Some naysayers way back in the 1990s predicted that online shopping wouldn’t last. Sure, and they said television was a passing fad, too! As we all know, just the opposite has occurred. There’s a television in every household, and more than likely, the homeowner bought their television online—along with his books, music CDs, clothes, and maybe even his home. (more…)
I see it happening all the time… websites with no physical mailing address. It’s as if they don’t exist anywhere but in the scary world of cyberspace. I say scary because that’s exactly what a high percentage of the web browsing population thinks of the Internet. When these people are looking to purchase a product and don’t see a physical address, they get scared, and very likely abandon the purchase. And don’t think that a typical email address for your contact information cuts it. People want a physical location. (more…)
Building a web site isn’t something that is really cut and dry. There’s a huge variety of products and services that can either help you get your web site where you want it or simply confuse you. It’s also important that you make the right choices upfront so that you don’t end up having to restructure your whole web site because of some problem in your design layout. The level of time investment neccessary for mastery in a lot of these software packages can range from little to a VERY significant amount. Because of this I feel it’s important to be lead in the “right” direction to make sure you don’t spend time in the wrong areas, or learning some software that might not be all that useful for you later on (*coughs* Frontpage *coughs*).
Where you should start greatly depends on what you plan on attempting to do, and how deep you’re going to dive in. For a moderately professional, clean looking web site without a lot of automation or intensive animated graphics you can probably get by with some basic knowledge of html, ability with a good WYSIWYG editor, and an image editting program. On the other hand, if you’re someone that’s looking to build something that will really wow your audience then you might consider spending some major time and developing some animation skills with a program like Macromedia Flash. I personally always spring for what I believe will bring me the greatest amount of profit with a minimal amount of effort, and because of this I usually end up spending all of my time diving in deeper with ONLY my WYSIWYG HTML editor, and my image editor.
## What is a “WYSIWYG” editor? ##
A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor is what allows you to get by with minimal knowledge of HTML. Yes, that means you don’t have to know EVERYTHING about HTML to have a decent looking website. When you use a WYSIWYG editor it interprets what you’re doing (inserting an image for example) as being a certain series of HTML tags with attributes, and does it for you… Thus, what you see on your screen is what you get. Instead of seeing a bunch of HTML code in text format, you’ll mostly see what will actually show up in your browser once your web site is up WHILE you’re making it. I highly recommend using the latest version of dreamweaver — it is well-known as one of the best HTML editors by general consensus. Dreamweaver’s interface is very friendly, has a built in FTP client, and is specifically built to be flexible enough to suit both the coder and the everyday amatuer webmaster.
## Image editing? What do I need that for? ##
Okay, let’s be realistic here: If you’re going to make a professional *appearing* web site it’s important that you can make some basic, decent looking graphics. There’s a lot of graphics problems that can truly get the job done, but as far as power and flexibility goes I recommend Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop definitely takes some time getting used to, but in the end it’s VERY rewarding. I’ve ended up using my knowledge of Photoshop to make not only graphics for multiple web sites, but also touched up portraits, made business cards, flyers, and other online advertisments such as banners. Infact, I’ve used it for everything except animation… But it also comes with Adobe Imageready which is very good with animation. This software is amazing, and if you’re going to learn ANY image editing software I recommend you start with Photoshop because of it’s widerange of overall… usefulness!
## Let’s get me some sales! ##
Kick off your new web site you’ve gotten up from your knowledge of webmastering and image editing with a few new sales… Sounds like a plan? Well a great way to do that quickly is with pay-per-click advertising. BUT WAIT! Doesn’t that cost money? Well… Yes. But with the tools brought to us by some of the biggest pay-per-click advertisers out there we should be able to make a good evaluation of how much profit we’re going to make without much investment upfront.
The big question behind pay-per-click advertising is whether or not it’s worth the cash when you can simply get traffic from regular search engine ranking (otherwise known as organic traffic). Afterall, there are plenty of companies out there that promise to help get you all the traffic you need through optimizing your web site for organic ranking. The answer to this question is quite simple: profit is profit. Through conversion tracking tools such as those offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google Adwords anyone can calculate exactly what their profit is after cost of PPC advertising is taken out. In my opinion, Google Adwords has the most user-friendly interface among the PPC advertisers. Google Adword’s interface makes it very easy to see which keywords are pulling you in the most sales, and which ones aren’t even worth your advertising money.
Let us not forget, however, that in order to make those conversions we’re going to be needing a shopping cart! There’s a lot of diverse software packages out there you can use, but I’ve been using Mal’s E-Commerce Free shopping cart for a number of years with great success. The cart’s server is hosted on their machines so that means you not only get away with not having to pay for the software itself, but you get out of having to buy an SSL security ticket too! Nothing’s a better bargain than free, eh?
## Getting those sales leads you’ve been building up to BUY! ##
Once you’ve scored a few sales it would probably be a good idea to start using some kind of lead management services. I highly recommend the use of autoresponders for this purpose. Autoresponders are, essentially, a newsletter sign-up that allows you to strategically determine what you want to send each lead after a certain alotted amount of time. For example, let’s say someone visits your web site and you offer them a free newsletter. If you were selling an ebook on some very complicated topic, you might consider sending them only information on the most basic concepts at first to get them interested. Slowly but surely, you can turn those visitors that might have left your web site and never have returned into some serious revenue!
As far as autoresponders go, I highly recommend the use of Aweber. Their customer service is superb (seriously, these guys really know their stuff!) and can be contacted at any point during the business day via online chat or phone. They also offer tons of free information, and guides on making the most of their services. Check out their month long free trial at http://www.getaweber.com/ .
If your business is not on the Internet, it is not doing as well as it could. In today’s day and age, if you are not advertising on the Internet, you are losing a significant amount of business. (more…)
Planning an ecommerce website is like building a house – architecture and budget need to be agreed before the decoration.
AN AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION MUST BE DRAWN UP AS THE FIRST STAGE BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE IS DONE – ANY OTHER APPROACH WILL ONLY LEAD TO CONFUSION AND WORSE. (more…)
Budding business people are always on the hunt for useful tips that they can use for their home-based entrepreneurship. More and more people now are interested in creating a home based business because of the endless opportunities available online, even unknowledgeable individuals.
Through the internet, any person can become an entrepreneur. An online home-based entrepreneurship requires less capital investment and so many people think that they can easily make a fortune out of it. But you see, even an online business requires careful thought and consideration. You have to exert a lot of effort and time to make it a success. Some of the online entrepreneurship opportunities include affiliate marketing, blogging, copywriting, and many others. If you take your time to do some research, you can find many high-profits earning business opportunities out there.
For family-oriented individuals who seeks for more flexibilities and for those that don’t have a professional career, a home-based entrepreneurship may be the answer to their financial needs. Running an online business does not evolve mainly on the desire to earn income. It takes more than that. Here are some helpful tips that you can use in running your home-based business: 1.No man is an island. Have you heard of that famous cliche? That is specifically true for entrepreneurs. You are the boss of your business but that does not mean that you will not need any support. You need to seek help from people who are more experienced than you. You have to learn more about your target market so that you can address its needs accordingly.
You can contact professional organizations for more information. Through research, you can learn a lot. 2.Educate yourself and be well informed. Only God knows everything. Man has limitations and so you will not know everything that is happening all at once. You need to get the proper training in running your home-based business. You need to familiarize yourself with record keeping, tax deductions, and basic accounting procedures. Through series of trainings, you will know more about running your online business venture especially if you are new in this field. 3.Never start a business that you are not familiar with. Training and experience are the keys to success. To run your home-based business smoothly, you need to be an expert.
Continue to learn as much as possible. Get to know in detail every possible aspect of the business you can think of before you plunge into your new business. 4.Never lose hope. Always have self confidence so that you can pass all the trainings and become a professional entrepreneur. You must always be patient and don’t give up easily especially if you are encountering certain difficulties and problems. By working hard, you can get the exact results that you want. Huge results don’t come instantly. You must always trust your training, your business plans, and most especially, yourself. These are some tips that you can use in making your home-based business a success. There are many tips that you can find on the internet but these four tips are among the best and most effective. Many expert entrepreneurs can attest to that.
If you want, you can join entrepreneur workshops so that you can meet famous entrepreneurs and learn more about their lives. As the number of home-based entrepreneurship increases, you must be able to compete with other businesses. This is the only way to be successful. Incorporate these helpful tips in starting your online business and soon enough, you can prove if it is effective or not. You can earn huge profits if you start your business with a solid foundation and manage it effectively.
Why is it important to establish the moral status of entrepreneurship? Unless it can be shown that the entrepreneur does what is morally worthwhile as an entrepreneur, that his role is ethically praiseworthy, not only his or her status in the market but the market itself becomes vulnerable to serious moral criticism. This is because it is well recognised that ethics are the free market’s life line. Many economists are beginning to realise this. Indeed, it is entrepreneurial activity that makes the best sense of profit – another vital part of capitalism.
However, without also demonstrating that entrepreneurship is ethical, the market would at most be hospitable to morally indifferent kinds of behavior; at worst it would encourage moral callousness and discourage the pursuit of presumably morally more significant objectives, such as order, self-restraint, artistic excellence, family values.
When a system is vulnerable in one of its essential ingredients, competing systems that lack this weakness become very powerful if not immediately successful alternatives. Their images improve, even if their actual performance leaves a lot to be desired.
Some argue that all we need is the hospitable environment, but this is false. Even in the freest of societies many, many potential market agents can be lazy. Not that laziness is encouraged but that it is clearly not foreclosed. That is partly what freedom means. One has a genuine choice whether to be productive or not. It is not enough to show that under capitalism human beings are free, unless the kind of uses to which such a system puts human effort can themselves be
morally worthwhile. So the question needs to be addressed. Why should one be productive? Why should entrepreneurship be practiced? What is good about it?
It is not enough by a long shot to answer that entrepreneurship is the ticket to a decent chance for wealth. Certainly one can agree that between stealing and producing, the latter is more honorable. However what if quietism – the form of religious mysticism that involves complete extinction of the human will, drawing away from worldly things – is proposed as an alternative?
How about asceticism – the religious ideal that one can reach a higher spiritual state by self-discipline and self-denial? How will the system that is hospitable to entrepreneurship be defended in the light of such powerful challenges?
The most serious challenges to capitalism come from those who contend that by making entrepreneurial effort possible – by protecting the rights to private property and the pursuit of happiness here on earth – this system corrupts human life. It tends to permit the commercialisation of human relationships, making us self-interested economic agents instead of what we really ought be, altruistic members of our community.
It is insufficient to reply that the capitalist system makes it possible for people to attain a better life here on earth. That is just what is in need of defense. Why should we strive for such a life in the first place?
In a society of just human relationships, there must be a consistent and constant hospitality to entrepreneurship because without this, an important moral dimension of human life would be suppressed or at least seriously distorted. Without such a welcome, public policy and law would yield to more widely accepted but sadly misguided moral sentiments, for example, the call for
greater and greater state power to regiment or re-engineer society instead of making it safe for natural human initiative.
Depending upon the way in which we choose to view it, the strengths or weaknesses of the concept of social entrepreneurship lie in the fact that most of its applications are in the form of a hybrid between private, non-profit and public sectors. As described, one such hybrid is found in non-profit organisations with an entrepreneurial offshoot that generates revenue for the organisation’s social objectives. With greater emphasis on the private, for-profit sector, a hybrid model is emerging whereby businesses lend money and expertise to non-profits. Increasingly, this latter model is linked to public pressure for businesses to demonstrate a measure of social responsibility.
The most realistic and desirable way for any business to be socially responsible is through what is called ‘‘strategic philanthropy’’ – selected giving in areas tied directly to the company’s interests and in arenas that the company can justly claim to have knowledge and a direct stake. The use of the term clearly suggests an indirect financial return on the philanthropic investment. Indeed, the exercise of traditional philanthropy does not make good business sense as it does not provide a tangible return. In a more refined consideration of types of philanthropy today, the notion of strategic philanthropy yet emphasises that highly motivated and visionary business leaders can bring together networks of organizations in new community ventures.
Like the term ‘‘strategic philanthropy’’, ‘‘social entrepreneurship’’ is an articulation, a combination of two concepts that do not naturally fit together and yet which seeks acceptance as common sense. It is the lack of a natural fit that renders the term open to resistance and challenge. Challenges, implicit or explicit, range from different interpretations of how the terms might justifiably be joined to denial that they should be used together at all.
Language is a key component in the shift towards rationalization of the concept of social entrepreneurship. This is because discourse acceptance precedes or runs in parallel with material acceptance. Thus we see the emergence of terms that were previously restricted to the business sector, such as ‘‘social venture capital’’, ‘‘social return on investment’’, ‘‘invest’’
rather than ‘‘donate’’, ‘‘revenue streams’’ and ‘‘client groups’’ applied to the social and public sectors.
If the colonisation of the social and public sectors by the language of business is accepted, the breakdown of barriers between the sectors becomes normalised. However, the terms cited are in contrast to the distinction between entrepreneurs who create social or artistic capital rather than financial capital, with social capital referring to that which is valuable to communities.
On the other hand, opposition could arise from the close association of the term ‘‘entrepreneur’’ with the creative and destructive aspects of capitalism. Those who are concerned about the negative aspects of business will be resistant to the blurring of the boundaries between public, private and civil society suggested by social entrepreneurship with the potential for increased influence of business beyond the private sector. The non-profit sector has long been associated with the creation and maintenance of a strong civil society. Marketing of that sector then calls that association into question with concerns for the viability of an independent civil society.
Furthermore, if business has the power to choose which non-profits are to benefit materially through socially entrepreneurial partnerships, what happens to those that are not chosen and therefore are marginalised?
A parallel can be drawn between the concept of social entrepreneurship and that of sustainability because sustainability is equally open to broad interpretation. Like social entrepreneurship, sustainability can favour either the social and environmental or the economic sectors, depending upon which model is adopted. Strong sustainability favours the social and environmental over economic development, upholding the social values of a truly civil society based social entrepreneurialism. Interpretations are derived from the beliefs and experiences of individuals. Social entrepreneurs and their work should ultimately be judged by the quality of the social outcomes, and that assessment should be made independently of the private interests of those entrepreneurs.
With concepts and movements such as social entrepreneurship, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility, it is crucial that we pay close attention to the persuasive uses of the terms as well as to their practical implication. All of them are contested, value-laden labels that can be used to reference a wide variety of interests, motives, activities and outcomes.