Small Office, Home Office Information

If you’re like me it’s hard to stay positive for any length of time. Negative thoughts can and do have a long shelf life in the back of your brain.

Without realising what we’re doing we often let those negative thoughts take over and hinder our development and overcoming all those negativities is so hard. You have no idea how much I envy Toni who seems to have the ability to always be bright, bubbly and very very positive.

If you’re a doom and gloom merchant like me you might find that something Steve Pavlina has written to be of great help. I’m not sure if How to Squash Negative Thought Patterns will help me but I’m certainly going to try what Steve suggests.

The difference between survival and death for a small business or home based business depends on whether your potential customers know you exist or not. Sometimes that can depend on whether or not you can manipulate the media.

You will find some interesting thoughts about that here.

It also goes to show why sometimes using Google Adwords as a source of advertising revenue on your web pages doesn’t always work. The article talks about manipulating the media and Google wants to advertise the Bravado Nursing Bra. (I wonder what Google will show on my site?)

For those of us who have been in business for a while stupid mistakes will be part of history. Everyone makes them and no one avoids them and those who tell you that they have never made a stupid mistake should never be spoken to again.

If you’re new on the small business or home office scene then maybe you haven’t made any stupid mistakes … yet but you will.

Steve Pavlina looks at some of the mistakes new small business people can make in his 10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed - it makes for some very good reading.

Yes I know that podcasting is all the rage and there are those who claim that it will overtake normal written communications but will it really? Do you really need to gear your small business or home office up to present what your message via podcasting?

According to Forrester Research there is a good chance that most podcasts won’t be listened to. In fact their latest research suggest that currently only 1% of households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts.

Of course figures like that have brought howls of protest from those who think that podcasting is the best thing since sliced bread and who instantly question the methodology employed by the researchers. But the fact remains that podcasting is not going to have the same reach - or the same benefits to your small business - as does a website or a blog.

So if you have been stressing about how to get into podcasting to get your small business message out there I would suggest that you stop stressing and shelve the project. Small businesses and home office people don’t need to get into podcasting just yet and perhaps the time will never come when they do.

No, I haven’t gone all weird and philosophical – well no more than I usually am – but there is an amazing importance for small business or even home office type business in being one – number one is search engine results pages.

Of course anyone who is number one is going to get a lot of clicks from people who are searching for what you might be selling. But there is another important reason too – one that is psychological and has a profound influence on people who are using search engines.

It’s not something that I had thought of before but it is something that some people have been aware of for quite a few years. I stumbled across it while I was reading the iProspect Search Engine User Behavior Study. That rather dry sounding document has some fascinating insights to offer the reader on how people use search engines and what information they glean from search engine results pages.

The survey was conducted in January this year and prior surveys were conducted in 2002 and 2004. The people surveyed covered a wide cross section of American society and these people showed the importance of one.

36% of those surveyed believed that if a business appeared as number one on any search engine result page then it was the top company in its field. They seemed to believe that somehow the search engine would only place the top company at the top of the first search engine results page for any term.

A further 39% neutral on the question of whether or not a company was the leader in its field simply because it was the top of the first search engine results page.

Now personally I found that to be a rather scary finding and what’s worse is that the percentage that holds that incredible belief has actually risen since the survey in 2002.

So now you see just how important it might be to be able to grab that top spot. If you can nail it for the search terms that are important for your small business or home office type business then a large cross section of society will think that your small business is the absolute world leader when it comes to whatever your business happens to do.

You can find the report here and I would definitely encourage you to download and read it because I’ve only just scratched the surface of the report.

If you’re one of those small businesses that seeks to increase your exposure to the world via pay per click advertising - for most of us that’s the advertising that appears on the right hand side of Google’s search engine pages, on this page and on plenty of other people’s sites too - you may have taken some heart from what one of Google’s top executives said last week.

Despite the fact that Google had just offered nine million dollars to settle an action brought by an advertiser over their losses due to click fraud this Google exec dared to proclaim that Google could now identify all click fraud and so click fraud for pay per click advertising was no longer a problem.

It seems there are some who don’t agree with him and some industry experts suggest that click fraud still accounts for between 20 and 35 percent of all clicks on website ads.

You can find the full story here - but if that really is the level of fraud are you factoring that figure into your advertising budget?

Here in Australia we’re going through our usual fuel price increases that happen just before major holidays. Lots of people are complaining and lots of people are suddenly finding that it’s costing them a lot of money just to move around their local area.

Unfortunately worse is to come and not just for Australia. Here analysts expect the price of fuel to reach $3.00 a litre by next year (and some suggest that it will get there well before next year). Other countries won’t escape the fuel price rises because demand has now far outstripped supply and the simple economics of supply and demand are cutting in.

So the price of fuel is going to impact on everyone because everything that we buy or sell relies on fuel for production and/or transportation.

So now’s the time to start identifying all the ways that the rising fuel price will impact on your small business. It might be something that is rather scary to do but it’s far better to be prepared than to leave yourself exposed by sticking your head in the sand.

Small business, especially those in regional and country areas, often spend a lot of money on television advertising but is that money well-spent?

Nielsen Media Research, using it’s minute-by-minute ratings analysis found that a television audience could fall by up to 15% during commercial breaks.

So are you getting good value for money from your television advertising dollar or are you just paying for viewers to take a toilet break or make a cup of coffee?

It was raining here yesterday - something that is usually quite common here on the coast in sub-tropical Queensland but it got me thinking about whether or not we think enough about advertising before we jump in and spend it.

Here in the town where we live there are four newspapers. One somes out six days a week and has a limited circulation because you have to buy it. The other three come out once a week - one on Wednesday, one Thursday and one on Friday.

Those papers are delivered to every house in town and they are free. Delivery is performed by a van driver tossing the paper over your front fence around 6am in the morning.

Now those freebies offer advertising at a lesser rate than the daily paper and, because of their wider circulation they seem to offer a better deal for your advertising dollar. But do they really and do you stop to think about what happens to your advertising dollar after it you have spent it?

Now remember I said earlier that it often rains here so if you lived in this town you might be wise to think of the rain when you spend your advertising dollar. Why is the rain an important factor?

Well two of those freebies are delivered wrapped in plastic. Regardless of the weather each paper comes protected from the rain. The third comes without any protection from the weather.

That means that quite frequently the unprotected paper gets delivered while it’s raining and by the time a householder has retrieved it from the front lawn the paper is a sodden mess. In that state the paper goes straight into the garbage and so does your advertising dollar if you happened to advertise in that paper.

So sometimes it pays to look at other factors besides circulation and advertising costs before you commit your valuable advertising dollars to the garbage.

There are times when you run a small business that you just have to wonder if anyone listens to you. If you’re dealing with a major company and have a complaint do they really care? Do they even bother to read your letter or email?

Well here is one small business that has found the key to getting heard and getting their complaints noticed and the problems fixed fast.

This guy makes ‘presidential level’ complaints and the companies listen. You will find his story here at Update II: Alexa Site Association