Attracting business listings to an online business directory is essential to operating a successful directory. The key to attracting business listings is to create a positive online presence. There are a number of methods one can use to spread the word in the online business community about the benefits of listing their business on your directory.

1. Because businesses need to know why it is beneficial to list their business in your directory, you need to let them know the advantages of adding their listing. Write a series of articles and submit them to a number of article directories throughout the internet. Write about why business directories are a great way for a business to gain exposure such as helping a business improve their search engine rankings and creating name and brand recognition.

2. Because online business directories allows one the flexibility of being creative in how they create categories and subcategories, you can target businesses in your local community by creating a category just for them. The subcategories can be divided into the various types of local businesses such as hotels, restaurants, computer services…etc. Send out emails or letters promoting your local business category of your directory. You can also go to each business and talk to them about the benefits of listing their business in your directory. Carry business cards with you to distribute.

3. Create a free e-book that teaches people how to effectively promote their own business. This e-book can be a 50 or 100 page guide on marketing one’s business both online and offline. It should be informative with a many strategies on how a business can reach their targeted customer.

4. On your business directory, offer free stuff that can benefit a business such as free animations, free website templates, HTML checker, keyword check tool, free spyware scan, website submission tools, Meta tag analyzer, and free back grounds. As well, post articles on your site on tips to promoting a business and how one implements various types of marketing strategies.

5. There are many online business discussion forums and business Blogs where one can post comments. It is important that your comments are relevant to the discussion and Blog post, and not just blatant advertising. Make sure your signature includes your directory URL. As well, post your directory URL to many online classified sites.

6. Make your online directory a niche directory. For instance, if your main website is computers, create an online directory that targets the computer industry. This can include categories that focus on the computer industry. You can create it so that it is for businesses that are related to your own business, but not your direct competition. You can then set up an email campaign to target these businesses for listing in your directory. You have to explain why listing in your directory will benefit their business.

Recruiting businesses to your online directory is easy, but takes patience. You have to implement some form of marketing technique every day to spread the word about the benefits of listing with your directory. In no time, you will have a thriving and money making online business directory.

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Jaded by a routine 9 to 5 job? Stifled by your thankless work? Have you bartered your dreams away for an emotionally unsatisfying life? If you have finally decided to wrench yourself free from your shackles, it is time to take stock financially and see how small business credit cards can actually help you in starting your and running your own business.

When you set out on this exciting new journey, you are likely to face a number of challenges, and with them, teething troubles. You can avoid such stress if you make good use of the various tools specially designed to assist entrepreneurs in their ventures. Small business credit cards are by far one of the most important accounting instruments made available to you.

Small Business Credit Cards are Valuable Accounting Tools

One of the major problems that small businesses face is detailed accounting of their monetary transactions. Finances of any business must be immaculate and readily presentable, and if you haven not done such accounting before, be prepared for a tough task.

Usually, a small business suffers from insufficient manpower. Business owners assume various roles and are often under tremendous pressure to perform efficiently in a frenetic race against time to meet deadlines. Thus, opportunity for human error creeps in. But when it comes to finances, even the minor errors can spell disaster for your new baby.

Small business credit cards offer an opportunity to ease this tension and minimize errors. Whenever a transaction is done through a small business credit card, it is automatically reflected in a monthly statement. Your books can then be easily updated on time with the help of these all-inclusive statements showing specific details. A thorough account of all purchases can easily be maintained in this manner.

Managing Your Business with Small Business Credit Cards

Small business credit cards generally offer features such as online banking and round-the-clock technical assistance. This is especially handy when it comes to bill payment, downloading data, viewing expense reports, redeeming points, and overall maintenance and monitoring of transactions.

Add-on Benefits of a Small Business Credit Card

Credit card companies have bettered the deal by offering additional benefits on small business credit cards. As a business owner, you cannot afford to ignore these benefits. For example, obtaining incrementally higher credit limits can provide you with additional liquidity when required and more opportunities to expand your business products and services.

A small business credit card can also have a cash back offer that entitles the cardholder to rebates on purchases made with collaborating businesses. The refund may be reflected on the customer’s account statement or just be provided by way of a periodic rebate check. Some cards also come with airline and travel reward incentives and you can even earn frequent flyer miles with your purchases that can also be redeemed for discounts and rewards.

Small business credit cards have revolutionized the way fledgling businesses approach finance. Card statements that are usually made available online can help remove tedious accounting paperwork. Small business credit cards empower even those with the most rudimentary knowledge of accounting, freeing them up to focus on growing their respective businesses.

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A good business idea will often be borne out of your experience. Have you observed people experiencing a problem or frustration, and do you have an idea that might eliminate or reduce that problem. The richer your experiences and the more observant you are, the more you are likely to come up with workable business ideas. Take an inventory of your experiences; of all the work you have done, paid or unpaid, and of all the games you have played, did you encounter problems looking for a solution?

Start with your resume and expand it as follows:

· Add all your activities so you have a detailed resume. Don’t limit this to work. Include games, chores, and any other activity that engages you.

· For each job or activity state what you accomplished. Remember this is not for an interview; it’s just for you so be honest.

· State what you like most about the job or activity

· State what irritated you or your coworkers most about the job or activity

· If you interacted with customers write down their frequent complaints

· For every irritation or problem that you list, think of and write down a way that you could eliminate or reduce it

· State the primary purpose of the job or activity and ask yourself if there is a better way to achieve that purpose.

This exercise will get your creative juices flowing and may result in your winning new business idea.

Always allow your brain some down time. You will spend a lot of time thinking about and perfecting your idea for a business, but often the best ideas come to you when you are in a moment of rest or mental inactivity. When you are done working on a problem, the mind continues to work on it in the background, but you must give the mind space and time to do that work, which means taking a break from active mental work.

While I urge giving your mind rest time, if you wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea get up and write it down. When you are out and about always have a means of recording those ideas that run across your mind unbidden. Sometimes you get a great idea in an unlikely place, but after hours of other activities, and distractions you forget about it. Your note pad will keep these potential business ideas from slipping through the cracks.

If you are still not coming up with any ideas don’t give up; keep thinking about it, but most importantly, you must be actively living and observing. Try to broaden your experiences and become more observant. If you have work experience, but no formal training, take some business courses. If the reverse is true and you have business training but no work experience get to work. If you can’t get paid to work, do some volunteering. This is not to suggest that you wait until you complete a course or get a certain number of years in experience before you start your business, but while you work on your idea broadening your experience in these and other ways will be helpful.

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What’s Next? Succession vs. Extinction

The holidays are over, and as everyone gets back to work (if you were lucky enough to get a break in the first place) it always starts me thinking about two things. First, I realise how much I miss the summer vacations from my school days. And as a father of three, don’t think I haven’t told my kids how lucky they are and how much they should appreciate the time off while they still get it. “Back in my day”…

The second thing that I begin to think about is retirement. Retirement means different things to different people, from sitting on a beach somewhere, drink in hand to sitting in the middle of the bay in a boat drowning worms to pursuing any number of passions outside their business pursuits. For me, thoughts of retirement definitely involve more travel, more leisure time and the ability to work on projects that have nothing to do with the world of business and finance. But one factor that all business owners with aspirations of retirement share in common (whether they know it or not) is the absolute need for a succession plan. I have read research from the US that suggests that up to 70% of owner-managed businesses are either liquidated or sold after the retirement of their founders. A common cause of this phenomenon is the owners’ failure to implement and execute an effective ownership and management succession plan. So if you’re dreaming of playing 18 holes of golf a day for the rest of your days and you haven’t got a succession plan for your business, here are a few things you need to know to get started, whether you’re planning to retire in two years or ten.

First of all, you have to weigh up your options. Many of today’s business owners are “baby boomers” that will all be looking forward to life after the 9 to 5 in the next five to fifteen years. But recent studies of owner-managed businesses reveal that up to 77% of business owners have not created a succession plan. Depending on the option you choose, you will have varying time frames within which to act decisively to make sure you can effectively create and execute a succession plan. And as things change with your business, the economy, your industry and your life, you will want to get started as soon as possible to make sure you have a plan in place that will be flexible an adaptable enough to survive until you’re comfortably lounging on a tropical island somewhere.

I’m going to look at three common exit strategies and some key issues to address with each one of them to make sure you will be able to effectively execute the one that suits your situation best. This isn’t written as an extensive or exhaustive list of options or a definitive “how to” of succession planning. It is written to get you thinking about the importance of succession planning to your business. Often, the difference between foresight with regard to this issue and just flying by the seat of your pants comes down to a matter of the succession or the extinction of your business. What you will want to keep in mind while reading this article is that, whatever strategy you choose, creating a succession plan boils down to doing whatever needs to be done to ensure that both you and your business are going to be successful and sustainable well beyond your planned exit date.

Third-party Sale

This is the most common “plan” amongst business owners, but typically, it isn’t really a succession plan. Business owners tell themselves that they will simply sell the business when they’re ready to retire and that will be the end of it. The first mistake with this assumption is the “simply” part. Selling a business takes careful planning and a clear marketing strategy and, in some cases, can take 5-10 years to execute properly. By properly, I mean selling up without selling yourself short.

Most business owners don’t realise the fact that their business is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay them for it – today. Many owners think that the value of their business is equal to the amount of assets the business owns, the equity in the business, the goodwill and the money that they have invested into the business since they started or bought the company. These factors, while not irrelevant, cannot be relied upon as an accurate indicator of the value of your business. The real value of your business is what you can sell it for at the time you’re looking to offload it. People who are looking to buy businesses are typically looking to make a good investment. But most owner-managed businesses are not run solely on the basis of what generates the best return on investment. There are lifestyle considerations, taxation considerations and various structures in place (such as trusts) that might serve the purpose of the family owners of the business more than they serve the needs of someone looking to buy a business. Typically, a minimum of 1-2 years would be required to fundamentally change the financial reporting focus, corporate structure, and future growth plans of any business prior to a successful sale. Often, these considerations and the changes required to make a business saleable will be more extensive in nature and take considerably longer than the minimum, depending on the current state of the business.

If this is the path you are considering, the message is clear, get started sooner rather than later. My final suggestion with regard to third party sales as an exit strategy would be to seek external professional advice. You will ultimately save yourself considerable headaches and make ensure that you maximise your selling price to the greatest extent possible by engaging a qualified, experienced succession planner to help you create and execute your plan of attack.

Generation Next

Congratulations, son! You’re the next CEO of Smith & Sons. The next most common succession planning strategy is to hand the keys over to a trusted member of the family when you’re ready to retire. As is the case with any succession plan, the key element is that you have to actually have a plan and effectively execute it to get the desired results. Simply telling yourself that Junior is going to one day take the reins so you can begin your around-the-world trip by cruise ship is not sufficient to make it happen. The single most important aspect of a succession plan that involves transfer of the business to the next generation is the early involvement of the “chosen one(s)” in a senior management capacity. By early involvement, I mean to say that you need to get the successor(s) on board before you retire – preferably two to five years before you retire. This will give you, them and the employees and stakeholders of the business confidence in their ability to steer the ship once you have left the captaincy. It will also give you time to change directions should your children all decide one day that they’re not interested in carrying on the banner of the family business. Or if it becomes apparent that the kids lack the required enthusiasm or expertise to rise to the occasion, you’ll need time to come up with an alternative exit.

A second key consideration with this approach is to make sure that the business is operating profitably enough to provide adequate financial support for the retiring owners and the new caretakers without putting a strain on cash flow or the overall sustainability of the organisation. Otherwise, both the recent retiree and the new CEO will be out looking for a new job before the former has the chance to make a dent in his golf handicap. Again, careful consideration of all the variables must be undertaken. If the retired owners are going to be reliant on a lump sum payment or ongoing dividends from the business to maintain their chosen lifestyle, the business impacts will have to be projected to see whether or not that reliance jeopardises the ability of the business to continue operating into the future.

Management Buyout

This approach to succession planning is less common because few business owners understand how the process works or how to execute a management buyout plan. And while management buyouts can be structured quite simply, the devil is in the details. Getting the step-by-step process in place and executing it effectively are crucial to the success of this strategy.

Most importantly (and obviously), it is key to choose exactly who will be the future owner(s) of the business and get them actively involved in the process as early as possible. As is the case with the family succession plan, it makes no sense to “spring” your idea on someone just before you plan to call it quits. To do so will most often result in costly delays and complications at best and epic failure at worst. Clearly identifying who will be taking over what role(s) and what ownership structure will commence after the retirement of the current owners as early in the process as possible is always best.

The next critical step is to put a manageable, step-by-step process in place to make the transition possible. Goals and milestones involved in the process should be laid out clearly and deadlines for key elements of the plan should be agreed to and established in writing. Everyone involved in the business, from the current owners, to the future owners and all of the key stakeholders of the business should be able to see a clear strategic pathway from the beginning of the implementation of the plan to the day of handover.

As can be the case with any exit strategy, competing interests of several different parties need to be taken into consideration with management buyouts in particular. Oftentimes owner-managed businesses come with a lot of “baggage” that comes from the personal investment of time and energy into building something more than the sum of the assets and liabilities might suggest. Any stakeholders

Driving traffic to your online business directory is essential to building a thriving directory. No one will post if they do not know that your directories exist. There are a number of easy ways to increase traffic to your online business directory. Below are a number proven methods to help you bring traffic to your business directory.

1. Search Engine Indexing of Your Directory: It is essential that you submit your online directories to all of the search engines to be indexed, even the lesser known search engines. As well, have your directories validated so that the major search engines will better index you URL.

2. Create a Favicon: A Favicon is a small icon displayed in your browser next to the URL in the address bar and also on bookmarks. It will distinguish your directory from competitors on the bookmarks’ list. You can download an existing Favicon or create your own.

3. Write Business Promotion Articles: Write articles about business and online business directories and submit them to article directories. Make sure that you include your directory URL. The articles should relate to online business marketing.

3 Create a Unique Directory: A unique directory will make your directories stand out from the competitors. General business directories will receive less business listings than if you created specific directories that focused on a particular niche. Do not create category dumps or search engines will categorize your online business directory as duplicated content.

4. Spread the Word: There are many options available to spread the word online about your online business directory. Develop a relationship with other directory owners so you can exchange promotional ideas and strategies. Exchange links with relevant directories, not your competitors. As well, post comments of business blogs and discussion boards. Make sure you use a forum signature that includes your directory URL on forums and blogs where you participate. Answer questions and post questions on sites such as yahoo answers.

5. Create Your Own Blog: If you have your own Blog, you can post relevant comments related to your online directories. As well, you place your directory URL and directory description on your Blog. Promote different categories and subcategories of your online business directory.

6. Social Book Marking: You can increase site traffic to your online directories by making use of social book marking websites. A small widget of the site can also be placed on your site so that visitors can share your content with others. As well, become a social networker. Use your Twitter, Linked In, MySpace, Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster to promote your directories. The more friends and followers you have, the more likely you are to get people to post on your business directories.

7. Make News: Use RSS (Rich Site Summary) technology. Offer RSS subscription to your directory’s visitors. Provide newsletters to those who subscribe to your news feed. Regularly provide new content about your directory using this feed.

The key to increasing traffic to your online business directories is implementing strategies that will make your directory appealing as well as getting your name out in the online business community.

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Article by Nadeem Hodekar