Tag Archives: small business

Starting a Small Business in High School

If you’re a high school student, you have two options for making money. You can get a job or start your own business. On the outside, a job seems easier, but in the end, it could be harder because you are limiting the amount of money you can make. Starting a business is hard work, and you might not succeed, but doing something you enjoy with a high earning potential will be more rewarding in the long run.

Find an Idea

You can do something that has been done many times before and has a lot of demand, or you can come up with your own new idea. Some common ideas for small businesses for high school students are:

  • Lawn mowing
  • Shoveling snow
  • Fall cleanup
  • Landscaping and gardening
  • Babysitting
  • House Cleaning
  • Pet sitting

These are all great ideas, and if there is enough demand for it in your community, you can do very well with them. If you don’t find any of these interesting or you want to do something different, there is no limitation on what you can come up with. Think about what interests you, what you’re good at, and what your goals are. These can all help you find great ideas for potential businesses.

Financing

Will your business need money to start up? Businesses that require little to no money to start will be easiest for you. You can use money you saved on your own or borrow money from your parents or another friend or family member. Keep careful records of who lent you what so that you can pay them back.

Preparing

Gather together whatever supplies you will need. Prepare by setting up a business plan. What are your goals? What is your product or service? Who will you sell to? How will you get customers? You should be able to answer these questions and more before you start conducting business.

Start Small

You can jump right into your business and start big, or you can start small. Starting small is a great way to ease your way into a business, especially if you don’t have money to start or don’t have a lot of time. Maybe by the time the summer roles around you’ll have more time to devote to your growing business.

Expansion

If your business becomes a succeed, always consider expansion. You can offer more products, work more, and hire more employees. Think carefully about every decision you make. Make sure it is in the best interest of your company. Who knows, your business could turn into a full time career you can take into adulthood.

Look for more business ideas or money making ideas? Go to TeenMoneyCentral.com where you will find a wealth of information.

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Afraid of Being Laid Off: Create Your Own Business Instead

Christopher Reid Internet Marketing Entrepreneur

Image via Wikipedia

Are you afraid that you could be laid off at any time due to the unstable economy? Are you tired of working hard for meager pay? Are you sick of having great ideas that make your companies millions of dollars, but you aren’t paid for it? When you work for someone else, you are often shafted, but when you work for yourself, you’ll be rewarded accordingly. The harder you work, the more you make, which is possible with a business. So if you’re tired of your bosses taking the credit for your ideas, start your own business instead.

Learn how to start an internet business is far easier and cheaper than creating an actual brick and mortar business. All you need to pay for is the domain name and hosting costs. Once you create a business, you have to do the work necessary to make it successful such as customer service, marketing and promotion, a great product, and favorable reviews. The advantage of an internet business is the fact that you can do it from anywhere. If you have a computer, you can work. Your success is based solely on how much you are willing to work, so the more you work, the more you will eventually make. However, it will take at least a year of not getting paid to get to that point. Can you handle that? Which is a better deal; working hard for two years and getting paid for the next twenty years, or working hard for all twenty years?

If it helps you feel any better, dealing in internet marketing is far easier than investing in real estate. Make a wrong move and you’ll go bankrupt in real estate. Make a mistake in internet marketing and the worst that you would have to do is start over. But with your knowledge, starting over won’t be as bad as when you first started. If you want to succeed in this business, thinking long term is key. Definitely a better investment than the stock market. The wave of the future is coming. Are you prepared to utilize the still-growing power of the internet or are you going to let it pass you by? The choice is yours.

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How Invoice Factoring Can Fix Your Small Business Cash Flow Problem

Large companies have taken advantage of invoice factoring for hundreds of years. Factoring covers the time between the company’s submitting an invoice to a client and the date when the client actually pays the invoice. The company is able to receive their payment right away, which eliminates the problems that can accompany a slow payment on an invoice. The business bank accounts remain solvent, and the company can maintain a healthy cash flow.

Factoring Relieves the Financial Strain of Slow Pay Invoices

Big businesses generally have a better cushion than smaller businesses when it comes to dealing with slow paying clients. A small business might budget their receivables much more tightly. Since it is becoming more difficult to qualify for regular loans through standard banks, many small business owners may be facing shortfalls if they are not receiving client payments in a timely manner. Invoice factoring relieves the stress of waiting for a client to pay the invoice on time. Since invoice factoring is not a loan, it does not incur any additional interest costs, either. The money that the business earned is simply available right away.

Keep Cash Flow Current

Small businesses can avoid several potential problems when they take advantage of invoice factoring. Without factoring, a business could face a bad debt situation if they are unable to pay their bills. Factoring allows you to maintain a current cash flow without sacrificing any of the equity in your business, as you would have to do with a traditional loan. Your business accounts will remain current and you will be able to make all of your payments on time, no matter when the client actually pays the invoice you have submitted.

Avoid Offering Unnecessary Discounts

Many small business owners have resorted to offering discounts for customers as an incentive to get them to pay their invoices on time. If you take advantage of invoice factoring, there is no longer any need to offer a discount for fast payment. The payment will be covered by the factoring agent, so the client payment schedule makes no difference to a company’s bottom line. You can save a great deal of capital by reducing the discounts for things like early invoice payment. That capital can be invested in the company so that you can continue to grow your business instead of being held back by slow paying clients.

Banks Reticent to Offer Factoring to Small Businesses

Most traditional banks already offer invoice factoring to large companies. These banks do not like to offer the service to smaller businesses, however. It can be difficult for a company that is not factoring hundreds of thousands of dollars a day to qualify for factoring through a traditional bank. Small businesses typically do not bring in the large volume of invoices that the banks would feel comfortable factoring. That is the reason most banks do not offer invoice factoring services up front when you approach them for an operating loan. The service is reserved for the largest corporations in the market.

Alternative Factoring Resources

There are some companies that specialize in small business factoring. You can qualify with one of these companies if your invoices total between $10,000 to $100,000 per month. Factoring decisions are also based on the client’s credit rating rather than the credit rating of the small business. These factoring specialists serve all kinds of businesses, from manufacturing to service providers. If you regularly invoice clients for products or services rendered and you are not a large corporation, invoice factoring could be the best solution for keeping your company moving forward without relying on the pay schedules of your clients.

 

Jessica Bosari is a small business owner who believes in helping small businesses thrive. Her latest project is at Technology-Colleges.info, a site that helps students achieve their goals for information systems security jobs, computer networking careers, and other technology fields.

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Business Contact Manager

Business Contact Manager is application software that enables you to effectively manage your business contacts with minimal effort. As more and more companies seek ways to stay on top of the competition, some have opted to implement effective computer programs so as to automate their processes. However, with the fast pace at which technology changes, there is the need to enroll for small business coaching training in order to be abreast with some of the application needed to manage and run a business. With the extra help, you can concentrate on other parts of your business, such as producing foil business cards or clear business cards for marketing.

As developers come up with solutions needed to automate the day to day functions of a business, they are also putting in place structures that will enable those taking up these applications to familiarize with them. Unknown to a majority of small business owners is that there are a number of certified training institutions in their area that can provide them with the needed knowledge either at their premises or online.

With technological development in internet technology there is no limitation to what can be done. Just as there is online shopping and online banking, there also exist online training. These are either conducted in real time where you are able to interact with your lecturer one on one via video conferencing or through e-learning CDs. These are pre-recorded class sessions that are designed to take you through the learning process.

To check for institutions or accredited centers offering such trainings in your area, all you have to do is run a search for the area of business training you want against a city name.

Nonetheless, price should never be the determining factor. There are institutions that will be offering to offer such services at unbelievably low prices only to short change you. It is important that you check the feedback left by previous clients so as to gauge their effectiveness.

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Some Powerful Marketing Ideas for Small Business

Understanding the customer’s needs and coming up with a plan that responds to their needs is the main essence of marketing. It is a fact that anybody who owns a business would wish to expand their business. Expansion and growth of business is most achieved by focusing on organic growth. Such growth can be achieved through acquiring more customers, convince each of the clients to purchase more profitable products or services, convincing the customers to purchase more products or services or convincing them to buy pricier products.

Usually, cheap small business ideas have limited marketing budgets, some do not even have any. But this should not mean these start up businesses can not match with the big ones. This only means that small businesses should think a little more creatively. Here are some of the powerful marketing ideas for small business:

  1. On a postcard, print your best advertisement and sent it to prospect in your projected market. Remember that people would only tend to read the ad on each postcard when the message is short but concise.
  2. Rotate different marketing schemes regularly and differ your approach. This is because no single marketing tactic would work all the time for every single business.
  3. Send mail outs by enclosing your flyers, brochures and other print outs in all your outgoing mail. This is especially beneficial in promoting your business without the added cost.
  4. Host seminars or open house. Holding events such as these would be a best way to gain face with important costumers and the prospective markets in general. This could also mean getting your company’s name circulating.
  5. You may use stamps, stickers and handwritten notes on all of your direct mail efforts. You can also do these in your day-to-day business mail. It’s like having the impact of a miniature billboard as people would tend to read it first, but remember to make it brief and straight to the point.