Website owners that want to make some money with their website, applies to the Adsense program. Assuming that their site complies with Google policies, the website is accepted to the program. Then the site owner (or editor) inserts a simple javascript into the page code.

On some other part of the world, some business owner decides to spend some money on advertising. They decide to go on with internet marketing and applies to Google Adwords program. They tell Google how much they are ready to pay monthly and give some basic info about their business by defining a set of  “keywords”.

A software, which is simply called Googlebot, visits its Adsense member websites and gets information about what these sites are about. According to this, Google decides on which publisher site to locate the advertisement above.

The basic and brilliant idea behind is that your ad (that you have paid for) will be published on some site that is basically have info about your business. This simply increases the chance of the visitor to click on your ad.

You can read more about Adsense on Ron Mertens’ knol here….

This knol about franchising your business mainly explains to you the 9 issues you should take care in order to franchise your business. Here is the recap of the 9 issues:

1. Franchise Operations Manual – This is the blueprint for a franchisee to run their business. The more detailed, the better, no matter how simple things are.
2. Pilot Operation – Although you are already running a business, you need to make sure it will still operate at arm’s length. Before offering your franchised business to public, you should test the system within your own business or store, at least one.
3. Franchise agreement – The Franchise Agreement governs the relationship between you and your franchisees and is an important source of protection for your business.
4. Franchise Sales Document – You need to think about the type of franchisee (persons) you want attract to your franchise business – The right message in your sales document will help you achieve it.
5. Franchisee Training – You need to decide what training your franchisees will need, how to train them and who will actually carry out the training.
6. Franchise Investment Costs – The amount of initial fee payable by the franchisee needs to be clear, and also the level of ongoing payments from the franchisee to you.
7. Recruiting Franchisees – You will need to produce a franchise sales document outlining your system and what is expected from your franchisees, and also establish a recruitment process.
8. Franchise Management and Support Staff – They will usually be responsible for selecting franchisees, and providing the ongoing support and guidance that is essential for the franchisees to build their business.
9. Professional Advice – Always ask for help, from both online and offline professional advice and franchise information offered by a franchise consultant, accountant and solicitor.

For more detailed explanations on how to franchise a business, please visit the knol.

Here are some pricing method Regnard Raquedan, the knol writer, suggest you:

1. Cost-plus Pricing: In this first method, you will arrive at the price by adding your desired profit to your base cost.
2. Target Return Pricing: The Target Return Pricing method works similarly to the Cost-plus Pricing method, but it takes into account your desired Return on Investment (ROI).
3. Value-based Pricing: Value-based pricing takes a different approach because the final price is rests not on you, but on your client.
4. Psychological Pricing: Psychological pricing plays on your clients’ perception of a good, fair price to what you are offering. This method is the easiest to use because there are really no hard and fast rules in setting your price.

For more details on how to price your web design work right, including how to compute for the above pricing methods, please pay a visit to this useful knol.

In general, small business is usually defined as a business with less than 500 employees. That being said, a sole proprietor business is, indeed, a small business.

This “band” of the number of employees makes marketing to small businesses a challenging task – Marketing to a sole proprietor business employs different strategy to marketing to a 500-employee business. So, yes – size does matter in small business.

The solution, referring to Anita Campbell’s knol, is to find a way to segment your target market that make sense.

Please do visit Anita’s knol to learn more about small business market size.

Choosing the wrong legal structure will tarnish your business potential. How to decide which business legal structure that is the right one for you and your business? You might want to consider this knol on business legal structure written by Standard Legal.

Here’s the recap of the business legal structure:

Corporation

A corporation is recognized as being separate and apart from its owners (that are called “shareholders”) As a separate entity, it has its own rights, privileges, and liabilities apart from the individuals who form it.

The advantages:

• The shareholders of a corporation are generally not personally liable or responsible for the debts or obligations of the corporation.
• Many view the corporate structure as being permanent, thus adding credibility and stature to a business.
• A corporation can be the most enduring legal business structure.
• Capital can be more easily raised with a corporation.
• Corporations can offer anonymity to its owners.
• Tax Advantages – Deductible Employee Benefits.

Limited Liability Company

A limited liability company (called an “LLC”) is a legal entity that, in the eyes of the law, exists separate and apart from its owners. The owners of the LLC are called “members” (as compared to a corporation, where the owners are referred to as “shareholders”).

The advantages:

• The LLC, like a partnership, is given a pass through tax treatment.
• Many view the corporate structure as being permanent, thus adding credibility and stature to a business.
• The LLC provides liability protection for the members.
• The LLC provides flexibility in management, compared to the relatively rigid corporate structure.

Sole Proprietor

A sole proprietorship is generally owned by a single individual or by several family members. A sole proprietor maintains and retains complete control of and responsibility for the business, receives all profits, is responsible for all loss, as well as all taxes and liabilities of the business.

General Partnership

A partnership operates by an agreement (either orally or in writing) by and between two or more people acting as co-owners of a for-profit business. The partners share personal liability for all claims against the partnership and share all profits and losses.

Limited Partnership

In a limited partnership there must be at least one general partner who manages the business and who is fully and personally responsible for all claims against the partnership business. In addition, there are investors (i.e. the limited partners – known in the past as “silent” partners) who do not engage in the management of the business and whose liability for the business is limited to the extent of their investment into the business.

Like a partnership, the liabilities and distribution of profits are based upon the agreement reached by all of the partners. Limited Liability Partnership.

For a more thorough explanation on business legal structures, please visit the knol.

Productivity is different from one person to another. For instance, an entrepreneur spending hours in a local coffee shop to watch the pattern of customers coming and going might be considered as unproductive, but not to the entrepreneur. Another example, a musician seeking inspiration on a scenic bridge is viewed by the artist as productive, but not to the others.

A knol by Leon Ho, the founder of Hongkong-based Lifehack.org, explains the essence of productivity.

The elements of productivity

According to the knol, there are 5 elements of productivity:

1. Organization: Most people require a sense of order to be productive. There are two main types of organizing, task-organizing and environmental-organizing. Although not always a prerequisite, both forms of organization smooth the ability to work productively.
2. Time-management: The principle behind time management is that productivity is a function of how you allocate your time. If you waste your time doing tasks that don’t have any direct value, that time is wasted. A couple strategies of time management include compressing, scheduling and efficiency.
3. Energy-management: Energy management is the process of building energy to use at work. Energy management began to gain considerable popularity after it was thoroughly covered in the book, The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr. The basic idea of energy management is that you should be building energy along with operating in cycles of energy.
4. Goal setting: Goal setting is the process of setting measurable, realistic and objective deadlines for your work. Goal setting creates clarity in helping to establish a context for what work is considered productive.
5. Prioritization: Productivity requires distinguishing low-value from high-value tasks. Sometimes this distinction is clear: writing is more valuable than watching television if you want to finish a novel. Other times the dividing line is blurred. Choosing which job to take in similar environments or whether to make client calls or finish work on a report may be difficult to distinguish.

For more details, please visit Leon’s knol.

You always want to put keywords on the right place for the search engine, but this could turn-off your readers due to the weird wording structure. In the other hand, you want to entice your reader with excellent wording and structures, but this could turn-off search engines due to the excessive wording that lack keywords.

Finding the balance is the key to successful SEO copywriting. A knol written by Glenn Murray offers you tips for a better SEO copywriting. Here is the excerpt:

1. Categorise your pages: Before writing, think about the structure of your site.
2. Find out what keywords your customers are searching for: These are the words you’ll want to use to describe your product or service.
3. Use phrases, not single words: Why? Firstly, there’s too much competition for single keywords. Secondly, research shows that customers are becoming more search-savvy – they’re searching for more and more specific strings.
4. Pick the important keyword phrases: Don’t include every keyword phrase on every page.
5. Be specific: Don’t just say “our computers”. Wherever you would normally say “our computers”, ask yourself if you can get away with saying “our cheap second hand Macs” or “our cheap second hand PCs”.
6. Use keyword phrases in links: Although you shouldn’t focus on every keyword phrase on every page, it’s a good idea to link your pages together with text links.
7. Use keyword phrases in headings: Just as customers rely on headings to scan your site, so to do search engines. This means headings play a big part in how the search engines will categorise your site.
8. Test keyword phrase density: Generally speaking, a density measurement of around 3% is what you’re looking for. Any less, and you’ll probably need to take another pass.

One word of advice: Don’t overdo the SEO in copywriting – you could end up turn-off readers and search engines! Seek professional help that can offer you the balance.

You can maximise your networking, that almost always translated into more earning and more business. A knol written by Katie Liljeberg offer you 6 ways to maximise your networking. The excerpt is as follow:

1. Master the power of giving. Networking and giving have an incredible “boomerang effect” in that what you give will always come back to you in some form—that is the law of giving.
2. Expand your thinking beyond yourself. Move away from the idea that you can work your business successfully on your own—this limits you in more ways than one!
3. Utilize your entire vast network. Take time to reconnect and polish up those connections that have become weak.
4. Dish out the praise. Praising others brings people to a higher level of energy and awareness.
5. Listen and be mentally engaged. Give your full attention to what the other person is saying; and a connection will be created that goes beyond the words being spoken.
6. Remain committed. This is what separates a mediocre networker from a successful one.

Doing all 6 effectively will allow you to grow your network, your business, and your reputation as a networker.

Please visit Katie’s knol for more explanation on the 6 ways.

One thing that Baskerville does that is quite interesting is he refutes the idea that traditional business plans are good. In fact, he completely disagrees with a traditional business plan for today’s entreprenuers. The following are his reasons for not going with a traditional, run-of-the-mill business plan:

You can’t research new – The foundation stone for the traditional business plan is market research but most new opportunities for entrepreneurs are created in worlds characterised by great turbulence and considerable change. Consequently, it is extremely difficult to do business planning research on fast changing and evolving markets. There is just not any meaningful data in these markets which leads entrepreneurs to value the ‘trial and error’ (effectual) approach far more than the goal, research and analysis approach required of a traditional written business plan.

Change is inevitable – Experienced entrepreneurs know and accept that entrepreneurial business enterprises change and morph substantially in the foundation stages until they eventually settle on their sustainable growth path. They know and accept that a percentage of their plan will not work but it is impossible for them to identify in the planning phase which parts these will be. They know that there are just too many variables in resources, market acceptances, product developments and the entrepreneur themselves to predict meaningfully in detail over the traditional 3-5 year business plan. Entrepreneurs rely more on their ability to adapt to the changing environment as it evolves than carrying out the detailed instructions of a plan fundamentally created in ignorance.

Windows of opportunity close quickly – Entrepreneurs know better than most that timing is everything. All opportunities have a trigger point where action and commitment is required for that opportunity to be exploited. They know that ‘windows of opportunity’ are fleeting and require timely action or they can be lost forever. They believe that the cost of devoting scarce resources to researching and writing a traditional business plan is greater than the any benefit received, particularly if a ‘first mover advantage’ in the marketplace is lost due to this usually 3-6month delay.

The plan is already in play – Over 70% of successful entrepreneurial enterprises are started by current domain experts who have directly experienced the pain of a particular problem for which they have come up with a solution. This experience usually occurred while working for someone else or with a previous employer. These entrepreneurs question the need or value of writing a traditional business plan and are more likely to use their insider knowledge and experience and strategic alliances to firstly evaluate the opportunity and then to take it to market via their highly accessible distribution channels.

Planning tools need not be so ridgid – The traditional business plan presents as a ‘one size fits all’. How many entrepreneurs have struggled with the templates asking question about the past performance of the business or the current status in terms of operations. The traditional business plan has a bias towards an existing business going forward and is not well structured for an ‘idea whoes time has come’, as it is for most entrepreneurs.

Getting it wrong is no great loss – The advent of the internet as a means of business entry has made the cost of being wrong almost negligible. Through the medium of eBay, on-line marketing and the like, products and services can be tried and tested in the ‘real world’ prior to any significant commitment of resources. This allows for the process of modification and adaptation of the business model to meet the market needs ‘on the fly’ and so creates a far more commercially proven business plan (proof of concept) than the traditional generally untested written ones. These entrepreneurs focus on an affordable loss approach rather than get carried away by the ‘blue sky’ estimates of traditional business plans.

To continue reading more about how to write a business plan, please visit the original article posted by Peter himself.

All risks of public relation and press release are coming back to one activity that is commonly held between the business owner, public figure or news sources with the journalists – an interview.

A knol in Google Knol elaborates this loudly and clearly, with first hand stories and case studies.

The Image Guru, the knol writer, explain that it is not advisable for news sources to go off the record with reporters. Although there are pros and cons about the advise, the knol writer explain that from his experience, going off the record has devastating effects.

One of his stories involves a news source being interviewed about a product launch, iPhone. The news source go off the record with the reporter, mentioned some international product variants doing well in the market. What next, the statement headlined into ‘launch of new phones by Company X to compete with the iPhone’ – this undermine the plan by the iPhone-selling company.

The Image Guru suggested that news sources have to know when to say no to reporters. He then stated that there is no such thing as ‘off the record’. Again, learn to say no to reporters’ tricky questions that aimed to open up ‘more detailed’ conversation.

Image by scragz.