Small Business Brief

Weekly Newsletter - Date

Hi All!

Here is this week's edition of our newsletter.

Keep in mind that what you are currently looking at is a template. Although it has the current news up until today's date, my actual opening remarks for this week are only available in the newsletter once it is delivered.

Just let me know if you have questions or comments.

See you next week!

Linda Riley
Editor - Small Business Brief
linda @ smallbusinessbrief.com

Be sure and drop by our Small Business Ideas Forum. It's a friendly community where we share knowledge, find help and encourage one another.

 

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Small Business News

Online Business Start-up
articlebiz.com - Are you thinking about starting an on-line business? Maybe you have a vague idea of what’s required – maybe you haven’t a clue. This article outlines three basic, non-negotiable things that you will need.

"How to make chat work for your online business
ecommerce.lifetips.com - "Business chat" sounds like an oxymoron. But when done right, chat can draw active and involved users repeatedly to your Web site and help you build an archive of high-quality, low-cost content that will attract more users. Actually, there are two related classes of software, both of which can be used for holding online discussions: chat and forum.

E-Commerce Site Design: The Product Page
ecommerce-guide.com - An e-commerce site's product pages are that site's lifeblood. These are the pages that spotlight products and offer shoppers a 'Buy' button — they're a site's "payoff" pages.

Promoting Your Business Site Through Affiliate Programs
websitemarketingplan.com - It is often a challenge to attract targeted, interested visitors to a business Website. There are several ways to do this, one of which is to cross promote your site through affiliate programs. Offering your own affiliate program gives others an incentive to advertise your site to those they think will be interested. Additionally, by participating in others' programs you can build relevant and useful content on your own site.

Time To Move Up From the Worn-Out Sales Brochure
businesstoolchest.com - Every small business should create the following pieces of information and format them in a way that allows them be printed inexpensively and updated often. I like to call this approach, the Marketing Kit. Your marketing kit starts with several professionally printed pieces that are the framework for up to 10 or 12 different educational documents. The core components are:

Email Subscriber Lists are Very Delicate Things
excessvoice.com - Before you send each promotional email or newsletter, pause for a moment. Review the contents and make sure you have the balance right.

Seven Reasons Why eBay Sellers Sell Below Cost
iwantcollectibles.com - In this article you'll learn seven reasons why eBay sellers sell below cost, and how to tell exactly which reason is behind each seller's actions.

Selling Local Services on the Web
ahbbo.com If you are already in business and you are thinking of promoting your products or services online, one of the first questions you have to ask yourself is "Do I have a product I can sell online?" Or perhaps in your case the question should be, "Can I sell my current product line online? These questions are at the very heart of the decision whether or not to try online marketing.

10 things you need for a home business
microsoft.com - You got an idea for a winner of a home-based business, and you're about ready to announce it to the world. Here are the 10 things you need — besides customers — to start your home business off on the right foot.

How to Start a Bed and Breakfast
entrepreneur.com - If you're thinking of turning your home into an inn, start here to learn about pricing, costs, employees and more.

6 Tips For Choosing The Perfect Shopping Cart
ezinearticles.com - OK - Just What Is A Shopping Cart Supposed to Do?

Unsolicited Commercial Email, SPAM and the FTC
ezinearticles.com - Most recently the Federal Trade Commission has put forth their requests for further budget funding for fiscal year 2007 and in this report to Congress for more taxpayer’s monies the FTC cited their efforts to curb SPAM. Yet many critics of the agency who have called it everything from incompetent to the Blob of Bureaucracy believe that the FTC has done little since the CAN SPAM Act to enforce this unsolicited commercial email. Here is what the FTC told the US Congress:

Taking Orders Online - Are You Portraying the Right Image?
apollohosting.com - Be sure to make it easy to order. Make sure you SAY exactly how you want prospects to place their order. Don't just simply put an "Add to cart" button on your site. Spell it out. Say, click on "Add to cart" below to order or call our toll-free number anytime.

Dos and don'ts for publishing content on your e-commerce site
microsoft.com - If you've invested a lot in online selling and marketing, you'll be wasting those dollars unless you also spend some time and money on developing engaging content for your e-commerce site.

Fine Tuning your Website
goarticles.com - You've organized your files, created the directories and uploaded your web pages. Once your site is online, the first thing you should do is go through each page as a visitor would, checking to make sure all the graphics are displaying and the links work.

Juggling Your Schedule as a Business Owner and Student
nfib.com Having trouble being a student and business owner at the same time? Here are a few tips to help you keep a sense of balance.

Building a Home-Based Business Team
businessknowhow.com - When you first launch a home-based business, you get to wear all the hats: accountant, marketing director, ad agency, administrative assistant and office custodian. But as your business succeeds and you grow, you will start to divvy up tasks, hiring employees or outsourcing jobs to service companies. Most home-based entrepreneurs keep some of the fun jobs – speaking at meetings about marketing tactics for the under-funded – as well as some of the drearier work – face it, you’re stuck as chief floor polisher.

How To Be Motivated To Create The Life Of Your Dreams
cashflowseller.com - Here are three tips you can use right away to motivate yourself - find out how to be motivated in seconds:

What was the name of your ezine again?
gothrive.com - Whether you're just now breaking onto the publisher scene or you've got a subscriber list and you want to revamp your ezine, answer the following questions before taking any additional action.

Best in Show
entrepreneur.com - Tap the right resources to build a blue-ribbon trade-show booth.

How to build word-of-mouse marketing
microsoft.com - Ask any expert to choose the single most powerful form of marketing and you're bound to hear: Word-of-mouth referrals.

12 Last-Minute Tax Tips
entrepreneur.com - You still have time to get your act together when it comes to filing your 2005 taxes. These 12 tips can help.

Uncle Sam's Money and How to Get a Micro Loan
ezinearticles.com - The US Governement has a MicroLoan Program that provides small loans to new start-up companies, newly established businesses, or loans to help small business growth concerns.

Spooked by accounting software?
microsoft.com - Ask many a small businessperson about accounting software, and you'll likely see them perspire a bit. No matter what the fear stems from — be it of learning a new program or worries that it will somehow make a mistake — accounting software angst can be crippling.

IDN domain names are coming
goarticles.com - If you have never heard of IDN domain names, you likely soon will. This is because the most used and popular internet browser in the world, Internet Explorer (IE7), is set to begin resolving them by default.

5 Ways To Increase Your Website Profit Without Increasing Traffic
businesstoolchest.com - To succeed in Internet marketing, you need to learn how to maximize the value of your website visitors. Here are the top 5 strategies on how to squeeze the most profit out of your website

Basics of Co-op Advertising
nfib.com - Co-op advertising is a cost-sharing arrangement between a manufacturer, supplier, wholesaler or distributor and your business in which the manufacturer pays for part of your advertisement.

Franchise Financing Options: Find the One That's Best for You
franchisetrade.com - You've already selected the particular franchise you want to buy. Do you know how you're going to pay for it? If you think it's just a matter of going to your local bank and getting a loan, think again. In addition to other criteria, unless a bank loan is backed by collateral -- property acceptable as security (like your home) -- you will have a hard time securing one.

6 Steps to Effective Small Business Credit Card Management
about.com - With the growing popularity of small business credit cards and ever changing interest rates, now is the time to learn the 6 steps to effective small business credit card management.

The Page Title and Description: Write them well.
excessvoice.com - It is tempting sometimes to pay a great deal of attention to the sales text or content on a web page, and then just scribble off the page title and description. Or maybe you don’t write them at all. Maybe someone in IT adds the title and page description for you. Big mistake.

Are eBay Featured Auctions Worth The Extra Fees?
iwantcollectibles.com - Most people who use featured auctions use them because eBay says they will increase bid amounts. In this article I explain four profitable ways to use featured auctions.

Is your marketing working?
microsoft.com - Smart marketing based on in depth research can generate leads, build brand awareness, and grow your business. But marketing that's based on luck or raw instincts will only waste money, opportunities, or both.Here are five steps to getting the maximum return on your marketing dollars.

Patents and Fees: An Overview
my-articles.com - Gaining a patent on your invention can be an expensive undertaking. From beginning to end, here are the basic fees you will need to be prepared to pay. Please realize that many others may crop up depending on how complex the prosecution becomes for your patent.

How to Start and Run a Landscape & Garden Maintenance Business
ireprint.info - These guidelines for starting your own service business are for those who have little or no money to start with.

To Pay or Not to Pay?
entrepreneur.com - How do you know when--and how much--to pay yourself? Our startup expert explains how to set your salary.

The Outside Of The Box Is As Important As What Is Inside
ezinearticles.com - So many people never think about the package when they develop a product. Packaging should be the first thought in product development -- not the last. Without the package, you couldn't even have a product to sell or ship. After all, the package transports the product from point A to point B, protects it and secures the contents inside.

Creating A Business Plan For Your New Online Income Opportunity
cashflowseller.com - These are some basic things that should be included in your new online income opportunity business plan.

The 6 Keys of Fanatical Customer Testimonies
about.com - A fanatical customer testimony is worth more than 1000 words of bland sales copy. A compelling customer testimony validates the claims you make about how great your business is.

What Do .com, .net, and .org Mean?
allbusiness.com - These phrases are commonly called suffixes and are one part of a domain name. Suffixes are categories of domain names, which categories serve to describe the type of company, organization, or other category that is represented.

Automating Your Online Business
smallbusiness.yahoo.com - The only way to grow a business is to market it. And the secret to being able to grow your business and still run it at the same time is automation.

Top 3 Ways To Dig Deeper In Your Niche Market!
ahbbo.com - When you are getting into niche marketing, it is important that you dig deep and find the most burning desires of your target market. It's satisfying these "hot buttons" of the niche market that turn people into rabid buyers of your products.

How To Turn An Idea
homebiztools.com - Here are some steps you can take to research your idea and turn it into a profitable business:

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