Small Office, Home Office Information

Small business people are usually very busy people so if you’re writing something for them that is going to appear on a web page or even in a letter you need to set it out in a way that they can read quickly. If you don’t they may not read it at all.

You’ll find some good pointers on How to Write for Busy People at the other end of the link.

Now if only someone could give me some tips on how to write while I’m busy …

There are definitely times when I seriously envy ant small business person whose business doesn’t rely on an online presence to survive.

Sure, working online can be exciting and challenging but it can also be very frustrating and very disappointing. When the search engines love your sites you can be on top of the world but search engines are very fickle things. Today your sites can be on top of the search engine result page and tomorrow they can be nowhere to be seen.

As one famous Australian politician once said – “You can be a rooster one day and a feather duster the next” – and, although he was talking about Australian politics he could have just as easily been talking about good rankings on Google.

So if, like us, you run a small business that depends on good search engine results I’m sure that you will find this thread on Webmaster World worth reading. You will have to register to view the thread but registration is free and there is a lot in Webmaster World that can be helpful for you.

At the same time you might also find it helpful to see the site that Liane – the person who started the thread – is talking about. As you will see from Liane’s initial post in that thread Sailing the British Virgin Islands has much to teach anyone interested in good site design.

In the last four months the amount of work that we and our writers have been doing has just continued to escalate. It has reached the point now where if there were two of Toni and two of me we could have easily worked 24 hours a day and still not seen the end of it.

Of course we don’t have the luxury of clones and so we have been working flat out and that can be dangerous not only to our health but to the health of our business. Perhaps that might seem hard to believe but running a small business involves more than just filling orders for your clients.

You also need to keep a watch on your business to make sure that you are putting the maximum effort into those areas that produce the most money. You also need to identify those areas that are not producing income as they should so that you can make an informed decision on whether or not to continue offering those services.

When Toni and I sat down earlier this week and identified all the little streams that come together to make up our cash flow we were able to see which regular clients and tasks were bringing us the most income and we were also suprised to see that, over the last few months, one of the services we have offered has actually had a negative cashflow.

We also took the time to look at those people who work for us. We wanted to know which writers produced the work we wanted with the least supervison and time spent on editing their work. Once again, that produced some surprises too.

Now, in the coming week we’re going to be using those figures to look at the direction that we want- and need - to take the business to make it even more profitable.

If we hadn’t stopped being busy for a moment and actually looked at the facts and figures we could have so easily made the wrong decisions simply because we had been too busy to keep on top of our own business.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and I feel like a mercenary swine. I was just wandering through my Blog list to see what others have been writing about and see posts about things uplifting, things challenging and what is my latest posts about?

An attack of sand flies and how to milk traffic from Google in less than 24 hours - I’m such a shallow mercenary swine.

In case you haven’t guessed it I should be working but lately Tuesday afternoons are time of the week when my brain wants to escape and play trains, walk along the beach kicking sand, doing anything but work.

My step-daughter just called her mother and told her that when she and her partner get married she wants me to give her away instead of her real father … I’m sitting here looking at a photo of three of my kids and see a son who is in the Army and my daughters - a teacher and a Systems Administrator and this mercenary swine feels very humble.

I think it’s time to my jazz tracks and dig out J J Johnson and listen to some concepts in blue.

There has been a lot of hype over the last year or so about blogging. On one level blogging has been seen as the preserve of those who want to share their thoughts and dreams with the world.

On another level blogs have been seen as a chance for affiliate marketers to push their sponsors and, while there are some good affiliate marketing blogs out there, unfortunately there is also a huge amount of stinking garbage out there too.

There is also a third level where blogs are seen as being useful and that’s as a marketing tool for small business.

But despite all the hype, or perhaps because of all the hype, you may wonder just how effective blogs really are.

Well here is something that surprised even me. In a matter of hours on Friday a Tropical Cyclone developed off the coast of Queensland and by Saturday it was obvious that it was going to reach land. At that time it could have gone west and missed us completely or turned south-west and hit us.

So I made a post about it on Saturday in a local news blog that I run. Sunday morning I happened to be looking at the stats for the blog and found that in less than 24 hours Google had picked up that post and it was sending people to the story on my blog.

Through Sunday and yesterday I continued posting about it as it drew closer and developed into a Category 5 monster. By yesterday afternoon the number of people who were coming to my blog for the latest on the cyclone was incredible.

That’s how powerful and immediate blogs can be. You can build a website and Google won’t list it for 12 months or more. Build a blog and post relevant comments on it and Google will love you within 24 hours. MSN and Yahoo will do the same.

If you have an important message to get out about your small business then start blogging because people will begin to hear you.

Who would want to run a small business at 3am on a Sunday morning?

Not me but I’m up and catching up with a few chores before I get on with the rest of the day. I don’t normally get up at 3am on a Sunday morning but back on Thursday we took a few hours off and went up the coast to one of our favourite eateries that’s right on the water and I was on the menu for the local sand flies.

Now I’m covered in bites and I’m not a happy camper but at least I should be able to get some work done today - if only I can stop scratching

Oh … and I also got up early to keep my eye on a category 3 tropical cyclone that is currently approaching the coast about eight hours drive north of here. They have been known to change course and come further south.

In the last couple of days a number of people have contacted me via a message board that I sometimes frequent and asked me about this blog. It seems that they’re interested in starting their own blog to deal with small business and home office issues and they wanted to see how it was done.

I guess I’m flattered that people want to see what I do but, if you’re one of those people, then let me suggest that the way I do things here may not be the best way of operating a blog like this. In lots of ways this blog is an expression of who I am and to copy what I do could well be a mistake.

I have very definite ideas on some aspects of blogging that don’t fit well with other bloggers. I detest blog rolls, I can’t stand people who want to ride to success on the coat tails of others - people who use well-known names in their Technorati tags when what they have written about has little to do with that person.

So sometimes I don’t use methods that would ensure that my blog receives more traffic than it currently does. And sometimes I openly question the ethics of other people but then that’s me and, as I said, this blog is an expression of who I am.

And trust me, you would not want to be me.

If your small business or home office type business is involved in affiliate marketing then you need to be thinking more about press releases.

There is no doubt that press releases are changing and they are now becoming a tool that anyone can use to get your message right to the very people you want to talk to - the consumers.

If you want to get some ideas on how to use a press release to market your sponsors’ wares then you might find this article interesting

If your small business or home office type business is involved in affiliate marketing then you need to be thinking more about press releases.

There is no doubt that press releases are changing and they are now becoming a tool that anyone can use to get your message right to the very people you want to talk to - the consumers.

If you want to get some ideas on how to use a press release to market your sponsors’ wares then you might find this article interesting

You would hope that advertising displayed by Google - as you see on this site - would be trustworthy and reliable. Unfortunately it seems that is not always the case.

Here is one such ad:

The program that you would have found at the other end of this ad was not Spy Sweeper at all, it was something entirely different and not what you would have wanted on your machine.

You can read the full story here