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12 Days for a Start-Up Business

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The holiday season is around the corner and while recovery from the global financial crisis is, well, not exactly in full swing… I thought it was time to address the vital question of what it takes to start a new business. Much like the larger-than-life gift-wielding icon from the North Pole, many people question whether or not starting a new business on the back end of recession is a good idea … or the figment of over-active entrepreneurial spirit?

Well in some ways it’s a better time and easier than it ever has been. The competition has been winnowed out, and many businesses are quieter and less obtrusive in their marketing. New technology options including the Internet, e-marketing and outsourced suppliers offering SaaS (software as a service or "cloud computing") make it possible for you to do a lot without emptying your bank.

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How to get your home office deduction

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Have you wondered whether or not you’re entitled to a home office deduction? With tax time here again maybe you should take another look.

A few years back, more liberal rules came into play for home office deductions, allowing more people to qualify for the write-off. Specifically, the old, hard-to-meet “principal place of business” bar was lowered to a much more taxpayer-friendly level.

If you use your home office space regularly and exclusively for your sole proprietorship, LLC or partnership business, there are several ways to qualify for the deduction:

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Avoid Budget Blowouts

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A budget is an important management tool. Being a projection of your income against your expenses you can check it at any time to see how well or how poorly your business is doing. The value of a budget is in direct proportion to the accuracy of the figures you use to create it. Here are some precautions to take to keep your budget figures accurate.

Use Realistic Projections

Since a budget is based on projections there’s always an element of uncertainty involved in estimating inputs. It pays to be conservative regarding things such as sales forecasts. If they turn out to be better than estimated, that’s great and provides the opportunity to distribute the extra around to advantage.

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Cross Promotion - A Low Cost Way to Grow Your Business

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With marketing budgets under pressure, business owners and managers are looking for ways to do more with less. One of the most effective ways you can find new customers with minimal expense is cross promotion.

Cross promotion is simply when two or more businesses combine resources to market their products or services to each other’s customers. The main criteria for success in cross promotion are that the businesses serve the same types of customers but don’t compete with each other.

There are hundreds of ways businesses can work together to achieve this. Here are a few cross-promotion ideas that can help you expand your market on a small budget.

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Choose your customer wisely, you don't want everyone

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Nearly every business is dependent on a constant flow of new accounts. It’s easy to ignore this because most businesses earn most of their revenue from old, established customers.

The problem is that a certain percentage of old customers will drift away or change their focus every year. They’ll change their buying habits, often for reasons that you can’t influence or life just happens.

So you need to continually market to recruit new customers, establish them, and start promoting them up your customer ladder, so that one day they’ll be part of your staple business clientele.

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Break-Even Analysis - Your simple high value tool

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One of the trickiest aspects of bringing a new product to market is to estimate the total cost involved in its production. Cost of production effects margin and margin determines how many units must be sold to make a profit. If the number of units sold can’t provide sufficient margin at a market acceptable price, then, no matter how good the product is, producing it will result in a loss for the business. The nexus between cost of production, price and units that need to be sold to make a profit, is called the ‘break-even point’.

Break-even analysis is one of the most important financial tools you can use to make better business decisions.