July 20th 2010 Posted at General
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In a recent post I mentioned sending greeting cards as a way to keep in touch with clients. Well, I liked SendOutCards so much I signed up as a distributor. If you are interested in using SendOutCards to keep in touch with your clients or if you are interested in becoming a distributor yourself, contact me. I’ll show you how it works and you can even send a card or two on me.
June 15th 2010 Posted at General
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When you’re just starting out with a new business…. or anything for that matter… nobody expects you to know everything. Nobody was born knowing the difference between a sole proprietorship and an LLC, or how to set up a facebook fan page. So don’t be afraid to ask.
Too often people will let pride get in the way and it seems they would prefer to make the wrong decision than to admit they don’t know. Everyone who has the answers was told by someone. Whether they learned it in school or searched google for answers, somebody supplied them with the answer. So don’t be afraid to ask.
May 11th 2010 Posted at Customer Service, Marketing
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One of the most important keys to having a successful business is keeping in touch with your customers. I strongly believe that many businesses that fail, fail to do this. I myself have failed to do this in the past and I shudder to think about the revenue I’ve lost.
First let’s talk about why it’s so important to keep in touch with customers. You can’t assume that your customers will remember who you are. Let’s use a screen printing business as an example. We’ll use a landscaping company as our example client. They have a crew of workers they want to outfit with shirts that have their name and contact info on them. They order 48 shirts from you. You do the job, receive payment and thank them. Four to six months later they need another batch of shirts but they can’t find your info. They think they found you on Craigslist so they go there to try to find you. There’s a lot of screen printers on there so rather than look at each ad trying to find you, they decide just to contact the first one that comes up. They get the sale for the 2nd batch and you lose out. How could this be prevented? That’s right, by keeping in touch with them. Now let’s be clear here, I don’t mean you should constantly spam them with emails every week asking of they need anything. That’s a surefire way to lose them as a customer.
Now let’s discuss methods to keep in touch.
Newsletter – A newsletter is a great way to keep in touch with customers. I recommend sending out a newsletter once per month. In it you can include any specials you are having, events you might be attending/sponsoring and anything new and newsworthy in your business. Try to keep it short and sweet though. If it’s too long they are not likely to read it.
Thank You Cards – Use these less frequently. I would recommend once per quarter at the most. This is just to say thank you for your business, you aren’t trying to sell them anything here. I like SendOutCards.com for thank you cards.
Direct Mail – Another way to keep in touch is by sending a brochure or catalog. Again, don’t spam them with these but this is another good way to let your customers know about a special sale.
Promotional Items – Everybody likes a free gift. Just make it something useful. It should especially be something they will use when you want them thinking about you. For example a pizza shop might want to give their customers a magnet for the refrigerator and a pizza cutter with their contact info printed on it. In this example you want them thinking about you when they are hungry. A computer repair company might want to send out some sort of desk calendar or maybe even a mouse pad. These are great because it keeps your name and contact info in front of them every day, so it’s there when they need you.
Hopefully this has given you some ideas on ways to keep in touch with your customers. Ideally you should use more than one, or even all of the methods listed but just make sure you keep in touch!
April 26th 2010 Posted at How To Start an Online Business
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I’m often approached by people who want to start an online business but don’t know where to start. So I’ve decided to post some pointers. Over the next several days I will post one task or item on How to Start an Online Business (or HSOB because I’m lazy and don’t want to type it out). Many of these apply to any business, not just online businesses.
Spread the Word – Tell everyone about your online business. If you have a Facebook account, spread the word there. If you don’t, get one. Same goes for twitter. Also, get business cards and give them out to everyone you meet. These days you can get 1000 full color, glossy business cards for about $50.
April 25th 2010 Posted at How To Start an Online Business
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I’m often approached by people who want to start an online business but don’t know where to start. So I’ve decided to post some pointers. Over the next several days I will post one task or item on How to Start an Online Business (or HSOB because I’m lazy and don’t want to type it out). Many of these apply to any business, not just online businesses.
Get a Website – Now that you have your domain name and a web host, you need a website. There are many options here. Since you are reading this I’m assuming you are a budget minded do-it-yourselfer. If you only have a few products to sell you could create a blog website like this one. If you want a more complex store I recommend Zen Cart. In fact I will have videos available soon on setting up and configuring an online store using Zen Cart.
April 24th 2010 Posted at How To Start an Online Business
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I’m often approached by people who want to start an online business but don’t know where to start. So I’ve decided to post some pointers. Over the next several days I will post one task or item on How to Start an Online Business (or HSOB because I’m lazy and don’t want to type it out). Many of these apply to any business, not just online businesses.
Get a Web Host – A web host gives you a place to put your website. I highly recommend using a host that offers cPanel. When you register your domain name at godaddy, they will try to sell you hosting. I don’t know how good their hosting is or if they include cPanel. All of my sites are hosted at DesertLord.net (Disclaimer: I own DesertLord.net). Unless you are running an adult site, hosting should be pretty affordable, typically under $10/month.
April 23rd 2010 Posted at How To Start an Online Business
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I’m often approached by people who want to start an online business but don’t know where to start. So I’ve decided to post some pointers. Over the next several days I will post one task or item on How to Start an Online Business (or HSOB because I’m lazy and don’t want to type it out). Many of these apply to any business, not just online businesses.
Get a Sales Tax License – Also known as a Transaction Privilege Tax license. If you sell products, you will probably need this. It’s not difficult to get. Search your state dept. of revenue website for info. Here in Phoenix, AZ I had to file with both the state and the city. This is also the license that allows you to buy products wholesale.
April 22nd 2010 Posted at How To Start an Online Business
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I’m often approached by people who want to start an online business but don’t know where to start. So I’ve decided to post some pointers. Over the next several days I will post one task or item on How to Start an Online Business (or HSOB because I’m lazy and don’t want to type it out). Many of these apply to any business, not just online businesses.
Get a Domain Name – If you want to sell products online you will need a website. In fact I recommend every business have a website. And if you want it to be something cool like www.MyBigBadWebsite.com vs. www.myisp.com/~mylamewebsite then you will need a domain name. Getting a domain name doesn’t get you a website or a place to put it, it’s just the name, but it’s a very important step. You can get one at GoDaddy.com for about $10/yr. When choosing your business name you will probably want to make sure you can get the matching domain name. I have created a short video that will walk you through registering a domain name with GoDaddy.
Or I could make it more unique such as www.RicksSCSD.com (Not recommended, not very descriptive) or www.RicksSuperCoolScreenDoorsArizona.com. Now you see why I said that name might be a bit long.
April 21st 2010 Posted at How To Start an Online Business
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I’m often approached by people who want to start an online business but don’t know where to start. So I’ve decided to post some pointers. Over the next several days I will post one task or item on How to Start an Online Business (or HSOB because I’m lazy and don’t want to type it out). Many of these apply to any business, not just online businesses.
Make Your Business Official – This is where people get scared away, but please bear with me. You will need to decide if you will be a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, etc. Honestly the differences are beyond the scope of this post and I’m not qualified to advise you which to choose. An LLC is what works for me. I think it only cost about $130 to setup since I handled it myself. I highly recommend you speak to a lawyer and/or your accountant. Wow, I used to hate it when people told me that. I used to think “Are you crazy, I can’t afford a lawyer or an accountant! I’m just a little guy.”. Well, it’s really not that expensive. My accountant saves me much more in taxes than he costs and with pre-paid legal services you can talk to a lawyer for a low monthly fee. I get pre-paid legal through my good friends the Ferguson’s. Besides, this is a step you really want to get right.
Once you decide which business structure is right for you, you will need to make it official. How you do that will vary state to state and depend on your structure. Here in AZ, if you wish to be a corporation or LLC, you will need to file articles of organization with the state Corporation Commission. For Sole Proprietorships, you just need to file a DBA. I recommend you use Legal Zoom to file the appropriate documents. It’s quick, easy and affordable.
April 20th 2010 Posted at How To Start an Online Business
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I’m often approached by people who want to start an online business but don’t know where to start. So I’ve decided to post some pointers. Over the next several days I will post one task or item on How to Start an Online Business (or HSOB because I’m lazy and don’t want to type it out). Many of these apply to any business, not just online businesses.
Choose a Business Name – There are several things to consider when choosing a name for your business. It’s really going to depend on what you intend to do. For this site, my name is my brand. But if I sold screen doors I might want to name my business “Rick’s Super Cool Screen Doors”. Actually that’s probably a bit long but you get the idea. Or you could make it more generic if you would like to use the name for a broader range of products and services. An example of that could be “Rick Enterprises”.
Also, you will need to make sure your name is available to use. Do a google search for your intended name. Be sure to include quotes so it searches for that exact phrase. For example, I’d search for “Rick’s Super Cool Screen Doors” including the quotes. I just checked and there are no matches. Without the quotes, any site with any of those words will show up as a result. Just checked that as well and there are over 75,000 results. You can also search your states Corporation Commission database. I just checked Arizona’s and there are no matches.
Another thing to consider is your domain name (web address). If www.RicksSuperCoolScreenDoors.com is not available for me to register, I might want to choose another name. Although I could change it up a bit to be more unique, but we’ll get into that later.
Lastly, you might want to consider name availability on social media sites. Personally I think this is the least important thing to consider, but you should decide for yourself if it’s important to you. Eventually you will want to have a Facebook page, a Twitter account and maybe a YouTube account for your business. Perhaps there are others I’m not thinking of. These sites often use your username in your url. Facebook calls these “Vanity URLs”. For example: www.Facebook.com/RicksSuperCoolScreenDoors.
So it looks like I’m good to go with “Rick’s Super Cool Screen Doors”. Watch out screen door industry, here I come!