Small Business Blog

Judging by the reactions I’ve gotten from telling people that I’m self-employed, there’s a common misconception that entrepreneurs have the freedom to work, or not work, whenever they feel like it. Here are a few of my favorites, and I didn’t make these up.

“Well, since you work at home, you can take a nap tomorrow.”
“Hey–you’ll be home tomorrow–can you run an errand for me?”
“Yeah, I work hard too. The other day I was ready to call it a day at 4:50, but I stuck it out ’til 5.”
“If I worked for myself, I’d go to the gym every morning.”
“You’re self-employed? Wow, that’s cool. I’d love to work at home–I’d sleep all day.”

More than once, I’ve found myself explaining that being self-employed is not the same thing as being unemployed (even though the pay is about the same). The truth is, having the ability to set your own hours means nothing when you have 23 hours of work to complete before tomorrow. (continue reading…)

Back in Feb., SmallBusinessNewz published a short article entitled “Consider These 8 Sources of Web Traffic.” To quote the article, the 8 sources mentioned are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• StumbleUpon
• MapQuest
• QR Codes
• Blogs
• Pictures

You could also add YouTube, Squidoo, HubPages, Yahoo! Questions (don’t tell Yahoo! I said it though) and others to the list. While it’s great to have a list of resources, it doesn’t get an entrepreneur/small business owner any closer to strengthening sales or profits. Small business owners have the problem of having too many options available; there isn’t enough time or money to participate in every strategy that presents itself.

So how can an entrepreneur efficiently make decisions about where to spend scarce marketing dollars? The process begins with developing a detailed understanding of where the business is currently. By this, I mean knowing things like:

• Your average ticket 
• Traffic to your store (if applicable) and your website (if applicable)
• If you have an office or store, what percentage of your customers have seen your website 
• Your close rate (once you get them in the store, in the office, on the phone, etc., how many buy from you?) 
• Amount and frequency of repeat sales from existing customers 
• Demographics of your average customer

Getting a handle on your average ticket along with the close rate can infuse your marketing decisions with a small bit of certainty. For example, say 5 percent of the people who visit your Web site end up buying from you. If you also know those eventual customers will spend an average of $350 (for example) with you over the next year, you can then estimate what each Web visitor is worth to you. (continue reading…)