When faced with a claim, the expenses can be quite overwhelming. In some instances so much that it could cause more of an impact than a business can endure. However, this need not happen with adequate professional indemnity insurance. Expenses for such claims would include hiring legal representation to defend the engineer or the firm. In some situations the legal representation is needed for negotiations to avoid a legal claim going to the courts. Professional indemnity insurance would cover both of these types of legal costs. Professional indemnity insurance also can help in situations where documents have been lost. Also, situations involving dishonest behaviour or fraudulent filings can also be covered.

Professional indemnity insurance from Markel UK also covers any damages that made be awarded to the claimant. Often these awards can be rather lofty and can possibly be another stressor on the financial health of any business. Coverage can often be back dated to cover previous projects. This only hinges on if there have been no claims made.

Some engineers might be reluctant to take out a professional indemnity insurance policy due to costs. However, if you calculate the long term benefits and take into account what one claim could cost, it is actually a very responsible business decision. Most insurers offer professional indemnity insurance with high limits.

The trick to maintaining a productive working life and a happy home life within the same space is to be clear about where you work and where you don’t. Creating a functional and practical office space within your own home shouldn’t be too difficult. Make sure that you have everything you need within this space. That includes the computers, printers, documents, resources, address books, calendars… This will save you from making unnecessary trips round the house throughout the day that could easily result in non-productive distractions. To help you get your desk space in ship shape, Ryman have a range of nifty office space storage solutions as well as a range of comfortable, but not too comfortable, office furniture.

If you have more than one computer, a laptop and a desktop, for example, try to make sure that one (preferably the desktop) is used for work and the other is used for more recreational uses, such as emailing friends and family, booking holidays or indulging in a little online retail therapy. If your whole world is centred around your laptop then give yourself boundaries about when and where you use it and what for. If you are using it for work, try to keep it within the work space. If you are using it for other things, try to keep it out of the workspace.

Many work-from-home entrepreneurs find that keeping these boundaries in place helps them to switch, psychologically, from one frame of mind to another depending upon which part of the house they are in. This is something that we all need to be able to do, no matter how or where we work, but when the workplace is also your home the lines are easily blurred.

The Merchant

Any business can use affilates to promote and sell their products with considerable benefit and no risk. Affiliates are paid by results, they are not empoyees or even contractors paid for their time. If the affiliate doesn’t produce results she/he  doesn’t get paid. This way the business (the merchant) is guaranteed the result they specify in the affiliate agreement, unlike most forms of marketing where the business has to pay whether the promotion is successful or not.

The Affiliate

Any person or business can become an affiliate. You just need to recognise that you are being paid to deliver a specific result to the merchant business. Successful affiliates can make a lot of money from their marketing skills without having the more tedious tasks of product production, delivery, customer service and administration. It is quite possible to build a full time business just promoting and selling other people’s products.

Payment

The merchant is effectively sharing profits with the affiliate and, because of the much lower risk, is able to pay a significant share of the profit on each sale. There are several ways to be paid according to the required result:

• Payment for each visitor delivered to the merchant’s website (Pay per Click)
• Payment per lead generated e.g. a completed enquiry, quotation request or email address
• Payment per sale i.e. a specified amount for each sale, either a fixed sum or a percentage

The most common of these is the payment per sale though the others are growing in popularity.

Benefits

The merchant benefits by getting an independent sales force generating guaranteed results at much less risk than paying for advertising or employing  salaried sales people.

The affiliate benefits by being able to build a good income without being tied down to a business. Affiliates are able to work when, how and where they wish and thus have much more freedom than in running a conventional business of their own.

Learn more about affiliate marketing

But websites are expensive and difficult to manage, aren’t they? They take a lot of programming and other techie skills like graphics and stuff, don’t they? Well, not any more!

WordPress Websites

For quite some time now those in the know have been using a program called WordPress. Unlike Dreamweaver or Front Page or the myriad of other website design programs which are expensive and difficult to learn, WordPress is quick and easy to set up. It runs from your website, not from your own computer and, with just a little practice, anyone who can use a computer for simple email, text editing etc. can build and manage their own website. Best of all, WordPress is completely free of charge.

Some of you may have heard of WordPress before but think it is only for blogs and other personal websites, but this is not so and hasn’t been for some time. I have been building WordPress websites for myself and clients for much less cost than a conventional website, and teaching them to do it themselves for a few years now, and it’s getting easier all the time.

You will need a few things to get started. First you will need a domain name, this is your business name and address in ‘cyberspace’. You can get one of these from around £3.00 (under $5 US) a year upwards, not a great business expense. You will also need some webspace on the internet to put your website onto, if you didn’t already know this is known as ‘hosting’. This costs from £5.00 (around $8 US) a month upwards, again not expensive. Everything else you will need for a basic website you may already have or you can get free of charge.

You will need some content for your website, a mix of text, graphics, photographs etc. If you are really ambitious you can add audio and video, also for free. If you already have marketing literature such as brochures, flyers, leaflets etc. you can resuse this content on your website. If you have a digital camera, or even a camera phone, you can take a few pictures to add to your website. You will also need a design layout – there are thousands of these available for WordPress either free or for very little cost.

WordPress Training

Although WordPress is about as simple as it can get, a complete novice will need a small amount of training to get started. Please don’t be put off by this, and don’t go buying expensive training courses either. I have decided to convert one of my own WordPress websites into a training ground for my readers. It is currently being used to market my website building services but I am retiring from active client business now so I thought I would put it to use to help businesses who would like to set up their own website.

You can find the site at www.wordpresswebsites.co.uk. The training material is not there yet but I will be setting it up over the next few weeks.

Bookmark this page as I shall be updating progress on the project here as I go along.

As this is probably of interest to a lot of people and my reply was rather lengthy, I decided to answer it as a blog post here:

One of the biggest problems I have faced over the years is having too many business ideas. The world is so full of opportunities that you can end up jumping from one thing to another and ultimately getting nowhere.

Your second question helps to answer the first, if you cannot get access to start-up capital then you need to narrow down your ideas to those that you can start without capital – at least in the beginning.

Generally speaking offline, real world, businesses that can be started without capital tend to be service businesses that you can perform yourself and that don’t need business premises or selling other people’s products on an agency basis. That’s how I got started.

Online it is much easier as you can set up a website with very little money, around $10 US for a domain name and around $5 or $6 a month. If you are really short of money it is possible to start with a free website from Blogger.com or WordPress.com, until you have made enough to set up your own website. You can then use your website to sell other people’s products online as an affiliate – similar to the agency business above.

Now, down to the choice of business idea from your list. If you don’t have a list and your ideas are just floating around in your head, then write all your ideas down in a list before you forget them. Next look at each idea using the following criteria:

1. Is there a market for what you are proposing to sell? Is it big enough to sustain a growing business?

2. Are there any other people selling the same thing and making money?    If you don’t get a YES to both 1 and 2 then put the idea aside for now.

3. If you get YES to both 1 and 2, then consider if this is really something you want to do. In the beginning you will be spending long hours and days setting it up and if you don’t enjoy it, you will not be able to keep going. A question I have often asked myself during my career is “do I want to be doing this for the rest of my life?”

4. Think about the kind of people who will be your customers. Are they the kind of people you will want to spend your working life dealing with?

5. If 3 and 4 are both YES, ask yourself, “Can I really be of help to these people? What can I do for them to make their lives better? Can I do it better than someone else who is already in this business?” The only way to build a successful business is to create happy customers who will recommend you to others.

6. If you are still getting YES’s, Can you produce the product or provide the service at a price that people are willing to pay and that will cover all your costs and give you a good profit? Can you sell enough to ensure that profit will give you the personal income you want and leave some over to reinvest in growing your business?

7. Can you easily and inexpensively communicate the benefits of what you are selling to your prospective customers and easily deliver the product or service to them?

If you have got this far with all YES’s, then you are already ahead of 90+% of people with business ideas! You will have narrowed down your list of ideas considerably, possibly even down to one.

If you still need more deciding factors then carry on with the following:

8. Once the business has been successfully launched, can you give most of the work to other people to do, either by outsourcing or employing people full or part time? If so you will be able to grow your business as large as the market will take. If not you will be limited by your own time and energy. Some people are quite happy to keep the business small enough to do everything themselves but others need to grow.

9. Is it the kind of business you will be able to get someone else to manage? If so, you can then look at other business ideas, if you have that kind of ambition.

10. Does the business have the potential to be sold as a going concern to someone else in the future or is it too dependent on you? If so you can sell and retire or start another business.

ABOVE ALL, once you have decided which business to start, give it your full and undivided attention until it is running successfully or it fails completely. Let nothing distract you from building your business and do not be tempted by other ideas not related to this business until it is capable of running almost by itself.

This is not a complete blueprint on how to run a business, but it should help you to choose the best idea from those you already have.

I hope it helps

John

I’ve mentioned Information Product Publishing in a couple of earlier posts as being a potentially good choice of business. For many years it has been popular as a choice for mail order and more recently it has emerged as a top earner as an internet based business.

Information products lend themselves readily to the internet, which is a perfect information publishing platform, because the products can be produced electronically in a downloadable format. This means that production and distribution costs are extremely low giving a good potential profit on even modestly priced products.

A couple of the early pioneers of information publishing online produced a course several years ago to help others to get started with simple little websites producing information products on a variety of specialist topics, they called it Underachiever Mastery. Why underachiever? Because each website, being narrowly focussed on it’s own topic, didn’t make a great deal of money. But a whole network of these little websites collectively made quite a large amount of money.

Times have moved on and this product has been off the market for a long time. But now another prolific information publisher, Russell Brunson, has picked up the baton and is launching a revised and updated version of this course, together with the necessary software tools to make it work more easily. It’s called Underachiever Secrets and it launches today at 2pm EST (7.00pm UK time).

I’m helping Russell with the launch promotion of Underachiever Secrets and I’ve set up a new website to do this. It gives the history of the product and the concept together with launch information.

If information publishing is of interest to you, and remember many mail order millionnaires made their fortunes selling information products and they are a huge seller online too, take a look at my new site at:

www.underachieversecrets.info

Starting a new business or growing an existing one is particularly challenging at the moment. In all my years of business I have never seen such an uncertain economic outlook. Yes we have been through a number of past recessions, this is my fifth, but there was always a degree of certainty – albeit not always positive!

However, uncertainty creates opportunities for those who can see past the present negative press reports. In my experience an economic downturn can provide as many opportunities as boom times and sometimes even with less risk. Yes, I did say less risk. In a downturn people take more care and are more alert to risk whereas during an economic boom they can be careless, as we have seen all too clearly in the last couple of years or so. But the key business factors never change:

• Clear and specific business objectives and business plan
• A hungry market with specific needs or wants
• A quality product that delivers exactly what they want at an affordable price yet still produces a profit
• Customer service and reliability that gains trust and a good reputation
• Active and consistent targeted marketing
• Fast response to enquiries and systematic follow-up
•  Sound cashflow and financial control
• Minimal borrowings relative to cashflow
• A positive attitude to your market place and your business and a willingness to ‘go the extra mile’ to satisy your customers

So, where do you want to be at the end of this year? How do you propose to get there? Whose needs can you best serve? What can you do for them that will please and delight them and ensure that they will tell all their friends?

Somewhere out there are people who need what you have to offer, all you have to do is find them and tell them what you have and how it will help them, then over deliver to the best of your ability.

Good luck and have a great year.

Buying an office is expensive and risky, plus potentially limiting. If you outgrow it then you have to sell before you move on, an increasingly difficult task with the currently unstable property market. Renting can therefore provide a great solution, offering flexibility in terms of price, office type and length of lease.

If you need a whole building, part of one, a room or even just a desk, there are options to suit every situation and budget.

For truly hassle free leasing, serviced offices provide a great solution: Fully equipped and managed, individual offices or floors are rented out. You don’t have to buy computers, desks, phones and cleaning and maintenance will all be taken care of – some even have a reception service, perfect for giving the right impression to customers. This is a great choice for a business that needs to look flash without the cash – the costs of setting this up from scratch would be prohibitive to most small companies.

Whether serviced or not, different spaces tend to attract different business types and by getting yourself in with the ‘right’ pool of companies, this could greatly enhance your own offering. Creative environments can be inspiring and if you work alongside a complementary business you may be able to help each other out and go for jobs collectively. If you know a number of businesses in the same position as you, why not pool together and share a building.

With risk low on many people’s agenda due to the economic difficulties the country is in, renting a workspace, short or long term, is a great option for any fledgling business. If you expand and everything goes well, you can move on to somewhere bigger and better, but if things don’t work out in your favour, then it’s easy to leave without incurring too much financial hardship.

About the author: Jessica Lowe writes on behalf of Office Genie, the UK’s first proper online marketplace for desk space and shared office space

Being so reserved actually stops you from being the kind of aggressive or ‘pushy’ salesman we all hate, and that’s a good thing. People are becoming very resistant to the traditional ‘the more you talk, the more you sell’ approach, especially when it’s over-hyped! What people are looking for is answers to questions, solutions to problems and how to achieve eternal happiness . And they’ll happily pay whoever can supply what they want.

Now, I used to be shy too, I guess I still can be reserved sometimes. When I first started out selling, friends and family were aghast! “How is John ever going to sell anything?” was the question they all asked. But I had learned that the best conversationalists do more listening than talking.

Most people love to talk about themselves if you press the right button. You do that by asking targeted questions that get them talking. Questions about their interests, problems, dreams etc. then listen, I mean really listen, because they are going to tell you what to sell them. If they start to dry up ask a question about something they’ve just told you, something that will tell you more about what they want out of life. After a while they’ll think you’re their best pal and will listen to your recommendations. Use this technique in conversation, in selling, even in dating (boy, does it work well there  )

It doesn’t have to be face to face, but it works really well in that form.  You can do it over the phone, in a sales letter or on a website. This is really what Geoff (the guy who’s post I was reading) is doing with his blog. He listens to the ‘online conversation’, posts a comment or a question here and there and people answer him, so he learns what he needs to keep the conversation  going and the sales coming in.

When you know what people want, you don’t have to ‘sell’ them anything, you just have to let them know where they can get it and that’s from you. Everyone is good at something and usually that ‘something’ is being sold profitably by someone, somewhere. If you are good at a particular thing, they might just as well buy it from you, especially if you are better than wherever they are getting it at the moment. Or better still, if they can’t find it at all.

But you do have to join the conversation, go on, just do it!

Good selling!

John

PS  I  got a great product idea just from reading the comments section and by listening to and  understanding the readers’ concerns. So I’m really glad I joined in the conversation.

If you don’t know Ian Traynor, that’s a shame because Ian is one of the online world’s ‘Marketing Gentlemen’, as is well known in webmaster and internet marketing circles. A shame also because you have missed one of the best internet marketing newsletters online, the Marketing Update newsletter, now in its final issue. I have been an update subscriber since January 2006, though I had seen Ian’s name around the web before then. Then I found him following me on Twitter, presumably because of this blog so I followed him back.

I consider Ian a personal friend even though we’ve never met in person, but that’s the internet for you:-). Though I hope to change that now that he, and shortly I, have both retired and have more time. We both have a lot in common Ian and I. We’re both 65 this year and we live in  adjoining English counties, he in Yorkshire and I in Lincolnshire. We’ve both been webmasters for 15 years and internet marketers for 10 and we’ve both been teaching small businesses to market online. I have been teaching groups of entrepreneurs offline in seminars, workshops and conferences; Ian has done it via his newsletters, websites, ebooks and marketing tools such as his legendary Internet Marketers Cheat Kit!

Ian has helped countless people to market online, not just by teaching but also by providing some great marketing and website tools. And he has delivered, in my humble opinion, some of the best quality and best value material anywhere. He is also one of the most approachable people in our business, he deals with his emails personally rather than using robots and has always welcomed contact from his readers.

I wish you and your good lady a very happy, healthy and fullfilling retirement Ian

John

Reader Opportunity

I mentioned an opportunity for you at the beginning of this post in connection with Ian’s retirement and that is his ‘Grand Retirement Sale’. He has put a huge quantity of his best products into a single package which is so good I’ve already grabbed it, even though I already had some of them! The opportunity to grab the rest while they were still available was too good to miss and a real snip at the price. Many of the top marketers in our field have also chipped in with some of their own stuff as free bonuses, and good products they are too. The sale is on until 21st July, so go take a look at his webpage and see what you can pick up for pennies on the dollar.

Update 22 July…

Ian’s sale finished yesterday. Sorry if you missed it but I have some good news. Ian is keeping on one of his projects, the Private PLR Club – of which I have been a member from the beginning, and ‘beefing it up’ even more. I’m personally relieved at that as some of my best products come from that particular source. I’ll keep you informed of this as it develops further.

If you are not familiar with Private Label Rights (PLR), it is a form of product licensing and is a brilliant way of sourcing information and software products for both online and offline businesses. I’ll put up a post here soon to explain further how to use PLR to set up a simple business.