Monthly Archives: May 2010
7 Tips for Earning the Trust of New Customers
"I trust no one, not even myself." " Joseph Stalin As an entrepreneur launching a new business, one of your fiercest opponents is distrust…more specifically, the distrust held by your target customers. Today's customers are savvier than ever before. They …
How do You Know if Your SEO is Working? A Review of SheerSEO
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of SheerSEO. All opinions are 100% mine. There's zero question that SEO is vitally important for any commercial website. Study after study has proven that people turn to search engine …
Failure Danger! 7 Entrepreneurial Pitfalls You Must Avoid to Succeed
Why is it that some businesses fail in the best of economic times, while others succeed and thrive even though they were started during an economic downturn? Sure, we can sometimes point to regional conditions, industry trends, and other factors …
What’s the Deal with Social Media? Know your options!
Trying to make sense of all the Social Media options available to entrepreneurs is enough to make anyone's head spin. How do you know where to devote your attention? Is it smart, or even possible, to use all the available …
Financing your Small Business with a Government Loan Program
One of the more positive economic indicators in the first quarter of 2010 has been that small business lending, particularly loans backed by the Small Business Administration (SBA), are on the rise. SBA loans are a solid option for entrepreneurs …
How to Choose a Hosting Plan for your Website
After you've picked a perfect domain name for your business, you'll need to select a website hosting service. Â Think of hosting like this: when you purchase hosting, you are actually renting hard disk space on a remote computer that gives …
National Entrepreneurs' Day – How did You Celebrate This Year?
You didn't. Â Because there is no National Entrepreneurs' Day. Â Mothers, fathers, grandparents, and even love (Valentine's Day) rightly have days to recognize how important they are to us, but currently there is no day set aside to honor the contributions …
Teenage Entrepreneurs: Interview with Christian Owens and Mark Bao Of Branchr.com
We have a special treat for our readers this week. We were able to interview Christian Owens and Mark Bao – both from Branchr.com. Branchr is an internet advertising company founded in early 2009 that aims to bring, low-cost, effective …
3 Things You Forgot to Include in Your Customer Service Plan
Ask just about anyone what they think customer service is, and you'll get answers that mostly refer to direct interactions between a customer and a business. The way a customer is treated at the counter, over the phone, via email, …
Self-Employment Sucks!
You're thinking, "Wait a minute – I thought this was an entrepreneurial site. What kind of demotivating crap is that?!" If you're thinking that, then you probably think entrepreneur, business-owner, and self-employed are all interchangeable terms. And that's how they're …
Entrepreneurs – Agents of Change
My brother Matthew and I just returned from a truly amazing event that we just have to share with YoungEntrepreneur.com readers. The event was the 40th annual St. Gallen Symposium, held at the University of St. Gallen Switzerland. For the …
Entrepreneurs, Start Your Engines: 100 Business Ideas You Can Drive Home Today
Ready to start a business? We’re excited to present a list of 100 businesses young entrepreneurs can start today! These ideas cover a very wide range of interests and possibilities, so there's something for everyone. With a list like this …
It's Not Enough to Cut the Video – How to Make it Go Viral
This is not your fathers Internet. Video used to be high-end and out of reach; something that only the the big boys with the biggest budgets were able to capitalize on. Fortunately, this is no longer the case. With the …
7 Social Media Lessons for Today's Young Entrepreneur
To say that Social Media has changed the way businesses communicate and market themselves is an understatement. It's no secret that social sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, and bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg are vastly popular and can …
7 Tools to Launch Your Startup into the Stratosphere!
When you're trying to get your new company going, you can use all the help you can get, but only if it's from quality sources. So we've compiled a list of resources that should be in every startup entrepreneur's toolbox. …
Your Employees Can Make or Break Your Business – How to Know What to Look For in New Hires
Good help is hard to find. Like most cliches, the saying came from somewhere. Most business owners will agree, good help IS hard to find, but if your business is at the point where you need to add to the …
10 Consulting Businesses to Capitalize on Your Expertise
We recently ran a guest post on being an expert. The point of the article was that everyone has an expertise and the ability to capitalize on that expertise to turn it into a thriving business. On that same note, …
How the Smart Entrepreneur Uses Twitter to Get New Business
Twitter came out of nowhere a couple years back to completely revolutionize the way online businesses are able to interact with their target market. Never before has customer service been so immediately accessible; never before has the online entrepreneur seen …
Business is Booming. Now What?
If business is going better than expected, your clients are happy and clamoring for more, and your prospects for the future are looking great, then it's probably high time to take your business to the next level; time to blow …
Differentiate or Die!
Why would anyone want to use your product, hire you for your services, read your blog, or visit your website? No matter which industry you're in, chances are pretty close to 100% that you have competition. So what do you …
Are You Startup-Ready?
You have a great idea, and you're anxious to get underway and start down the road to business success. There's no better feeling for an entrepreneur than the euphoria that comes with an early-stage startup. Hold on though. We've all …
Warning! Your Traffic Might Be Useless – 5 Tips to Help You Paint a Bulls-Eye Around Your Target Market
It isn't a stretch to say, unless you are selling advertising on your website based solely on the amount of visitors to your website, web traffic is a somewhat empty metric. It isn't enough to simply target traffic, you must …
