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Helping people setup limited companies brings us into contact with LOTS of entrepreneurs.
So, we thought we’d reach out to a few people who are running interesting and successful businesses to hear their stories about getting started – and maybe inspire a few people to start a business of their own.
First up, friend of The Company Merchant, Mark, caught up with a local businessman in his neck of the woods …
Who: Brian Deeney
What: www.donegalcottageholidays.com
M: Tell us a little about your background and why you started DonegalCottageHolidays.com?
BD: My family ran a small seaside hotel in Rathmullan and I grew up in an environment of meeting and greeting visitors to our area. Eventually the hotel was sold and we moved into self catering in 1999 and began advertising on the Internet. Other owners in the area joined the site and soon this grew to include all areas of Donegal. The site focuses exclusively on Donegal and as well as promoting self catering properties we promote the county as a good place to visit for a family holiday.
M: There are over 500 properties listed on your site, how have you gone about attracting such a large number of paying advertisers?
BD: The site grew slowly in the initial few years and most new owners joined through word of mouth referrals. The focus has been kept on Donegal with photo galleries and videos helping potential customers get a flavour of the village they intend visiting. Transparency is a key factor of the site – customers should know exactly what a holiday home looks both inside and out, what its availability and pricing are and have the ability to view comments from people who’ve stayed previously.
M: You’ve done a great job at getting listed highly in the search engines, what’s been your secret?
BD: The site is prominent in Google making it easy to find and because content is continually being updated, the site stays fresh and is regularly indexed by the search engines. I adhere to the 2 golden rules of Google – relevancy of content and plenty of new articles added frequently. I also exchange links with other holiday rental sites. Recently we have added video to the site making it prominent in YouTube and have launched a Facebook group for holiday rentals in Donegal.
M: You’ve recently launched HolidayHomeIreland.com – what’s the thinking behind that?
BD: HolidayHomeIreland.com is a natural extension of DonegalCottageHolidays.com and I intend delivering the same high quality content on this site. To this end, I’ve included a blog to pass on useful information for both owners and visitors. I also commissioned a guide, “Marketing your Irish Holiday Home“, which is available for download in PDF format from the site or at www.bit.ly/hhireland
The site was launched last year and the first 9 months were spent adding relevant articles for each county in Ireland. As a result of this background work, the site is now no.1 on google.co.uk for the important search term “holiday home Ireland”. This makes it an ideal platform for individual owners to advertise their holiday home in the knowledge that they can be easily found via a web search.
M: What would your advice be to anyone thinking of starting a similar business?
BD: There is a lot of competition in the holiday rental advertising sector and I would advise anyone starting out to pick a niche and focus on a specific geographic area or holiday rental type. A lot of work needs to be done to establish yourself on Google and it can be quite a while before you see any return on the investment of your time – perseverance and belief in your idea are key to long term success.
Coming up with a cool, brandable name for your business isn’t easy – particularly if you’re also looking for one with an available domain name AND an available limited company name AND an available trademark etc….
It really depends on how big you’re thinking but you might also need to give some thought to how your chosen name will translate in other languages.
To help startups solve some of the simpler issues (names and domains) sites like BrandBucket.com and BrandStack.com (previously IncSpring) are good for finding ready-made business names, complete with domain name and logo. The names tend to be pretty general and therefore applicable to lots of different kinds of businesses.
Packages on BrandBucket.com for example include some pretty catchy potential brand names like buzzist.com, aderati.com, blidget.com, foodsy.com and thinkaholic.com.
If all you need is a little inspiration you could try a site like PickyDomains.com who will help find a name based on your brief for just $50 – sourced from their community of ‘namers’.
At the other end of the scale there are more complete services, via brand naming consultancies like Namingo, who will look at everything from URLs to trademarks to linguisitic differences to help find that perfect name.
However you go about it make sure to consider a few basics:
- Is your chosen domain name available?
- Can you find an appropriate – and available – limited company name?
- Are there any trademarks that would prevent you using that name?
- Is it easy to remember and spell correctly?
- Does it help tell people what you do?
When it comes to business blogs, proponents have long pointed to more enquiries, improved visibility and growing reputation as signs that blogging was good for their businesses.
Logically too, creating lots of new content gives search engines — and people — more to find and can help fuel social media conversations.
Logic and anecdotes are fine, but if you’re going to approach blogging as a business investment, a few cold hard facts wouldn’t go astray either.
Online marketing company HubSpot decided to carry out some research into the effects of blogging on their clients’ websites. They sampled a little over 1500 companies — roughly half of them blogged for business and the other half didn’t.
The results were striking. The businesses who blogged had 55% more traffic, nearly double the number of inbound links and over 400% more pages indexed by Google.
So blogging clearly has some tangible benefits: more indexed pages means more chances to be found in search engine results, more inbound links improves search engine performance and more traffic means more opportunities to convert browsers into buyers.
There are plenty of other reasons to blog for business — from customer service to building a brand personality — but on this very practical level at least the numbers seem to back up what good business bloggers have known for some time.
So here’s a simple seven point plan for getting started with your own business blog:
1. Decide why you’re going to blog. If it’s to please the search engines, you’ll need to be SEO-savvy.
If you’re hoping to build relationships with customers and clients, you might aim for a lighter, more personal tone.
2. Give your blog a focus. Generalists have a harder time attracting attention so try carving out a niche or taking a particular angle on your industry.
3. Make a list of the top 10-15 blogs relevant to your industry focus and read them regularly. What are they writing about and how do they approach their blogs?
4. Leave useful comments on those blogs.
5. When you’re comfortable with the social media space, start creating your own content.
A safe bet is to give your take on industry trends and advice and tips for customers and clients. Set a schedule, posting 2+ times a week.
6. Start distributing that content through your social media accounts.
7. Review after six months.
You could make it a lot more complicated and spend a lot of time planning, debating and over-thinking the process.
You could. But provided you focus on producing regular, useful content you won’t go too far wrong.
The Internet makes it much easier for anyone with a good idea to start a business. Would-be entrepreneurs can start cheaply, work from anywhere and serve a potentially global market from day one.
The tools are there – all we need is something to sell and a way of marketing it.
For creators of ‘real world’ products, sites like eBay, Etsy and Foodzie can help solve the marketing issue by bringing together millions of buyers and thousands of sellers in a central marketplace – giving anyone with something to sell easy access to people who want to buy.
In doing so, they’ve fostered a new breed of micro-entrepreneurs that are making a living doing everything from knitting jumpers to baking cakes.
Just like eBay (where some 800,000 now make a full-time living), Etsy provides its users with the technology and information they need to start and grow their own businesses.
Launched in 2005 with a mission to “enable people to make a living making things”, Etsy is the world’s largest marketplace for handmade goods. Some $180 million worth of products were sold on the site in 2009, which works out at around $720 per seller.
And where Etsy took the idea of a huge central marketplace and applied it to handmade goods, Foodzie took the same idea and applied it to artisan foods. Whether you bake exceedingly good cupcakes or blend a mean of herbal tea, Foodzie can help you sell it.
So if you fancy starting a business selling anything handmade, from crafts to cookies, the web’s got you covered.
February 19th, 2010 in
Business Ideas | tags:
etsy,
foodzie |
1 Comment
Businesses are constantly being told how to make more money online. Whether it’s social media marketing, search engine optimisation or launching the latest ecommerce behemoth, the internet is often seen as some sort of giant piggy bank waiting to be unlocked by the savvy entrepreneur.
However, the web offers more than just the chance to make money – it can also save your business money too. Whether it’s through improved efficiency, access to cheaper products and services or finding better ways to collaborate, the web offers a wealth of opportunities to trim costs and become a leaner business.
Here are our five of our favourite web-based cost saving ideas:
Use Free Software
There is a huge amount of free software available covering everything from simple office tasks to online training platforms and everything in between. In other words, instead of buying expensive off-the-shelf software packages, businesses can save by using free equivalents which are often as good (or in some cases even better) than their paid for cousins.
OpenOffice, for example, is a free suite of office tools including spreadsheets, word processors and presentation software. It recently passed the 100,000,000 download mark and it’s what I used to write this article. You might also take a look at Google Docs, Google’s free office suite which is hosted online so you can access it from any computer.
Make Free Phone Calls
VOIP has been around for a while and simply refers to software that allows you to make free phone calls over the internet. Skype is the most well-known example but many ‘traditional’ phone companies now provide VOIP options too. Check them out.
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing refers to the act of taking a job that wouldnormally require hiring an employee or freelancer, and outsourcing it to agroup or community. The idea is that many brains are better than one.
There are plenty of examples of crowdsourcing in action but one of the most interesting is a site called 99 Designs. You upload a brief for a design job (say a new logo, stationery or website design), set a budget and then designers from around the world submit ideas to compete for your money. You get to choose which ones you like best and go from there.
Web Presence
Getting online used to be expensive. Now you can create a web presence for your business for free with social media sites like Facebook – and even creating your own website can be surprisingly inexpensive.
If you want a more polished, individual look or have special requirements, working with a designer is still the way to go. But – and it’s a big but – if you simply want to create a clean and simple website, you can try something like Wordpress.org (which has plenty of attractive themes to choose from) or any number of other free platforms.
If you want to sell online, check out Big Cartel which offer intuitive and beautifully designed ecommerce sites for under $20 a month – and if you have 5 or fewer products to sell, it’s completely free.
Collaboration
Being able to collaborate online not only saves time but can also help cut costs associated with travel or phone bills (although if you’re using Skype, you can ignore that last bit). There are dozens of great online collaboration tools available – here’s a worthwhile list.
Of course, this list could have been 100 times the size. The web removes a lot of the costs of moving around or storing information, which means lower costs to consumers and businesses. If you’re looking for more free tools and ideas for saving money online, just visit your favourite search engine and search for ‘free whatever’.
You’ll be amazed at what’s on offer.
http://wordpress.org/
via flickr creative commons (brother omara)
If you are starting a business, especially now, it’s hugely important to keep a tight reign on expenses.
Here are a few of our favourite money saving tips for startups:
Use Free Software: There is plenty of free software available that will help you run your business without breaking the bank. Google Docs and Open Office are great alternatives to expensive business and word processing software for example.
Develop a Low Cost Website: Low cost doesn’t have to mean low value when it comes to websites. Try using something like Wordpress as a platform for your site and then choose an attractive theme to customise the look and feel.
Share Space: Working from home can be a great way to keep costs in check when you start out but if this isn’t an option (or you’d rather not) then see if you can share space (and costs) with someone else. Co-working and hot desking spaces are popping up all over the country and offer everything you need – and some company – for just a few hundred a month, often less. If there’s not one near you, try approaching another business directly – many will be happy to reduce their monthly outgoing right about now.
Get Bank Freebies: Lots of banks have startup accounts that offer bonuses – usually discounts on products and services like insurance.
Use Online BookKeeping Software: Hiring a bookkeeper is expensive and so is bookkeeping software. Online alternatives like KashFlow offer a simple way to keep track of your money, produce company accounts and create invoices all for a modest monthly price.
Shop Around: And when it comes to insurance or other business necessities, make sure to do your research as there can be big differences in prices between suppliers. This goes for everything from your electricity bill to your broadband provider.
Form Your Company Online: OK, so this one is a little self-serving but forming a company online can save you some serious dough.
Share your own money saving tips in the comments below.
via flickr creative commons (matt hamm)
I spend quite a lot of time using social media tools like Twitter and as it becomes increasingly mainstream, I’m often asked about the right way to use Twitter for business.
Of course there’s no one ‘right way’ to use Twitter – how you use it has more to do with what you hope to achieve. With that in mind, it’s worth taking a few minutes to consider what you’d like to get out of Twitter before you dive in.
Twitter as a Networking Tool: Twitter is a bit like a trip to the pub. There are lots of people, having lots of conversations – some of which will be interesting to you and some will not. In a business sense, it’s more akin to a networking event – it offers the potential to connect with people that you might not otherwise have met. If you invest in developing these relationships then they can lead to further introductions and business opportunities.
Like any good networking event, most of the real business ‘on Twitter’ is done away from the event itself – by email, telephone and face-to-face meetings – but Twitter provides the simple platform to make those initial introductions and connections. And for many people who find live networking events difficult, the fact that anyone can connect with anyone else on an equal footing is a huge plus.
Twitter as an Advice Service: For whatever reason, Twitter has attracted a slightly older demographic than other social networking sites like Facebook or Bebo. In fact the site is crammed full of experts and professionals in just about every field imaginable – and for the most part they’re all happy to share their expertise. If you have a question or need a recommendation, simply ask.
Twitter as a News Source: Twitter has gained a lot of media coverage for its ability to break news (like the Hudson plane crash) and serve as an effective news channel (the recent protests over the Iranian elections are a perfect example). Major media sources like the BBC, RTE and countless others all feed their breaking headlines into Twitter – alongside millions of smaller sources and private individuals pointing to news and reviews that you can use in your business. Find interesting news sources – particularly those within your industry – and follow their updates.
Twitter as a Learning Tool: In a similar fashion, Twitter is also hugely effective at pointing to interesting new content, articles and ideas. Many blogs and websites now have Twitter tools built in, allowing Twitter users to easily share content which they find useful. Again, find interesting people to follow (experts within your industry, people you know offline and trusted news sources) and use their updates as your personal guide to what’s interesting and useful on the web.
Twitter as a Customer Service Tool: For larger organisations, Twitter offers an almost unrivalled opportunity to hear what people are saying about their brands and industries in real time. Even for smaller businesses though, Twitter can be a simple, open and effective way to generate feedback and address customer service issues. Use a tool like Tweetdeck or Splitweet to help monitor mentions of your brand and messages to your account.
Twitter as a Marketing Tool: Of course, what most people want to know about is how to use Twitter to attract more business. The first thing to bear in mind is that Twitter is not advertising – people must choose to view your messages. That said, if you use Twitter to interact, network and share valuable information, the natural byproduct will be more followers and more traffic to your website.
In other words, don’t try to use Twitter as a marketing tool – use it in the ways described above and when you do talk about your own stuff, people will be more willing to listen.
It used to be the case that once you knew the tools of your trade, you were set. Now, even the tools are changing.
The way people search for and buy products and services has changed. The way people consume media has changed. The economy has changed. Business models have changed. Your industry has changed.
In fact, the only thing that you can be sure of is that things will change. And the more things change, the more we need to learn new skills and how to deal with these changes.
It used to be the case that, once you had learned your profession or business that you could be relatively certain that those skills and knowledge would stand you in good stead for years to come. Now, not only are things changing, but they’re changing faster than ever before.
Entire industries are being reinvented in the course of just a few years – not decades. To compete, smart businesses are recognising the need to invest in training and continuing education.
Some of that will be formal training – qualifications, accredited courses and seminars. Some of it will be informal – through hands on experience, networking or simple self-study. Either way, learning should be a priority in any business – but what exactly does your business need to be learning?
What Should You Be Learning Before (and After) You Launch?
Learn About Technology and New Media: You don’t have to be doing business online to understand the importance of new online technologies and the rise of social media.
Whether you’re there or not, people are discussing you and your business online. Whether you’re there or not, your competitors are using online tools to get the edge in marketing, innovation and productivity. Whether you’re there or not, the use of the Internet continues to climb in every segment of the population and in every industry. The first step to getting to grips with it all is to be open to learning about it.
Learn About Your Industry and Advances Within It: It could be the economy, it could be foreign competition, it could be changes in legislation or the Internet or changes in the way people work. It could even be an interesting new start-up business that you’ll never see coming until they start taking big chunks of your customer base.
Learn About Marketing: As the way people consume media changes, so does the way marketing works – and doesn’t work. You need to understand and learn from the successes of others, both within and outside your market.
Learn New Management and Strategic Practices: People don’t even work in the same way now. Freelance roles, temporary and contract positions, job sharing, remote working – they all require new ways of working with your team. And when you bring it all together – the marketing, the Internet, your industry, your people – you need to start thinking differently about your business as a whole and the strategy you will take.
So how do you go about learning all this stuff?
Formal training courses can be a great way of learning about a subject but given the rate of change, even these can be out of date within a few months or years of taking them. A better approach is to open your business to new influences and ideas and become a student of business and your industry.
Read the trade magazines, go to the events, network voraciously both inside and outside your industry, spend time online reading blogs and hanging out in social networking spaces, set up news feeds to make sure all the new information is delivered straight to your inbox.
Smart businesses know that what they need to learn is the stuff that’s changing every day – which means that they need to be learning every day. An ability to learn and adapt has become a serious competitive advantage – and something you should be doing before you ever ‘open your doors’.
Recently at The Company Merchant, we helped form a company for a previous ‘contestant’ on Dragon’s Den – the hit TV show where entrepreneurs pitch for investment.
It got us thinking about the reasons why prospective entrepreneurs might go onto a show like that. Money is an obvious answer. Publicity is another.
Some honest feedback from seasoned business pros might sound good (but in reality you’re more likely to get a few quips and bad puns from Duncan, Peter, Theo and the rest as they tell you ‘I’m out’).
Finally you might consider the expertise, connections and clout that the Dragon’s might be able to bring to the party for your product. Certainly an asset to any business.
So there are definitely some positives – but the negatives are also worth bearing in mind. Being ripped apart in front of millions might not be the best PR for your brand (although they do say all publicity is good publicity).
There’s also the not-insignificant stake in your business that the Dragon’s will demand if you are successful in winning them over. There’s every chance that this will be higher than if you raised investment elsewhere.
So if pitching the Dragons isn’t for you, where else can you raise funds?
Angel Investors: Most regions will have business angel networks (groups of high net worth individuals who invest in startups) but you can also check out sites and services like – the Angel Investment Network or the British Business Angels Association.
Friends and Family (and your own money): This is how most small startups get going.
Bring in a Partner: Bringing in a partner is often a good way of raising funds and adding to your businesses skills and expertise. Make sure to agree everything in writing and be careful about who you choose to work with – a business partnership is a marriage.
Private Business People: If you know people in your industry (say a former employer) they may be worth approaching about investing in your business. They’re also a good barometer of your likely success and can offer constructive feedback (just don’t give away all your plans).
The Bank: Banks do lend money to startups although they’ll likely want some security. You should also check out government schemes like the Enterprise Finance Guarantee which can help out if you don’t have anything to put up as security.
Boot Strapping: Perhaps one of the best methods of getting a small business of the ground is NOT to seek outside investment or loans. Obviously this won’t suit every business, but if you can start and begin to grow your business without external finance, you’ll retain full ownership of the business and if you do need investment at a later stage, the fact that you’re making money will make your business that much more valuable.
Or you could just pop onto Dragon’s Den and have a go.
Depending on which side of the fence you sit on, the changes that are taking place in the world of ‘the media’ could be tremendously good news or tremendously bad.
Whatever your take, it is worth remembering that these changes have taken place in no more than 15 years. Which of course, suggests that it’s still far too early to say categorically what it all means for the future of media and publishing – or for the businesses, organisations, communities and individuals it will affect.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little stab at a some prognostication. With that in mind, here are our top three predictions for the future of the media online.
THE LINES BETWEEN CONSUMER AND PUBLISHER WILL BECOME INCREASINGLY BLURRY
Democratisation of the tools of production and distribution inevitably leads to greater diversity. If anyone can create a blog, podcast or short video about anything they want, then they’ll do just that. Some will have ‘audiences’ made up entirely of friends and family, others will attract millions of readers, viewers and listeners.
Of course just because there’s a lot of something doesn’t mean that it’s all of equal value. There is still a desire for quality, trusted content, but that content no longer has to come from a ‘media’ source – it could just as easily come from a subject matter expert, astutue amateur or even a business. The clear lines between producer and consumer, professional and amateur, have become more of a gentle slope.
This is a massive opportunity for smart businesses to establish themselves as trusted resources, for new online publications to gain market share and for traditional media outlets to leverage their hard won brands.
NEW BUSINESS MODELS AND REVENUES STREAMS WILL BLUR THE LINES BETWEEN MEDIA AND EVERY OTHER BUSINESS
Traditional media outlets are working hard to replace lost advertising revenues with new revenue models and reworkings of traditional models. While it might be tempting to focus on paid content as a silver bullet, what is much more likely is that online publishers will continue to experiment with dozens of new models.
Forward-thinking publishers of all ilks are already trialling everything from micro-payments and pay walls to branded content and even retail. Some of these experiments will work, others will fail – what we’ll be left with is an array of blended models in an unlimited variety of flavours.
MULTI-MEDIA CAPABILITIES WILL BLUR OUR DEFINITIONS
We’ve always categorised media-types based on the format of their content – magazines and books are mainly printed text, radio is sound and TV is moving images. So what happens when we start to shake these about a bit?
The web allows all these formats to exist in the same space simultaneously. An online magazine might include video interviews alongside text content. A review of a new album could contain snippets of the tracks alongside images of the artist’s latest concert and an animated infographic charting their rise to the top of the pop world. The potential only increases when you consider how these ideas might translate to the mobile web.
Of course, these are only educated guesses. The only certainty in this case is change. Messy, bumpy, blurry change. But where there’s change, there’s also opportunity.
