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Car Organization Tips For Small Business Owners on the Move

If your business requires you to be constantly on the move, then you may be spending a lot of time in your car.

You can increase your efficiency by keeping your car well-organized, with all the important items that you need on a daily basis close at hand.

The Glove Box and Front Seat

Your glove box should contain important items such as your business cards, a notepad to jot down important notes, a pen and a log to note down your car’s mileage.

This will help you for tax purposes when you need to deduct fuel and mileage expenses.

If you are a music buff, then you can also store your music Compact Discs in the glove box or under the front seat. Your umbrella should also find a place under the front seat.

You can also store some of these items by purchasing a pouch that can be attached to the rear portion of the front seat. They are available in any car accessory shop.

The Trunk of the Car

The trunk of your car can be filled with bulky items such as product samples, brochures and a few empty plastic or paper bags that can be used in case of an emergency.

If you regularly travel long distances, then you can also carry a cooler to store water and sodas, and maybe even a few sandwiches. You may also want to keep a small pack of cookies in the car.

The life of a road warrior can be trying, especially if you are a small business owner. By keeping the above tips in mind, you can make your life on the road a bit more bearable.

4 Easy Ways to Balance Your Personal Life and Your Small Business

Running a small business is much more than merely counting cash at the end of the day. It is also about living out a passion or a dream, being among loved ones and basically balancing your life.

Here are some tips to help you balance your personal life and your small business.

1. Dedicate Some Time For Your Loved Ones. Even if you are super busy, ensure that you can dedicate some time for your loved ones, especially your children.
   
   Children grow up very fast and you could be missing out on a lot of fun if you aren’t present during their formative years.
   
   Try not to take your work home and dedicate at least one day of the week for your loved ones.
2. Take Small Breaks. By taking small and regular breaks from your small business, you will not only be reducing your stress but spending quality time with your loved ones. You will also be forming a close bond with them.
   
   You should train your key employees to handle your small business if you were not present for a few days.
3. Communicate With Your Loved Ones. Even if you cannot do activities with your spouse for a long time, keep in regular touch and communicate your true feelings to him or her.
   
   This will lessen your burden, and your spouse may be able to help you out if you are under stress.
4. Involve Your Loved Ones In Your Business. You could also involve your spouse and your children in your small business by allocating various jobs to them.
   
   This will enable you to spend some more time together.

Business Scam Warnings

If you’ve been looking around on the Internet for a great online job opportunity, you have no doubt seen an endless string of options.

Some of them may seem like fantastic deals just waiting to be had. But make sure to look at them a little more closely before you jump at a deal that may really be too good to be true.

Many of the ’start your own business’ offerings online are scams. There are plenty of great, real business options out there. But unfortunately, there are many more scammers trying to take your cash and leave you with nothing but an empty wallet.

Follow this checklist before you consider any business opportunities, to avoid being the victim of a scam:

• Research – Online research is easy these days. Do a Google search for the business opportunity you are considering with the words ‘review’, ‘customer experience’, etc, to bring up customer reactions to using the company.

• Attorney General – Contact your local Attorney General’s office to see if the company has any complaints against them in your state.
  
  If there aren’t, this is a good sign. If there are, delve further to see what the complaints are and if they should be a cause for red flags.

• Better Business Bureau - Contact your BBB office to see if they have any complaints about the company.

• Business Reports – A final way to check on a company is through their business reports.
  
  You can enter their name into the Dun and Bradstreet database (http://www.dnb.com/us/) to get information about the company. While it costs about $10, it is worth that little amount to make sure you don’t lose a lot more.

Once you have done your homework, and a business has checked out, you can proceed with confidence.

Blogging for Business

You have likely heard of blogs or even read a blog or two in your online time. But have you ever considered just how much a blog can do for your small business?

Think about the goal of your website. If you run a completely online business, you are relying on people to find your website in order to make sales.

While you may have taken some traditional marketing steps to get hits to your site, if you want to keep the hits coming, you need to create other inbound links to your page.

A blog will do just that.

Business Blogging

The idea of a blog is like an online diary or journal. Business blogs generally include topics of the type of business owned by the writer. A blog is not another page to advertise your website; rather, it’s a place to be a goodwill ambassador to those interested in your field.

You can share your expertise, tips, ideas and thoughts on anything relating to your business industry on your blog.

Now, you may be wondering just how that equates to sales. While you won’t directly advertise on your blog, it will have a link to your company for people who are interested in who you are and what you have to offer.

Essentially, those who are looking for the information contained in your blog will find your business through the blog, and then click through to your website to see what else you may have to offer.

Now, not only have they come to your website, but have come knowing you are the person who helped them answer a question or made a comment they respected.

This means you already have their trust, and they believe that you are an expert in your field. That makes them more likely to buy from you than another company with just a website.

Choosing and Registering a Domain Name

Ready to put your business online? Do you know what it takes?

Here’s a quick look at the down and dirty of choosing and registering a domain name.

Name Selection

1. Make it simple – The easier name you can use, the better. Potential customers are less likely to remember a long domain name.
   
   Use simple spelling. Names that are hyphenated are also problematic because many people forget the hyphen and end up somewhere else.
2. Make it legal – While you may have a fun name, if it’s too close to another company’s name, it may be trademarked - meaning you could lose it down the road.
   
   Do research on the name you are thinking of using.
3. Make sure it’s available – Use a domain registry check (such as godaddy.com or networksolutions.com) to see if the name you are considering is available.

Registering Your Domain

One you’ve selected a name, it’s time to register it. Choose a reputable domain registrar (companies like networksolutions.com and godaddy.com have been around for some time and are well trusted).

Compare prices. Domain names range from a few dollars to $40 or so annually; so find out what is offered for the money you will pay.

If you let someone register your domain name for you, and they put it in their name, you may be locked out of your own site down the road if something goes wrong in your relationship.

In online business, that’s like changing the locks on the storefront and not letting the owner into their own store.

4 Keys to a Great Website

Once you have your domain name and web hosting service, you may think the trip to a wonderful website is almost over. Think again – it’s really just beginning.

As your website is designed and brought to life, there are a lot of things you need to manage what it’s doing - and not doing - to keep your customers happy.

Focus

One major mistake made by many business owners on their website is to try and tell the customers EVERYTHING about their company.

Keep in mind the average potential customer is going to pop onto your site and may decide in 30 seconds or so if they are going to stay - and if you are going to get their business.

If they have to read through pages of information to decide if you are the right company to work with, they are going to move on.

Make sure your site focuses on what you want to sell, why people should come to you, and anything else that makes you stand out in your market.

Load Speed

How long will it take someone to get your website to load?

If you have a site filled with pictures, graphics, videos, audio and other additions, people with slower connections may have a tough time getting your page to load, and may go elsewhere.

Streamline where you can.

Ease of Navigation

If a buyer has to go through various pages on your website, don’t make it difficult. Have obvious, easy to use navigation buttons to avoid frustrating them.

Contact Information

Make sure there are easy and obvious ways for customers to contact you. Not only is this good for customer service, but it also helps to build trust with potential customers. You are letting them know you are willing to talk to them.

In addition to these tips, make sure you have a central and consistent theme on your website. This way, you will begin to create your own brand and style that is visible on every page.

Do I Need a Business Attorney?

As you venture into the creation of a new small business, you may have a lot of questions. Many of these questions can be easily answered by doing research on the Internet.

Other parts of this information may well be a little touchier. You should consult with a business attorney so you know what to do and how to deal with various situations you may encounter, such as:

• Business Name – Want to use a fictitious name to run your business? A business attorney may well be your best friend in this venture.
  
  When you are choosing a name, it is important that you select one that is not being used elsewhere. It should also not be trademarked or copyrighted, to save you from legal trouble down the road.

• Taxes – A business attorney can tell you how best to structure your business for tax purposes.

• Liability – Making sure you are protected, should something go wrong with your company, is vital.
  
  Depending on the business structure you have selected, you may be personally liable for any legal actions or debts incurred by your company.

• Licensing and Registering – Whether it’s permits, licenses or business registration, there is a lot of legal paperwork that goes along with being in business.
  
  While you can do most of this yourself, making mistakes can mean big trouble from local, state and federal regulators.

• Contracts – Probably the most popular use of a business attorney is the job of checking over contracts to make sure they are in your best interest before you sign.

These are just a few of the roles a business attorney can serve for your small business. If you think you have all of these under control, you may not need an attorney’s help.

If not, you may want to consider looking for an attorney to keep an eye out for your small business’ best interests.

Home Based Business Ideas

Once you are ready to work for yourself, you may have a lot of energy to get going but not know what kind of business to put that energy into.

Here’s a look at some home business ideas that you can get up and running quickly:

• Virtual Assistant – If you have worked in an office all your life and know how to keep things running and organized, why not put that skill to use for your own profit?
  
  Virtual assistants do everything from setting up meeting and travel plans to basic bookkeeping and organizing presentations.
  
  If you have the skills, you can do this from your own home for clients all over the country or around the world.

• Gift Baskets – If you are creative and like to make things to sell, you may want to get into the gift basket business.
  
  This is a very popular business, as people always need gifts and are always looking for something different.
  
  Original ideas for gift baskets that are both useful and unique can translate to big money in a home-based business.

• Secret Shopping – Like to shop? Why not get paid for it?
  
  Companies are always looking for secret shoppers to go to their stores to make sure the business is running as smoothly as they would like it to be.
  
  You will be asked to make a purchase and take notes of the transaction. In addition to getting paid for your time, you will often be reimbursed for the purchase and able to keep the item or items you bought.

Working from home can be very rewarding. By considering some of the ideas above, it can be very lucrative as well.

Record Keeping 101

It is one of the least liked but most essential parts of running a business – record keeping. Unless you are an accountant, no one likes keeping the financial books in order.

For some, it may border on torture. But if you don’t do it properly, you will likely regret it down the road.

The best way to make your way through the maze of recordkeeping is to set up a plan before your start running your business, so you know what to records keep and where they go.

Here are some of the records you should be keeping:

• Invoices
• Receipts
• Contracts
• Important Correspondence

These all need to be kept separately to avoid a jumbled mess at the end of the year.

Make it a Regular Routine

If you’re smart, you will also make record keeping an ongoing part of your business, instead of stacking things up until the end of the year and trying to sort it all out in a frenzied panic.

If you have a small business, you likely don’t need an accountant, but you may want to enlist the help of accounting software. There are plenty of programs that will let you set up a small business account within them, such as MYOB or Quick Books, which will help you sort and separate all those papers into their appropriate categories.

If you do this as you go, instead of worrying at the end of the year, you will have a perfect print out of all expenses, payments and other financial information you need.

It is important to note that financial rules and requirements differ by state and region, so you may want to check with a CPA in your area when you are first setting up your financial record keeping program to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

3 Simple Ways to Protect Your Vital Computer Data

While the falling cost of computers, software and peripherals has helped even small businesses to automate on a larger scale, they have also become vulnerable to attacks from within and from the outside.

Here are some simple tips to protect your vital computer data from falling into the wrong hands.

Use Passwords for Different Levels of Work

If your employees are working on the same computers or using common servers, then restrict them to their level by using different passwords. This will keep your data safe.

Remember to change your passwords frequently and keep your current password list secure.

Use Good Anti-Virus Software

If you are using the Internet or exchanging data between different storage media like CD’s and pen drives, then you need to install a good anti-virus software program. 

The program should not only detect viruses and Trojans, but also remove them without damaging your files.

Don’t try to save money by installing free anti-virus software that can only detect a limited number of viruses.

Restrict the type of websites that your employees can visit to lower the chances of an infection.

Perform Multiple Backups and Store Them in a Secure Place

Do not allow your employees to use pen drives or mobile data storage devices with USB ports.

Perform multiple backups of your data and store them at different places that are under lock and key. Your accounting and inventory package should have a password- enabled backup and restore program so that only you can take the backup of data.

Even though computers have made your life so much easier, overlooking these cautions will open the door for misuse of your vital data.