ADUTAINMENT: Advertising as Entertainment
JellyBasket.com - JELLY by the CASE or as a GIFT BASKET.

Dont Buy Your On-Line Marketing Articles From Article Factories
I was busiy submitting some articles I ghost wrote for a client to some web portals late one night, when I was struck by a message a web site editor left for visitors. I won't tell you the actual site name, or mention the company that they are targeting with their message in order to protect their privacy.

Lone Star Overnight Honored with Consumers' Choice Award for Business Excellence
For the third consecutive year, Lone Star Overnight (LSO), one of the fastest-growing regional overnight package delivery companies, has been recognized with the Consumers' Choice Award® for Business Excellence. The company won the award in the Texas Headquartered Courier Services category.

Parature VP of Marketing to Speak at 2nd Annual Southeast Venture Conference
Conference Showcases the Most Promising Emerging Technology Firms in the Southeast Region

How To Start A Business
Have you always dreamed of owning your own business? If so, you may be able to make that dream a reality. If you?re willing to invest the time required in up-front planning, you may be surprised how quickly you can get your business going.

How I Chose My Work At Home Business
Finding a Work At Home Business can be a difficult thing. If you are like me you have spent countless hours surfing the internet looking at every possible home based opportunity listed. The problem is that there are so many it can become not only cumbersome but also confusing. They all have grandiose claims that you will be making all the money you will ever need in the first week, month, or year. Whatever! It can be so overwhelming that the decision to join one of these programs is often put on hold waiting for that perfect program. On hold means ?time?. And we all know what time is, right? I looked for a program to join for almost a full year, putting off the decision to join over and over again. At first it was because of the excessive s...

Synchronicity And Marketing: How To Increase Your Net Worth
Synchronicity is "the coincidental occurence of events that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms". (source:Mirriam Webster's Tenth Edition) It has come to mean so much more now, especially in spirituality. Synchronicity is pure magic when it happens. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say when you NOTICE it's happening.

Pepperjam Wins One Year Supply of Free Energy Drink with Viral YouTube Video
Pepperjam ( www.pepperjamsearch.com ), an Inc. 500 Company and industry leading full-service internet marketing agency, announced today that they have been informed by Who's Your Daddy, Inc. that they will receive a free one year supply of energy drink for a viral video they produced and launched on YouTube. In the last forty eight (48) hours the "What would you do for a Free One Year Supply of Energy Drink" video has turned viral, netting nearly 100,000 views on YouTube and many other accolades along the way.

Tango Marketing Introduces Sage Master Builder Newsletter
Tango Marketing LLC announced today that it has added Sage Master Builder to its line up of product newsletters designed for Sage Software Business Partners.

AdMedia Partners Advises Interactive Marketing Agency Brulant in Acquisition by Rosetta
Independent M&A advisors specializing in mergers and acquisitions for digital and traditional media, marketing and information businesses represented leading interactive marketing agency

Sales Tax - E-commerce And Small Business
If an online business has a physical location in a certain state, such as a store, business office, or warehouse, it must collect sales tax from customers in that state. If a business does not have a physical presence in a state, it is not required to collect sales tax for sales into that state. This rule originated from a 1992 Supreme Court decision which declared that mail-order merchants did not need to collect sales taxes for sales into states where they did not have a physical presence.

New Webinar From eBizITPA Explores the Art and Science of E-Mail Marketing
The Center for eBusiness and Advanced IT (eBizITPA) is debuting its new Webinar, "The Art and Science of E-Mail Marketing," at 2 p.m. on October 25, 2007. In "The Art and Science of E-mail Marketing," attendees will learn how to combine engaging message tactics with established procedures to create e-mail messages that are meaningful and important to their target audience.

VoIP Phone System - Do You Want These 5 Advantages For Your Business?
New technologies such as IP Telephony don't just replace previous ones but allow much greater functionality, increased productivity, enhanced customer service and lower costs than prior technologies. Here are just a few ideas for you to ponder.

Article Marketing Success - Served Up Barbecue Style
Many article writers tend to fall into self-made traps. One of these traps is following a logical progression of work from start to finish before starting new work.

Green Business Conference Focuses on the Payoff
The Business of Green, a one-day UCLA Extension conference, focuses on budding green practices in a variety of industries -- and how environmentally sustainable practices can help both the environment and the balance sheet. The conference takes place Friday, May 23, in Long Beach, Calif.

Small Business Checking Accounts
ACCOUNTING AND BILLINGCHECK BOOKSWe recommend that you maintain a business checking account in addition to a small business credit card merchant account so that you can take credit cards from purchasers. This way you will know exactly how much is going into your merchant account and how much of your volume percentage is being done through credit card usage.

The Business Autopsy: A Fact Of Life

Last week we discussed the importance of performing an autopsy on a dead business. No, I haven't been watching too many of those wonderfully graphic, TV forensic investigation shows. The reason I recommend you do a business autopsy is to uncover the exact reasons why the business died. This is valuable information that can not only heal feelings of personal failure, but also better prepare you for the pitfalls of business should you ever take the plunge again.

Starting a business is never easy and the odds of your success or failure are about even money. The fact is, approximately half of all small businesses fail within the first four years. And a large percentage of those failures occur within the first year. These are the statistics that keep many entrepreneurs awake at night. Like Sisyphus, always pushing that boulder to the top of the hill only to have it tumble back to the bottom each time, you never know when you're going to lose your grip on your business and have it tumble back over you.

OK, so far in this column I have managed to squeeze in references to modern American television and ancient Greek mythology. Enough highbrow beating around the bush. Perform the autopsy and learn from it. Only by knowing the real reasons your business died can you identify and hopefully stave off those maladies before they take you down next time, if there is a next time. And if you're a true entrepreneur there will be a next time, trust me on this.

There are many reasons why businesses fail, but according to a recent survey by U.S. Bank, the majority of business failures can be attributed to three reasons: bad management, bad financial planning, and bad marketing.

Bad management comes in many forms. The survey showed that seventy-eight percent of the business failures examined were due in part to the lack of a well-developed business plan and a business owner who had no business being in the business he was in. In other words, the business owner did not have an adequate knowledge or a thorough understanding of the business he had chosen to start. This is why software entrepreneurs like me don't start shoe stores. I have feet, I wear shoes. That's not enough to qualify me to go into the shoe business.

Next, seventy-three percent of the business failures in the survey were also manned by owners with rose colored calculators. These business owners over-estimated revenue projections (the number of expected sales) and under-estimated the burn rate (the amount of money required to sustain the business per month).

It gets better. Seventy percent of the failed businesses in the study were led by entrepreneurs who were in denial regarding their own competence, or more to the point, their own incompetence. These business owners either didn't recognize or chose to ignore their own entrepreneurial shortcomings. These entrepreneurs also did not seek assistance from others who might have made up for their inadequacies. It's sometimes hard to ask for help when you are supposed to be the one with all the answers.

Believe me, I know.

The final contributing factor to the death of sixty-three percent of the businesses who died from bad management was that the owners had no relevant or applicable business experience.

Bad financial planning was the second reason sited by the survey as to why most businesses fail. In business, it's always about money. According to the U.S. Bank study, eighty-two percent of the business failures studied reported poor cash flow management as a contributing factor to the death of the business.

Seventy-nine percent of the businesses were inadequately funded, and seventy-seven percent miscalculated the cost of doing business. In other words, they failed to take into account all of the costs involved when setting the price for their products.

Let's move on to my favorite subject: bad marketing. You've heard me preach this sermon before. You can have the greatest product in the world, but if your marketing efforts are inadequate or ineffective you will end up with a warehouse full of the greatest product that no one in the world has ever heard of.

The study showed that bad marketing was a contributing factor in the death of sixty-four percent of the businesses surveyed. Many of these misguided entrepreneurs either minimized the importance of marketing and promotion or ignored it totally.

A vital part of marketing is knowing who your competition is and always knowing what they are up to. The entrepreneur who ignores his competition is a fool (gee, was that too harsh?) and is always destined to fail, as proven by the fifty-five percent of the dead businesses in the survey who either didn't even know who their competition was or simply chose to ignore the competition altogether.

Here's a nice hole in the sand for you, sir.

Please insert your head...

Another mistake made by forty-seven percent of the deceased businesses was that they relied on just one or two customers for the bulk of revenues. This is a common mistake made by many business owners who devote all their energy to one huge client. What they don't seem to understand is that if that one customer goes away, so does most of their revenue.

When performing your business autopsy you might identify other contributing factors that were beyond your control, such as a down economy, the lack of qualified employees, new government regulations that negatively affect the way you must do business, the failure of a strategic partner, etc..

There will always be things you can't control. The key to business success is to keep control of those things you can and do everything you can to prepare for those things you can't.

Next time we'll discuss a few things you should and should not do to help ensure your business success.

Here's to your success.

Tim Knox

Small Business Q&A is written by veteran entrepreneur and syndicated columnist, Tim Knox. Tim serves as the president and CEO of three successful technology companies and is the founder of DropshipWholesale.net, an online organization dedicated to the success of online and eBay entrepreneurs.