Start-Ups Articles

Cheat Sheet / Updated 12-09-2022

Prepared entrepreneurs learn as much as possible about their marketplace and what customers want. This cheat sheet helps you test new ideas and weed out the keepers from the also-rans. It poses key questions about your concept, the marketplace, the industry, and your team. It even shows you how to create a marketing plan, and more!

Cheat Sheet / Updated 05-12-2022

A well-developed business plan is critical for any start-up business. To develop a thorough business plan, research your customers and competition; avoid mistakes that lead to business failure; and know how to implement a business plan and make it work. Your business plan should include a basic financial statement, all major pieces of a business plan, and information from your business-planning checklist.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-15-2022

A side hustle is usually a sort of business that you’re running in addition to whatever you do for your full-time job or career. Or, you can pull together two or more side hustles and, taken all together, that’s how you earn a living. If you’re not sure whether a side hustle is right for you, getting clear on the reasons you may want to start one is a good place to start. You may also find it helpful to think about different categories of side hustles, in order to find the one that’s best for you. Finally, if you’re trying to juggle a full-time job with a side hustle, you need to know how to keep all those balls in the air. This Cheat Sheet has you covered on all of these fronts.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-09-2022

Getting a business off the ground may not be easy but it can be great fun, especially if it gets off to a flying start. This cheat sheet serves up key ways to make sure that your business gets the initial boost that it deserves.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-25-2022

If you're looking to channel your passion for crafting and artful creation into a business, consider selling your work on Etsy. Countless crafters have ditched their day jobs to start their own Etsy craft business or have supplemented their existing income by selling their own crafts, vintage items, or crafting supplies. If your dream is to "make a living making things," then Etsy is for you!

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-18-2022

Starting an online business or growing an existing e-commerce business doesn’t have to be hard. Lots of resources are available to help you do everything from creating content for your website to building a long list of loyal customers. Being a savvy online entrepreneur also means learning to use social media to promote your business. Try these suggestions and quick tips for launching your website and engaging your customers.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-08-2022

Starting and running your own business can be one of the greatest joys in life. It can also be the hardest thing you ever do. The fact that no one is going to be standing over your shoulder telling you what to do can be simultaneously exhilarating and frightening. Finding sources of inspiration for great business ideas can keep you going in the absence of that voice over your shoulder. Nailing down a handful of basic, fundamental practices can keep you on the right track. And getting a grip on the money constantly flowing in and out of your business is one of the big keys to success.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 12-09-2021

The thought of building and launching a brand can send any budding entrepreneur into a panic. Where do you begin with such a formidable task? How do you build marketplace momentum? How do you extend your brand’s reach and increase awareness of it? How do you protect it from threats — external and internal? And when you finally achieve some degree of success, how do you reach the next level? In Launching and Building a Brand For Dummies, I answer all of those questions and more. This Cheat Sheet highlights a small sample of what’s included in the book while getting you up to speed in a hurry on a few key branding topics.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-11-2021

Starting and running a small business is an exciting — and often frightening — adventure. Who knows where you may end up? To keep from getting lost on your journey exploring business opportunities, you need help setting up your business — including choosing a name, creating a business plan, gathering equipment, and finding financing.

Article / Updated 03-31-2020

With so many different website pages and options for what and when (or where) a visitor first sees on your site, it’s critical to help define the path you want visitors to take through the website for your online business. Just as you want a profitability plan for your site, you need to map out and control, or heavily influence, how traffic flows through the pages of your website. Ultimately, you want that traffic flow or “visitor pathway” to result with an action — making a purchase, requesting a quote, watching a video, downloading a white paper, registering for a webinar … the list of actions is nearly endless and totally dependent upon what you want your visitor to do. In the past (and we mean years ago, when businesses first started getting online), websites had a very simple structure. There were usually three to five main sections of a site (Homepage, About Us, Products, Services, Contact Us) with few total pages — usually less than a dozen. Today, websites, especially e-commerce sites, can have hundreds of pages, or more. There are also lots of different ways people can find or enter your site — directly (by typing your domain name in a web browser), through a link in social media, by responding to an online ad from Google Ads, in response to a call to action in a video on YouTube, or through organic search (because they’re searching for information or products and your site shows up in search results). Not to mention, new visitors can start their experiences with your site from your home page or from any other page in your website (this is considered a landing page because visitors “land” on it first). Let’s start by defining exactly what we mean by website goals and conversions. A “goal” is an end result you want to achieve, and it must be specific and measurable. You might have a goal to increase traffic to a particular product page on your website by 20 percent over the previous 30 days and have a bounce rate (whether or not visitors immediately leave or bounce off that page) of 40 percent or less. A “conversion” is the completion of an action, such as clicking a call-to-action button or actually buying a product. We sometimes talk about conversion rates to determine how successful an online offer is on a particular page. One way to calculate the rate is by dividing the number of clicks on a call-to-action button by the number of visitors on the page over a certain period of time. A Buy Now button on a product page may have a 2 percent conversion rate, for example. Before you can map out how you want traffic to flow through your website, you need to define the goals and conversion points for each page of your website. And all these decisions are critical to successful website design! Obviously, you cannot physically control what actions website visitors take and which pages they view, or in which order. However, knowing the goal of a specific page helps you determine which calls to action you need on the page, and further helps you determine what type of content you need on that page. The figure shows an example of a visitor pathway based on goals and conversions. Use the information from the profitability plan you create to determine what type of conversions you need on each page. This ensures you are directing visitors to click on offers that help generate the highest possible revenue for your online business. Each page of your website should have a goal associated with it. What is the purpose of the page? What do you want visitors to do when they are on that page? Where do you want visitors to go next? For example, the goal may be for visitors to read information about a common problem they may be having and learn more (which could be measurable by the bounce rate and time spent on the page). The conversion point may be to click a link within the text to a product or service page that solves the common problem they just read about; or it might be to watch a video for more detailed information. Knowing the goal for each page also helps you determine the most appropriate conversion points on the page. (Yes, you can have more than one conversion point!) Once you have goals, conversions, and visitor flow mapped out, you have a good starting point to determine your site’s structure.