Here’s a rundown on some of the tips offered by Jason.

* Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are often a rip-off.
* Fire anyone who doesn’t love working at your business.
* Buy everyone a second computer monitor, they save time.
* Buy an expensive coffee machine to prevent people leaving the office and spending money at Starbucks
* Get a fridge in, stock it full of sodas
* Use Macintosh computers and don’t buy more than a couple of copies of Microsoft Office. Most people can use Google Docs.
* Buy your hardest working staff extra computers for home use
* Don’t bother investing in a phone system; people use email, IRC, chat or mobiles.
* Outsource all Human Resources and Accounting functions
* Allow and encourage flexible working hours
* Use Google mail, don’t bother with stuff like Exchange servers
* Recruiters? Dump ‘em. Save money by doing your own using LinkedIn and FaceBook.
* Same with PR agencies on fat retainers. Use good freelancers on a project basis.

While I don’t necessarily agree with all these suggestions, I’m sharing this wavelength. Everyone starting up or running their own small business ought to sit down and come up with their own list, particular to their organisation. But start-ups have really got to pay particular attention to their costs and to the people they hire, otherwise it’s going to be much tougher to get to that break-even point. If start-up employees aren’t prepared to give their absolute all and ‘share the vision’, then maybe they would be better off somewhere else.

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It was, but then I discovered a cool bit of code to automatically optimise a Wordpress blog for iPhone users. Check it out! (enough of this tech talk already)

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However I have to say, it’s simply blown me away by its ability to save me time. How so?

I do one heckuvalot of reading, mainly of blogs, which are nicely presented and aggregated through my Google Reader. None of my other phones including the Nokia P900i and the Treo presented the web in any way clear enough or fast enough to really bother with.

But on the iPhone, it is unbelievably quick – obviously over wifi, but less obviously over Edge. It is just so easy to use, that even if I have my laptop right there in front of me, I find myself opting to use the iPhone browser instead. I am just so surprised. Clicking on email http links whisks me straight into the web browser and having up to eight browser windows available is a real bonus. So what you might say, that’s just the web. But look at the huge inroads that web software companies are making lately on the market as a whole. Try running Salesforce on an iPhone – it rocks!

Apple are also looking to go on the attack with the pending release of the SDK over the next couple of weeks, which will broaden the existing thousand or so web applications by some degree. IT managers are hunkering after a hook-up with Microsoft Exchange – that feature alone will immediately blow away some of the Blackberry advantage.

It’s been said that the iPhone is the Trojan horse that Apple have built to sneak into the business enterprise market.

I was reading a survey carried out earlier this month by tech research company, ChangeWave Research. They surveyed enterprise smart phone users and found that 59% of business iPhone users were ‘very satisfied’ with their phone. That compared with only 47% of BlackBerry users and 40% of Nokia users. That looks like a clean sweep to me, and this is before Apple has gone head-to-head on the Windows email issue.

My bet is that Apple, having cleared their initial hurdle of getting early adopters on their side, will say thanks to AT&T in the US and thanks to O2 in the UK, you guys did well for our launch, but consumers and businesses are demanding that we make the product available to the other carriers.

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The report looks specifically at the check-out process used by these successful e-tailers and studies what effect 23 tactics have on conversion rates. For example, what effect does a quicker check-out process have? Does live chat help increase conversions? Is it better to cut out all navigation links during the check-out process, to narrow the buyer’s focus? Should return policies be displayed on each page?

This excellent report is free and can be downloaded from here.

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Yet you know that a disposal of shares is rightly the ultimate goal and conclusion. Right from the very first stage of setting up or buying a business, the underlying thread to all your strategies should be to position the business for sale. ‘What is going to be most valuable to a potential purchaser?’ is the guiding question.

Understand the value-drivers in your business. Then take the necessary steps to make your business better and more attractive to a business buyer than the competition. Put robust systems and management in place that will facilitate rapid growth.

All the while, think about exactly who might be looking for businesses for sale like yours. Keep a file on potential suitors. When the time comes, this will form an invaluable ‘hot file’ of leads.

Try not to be too sentimental. If the price is right, ‘take the money and run’. Although in practice, you may have to hang a round a while for the best possible price. Many buyers will pay an initial tranche followed by the balance after a transition period, often insisting that the owner is at hand for this time. So you do need to think about whether the relationship is right between you and the buyer of your business, as you may well be working closely together for the period of the transition or earn-out, and a failure in co-operation might have an adverse effect on the final payout figure.

You may also be concerned about the welfare of your staff, and finding a buyer who you can trust in this respect is sometimes more important than scraping an extra hundred thousand out of the deal. You can do your bit beforehand by ensuring key employees have effective contracts with appropriate notice periods in place.

Good advice is to start negotiating with the potential purchaser not as an adversary, but as a friend. Being intransigent over every issue will ultimately be counter-productive and can put the whole transaction in jeopardy. You need to structure a win-win scenario, where everyone is feeling like they are walking away with a good deal.

Remember to demonstrate to the buyer that there is serious growth potential left in the business. Try to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes for a minute and think “where is the upside, what kind of scale is there here, how fast can I grow this business?” Strive to provide the answers to these questions beforehand; you need to offer convincing reasons, not a general comment like “the market is going to be huge in 5 years time”.

The road to a business sale is often fraught with emotional turmoil and anxiety. However the rewards for a properly planned exit always make it worthwhile in the end.

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For his own privacy he asked me to not use his real name or disclose his identity in the article, which I will respect. For the sake of this story I’ll refer to him as John.

A bit of background

John was brought up in a lower middle class family. His family was definitely not wealthy, but they had a roof over their heads and food on the table for every meal. John was an only child to two people that were not quite fit to be parents. Like I said before, they put a roof over his head and fed him, but other than that they had no real connections with John. If they ever went anywhere he was left at home, they would not support him in any of his activities, nothing. Other than the food and housing, John supported himself with part time jobs since he was 12 years old. John eventually became very depressed because of the rejection he felt from his parents. By the time he got out of high school, John knew that he would no longer be able to live at home or he would end up killing himself because of how miserable he was. John moved out into a 1 bedroom apartment on his own after he graduated. He was barely able to pay for food and rent with his job at a nearby market. After about 3 months out on his own, John lost his job. The market he worked at closed down and left him jobless. After weeks of searching for a new job unsuccessfully, John decided he may have to move back home. He went to his house to talk to his parents about this, but shockingly they no longer lived there. He had not kept in contact with his parents while he was on his own for obvious reasons, so he had no idea that they moved away. John was now 3 days away from being homeless, and 3 days later he was.

Being homeless sets in

John was literally homeless now. He lived out on the streets just like you would imagine. The thing about John is that he had never been lazy by any means, he was a very hard worker. He spent his days looking for work. Within a week he had found some opportunities that looked promising, but he didn’t have any reliable mode of transportation and this was not attractive to employers. After about a week and a half of not finding work, John had nearly given up. He literally didn’t have a penny to his name. With such depression and discouragement setting in, John found himself in the local library looking for self-help books because this was the only thing he had access to without paying for it. Since John wasn’t much of a reader the book thing really didn’t work out for him, but the library offered something else that was of interest to John, free internet. Free internet access was great to him, he could keep himself entertained and get his mind off of all the problems he was having in his life.

Finally some hope

After a couple days of hanging out at the library, John stumbled upon an advertisement stating “Click here to make money.” Normally he wouldn’t have been at all interested in something like this, but at the current state of his life, he certainly was interested. Now this ad he clicked really wasn’t any good for him, it was just one of the millions of get rich quick schemes which he figured out after about 2 minutes. But the idea of making money on the computer really got his brain thinking. John hadn’t ever been very computer savvy, but he really was interested in the idea of making money while sitting in front of the computer screen and had all the time in the world to learn how to do so. So he began researching on the internet how people are making money off of their websites. Luckily for John, he was a quick learner. Within a couple of days he had started his own website using a combination of free utilities he read about while researching beginner methods of making money on the web. Although still homeless, things were really starting to brighten up for John. He had something on his mind all day to replace a lot of the thoughts he had about being homeless. For the next couple of weeks John would spend most of his day at the library learning everything he could.

John finally landed a part time job at a restaurant washing dishes and clearing tables. He was able to make enough money to finally get a place to live, but this did not stop him from pursuing his online ventures. Being the hard worker that he was, John would work his day job and go to the library immediately after work to continue his online work. He had to do this for several months until he had saved up enough money to buy a computer of his own. Once John had enough money to buy his own computer, he really began to get things going for himself. His day job was now full time, and he spent at least 8 hours a day working on his online business. This meant very little sleep and very little fun for John. He really didn’t mind though, the online venture he had kept him very excited and eager to learn.

Success feels so good

After a year of working non-stop, John was finally making enough money with his online business to quit his day job and concentrate solely on the internet work. This was the greatest accomplishment John ever had. He worked his way from off of the streets to being completely self supported by an online business. At this time he wasn’t rich by any means, but he made enough money to pay his bills and have a little bit of fun. He always tells me that feeling is much greater than anything he has ever felt.

Today John is extremely successful at the age of 26. He owns hundreds of websites and even bought the restaurant he worked for after being homeless. Making over a thousand dollars in a day is nothing uncommon for John’s online business. Although John could literally sit back and not work ever again, he chooses not to. The struggle he went through instilled a sense of hard work and drive in him that he’ll never lose.

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1. Make Money Filling Out Surveys

Surprisingly, the web offers you the ability to make money off simply filling out surveys. All you have to do is a find a company that pays you to fill them out (which there are a ton of), and you’re set. The main problem with this method, however, is simply that a lot of the times it doesn’t pay well, or pay at all. You have to really do your research if you want to make good money on this, and find the best companies.

2. Make Money Reading Emails

One way to make money on the internet is simply to read emails. Sounds too good to be true right? Well, maybe it is. There are many companies that will pay you to read emails. They can afford to do this because advertisers pay them, and then they give you part of that money. However, a whole lot of these “Paid to Read” companies simply don’t pay, or pay practically nothing per email. One of the major ones I used to use paid like 1 cent or less per email, and with only a few emails a day tops it was pretty much worthless unless you managed to get a gazillion referrals. I guess the point here is that you either have to do really good research, or score a whole lot of referrals with one of the larger “Paid to Read” companies if you want to make decent money.

3. Affiliate Programs

This is the main way I make money online. Affiliate programs pay you either on sales commissions, 1000 impressions, per click, or per lead. The best way to make money off these programs is to develop websites with heavy traffic flows that have affiliate links on them. This will give you an income that is continual and may only require maintenance, rather than one that requires you to read emails or fill out surveys every day. However, it will also likely be harder to get going.

4. Selling Products

Selling products online is a great way to score some big time green. However, there may be a lot of complications you will have to deal with. Are the products real or virtual? If they’re real, where are you getting them? Can you get them cheap enough so that you can mark them up and people will still buy them? How are you going to deal with shipping, warehousing, billing? As you can see, selling products may not be the easiest way to make money online. However, it may yield the greatest return.

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An online business gives you the opportunity to pick and choose something you are interested in.

Starting an online business can allow anyone to create his or her very own business that is aligned with personal interests. This alone is the main reason I personally find online businesses to be my favorite career choice. Doing something related to your interests ensures you being able to maintain a happy outlook on life. It is the exact opposite of sitting in a little grey cubicle doing pointless tasks that have been delegated to you.

Everyone knows that a bad day at work tends to drag over to your personal life. The main benefit to online businesses in my eyes is the near-full to full elimination of those bad days. You are picking something you LIKE to work on! You are having FUN! Your online business can be likened to the career of a professional athlete. Professional atheletes make their livings doing what they love, and so can you.

But then again:

We have this issue where for some people online businesses simply may not be the right choice.

This issue stems not from the idea of doing what you love for a living. Rather, people should always try to persue a career they find intriguing, for the sake of maintaining personal sanity. What this issue really stems from is the simple fact that many people are not cut out to make a living online. Yep, I said it. I admitted the one thing that most online business advocates will never admit. Online businesses are NOT for everyone.

The reason this truth is kept so “hush hush” is that an entire online industry has emerged which has the sole purpose of promoting online business opportunities. This industry basically acts as an online business opportunity middleman. It provides you with things you could obtain free of charge, makes these things sound better than they really are, and subsequently makes a killing! Avoid this “middleman” industry at all costs!

There will always be a few success stories used to attempt to reel in you and your money. Some of them may be real, some of them may be fake. However, you simply don’t need to pay for the things this industry offers. There is plenty of free information available on any subject you can think of.

Now, let’s go over why online businesses aren’t for everyone.

There’s a certain mentality that goes along with successful online business owners. Part of it is a strong will to succeed, part of it is taking a constructive approach towards failure, part of it is not putting all the eggs in a single basket, and there are other parts as well.

However, there seems to be one main issue I think is many times overlooked. Typically, in order to be successful with an online business you will need to be business-minded. If you don’t know much about business in general including managing a business, running a business, starting the business in the first place, getting a business off the ground, etc., you can’t just expect to waltz into the online world, throw some money at a potential opportunity, and then succeed. That’s simply not how things work. Online businesses are no different than real life businesses other than the virtual aspects. It’s still a business, and it still entails the general things any normal business entails. The specifics are where the differences lie, and they many times give online businesses the upper hand when it comes to things such as overhead and product replication.

So what if you aren’t business-minded? What if you know nothing about businesses? Well, I personally think you are better off not wasting your time trying to start an online business. Can you become business-minded? Sure, I believe anyone can change. And if you do, by all means go ahead and give online businesses a try. However, for those of you who simply aren’t business-oriented in the least nor think you want to go through the effort to change, I would say you’re plain outta luck. Leave online businesses alone, and try to find a stellar job. After all, everyone desserves to be happy in life

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 Your webmaster is the only person who knows the username, password and other improtant settings for your website. If the webmaster suddenly stops responding to your phone calls or e-mails (which I’ve seen happen many times), you would have no idea how to hand off the website updates to another person.
• Your programmer no longer wishes to work with you. When you hire a replacement, it turns out that there is no documentation for the program, the code is unreadable, and it will be cheaper for you to buy a new program than salvage this “sinking ship”.
• The software that was developed for your business theoretically does all that was required, but there is one big problem: it is sitting idle because it is so confusing that nobody wants to use it.
• The web server crashes and your website files get erased. Then it turns out that nobody has a backup copy
• Your technical person realized how dependent you’ve become, and starts acting like a “primadonna”, and even blackmails you into shelling out more cash, “or else”!

So how do you protect yourself?

If you are now thinking that you need to become a computer geek yourself so you don’t have to depend on anyone else - that could not be further from the truth. If you spend all your time digging through computer books, writing code and working on the technical details, there will be no time for you to run your business.

Doing it all yourself is not the answer. Everyone should concentrate on doing what they do best. What you need to do is just take some measures to protect yourself. Just knowing and applying these few basic things that I’m about to describe will put you a giant leap ahead of most other business owners.

Here are the things you should do:

 Require documentation on all technical projects. Every technology aspect of your business should be documented in such a way that you can hand off this document to a new technical person and they’ll understand exactly how the system works and what to do with it.
• Let me warn you: you will encounter a lot of resistance from the technical people when you make them document things. However, you need to be firm and require documentation as part of the project before you release the final payment.
• When asking someone to develop a website or software, communicate exactly what you want and how you want it to work. Don’t assume that people can read your mind.Communicate all your requirements upfront. If you don’t tell programmers or designers exactly what you want, they’ll put together a project according to their own vision, which often does not correspond to yours.

  Most problems with technical projects occur because of miscommunication.

• Make sure you have copies of all files and do regular backups. Don’t put it off until tomorrow, because tomorrow might be too late. Losing data can be absolutely devastating.The easiest thing to do to protect your data is to write those files to a CD on a regular basis. Also, don’t forget to store those CDs in a secure location.
• Keep track of all technical projects and know what’s going on. Being “clueless” should not be acceptable.Many business owners have such fear of technology that they just don’t want to understand the projects and hope that others will simply take care of everything. While you don’t need to get involved in all the little technical details, you still need to understand the process and “the big picture”.

Practice these simple strategies, and you’ll find yourself having more control, more piece of mind and more money in your bank account.

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Most of us spend money on entertainment, whether it’s eating out at nice restaurants, movies, cars, bikes, games, big toys, etc….. Some of us can come up with cash for our online business by not eating out one time a month! That should not be so hard to do, as lots of us are spending more and more money on weight loss products!

If you want your business to grow you must feed it. You must spend money to make money, even if it’s a small amount, it will still grow some. You cannot win the lottery without first buying a ticket!

All successful entrepreneurs spend a certain amount each month on their business. Sure you say they are making money so they have it to spend. But actually you start out investing a larger percentage of your profits then you will later on as your business grows. Most people who start an Off-line business usually invest a large amount of capital before they see any money coming in. You have to continually re-invest your money.

That’s where an On-line business is unique. You can start with very little capital and invest as you learn. You do still have to invest some money and time, or you will not grow. You have to spend wisely though, where you will see results. You must read and do some research before you spend. There are lots of ways to throw your money away if you are new and not careful. There are also many ways to receive valuable information online that’s Free. One way is reading Free articles by those who are successful. You will find many of these Free articles at: http://www.best-home-business-ideas.net

Also if you’re in an MLM or affiliate program, you should have an up-line leader. They will help you along with good advice because it’s in their best interest for you to succeed!

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This article may be reprinted providing it is published in it’s entirety, including the author’s bio and hyperlink to the URL below.

About The Author
The author, John Baker, is the editor of Best-Home-Business-eNews. A newsletter dedicated to supporting the home business entrepreneur. If you’re looking for some of the best home business opportunities, tools, thoughts, ideas, and support from a dependable source, come by, visit,and grab a FREE subscription today at: http://www.best-home-business-ideas.net or email your questions to: admin@best-home-business-ideas.net

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