Business Alone

In my travels today I ran across a great site online that should provide a nice resource for you as a small business owner. At the very least, you can use it as a consumer to find just about any kind of product or service imaginable.

Often, solo business owners are in need of a particular service or piece of equipment that may not be available locally or within the surrounding area. Not to worry . . .

This resource I'm talking about is a business directory of sorts. What makes it such a good resource, however, is its search capability. You can search in any state or city in the U.S. and get great information about the business supplying the information.

Now searching for any type of service or product is a breeze. Not only will the search include the name of the vendor, it will also allow you to find all the contact information you need, web sites, email addresses and what kind of local competition there may be for a product.

Last night was one of those nights that I absolutely hate! And as I grow older, I have them more often than I used to.

I got to bed at a decent hour, about 10:30 pm or so. I like to retire after the news so I can get a good night's rest and wake up early to meet the new day. I guess one would say I'm a morning person. I don't do well if I stay up late and work into the early morning hours.

I'm not knocking that lifestyle if it's yours ... I just do better getting up early in the morning than trying to force myself to stay up and think at night when I'm tired.

Anyway, last night was a terrible weather night here in Utah. The thunder and lightning were fierce and didn't let up until about 3:00 am. I had a hard time sleeping early on as the lightning flashes and thunderous booms would startle me each time I started to doze off. After an hour of similar interruptions, I got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the patio door (it was cool but not cold) and watched the stormy displays.

If there was ever a time to say "it rained cats and dogs" this would be it. This summer storm was much needed as our lawn has been burning up with the heat of this July and August so far.

I thought I'd post a little change of pace today. I ran across an interesting bit of wisdom a couple of days ago that I wanted to share with you.

This bit of information was written by Regina Brett of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. The focus is not on business.

Ms. Brett, a columnist, writes about the lessons of life that she has learned from her 70 years of life experiences. I thoroughly enjoyed this and hope you find it helpful.

Extract what is meaningful to you. If your life is fulfilling, you will be that much more able to run a successful small business.

Of all the things you need to pay particular attention to on your web site ... content is probably the most important.

Your business will be judged by your site's content. If it's remarkable, your business will be seen as remarkable.

If your site content is nothing but scraped or rehashed dribble, well, you site will be viewed in the same way.

Besides your content being "good" it also needs to be timely (updated often), targeted to the niche you have chosen, and of sufficient "uniqueness" that it separates itself from the content of other web sites in your niche.

Prospects and customers need to have a reason to keep coming back to your web site.

In every business it is critical that both customers and prospects trust the business owner.

He must be trusted that he will represent his products and services in an honest and fair manner.

The owner must be trusted that he will live up to his claims of service, guarantee, and product quality.

The owner must be trusted with valuable personal information and honest use of checks or credit cards.

In a very real sense, the customer must find the business owner beyond reproach.

Regardless of the product or service you want to sell online as a solo business owner, you will be confronted initially with the task of choosing a viable niche.

Not choosing a niche would be disastrous. You must focus on defining your customer market, the products you are going to sell, and your USP or unique selling proposition.

If all you have at this point is the thought that you want to start an online business ... that's fine but you can't stop there.

Small businesses that are not well defined are immediately doomed to failure. Why?

There are several reasons, but the most important one has to do with targeting your customers. If your offers and marketing are not targeted, you will not be successful in getting your message across to the right buyers.

Trying to sell green widgets to someone who could care less about green widgets will never work.

Every web site needs traffic. For most web sites, especially business sites, the more traffic you can get . . . the more sales you can make, all other things being equal.

One of the important characteristics of the most highly trafficked sites is that they have managed to build lots of inbound links. Not just "lots" as in dozens, but "lots" as in thousands.

Simply put, a link to your web site is a referral on a different site pointing to yours. A web site, other than yours, has "linked" to you by means of an active button, graphic, or text which anyone may click on to be immediately taken to your site.

Why would you want to have lots of "incoming" links?

I know there has been a lot written about Google's Page Rank "rating" system. Yet most folks I speak with don't really know what it is, how to increase the rank for your web site, and whether or not page rank (we'll call it "PR") really is that important to your web site and business or not.

The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, and the PR process has been patented by them. However, the patent is actually assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University.

The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; the shares were sold in 2005 for $336 million according to Wikipedia.

Here is Google's own explanation (or definition) of Page Rank:

I came across some wonderful advice written by Benjamin Franklin hundreds of years ago. I thought I would share it with you today and also in the next post. There is so much wisdom and sound advice here.

I hope you can appreciate what he is saying.

Yes, I understand that times have changed and today's business world is much different than when Franklin penned these ideas.

However, the principles behind what he is saying still hold true.

Solo entrepreneurs would do well to follow this advice; especially his wealth-building ideas and his abhorrence of debt.