Georgia Business Idea – Content Writer / Copywriter

One business you can start in Georgia, or anywhere really, is that of online content writer or copywriter.

Georgia website owners need writers to make what they need to communicate to their customers – make sense. Copywriters specializing in a certain area, technology sales, for instance – know what words to use in order to push the buttons of people viewing sites where they might buy some tech gadget.

Copywriters get paid exceptionally well – and there’s good reason for that. They make business owners money. Lots of money. There are few great copywriters in any field out there – and you’ll need to do your homework to find them. Some are good across fields. They are paid at the rate of $10,000 and more per day of work. How’d you like to be on that pay scale? That would be some nice padding in the wallet.

On the other hand are content writers. Other end of the scale really. It shouldn’t be this way, but with some search engine development and India up and coming as a country who has millions of English speakers – the outsourcing of content writing for websites – general text, not so specific like copywriters, has come down in price – and quality.

Websites want to see quality, unique content. While the content that most content writers put out is unique – many are just switching around words in a sentence and calling it unique. The ideas are rarely unique. Content writers churn out words by the thousands and make less than a penny per word in some cases.

If you’re going into the content writer profession you should focus on writing quality content for decent pay. You’ll never undercut those that are willing to work for peanuts – and it isn’t worth your time to try. Focus on writing very high-end content and get paid $100-300 per article, not $2-10 per article.

An essential part of starting your own Georgia business – is incorporating that business. Incorporating in Georgia will give you some peace of mind. Incorporation protects your assets in many cases, if your business is sued. If you don’t incorporate and you’re running your business as a sole proprietor, you can be left open to lawsuits suing you personally – which puts your personal assets at risk. Don’t risk it – incorporate your Georgia business here today. It takes minutes, and saves you headaches later.

Good luck to you!

7 Easy Optimization Tips for Your Georgia Business Website

Search engine optimization, SEO, can propel your business into the green with some simple changes you can make in a day or two. Besides spending bank vaults of money, nothing else can affect your Georgia business more than some well placed SEO optimization. Sometimes the results can last for years, up until this point that has certainly been the case… whether it continues in the future is an unknown. What is known is that SEO is an essential for any business looking to make money or connect with potential customers online.

7 very basic, and most important SEO changes you can make to your business website:

1. Remove Extraneous or Non-Essential Links – Be very careful with what websites you link out to. When you link away from your business website you are probably losing visitors that could very well turn into customers. Is it really worth the $.14 you would make from Adsense to send that visitor away? Not if you have products or services that are in demand!

Begin by deleting links to the designer of your business website that usually reside in the footer. Be sure that no hidden links are part of your website. If your business website is a WordPress theme you can remove those links if you paid for the theme. Watch for links to external sites in your RSS feed, comments section, and with certain plugins that stick links into your website.

The reason you don’t want links out to anybody that you aren’t trying to link out to is because Google and maybe other search engines look at those links as votes for that site. You want to use your votes either for your own sites or for other sites you’ve agreed to partner with. Conserve links and never link out to sites that are of questionable character because many search engines will associate you with a negative site you link out to.

2. Every page, or post must have a unique Title Tag. If you have even two title tags that are the same, one of those pages will be penalized and not rank well in search engines like Google. Ensure that the title tag matches the main gist of the content that will be found on that page. Never use title tags that don’t match the content as your entire site may get banned by Google.

3. Search Twitter and BlogSearch for keyword phrases that are related to your Georgia business niche. Leave comments at posts that talk about these topics. Leave long, genuinely helpful, and awesome comments so they’re approved. Some sites have links followed by Google, and will link to your site. This helps tremendously over time.

4. Include your business address, email, phone, fax, and copyright statement in the footer or right column of every page. Google is one search engine that considers these things important – especially for business websites.

5. Domain name registration should be for the maximum term allowed. I believe this is still ten years. So, instead of registering your business domain names for one-year at your registrar, grab ten years. There is a lot of talk and speculation that it increases your rank in the search engines because a longer registration period means you are probably more serious about keeping your business going long-term. Whether this is pure coincidence or not, I had two of my domain names increase in Google’s Pagerank factor by a whole point the day after I added the full ten years to their registration period at my registrar.

6. Keep your business site on fast servers. Recently Google added a speed factor to their search algorithm. What that means is that your business should be in fastest 50th percentile of websites in your niche in order to get good marks at Google. Besides Google’s new policy, it just makes good sense that you don’t want anyone visiting your site to wait for it to load. Nearly everyone has broadband now and if your site doesn’t load in 1-2, 3 seconds people aren’t going to wait for it. Crank up the server speed by adding RAM or by getting a different hosting plan or entirely different host. Keep the size of your pages under 100kb for best results.

7. From your business home page link to the most important pages of your site. Then, from all pages of your site – ensure that the most important pages are linked to. Search engines assess the structure of the links contained on all pages to guess which pages are the most important. Those that are linked to most often and most prominently are going to have the best chance of gaining high ranking in Google.

These seven tips will help your Georgia business gain SEO points, but they are no substitute for a paid professional that can iron out scores or hundreds of issues that are important in the big picture. If you’re serious about your business being found in the search engines and you don’t have time to learn it all, you will want to find someone trustable to help.

7 Can’t Miss Tips to Help Your Georgia Business Website

Your business website must do a few things correctly in order to accomplish the goals you have set for it. Here are some essential business website tips that every Georgia business owner can use.

1. White Background – traditional works best – high contrast black text on a white background with blue or some other bold colored links, works well. A white background is seen as clean and nice, besides being very easy to read black text on it. For a business website white should be the predominant background color behind almost all text to keep the site light and bright. The default blue links are best, as the world knows what blue text in a site means – it means a link.

2. Fonts – Times New Roman and Courier fonts must not be used for your business website except in small quantities. The predominant font should not be one of those. Instead, use Trebuchet MS, Arial, Verdana, or Helvetica font for the main text on your site. These are easy to read and familiar fonts.

3. Essential Business Website Pages:

About – use this page to talk about your business and the owners and staff. Photos in this section will help visitors feel connected with you. Some background bio info will build trust and visitors will either judge you to be competent or not.

Contact – offer several ways to reach you: phone, email, fax, chat, social media like Twitter or Facebook. Ideally you will create a contact form right on this page that a visitor could fill out and reach you without having to send email or choose one of the other contact options.

Disclaimer – the typical business owner doesn’t pay for a lawyer to draft this page up specially for their business, but you may need to. The other option is to copy someone’s disclaimer and change everything to make it relate to your business. Keep in mind, if you are sued the disclaimer on your site is probably going to be part of the case.

FAQ – the goal for a business site that is selling something, or asking visitors to sign up for information is to answer all questions the visitor may have so he or she just naturally signs up or buys – depending what your goal is. A FAQ section is ideal for listing all the questions and answers anyone could have so they don’t have to contact you to ask. Your business website is like another employee that converts sales for you, converts leads, and answers questions so your support team doesn’t have to.

Privacy Policy – everyone wants to know what is happening to their data they input at your site. If you have any form on your site or use cookies at all – you need to mention that in your privacy policy. Even if you don’t have any forms or cookies you can say that you respect individual privacy to a high level, and make people feel more at ease about visiting your site.

4. Contact Info on Every Page – in addition to a contact page you should (must) put easy-to-see contact information on every page of your business site – maybe in the right hand column – and keep it in the same place for all pages. All visitors should be able to find your contact information very quickly when they need it.

5. Lead Generation – give away something of value like an ebook report, audio, or video file in order to get visitors to sign up for your email list. The difference between collecting someone’s email and not is the difference between having them as a potential customer for the two minutes they are browsing your site, versus the two years they stay subscribed to your email list. It’s a big difference!

6. Sell Something – business websites must be selling something. You might be selling a product, a service, or yourself. Either way – you’re selling. Create clear calls to action to help remove any ambiguity about what the visitor should do on your site.

7. Style and Hype – a site filled with hype isn’t attractive to very many people, and you aren’t going to build a lot of trust using it. Exclamation points, huge fonts, and using many different colors in your website are bad style ideas. Business websites are always going for a professional look. Find some of the most professional sites in your niche and figure out why they give the impression of professionalism. Copy these features for your own Georgia business site.

Starting a Georgia Business – Paying Yourself to Work

If you are like most US citizens you are working for a an employer that is not part of your family, and that takes 30% or more of your paycheck in tax withholding for the IRS. You are probably living payday to payday and you don’t have much after the bills are paid. Is there a way out?

Sure there is…

If you start a Georgia business of your own you can start to climb out of the hole where you’re barely making enough to survive, and start earning what you are worth. One of the reasons you are hurting for money is the same reason everyone else that is employed by someone else is hurting. You have limited ways to save money that you make. Taxes are eating you alive. Welcome to the American way.

If you wanted to start your own business in Georgia and begin to escape the life you’ve created for yourself by following tradition read on. You can start with incorporation. It’s very simple and immediately you’ll begin saving money. Let me show you.

Lets say you make $30,000 per year salary. You never see that much, but that is technically what you make. You only see somewhere around $20,000 of it because the taxes are taken out before you get your check. Lets say you need $15,000 to pay your rent, food, all expenses that you have each month and that you save $5,000 per year in your bank account. The horrible thing is – you already paid taxes on that $5,000. You earned $6,500 but were taxed $1,500. That left you with $5,000. How long will it take you to earn that $1,500 back you lost to taxes in an interest bearing savings account? A long, long time. There’s a better way.

You have your own business right there where you live in Georgia, where you make $30,000 in a year. You pay yourself just what you need to survive, $21,430 and pay taxes on that – leaving you what you need, $15,000. There is still $8,570 in your business checking. Guess what? You don’t get taxed on that. You can keep it in your business account until you need it to buy something for your business or to pay yourself later. You may not get taxed on that at all. What a great system, right?

If you don’t have your own business you probably aren’t taking many deductions. You probably are paying too much in taxes every year. As you decide to start your business you can work for your employer and work for yourself as well. There’s no law saying your business must be full-time immediately. You can, and should, have two income streams for a while until your business can fully support you.

Start moving forward as soon as you have a good idea for your business, one that you’ll put energy into fervently – daily, and one that has the potential to payoff. Incorporate your business as soon as you have a viable idea.

You’ll need to choose the type of incorporation that is best for your business. Here’s a hint, over 80% of new, 1-person businesses that incorporate are choosing the LLC – limited liability company as their business type. If not LLC, then look at S-Corporations. LLCs are great because of their ease of administration – which amounts to little compared to some other corporation types.

After you incorporate your new business you’ll need to get a TIN – tax identification number, which should be free. The IRS gives it away for free, but often services will charge you for the information. Use a service that gives it to you for free. You’ll need your TIN for opening a business checking account. There are strict rules about keeping your personal and business finances separate. You should do a bit of research with the IRS to find out what these rules are and follow them strictly. They are for your own protection ultimately if you are sued in a court of law and want to keep your personal assets from the long arm of the law.

Your Georgia business can buy what it needs through the business checking account without taxes in many cases. It pays to keep all your receipts and keep good track of any and all expenses related to your business. When you incorporate your business you’ll be able to enjoy protection from personal liability to some extent, as well as start deducting business expenses as you keep on working at your traditional job for your current employer.

Creating a corporation for your new business is a great idea and one that you should not skip for any reason. Incorporating your business need not be overly complicated or expensive. You should pay no more than $300 in Georgia for a simple limited liability company.

Georgia Veteran Entrepreneurs

This podcast from the Small Business Administration (SBA) covers programs made specifically to help veterans of the armed forces become new entrepreneurs in Georgia, or any state in the USA.

Ron Johnson from the SBA interviews Bill Elmore who also works in the SBA.

Highlights from the podcast:

Ron Johnson: What does the SBA have available to veterans who want to start or expand their small businesses?

William D. Elmore: Ron, usually when I’m asked that question I walk people through a sort of a simple quick overview at the agency so veterans will have a better understanding of the answer.  Veterans are used to dealing with the Department of the Veterans Affairs, but we are nowhere near that size and scale.

Most of our work is delivered through third party and partners.  So from a size perspective, we are your guides into the full range of services and programs that we offer, and I’ll give you sort of a basic overview of that.  For example, we have about 1,500 different kinds of small business development centers around the country.  Some are focused on women, some are focused on veterans, many are focused on technology, and a broad range of issues or arenas or opportunities.  But, any one of those 1,500 centers, whether it is a score chapter or are small business development center or a veterans business development center offer and will provide assistance to any veteran that request it.

There is a considerable amount of information in this short podcast – have a listen to it by clicking the link further down the page…

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SBA Programs Support Entrepreneurial Veterans

There are numerous programs in place to help veterans that want to start a new small business or grow a small business they already operate… Assistance can come in the form of advice, loan guarantees, and other programs.  If you’re a veteran living in Georgia or any other US state and you want to start your own business this podcast is a must-listen.

( Transcript )

Have you used any of the SBA veteran-specific programs – and, what was your experience? Please leave in the comments below. Thanks!

Checklist for Starting a Georgia Business

Starting a business checklist podcast for new Georgia business owners by Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corp., Wendy Baumann.

Highlights of the podcast:

Ron Johnson: Now, Wendy, what are the key items on the checklist?

Wendy K. Baumann: Well, really, you first have to identify and understand the reasons of why you want to start a business.  I often ask entrepreneurs or business owners in the early stage to hold out their hands.  What is the “who” behind this business?  The “what” behind this business?  When, where, and most importantly, really, why?

You need to begin at this early stage of doing a self-analysis of your own skills and your experience.  You really have to look very carefully early on.  Is this business idea viable or feasible?  And then ask yourself the hard question, do you have the capacity and the interest to carry out this viable business idea?

And then, finally, still at this early stage is, I think we really need a plan, a written business plan as ideas, something ideal.  Something happens when you take all those ideas in your head and really begin to put them down on paper in a formidable plan for yourself and then other supporters along the way.

This was just a small sample of the wisdom collected in the podcast that follows. Have a listen!

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Before you listen to the podcast download our Ultimate Business Website Checklist in PDF format here (free). Best to right click and choose “Save file as” or “Save Target as” and open it later.

Ultimate Business Website Checklist >

Check List for Starting a Business

This is a good start for helping new Georgia entrepreneurs decide if they are ready to start a business. This starting a business checklist covers many of the tasks new entrepreneurs need to accomplish in starting their own Georgia (or any state) small business.

( Transcript)

Can you think of any more action items that need to be on this business checklist?

Georgia Entrepreneurs – What it Takes

This is a short podcast that covers the basics about what being an entrepreneur takes – the effort, the hours, the passion. Do you have what it takes to open your own Georgia business?

This is an interview format podcast with Ron Johnson from the SBA interviewing Cheryl Mills, who works with the Office of Entrepreneurial Development at the SBA.

Highlights from the podcast:

Ron Johnson: Cheryl, what are some important characteristics that lead to successful entrepreneurship?

Mills: Starting a small business can be exciting and rewarding.  However, becoming an entrepreneur or working as one each day is not for everyone.  In business, there are no guarantees.  There is simply no way to eliminate all of the risks associated with starting a small business.  It takes a special person, with a strong commitment and specific skills to be successful as an entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur needs to be a self starter. It will be entirely up to you to develop projects, organize your time and follow through on details.

Do you get along with people? Business owners need to develop working relationships with a variety of people including customers, vendors, staff, bankers, and professionals such as lawyers, accountants or consultants. Some say the hardest part of being self-employed is dealing with employees and demanding customers.

There is a good deal more information contained on the podcast – listen to it at the link below.

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Is Entrepreneurship for You?

It can be said that new Georgia business entrepreneurs will get out of it what effort they put into the business. Each year better than half a million businesses are filed in the USA. Many of those businesses promptly fail, or don’t make it past a year.

How can you make sure you’re ready to be a new Georgia business owner and successful? This podcast covers some interesting material you shouldn’t miss.

( Transcript)

Do you have any other tips for deciding whether starting a new Georgia business might be right for some of your fellow entrepreneurs?

Choosing a Business to Start in Georgia

Many people that want to start a Georgia business don’t really know where to start. If you don’t have a particular business in mind and already have the ball rolling forward you should have a look at this short podcast for ideas.

Ron Johnson from the Small Business Administration interviews Lou Davenport from the SCORE in Pennsylvania.

Highlights from the podcast:

Ron Johnson: Is it true the secret to starting a successful business is to find a need and fill it?

Lou Davenport: Yes, it is, Ron.  There are many needs and many potential businesses available.  However, before you invest a lot of time and energy and money in starting a new business, you need to ask yourself several key questions.

One, is the business idea practical and will it fill a need?  And that’s a simple statement, but there’s a lot of importance to it.  I surprise my clients from time to time when I say to them in a very real way I don’t care what you think about the fantastic business that you are aspiring to create.  All I really care about is what the prospective clients or customers might think.

The old adage is that it doesn’t matter what the dog food looks like, what it smells like, how it’s packaged, how it’s priced.  If the dogs won’t eat the dog food, you don’t have a good business.  So you need to figure out whether the target market really has a need that you can fill better than the competition.  That’s another key question.  Can you outperform your competition?

In today’s world, you really need to have one or more competitive advantages in order to establish a very successful business.  If you’re entering into a business that’s simply like everybody else and you don’t have competitive advantages in terms of products and prices and services, then arguably you’re going to have a tough time and could end up on the trash heap of also-rans.  So a critical competitive advantage is another key question that you have to ask yourself.

And finally, can you make a profit?  That’s to say, can you sell your products or services to enough people at a price that not only covers your overhead expense, that provides a fair wage for your management services to the business, and still leaves a profit in terms of return on investment for the risk capital that you’ve invested as an owner.

There is a LOT more in the interview – have a listen to the podcast at the link below…

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Selecting a Business That Fits

Of course a new Georgia business should target a specific need or needs that aren’t being met or met well enough. That said, it’s also very important to start a business that you’ll continue to be excited about. How?

Choose a business that meshes well with your personality and is something you enjoy doing. In this way you’ll better ensure you’re in it for the long-haul. Often times there’s a hump to get over where you are not profitable for a couple months or longer. Choosing a business you enjoy doing is one way to choose a winner.

( Transcript)

Did you choose a Georgia business based on your interests or for some other reason? How’s it going?