BroBeanz

Product photography has become so important in the last decade. It is hard to imagine a website without any images, especially if you are selling online. Sure when selling customized items it is a little difficult but there is always Sketchup and other free software to create some basic drawings. In most cases, manufacturers will supply generic white background product shots that are good enough for most web pages.  I use them myself in our businesses, but, whenever I can, I try replace them with my own product shots.  When competition is tough, you have to stand out above the rest. You have to differentiate your product from the others even though it is the same.  I think it is a psychological thing with buyers. Although the same product, if the image is different, it just "feels" different.  That is when you have the edge.  I am not talking about commodities such as an iPad, iPhone etc. They are too well known products and actually you don't even need an image to

It does not matter what type of business you are in, you need to communicate what you do.  About 10 years ago the Yellow Pages (or similar directories), were absolutely essential. I remember that one year new business placements deadline was shifted a month earlier and I missed it. It was devastating to my business, that was a bad year. In those days you had to wait for the next publication to come out. So what about now. I think you cannot afford not to have a website. I have heard the excuse that my sector is too competitive and I will never land on the first page of Google, Bing or Yahoo.  We'll, just a wakeup call, Google has changed their algorithm and user experience, content quality comes first. The new algorithm even hit big companies such as ask.com because of their weak user experience and shallow information.  That is great for small businesses that want to rank a little higher because they have unique content that is useful to the consumer. So the argument of not

There are nearly 34,000 plugins to choose from. That is a lot! Considering that you will not use more than 10 it sounds like overkill. A lot of these plugins are not updated any more by their creators so the actual number that are current is difficult to estimate. As with any website, there are a couple of things we all do and is the same for each website, we need good SEO, spam protection, access control and protection, traffic analysis and more. The following plugins are the basic ones that should be installed even before you start writing. Plugins for good SEO This is a must since they help you writing content that is focused  but also understandable by Google.  Don't overthink SEO, write good unique content. There are two major players: Yoast WordPress SEO. Easy setup and quick to understand. Simple and effective. All in One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert of Semper Fi Web Design. Quite complex settings that I do not understand. You can enter some keywords for your

The odds are against people who want to start a business. Statistics have shown that 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start their own business fail within the first 18 months. It is quite a chilling fact and a big deterrent if you want to start. I don't want to talk about why business fail, because that is a totally different subject. This article is about when to quit a business even if it is not a failure or not making money. You can decide to quit a business venture and sell just because your ROI will be at it's highest. Quitting does not necessary mean stopping what you are doing or taking a new direction. You don't need to quit the whole business, it is healthy to quit parts of it. Shed unprofitable sections and either sell them off or just cut them loose. I call it adapting (in my view anyway). When do you decide when to quit Well you don't decide, or should not decide, to quit business when things are really bad. When things get tough it is often very diffic

Wordpress is growing at a phenomenal rate. I don't know by how much compared to the others, but I do know it is more than others (Drupal and Joomla, those are the big contenders). I'm not talking about Blogger and Wordpress.com, I'm talking about creating your own website and then thinking, oh shit, I don't know diddly squat about html. That realisation used to be in the past. We have Wordpress, and themes! We have the freedom of choice! My goodness do we have choice. Can you imagine 10 years ago, at the click of a button, pay a web developer $50 and you have a beautiful website. Now we have over +1,000 (it could be a million by now, LOL) good looking websites for free at the click of button, How the world has changed! For the beginners, that freedom of choice and plethora of options is sometimes limiting.  There is a saying: Boundness to the unbounded is the worst form of boundedness It is actually a Dutch saying "Gebondenheid tot de ongebondenhei

If you own a small business and you are selling the same products that the big guys are selling you are sort of stuffed. There is just no way you will get the number of customers or bottom line they do by competing directly with them. Even if they could sell at cost, they still have a rebate of at least 2.5 - 5.0% with which they can play with. So where lies the secret or better still, the money? Each business sector has it's own strategy, but I will make a few generalizations just to get you going. The first thing you need to believe is that the big boys can be challenged. They are too busy with their own politics and corporate bullshit to even notice you. So don't be scared. I mean really, can you hurt Massmart. They don't think so. Secondly, you must target big corporation's weak points. I will discuss three and how to beat them. Bottom line The sales personnel are more concerned over turnover than bottom line. So the sales person on the floor has a c