Understanding Branding for your Small Business

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Via HomeOfficeVoice:

A brand is so much more than your well-researched business name, a flashy logo, your well-designed letterhead and that stylish business card. No, a brand is all that and more.

I’m no brand expert and I will not pretend to be one here, so … instead, I’ve roamed the vast expanses of the Internet and come up with a bunch of articles, definitions and ideas that will make you into a branding expert.

It’s a read … but I recommend all those serious about making their home business (heck, any business for that matter!) last for the long-term to take the time and to really understand what branding is all about.

This article is a great one for those looking to expand your knowledge on small business branding and getting your business/organization/website/self/whatever more known.

Check out the full article over at HomeOfficeVoice!

Happy Holidays!

I know it is a bit late for Christmas, but I wanted to wish everyone out there that may be reading this even though the site is not completely live just yet a very happy holiday season and a safe new year!

Are You A Good Listener? Small Business Podcasts

Via Small Business Branding:

If you have ever studied marketing and communications you may have learnt about the different ways people learn and study - by listening, reading, watching or experiencing. Generally most human beings learn through one of these methods and they have a “best” way to digest and comprehend information.

If you follow the 80/20 way of life where you maximize your working hours by only doing tasks that provide the most value for you, then discovering which way you learn most effectively is very important. While some people learn almost equally as effectively by listening to words as reading them, others have a very dominant way of learning and should only study using that method. For example I find I learn best by listening but I’m also good at reading, I’m just a slow reader so I need to skim read in order to best use my time. I tend to mix up my studying with both books and audio.

I produce a podcast show (if you don’t know what a podcast is have a read of this article - What Is A Podcast?) that currently has over 25 episodes, some interviews with entrepreneurs, others instructional “how-to” shows on Internet marketing and business. If you have an MP3 player they make great companions for exercising or road trips or just for times when you can’t read another word but some audio education may be good

Yaro of Small Business Branding and Entrepreneur’s Journey has some amazing podcasts up on his website. I definitly suggest taking a look at them if you are a person who learns better through hearing or if you just want to gather some great business sense from him and his interviews and how-to’s.

You can read the rest of Yaro’s post at Small Business Branding which includes a full list of his previously published podcasts.

How to Be More Charismatic

Via Small Business Branding:

Now, after a month of researching the topic, consulting with experts, and - in near voyeuristic fashion - simply observing charismatic people, I’m prepared to dispense the fine points of charisma. If I do my job effectively, you should walk away with several tips about how to be more attractive and influential (i.e. charismatic) in your own corner of the universe.

You can read the full article over at Small Business Branding.

Why Traditional Marketing is Dead

Via Small Business Branding:

Before we celebrate the death of traditional marketing, lets set the stage for its timely and fortunate demise.

The long-awaited Iraqi election is over, and I wonder how many people realize the significance of such an event. Millions of human beings - who suffered at the hands of a brutal, murderous dictator just two years ago - have collectively and freely CHOSEN their own leaders. A new day has truly dawned in the Middle East.

Tomorrow and each day forward, an Iraqi government of the people, by the people and for the people tackles the long arduous work of crafting a culture where all human beings are imbued with equal respect and value. A culture where people are free to question and criticize their leaders without fear of being jailed, having an extremity lopped off or a family member raped or beaten. A culture where discussion, discourse and debate is not only allowed, but is viewed as imperative to one’s way of life. A culture in which people are free to learn, evolve and transcend their estate, and thereby make more of their life than the circumstances of their birth might otherwise allow.

You can read the rest of the article over at Small Business Branding.

How To Make Money Online Using Niche Content Websites

Entrepreneur’s Journey:

Does the idea of continuous passive income from websites you can set-up and forget about sound good to you? Well that is what niche content websites are all about. Let’s take a look at this online income method.

The concept is reasonably simple. Do some research, find some very tight niches that aren’t well serviced at the moment, build a content website targeting the niche, stick some AdSense, Chitika and similar advertising programs up and just let it sit there earning a few dollars a day.

Yaro Starak has a great article up at his blog, Entrepreneur’s Journey about making money from creating websites. If this is something that you are interested in doing so, then you need to read it! Yaro has some amazing articles on his blog and I plan on bringing a lot of them to you to share the wealth of knowledge that he has!

You can read the full article by Yaro at Entrepreneur’s Journey here.

I hate selling my books back!

I absolutely hate it! This is going to be a bit of a rant, so I warn you now. This has to be the worst feeling in the world- selling back your college textbooks and getting a small fraction of the money that you spend on them.

So I took all but one of my books to the bookstore yesterday and waited in the line for 15 minutes to get only a small portion of money back. I had probably paid well over $350 for my books for this semester, and that was for mainly general education requirement courses. You would think that they would be cheaper books because they are used more often, not!

So I got up to the line and the first book on my stack was “The Great Gatsby” by Ernest Hemingway that I had to buy for an English class. I paid $9.99 for the book, the receipt was still in it. I got $1.50 back for it. Right then I got pissed at the system. The next book, “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, again for my English class, I bought only 3 weeks ago (my teacher made us read a full book - 220+ pages - in less than a week time and it was also the final week of classes). I paid $12.99 for the book and only got $6.50 back for it.

My other books for bigger textbooks and got some more money back from them but it still eats my skin that we are pretty much forced as college students to purchase new books every time that a publisher decides to change some words or add a picture and call it a new edition, therefore forcing the bookstores to not take back the used older edition and only having new editions for sale. Then you have to pay $100+ for a brand new book that you may use 10 times during the semester and when you return it back at the end of the semester you only get $35.00, how does that work? The bookstore than goes and resells it as used for $75.00. It’s ridiculous!

Now this problem has been ranted about many times before and there have even been changed to the legislation in Virginia that requires all universities and colleges to produce a list of all the books that teachers will be using for different courses before the start of the semester so that students have a fair chance to acquire the books via a different means (friends, online, offline, wherever!). So, this is what I shall do from now on. I will be using the website provided by the school and order my books from places like Half.com and Amazon.com.

My schools Student Government Association launched a message board this year along with their website and there is a section for buying and selling books on there with other students but I don’t think that it is going to be as effective as they would like to see it be. I have been trying to come up with ways that would make the buying and selling of used textbooks easy but I can’t come up with much besides launching a forum/message board specific to each school and allowing students to post the books they have and their asking price or students posting the books they need. The other effective way to do this would be to create an inventory of used books by buying them from students at an amount higher than the campus bookstore would give and then selling them with a minimal price mark up per book. This second option just doesn’t seem feasible as it would take a large amount of start up money to purchase a large inventory worth of books.

I would love to hear what some of you out there reading this may be thinking and if you have any ideas for making a feasible business out of this I am very interested.

Your annoyed ripped off college student,
Chris

Welcome to Dorm-Room-Biz.com

Hello and welcome to the brand new Dorm Room Biz located at http://www.dorm-room-biz.com

We are still currently working on getting the site design customized and getting everything organized, so be sure to check back soon for more updates!