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Finance and Money Management For Small Businesses

Finance and money management is particularly important for new and growing businesses. Money flow can be a problem even when a small business has numerous clients, offers a product superior to that offered by its competitors, and enjoys a sterling reputation in its industry. Companies suffering from money problems have no margin of safety in case of unanticipated expenses. They also may experience trouble in finding the funds for innovation or expansion. It is, somewhat ironically, easier to borrow money when you have money.

Keeping on top of your business finances, whatever industry you are in, is essential and allows you to keep abreast of what is going in and out of your business.

If you haven’t really had a marketing budget before but have some cash aside that you could use to help promote you better, start by doing a bit of market research into where your target audience digests their daily news, whether they spend their time on social media, what offline publications they read. This will allow you to look at advertising costs or ways in which you can target your market.

You can always use a ledger to keep track of your income and expenses. But with the variety of high quality, low cost, or even free software options, there is no need to try to save a few pennies and do the work by hand. Software is often quicker, easier, and more accurate than pen and paper.

New internal systems help you to work more cost effectively if you were to make the purchase? Sometimes, investment into technology – while sometimes expensive – can be more worthwhile in the long run.

Using technology to manage cash flows is one of the most obvious ways to enhance efficiency. Dropbox, Quickbooks, Google Drive, and Xero all offer great services and cloud-stored accounting software that will help you manage your cash professionally. Some of these services are free, but if you don’t know your way around basic accounting concepts it’s best to pay a professional or buy a premium software package.

If you need more cash, it seems like a no brainer to go out and try to attract new customers or sell additional goods or services to your existing customers. But this may be easier said than done. New customer acquisition is essential to a growing business, but it can take time and money to convert prospects into sales. Selling more to existing customers is cheaper and you may be able to do this by analyzing what they’re buying and why – information that may even lead you to increase your profit margin and, hopefully, generate more cash.

Cash is the lifeline of your business. Even a small business which allows you to work from home and doesn’t employ a lot of people will require some thorough cash management. By extending payables, borrowing when necessary, asking for advances, and using professional software, you can ensure your business survives and thrives over the long term.

One top way of business finance and money management is tracking your cash flow results every month to determine if your management is creating the type of cash flow your business needs. This also helps you get better and better at creating cash flow projections you can rely on as you make business decisions about expanding your business and taking care of your existing bills.

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How Tax Holiday Can Help Your Business

Sales tax holidays are especially common. Typically, they involve suspending the collection of sales tax on a particular day of the year in order to encourage consumers to buy certain items and help local businesses.

For example, many cities have a tax holiday during the back-to-school season in order to encourage people to shop and to help parents pay less for school supplies.

Tax holidays can take many forms, though. Governments sometimes create tax holidays for new businesses. Developing countries might create tax holidays for foreign companies that relocate to the host country. The overarching idea is to lower the cost of doing business in an effort to encourage economic activity.
Why it Matters:

The facts are that internet sales—the majority of which continue to be tax-free—have enjoyed double digit sales growth virtually every year out of the last 15. At the same time, sales at our local stores have been essentially flat after inflation. This is why those who want more taxes to spend have lamented limited sales tax revenue growth. The truth is that the sales tax is virtually 100% avoidable.

Sales tax holidays are supposed to boost business and relieve shoppers, but they are underpublicized, damningly complex and easily manipulated.

Although taxing authorities lose out on tax revenue during a tax holiday, many economists believe that tax holidays actually increase tax revenue over the long term because they help businesses stay in business or grow. Over time, this creates more taxable revenue for the taxing authority and even more tax revenue in the form of payroll and other taxes if those businesses retain or hire employees

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Streamline Order Management in eCommerce

The purpose of order management is to ensure that the administration of processes within related to goods and/or services run smoothly. Implementation of order management systems helps to streamline the ordering process and to ensure that inventory information, vendor databases, customer databases, information on billing and payments, records of order processing and general order information is always updated and retrievable. A well implemented order management system improves the relationships businesses have with their customers, improves order efficiency and prevents delays and back orders of products.

While a clear project structure is essential, it’s also important to consider B2B best practices and design principles that are meaningful to your customers – always put your customer first. Create an experience that focuses on your customer and their job. While there are complex decisions that you and your team will make, always put yourself in the shoes of your customer.

B2B Order management gets more complex the more channels you add. You’ll need a system that can give you a holistic view of all your orders, in different stages of the supply chain.If a merchant is only selling products through one channel, like an online store, an eCommerce platform can typically keep track of inventory. But when more than one sales channel is used, inventory management can become difficult.

If a merchant is only selling products through one channel, like an online store, an ecommerce platform can typically keep track of inventory. But when more than one sales channel is used, inventory management can become difficult.

Order management systems are very critical to order fulfillment and in effect how effectively a business will perform within its ecommerce component. A business cannot grow efficiently if that particular business cannot adequately fulfill its orders. Therefore, it is often recommended to have multichannel order management systems that allow for significant optimization in inventory and notable sales each and every day.

Order management systems have specific software that provides details and data necessary to ensure that all eCommerce orders are managed properly. All order management systems have powerful features that include shopping cart integration, PCI compliance as well as fraud protection.

Most products that online retailers sell are sourced from distributes, drop shippers, or directly from the manufacturer itself. In each of those situations, establishing a good working relationship with them is essential. Having a healthy rapport and good reputation with your suppliers will benefit you when something goes wrong. Also, just as important is how you relate to them technologically. Integration between your ordering system and theirs is key to providing your customers with excellent service and fast delivery.

Complexity is not new. Manufacturers and Distributors typically already had all of that complexity before e-commerce. B2B enterprises have elaborate ERP systems that route, fulfill and handle return orders for existing channels. E-Commerce is just a new order capture channel. This is why I spend so much time articulating the differences between B2B and B2C. The challenges can be radically different. For a change, order management is an issue that is less complicated.

The benefits of Streamlining eCommerce order management system are significant. A Centralized order management offers greater efficiency in managing orders across the enterprise.With the help of an order management software, retailers can ensure faster and more efficient responsiveness to customer demands and marketplace changes.

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Money Management and Financial Budgeting

Wise financial management requires a series of daily choices. Take control of your financial situation with our money budgeting tips and learn how to calculate net worth, create a budget, monitor your progress, manage the flow of income and expenses, and protect your assets. After all, no one cares more about your money than you.

The first step to taking control of your finances is doing a budget.

It will take a little effort, but it’s a great way to get a quick snapshot of the money you have coming in and going out.

Setting up a budget means you’re:

Less likely to end up in debt
Less likely to get caught out by unexpected costs
More likely to have a good credit rating
More likely to be accepted for a mortgage or loan
Able to spot areas where you can make savings
In a great position to save up for a holiday, a new car, or another treat

If you’re spending more than you have coming in, you need to work out where you can cut back. This could be as easy as making your lunch at home, or cancelling a gym membership you don’t use. You could also keep a spending diary and keep a note of everything you buy in a month. Or, if you do most of your spending with a bank card, look at last month’s bank statement and work out where your money is going.

Some people find it hard to get motivated about saving, but it’s often much easier if you set a goal. Your first step is to have some emergency savings – money to fall back on if you have an emergency, such as a boiler breakdown or if you can’t work for a while. Try to get three months’ worth of expenses in an easy or instant access account. Don’t worry if you can’t save this straight away, but keep it as a target to aim for. The best way to save money is to pay some money into a savings account every month.

Savings (for your emergency fund and for investments) must be deducted FIRST from your income; whatever is left may be used for expenses. Most of us live the other way around — spending first, then parking the remaining money in investments. Ideally, 30 per cent (or more) of your income — whether you earn a lot or a little — must be saved. If that seems impossible, step it up slowly. Start by saving at least 10 per cent of each pay-check and keep increasing this every quarter.

If you find that you need help with your finances, professionals such as tax advisors, credit counselors, financial planners, and lawyers can help. Before working with any financial professional, be sure to check their credentials. You may choose to ask your friends and family if they have any trusted financial partners that they recommend. Ask specific questions about their history and areas of expertise. Finally, be sure that you are comfortable with the advisors you choose; ideally, you will be financial partners for life.

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Why eCommerce Order Management System So Important

The growth of online retail is one of the most significant effects of the Internet on the modern business environment. Freed from the shackles of overhead costs that accompany brick-and-mortar stores, retail entrepreneurs can launch online stores and grow their operations with lower upfront investments.

Yet even in an online retail environment, scaling up can be a challenge for businesses whose original processes for managing and fulfilling orders can’t handle an increase in volume. In these situations, online retailers typically invest in various e-commerce solutions.

A structured design process will provide clear direction to the eCommerce team. Everyone will know their roles and will feel that their input is considered at the appropriate time. While there is always a need to adapt and be flexible throughout the design journey, adhering to an overall structure will provide direction for all involved and can reduce the general length of the project.

Ecommerce order management process is the heart of any online retail business which contributes towards achieving 100% customer satisfaction. So, an order management system is the “hub” where data from each critical aspect of the business—the online storefront, the shopping cart, the inventory system and the payment- and shipment-processing platforms—flows in and out of. The order management system is aided by integrations with services and functions in each of those critical areas.

It is difficult to find what you are looking for on the B2B site when you don’t know exactly what you need. The clean search, navigation and taxonomy enables a customer to find technical and complex products quickly and be assured they found exactly the right product.

If you integrate your shipping services into your sales workflow, you’ll save time and energy generating shipping labels and choosing carriers. Most order management systems easily integrate with well known shipping partners like FedEx, USPS, UPS and several others. Be it your online store, your catalog or your warehouse, order management systems match the right inventory with accurate numbers and details of the product to your customer.

Your order management system should also track shipments and separate a unique tracking number for customers, enabling both you and the customers to track the order throughout the fulfillment process. This service also simultaneously updates the shipping information on all channels.

The ultimate goal of any business is to get customers to buy your product. However, if your back-end is not efficient, or your inventory isn’t integrated with order management system, you are likely to miss out on potential clients.

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Importance and Benefits of Exports in an Economy

Exports play an important role in economy, influencing the level of economic growth, employment and the balance of payments. If exports increase at a faster pace as compared to imports, nothing can stop an economy from being a developed one. On the other hand, the instability in exports can adversely affects the process of economic development.

Lower exports mean low foreign exchange and lower foreign exchange in turn means a small purchasing capacity of a nation in the international market.

Fluctuations in export earnings introduce uncertainties in an economy. These uncertainties influence economic behavior by adversely affecting the level and efficiency of investment and in turn have a negative effect on growth.

Businesses generally strive to make profits and the bigger the profits the better. In many instances, exports can contribute to increased profits because the average orders from international customers are often larger than they are from domestic buyers, as importers generally order by the container instead of by the pallet (thereby affecting both total sales and total profits). Some products – especially those that are unique or very innovative in nature may also command greater profit margins abroad than in the local market.

Exports help to put idle production capacity to work. This is generally achieved the more efficient utilization of the existing factory, machines and staff. What is more, because you are now selling more products without increasing total costs to the same extent, this has the effect of lowering your unit costs which represents a more productive overall operation. Lower unit costs make a product more competitive in the local marketplace as well as in foreign markets, and/or can contribute to the firm’s overall profitability.

The concept of trade stability or instability may be based either on a country’s aggregate trade in comparison with the cost of the world or on a binary country pair comparison. Such binary pairs may be large depending upon the number of trading allies.

Export instabilities have been claimed to affect economic growth both positively and negatively. Fluctuation in exports earnings introduces uncertainties in the economy. Supply side policies could include both interventionist supply side policies (such as education and training) and market oriented supply side policies (e.g. reducing the power of trades unions, reducing government regulation). This can enable increased productivity.

Private sector innovation. There is only so much the government can do to promote private sector productivity. Competitiveness depends on new technology and management techniques as much as any government policies

With increased export production and sales, you can achieve economies of scale and spread costs over a larger volume of revenue. You reduce average unit costs and increase overall profitability and competitiveness. Long-term exports may enable a company to expand its production facilities in order to achieve an economic level of production.

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How B2B and B2C Sharing eConomy Change Business Style

Sharing economy refers to a common or communal economy that includes the production, consumption and use of commodities. Sharing economy is based on temporary access instead of ownership, by utilizing the development of technology and the popularity of social media, such as sharing platforms. Sharing space, goods and skills is guided by three principles of: 1) efficient use of resources, 2) crowdsourcing, and 3) communality.

Manufacturers, wholesalers and corporate suppliers consistently surprise the market when they enter industries and launch business ventures traditionally dominated by B2C. First, it was the concept of eCommerce, now expected to surpass the value of B2C online retail. Soon after, B2B began taking hold of social media, Big Data, wearable technology and, most recently, the on-demand mobile application market.

Now, experts say B2B is approaching its next frontier: the sharing economy.

At its core, the sharing economy is about a lack of true ownership, allowing goods, services and information to be shared between two or more individuals. It is fundamentally a P2P business model.

Today, however, the corporate advantages of the sharing economy are providing companies with resources that would have otherwise been far less accessible. From sharing data to sharing office space, the sharing economy is expanding as a B2B business model.

B2B sharing economy has grown from almost nothing to a pool of global businesses valued in the billions of dollars. The concept—people using technology to find and purchase one another’s extra resources—represents a triumph of trust and crowdsourcing. Peer-to-peer financial firms such as Lending Club, transportation services such as Uber, and lodging brokerages such as Airbnb have all rapidly taken off, using Internet-based platforms to connect people directly without highly paid intermediaries. It’s no wonder investors are so intrigued, and the rest of us are a little enervated by all the hype.

Sharing economy platforms and applications are already being used widely in the B2C markets, such as Über and Airbnb, but sharing economy solutions for the B2B markets still includes a lot of potential. The principles of sharing economy are being utilized in the B2B markets for instance by sharing machinery in agriculture and forestry. In addition, other tangible assets, such as equipment, raw materials, office space and warehouses can be shared between companies. Intangible shared assets include for instance companies’ brainpower, knowledge and intellectual capital.

The potential here is not just to garner ideas from outside inventors through open innovation. Nor is it to open up a platform for third-party developers to introduce ancillary products and software, as computer companies have done for decades. The real potential is for new platforms to evolve that offer a segment of a company’s intellectual property base to the world at large, so that others may do things with it, and the patent holder may profit.

In the current form of this relationship, the two parties collaborate to bring innovations to market. The Chinese appliance company Haier, for example, invites inventors from outside the company to propose innovations they could produce together. But collaboration might not always be necessary. A company with a patent for a new type of battery technology, for instance, might choose not to develop it, but by placing the battery technology on an exchange, the company could make a connection to another company with a complementary technology that would otherwise never have been made.

The sharing economy is built on a simple premise: People who have extra capacity can make money by selling it to other people who need it, without a middleman to siphon off much of the value. Within the past decade, several businesses based on this concept have sprouted up from nothing and turned into billion-dollar enterprises.

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Use SEO Content to Make More Money

Make More Money Easily by Using Effective Keyword Rich SEO Content

Today’s online business is SEO oriented and people try to optimize their website through search engine optimization or SEO in order to be found by search engines easily. When search engines favour them, it’s expected that more traffic or people would be able to visit their site thus businesses get more customers and make more money. If you have an online business, here are ways to optimize your website so as to drive traffic your way and make profits.

Place proper keywords on your site that best describe your product. These should be the exact keywords that people use when they make a search on search engines. For instance, If you are selling laptops, choosing the keyword “laptop” is too generic. Think of the people you want to visit your site, visitors who would likely be your customers. If you are selling second hand laptops, you would be better off choosing the keyword “second hand laptop” or for a more specific term you can include the brand, “Dell second hand laptop” or “HP second hand laptop”.

You must also check how competitive the keyword is. Try searching for the keyword you are targeting in google by enclosing it inside quotes to know how many web pages are competing for that keyword. Example: “second hand laptop” If the search results showed more than 50,000 pages look for another keyword as this keyword is quite competitive.

Use such keywords so that search engines would be able to find your website and place your site in their top result pages. People will then be able to click on your site thus you would be able to make money online.

Another way how to make money online is to fill your website with quality content such as informative articles. When you have good articles that readers repost in their own websites or on their profiles in social networking sites, search engines will like this and will place your site in their top result pages. You have to make your articles accessible to people online and one way of doing this is submitting them in online article directories. There are a lot of people who visit such directories to look for information.

Keywords role on SEO is crucial because you will not be able to start proper SEO if you have not selected a keyword or keyword phrase. Once you’ve selected the right keyword for your web page you can now proceed with your on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

The google keyword tool can also help you choose the right keyword for your web page. You can see how many global searches there are, local searches happen, the competition there is and many more parameters. So you easily can find the best keyword that match for your business and use the effectively to make a Keyword Rich SEO Content which will help you to make more sales and money from your online business project.

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WordPress Blog Optimization Secrets and Tips

WordPress BlogSite Optimization Secrets and Tips

Every blogger should serious about site quality management and blog optimization. Here are a few little known tips and tricks to help you out with the technical aspects of blog optimization.

1. Update the content of your blog frequently

It is very necessary to update the blog content regularly. Google bots give high priority to the blogs which updates their content frequently. It is also very important to have a fresh and interesting content on your blog that can hold visitors on your blog.

2. Changing The Template/Layout Of Your Blog

Changing the template of your blog? Remember to always save a copy of the template you are currently using.

This will come in handy if you change your template, preview your blog in the new template, and do not like what you see.

3. Don’t Distract Your Readers With Too Many Videos/Music Files

Do not insert too many videos, music files or flash images in one post. Not only is it distracting for the reader, you will also end up increasing the page load time and will bore your visitors away.

4. Review The Coding Of Your Blog

Most bloggers insert codes that are written in XHTML instead of HTML. Since XHTML is case sensitive, you have to ensure that all your text code is written in the lower case. Remember, XHTML is stricter than HTML.

5. How To Easily Change Your Blog’s Background Color

You can change the blogger header background color simply by clicking on the ‘edit HTML’ option and scrolling to the code part where the background is mentioned as ‘background’. Here you can enter the code of the colour you want to change to, and then save your blog site. Refresh your blog site later.

6. Learn To Tag Your Posts

Learn to tag your posts. In systems like WordPress and Blogger, a well tagged site is crawled much more easily by search engines and hence comes up higher in the rankings. Not only will it rank you higher, it also ensures your readers can read up on a particular type of post any time.

7. Move Javascript at Bottom of the Page

Your site can run very slow or stall if another site that you call Javascript from is down. Moving the Javascript to the bottom of the page allows your visitor to still see your page content even though the javascript at the bottom is not loading for some unknown reason.

How to move Javascript to the bottom of the page

So I am going to quickly cover this here. There may be exceptions where you specifically want to load the javascript in the header but generally it should be moved to the bottom of the page (footer of your theme). The HTML code to load a javascript looks similar to the following:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.your-site.com/wp-content/themes/theme-name/scripts/some-script-file.js”></script>

So you can open your theme’s “header.php” and search for the word “javascript”. Once you find a line similar to the one above, cut that full statement (opening tag to end tag) and paste it in the “footer.php” file.

Try these blog optimization tips and say hello to a new and improved way of fast and optimized blogging.

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Make Money on eBay by Selling Public Domain Products

Make Money on eBay – Selling Public Domain Products

One of the easiest ways to make money on eBay is selling public domain information. The great thing about selling public products on eBay is that they have a huge market of buyers regularly searching eBay for anything old and rare.

You can also package these products in different formats, for instance if you find an old fishing book you can make it completely new and fresh by adding pictures, more text etc.

You can read the book into a microphone and hey presto you’ve got a great new audio product to burn to a cd and sell over and over again. There’s a great perception of wealth attached to audio products, you could make a fortune if you created four or five audio products and constantly listed them on eBay.

You can also take a great old picture, screen print it on a t shirt or place it on a mouse mat.

One guy I know prints old sports pictures on tea and coffee mugs and sells them for huge profits.

You can sell old books as ebooks burned onto cd’s, you can turn the book into an audio product or even a dvd.

The only problem with making money from public domain works is how to find real quality public domain websites.