New Georgia Business Idea – Online Auction Sales

If you have a product you can sell it online at one of the big auction sites like eBay. Even if you don’t have a product, look at yesterday’s post about starting a new Georgia business as an affiliate. You can sell other people’s products on eBay as if they were your own.

One of the keys to a good business is that you have your own product(s) to sell. Create something that is unique, hard to copy, and useful. Keep modifying your product to stay ahead of the competition. If you don’t have your own product like this – you might sell someone else’s product and do a “value-add”. This means you add something of substantial value to the product – and sell it for more.

One ingenious Georgia entrepreneur I found did his value add like this…

I went to a place called “Tongs.com” to buy some tongs to handle venomous snakes. I don’t own a credit card – I refuse to. I wanted to buy some tongs they had for just about $100. The owner just wouldnt’ take PayPal. I had no other way to pay, and didn’t want to pay high fees to go with Western Union. There was, literally no option. I sent my last email to the guy wondering – how does he stay in business?

I got online and searched for “tongs.com” and “paypal” as keywords.

In minutes I found the tongs I wanted in an ebay auction. The guy selling them – accepted Paypal.

I got the tongs (and a bonus snake hook for free!) for the same price I would have paid the owner of Tongs.com directly.

The guy doing the eBay auction – did a simple value add… offering another way of payment, that worked for all of us. The owner made something, the auction holder made something, and I got what I wanted for the same price it would have been to go through the owner directly.

Be creative when you think of your value-add, if you go this direction.

Good luck to you!

Georgia Business Idea – Photographer

Incorporating a business in Georgia is one of the smartest things you can do in this economy. Creating a business for YOU, built by YOU, and being entirely responsible for it – without relying on others to give you employment – is the way to go.

Back in 1988-1991 I was a photographer in New York City. I was on track to become an advertising photographer and had just landed a great assignment to work with one of the top advertising photographers in the country. I chose to go back to college instead. Was it a good choice? I’ll never know. The life of a photographer seems glamorous, and yet there is a lot of detail work that goes into it behind the scenes.

If you have an interest in starting a Georgia business and you have a serious interest in photography, you might be able to get into the field. It will be difficult, let’s not beat around the bush… but, there are new photographers getting into the field, and if it’s something you really love – you might as well be one of them – right?!

Don’t let the fact that there are cameras out now that take excellent photos almost regardless what the person looking through the viewfinder does. That’s true, and it isn’t. There is a lot more to photography than the technical aspects. Lighting, cropping, color type, digital formatting, and many other things are just as relevant. If you are an excellent photographer with a lot of drive to do it – and make it work, you can make it in the field simple as that.

Photographers usually go one of two ways – specialize in a small niche – wedding photography, for instance. Or, they try to do it all – weddings, stock photos, aerial, advertising, portraits, school photos, artistic, and the rest of it. If you’re in a small Georgia town you might try the second type – do it all. Reason is, there might not be another person in your town that is a professional photographer and lots of types of photographs are needed.

One of the best photography niches to get into is real estate photography. It takes a lot of practice – a lot of lights to light up dull interiors, and it might take a specialty lense or two (tilt-shift lenses), but, it can be done. Real estate agents always have a need for good photographers – and if you’re in the right Georgia location – you’ll find work in this niche.

Another thing you might try is stock photography. We use Dreamstime.com and in the past used Fotolia.com also. Start with Dreamstime and see what you can do. The key to stock photography is shooting images that others will use on their website, and as covers or filler in their digital books.

Whichever route you choose – or if you choose one of the dozen other areas of photography – we wish the best of luck to you! Don’t forget to incorporate your new Georgia business. Nothing hurts worse than a lawsuit in which your personal assets are taken. Help protect your assets with incorporation. See one of our incorporation forms now…

Small Georgia Online Business? Tips For You…

When starting a small business there are times you will feel overwhelmed. Here, to add to your GTD (Getting Things Done) list are five activities to put in your agenda. Keep these in mind as you start your new business because they will help you through some of the major hurdles and problems you might find yourself up against if you ignore them.

5 Things You Must Do for Your New Georgia Small Business:

1. Incorporate – as soon as you know what your business is, what the name of your business is, what the domain name is, you must incorporate your new business. If it sounds like more than a strong suggestion, it is. I have a friend that chose not to incorporate – it was too much trouble. Instead he listed himself as a sole proprietor for his real estate business in Florida. His business was sued because of something that was misunderstood. He learned during the court process that his personal savings accounts, boat, house, and anything of value he owned could be taken by the court if they deemed his actions to be maliciously intended.

That is finding out way too late that you could lose everything you have because you did not take a few hours to incorporate your business for $225 to $300. Incorporation puts a layer between you and your business. In fact, it creates a separate business entity for tax purposes and legal purposes. If you do not incorporate you are risking so much. Spend the $300 and gain peace of mind.

2. Register domain names at Godaddy.com – after you figure out what your official business name will be, you have incorporated with it – now register that name three times with.com,.net, and.org suffixes to protect yourself from cybersquatters and those that are looking to steal away some of your customers. It costs about $30 to register 3 domain names at Godaddy. Less if you find coupons that give you big discounts.

3. Research Open Office and Google Docs before you buy into Microsoft’s Office Suite software. You can save a lot of money because both of these options are free.

4. Read Tim Ferris’ The 4-Hour Workweek for a different perspective entirely on the goal of small business. This book makes a very strong case for the entire point of your business being to fund your travel and freedom. Exceptional book that you will be glad you read, and be recommending to others. I promise.

5. Write an informal business plan. Find a formal business plan and use the headings and subheadings to guide you as you write up a plan that you will follow for your business. Do this whether or not you will create a formal business plan to help you get funding with a financial institution.

Starting a new business sometimes seems too difficult for people once they get started. It sounds like a great idea at first – and then the reality of work sets in – it is work too, right? If you follow these tips – it will help you get started the right way. It is NOT that difficult – just start and move forward – at whatever pace. Eventually it will be up and running, and you’ll be in a better place than you were before. Good luck to you!

Is Your Georgia Business Built on Rock or Sand?

Is your new business built on a house of cards? If someone sued your business right now, could you lose everything? I mean everything – your house, one of your vehicles, your cash savings it took you thirty years to amass.

A business built without certain fundamentals is like a card house waiting to topple. It would not be a pretty picture if it was your business.

Here are a two things you have to do correctly in order to have a stable base for your business:

Choosing a Georgia Business Name

The name of your business can get you into trouble, believe it or not. Name your business something with a trademarked term in the title and you could find yourself in court over it. Maybe it will not happen this month, maybe not this year. Maybe, when your business has made you a couple of million dollars a lawyer shows up and wants to talk about cutting a deal because you have been using their trademarked word in your business name, website, and product design. That is probably one fight you are better off avoiding – and you would be best advised to go ahead and settle and give them a million dollars or whatever you can get away with. Yes, it is that bad.

The US Patent and Trademark Office is located online at USPTO.gov. They have a search feature that will let you search for trademarked words and phrases that you must not use for your business name, or products… or use in your business at all.

You also need to research thoroughly about whether or not your business name will conflict with another similar business or similar sounding name. Court cases can be brought for names that are too similar. The reason being, if you named your business something that could be easily mistaken for another existing business – there is some conflict there. A court could award damages either now or in the future. Google and maybe one or two other search engines are resources you can use for a check of this nature.

Your official business name is one thing, and your domain name is another. You will want to research your business name in Google to find out if there are any domain names with very similar, or the same phrase. Someone doing business as a sole proprietor could register a business domain name before you do – and be able to use it – regardless if your name is an official company name or not.

Incorporation

Many one-person businesses look at incorporation as something that is only for businesses with employees, an office. In fact, it used to be that way. Now that the internet is providing a platform for new businesses to spring up literally in a day or so, the one-person business needs to add this crucial step to their business start up plan and incorporate.

Incorporation is as easy as:

* Figuring out which type of business entity to create. Will you choose LLC, S-Corporation, C-Corporation, or a Non-profit? After a couple of hours of self-study you will have it all figured out and be able to go to the next step.

* Register your business by filling out an online form at one of the online business registration services.

These two steps – business name check, and incorporation, are crucial because time does not make these things go away. Start your business the wrong way – and the possibility of lawsuits in the future do not go away. Take care of your business from the start and do these few things the right way. There are many more things you should do the right way – starting with taxes, but this is a good base to start from. Surprisingly, many companies do not even do these few small things.

Disclaimer – we are not lawyers and cannot give legal advice. Consult registered lawyers before you act on any information provided here.

Business Website Statistics – An Overview

Website analytics, often called website statistics, are not understood well by most owners of online business websites in Georgia – and all over the globe. Google Analytics, Urchin, Analog.cx, or Report Magic can all flood you with statistical information about your visitors, who they are, where they came from and what they did while at your business website. Amidst this river of data there are a few crucial things to understand.

I have used Google’s free analytics program for many years now as well as a couple other free reports to give me a different view of the data. You should not be surprised to see different analytics programs reporting slightly different information about your websites. This is the norm. No two programs work the same way and define events exactly the same. I would recommend you use more than just one website analytics program to give you a better view of things.

What I count on though is Google Analytics. This requires a bit of code on each page of your Google analytics requires placing a bit of code on each page of your business website. It is very accurate and tells you a great deal of information. I strongly recommend that you use this free Google program as one of your analytics tools.

The following are some basic analytics terms and what they really mean:

Bounce Rate (BR) – BR tells you about the number of visitors coming to your site that do not stick around long enough to click even one other links. These visitors ‘bounce’ off into oblivion and to someone else’s site presumably. High bounce rates are the norm. This is a function of the search engines (usually) not making perfect matches for those using the search engines. It could also be regular visitors that pop in to look for something new, they do not see it and they click away.

BRs of 60% or higher, though this sounds incredible, are about average. If you can get below 50% that is a good percentage. It all depends on your business of course, but obviously lowering the BR has advantages, like more pageviews – probably leading to more sales.

Hits – Hits means nothing in the big picture. Your hits could be at 1 million and not mean a thing. Let me explain… If you have 1 million photos on one page of your site – if one person went there and viewed them you will rack up over 1,000,000 hits as a result. If your page has 30 photos, you get 30 hits. Basically a hit is any object. You get one hit for someone viewing your page, one for each image, one for any audio listened to or videos clicked. Clicks do not tell much at all. Nobody knowledgable about analytics talk about hits at all. The main criteria everyone is concerned about are: unique visitors, and pageviews.

Unique Visitors (UV) – the number of unique people that visited your site is represented by this criteria. UV count is something that many business owners are concerned with because when they increase, sales increase. Reach increases. This is a main goal of business online, along with the next item, Pageviews.

Pageviews – the number of times your page was shown to a visitor. One visitor might see 8 pages. One visitor might see 3. Pageviews are given in total and by average usually. The pageviews number is, in Google Analytics, after those that bounced have been removed from the number. If you have GoDaddy for your business website hosting you have access to their free stats program. This program shows the pageviews including all bounces – so there are many more pages counted than Google Analytics counts. For example, at Godaddy one of our sites gets 3700 pageviews per day. Google shows only about 1000 per day for that same site, not counting the pageviews of the bounced visitors.

Many people believe you need hundreds or thousands of visitors per day at their business site to make money with their online business. The truth is, if you had only one hundred highly targeted visitors arrive at your website, that might be enough. No matter how many visitors you are getting, try hard to convert them to join your email list by offering something for free in exchange for them joining your list. You will have continued opportunities to promote ideas, conversation and things you are selling if you are able to email them over time.

This was just a basic introduction to analytics for your business website. There is much more to know, and I hope you will continue your quest for information about this very important topic as it relates to your Georgia business.

Why Start an Online Business? Here’s Why…

You probably know people that have started their own business.

Many of us consider starting an online or traditional business, but most of us do not. Why is that?

Taking a job working for someone else:

* is degrading
* kills your freedom
* makes you barely productive
* is not fun

Yet, most of us choose to work for someone else because we are following tradition. Traditionally almost all of us look at ourselves as employees, not the boss. There is a lot to be said for creating your own business and hiring employees, but on initial consideration – it seems like a major project, fraught with headaches and tough decisions.

The USA, and really the world, is not in a good economic state at the present time. Maybe it is getting better in the USA, maybe not. But you know what? There are thousands of people owning their own businesses that are relatively unaffected by the global economic situation. Personally I know dozens of people that work online that are relatively unaffected. They are not making as much money as they would be in a killer time of growth across the globe economically, but they are doing well enough to take long vacations and keep plugging along as usual.

I think the absolute number one reason everyone should start their own business is because – nobody can fire you. That is it. Job security. As long as you are trying – you will remain employed.

The second reason to start your own business is because your failure or success is directly attributable to only one person – not a company. If you put the time and effort into knocking one out of the park, then you will succeed. If not, you will fail. If you are motivated to do something good for yourself and your family then starting an online business is one of the best projects you could ever start.

Another reason to start your own business is money. You pay yourself what you want. If you are an employee for someone and you are paid $4,000 per month, and you save $1,000 per month… you are taxed on that $1,000 that you made. So really, you made about $1,350 to make that $1,000 you saved. It will take you many years to make that back in interest in a savings, or through bonds. This, because you are already in the hole.

Contrast that with being your own business owner. You pay yourself only what you need to survive. So, you pay yourself $3,000 – on which you are taxed. You do not withdraw the $1,000. You keep it in your business checking where it is not taxed. You can use that money to buy business equipment, or use it for many business related things like travel to another state or country if you choose…and you are not taxed on that use of the $1,000. Makes sense to start a business for that reason alone.

Starting an online business in Georgia is ridiculously easy and can be done in 24 hours in most cases. You will need to figure out the type of incorporation to file: LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, NonProfit. You will need to decide on officers and roles for staff.

In most cases you will not need a lawyer or an accountant to file your initial articles of incorporation. Most entrepreneurs read up on the various types of incorporation filing and decide on their own which fits best.

Filing is easy, you can use easy online forms from a multitude of companies online to file your articles within 24 hours.

Why starting a business in Georgia is a good idea?

1. Tax advantages.

2. Georgia is a respectable state for your business. Two states, Delaware and Nevada, though they have some of the best benefits in the nation for businesses strike many lenders as bogus states to incorporate in. The truth is, corporations registered in DE and NV are not taken as seriously as Georgia or most other states. Part of incorporation is respect. You want it. You need it. Do yourself a favor and avoid these two states as well as off-shore incorporation in the Virgin Islands, or worse.

Incorporate first. Then start the transition out of your other full-time job. A smart way to go about it is to wait until you are very close to self-supporting with your new business before quitting your stable, income-producing job. There is no deadline – no competition. Treat it as it should be, as a meticulously planned change of your career and really, your life.

Put hours in at your new online business when you can. Test many things – marketing, sales tactics. See what works and get things moving forward and carrying some steam so you can quit your other job.

A big part of your time should be spent learning. Internet marketing is a large topic, and traffic generation, lead generation, marketing, and online sales are all topics you will want to get up to speed on – or, hire someone that will. These are essential topics for any new online business.

Decide where you will target to get traffic to your website(s). Google is not the only game in town anymore. YouTube, owned by Google, drives tremendous amounts of traffic and has been named the second most popular search engine next to Google!

Join sites like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, and Viddler.

Marketing is the most important activity for your new online Georgia business. Visitors coming to your business site is probably the most important factor of success and you need to bring people to your site in order to be successful. Spend most of your time on marketing and increasing traffic to your site.

Just like with traditional brick and mortar businesses, hard work, consistent effort, and evolving tactics that work is what will propel your online business toward success. There are many online entrepreneurs across the globe making money with their online business. There is no reason you can not do the same.

Do not waste another minute – go find out about incorporating your business in Georgia. It is the right state. It is the right time. Are you in the right state of mind?

10 Georgia Business Site Design Tips

Design of your business website is very important. You want to get across a couple of things – important things. What is your business all about? A new visitor should be able to answer that question in the first 5 seconds. Where can they contact you? What products or services do you sell?

These 10 tips will help you create a website that is fun and easy to use for visitors. These are time-tested techniques to help your business website be the best it can possibly be.

1. Fonts – Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica – these are all easy to use fonts that are more recent than Times New Roman. A site still using an old font like that, or worse, courier – which is like type written characters, is an eyesore to look at. Font size should be 12 or 14 point for general text. You might use size 18 or 20 point for headings and subheadings.

2. Include Images – sites that have no images or graphics are very boring and a new visitor will likely just click off very quickly and go to another more “GUI” (Graphical User Interface) site. A GUI site is one that has a lot of eye-candy and can grab a viewer’s attention and hold it for some amount of time. Photos of people using your products are especially effective in helping you sell online.

3. Include Video, PDF, images, MP3, FLASH – and all kinds of multimedia files to grab attention and keep visitors on your business website. Video in particular is the ultimate way for businesses to present information to potential customers online. Invest some time in producing some video for your website – it is all time well-invested.

4. Blue Links – originally all hyperlinks on websites were blue. This was back in the mid to late 1990s. THe color has stuck in our minds and to most of the online world the bright blue color of text signifies hyperlinks. This color is more easily noticed than other link colors. If you do not want to use bright blue for your links, use another color of blue or bright red. Black for links is difficult to discern, so if your body text is black, you should not use black for your link color.

5. White Space – is necessary. Break up huge conglomerations of text with copious amounts of white space to give eyes a break.

6. Sales Page Optimization – a quality sales page has a number of features. Primarily, your goal is to answer every question about your product as possible so your potential customer does not click away and visit another site. Your sales page should have images, sound, video, or other media to highlight all the positives you can about the product. Describe who your product is for, why it is necessary, how to use it, and why the price is worth it.

7. Template Format – your header, columns, footer, the entire website should have some structure to it – and look professional as a result. If you keep the links in the same place, the articles in a set format, it becomes natural and easily remembered. If it is easy to remember then your site is easy to use. Strive to make your site very easy to use.

8. Remove Mandatory Downloads – websites or pages that start with a FLASH or other mandatory download can be a horrible user experience and may lead to potential customers clicking away before they even see what you have to offer. Large downloads of FLASH or video should be optional at all times – never mandatory. Though most of the USA has broadband internet there are buyers that do not. Even among broadband users, few enjoy being forced to wait even a minute to download something they are not sure is pertinent to them.

9. Substantial Content – business websites with less than 10-20 pages are not taken very seriously by Google or other search engines. You should be able to make 50 pages for any business website. If you cannot fill your site with 50 pages of great information about your product or service then you probably are not going to make a big impression in Google. It is possible, it is not likely.

10. A-Level Graphics – there is nothing that gives your business the impression of being amateurs as having weak graphics on your website or for your promotional materials. Spend the extra money to have graphics developed professionally and you will present a better impression of your business.

There are many areas to optimize when you start your new business. Make sure you are building a business based on fundamentals that are proven and work, not on a pile of sand, which can cause your business to fall over at the first sign of trouble.

Can a WordPress.org Business Site Replace Your Web Developer?

An option for website content management has become available over the past couple years that makes it possible to get rid of your full-time webmaster in favor of a content management system (CMS) called WordPress.

As websites turn toward blogging for an easy answer to being able to have user generated content without creating it in FrontPage, DreamWeaver or some other web development software the need for on-staff webmasters has lessened. Many companies are turning to blogs, and especially the WordPress content management system which puts the power back in the hands of the business owner to add, delete, and edit content without the need for someone versed in web development software and file transfer protocol (FTP).

Over the past 4 years I have created a few dozen websites based on the WordPress content management system (CMS). Through this amazing system it is now possible for business owners themselves to maintain their website to some degree and only outsource more technology intensive projects and problems. It is not out of the question to have a business website go live in just a day. You could either pay someone to create it for you or, if you dare, give it a try creating it yourself. The instructions at the main site are easy enough that most technical professionals or those that like to tinker, can probably hash it out and do everything themselves.

Learning the WordPress dashboard is not very hard and in a few days to a week you can become proficient enough to accomplish many tasks you would have given to a webmaster if you hired one. WordPress is powerful. It gives you the tools that make it easy to make changes to your site. You don’t need to know how to code a webpage or FTP.

Some WordPress themes are making it exceptionally easy to build and maintain your own website. The “Thesis” theme is one WordPress theme that was designed for professional use – and is very easy to use its many customizable features, and might be ideal for your Georgia business. With Thesis you can change colors, fonts, backgrounds, number of columns in hundreds of different combinations. It’s a premium theme which means you’ll pay for it – but the cost at the moment is under $100.

The online business game has changed substantially. You may be able to save hiring a full-time webmaster for $50,000 per year and only spend $10,000 on technically challenging projects or problems.

Learning the WordPress CMS to a high degree will take some study if you want to learn about it in-depth. Figure on 30-100 hours of study to have a good base for tackling custom changes to the PHP templates or Custom Style Sheets (CSS). If you spend some time learning the WordPress platform, and how to tweak the CSS and PHP code you will be almost self-sufficient and not need to outsource web development much at all.

Do you need a full-time webmaster on staff to handle your Georgia business website? Maybe yes and maybe no. If you have any interest in finding out there are many tutorial videos online for how to use WordPress. Why not have a look? It might save you $50K per year in the long run. It makes a lot of cents.

Too Much Competition Online? Not in Georgia.

I was looking through an online business journal and reading articles like I do a lot. I thought I’d have a look at the online Georgia businesses for sale, so I looked at the available Business to Consumer businesses that were currently for sale.

I found just 10.

In ALL of Georgia. Ten. Is that saying anything to you? Because it says volumes to me. Here is one of the biggest online business journals in existence and Georgia has a whole lot of people that could be starting their own businesses… and there are just 10 online B2C businesses for sale in the whole state.

Online business is so simple to start and really not that difficult to make money at. Are people in Georgia continuing to create traditional brick and mortar businesses and just aren’t comfortable with using the internet for business yet?

I was floored. In this economy I expected to see 100 online businesses – probably more, for sale in the whole state.

To be fair I’ve not yet looked at other states – will do that in a minute…

If you’re reading this and you haven’t started your own online business – seriously consider choosing something and getting started. The peace of mind you’ll eventually have for creating, building and running your own successful business is something that is worth every minute you put into it.

Don’t forget to incorporate your new Georgia business with us here.

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