If you are a freelancer, virtual assistant or self-employed then winweb.com has a list of over 100 tips & tricks for you on how to make your business more profitable, how to find more clients and other useful ways to improve your small business.

During times like these you can’t afford to miss a trick, so why not go over to the WinWeb blog and find out more.

Read more @ WinWeb Business Blog

Running your business and managing an office should be viewed as separate projects to make your business successful and should be dealt with carefully. Your main focus has to be running your business. While we have covered the importance of managing your office for the success of your business, don’t let it consume all of your working day. Remember to spend time each day doing the tasks that only you can do to progress your business.

One of the best ways to reduce the time spent managing your business is to find an online solution, or an office online. Look online to find Virtual Assistants to act as virtual employees of your company. Outsource the essential, repetitive tasks that you can pay someone else to do. Make every penny or cent count by finding the best solutions online to suit and help your business.

To find out how, read @ winweb.com

Working 5 to 9 has become a popular term for people who run their small businesses out of hours or after they have finished their day job.

It assumes the business is part-time and is a good way to test the credentials of a business idea you may have had. As you don’t have a full day to dedicate to running your business, it makes sense to run it from home to give you the vital extra time you need. If your home isn’t adequate for running your business idea, consider time-sharing a property to help bootstrap your business.

Find out more @ winweb.com

Starting a small business from an office or home is a great way to earn some extra money or make into your full-time occupation.

As we all know there are many things to consider and the take into consideration. WinWeb has compiled a great list of 100 tips to help you to check out your business idea. Have a read and find out how well you are prepared.

100 Small Business Start-Up Tips @ WinWeb Business Blog.

So far we have provided tools, like our OnlineOffice, to help our clients to solve their small business problems, now we actually solve these problems for our clients in an integrated way, leaving them to explore their entrepreneurial vision and look after their business, not their admin and IT.

I am very happy to announce that WinWeb is releasing ‘BusinessServices’ – a new business services offering for the freelancer, home business and small office market. This is another world-wide first for WinWeb and every business service includes free access to WinWeb’s OnlineOffice as a bonus.

These services include bookkeeping, call & fax management, business address, mail hold & forwarding, web site design and maintenance, SEO – search engine optimization, payroll, graphic design, export services, online marketing and PR services, online presenters, online shop setup and maintenance and as before many Pay-As-You-Go services like parcel service, translation service and many more.

We have been training a large number of virtual assistants in all aspects of our service offerings for months and we are very confident we can provide a professional and extremely cost-effective service to all our clients. These services will be available in the following regions, the UK, Ireland, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but may vary from region to region.

As an example, Bookkeeping will start at £9.85 per month plus VAT – at these kind of prices even the smallest of businesses can afford to outsource their bookkeeping. In addition to the low price, our OnlineOffice will be free for the duration of the service allowing you to keep your cost even lower, by using the invoicing software and online shop to further reduce your bookkeeping cost, since any of these transactions will automatically be processed in the system.  

Any receipts can be uploaded by fax, scanned via email or sent to our processing centre and will be processed within 72 hours of receipt.

This is just one service aimed at making you focus on your business and not on your admin. I will talk about the other services in due cause on this blog, but you can always go and have a look at them on the WinWeb website now.

Especially during these times it is essential for freelancers, home business and small business owners to focus on revenue, sales and marketing their services and products and free up as much time a possible by outsourcing non-essential admin services.

All of our services come with a best price guarantee, we will match any comparable price in the relevant regions. Almost 100% of services are provided in local markets by local personnel and not outsourced to far eastern countries – showing our commitment to the regions in which we work.

Using OnlineOffice you can save over 75% on IT cost, now with BusinessServices you can save over 90% of admin hassle and additional cost savings, making it the ideal combination for your business success – have a look today! –ST.

‘Darling Brown’ – I love calling them that – are telling us everyday how much they are working to help small business to get finance and get the banks back to lending. With Bank Bail-Out 2.0 under way, we the taxpayers are continuously bailing these guys out, to the detriment of pensions, our currency, house-prices, lost jobs, economic down turn and so on and on. In other words we, the tax-payers are being very nice to all these bankers who got us all into trouble.

Every-time Darling Brown open their mouth, money falls out, our money and lots of it.

Even more surprising our state has obviously granted total immunity to our beloved bankers for their recklessness, greed and stupidity. Of cause if we, the small business people in this country, did anything only remotely similar, we would be in jail – we won’t even mention any bail-outs.

Alarmingly our favorite bankers still have not been helped enough, as many of my clients report they are being asked to pay double the interest on their overdrafts/loans as before. For instance where clients payed 2% over base rate for their loans, Barclays Bank PLC now asks for 4% over base on renewal of facilities, but kindly offer not to increase the facility fee.

Small business can not get any credit, and if it can the interest payable has been doubled. What I do not understand how exactly this is going to help small business. I always thought that the interest rate cuts by the Bank of England, was to help small business and consumers to stay afloat and get this economy back onto its feet?

The interest rate cuts only help the banks nobody else – and that, is a disgrace. — ST.

I guess we all know 2009 is not going to be the easiest year for business and for small businesses in particular, but I firmly believe that there are enough opportunities out there to survive and even to make a profit in 2009, especially for a bootstrapped small- or home business. Not loosing business focus and concentrating on your business goals may be the most important job for small businesses owners in the coming year.

I have compiled my wish-list for small business 2009 and would like to share my top 5 here with you, my list is much longer, but I did not want to unduly bore you on this New Years Eve 2009:

1. Government Interference – due to the total oversight failure of almost all governments which lead to this credit crunch and economic recession, our representatives will try and get rid of the ‘redness’ in their faces by being seen as doing things, and introduce more red-tape to ’supposedly’ regulate the markets better. I hope that there is going to be some ‘thinking’ before this happens to minimise the disruption to the running of small business. Red-tape kills small business, prevents innovation and is often ineffective.
2. Home Business Recognition – I hope that more people (politicians, cilvil servants and others) will learn to understand that a home business, as any other small business, is a real business. It produces work for others, even if it does not employ people. These businesses are very relevant to the global economy and their importance will grow dramatically in the years to come. It is still shocking to me how small the knowledge of micro business is among many.
3. New Small Business Finance – to enable small business to play a greater part on the way to our economic recovery. This recession will end faster if we manage to help small business to succeed, it will create work and jobs, taxes, and invigorate local communities. Most of all it will create stable small home businesses and deliver self-fulfillment, self-determination and financial independence to the entrepreneurial small business owners.
4. Tax Cuts To Help Investment – Any lowering in overheads will help small business survive or even turn a small profit. Lowering tax, or giving investment incentives would be better for our economy too. We need to learn to see the whole picture, not only the rewards for hard work, but the hard work too. We need to give incentives to people who are willing to go the extra mile, now more then ever.
5. 1000 New Companies – As my company, WinWeb, will be 15 years old next year, we want to be instrumental in helping to start over 1000 new businesses, if you are reading this and you are thinking about starting a business come and talk to us, we will help you to get started and you can make us into a winner. Joining us could net you £10,000 as the first price, even if you already have a business.

All left for me to do now, is to wish you a prosperous and profitable 2009. If enough of us get up and make things happen, then 2009 still promises to be a great year for small businesses and an even better year to take the plunge and start your own small- or home business venture.

Ready or not – 2009 here we come. — ST.

You may have a new years resolution to start your own business, but as you know some of the forthcoming new years resolutions are easy to keep, some others are more challenging and most of them will be broken within the first month. So if you are thinking about starting a small business in the new year here is how I would go about it in five easy steps:

1. Define Your Goals:

When you get in your car you usually know where you want to go. It may be surprising to you to find out, that most businesses do not have a ‘formal’ goal. The problem with that is that you never arrive, because you don’t know where you want to go. What are typical goals to have?

• Make a certain amount of money a month!
• Have more time for your family and friends!
• Be at home when the children come home from school!
• Avoid travelling for hours each day!
• Have a better work/life balance!
• Be the biggest and best in you chosen field!

What ever it is, write it down and go back to it now and then, especially if your are not sure how to make a decision about a problem. Focusing on this goal is absolutely essential to your business success.

2. Get A Business Idea:

You may already have a business idea or you may be looking at something a little vague still. What ever your situation, make sure your business idea aligns well with your business goals.

It is no good to run a busy office if your aim is to be at home for your kids. If you have your heart set on a business idea but it does not align well with your goal, try thinking of variations, working with others by forming a virtual company or subcontract to someone else as a freelancer to achieve your goals. Stay focused on your goal.

3. Test Your Business Idea:

Once you have decided what to do you need to test the viability of your business idea. The way you do that is by doing a cash-flow plan. This is not an exact science, but it will show you what you have to do to achieve your business goal.

If for example you want to produce artificial flowers, working from home and your business goal is to make say £ 5,000.00 a month. You can work out how many artificial flower arrangements you will have to produce to make this money. It will give you an idea if that is possible, because you will know how long it is going to take you to make these flower arrangements and what their average sales price will be and what your raw-material cost and other business costs per month are.

If you have never done cash-flow planning then find an accountant or a bookkeeper who will show you how to do it. It’s easy and you can learn it in 30 minutes. Our OnlineOffice has a cash-flow tool you can use for free for 30 days. That is enough to test your idea. Our 24 hour live support staff can also help you to get started with cash-flow planning, it’s free.

One final word on cash-flow planning here. It is not about being right, it is about doing it and then analyzing why you were not right. I’ve been doing it for 30 years and I was never right, but I’m fairly good at it. It will allow you to see many problems arising before they are a big problem. In my opinion this is the most important business tool ever.

4. Bootstrap All The Way:

One simple rule to stay in business is not to spend any money you do not have. Bootstrapping is all about that, making money first then use it to establish a solid small business.

Given the current economic climate, borrowing money from a bank is very difficult and that may just be very good for anyone to start a business. It will teach you financial control and self-reliance. Here are some of the rules I have:

• Do Not borrow money from banks, they will want it back when you can least afford to pay them back. They do not care how your business is doing, good or bad, they just want their money back.
• Do Not put your house or any other valuables you have on the line until your business has proven itself. A good bootstrapped business will make money from day one, that will ensure the business idea is good too.
• Do Not fear failure or making mistakes. Because you will be making mistakes, I make them every day and you may very well fail with your business, I have in the past. The important part with bootstrapping is it will not hurt you, it will just be part of your learning process to be come successful. After a failure you can show your true ‘colors’, by getting up and starting your next business.
• Sell to your friends, family and your current employer first to get the first order and money into your business. You could even let them get involved into your business. as partners or investors.
• Every problem somehow hides an opportunity, you just need to think about the problem out of the box. Every time you overcome a problem you confidence will grow and it will make you a better and stronger business person.
• Outsource every non-essential business process, bookkeeping, call answering, credit control, website design and keep your business IT online, the most important resource is not money, but your time – do not waste it on non-essential tasks.

There are many more rules I have established over the years, many of which I have broken, but these are the ones I strictly stick too.

5. Stay Focused, Always!

If you want to do flower arrangements your business is flower arrangements and NOT:

• Installing an IT system or an SQL server;
• Setup your data security and internet security;
• do your accounting;
• do your web-site;

Remember it is easy to waste your most precious commodity ‘TIME’ and have nothing to show for it. You may say ‘I have no money to have someone else doing all these things’. Please remember there are always opportunities in every problem. Here are some:

• Barter for services with your flower arrangement, i.e. for one month bookkeeping, you may find a new customer this way, get mouth to mouth advertising and most of all you do what you do best – flower arrangements..
• Keep your IT online, it is very cheap, more secure, easy to use and more reliable, you can often get some time for free, maybe even a whole year.
• Depending on the services or products you supply you may be able to receive many other services and products in exchange for your services or products.

Whatever you do, don’t get side tracked from your business goal, ultimately this is the main reason for small business failure. Your business will look more professional if you outsource your non-core business needs to small businesses focused on those services.

As you may know I have set us a challenge to be ‘instrumental’ in helping to set up 1000 new businesses until October 31st, 2009 – so, if you are going to do it, please register with us and help me to win my challenge.

It has never been easier to start a business to supplement your income – 2009 is the year for you to do it. — ST.

I’m thinking more and more about opportunities for people to start a small business, home business or a self-employed business during this recession/depression or once they lose their jobs.

This afternoon I had this idea as another company was in the news with over 2000 job losses. I thought about what happens when companies go under and it occurred to me that there is still business to be had, when a business fails.

Let us assume you work in one of those businesses, you will know part of the business very well, you may know some customers or how something is manufactured, or something else that was part of what your employer did. Now you and your colleagues are unemployed and you lost your income.

BUT think about it – are you the only party that is suffering here? No you are not – the former customers or clients have lost a supplier too.

So here is my idea, what about if you and some of your colleagues set up small home businesses and formed a little Co-operative and started providing services, like maintenance or upgrades or products to these former clients of your employer? Why not use your knowledge to your advantage?

There are so many opportunities here, if you think about it a little, that you and some of your colleagues could make a good living out of this disaster. You never know – you may be able take more and more of your colleagues into your self-employed co-op. Always remember the bootstrapping principals and you should be fine.

Every cloud has a silver-lining – you just have to look for it. — ST.

These days many ask, what to do if you lose your job? They know it is not easy to find a new job in this economic climate and are worried about starting a business during a recession/depression. The financial worries for many are extreme, as unemployment payments are often not enough to even pay your over heads, not to talk about having a bit of a life.

With unemployment numbers set to rise by about 600,000 to almost 3 million in the UK or to 6%, the outlook is dire.

My answer to the question on what to do, is pragmatic and simple, do both. If you lose your job, look for a new job and start a side business. It is no longer necessary to make a decision about these two options. Starting a small business is easy and it will give you at least some control of your destiny, while looking for a new job will give you the chance to find new employment. Should your business support you and your family well, just stop looking for a job.

Remember job security is a thing of the past – that is why you will not be surprised to read, that even if you still have a job, you should start a home business on the side, to make sure you keep your options open.

In my opinion running a small business is THE essential financial survival tool these days. — ST.