Category: Business Ideas

Small business, especially in their infancy, can be massively labor intensive. Even though it’s a labor of love, there seems to be more things to do than there are hours in the day. This means that every tool and resource you have counts so much more, because you need to simplify your life as much as possible. Thankfully, there are tons of apps designed to help small businesses with transactions, bookkeeping, productivity, and networking. Keep control from your smartphone.

1. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is cloud based and easy to use. It works for billing, invoicing, and creating invoices. It also allows you to track your business expenses, which is especially important for a young business. When you’re working on a tight budget, you need a good idea of what your running tab is before you spend any money. It does cost a small monthly fee to use, but it’s worth it in what you’ll save by rolling all of those responsibilities into one interface.

2. Square

Square takes payments anywhere and everywhere. If you have a physical location where you’re billing clients or charging customers, Square can integrate with any mobile device to accept payments. Since they charge a small fee for every transaction, it doesn’t cost money to use. The fee you pay with Square is slightly less than what you would pay with a lot of other payment processing options, so you’re getting convenience while keeping costs low.

3. Slack

Slack is the perfect internal communications hub. It’s especially important to have an app like Slack if some of your employees are remote workers. If everyone has Slack, you can streamline your communications and keep a record of what’s going on. Nobody will feel confused, and you can host meetings even when someone is on a business trip. Slack is a freemium app. There are advanced features that cost a little bit to use, but you can start off with free Slack while you’re deciding whether or not you need them.

4. MailChimp

MailChimp is perfect for branding and marketing. You need to be able to keep your customers up to date with what’s going on in your business. It’s easy to integrate into the majority of eCommerce platforms, which makes your job a lot easier. MailChimp will allow you to make your newsletters or sales emails with a drag and drop process, so you don’t need to be a seasoned genius to put something professional looking together. It’s freemium, and it’s definitely worth a try if you want to simplify your marketing.

5. LinkedIn

Small businesses need to network all the time. LinkedIn is a dream for meeting other business owners who may be able to cross promote with you, as well as finding great hires in your community. Meeting people and making connections is crucial to the continued success and growth of your business. LinkedIn also provides articles, resources, and expert advice. If you want to stay breast with what’s happening in your industry, you’ll probably be able to find out on LinkedIn. Who says social networking at work is a bad thing?

Apps make fun and games a lot easier, but they’ll also improve your ability to run your business. Your smartphone is one of the most powerful tools you have to help you set a promising future for your professional success.

Merrigan Leone is a blogger and a businesswoman who currently works for Bizinfo.in as a Content Manager. She specializes in online marketing, career development and freelancing. In her free time, she enjoys traveling across the world and cooking.

The Mobile Apps business is currently booming and expanding, and so the competition is getting cutthroat. If you are an app developer, it is essential to make sure that your app is highly visible. You have to carefully decide the approach you want to use to promote your new app if you’re going to attain success.

Companies like Car Accident Lawyers Chatham Ontario know that a systematic approach is what gives you the desired results. Here are systematic and attainable steps you can follow to launch your mobile app successfully:

Choose the genre of your Mobile App

It is crucial to think of the importance of your app before launching it. Consider whether the app is solving any problem, entertaining or educating people. By questioning your mobile app, you will be able to fight the odds. The aim is to make your app stand out and outdo existing Apps.

Choose Your Target Audience

You need to decide the kind of audience you want to reach with the App. While you consider your audience you all need to consider the type of mobile device they may be using, the terrain they live in, their sex, income, and age. The idea is to find an audience that will use your app in the long-run.

Choose Your Platform

There are four platforms you can explore, Google’s Android, App Store, HTML, and Microsoft’s and you have to choose your preferred platform. The platform will be influenced by the audience you are trying to reach. Choose a platform that suits the users.

Have a Monetization Plan

There are various models you can use to earn money. You can make the App free for users and chose to make the payment through advertisement. You can also incorporate in-app purchases where the users will have to pay for perks like virtual currency, extra games live or others.

You can also have a paid App where users will have to pay to download the app.  Or you can also use the subscriptions options where the users will pay at different intervals. Choose the monetization plan that suits your App the most.

Expand App Distribution

You should consider going beyond Google Play. It is not wise to restrict your App to one or two platforms. If your App is of high quality and you’re sure about that, then other app stores will crave for your app. Expanding your distribution will increase the number of reaches, users, and downloads.

Go Social

It is crucial to make sure that your app has a robust Social Media presence. Social media can be the best platform to allow your users share their experiences and interact directly with your brand. The most popular social media channels that will enable two-way communication between you and your users are Facebook and Twitter.

Blog about the App

If you continually blog or write new articles about the App, you will keep it alive. If you have a website make sure that you continuously generate new content in the form of articles and blogs to keep your audience interest and also improve the SEO ranking of your App.

Article Contributed by Corinne Ledling

Kickstarter is often used as a great example of a place where you can gain funding for a project, but many people feel that it might be too big for them to try it out. Actually, this crowdfunding platform can work for anyone, and there have been plenty of projects that came from obscurity and yet were fully funded. Here’s why you should give Kickstarter a chance – and how to make it work for you.

Search the projects

The first thing that you will want to do is to search the projects that are already on Kickstarter. Take a look around to familiarise yourself with what kind of projects get featured on the front page and seem to be doing well, and then use search terms that you would apply to your own project. If there are lots of similar projects in process, it might not be the best bet for you. If your project seems fairly unique on Kickstarter, however, then you’re in with a good shot.

Pursue original ideas

Whether you are unique on Kickstarter or not, it’s really important that you come up with original ideas. To take a silly example, let’s say that you wanted to start a project about printing out Google Maps onto paper for tourists to use. Most people wouldn’t want to back your project because printed maps already exist – this wouldn’t be a new idea! To make it original you have to add your own twist, like creating personalised maps for each traveller, or drawing your own maps with insider info that only locals know.

Offer good reward tiers

No one will pledge to your Kickstarter unless it has two things. The first is an original and worthwhile idea, as we have already discussed. The second is reward tiers that will make them feel they are getting something out of it. You could allow people to pre-order your product at a much lower price, print their name somewhere on it, give them exclusive goodies that won’t be offered ever again, and so on. You can also offer things not related to the Kickstarter if you are already known for something else. For example, if you have a successful podcast, you could offer to give supporters shoutouts in one of your episodes.

Give people reasons to pledge

Pledging money to a project is a big deal, particularly if some of your tiers are on the higher side. You’re asking someone to trust you to take their money and use it to produce something spectacular. Don’t write just a basic description and expect it to do all of the work for you. Explain in the text why people should pledge, and give them reasons to. Tell them how your project will improve their lives, or someone else’s. Let them know why they should choose your project instead of pledging to someone else. Don’t waste that description space! Provide regular updates, too, so that they can see their money will be put to good use and you are serious about finishing the project.

Share socially

After posting your campaign, be sure to share it as much as possible on social media. Encourage friends, family, and current pledgers to do the same so that the word spreads as far as possible. The more people see your project, the more chance there is that you will get the funding that you are looking for.

Kickstarter can work for almost everyone – so long as you have a good, original idea and know what you are doing before you start.

Corinne Ledling is a businesswoman who’s very passionate about her job. She’s a Content Manager at Bizstats.co.uk and loves to share career tips and tricks.

Fears concerning what the consequences of Brexit’s aftermath will mean to businesses looms large over both small and large UK business owners, and landlords are not exempted from these post-Brexit worries. But UK landlords need not fear so much especially since there are ways they can expand their enterprise as well as their source of profit.

Most times, when landlords feel their profit margins are threatened, their first move is to increase the rentof their tenants. This places a heavy toll on tenants and atimes leads to a landlord’s property becoming undesirable and unaffordable for many. This in turn often leads to a lose-lose scenario for both landlord and tenant as tenants become unable to afford the property’s high rent and the high-priced rooms stop yielding profit because they are empty.

Increasing rent without forethought might not yield desired results, so instead of raising rent simply to protect their income, post-Brexit UK landlords can attempt expanding their income with any of the following;

1. Renting out other forms of property.

If a landlord is currently renting out homes, rooms, or apartments, such alandlord can consider including shops to his/her least of available properties. People rent space for a variety of needs asides from where to live and landlords can take advantage of this by making available more properties to satisfy these needs. Instead of focusing on satisfying one aspect of the property market, landlords can look to expand their business by providing for other aspects of the market that aren’t yet fully catered for.

2. Renting out vans

Vans have become one of the most common vehicles you can find on UK roads and their numbers are likely to only rise. This is because UK people, especially business owners, have found many ways to use vans to their advantage. But not many business owners, especially start-ups, can afford to outright own a van. Landlords can take advantage of the ongoing UK van trend by providing van rental services. Owning a fleet of vans and making them available to either business owners or private persons for their individual needs isn’t only a great way for landlords to increase their profitability but also boost the UK economy by providing affordable equipment (vans) to businesses that need it. This sort of business idea will be most appropriate for a landlord who has property with a lot of free space that can be used as a parking lot for the fleet of vans.

3. Moving services

Since landlords have tenants moving in and out of their properties on a fairly regular basis, they can provide packing, loading, and unloading services to both tenants and anyone else that requires the service. Helping people transport their belongings is a great businessidea because it ties in to the accommodation services the landlord already provides.

Asides from seeking other business opportunities, UK landlords can also protect their property investments by becoming better landlords. By following a proper landlord guide, a landlord is assured of attaining the most profit from his/her property while avoiding irrecoverable losses.

Investing in fancy colored diamonds is an opportunity that investors should consider. In fact, ever since the prices of fancy colored diamonds were first recorded, they have increased in value every year, with colored diamonds surpassing all other hard asset classes for several years now.

So, what do you need to know if investing in colored diamonds is a wealth management choice you’re looking to pursue? Traditional diamonds, of course, have a foothold in the engagement ring industry, but what about their gemstone peers? There are several things you should consider when seeking to invest in colored diamonds.

1. Colored diamonds are a stable investment 

Global economic unrest has caused many investors to rethink their portfolio. Diversifying away from traditional investments into more tangible ones, such as colored diamonds, which have shown to increase in value over time, is an attractive option to investors. Colored diamonds are a form of investment that has demonstrated stable long-term investment returns.  That’s comforting to many investors in today’s financial climate.

2. Know the 4 C’s

The American Gem Society reports that the 4 C’s of a diamond, particularly when it comes to diamond grading, are: Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat.

When it comes to cut, the more precise it is, “the more captivating the diamond is to the eye.” As for color, fancy colored diamonds occur in a range of hues. Diamond clarity involves the presence or absence of characteristics called inclusions in the stone — and a clarity grade is determined by the impact of these inclusions on the look of the diamond. Finally, carat is the diamond’s physical weight as measured in metric carats.

3. Stick to your budget

Your budget will help you determine what kind of fancy colored diamond to invest in. Relatively common colors include browns, greys, and yellows.  Pink diamonds, on the other hand, are less common and will likely necessitate a larger budget.

4. Elements of the fancy colored rainbow

We’ve already determined that color is one of the 4 C’s of a diamond. But did you know that there are specific elements involved in the color grading of fancy colored diamonds? These elements are Hue, Tone, and Saturation. Hue refers to the main color of the diamond, and there are 27 hues in all. Tone refers to how light or dark the color or hue of the diamond in question is — ranging from Very Light to Very Dark. Finally, saturation is determined by the strength of the color of the stone. Lighter tones range from Faint to Vivid, and darker tones go from Dark to Deep.

5. Supplies of rare diamonds are dwindling

Some colored diamonds are incredibly rare. For example, the majority of pink diamonds come from the Argyle diamond mine in Australia.  Mineral resources at this mine continue to fall, with the mine slated to close by 2020. In short, demand for colored diamonds is already outpacing supply, and it’s expected that demand will continue to outweigh supply in the years to come.  That means it’s a perfect time to invest in fancy colored diamonds and have an asset that will only become more sought-after over time.

About Paragon International Wealth Management: Paragon International Wealth Management is a Toronto-based wealth management firm and a leader in the acquisition of fancy colored diamonds. Our firm is committed to advising clients in the area of fancy colored diamond management and dedicated to helping clients create a successful hard asset investment portfolio.