Businesses do not have a secret, no-fail formula for success. But basic requirements apply such as industry and well-maintained business promotion. Businesses are now going online to exploit this newfound medium; setting up an online business is hotter than ever. But the question is – are business owners prepared to do business online?

Why such concern? If business owners do know how to do business in the physical world, why should it be any different in the virtual realm? Sadly, there really is big discrepancy in these two media. Online businesses utilize the services of a website most of the time. Instead of the business owner being there to meet customers while smiling warmly, radiating a positive feel to potential clients, online business consists of a flat screen with the business logo, mission and vision and the products and services the company offers. The website speaks for itself, for the company. There are no nonverbal cues to be observed, no time to explain oneself, and ultimately no time to tailor fit responses depending on the personality of the website viewer.

Doing business online is actually a more complicated thing compared to setting up a business in the real world. Here, psychology concepts are employed on top of business principles. The business owner must be a master of foretelling how consumers will react with each online promotion and activity. He must know how to keep his audience constantly checking the website for updates. He must be able to provide good content in the website and make it a reliable source of professional opinion.

Various techniques can be used to promote business online. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are leading examples of exploitable media for business promotion. Notice how many ads are popping in the right hand corner of your Facebook page? Those are paid advertisements. You can bet that most people are ignoring these ads so why pay for something that gets ignored eventually? If you are a business owner, a Facebook account named after your company or the brand you are selling will most likely find its way to potential customers.

Fan pages are great examples of social media advertising. Creating a fan page for a product or service and inviting people to become part of it will give the business owner a chance to assess how customers online respond to your advertising efforts. This two-way communication, with the business executive going down to the grassroots level, will enable the owner to get fresh feedback from consumers. Winners will most likely make use of these comments, losers tend to ignore it and stick with flawed strategies.

Aside from social media marketing, business owners can also opt to make use of SEO tools in order to become more “searchable” on the internet. Search Engine Optimization can be done by using meta tags, updating website content regularly, promoting the website in other more popular web pages, and by linking to the site a couple of times using other websites. Still, business owners can also avail of SEO experts who can make your page easily detectable to search engine web crawlers.

These strategies are not the sole strategies that can be used in promoting a business online. With increasing familiarity to the medium, business owners will be able to conceptualize their own plan of attack in the internet.

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   Set savings goals. For short-term goals, this is easy. If you want to buy a video game, find out how much it costs; if you want to buy a house, determine how much of a down payment you’ll need. For long-term goals, such as retirement, you’ll need to do a lot more planning (figuring out how much money you’ll need to live comfortably for 20 or 30 years after you stop working), and you’ll also need to figure out how investments will help you achieve your goals.

   • Kill your debt first. Simply calculating how much you spend each month on your debts will illustrate that eliminating debt is the fastest way to free up money. Once the money is freed from debt payment, it can easily be re-purposed to savings.
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   Establish a time-frame. For example: “I want to be able to buy a house two years from today.” Set a particular date for accomplishing shorter-term goals, and make sure the goal is attainable within that time period. If it’s not attainable, you’ll just get discouraged.

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   Figure out how much you’ll have to save per week, per month, or per paycheck to attain each of your savings goals. Take each thing you want to save for and figure out how much you need to start saving now. For most savings goals, it’s best to save the same amount each period. For example, if you want to put a $20,000 down payment on a home in 36 months (three years), you’ll need to save about $550 per month every month. But if your paychecks amount to $1000, it might not be a realistic goal, so adjust your time-frame until you come up with an approachable amount.

4. 4

   Keep a record of your expenses. What you save falls between two activities and their difference: how much you make and how much you spend. Since you have more control over how much you spend, it’s wise to take a critical look at your expenses. Write down everything you spend your money on for a couple weeks or a month. Be as detailed as possible, and try not to leave out small purchases. Assign each purchase or expenditure a category such as: Rent, Car insurance, Car payments, Phone Bill, Cable Bill, Utilities, Gas, Food, Entertainment, etc.

   • Keep a small notebook with you at all times. Get in the habit of recording every expense and saving the receipts.
   • Sit down once a week with your small notebook and receipts. Record your expenses in a larger notebook or a spreadsheet program.
5. 5

   Trim your expenses. Take a good, hard look at your spending records after a month or two have passed. You’ll probably be surprised when you look back at your record of expenses: $300 on ice cream, $100 on parking tickets? You’ll likely see some obvious cuts you can make. Depending on how much you need to save, however, you may need to make some difficult decisions. Think about your priorities, and make cuts you can live with. Calculate how much those cuts will save you per year, and you’ll be much more motivated to pinch pennies.

   • Can you move to a less expensive apartment or house? Can you refinance your mortgage?
   • Can you consolidate your debts so that you’re not paying as much interest?
   • Can you save money on gas, or give up a car altogether? If your family has multiple cars, can you bring it down to one?
   • Can you get a better price on insurance? Call around and make sure you are getting the best price you can. Consider taking a higher deductible, too.
   • Can you drop a land line and either only use your cell phone or save money by calling over the internet for free with services such as Skype?
   • Can you live without cable or satellite TV?
   • Can you cut down on your utility bills?
   • Can you restrict eating out? Buy food in bulk? Start using coupons? Cook more at home? You might be able to save a lot of money on food.
6. 6

   Reassess your savings goals. Subtract your expenses (the ones you can’t live without) from your take-home income (i.e. after taxes have been taken out). What is the difference? And does it match up with your savings goals? Let’s say you’ve decided you can definitely get by on $1500 per month, and your paychecks amount to $2300 per month. That leaves you with $800 to save. If there’s absolutely no way you can fit all your savings goals into your budget, take a look at what you’re saving for and cut the less important things or adjust the time-frame. Maybe you need to put off buying a new car for another year, or maybe you don’t really need a big-screen TV that badly.

7. 7

   Make a budget. Once you’ve managed to balance your earnings with your savings goals and spending, write down a budget so you’ll know each month or each paycheck how much you can spend on any given thing or category of things. This is especially important for expenses which tend to fluctuate, or which you know you’re going to have a particularly hard time restricting. (E.g. “I will only spend $30 a month on movies/chocolate/coffee/etc.”)

8. 8

   Stop using credit cards. Pay for everything with cash or money orders. Don’t even use checks. It’s easier to overspend when you’re pulling from a bank or credit account because you don’t know exactly how much is in there. If you have cash, you can see your supply running low. You can even bundle up the predetermined amount of cash allocated for each expense with a label or keep separate jars for each expense (e.g. a bundle/jar for coffee, another for gas, another for miscellaneous). As you pull money from a jar for that particular expense, you’ll see how much remains and you’ll also be reminded of your limit.

   • If you need to have credit cards but you don’t want the temptation of having them available to use day-to-day, restrict that section of your wallet with a note or picture reminding you of your savings goals.
   • Credit cards are not inherently evil; it’s all about your self control. If you use them responsibly (i.e. completely pay them off every month), you can benefit from them. But the reason most credit card companies make money, however, is because people end up spending money that they don’t have. Unless you are one of the people who can religiously pay off the balance in full every month, you’re better off foregoing the promotions that credit card companies use to lure you in (cash back, introductory APR, airline miles, and so on).
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   Open an interest-bearing savings account. It’s a lot easier to keep track of your savings if you have them separate from your spending money. You can also usually get better interest on savings accounts than on checking accounts (if you get interest on your checking account at all). Consider higher-interest options such as CDs or money-market accounts for longer savings goals.

10. 10

    Know where your money is. And how much of it, too. If you accidentally overdraw your bank account, you will incur hefty bank fees; worse yet, the place you paid with that check may slap a bounced check fee on top of that, and send the check in again, resulting in a second overdraft fee from the bank! So just a few cents missing to cover that check could result in over $100 in fees. To avoid that, you should always know how much money you’ve got in your account(s), so you never cut a check for more than what you have.

    • Look into checking and savings accounts that pay interest. Also, consider CDs (certificates of deposit) for longer-term savings with low risk.
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    Pay yourself first. Savings should be your priority, so don’t just say that you’ll save whatever is left over at the end of the month. Deposit savings into an account (or your piggy-bank) as soon as you get paid. An easy, effective way to start saving is to simply deposit 10% of every check in a savings account. If you get a check or sum of cash, say 710.68, move the decimal point one place to the left and deposit that amount: 71.07. This works well and requires little thought; over several years, you’ve a tidy sum in savings. Over decades, you’ll be a millionaire.

    • You can set up an automatic transfer from your checking account to your savings account.
    • Many employers allow you to deduct savings from your paycheck. The money is directly deposited in your savings account so you never even see it on your paycheck.
    • You can also have investments for retirement taken directly out of your pay, and the taxes may be deferred with this option.

Have you spent a lot of time traveling and would like to share your experiences with others? Do you feel you have a lot to offer other people wishing to travel but don’t know how to keep them informed? Consider a career as a travel writer! Not only will you be able to share your travel experiences with others buy you can make money while you’re doing it.

There are several ways you can make money as a travel writer. Choose the one (or more than one) that appeals to you the most and get started making money doing something you love.

• Posting on other people’s blogs. Blogging is HUGE today and it’s all over the internet. You’d be hard pressed to find a website that doesn’t have a blog site for visitors to leave a post. The neat thing about blogging is that for almost any subject you can think about, there’s going to be several blogging sites. Check out some traveling blog sites and offer them your articles. Although most sites require you to write at least a few hundred words, if you have a lot of travel experience, you’ll have no problem completing the assignment. Set a certain fee for your article and begin making money. Blogs are constantly in need of fresh new content, which you can provide for them.

• Start up your own blog post. While you may not get people that come to your blog site to instantly start buying your travel articles, they will come there to read them and will return for more. This makes your site the perfect place to put your ads in hopes of selling them. If you’ve ever thought of becoming an affiliate partner with some business, this is a great opportunity. While your travel articles will generate traffic to your site, the ads will bring in the revenue!

• Sell your travel articles to newspapers and travel magazines. You really don’t have to be a professional writer to sell your articles to these places. If you’re a relatively good writer and write content that other travelers like yourself would enjoy, many travel magazines would love to pay you money for your work. Check out the Writers Market at your local library and you’ll get a list of periodicals that will pay good money for your work.

• Consider writing your travel articles on project sites. The internet is a place filled with many project sites where people bid and sell their work. Guru, Elance and DoMyStuff are just a few project websites where you’ll find many people interested in buying your work. You can set up an account for free as a provider of written content. Check out advertisements for people looking for writing projects and you may just find someone looking for exactly what you have to offer. You do the writing assignment and you’ll be paid online, where the money will be deposited directly into your account. Check these sties out today. There just may be someone looking for travel information that only you can provide them with!