Noobpreneur

If you enjoy blogs as I do, you will notice that most information available online is free.

With all due respect to fellow bloggers, blogs are one of the websites on the Net that are valuable in asset but clearly under-monitised.

We deserve more :)

Not only blogs, any other websites offering free, legitimate, information are all under-monitised.

Some examples of those websites are sites about Home Improvement and Cancer Signs. Those sites are lightly monetised by Google AdSense.

Although monetisation is the site owners’ prerogative right, in my humble opinion, the information provided worth way too much money than they are today.

Good information need to be supported to stay exist on the Net

Good information clearly need monetary supports from the site visitors.

Many would argue that blogging or creating a content site is not all about money - it’s passion to help others and to pursue personal endeavours. I fully respect those who think so.

However, I also know bloggers and site owners that are passionate about what they do, and hoping that someday, this passion also brings monetary rewards.

In my opinion - maybe I sound a bit too capitalistic - good information need to be monetised, to push bloggers and writers to create better work quality through adequate resources.

Why? Because writing contents take a lot of resources - time and, often, money.

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Nothing to be brag about, but this is an achievement to me.

Like many authority bloggers a.k.a. probloggers suggest, perseverance is key if you want to blog for a living.

Thanks to those who have paved the road

I honour Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse, whom I considered role models in today’s blogging. I try hard to follow their recommendation and suggestion, and today I started to see results - thanks to them.

I learn that continuously write posts on topics you love is difficult. Inspiration is hard to find sometimes, and other responsibilities in life - family to take care, business to manage, and other personal endeavours limit my passion for blogging.

But now it’s different - I learn that writing is actually help you overcome your offline life issues, as well as train your brain for creative thinking. I also learn that blogging is actually helping myself, as well as - hopefully- my readers to give an insight or two about issues, in Noobpreneur.com case, business issues.

Noobpreneur.com blogging tips

Tips that work well for me, that might also work well for you:

• Write a post every day, at a constant pace, the more the better.
• Social bookmark your post yourself - A bit narcissistic, but if you don’t do it, don’t expect others to do it for you.

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Looking for a candidate to fill an important position in your business is important, as well as tricky.

Online job market has been a constant provider of qualified candidates, even more with the blurring boundaries between online and off line world.

Why you should consider online job listings

There are several reasons why you should consider online job listings:

• Fast - sign up, pay, and list right away.
• Listing fee is only a partial of job listing in newspapers.
• Everybody who is computer-literate can access and apply your job openings - this is naturally select candidates that have basic computer skills.
• If you choose your online job marketplace right, you can get faster responses by candidates, which means a hefty number of candidates in a short period of listing time.
• You can post, edit or update your job openings yourself, right away.
• You can get candidate screening services fro online job marketplace that offer such services, helping you ‘throw away’ unwanted candidates that fit in a certain criteria.

Where to list your job openings online

You can post jobs almost everywhere on the net. Blogs, forums, job marketplace, classified ads site, and other places can be the right place to advertise your job openings. You can post yours either for free or paid.

However, in my opinion, posting your job in online job marketplace offers more benefits for business owners. Listings are more trusted, as service for job posting is usually not free - thus selecting companies that are legitimate, to the least.

New online job marketplace, such as Fresho.com has emerging with a rapid fashion today.

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You have a great idea. You have chosen an excellent business name. You have created all the concepts and the systems to run your online business to success. You have the team to run the online business.

Next - you have to choose a great domain name. If it’s merely ‘good’, your online business is only half the potential. Period.

Choosing a great domain name is just as important as choosing a great business name. Fail to do so in the first place will damage your business potential.

You might ask, what’s in a name? In business, as well as in our daily life, a name can command respect, trust, and worthiness. Just to make my point, you simply don’t want to name your child Lazy or Stupid, do you?

What to look in a domain name

Having your business name as your domain name is not always a good way to go.

If your business name is Amazing Retail Company selling laptops, choosing AmazingRetailCompany.com might always seem logical to do.

However, in my opinion, this is not the best route to take.

I recommend you to have keywords in it.

What’s in a keyword? Choosing the right one for your online business will almost always guarantee more organic traffic and better position in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

For the above example, I would prefer to choose AmazingLaptops.com than AmazingRetailCompany.com.

Where to look for a domain name for you

I highly recommend you to use domain name suggestion tool, such as AptDomain.name.

I use AptDomain.name to look for domain names with the keywords of my choice. The site will suggest you the domain name filled with the keywords you specify, if any. If yours is available, you can buy the domain name from the site.

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There are certain perks for being a discipline and well-organised business owner. One of the perks is on credit cards financing for business purposes.

As you might already aware, credit cards can make or break your business, as well as your personal finance.

Using your credit cards under strict management will give you the opportunity of non-interest bearing loan.

Credit card financing - free source of business funding

Credit cards ‘offer’ you a 30-day period loan - meaning, if you pay your credit card bill on time, your ‘borrowed’ money do not bear any interest. This means, you have to pay in full for your credit card bill, and avoid paying minimal payment at all cost.

What kind of credit cards offer is for you?

0 APR credit card is the common offer by credit card issuers that you should look into when applying for an account - you pay no interest, fees, and other related credit card charges for a certain period of time.

The purpose of credit card issuers offering 0 APR program, to me, is to encourage consumers to use credit card balance regularly, with the hope that consumers will keep ‘borrowing’ when the offer expires.

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International business is truly a complex and exciting way to do business.

However, you might already understand that businesses always involve tax issues, and doing business overseas adds the complexity of tax issues. Such tax issues include tax law, such as export-import tax laws, local area tax regulations, and other tax issues.

You need to have as much tax law help as possible

Understanding international tax law is one of the key success factors in determining your success in doing business in other countries.

You certainly need all the help you can, as you definitely not knowing the details of local area tax issues, no matter how expert you are in international business.

Have international tax law specialist as your team member

I recommend you to look for international tax law specialists, to join your international business team.

Why forming a team? What is a team, actually?

Your team is not only your internal management team. Your team involves lawyers, public accountants, and tax consultants, to name a few.

Having a complete team with a tax consultant specialising in international tax law will aid you in your go international business mission.

How to choose an international tax law specialist

Basically, you are recommended to choose an international tax law specialist that:

• Has dealt with clients that are successfully go international
• Has dealt with local authorities overseas, focusing on the country you target your business expansion to.
• Has a local area partner overseas.

If you have any other ideas, please add to the list :)

Good luck going international.

Ivan Widjaya
International business

If you rely your business online, especially if your business is 100 per cent online, you need to better place your site in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), that will lead to better exposure.

Why SERP? Because, although direct traffic from your advertisement is nice, most of your potential visitors and clients are coming from the search engines - the more the better - this is called organic traffic.

Strengthen your online business is different from advertising and promotion. It’s more Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) than advertising and promotion process, such as ads placements and campaigns.

The most common term referring to strengthening your site is link building.

How to strengthen your online business

I recommend you to strengthen your online business through:

• Directory submission
  Submit your business website to web directories, both free and paid. In my humble opinion, submitting yours to free directories have almost no different in your SERP placement, but will expose your links more to the directory’s visitors.
• Getting reviewed
  Have your site reviewed, by free or incentivised reviewers. This is big in exposing your site better and pushing your site to higher SERP placement. Choose your reviewers wisely - choose those that offer you high quality and traffic sites, not Google PageRank. Be warned, Google doesn’t like you do this :)

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If you are dealing with multiple business units, you always could use a help or two from others.

The basic rule of thumbs is not to be a control freak - that is, having all your business under your sole control.

Why?

The best idea of entrepreneurship is to delegate, delegate and delegate. This way, you preserve your most valuable resource - time - and use it either to build more businesses or to have it yourself - a privilege most people don’t have.

Business delegation and business process outsourcing (BPO) can be achieved through my favourite outsourcing method - hiring a virtual assistance.

Virtual assistant help you build a real business, not another job

The idea of starting a business is to make it grow, becoming a real business, not another job.

Job?

Yes - many business owners are sole proprietors. They operate their own one-person company.

If the owner is having problems, so is the business. If the owner stop working, the business stop running, too. If this is your case, then you are having a job, camouflage as a business.

Virtual assistant can ‘redeem’ you from your job-business.

A virtual assistant (VA), hence the name, is your independent assistant, helping you with various job functions and work, such as office administration work, personal assistance, data entry, bookkeeping, and even website design.

The benefit of BPO to virtual assistant

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If you wondered why accessing the Noobpreneur Business Blog is a bit difficult and troublesome, I am actually in the middle of upgrading Noobpreneur.com’s Wordpress to the latest version of 2.6.2 - meaning, better security and other enhancements.

Not only upgrading the Wordpress script, I am also in the middle of custom-designing Noobpreneur.com based on a Do-It-Yourself Wordpress theme structure, Thesis.

Why Thesis? After a long search for custom, user friendly Wordpress theme, I finally take action to purchase Thesis Wordpress theme, for several strong points:

1. Easy customisation, via click and apply method.
2. User and SEO friendly
3. Constantly developed - security and bug fixes, more features, etc.
4. Helpful forums!

The license is $87 for a single site, and $164 for multiple sites. It’s a fair price, considering the quality. If you are looking for Wordpress blog themes, do consider Thesis.

The customisation I am doing right now is almost finished. There will be a small update on the theme in the near future, but I assure you during that time, there will be no more interruption in your visits :)

Please let me know your feedbacks and comments on Noobpreneur.com new design.

Ivan Widjaya
Blog designer