05/29/2015
What is a Domain Name Strategy?
The purpose of a domain name strategy is to proactively protect your brand online by reducing the chance for others to use your brand name in their online activities, specifically, in their website URLs.

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05/28/2015
Innovation is usually used to describe ways of adding value to things that already exist. Invention is the creation of something that never existed before. And then there is creativity.

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05/27/2015
From making a financial plan to creating an exit strategy, here are some helpful tips for establishing and running your small business.

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05/26/2015
Walk around any town in Indiana and you can see it: Small businesses are the lifeblood of our state and the engine of our economy. And yet, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is set to implement a rule that would harm Hoosier small businesses.

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06/12/2015
All major wireless operators available in the U.S. offer some international roam, but the volume varies by network. To get an understanding of how your network will fare abroad, or to understand which carrier to choose if you are a regular traveler, you should first understand the two basic major technologies that wireless operators use.

How to Travel With Your Cell Phone Without Breaking the Bank

06/10/2015
Do all small business owners need to pay sales taxes? Yes, the majority of businesses that are sales oriented are required to pay taxes to the home state or other locations where they do business. There are only a handful of states that do not require taxes from businesses - Oregon, Alaska, New Hampshire, Delaware, Hawaii and Montana, for the rest of us, sales taxes are something worth paying close attention to.

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06/08/2015
Loyal customers are precious. Identifying the details and creating a system to make sure they are taken care of is key.

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06/05/2015
Established businesses have one obvious advantage over their younger counterparts: Deep pockets.

Fortunately, what todays small business lacks in budget can be made up for with strategy and a few carefully chosen tools. Here are six smart marketing ideas gleaned from my experience running a company that teaches small firms how to compete with big ones.

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06/03/2015
Entrepreneurs are born idea people, with a seemingly endless supply of light bulbs flashing over their heads. But it takes more than good ideas to find your market niche and to build a successful business. It is even harder to do if you are not familiar with the market thats drawn your interest.

Small Business Tech Report

06/01/2015
A report commissioned by eBay finds that more than 190,000—or 90 percent—of its small and medium-sized businesses used its platform to export in 2014. (Tweet This) To compare, in 2009, fewer than 30,000 were exporting. The findings come from eBay's Public Policy Lab in its 2015 U.S. Small Business Growth Report.

Despite that growth, less than 5 percent of U.S. small businesses overall are exporting, according to estimates from the International Trade Administration.

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05/29/2015
Why you should you blog?

Through posting simple things such as helpful tips, special discounts or the latest industry news you can effectively maintain your customer relationships and give people a reason to visit to your website.

More recently blogging and content marketing has been widely used to enhance SEO strategy. Writing articles around the keywords that you are targeting will help to improve rankings in search engines. Furthermore, if you write unique and valuable articles, other websites will link to your content and as a result; this will increase your website's back-links.

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05/27/2015
By 2020, most small businesses in the U.S. will be powered by the cloud, according to Intuit. Is your business ready?

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05/25/2015
What do you want to achieve in 2015 for your small business? The beginning of January is the time for New Year's resolutions, so here are my top 10 resolutions for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

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05/22/2015
Every business owner should be forecasting sales. You may use actual numbers if you have historical financial records. But what do you do if you have nothing to refer back to? You will need to determine how many potential customers are there and how many of these potential customers are likely to buy from you, decide the average sale per customer, and then project this out for the year.

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05/20/2015
If you are thinking about starting a new business in one of the states in the US, then this list of 10 best states for business taxes could be very useful to you.

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05/18/2015
Despite the warning, a number of extremely well known brands are still scrabbling to minimise the impact of Google’s mobile algorithm update, leaving smaller businesses with the advantage as long as they do not panic according to leading UK and US Search experts.

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05/15/2015
Small business startups may fuel the economy, but that does not mean that they always succeed. In fact, according to a study published by Bloomberg, 80 percent of businesses fail within the first year and a half, which is a pretty dismal outlook for aspiring entrepreneurs.

The reason that so many businesses fail, in large part, is due to poor financial planning. In order to beat the odds and to get your business moving on the right track, consider the following financial advice.

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05/13/2015
Not heeding these warnings can lead to costly mistakes, such as litigation and employee turnover.

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05/11/2015
At one time or another, virtually everyone thinks about starting a business. The allure of being your own boss can be strong, but it is important to remember that launching a new business is risky: According to a recent SBA report, [about 50% of all small businesses will fail within just five years.

Managing a startup can be a minefield, especially when the pull of entrepreneurship clouds your decision-making – and when you go it alone with no business experience.

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05/08/2015
Owning your own business is often touted as the ultimate coup in the working world. You set your own hours, pursue projects you are interested in, and maybe work in your pajamas. Obvious challenges aside, it sounds like a pretty nice gig. Such jobs are largely enjoyed by men, who make up an estimated 71 percent of business owners in the U.S. But that might slowly be changing.

A report from the Institute of Womens Policy Research shows that women are steadily increasing their presence in the world of small-business ownership. About 29 percent of Americas business owners are women, that is up from 26 percent in 1997. The number of women-owned firms has grown 68 percent since 2007, compared with 47 percent for all businesses.

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05/06/2015
The skills gap is widening and workers are feeling it. In fact, Lynda.com recently conducted an online survey of nearly 10,000 respondents, and found that about half of them lacked confidence in their job skills.

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05/04/2015
When launching a startup, it always helps if the industry you're breaking into does not have a juggernaut with the power to crush the competition.

While almost every sector has incumbent market leaders and new rising stars, certain industries are fragmented to the point where no single player has a major stranglehold.

As a part of Inc.s annual look at the best industries for starting a business, we decided to highlight the niche sectors that are projected to grow during the next few years and that do not have an industry leader dominating the market.

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