Business

You’re starting up a local micro-business. It might be web design services, business support, carpet cleaning, ironing, consultancy services or a Zumba class. Whatever you’re selling, you need to let people know what you’re doing and why they can’t live without your stuff. Most of the time it means setting up a website, then promoting…read more

I’ve always been a sucker for buying through catalogues, direct mail and the internet. And I know Kleeneze well, the source of a vast range of curious, useful and innovative products for the home. It works on a franchise basis and unlike most, the initial outlay is tiny at less than £100 or so for…read more

One of the biggest barriers to setting up a new retail business is the cost and hassle. Before you can test drive your brilliant idea you have to find a suitable premises, sign a long lease, hand over vast amounts of cash and deal with all manner of legal paperwork. But pop-up shops, which have…read more

Yesterday I talked about how to make money by writing ebooks for Kindle. Today I’m taking a look at how to get them in front of potential customers – the marketing bit. Great news: Amazon itself acts like a search engine When your books are on Amazon, formatted for Kindle, there’s a serious built in…read more

In August this year Amazon UK announced that their Kindle ebooks were out-selling actual books for the first time. For every 100 hard and paperback books it sold, 114 ebooks were downloaded. A couple of months later, I imagine ebook sales have increased even more. It’s a quiet, polite revolution and it’s changing the face of…read more

… and minimising your freelance costs. Thinking about working from home? Working from home already? It’s all too easy to get distracted when you’re home alone, and the best way to make a success of a home business is to stay focused. It’s no good drifting into the living room to watch daytime TV or…read more

There’s a lot of rubbish talked about social media marketing. But when you use it wisely it’s a genuinely good way to build trust, promote your business and – eventually – win new business. Here are some common sense tips for using Twitter to its full advantage yourself, without paying for outside help. You win…read more

You could spend wads of cash getting a collection of videos together to promote your business online. Or you could make your own. The stellar rise in video marketing has spawned a plethora of cool mash-up-your-own video tools, so I thought I’d take a look at two of my favourites, OneTrueMedia and SlideShare. About OneTrueMedia…read more