Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

The other day I was on the phone with an entrepreneur. Less than 4 years ago he was in a business relationship that soured and he was financially ruined. Now, he owns several successful businesses again and has amassed a brand-new 8 figure fortune. He really is a rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches story!

I asked him what he thought were the secrets of his success and this is what he told me:

“Buzz, I build on each success and each failure. After the last ‘adventure' I had to re-evaluate and chart a new course. I sat down and listed many of my experiences, both good and bad. I wrote down what skills I developed from each experience as well as contacts I had made in that area. Then, I looked at the list of my skills and identified common groupings among the skills. From that I was able to springboard into several business ideas using those skills… and at the same time had a list of contacts to help me get my start.”

After our call, I tried doing that, too. As he hinted, I created a list of skills that included some I never realized I had. Try it yourself and see if you get some great ideas to take your business (or a new business) in a different direction.

E-business owners spend a lot of time, energy, and dollars on implementing online search engine strategies. And I hear quite frequently from entrepreneurs about the rising cost of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads, especially ones like Google that use a bidding system to determine placement rather than a flat rate. (I think Miva — www.miva.com — is headed in that direction eventually). Rising PPC costs are a problem, but this article suggests some solutions.

This article talks about the creative ideas some marketers are using to find ways around the high cost of popular keywords. Honda Element, for example, bids on low-priced keywords that are rarely searched. In some cases, offline ads support the online searches.

If you find PPC costs are hammering on your bottom line, think about some ways you can get cheaper ads.

If the sign outside your office door says “President” and “Janitor,” then you're probably kept pretty busy with your workload: satisfying customers, balancing the books, and mopping up at the end of the day. For many people, when you're doing all of the jobs yourself, your door also says “IT department” which may mean that you're designing and maintaining your own website.

Websites can be built from scratch with good knowledge of code or they can be built with some of the good programs out there like Macromedia's Dreamweaver or Microsoft's Frontpage.

Those programs may be enough for you. But if they're not, I've just been recommended a great program at http://www.evrsoft.com/. They have a free version and a paid version. I've just been trying out the free version lately and am really impressed by it. I'm not a coding master by any means but I know my way around html and I've actually had a lot of fun designing websites with it. And what I like about the program is that you can design them in html or you can design them in WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get).

If you're looking to expand your web design know-how, check out Evrsoft's program for yourself.