cause.

I remember that a few years ago, there was a situation like this, as two hackers managed to hack into 11 Dave & Buster�s cash register terminals. It has been said, that they captured data of about 5,000 credit and debit cards, which is a quite large number considering those were only two hackers. While I am not saying we should not visit restaurants, I think that we should look a little bit deeper into possible security vulnerabilities at such establishments.

Writing your business plan before starting your online business is one thing, but revising it on a regular basis is another thing. You will need to revise your business plan from time to time simply because so many things change very rapidly. Even if a strategy used to work in the past, it might not work anymore and you might be forced to revise your strategies.

-Learn to use constructive criticism to your advantage. I know that sometimes listening to criticism might be hard, but if somebody has to say something about your business and he is right about it, do not hesitate to listen to him and implement his advice in your business plan.
-Make sure the data you included in your business plan is accurate and up-to-date. Since many things change every day, what used be true yesterday does not have to be true today.
-Check regularly whether your ideas worked in the past. Also, check regularly whether your business plan worked and whether your business follows the path you described in your business plan. If your business follows another path and is brining you money, do not hesitate to adjust your business plan to the new path. Remember that your business plan can be flexible if this is what you want it to be.

It seems that many business owners quit blogging. Are you interested what the reasons are? Are we really that different from business bloggers? We also try to �sell a product�, but in our case it is our blog itself. Here are the reasons why many business people give up on blogging:

1. They are not happy with the amount of comments left by visitors.
2. According to them, they do not have enough subscribers.
3. They do not observe an increase in traffic coming to their main website.
4. They find it difficult to come up with fresh new content for the blog every day or week. Blogs that are not being updated often might not serve their purpose.
5. They cannot work out how to promote products and services via their blog. It is not that easy to promote different products from various industries on a blog.

Maintaining a blog costs money. That is why if there are going to be negligible benefits, then it is a wise choice for a business to delete such a blog. Regular bloggers are in a different position, as they are not oriented on increasing their income. They are rather focused on having influence over other people and interacting with users all over the world. That is why there are some blogs that have been out for years, and they are still performing very well.

Organizing your work space might be one of the best things you can do for your business. If there is a chance that somebody might drop by and pay you an unannounced visit, you need to be prepared for any unexpected visitors. You need to learn to represent your business with style. Many things can add to the style of your business. Organizing your work space is one thing, but having a few business cards prepared for your visitors is another things. If you plan to have some business cards prepared in advance, make sure that they are designed in such a way that they are likely to attract the attention of your customers.