Jim's Articles

Branding recommendations

Searching for Strategies for product design & development ? Good design is timeless, and if you design your product well, it will last the test of time. Long-lasting products are more valuable to consumers, better for the planet, and are a testament to the skills of the designer. Think of all the great vintage items you have in your home or grew up with. Antiques, vintage clothing, old cars — these things are still with us today because the people who designed them built them to last. Good design never goes out of style.

Entrepreneurs are born, not made, so it’s safe to say they often think as a businessperson all the time. It’s a way of life for many entrepreneurial men and women. But when it comes to product development, you have to think like your consumer and not yourself. Put aside the pride you have for your idea and the realization of it and think about how your buyer would perceive this every single step of the way. Any time you make a modification to the product or the idea behind it, you have to ask yourself if a consumer wants or needs this and determine whether or not as a buyer yourself, you’d buy this product as is from someone else. Read extra details at Launching a product.

Take a broad view and make topline decisions that will carry through each element of your brand identity. Now you’ve determined what you stand for and where you want your business to go, but there’s still a few steps to take prior to hiring that web designer or launching a logo contest if you want to get it right the first time. Again, resist the temptation to dive into specific “must-have” elements like a business card, website, or Facebook page until you’ve made some broad decisions upfront about some key concepts such as: Brand voice – fun and playful, socially responsible, careful, edgy, artistic, healthful… think about how you want your brand to speak and sound across all platforms. This “voice” should map back to your larger purpose and core values, and appeal to your ideal customers.

Start-Up trick of the day : But don’t forget offline opportunities: Step away from the computer, put away your smartphone, and find people in real life at conferences and networking events. The connection you can make with a person face-to-face is naturally stronger than one mediated between screens. And of course, don’t forget a professional business card to turn your encounter into a relationship. Source: https://www.petermanfirm.com/.

Ymca coupon codes

Visionworks coupon codes by age today. National Parks: U.S. citizens or permanent residents age 62 or over can access more than 84 million acres of land protected by the National Park Service for the rest of their lives for $80. While this isn’t quite the bargain that it used to be — prices were raised from just $10 last year — it’s still much better than the general, $80 annual pass rate, says Warren Gress, 67, of Parker, Colo., who has visited Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion, among others. Plus, Gress notes, the pass gets you discounted site fees if you’re staying in a federal campground. T Mobile: Customers ages 55-plus can get two lines with unlimited talk, text, and LTE data for $35/line with AutoPay. This is the best cell service discount available at the moment, says Dworsky of Consumer World. Bonus: only the primary account holder has to be 55 or older.

Many people can appreciate saving a bit of money. Many business owners recognize that senior citizens do not always have the flexible spending options that those who are younger have. They still want your business. As a result, they may offer a discount or a small savings for using their service. Senior discounts range widely. Senior discounts can apply to everything from medical alert systems to internet service. There is no legal requirement for any location to offer them. However, many don’t advertise them thoroughly. Ask about them whenever you visit an establishment. It could save you a significant amount of money quickly.

Dress Barn started in 1962 in Connecticut and now, with some 800 store locations around the country, is part of the Ascena Retail Group. It reportedly offers 10% off on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to customers who are 55 or older, though not necessarily at every location — so you might want to ask about available discounts before completing your shopping. If you buy $100 worth of clothing there every few months, you might save $40 or more per year. Read more info at Discount Codes for US Stores.

Some coupon companies sell the deals they provide, charging less for coupons than what they are worth to customers. A company may sell $20 coupons for $10, for example, having already paid $5 to the business providing the deal. For these companies, coupons act as regular inventory, allowing them to employ a traditional retail business model. Success relies on consistently driving new traffic to participating businesses to secure repeat coupons from deal providers, since that is a key to reliably replacing inventory.

Coupons industry is big. Any service on the planet can be purchased at half price if you wait for the right voucher. In e-commerce and online shopping a coupon code, or promo code, is a computer-generated code, consisting of letters or numbers that consumers can enter into a promotional box on a site’s shopping cart (or checkout page) to obtain a discount on their purchase.

Most people don’t think of promo codes and ROI together, but we disagree. If you’re not using smart codes to track the Return on Investment of your marketing strategy, you’re missing a trick! The beauty of promotional codes is that you can fit so much information inside them. It’s easy to generate QR codes and barcodes which are uniquely linked to each individual customer, for example. And you can use that unique information, together with data from the point of sale, to see exactly how customers are interacting with your promotions. Set up your campaign so that customers receive different codes, depending on how and where they download the code. Let’s say one customer spots your promotion on Facebook and downloads a QR code to their smartphone to use in-store. Another user clicks a link on your website, gets the code by email, and types it in at the online check-out. Those two customers have received two different codes. By tracing which codes they use, you can link customer profiles to the download method and shopping styles they prefer. You can even track the time between receiving the code and applying it to a purchase. Source: https://couponfavorite.com.

Entrepreneur guides from marketing coaches

Stanford GSB Lecturer and former founding Chairman and CEO of VERITAS Software Mark Leslie has spent four decades as a tech founder, advisor, board member and investor. What’s the most common company-ending mistake he sees startups make? They fail to determine whether their go-to-market strategy should be led by marketing or sales. He created a simple set of questions to help startups deploy their limited resources in the right direction and give them the best shot at a successful launch: Price: Is this a large or small economic decision for the buyer? Market Size: Is it easier for them to find you or for you to find them? Level of Complexity: Can a customer self-serve to use or is education required? Fit and Finish: After all is designed, done and shipped, is there still much more for the consumer to do? Customer: Am I predominately selling directly to people or companies? Relationship: Do I measure successful customer relationships by transactions or longevity? Touch: How much agency do you have in developing your relationship with your customer? Can your efforts compound or are the mostly one-off?

To achieve your goal, you have to make a mental commitment that will be completely devoted to your business. In fact, you should ask yourself that how big of a business you are planning to have. The bigger the business, the more years you’ll need to track onto year one. One of the best pieces of advice that you can ever get in the whole process of building a business is related to the word bond. With this, it means that if you are making any commitment then no matter what happens you have to deliver the same on time. Poor decisions related to business can put your status as an entrepreneur at risk. Extra info can be seen on Marketing strategies.

Do not wait until you launch your business to get customers or consumers, because they are the central element that determines the success or failure of your initiative. Make as much networking as possible! Gather contacts! Offer samples with your product / service! It’s never too early to start marketing for your business. The main motivation for writing your business plan before you start is to save time and money later during the business development. In addition, the business plan helps you to clarify your business concept and gives you a general map based on which you will invest in growing your business. There is no need to make a detailed and fluffy business plan, focus on those essential elements of the plan that will help you throughout your business development. More information and tips on writing a business plan can be found in the How to write a business plan section.

You are the designer of your life. If there are parts of your life that do not fit well, you can make adjustments. Think of your life and career as clay on a potter’s wheel and you as the potter. Get a picture in your mind of what the masterpiece looks like and keep shaping toward that picture. – Bonnie Hagemann, Executive Development Associates Source: https://theentrepreneurresearch.com/.

How to get more Youtube subscribers

You want to grow your Youtube channel or to increase the views of your videos and you don’t know how? Here are several tricks about how to obtain more Youtube viewers and subscribers.

Encourage Your Viewers to Subscribe: Want to increase your subscriber count? Start asking for it in your YouTube videos. A lot of upcoming YouTubers always aim at increasing viewership numbers only. While this is great, it is important to have repeat viewers. Just like in retail, a sale counts towards the business bottom line. But, this is a short term strategy. To stay ahead of competitors, businesses need to aim at having repeat customers. With repeat customers, businesses can grow and surpass their goals. Subscribers are repeat customers. By subscribing, your viewers become your followers. If they tap on the notification bell, they will receive an alert every time you upload a new video. By building a strong subscriber base, you create a powerful online community.

But “watch time” is not as simple as it sounds. Yes, it includes the actual time people spend watching your videos. But channels also earn “watch time credits” for driving viewers to watch videos on other channels. In short, the algorithm is more likely to surface your videos when people spend more time watching your videos, and when they spend more time watching videos by other users that you refer them to. But, of course, there’s more to it than that. Learn more in our guide to using the YouTube algorithm to get more views. Read extra details on 1000 Free YouTube subscribers.

Provide relevant details about your video material: write a text that represents your content. In those 5000 characters, try to objectively describe your video. Visitors may not always read what you wrote. The first advantage is that search engines will better understand the subject of your video. Insert links to your social media accounts. A popular method is to insert a link to the Facebook page. You can urge visitors to like it. Under these conditions, you increase your Facebook page. In conclusion, make the most of those 5000 characters, choose a reasonable and appropriate title. The title is the essence of any page on Google. In fact, the first thing that attracts clicks is the title. Here are tips for building a strong title: include the keyword chosen at the beginning of the title. Make sure your title has a length between 55 and 67 characters.

Improve your Youtube videos view count tricks

Methods to increase your Youtube channel subscriber numbers, this is a popular topic amongst Youtube content creators. Once you have enough experience creating videos why not try going live and talking to your audience in real time. Answer questions from your audience in the moment and give your viewers the ultimate viewing experience. And don’t forget about email marketing. With an industry average open rate of 18 percent and a purchase rate of 66 percent, email marketing is a powerhouse when it comes to sales conversions. It doesn’t need to be too complicated either.

Upload a transcript of your video in English and Spanish. About 38 million people in the United States speak Spanish. By uploading transcripts of your video in both languages, your video will start appearing in English and Spanish YouTube searches. Transcripts alert YouTube of what keywords are featured in your video and greatly increase the likelihood that your audience will find you via YouTube search. However the easiest way is to buy subscribers from a online marketing agency, that can advertise your channel to a larger audience.

Optimize Your Thumbnail Image: Your thumbnail image, like a hero-image, can work wonders when increasing your YouTube views whether they’re on the organic results page, suggested videos section, or appearing on social media. Use high-quality images that feature readable and engaging fonts and facial-closeups, if they’re featured in your video. Have your thumbnail be a visual correspondent to your title and description to boost your video views. Create Transcripts of Your Videos: Captions or transcripts of your videos have been heavily debated as to their ability to increase your YouTube ranking. However, closed captions can help get more YouTube views as they cater to international audiences and the disabled.

SEO is not just limited for Google, but you need to do SEO for the video by incorporating keywords in the video title and description. Make sure that they are search engine optimized. If you are creating a video on how to make Italian pasta, then you need to have the keywords that people usually search for this. Keep your description detailed and include the links to your social media accounts. It is important to use a suitable thumbnail instead of using an over the top sensational thumbnail. The thumbnails which are misleading are completely against YouTube’s terms and conditions. The thumbnail is such that it informs people what the video is all about so that they can confidently click on it and watch it. A good and apt thumbnail is important to encourage people to watch the video.

Follow the 1×4 content schedule : I wanted to know how to build a YouTube following from scratch, so I interviewed Graham Cochrane, the founder of the popular YouTube channel “The Recording Revolution.” Cochrane went from unemployed to creating a 7-figure business around audio engineering tips. YouTube has been a key distribution channel for him. Cochrane says publishing frequency is key. “The BEST thing you can do with YouTube (or any content creation for that matter) is to make a lot of content and make it consistently. I’ve made at least one video a week for seven years.” This frequency helps you retain subscribers (another important metric for YouTube) as well as helps you attract new free YouTube subscribers. Source: https://subsshop.com/.

Selling a business almost free of charge

Search for businesses to buy? There are some marketplaces where you can sell your business or buy a a new business. Businesses are bought and sold every day, maybe you want to enter a new market or you want to exit a market. Maybe you think your business will develop to a new level with another person leading and you reached the ceiling of how high you can expand it. Let’s see some successful business deals and discuss a little about places where you can buy or sell a business.

Any business can be sold! Even websites, that are not really businesses, can be sold for a lot of money. Freakanomics, was founded by Stephen J. Dubner, in the year 2005 and was sold just two years after it was first created. Stephen was a professional journalist for the New York Times, when he started the blog, which was actually created after the huge success of Dubner’s book, which was also called ‘Freakanomics’ . The website was eventually bought out by the New York Times the sum of $8 million. The Consumerist, is yet another website which was developed by the Gawker Media Group, there doing quite well aren’t they? Anyway, Joel Johnson was the editor-in-chief although the site was originally the idea of Nick Denton and Lockhart Steele both of whom are highly ranked within the Gawker Media Group. They decided to sell the consumerist to Consumer Media LLC when they were offered around $7 Million. I think I may have sold for that price too!

Tips for buying a business: Spend money on an attorney and clear up all the possible legal confusions. During a purchase, your buyer might want to do the diligence and make sure everything is legal and tactical. My advice is, be practical and take the step before having any buyer so you know everything is good. Besides, every buyer wants to know what they buy is legal. Even if you’re not doing something wrong, I believe is worth to invest some dollars on a lawyer to bulletproof your business. Also, this helps you to check the terms of your service, add, or even remove disclaimers. And, then, when you talk to a buyer you can say you have an official opinion from a lawyer, and you can present it to them. This is really important because every buyer wants to minimize risks so do your due diligence before and save yourself some time and hassle during the selling process. See more info on Buy a business.

FE International is a website broker with a 94.1% sales success rate that offers a fully personalized sales process to ensure that the buyer and seller get exactly what they were looking for out of the sales process. Since they’re a website broker, they work directly with sellers to completely understand their business and then they contact their network of buyers to find ones that are the right fit for the business. From there, buyers make offers on the business and FE International negotiates to find the best deal for the seller. Finally, they ensure that the seller provides the right information and support to the buyer so they can successfully take over the online business so both the buyer and seller are happy. FE International is an experienced team of brokers that work together to create a high-quality experience for buyers and sellers, and they’re most experienced in evaluating 5-7 figure businesses. To learn more about what they offer buyers and sellers, check out their Frequently Asked Questions.

Website Properties – If you read Website Properties homepage, you get the feeling they are focused more on sellers. Confirming this with a long list (17,000 during January 2019) of strong buyers and a small dealflow (only 21 websites (January 2019)), so I haven’t included them in the top marketplaces with Flippa, Empire Flippers, and others. Supposedly they have been in business for 15 years, but the web archive only shows data since 2007 (which is still a very respectable track record!). Their website may occasionally feel a little bit dated, but with a nice design and a few dedicated illustrations to highlight the websites they have for sale. Their blog is updated with solid advice to website investors! Deals are ranging from $25,000 all the way up to $10 million. (Wow, Canabis.net is currently being sold).

Zazzle’s been called the “anti-Amazon by some,” but we don’t really see it that way. Zazzle is comparable to Cafe Press in that it’s a marketplace devoted primarily to writers, graphic artists, and really anyone in the business of image or logo creation. This marketplace offers over 350 products to sell online; ecommerce merchants would not be able to list their individual products here–just as Café Press merchants have the ability to create 100% completely customizable online shops with an unlimited amount of products to sell. Zazzle allows merchants to set their own royalty rates from between 10% to 99% and adjusts the final price to include this percentage. The marketplace also offers free promotional tips and strategies. Zazzle’s Affiliate/Associate program pays at least 15% for all referred sales, and will even pay a referral fee for customers you refer to your own site. This marketplace indicates it pays out to merchants by check but that there is an option to have this done via PayPal.

BizForSell works as a hub for business brokers as well. Business sellers can search and contact business brokers on the website to assist them with the selling process or business brokers can post advertisements themselves to find buyers of their clients’ business. All the related stakeholders can help each other this way through BizForSell connection. Moreover, we also allow registered brokers to publish business related blogs and connect to businesses in general. We offer very convenient options for sellers, buyers, and brokers of businesses. Business buyers can easily browse businesses locally and find the best possible deal . With a fast-growing audience of sellers, buyers, and brokers, you can be sure of finding something suitable for you on this marketplace if you search! We provide solutions to sellers, buyers and brokers worldwide. Source: https://www.bizforsell.com.