Every company needs to have a website – no matter what it is you do. Even if you’re a self-employed freelancer, you still need a website to act as an online portal where people can find more information about your business. 

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, your website is an excellent way to help attract more customers to your business. It’s not something you should neglect, but how do you get everything set up and started? You’ll probably have multiple business sites through the ages, but this article will look at how you get your first one up and running. 

Choose the website purpose

All websites have a purpose – or multiple purposes. In effect, this is what you want to gain from the website. For example, what’s the use of the Amazon website? It’s to show off all their products and get people to buy things. By contrast, what’s the purpose of a local coffee shop’s website? It’s to provide more information on the business, show people where it’s located, and give a glimpse as to what’s on offer. 

Different businesses will need a website for various reasons. So, decide on how you’re going to use your site before you set it up. 

Pick a platform that’s good for growth

You can set up a website using lots of different platforms. However, it’s a good idea to pick one that’s got room to cater for business growth. Something like WordPress is useful as you can design an initial website, then make it bigger and better. The beauty of WordPress development is that there are always things to add on and improve your site with. 

For me, I think it’s good to start off small and then get bigger. Don’t invest too much money on your website as it could be too expensive. Instead, make sure you have something that looks good and fulfils your main purpose. As success arrives, you can update and expand your site to make it even more impressive. 

Get professional help

Are you a website expert? No? Then it’s probably not wise to try and do everything from scratch with no help. Instead, it makes sense to get some professional professional help. You can hire freelance web designers to set everything up for you on a platform of your choosing. It won’t be free, but it’s worth the costs because you ensure that everything is done correctly. 

The alternative is trying everything on your own, then running into lots of issues that cost money to fix. In the end, you’ll probably end up hiring a designer anyway. So, save yourself the money and effort, and just get help from the very beginning. 

Remember, these tips are just here to help you get your first website up and running. Don’t sit back and admire your work; build on it! Keep updating your siteupdating your site as your business grows, and you will see a steady incline of success. So, if you don’t already have a business website, now’s the time to make one. 

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If you have ever wanted to run your own business selling handmade gifts, then now is the time to do it. In recent years there has been a considerable shift in the buying habits of consumers, and now many people want to get products that are handmade with that special personal touch. Added to this, websites such as Etsy make it so much easier for independent crafters to reach their target markets. So, why are you still sitting here? Go and get your battery powered glue guns out and get making.

Finding Your Niche

You may already have a specific craft niche that you are passionate about and good at. If you do, that’s great. Finding your niche may be easy for you. Some people enjoy a range of crafting activities and work across several styles. If this sounds like you, you will need to narrow your work down to either a specific theme or product type. There is nothing wrong with setting out a mixture of work. However, you need to be able to market your products well, and to do this, you should be able to define what you are all about clearly. 

Register As Self-Employed

Hopefully, you will make lots of money as a self-employed crafterself-employed crafter. If you do, then you will need to pay tax on this. Before you can do that you should register with your local tax office. Start keeping records of everything that you sell so that you know how much you have earnt. Keep a list of your expenditure too. If you have had to buy any stock items or equipment, then keep receipts as they will be tax-deductible expenses. 

Set Up Shop

You will need a good name for your online store, and also a look that reflects precisely what you do. Make sure your store looks professional. If you want inspiration, visit some of the most popular pages on Etsy and try and learn what works well for them. 

List Your Products

Your products need accurate, well-written descriptions. Make sure you run these through a grammar check before posting them as they need to read well. Take some clear photos that show your products off in the best way possible. Make sure you use a plain background. If you need additional images to show different aspects of the product, make sure and include these. 

Promote Your Page

Running your page does not stop with making and listing your products. You will also need to promote them too. With this in mind, set yourself profiles on the major social media networks to let your customers know that you exist. Use relevant hashtags and often post to build up a following. 

ANALYSE Your Sales

The secret behind any successful business is understanding what works for you. If lines are not selling, cut your loses, reduce them, and create alternatives. Use the analytical tools on the site to see how your visits are translating to sales. 

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If you are blessed with having a talent for fashion or even designing products, then why not turn it into a career? You’ll learn more, be given a ton of opportunities and you may even be able to turn a tidy profit too. There is however a lot that you need to know before you take that next step, so take a look below to find out more.

Think like an Entrepreneur

If you want to build your own fashion business, then you need to think like an entrepreneur. It helps to come out of the drawing room and chat with a few people who actually know the business. This will give you the chance to benefit from the experience that they have, and it will also help you to find out how the business works too.

Know your Clients

Building a business without knowing who your clients are is a big mistake. You won’t be able to move forward, and you may not even know who you are actually designing for. After all, the market is vast, with people of every age and interest. If you want to help yourself here, then you need to know your target market. Do your research and understand your trends, colours, designs and even styles too. This will help you to build a dependable profile and it will also help you to find out crucial details about your potential customer too.

Start out Small

If you want your business to be a success then you need to start out small. A lot of business owners work across a lot of different product lines, but this is not a good strategy at all. It will involve way more time and money, not to mention that it will also cause you to hire more staff than required. One of the key points to consider is to start with just one fashion product. Many small businesses start out with a single product line and then develop it so that people have faith in the design. Invest in some mannequins and show off limited designs in their truest form.

Set the Right Price

Another thing that you can do to make your fashion business truly successful is to set the right prices. Find out how much your target customers are willing to spend and then find out how much you are spending on the raw manufacturing process. This will help you to have a guideline as to how high you could charge, and how little you need to charge. Making a decent profit is crucial here because you also need to think about the cost of your staff per hour, any logistical transport you need to pay for and even what would happen if you had to source new material or even a new designer. If you fail to account for things like this then you may find that your profit suffers as soon as disruption happens within the company and this is the last thing that you need.

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Finding more customers for your business is essential for your company. The more you can do online, the better. There are so many individuals online now that have a digital presence, and so it’s worth tapping into this market wherever you can. If you have a website already, then there’s plenty that you could be doing in order to gain more customers. Here’s how to attract more customers with your website.

Improve The Design

The design of your website is pretty important because appearances can make a difference when customers come onto your website for the first time. If it’s pretty basic, then it’s going to seem boring to your customers likely, and they may not really feel like sticking around on your website. Your website might also not be really showing off what your company or brand is really about. You want to ensure that your website design is clear, interesting, and actually relates to your branding. Get someone in externally to sit down with yourself and your team to discuss what changes could be made, or it can be completely redone if it’s really bad.

Advertise On Other Websites

Advertising digitally has become a lot more popular than traditional advertising merely because you reach so many, and that’s because more of us are online now more than ever. You can also track statistics and the amount of traffic that’s clicking through to these advertising using analytic software and systems. This means you can then further tailor the advertisements that you’re creating and find out more about the target audience that you have. Start looking at the websites that are attracting a similar demographic of the audience and pick various ones that have a mixture of traffic levels. Most will likely charge for advertising space but done right, this will end up saving you a lot of money compared to traditional sources of advertising.

Connect Your Social Media

With social media, there are so many platforms that you can choose from to further expand your audience. Not only nationally in your own country but across the globe. The number of customers that are potentially out there for you to access is incredible. You should be connecting these social media accounts to your website so that everything to do with your digital presence is tied in together. Those who are familiar with your website can then interact with you on social media and vice versa. You can get downloadable logos from the social media sites themselves to feature on your website. Try to display them clearly, and they are usually placed at the very top or the bottom of the page. The top of the fold is going to be better because many people switch off before they reach the bottom.

Create Regular Content

With your website, there can be many benefits to be gained from having a blog. A blog is used for sharing information about your brand, perhaps the industry and any guides that might be helpful to your customers and that are related to what you provide as a service. This content is worth working on, and it’s worth creating it on a regular basis so that your readers who enjoy engaging with it, will know when you’re posting each day or every week. So if you can’t continue creating content for any reason, it may be worth hiring a company to do it for you or to think about hiring or outsourcing because it’s definitely worth doing. Make it regular and engage with your audience by asking them to comment below and to create conversation.

A Blog can help with your website

Hire Someone For Your SEO

SEO is one part of maintaining your website that will certainly need professional guidance. You want to be improving your SEO because it’s the main reason for bringing your website up the ranks on Google. The higher you can rank, the more traffic you’ll gain and a reputation for providing links that are strong in the eyes of Google! So whether you can outsource the services or hire a company to maintain and improve your SEO, it’s certainly worth doing. A few ways to do this yourself is to compress any images you have on your website, create more long-form content and to keep linking internally on your website, whether it’s on individual pages or on the articles in your blog section.

Make Use Of Your Mailing List

Your mailing list is where you gather customer data and use it for email marketingemail marketing and other content or news that you want to share to encourage those customers to come back and buy more. If you don’t have a mailing list or have made it possible to sign up to a mailing list on your website, then do it now. You can have it feature as a pop-up or to just have it on the side of a page. Pop-ups are likely to be more effective because they need to click off it in order to gain access to your page.

Ensure It’s Easy To Navigate

And finally, the most important aspect of your website is that it’s easy to navigate. Anything that’s confusing or isn’t laid out properly and is freezing or isn’t compatible with other devices is going to make your customers go elsewhere. Ensure it’s easy to navigate, and that might be where you get an access audit to have fresh eyes to look at your website from an accessible point of view. That way, you can get the right responses and can make the necessary changes needed to have your website easier to get around. You don’t want to lose your customers to something so simple, so make an effort to fix any issues.

Attracting customers through your website is highly effective, and as you continue to improve your website, the more traffic it’ll gain, the more profit that will be made when your readers, becoming paying customers. Follow these tips and see the difference it makes your website.

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The chances are that you started your money making venture from a home office. Whether you were freelancing or working as a solo trader, a little space dedicated to your career within your home was perfect. You limited your overheads, you didn’t have the dreaded commute into work and you could have the odd pyjama day. Fast forward a few months or a year and your business is really taking off in a big way. To grow your capability, your home office will no longer cut it. While you will be sad to say goodbye to your work from home lifestyle, you now need to hire staff and exude a more professional ethos. It’s time to make the transition from home to professional office environment.

Location

You don’t want an office space in the prime location for your sector if it means damaging your cash flow. You need to find a happy medium. At the same time, you can’t rent out a commercial building in the middle of nowhere. Get yourself a small hatchback or mini motor and become more mobile and ready for city centre driving. Smart cars are perfect as smart car servicing & parts are so readily available and cheap. You’ll also be able to park anywhere! For your employees and customers, decent transportation links are a must as is passing footfall. You are better off finding a smaller space in a prime spot rather than a large place out in the sticks.

Productivity

When you hire new staff and welcome them into your office environment, you need your workplace to be dynamic and inspiring. The dodgy looking damp and peeling wall paint just won’t cut it. Instead, you need to whip out the white paint, get some artwork on the walls, and add a splash of greenery to every corner of the office. Making the space light, bright and open plan is perfect for a more collaborative approach to working. Swap the individual working booths for teamwork pods in which to conduct meetings. Facilitate these water cooler moments and enjoy seeing people engaged with their work and being highly productive.

Staff

When hiring staff, you need to focus on personal qualities rather than qualifications. Sure, ten years of experience and a redbrick university degree is seductive, but what if they aren’t team players? Instead, invite potential candidates to the office. Talk about the goals of your startup and see if they align with their personal ethos. You can tell pretty quickly if you get along on a personal level. Consider what they can bring to the table and look out for desire, commitment and drive. These are way more important than years working for one of your competitors. You want someone who’ll stay the course rather than jump ship.

Being an entrepreneur is tough. However, when transitioning to an office based workplace, your startup productivity needs to ramp up tenfold. Follow this guide and you can manage your move from home to office with great success.

One of the hardest things about working from home is being able to keep your home office organised. Whether you’ve been working from home for years or you have only just started your business, ensuring you’re staying on top of the organisation of your office space is important. From creating lots of storage space to creating dedicated shelves for your paperwork, you need to be sure you have an organised space to work in. If you only have a small area available, consider how to use your space best, what type of desk would best suit your needs? With that in mind, here are 5 ways to organise your office better:

Make Sure You Have Lots Of Storage Space

One of the best ways to organise your office is to ensure you have lots of storage space. Although you may not have a lot of ‘office-related’ belongings, having the storage space to store all of your work equipment will allow you to have a clean and tidy office at all times. Although it may not feel like it makes much difference, research has shown that working in a tidy space can really help improve your productivity. For more information about improving your productivity in your work space, you can visit this site here.

Keep It Clean And Tidy At All Times

Another great way to ensure your office is always organised is to keep it clean and tidy at all times. Although it may be easy to fall behind when it comes to cleaning, working in an untidy office is incredibly damaging to your productivity. For tips and tricks when it comes to keeping your home office clean, you can visit this site here.

Shred Any Important Documents You May Have

If your business involves important documents that have sensitive information on them, you need to ensure you’re getting rid of them in the best possible way. Although it may seem as though it is safe to throw them into the trash, you need to be sure you’re shredding absolutely everything that contains sensitive information. For more information about confidential shredding, you can visit this site here.

Have Dedicated Shelves For All Of Your Paperwork

Another great way to organise all of your paperwork is to ensure you have dedicated shelves for everything. Whether it’s a dedicated space for invoices or space on your shelves for your receipts and purchasing information, you need to be sure you know where absolutely everything is kept.

Keep A Physical Diary To Help Organise Your Day

Finally, one of the best ways to organise your office is to ensure you have a physical diaryphysical diary on your desk. If you don’t have a physical diary where you can write down notes and appointments, you will find that you’re using rough pieces of paper to write down important information. Whilst it may prove successful to begin with, it won’t be long before you lose something important.

Are you looking for ways to improve the organisation of your office? What can you do to ensure you’re being as organised as possible? Let me know your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

Unless you have everything you need on your premises to help you manage your business, you will probably need to contact a product supplier at some point during your business life.

If you are home-based, for example, you might need a supply of paper, ink, and other stationary equipment. And if you are running a restaurant, you will need food and drink supplies, as well as those items that are necessary for a kitchen.

Finding the right supplier is important. Get it wrong, and you might run into problems later on, especially if they don’t meet your needs on time. But get it right, and you will have everything you need, without any major problem hindering your business.

With the above in mind then, these are some of the questions you might consider asking when looking for a new supplier.

Why should I choose you?

You probably have a range of suppliers to choose from, so to narrow down your options, you might want to ask each supplier for their USP (Unique Selling Point). They might sell their products at a cheaper price, for example. Or they might have a returns guarantee if you aren’t happy with their product. Faster delivery times, innovative products, and excellent customer service options are other factors that a supplier might use to win you over to their side.

Are you eco-friendly?

This is an important one, as not only should you be looking at ways to go green in your personal life, but for the sake of your professional life, you should go green in your business too. This is your way of standing ahead of the competition, as many of today’s customers prioritise companies that can prove their green credentials. Therefore, look for those suppliers who can showcase their efforts to aid the environment. As an example, Fuel Box can provide red diesel to stockists and agricultural businesses with 90% less plastic packaging, and they promise 86% less landfill waste. Could your supplier offer the same guarantee? Ask them the question, and check to see if the materials they use come from sustainable sources too.

Can you prove your credentials?

Okay, so your supplier might promise you all kinds of things when you’re talking to them on the phone, but do they have evidence to back up what they are saying? Their website might be a good indicator, as they might have customer testimonials and certifications displayed on their web pages. However, if they claim to have satisfied customers, the supplier might also provide you with their business contact details so you can speak to them yourself. Or they might have copies of letters and emails from their happy customers that can be forwarded to you as evidence. When others can vouch for the credibility of the supplier, then you know you are probably safe to move forward.

Other questions

There are other questions you should ask before making a decision. You might ask them if they can meet your demands, for example, as if they don’t have sufficient stock, then your business might one day be short of necessities. You should also ask them for a service level agreement, as this will cover both them and you in the event of any potential legal issues down the line. And there might be other questions you can think of, so write them down before contacting the supplier, and then raise them before coming to a decision.

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When you startup a business of any kind, you obviously need to find a way in which you can hope to get it out there. The more people who know about your business, the more likely it is that you are going to be able to get the kind of customer base you really need, and that is essential for the business’ ongoing success. There are many ways that you can start spreading the word about a business, and it is helpful to know about a number of them if you hope to get your business off to the right start. In this article, we will look at some of the best ways to spread the word about your business early on, thereby giving it a much better start.

Spreading the word On Social Media

There are many ups and downs when it comes to marketing on social media. Some people find that it is not quite as effective as they would like when they are trying to use it to sell a particular product or service. But social media can be a powerful tool in many circumstances, especially if you make sure that you use it right. If you use it early on just to try and get the word out about the business existing in the first place, you might well find that it is helpful for that. Likewise, any kind of generic branding attempts can be extremely powerfully done if you do so through social media, so you should absolutely consider it at the start of your business’ lifespan. You will find that this really does get the word out more effectively.

Trade Shows

There are events which are designed specifically for advertising your new business, and they are known as trade shows. You may as well make the most of these events if you want to ensure that you are getting the word out about your business as well as you can, as they are often likely to be very powerful tools. In order to succeed at trade shows, you need to find a good exhibition stand for hire and ensure that you kit it out properly, making it as attractive as you possibly can. It is also helpful if you find someone to man the stall, ideally someone who is able to speak with a lot of people in a way which is going to entice and attract them. If you can do that, you will find that people learn about your business most effectively.

Word Of Mouth

Sometimes the old ways really are the best. Word of mouth can be a hugely powerful means of allowing people to know about your business, and it’s something that you might want to make use of if you are trying to pull out all the stops with your early marketing. You’ll find that speaking to people in normal conversation actually becomes one of the best ways to spread the word about your business overall.

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The idea of working from home can seem like bliss to someone who has been working nine to five in an office for their entire lives. The idyllic days of working in your pyjamas, getting up late, supping your favorite cuppa or venturing to your local coffee shop to people watch while checking emails can appear like heaven. However, working from home while working for yourself takes some will power and if you’re a parent too, you need to be organised. It’s all too easy to procrastinate, scroll through your social media feeds for hours on end, and check out the latest rolling news ticker feed.

If you are starting out on your first entrepreneurial adventure, you might be a little overwhelmed at the sorts of duties that now fall on your shoulders. Being concerned with money will be the number one worry. However, by working from home you can save massive amounts of cash on hiring an office. Instead, working from home could be the ideal solution, at least until you expand and have to hire staff. Take a look at the joys of working from home, and also how to survive by ensuring that you maximise your own productivity.

Wake Up Early

Ok, so the lie in is a huge incentive to work from home, but have a lie in every day and you won’t wake up productive. You’ll feel sluggish and meander downstairs still in your pyjamas, switch on morning TV, and before you know it, it’s the afternoon. You need to be self disciplined and set your alarm just like you would on a normal working day. Get up, have a shower, eat breakfast and start working at your desk. Check your emails with your favourite coffee in hand, and set a plan of action for the day, ensuring that you tick off your duties you complete them. This way, you can see the impact that you are having while working from home. Although working from home affords you more freedom, if you take it, you will end up working fewer hours and being less productive. Remember, this is your way of earning a living now and you rely on no one else but yourself, so you have to get it right,

Don’t Work On The Sofa

There are way too many distractions if you choose to set up your laptop in the living room. Your sofa may be the most comfortable place in the house, but it isn’t conducive to working. Set up a home office and equip it as you would expect your desk to look if you were employed and working in a commercial premises. By setting up a wholly different area of the house, you are able to separate your work and home lives more easily. There’s nothing worse than being on the phone to a client, only for your little darlings to rush in and demand something to eat. You need an area that is for work only.

Your living room needs to be the space where you can escape your new freelance existence. This is the area where you retreat to after work, where you rest your weary bones and where you chill out in front of the TV. Your work laptop remains firmly in your home office.

Take Breaks when working from home

Just as you would if you were still employed, it’s crucial that you take breaks throughout the day. Being cooped up at home sounds lovely, but you can soon get cabin fever. Rather than running the risk of turning into Johnny from The Shining, you need to stretch your legs every so often. If the weather is good, take a stroll to the park, find a nice bench and have lunch, and take the dog for a walk halfway through the day. This gives you time to clarify your thoughts, work through what you have achieved already throughout the day, and allows you to return home reinvigorated to carry on.

Even taking a break to watch a bit of TV is no bad thing. Just don’t fall into the trap of making a sandwich, sitting down to watch the next episode from your favourite boxset only to catch forty winks. You may never wake up ready to continue with your working day!

Be Equipped Online

It’s vital that you hit the ground running as a freelancer when working from home. Get some help with your web design, enjoy updating your social media feeds, and set up a business blog. With a solid online presence, you are more visible to your potential clientele. This means that you will be busier with leads and will have less time to procrastinate. When you go freelance, there is always the nagging worry that you won’t get enough work to make a living. By ensuring that your online presence is maximized, you can attract potential clients by showing off examples of your work, by setting up a whole host of online profiles and by answering queries quickly.

Get Family On Board

Working from home may seem like an easy life to many of your friends and family. They probably have images of you relaxing in the garden, cocktail in hand as you catch a few rays while surfing the Internet. The reality is very different, so you need to try and communicate how you will be working to those closest to you. You have to have the support of family and friends when you undertake such a massive shift in your professional life. No longer will you have the camaraderie of office colleagues, so it’s important that you can chat openly with family.

If your spouse or kids are home when you are working, they need to realise that you need your professional space. Without this, you risk procrastination or frustration.

Stay Social

With your newfound freedom at home comes newfound isolation. This can come as a shock to many. No longer do you have your best office pal to have coffee with mid-morning. You don’t have work social events to attend. And you don’t have time to call up a friend for a catch up. Instead, you need to be proactive in keeping communication channels with friends open. It’s all too easy to become overwhelmed by your work life, especially in the first few months when you go freelance. You need to work hard but you also need to ensure that you don’t work yourself into the ground. You have to ensure that you not only take breaks during the day, but that you also maintain your weekends for family time and social events. Head to your pal’s barbecue, go to the movies on a midweek evening and relax with your favourite tipple every now and then. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of succumbing to pressure and stress.

Chores

Working from home means that you’ll need to become more organised with your chores. Get your lunch made the night before, put the laundry on first thing in the morning before you even switch on your laptop and think about getting yourself a dishwasher if you don’t already have one. The last thing you’ll want to do after a hard day’s work in the home office is do the dishes. Chores are boring, but they quickly build up if you don’t get on top of them. You need to set out a weekly plan for chores and stick to it. This will help you manage your time more effectively, and your home will never look like a bomb has hit it.

Becoming a freelancer is exciting, but it can also be daunting. You need to ensure that you hone your organisational skills, you prevent procrastination at all costs, and you have the support of friends and family, so you can make your foray into freelancing a success.