business reviews

Running online business does resembles its off line counterpart.

You need to monitor the performance of your back office operations.

In off line business, that includes monitoring financial management and reporting, monitoring your team performance, and even monitoring whether your coffee machine is in good shape and well-stocked :)

In online business, that includes monitoring your website performance, server performance, and tracking your website visitors and popularity.

Why you need to track your website performance

First of all, it is a good habit - you need to know your website’s current state in order to spot a potential problem or two in the future and receive a report on it.

Secondly, it is important to test campaigns to find your best practices. In term of website traffic monitoring, for example, you implement a new online certification, such as BizRate, for your online retail store. You may want to know the effectiveness of BizRate’s badge placement on your website. You can test the campain by monitoring the visitors traffic - is it increasing?

Tools to track your online business performance

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Are you a business owner that feel lacks of time for your family, friends, even yourself?

Well, you are not alone.

For most small business owners, success co-relates with the time spent on the business. If you are a self-employed or a sole proprietor, your business success means more time needed to maintain the success.

However, this is not the ideal situation. Sure, you may be satisfied with all the success you have, but as a business owner, I’d suggest you to find ways to leverage your success.

Leveraging success

Success can mean anything - more time with the family, working whenever and wherever you want, etc. - but the most common measurement of success is - surprise, surprise - money.

Having ‘excess’ money means more opportunities - either to spend it lavishly or invest it. I prefer the latter, and I hope you do, too.

Leveraging your success - in this case - your money, is crucial in your path to financial freedom. You have to find ‘vehicles’ to make your money work hard for you, not the other way around.

One way to do it, is to owning businesses that don’t require you to actively involved in them, producing passive income streams for you.

The ideal passive income small business opportunity

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I work at home today much, much more than I did in the past. This is intentional, though, considering the type of business I am in.

If you foresee that working at home is the future of you, I’ll join you to evangelise the perks of working at home :)

Why work at home is a more feasible business solution today

Forget nice business suit and professional looks. Say hello to a more casual look of you.

If you are keen to work at home, you have to realise that you can, may and have to work even in your PJs. You can work whenever you want, reducing the need to commute.

All in all, the main benefits of work at home are: flexibility, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Today’s recession, rising gas price and rising cost of living are the main points to consider moving your office to the comfort of your home.

Not only for well-seasoned business owner, working at home is lucrative for new, budding entrepreneurs, including stay at home mom and dad.

With the presence of the Internet, working at home is never been easier. You can do almost anything you could’ve think of, including but not limited to virtual assistance, wealth building, online business, affiliate marketing, and other web-related businesses.

Things to consider when deciding to work at home

You have to realise that working at home needs a little different office management than the conventional out-of-home office management.

In my opinion, you have consider the following:
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I’ve involved in franchising fore some years, and I vision franchises to be the driving entities of regional economy.

Franchises also have the great potential to make a difference, thanks to the inherited perk - replicative in nature.

If you own a franchised company, investors will spread your vision in exponential fashion. If you are a potential franchisee, investing in one that has the vision to make a difference will result in both financial and social reward.

Hot franchises - Any franchises that are built based on go green movement

In today’s worldwide movement to save the earth - to the extent of environmental issues, at least - go green movement is definitely a well-respected and well-buzzed movement.

In term of business, applied the go green concepts within the core business will boost the business in term of financial and social credentials. Franchising your go-green business is a smart and strong move.

The go green franchises are definitely on the rise.

Go green franchise - Moving franchise

One of the most potential go green franchise type is moving franchise.

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Running a small business is challenging.

A small business doesn’t get all the funding the big business has, but is expected to perform, in my opinion, way over the current performance over limited resources.

Especially in today’s tough times, running your small business efficiently and effectively requires you to seek whatever help and resources you encounter.

When you head onto problems, where to seek help? When you need other services or products to support your current products or services, where to seek partner?

Where to find help and partnership

Well, you can always take great benefit by joining small business network.

You are not only receiving advice from experts and mentors alike, but also from your peers and fellow small business owners - allies and competitors alike!

Another great way, that, in fact, you can do immediately today, is to find resources of help and partnership through online media.

Online advice and help for small business

Internet small business directory are often a good starting point to seek for help and partnership.

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As you might already read from my previous post, I highly interested in online business - or to better describe, everything that can be monetised, online :)

One are that are certainly new for me is building wealth online. I currently focus on building and acquiring any type of website properties, such as blogs and directories.

While the investments are great, I think diversification is key in Internet business and investment. Just like the offline counterparts, online investment can be diversified into many forms - businesses, investment properties and stock investments.

If you asked me what next, I would say online trading is the way to go.

Online Trading Benefits

Online trading does offer you excellent opportunity to build and manage your wealth easy and in real-time fashion.

All can be done at the comfort of your home, office, or wherever you go as long as you have a mobile device, such as PDAs or Laptops, and have access to the Internet.

You can receive news and updates on stock markets directly to you in real-time, and you can act accordingly also in real-time. Or, you can have your online advisers do the analysis and act based on your profiles and preferences.

Things to consider in trading online

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If you interested in online business like me, you might already noticed that one of the best things offered on the Net is free stuffs.

Many, if not most, online businesses today offer free products and services - either meant to attract customers, membership sign ups, or simply just that - free service for everyone.

Online Business offering free services - Always here to stay

The typical (and very lucrative!) business model on the Net today is to offer free services with the aim to attract a large number of visitors to your websites. When the time comes, the generated buzz and traffic are utilised to attract advertisers. If you wonder where all the online businesses offering free services get the revenue from, the answer is from the advertisers (some from premium services offered to members). The example of this type of online business is Facebook and AdBrite.

Another typical business model with the similar concept is to offer free services while growing the real assets of the business - subscribers, members, and the community. The end line, eventually, the business is meant to be sold to the blue chip companies - Google, Yahoo!, or the likes. The example of this type of online business is Feedburner and Blogger, both acquired by Google.

Free classified ads business - Lucrative?

The fore-father of all free classified ads online business is, of course, Craiglist.

Offering free listing for all, Craiglist is meant to be buzzed and heavily trafficked website. While no advertisement on sight, Craiglist does offer a listing for a fee for ads in certain region.

Similar to Craiglist of US, there is Gumtree, one of eBay’s classified ads sites.

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Like all we know and experience in today’s recession, one of the hardest hit businesses in recession today is small businesses, especially real estate business. For small business owners or independent real estate investors, getting around our way around recession can be done by loan management and debt restructure.

I am certainly not a real estate expert, but I understand that, like in any other businesses, smart your way through recession is the key to survival.

With the rising cost of living and interest rates today, it is desirable to have a strong refinancing strategy to help you withstand and rise above the pressure of recession.

Good debt vs. bad debt - a grey area today

I enjoy Robert Kiyosaki’s principle of good debt and bad debt.

Good debt is debt that make you money. Bad debt is debt that lose you money.

In today’s raised interest rates, some good debt investments are becoming, or starting to become, bad debt investments.

How’s this happen?

Some investment properties are no longer having positive cash flow, businesses struggle to pay their debt and keep their cash flow on the green, etc.

One of the most common ways to tackle those situations is by refinancing your debt.

Loan and mortgage refinance

Among many loans, mortgage loans are often being the type of loan that need refinancing.

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As happening throughout the world, real estate market value is in decline due to the global recession.

Foreclosures are in trend, and FSBOs are easily be seen everywhere.

Is it a bad thing or a good thing?

Opportunities for Real Estate Investors

I can tell that real estate investors are lurking somewhere, ready to make a move. Some are already make moves, investing in foreclosures, ready to ride the real estate wave that will start as soon as the recession worst moments are things in the past.

I think this is actually the time to invest - recession is your window of opportunity, for a simple reason: Market is in decline and some people are willing to sell lower than market value. If you can get adequate financing, even in the midst of rising mortgage rate, I would suggested you to invest sooner than later.

Remember, what’s come down, must come up.

Invest in foreclosures

I strongly suggest you to invest in foreclosures. There are two main strong points in investing in foreclosures.

Firstly, you can purchase a property that is lower than market value.

Secondly, you are actually helping the current property owner to clear the debt.

Take heed, though - there are a certain negative side of foreclosure investment - some people will know you for a person that take advantages over others’ problems. If this is not a problem with you, then by all means go for it :)

US Real Estates: I recommend Honolulu, Hawaii

If you consider not only real estate investments, but also Hawaii relocation, I suggest you to search yours in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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