For the first time ever, you can order an Uber from your PC thanks to #Windows10.
with us relying on smartphones for practically almost everything, we do have some
reasons to use our computers and other devices.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
When people make a transition into self-employment, there are a lot of things they need to consider as a new self-employed professional. Even though you often still have a lot of the same skills as an employee in the same field, you need a different thought process to succeed. Here are some tips to help you succeed starting your own business:
1) Get Yourself on a Schedule That Works For You:
One of the biggest advantages of self-employment is flexibility. When you’re getting paid by the project instead of by the hour, a 9 to 5 and Monday-Friday format may not work for what you do. It may be easier for example to have 4 long days of 12-14 hours, but then you have 3 days off to do what you’d like. You may be more productive at 2 A.M. in the morning than most people are during the day. Factoring in the nature of your business, try to experiment and find what works best for you.
2) Always Be in a State of Learning About Your Field and Business in General:
When you work for yourself, often you don’t have anyone directing you toward what you need to learn. You need to be very proactive about this. Subscribe to magazines and buy books related to your field. Go to seminars and workshops. Also, be sure to check with your accountant to find out what can and can’t be considered business expenses as far as your taxes.
3) Learn How to Keep Your Finances in Line:
If you start doing this while your business is small, it makes things easier when you do grow. Take some time to learn how to track your finances and budget your business to where you’ll grow with stability. Keep good records and have them all in one easy place such as a designated filing cabinet.
4) Become Active in Your Local Community:
When a lot of people talk about networking, they often make it sound like this cold static event where people shake hands and trade business cards. One of the favorite things about being self-employed is genuinely getting to know other people you wouldn’t have met sitting in a cubicle all day.
5) Love What You’re Doing:
One of the things people do a lot with their jobs is they live their life in compartments of job, family, hobbies, friends, church, and so on. It doesn’t necessarily feel like the same life all the time as much as it does a series of roles that they’re playing. Self-employment at its best is more of a lifestyle than a career.
More Tips:
Starting out, you’re probably going to have to work more hours than the average 40 that many employees work. However, as your business develops and grows, things should gradually get a lot easier to the point you’re better off than most employees within a few years. It’s a trade-off that just involves a lot of delayed gratification.
It is better to keep your business debt-free from the beginning and grow slower than it is to leverage yourself into quicker growth that may or may not happen. Your bank statement serves as a back-up to your recorded income and expenses.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
Smart phones give us access to the world on the go, right in the palm of our hand. I think it’s safe to say almost everyone has a smart phone, and most people would feel lost without one. I wonder how we all ever got on without them, they give us so many benefits and apps that can do almost anything. If you have a home based business, a smart phone is essential, but do you know all of the benefits it can bring you? Let’s talk about all the great things your smart phone can do for your home based business.
Scheduling
All smart phones have a basic calendar for us to use for appointments and keeping track of important deadlines. You can edit your calendar and add alerts that remind you of things you need to do as well. Scheduling appointments or organizing your time to get important tasks done has never been easier. Simply use your calendar to input information for appointments and when you need to see if you’re available for a certain date, just click on the calendar for easy access.
Credit Card Services
With all of the advanced technology we access every day, you wouldn’t be surprised to know that there is a service that allows you to turn your smartphone into a credit card transaction machine! You can easily accept payment from credit cards by using a service like Square Up. With Square Up you will receive a small credit card receiver that plugs into the headphone jack of your smart phone. To allow customers to use their credit card, simply slide the card through the reader, and your good to go. It works with Apple phones or Android phones as well.
GPS
All smartphones come with a GPS built right in, you no longer need an actual car mounted GPS anymore. It’s incredibly simple to use, and if you’re trying to get to a certain destination, but aren’t sure of the address, you can search for it by name and it will automatically find and guide you to it. GPS is a must for home business owners when needing to meet with clients or customers, but don’t know how to get to them.
Organizing Time and Resources
When you need to get organized with your time and resources, you can use a multitude of different apps that are designed to do this. If you don’t really want another app on your phone, you can simply use the calendar that your smartphone already has on it. A great app that I like personally is Todoist. This handy app works across all devices, smartphones, computers and tablets. You can also use Todoist for business, it’s created just for business owners and makes life much simpler. If you would like to check out Todoist and see what it can offer your business and personal life. Need a great app that allows you to manage your customer relationships and more? Contact us for a demo.
Web Browsing
With your smartphone, you literally have information about everything and anything at your fingertips. Think of your smartphone as a mini-computer, you can browse the web for anything your home based business needs. For example, let’s say you’re at your local home office supply store and need more information on a certain product or want to check other stores prices on a particular object. You can easily pull up your web browser on your smartphone and do a quick search. So easy!
Email
Smartphones are capable of setting up your email account and notifications on your smartphone. Most smartphones have an app that says email, and all you need to do is click on it and enter your information for your email account. Once it has your information, all of your emails will be sent directly to your smartphone and you will receive a notification. With this handy app, you will never miss an important email again.
I hope this gets your wheels turning! Now go ahead and take advantage of the tools you have at your fingertips.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
Keeping in touch with your customers and clients is a very important detail to a home business, and not having great communication skills can break your business. If your home business has employees that work for you, it’s even more important that your communication is on point, and they need to be able to have easy and quick access to you when problems or questions arise.
The most obvious way to communicate with your customers is by phone or email. However, when you’re running your business from home, you may need alternatives, especially if you’re receiving many long distance calls that can run up your phone bill greatly. Email is great for communication, but it’s not the most practical for time-sensitive problems. You may not check your email in time to respond to an urgent message, and this will make your customers become frustrated.
When Skype first hit the market, everyone was using it. Everyone was fascinated by its technology and how they could easily contact important people whenever they needed. It also made it much more convenient for those working from home, they could have meetings with another person without having to leave their home, but still being able to communicate face to face. For a while it was the only option for a VoIP, and Skype’s earnings were through the roof. Since then many companies have caught on to the idea and came out with their own VoIP services, many that are even better versions of Skype.
You may be wondering what other options are available besides Skype that will allow you to easily keep in contact with your customers and clients. The answer is very many, and the number seems to grow steadily. Most people do still use Skype, but in my opinion there are better options, and most are mainly free to use. Here is a list of more services like Skype for you to check out and choose which one is best for your need.
Vonage is a great option for an alternative to a traditional home phone line. It uses a high-speed internet connection for calls, and includes free long distance calling all over the world.
Magic Jack works similarly to Vonage in that it is an alternative to traditional landlines and it uses a high-speed internet connection as well. It also includes free local and long distance calling.
Google Hangouts is a great tool that allows users to interact through video chat and the sessions are free. You can add up to a total of 10 people on one call.
Google Talk goes hand in hand with Google Hangouts, its difference is that it is primarily used as a messenger app.
Anymeeting is perfect for those who need to host larger group meetings through video chat. It allows users to host a video chat up to 200 people at one time, how cool is that?
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
If you want your small business to have any chance of being successful, you must use marketing techniques. Whether the business is large or small, all businesses have to market themselves, and they have to continually do so. Many people become overwhelmed when it comes to marketing, not knowing how to do it, or which methods are the best to use. Choosing different marketing methods are really dependent on your business and how you run it, and what you are selling. Let’s take a look at different marketing techniques for your small business.
Printed Media
In today’s time and with the technology that we have readily available, it’s quite easy to obtain printed marketing material for you small business. Prices are not as high as they used to be, and tons of companies are choosing to use printed media for marketing, it simply spreads the word in a simple and effective way. Printed media marketing can be anything from brochures, printed t-shirts, flyers, banners, billboards, business cards, and freebies. If you haven’t started marketing yet, this is where you should start.
Online Signatures
When you send an email to a friend, acquaintance, co-worker, or a business contact, you have the option of setting a respective email signature. Use this to your advantage, leave a link back to your website to promote your business. The same goes with posting in different places on the internet, you can join a forum that discusses business strategies or anything relating to your business. Set up your signature with the link, and everyone will see it when you post.
Lead Capture Pages
Lead capture pages are very popular with online businesses and marketing. The pages are simple, they consist of one page with general information about what you are selling, however you don’t want to go into detail here, use a video that tells all the great things they can do when they buy your product, but don’t tell them how it works. These pages will ask for an email address from the prospective buyer, and you will give a promise in return, like signing them up for informational emails.
Internet Marketing
Internet marketing comes in various forms, there is almost a limitless amount of possibilities for marketing online. Some we have already mentioned, like the online signatures, but there are more. One of the most popular strategies that businesses use is signing up with Google AdWords. Google AdWords is great for beginners, it’s not that expensive and it’s relatively easy to set up. When you use this as a marketing strategy, your ads for your website will show up all over the internet, especially when someone uses the Google search engine.
Other ideas include:
Using social media for your business
Attending networking events
Using referrals to your advantage
Use your friends and family to spread the word, this is free!
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. Contact us today and watch your online business grow.
Burnside | A technology professional with more than two decades of experience writing. He has served as contributing author for ‘Talking Tech’ Column in the Pride of Durham News Paper(NC), and has an ongoing contribution here on CyrilBurnside. He is a professional services consultant with PC99Solutions, an IT consulting firm for small business. 
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