Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Do yourself a favor and take a minute to check on this…

Is your domain registered with your hosting company?

If it is registered with your Hosting Company, this is a bad thing. For more information on WHY this is bad, check out my CheatSheet – Why Use Different Companies for Domain Registration and Web Site Hosting?

If both your Domain and Hosting Account are with the same company, you need to move your domain name ASAP, providing you are happy witrh your hosting. If you aren't happy with your Hosting Company, then things are a bit more complicated and that is a topic for another day

But, back to this topic…

The time to move your domain is BEFORE you have a problem.

Let me share my recent experiences…

I have a client with a web site. About 3 months ago, we ran into problems with the web site and the hosting company was now able to resolve the situation in a satisfactory manner.

My client and I decided to move her web site to a different hosting company, but…

In order to move the site, we needed to change the domain settings, meaning that  she needed to control or have access to her domain registration.

However, the hosting company had registered it for her and despite the fact that it IS registered in her name (a GOOD thing) she can not change the setting related to it (a BAD thing).

So far, we have been working on getting the domain registered to her account with a different domain registrar. The process has gone on 3 weeks and I will be working on it next week as well. I personally have made numerous phone calls and spent interminable amounts of time listening to bad elevator music,while on hold.

If she had her domain registered elsewhere AND had access to the domain settings, we could have moved / rebuilt her site after the first week of problems. As it is, we are looking at this for more than 3 MONTHS! and we still haven't been able to move her site…

BECAUSE SHE OWNED THE DOMAIN BUT DIDN'T CONTROL IT!!!!

The good news is that the web site is accessible to the public, we just can't make any changes to it. Things could be much worse, but we have also wasted 3 months of being able to market her business with her website!

So, do yourself a favor BEFORE you run into problems.

Check where your domain is registered. Owning the domain isn't enough. You need to be able to access the domain settings at will.

If this is not the case, go ahead and move your domain to a different registrar.

Be aware that the process maybe a long one.

Do it now, before you have problems!

Sharing the Road to Success,

Tink

Black Friday

Cyber Monday 

Free Shipping Day (NOTE: Free Shipping Day 2010 is Friday, December 17)

Have you figured out your strategies for these upcoming events?

I have been busy doing the Holiday Season planning for a group of my niche websites.

NOTE – NONE of my online business streams are related to selling either needlework or quilting products in any way! Let me repeat that…

I WON'T BE SELLING NEEDLEWORK OR QUILTING ONLINE!!!!!

Anyway, I have my planning notebook, my Planner Pad, and my colored pens and highlighters, planning for the upcoming Holiday Season. (What can I say, I am visual person and I like shuffling paper LOL)

Three of the events I am focusing on are:

Black Friday

Cyber Monday

Free Shipping Day (NOTE: Free Shipping Day 2010 is Friday, December 17)

While my business are online only, these events are equally, if not more, important for brick and mortar.

(REMINDER – NONE of my online business streams are related to selling either needlework or quilting products in any way!)

In the case of Brick and Mortar, it is of the utmost importance that you start figuring out ways that you can make these dates work for your OFFline business.

If you have any sort of online presence, whether you have a business card site or run a full fledged online retail site with shopping cart or something in between, you should be planning… NOW!

Don't wait until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving…  at that point you are already 2 months behind

I am still in the tentative stages of my planning, but already I am thinking that I will start my promotions by Oct 1 — not necessarily blatantly, mind you, but I DO want to make the most of the lead time…

Some of my ideas are -

Create a Gift Basket of the week idea and promote it with a post on the site (note, all of my sites are built with WordPress and I primarily create Posts rather than Pages) and with Tweets (I will have a Twitter acct for each site) and on my email list (I will have at least one email list for each site)

Figure out a way to have an appealing (not annoying) Holiday CountDown. It would need to start BEFORE Black Friday, so maybe start it on Nov 1? Can I figure out a creative way to talk the Holiday Countdown up starting in Oct — maybe with something posted weekly?

Some thoughts related to retailers — ideas which are not appropriate for my business model –

Plan and promote WishLists for customers (Promote offline, and online with website, Twitter, Facebook if appropriate, and on your email list(s))

Offer incentives to get customers to visit your Brick And mortar location on Cyber Monday

Offer incentives and/or activities for Black Friday — for AFTER they have shopped elsewhere for everybody else. Think about offering rewards for surviving shoppping elswhere.

Create a Twitter Hashtag Campaign for these events – either individually or as a group

Tink Note – You SHOULD already be Tweeting and you SHOULD already have a Twitter Hashtag Campaign going where you send out Tweet Announcements as new products are put on the shelves

Check out Twitter for Offline Businesses

The important takeaways with all of this:

• You should be planning all of this now, not on the day before Thanksgiving
• You can't just go into ostrich mode about all of this… make a preemptive strike!

Sharing the Road to Success,
Tink

As I see everyday, many offline business owners are both overwhelmed and intimidated about taking their small businesses online. They may have been determined enough to get a website, but after that, well, everything just seems like too much — too many options and too much to do.

Well, I understand! I am right there beside ya! LOL

I was talking with a friend last night. She has an offline service based business but does have some products that she sells and which are unique to her and her business.

She has had a blog for several years, but like many us, has had trouble gaining traction.

I think that we understand intellectually how online promotion works and we know that business blogging is a good way to promote an offline business online… but emotionally, it can be difficult to grasp.

DO people READ business blogs from just regular folks?

I mean, really… does this actually work for a small, local business?

Read the rest of this entry »

I started planning on Friday night…

I had two blogs that I wanted to reorganize and start heavily promoting. They are part of this year's strategy and I REALLY want to get them active and productive.

Both of them are WordPress sites and I had created new themes for them using Artisteer — one of the best buys of the last year, btw!

I had tweaked the look of each site but, more importantly, I was trying a new layout, based on a successful blog. I had analyzed the layout of that blog and decided that I could come pretty close using Artisteer… 

OK, I get the themes uploaded and activated. I did spend some time tweaking, but hey, I'm a designer… that's what we do! LOL

Read the rest of this entry »

I just got off to the phone, talking to my baby sister in PA/DE (she lives in PA about 4-5 miles from the DE state line and works in DE) They have 27 inches from the weekend blizzard and just got another 14 or so yesterday!

She expects to be home from work, she works at a nearby college, for the rest of the week. This got me thinking about Small Businesses and how they are affected by the local (geographical) weather.

Does YOUR small business have a WEATHER POLICY?

• Is it CLEARLY stated on your website?
   
• Can it be easily found? In other words, is there a clearly marked, direct link somewhere on all of the major pages of the site?
  Read the rest of this entry »

The last 4 weeks have been an interesting convergence of events…

I had several sites hacked… repeatedly.

I had to have one of my computer’s reformatted and a new Operating System installed.

I had the databases for a couple of sites crash (who knows why!).

I am still waiting to see the final outcome with one of my problem sites.

While living thru the whole process I have learned a LOT and I am in the midst of implementing changes based on those lessons.

Here are some of my hard earned but valuable lessons…

I am VERY happy with the advice and help from my computer support guys. An enthusiastic shoutout here to Freddie and Maria at Kentucky Trade!

I am happy with the timely help and respectful communication from my hosting company. HostGator Rocks! Thanks, guys!!!!

It is much less stressful to face potential disaster while saying *Gee, I am glad I…* rather than saying *Oops! I am sorry I didn’t…*

After spending so much time and effort writing my Survival Course, *Disaster-proof Your Online Business*, I am happy to be able to say, *Do as I DO*.

One of my dearest online friends took the time to help me evaluate the process and my actions and grade my strategies. I was pretty happy with the results.

The bottom line is… bad things will happen to your online business. Do the best you can to prepare for them, and accept that you can’t anticipate everything.

Having the various elements of my sites backed up on a regular basis was a god-send. It is much less stressful to contact the Support Desk at your hosting and be able to tell them that you have full backups available if they need them. (I am happy to say that the fates were with me and my backups were not necessary, BUT the important thing is… I had them available in a worst case scenario).

Do keep your information available in multiple media formats, when applicable. I talk about this in depth in *Disaster-Proof* and I provide both text file templates and spreadsheet templates. Over the last 4 weeks, there were many times when I found myself using BOTH formats.

Since the people who know me best sometimes accuse me of being overprepared, I will admit to wondering a couple of times if I was going overboard. I am now happy to say… No, I wasn’t! LOL

As I said at the beginning, I am still evaluating the process, so look for one or two more posts sharing my experiences.

Sharing the road to success,

Tink

I have posted another Cheat Sheet over at SurviveAndConquerOnline.

This one is a CORE Cheat Sheet on WHY it is SOOO important to use DIFFERENT companies for Hosting and Domain Registration.

Cheat Sheets are short reports that are focused on an important idea, method, technique, or resource. CORE Cheat Sheets are the Cheat Sheets that contain what I consider to be vitally important information regarding Online business.

The Cheat Sheets are only going to be available at SurviveAndConquerOnline for a short time, and then I’ll be moving them to my new Coaching web site. I have a lot more in the pipeline and will be adding about one per week for the forseeable future! LOL

Check out the Cheat Sheets here:

http://surviveandconqueronline.com/CheatSheets1.htm

Sharing the Road to Success!

Tink

I’ve been a busy bee! LOL

I have finished the make over at SurviveAndConquerOnline.com, the sister site for this blog. The two sites now have a new, but still unified, look.

This new version is based on the Gear logo and is a bit less hard edged than the original look I had. What can I say– I am a designer and I like to change the wallpaper and rearrange the furniture!

I have also been adding goodies — there is now an official Cheat Sheet page and the first three Cheat Sheets are available for you to download, read, and I hope, pass along to other busy business owners.

The Cheat Sheet policy is this… while the contents of each Cheat Sheet is copyrighted, you are welcome to send the files along to other motivated business owners, provided you pass along the file in its entirely and you make no changes to the content.

I have also started the Tool Room. This is in its beginning stages, but I have plans to add much more info and many more resources. Be sure and sign up for the SurviveAndConquerOnline SURVIVAL TIPS Newsletter, so you get notified as new resources are added.

Sharing the Road to Success,

Tink

One of the biggest barriers to Online success is applying Offline reasoning to Online situations– incorrectly.

Online marketing (and selling) is very complex and all of us are looking for ways to decipher its complexity. One tempting method is to look for parallels between the Offline and Online worlds and then apply that Offline reasoning to Online situations.

Now, as a former Theater Scene Designer, I was trained to use metaphor as a problem solving tool. Comparing apples to apples can be very effective, but in many cases, applying Offline reasoning to Online problems is more like comparing apples to screwdrivers.

What brought this to mind was hearing (third hand, I will admit) about a company that is planning on selling digital products online. OK… that is good. I sell digital products online and know that it is a viable business model.

What concerned me was hearing (again, third hand) that this company did not plan to show the book pricing until the item is added to the shopping cart.

As it was explained to me, the reason was that they were following the example of “real books” whose pricing is located either on the back or inside the front jacket, so viewing the price requires a little work.

Hmmmm… OK, let’s think about this…

I see this as faulty logic for three reasons. (Truth be told, I quit looking after these three, because I had other things I needed to do. LOL)

My thoughts —

Problem #1 – Following the example of “real books” only works if you understand WHY it is that way and your product and its selling mechanism are the same as “real books”.

With real books, putting the price on the back or inside the front jacket encourages the shopper to pick up the books. Many times this leads to looking more closely at the book, opening it and reading an excerpt, looking at the table of contents, the index, or, better yet, any illustrations.

The potential customer is interacting with the book, building a relationship with the book, and once that happens is more likely to want to give it a good home (meaning purchase it, for any of you poor souls who are not *book people* … smile…)

With a digital product, displayed online, this won’t happen…

While a digital product may have the same intellectual content as a physical printed version, the differences in its physical manifestation – it is a file on a computer, not a physical book– make this an excellent example of comparing apples to screwdrivers.

Problem #2 – Pricing on digital products can vary greatly.

With a physical product, it is easy to guess a ballpark price.

I don’t expect to pay the same for a beat-up second hand paperback book as I would for the newest, large, lavishly illustrated and beautifully printed coffee table book.

Pricing digital products is much less obvious. Often it is difficult to separate the issues of physical creation and manufacturing costs from the value of the intellectual property that the digital product contains. As a result, it is very difficult to predict accurately what the product cost will be.

Problem #3 – Online purchasers are wary about being taken advantage of or scammed.

Many folks are not aware that it is safe to back out of a purchase even after you have products in an online shopping cart.

Many are afraid that simply starting the transaction will commit them. Will they be willing to start the process, simply to find out the price? I doubt it!

One of the most important elements of successful online selling is creating customer comfort and trust. For that reason, it is important that an online merchant provide open and comprehensive information about a transaction BEFORE the transaction begins. This includes information such as a detailed description of the item, photograph of the item (if applicable), the format/size of the item, shipping charges, exactly how the transaction will take place AND the product’s price!

I believe that asking the customer to start the transaction before establishing the price is a poor marketing strategy.

Thinks of how differences between countries and cultures can affect business. In some parts of the world, black is the color of mourning, in others, white is worn to honor the dead. To someone wishing to show proper respect, wearing the wrong clothing can send a disrespectful message nonetheless.

There are many knowledgeable Offline business people who are moving Online and bringing with them a wealth of knowledge and breadth of experience from which all of us benefit.

The danger lies is in NOT recognizing that Online is a very different universe than Offline. It is important to learn about this new Online world before incorrectly applying business principles from the old Offline world.

Sharing the Road to Success,

Tink