Author: Pamela Swift

Categories
Online Business

How to Set Up 6 Figure Making Online Business

Not too long ago, business have been rooted and limited geographically. However, with the wave of globalisation, it has brought about new technologies which enables one to operate his or her business remotely. Many online business opportunities have popped up in the recent years. These opportunities are not tied to a geographical location but rather they are flexible allowing people to work in the comfort of their own chairs. This has attracted many to join the market in such freelancing work that have also been an addition stream of revenue.

If you want a piece of the pie in the new “gig economy” and earn some extra income besides your current job all you have to do is to really search through the internet to find an opportunity that matches your interest.  Unlike a brick-and-mortar business, you don’t need a lot of start-up capital. In fact, you can get many internet businesses up and running with no money at all because there are simply so many free services that facilitate the possibility. For example, you can set up a website or blog for free using WordPress. Or you can leverage a third-party site like Airbnb to rent out your houses for short overnight stays.  You use these platforms to gain customers and in exchange all you have to do is to pay a small fee to the host website. Let’s consider three top ways to start an online business and make money online with little or no cost at all.

1.Affiliate Marketing 

Affiliate an e-commerce model that you don’t have to maintain an inventory of your own products and to worry about shipping products to customers. Basically, you pick a particular area or product for your online business, and then you find an affiliate partner who has products available in that niche.

With affiliate marketing, you offer the products for sale, for example, on your blog or e-commerce website. Each product has a unique link that tracks back to your account with your affiliate partner. A prospect who clicks on the link is taken to your partner’s shopping cart for checkout. Once they buy, that purchase is recorded and you receive a commission. It varies depending on the affiliate partner, but is generally 5 percent to 25 percent, or 50 percent or more with digital information products. For example, CBD Affiliate Program offers up to 25% of commission.

What is CBD? CBD is a non-psychoactive, oil-soluble compound extracted from the cannabis plant, and is typically marketed dissolved in plant oil.

Most consumers are using cannabis in forms of buds, or oil. The federal legislation that helped legalized the industrial hemp production in the States encouraged an increase in public acceptance of the CBD-based products. (Experts have estimated the hemp-CBD market to hit 22billion by 2022.) It is a good chance to join CBD as an affiliate now to get your hands on one of the most lucrative trends in the recent times. CBD Oils are especially popular now and is set to dominate the market among the huge pie. The CBD website is relatively to easy to navigate with the different categories sorted out such as Oils, Edibles and Bath & Beauty. There is also a search filter that allows you to customize your search.

  1. Online Video

You can leverage YouTube’s reach to make money online. You will need to create engaging useful content that people want to watch on a regular basis. You would need to upload multiple videos frequently, enough to sustain people’s interest and this can happen in many different areas and sectors. The sky is really the limit here so let your creative juices flow today.

You make money with ad revenue. Your first step is to create a YouTube account and start uploading videos. Then you enable monetization on your YouTube settings. Basically, this gives Google the go-ahead to include short AdSense ads with your videos. When viewers click on those ads, you get paid.

  1. Blogging

If you have expertise or a passion or interest for a subject, you’re ready to start making money with a blog. There are so many sites out there which allows you to utilise on. You can also create your own site and secure your own hosting for a low price. The key is that you want to post original content that is useful to your target audience and to post on a regular basis. That is the best way to get ranked in the search engines and to also get your audience to take action. Monetising your blogs with pay-per-click ads that appear on your blog. Every time somebody clicks on an ad (which is supposed to be about a subject related to your niche), you make a few cents or more. Small amounts each time, but it adds up.

Start earning your extra income today, the opportunities are limitless and you just have to grab them especially those which are in trend like CBD Oils.

Categories
Human Resource

5 Expectations You Need to Set for Every Employee

Even if you’ve never owned a business and you’ve never managed a team of people before, you should have at least a rough idea of the value of setting proper expectations. For example, if you walk into an account management role expecting to only manage client relationships, but you end up having to tackle tons of administrative responsibilities too, you might end up disappointed. Alternatively, you could focus only on what you were expecting to accomplish, but your boss will end up disappointed.

Expectations are a form of communication that remove ambiguities from language, clear up any misconceptions in advance, and help all parties walk into a relationship with clear understandings of the values, significance, and direction of that relationship. Clear communication of expectations, well in advance, is critical for a healthy employer-employee relationship.

That being said, some expectations can go without saying. So how do you know which expectations you have to set for your employees?

These five are a good start:

  1. Individual Responsibilities. If you think most jobs are self-explanatory, think again. If you hire someone to join your team as a social media marketer, what expectations do you have for her responsibilities? Is she only responsible for managing the company’s current social profiles, or is she supposed to find others to sign up for? Is she also in charge of developing content for your company’s blog? Does she have the authority to create her own promotions, or must she work with someone else in marketing to do so? You may not have answers to all these questions immediately, but they’re something you need to hash out as early as possible. Chances are, your prospective employee will have her own expectations for the job—so be sure to ask what those are and negotiate if necessary. It is especially helpful to have job description documents prepared for every position in your organization—that way all expectations are set in clear writing, so either party can go back in check if in doubt.
  2. Company Culture. The value and significance of company culture should not be underrated. It is the underlying structure and attitude that permeates each individual position and the organization as a whole. Making these cultural values clear early is essential to helping your candidate settle in properly (or withdraw from consideration if they don’t feel it’s a good match). As a few examples, what is the dress code in your office? How flexible are your working hours, and is working from home ever acceptable? What are your policies on breaks and office chatter? Do you emphasize teamwork or individual efforts? Are you more casual or formal? Are you implementing any of these employee engagement activities? A quick tour of the office could clear most of these up, but never assume that your candidate knows what’s expected of him from a cultural perspective.
  3. Performance Metrics. Different companies measure performance in different ways. All companies want their employees to work as hard as possible to improve their respective departments and make the company more profitable, but how are you going to measure that performance at the end of the year? Will you use one of the many employee productivity tracking software tools on the market? And will you be measuring his performance based on whether or not he hit a range of specific goals, or is it more about how he performs on a daily basis and the effort he puts in?
  4. Feedback Formats. Performance evaluation generally comes at the end of a relationship period, whether it’s at the end of the week or the end of the year. Feedback occurs throughout the process, and you need to establish how that feedback will be handled. Will you be giving your candidate minimal feedback in a hands-off approach, or constant feedback as you tailor her to the role? If she has feedback for her supervisors or teammates, in what format should she give it?
  5. Future Growth. Last but not least, you’ll need to set some expectations for the future, both for your candidate and for the company as a whole. What are your long-term goals as an organization? How will the company develop over the next few years? Will your candidate have opportunities to increase her salary or get promotions? If so, how and in what timeframe?

These five expectations should be set with every employee well in advance of the working relationship, ideally during the interview phase. However, you’ll also need to evaluate the individual responsibilities and expectations you have for each specific role—you may find that you have other expectations that exceed these five basic ones, depending on the position at hand. The clearer and more thorough you are at the beginning of a relationship, the better that relationship will be as it develops.

Categories
Entrepreneurship

The Big Jump: How To Sure Up Your Finances Before Going Self-Employed

It’s a huge jump, but one that can ultimately reap you umpteen rewards (many of which are not financial).

However, taking this jump towards self-employment is one that a lot of people just struggle to get to grips with. Suddenly, the comfort of a standard 9-5 job is stripped away, and they are left with countless unknowns.

Well, before you even consider to take this leap you should take a long, hard look at your finances. With that, let’s take a look at some of the financial issues you should be raising yourself before pressing ahead.

Do you have enough savings to fall back on?

First and foremost, you need to make sure you are in a strong enough financial position to move forward with your dreams. Let’s not forget that this is going to be the period where your regular pay check goes out of the window, and you effectively enter the unknown.

Ultimately, there will be months where you might not have any income. It is for this reason that you need to put together something of a nest egg; you need sufficient money to fall back on in case you struggle to turn a sufficient profit in the initial months.

This might mean boosting your income through a second job, or even something like trading. In relation to the latter, technology has unquestionably made this a lot easier over recent times, with the likes of the Meta Trader 4 demo account meaning that you stand a much bigger chance of turning a profit and ultimately increasing the size of your savings ahead of your self-employment move.

Have you cut out all unnecessary expenses?

This next point is quite self-explanatory; after all, nobody needs unnecessary expenses.

However, this suddenly becomes a lot more urgent as you move into the world of self-employment. After all, as we have already alluded to, this is a period of the unknown. You don’t quite know what expense or even income is around the corner, so you need to cut back wherever possible.

Take a look at your finances and scale back, just to give yourself a bit of breathing space and alleviate some pressure.

What is your mortgage situation?

This next question is quite interesting. Now that you are self-employed, your borrowing situation becomes much different. Quite often, lending providers will require three years’ worth of accounts before considering lending you money, and obviously this is a stumbling block.

Ultimately, if you are thinking of remortgaging or getting another mortgage in the near future, this is something to be aware of. It might mean that you are handed a much higher interest rate than you may have been expecting.

Have you looked at possible help from the government?

Finally, it doesn’t have to all be bad. One of the wonders about starting your own business is that you can tap into a whole host of different grants. Many of these directly target start-up businesses, so sift through them and see if you can get some extra help along the way.

Categories
Entrepreneurship

6 Bad Habits That Are Ruining Your Business

Business success demands that owners and managers hone their skills to promote the growth and health of their organization. Unfortunately, this challenge can be a difficult one. Given the competitive nature of the business landscape, leaders with a few bad habits can destroy a company’s probability of success.

1. Lack of Flexibility and Vision, Related to Business Model Changes

A technology-driven economy changes at breakneck speed. What many many business owners are failing at, which can dramatically impact a company’s ability to thrive in the future, is their ability to adapt. To the extent that leaders are not flexible or open-minded to making drastic business model changes necessary to adapt, an organization can cease to exist. A good example of this type of nearsightedness might be a reluctance by business owners to acknowledge and embrace the need for new software solutions that would benefit employees and customers alike.

Merely modifying a business model is not always enough to meet the future’s demands. Business management teams must be capable of serving both today’s customers while developing future customers. Since one of the most difficult challenges any management team faces is to address current needs while also serving as a visionary for the future, many businesses lose their competitive advantage when they fail to juggle the present and future needs of a business.

2. Micromanaging Employees

Employees resent being micromanaged because it feels like the manager or owner does not trust them to competently do the job they were hired to perform. An effective leader must learn how to delegate tasks and trust they will be done.

Any company that expects to grow has to hire competent employees and then have confidence they can do the job, not look over their shoulder and double check everything they do.

3. Lack of Interest in Team Members’ Well-Being or Personal Growth

As the contributors of an organization, employees are the heartbeat of any company. Leadership must show genuine interest in the welfare of their employees if they expect to attract and retain a loyal and committed workforce. Whether it means investing in ergonomic chairs, state-of-the-art training or safe Bluetooth earphones, these types of investments prove the management staff’s interest in investing in their staff members need to be part of strategic human resource policy.

4. Poor Market Analysis

Data drives the market and must be considered carefully by entrepreneurs and managers if they want to remain competitive. They must create systems that can capture accurate information in a timely manner. Without timely report analysis, it is impossible to adjust policies and procedures to overcome challenges.

Keap reports that it is especially critical that entrepreneurs analyze the marketplace as they launch a new business. Many businesses fail due to insufficient oversight and an inability to accurately “see the writing on the wall,” about serious operational problems.

5. A Lack of Respect for Other People’s Time

A pet peeve for many people is timeliness. As busy as the management staff may be, they need to always honor their commitments and meeting times with staff members. In case they are always late, they risk sending the message that the subordinate workers’ time is less valuable than their own. This rule is simple: To earn respect, you have to respect others too.

There are always exceptions to any rule, but a pattern of not being punctual sends a clear, and a very negative message – that you are either not interested, or the meeting is just not important to you. In a tight labor market, such actions can significantly impact your bottom line. Bosses who neglect their team members run the risk of losing team them.

6. Unwilling to Take Necessary Risks

Industry leaders take risks. The status quo will only take you so far. An unwillingness to take risks can limit a business’s ability to make important breakthroughs that lead to growth. The business landscape is unpredictable and demands that entrepreneurs adapt policies, procedures, and even business models at times if they want to continue to compete.

With careful analysis, managers and business owners can limit the amount of risk they take. But at some point, after careful consideration, you have to take a leap of faith and make some bold moves.

Wrap Up

Owning and managing a business is a risky and challenging proposition that guarantees failure for entrepreneurs who sport bad habits. Such habits lessen their ability to lead and change when necessary.

The good news is that smart leaders can identify problem areas and make a commitment to improving. While self-evaluation can be painful, it is necessary for any person who wants to grow in order to fuel their company and give it what it needs.

Understanding the predictable bad habits above that can harm a business is a good first step towards avoiding these issues. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. Everything possible should be done to identify and eliminate bad habits that can ruin your business.

Jasmine Williams covers the good and the bad of today’s business and marketing. When she’s not being all serious and busy, she’s usually hunched over a book or dancing in the kitchen, trying hard to maintain rhythm, and delivering some fine cooking (her family says so). Contact her @JazzyWilliams88

Categories
Online Business

Make Them Want to Come Back: Tips for E-commerce Entrepreneurs

According to Business.com, returning customers spend 67 percent more, on average, than new customers. That’s why it’s so important for entrepreneurs to concentrate on turning first-time customers into loyal customers by providing outstanding customer service and good communication. Building customer loyalty requires regular, consistent effort and making new customers feel welcome and repeat customers feel special and catered to. Always bear in mind that a high level of commitment on your part reassures and renews your clientele’s faith in your brand.

Enticing new customers

The first step in building a regular and reliable clientele is to win over new customers. There are many ways to do this, but some of the most popular and endurable ones include offering new customers special discounts or free shipping, a particularly important perk for an e-commerce business model. The more positive a new customer’s initial experience, the likelier they are to come back for more. Once you’ve earned their business and have their information, you can begin the process of target and database marketing.

Stay in touch

Never assume you’ve won over new customers simply because they’ve purchased something from you. Competition is so intense, and businesses are constantly finding new ways to make it convenient and rewarding to do business with them, so you can’t take anything for granted. Create a database you can use to make your customers feel special. If you have email addresses, contact information and phone numbers, you have multiple ways of wishing customers a happy birthday or promoting upcoming sales.

Social media allows you to communicate with customers every day with the click of a button. As you engage with people on Facebook, work in tantalizing indications of a big sale or discounts, though avoid using the full-on advertisement approach too much in this venue. Instead, think in terms of fun and intriguing messages and information your customers can use to help them save money. Social media and word-of-mouth are reliable and inexpensive ways to grow your customer base.

Keep the perks coming

Your regular customers are worthy of your loyalty, so show them how much you cherish their patronage. Establish some sort of special service, whether it involves free shipping, price breaks or a reward system and you’ll encourage them to stay involved with your brand (people are reluctant to walk away from a relationship that benefits them). Offer return customers opportunities to make advance purchase opportunities that are available only to them. If you do it right, they’ll pass the word on to friends and family who will want to see for themselves.

Empower loyalists

Offer your core customers an added benefit or perk they can share with others and help create new customers. Or establish and promote a special membership group for loyal customers, something that has real, monetary value and which new customers will value and want to become part of. And empower your brand ambassadors to issue discounts or invite friends to unique sales and promotions. At a stroke, you’ll strengthen the relationship with key customers (again, everyone loves to feel special), encourage new business and generate word-of-mouth attention.

Give them what they want

Dropshipping is a powerful tool in the hands of a savvy e-commerce entrepreneur. What better way to build loyalty than to provide customers exactly what they want? Here’s where some statistical research will come in handy. Study your customers’ buying habits and do some online research concerning the hottest offerings. Once you’ve determined what’s in demand among your clientele, respond with targeted products and niches through dropshipping.

Promote through upgrades

One of the best ways to keep customers engaged is to show off improvements from time to time. There are many ways to fund business upgrades, from crowdfunding – which provides opportunities to reward contributors – to business loans, lines of credit and grants. A business that can show tangible improvements is one that’s clearly successful, dynamic and on the move – and it’s a business customers will want to be part of.

The smart entrepreneur is one who’s able to communicate to customers that the success of the business is to a large degree a product of customer loyalty. Find ways to make your return customers feel as though they have a sense of ownership in what’s happening. That way, they’re sure to stay connected and they’re more likely to bring along new business.