Apart from financial gain, the desire to have more time for themselves and/or family is among the top reasons many give for starting their own business. Yet, those of us who have ventured out know – family time is the first to get sacrificed. We want to fulfill a lifelong goal, but we don’t get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We want to make our family happy. Instead, they think our business is a poisonous fruit. Ironic isn’t it? Will you finally have time to live your life this year? The answer is (and should be) Yes! Like…

2015 is the year that you're going to do things a little differently. The time is right to step up your game. Without gazing at the past too much, recognize that that was how you used to conduct business. That's when all you're best strategies delivered on making your brand better, more memorable amidst your stakeholders. Give yourself a well deserved pat on the back.

I’m seeing more and more of this -especially on tech sites. On the contact us page all they offer you is a form so that they can qualify you. What I don’t see is anything about where they are located, what they’re phone number is etc. For me, I want to know where you’re from. No particular reason -I just like to know. Sometimes you’re near other companies I know. It concerns me that you don’t want to divulge that information. God forbid I actually call before you vet me. Already I can see that dealing with these hidden companies…

Perhaps you are looking into setting up offices in a different country – or hope to. Or, maybe you’re hoping to connect better with staff or customers from a particular region. Photo Credit © Depositphotos.com/Mishchenko Whatever your reasons may be, learning a different language has many benefits for entrepreneurs. Besides business benefits, bilingualism is also good for your mental health. Studies have shown that bilingualism delays the onset of dementia. People who speak more than one language also process information more easily. Convinced and want to get started? Here are 5 places you can learn a new language for free, or…

When I first started online, one of the things that was taught to me was to put testimonials on dedicated opt-in pages. The whole idea is to treat these pages like a page where you sell an actual product. It’s quite interesting to see that even after all this time, this little case study shows that testimonials still help convert visitors into subscribers/leads. Not that I’m expecting anything drastically different. Just goes to show sometimes it isn’t about how fancy your opt-in is.

We all have this nagging feeling in the back of our heads. Is what we’re doing working? How would we know? It’s a fair question. As a (very) small business with two partners, no employees and several freelancers, the question whether digital advertising works is a resounding yes. In fact, I can’t imagine advertising anyway else. Online advertising is very friendly on the small-micro business budgets and it is immediately measurable. However, if you are a long time brick-mortar business or mid-sized business. I can understand the question. Here are 8 reasons why online advertising works, backed by research data. As much a…

You know the saying. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Planning however doesn’t come easily for some. Not sure about you, but I was never taught how to plan in when I was in school, which is rather unfortunate, but no fear. One way to start is with a good planner. Now we all have our favorites so it’s OK to continue using that. I use BlogEnergizer’s planner because content marketing is an integral part of our business and the planner is geared towards that. It also has useful information how to make the planner work best…

This is the million dollar question isnt’ it? We all want need people to buy or our businesses will die. Although we know more or less why and what triggers a sale, especially when we know our customers well, but understanding general trends can help us too. This infographic gives you some pretty interesting snapshots based on a shopper survey. One of the things I find really interesting is the percentage of people who won’t share about their purchase on social media. Just because social media is hot and you can doesn’t mean that it works. That reflects my own online shopping…

Earlier this year, Google announced that it will give websites with ssl certificates extra brownie points. Though it is only a small ranking factor, it is one nonetheless. Overall, this news has been well received. However, many small sites have worried about the cost of the certificates and the cost of implementation. The good news is, the cost of these certificates aren’t exactly prohibitive, they start from $10 but they can go up to thousands of dollars. $0 is of course much better. This week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has announced a new initiative to transfer the web from HTTP to…

I’m at the WebCamp Live event this weekend by Armand Morin, and each morning, Jim Howard opens the event. Jim and his wife Chris used to run a printing company and has helped many businesses with their branding. Their story is so very inspiring and Jim is a fabulous speaker. Today, he mentioned something that I’ve heard him say before. I’m so very glad to be reminded again. This is what he says…   Did you get that? “It’s never about how you start. It’s how you finish.” Right now, the end of the year is around the corner. Will you spend…