Image by rhodes via Flickr

Loyalty is a funny sort of word. We are loyal to our friends and we are loyal to our partners and family. Sometimes we even feel a certain level of loyalty to a store or website that carries out favorite items and the best prices. Some stores offer loyalty reward points to get us to buy even more and save even more. Yet, on the whole, what does loyalty count for?

Perhaps you might consider your home/cell phone company, your credit card company, your bank or your mortgage company. How loyal do you feel toward them? How loyal do you think they are toward you? Are they quick to notify you of any special offers that are usually aimed at “brand new customers only” or do you have to call them and threaten to change to another company in order to get a deal from them?

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

In the past, businesses relied on referrals more than they relied on advertising. A certain local establishment can be a town landmark yet does not employ any kind of marketing campaign because it has excellent word-of-mouth. Presently, there are so many marketing strategies aside from referrals which any small business can employ. However, the power of referrals is still going strong, making it a must for local businesses.

Unless your customer is that happy with your services, you cannot expect them to refer you to their friends and family without you motivating them first. This is why most local businesses have a referral program wherein they reward customers for their referrals. The idea of giving out incentives will usually mean that a business has to spend money in order to make money. But if this strategy is carried out wisely, business owners need not worry about throwing cash into the drain.

Image via CrunchBase

You can start a number of small businesses with little or no money, but first you must decide upon what type of business is best for you. It must be something you have an interest in, have the resources to start financially and that you have experience in. If you have these basics covered, then you could be soon running a business in the area of your expertise.

Here are some great examples of businesses that cost almost nothing to start up and what each one requires from you to run productively, so think about which ones appeal to you.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Quora is the name of a questions and answers website that was founded in the year 2009 and launched in 2010. This is akin to an online encyclopedia of questions and answers which is uniquely maintained and updated by all those who use it. There are newer questions and their answers created as well as edited by those reading them. It is a constant process of enrichment of the site that is carried out by those who are reading or using it in the end. There are various topics for the questions here and subsequently you can answer them too. If there is another who reads the answer and feel they can update or correct the same the suggestions will be brought to you by their comments.

Image via Wikipedia

Steve Jobs was one of the biggest titans in the digital age.  Yet, how does he compare to other famous businessmen?

It will take awhile before we can truly answer this question as technology is still evolving.  In addition, we do not know what Apple will achieve in the future.  However, it is pretty clear that Steve Jobs was a top visionary in the IT world.  It is sad that fate decided to take him away at such a young age.  He died at only 56, an age that is too young to pass away.  On the other hand, he did accomplish many things in that short period of time.  As such, we need to use his memory as inspiration for both ourselves and our children.

Image via Wikipedia

More and more Americans today dream of shedding their nine to five lifestyle for an exciting freelancing job. You may find yourself wondering how these people get so bold, how do they find the jobs or meet the deadlines? How do freelancers make it work? It can be terrifyingly uncertain to leave the security of a full time job and make the leap to freelance business without first knowing a thing or two about how to get started.

Image via Wikipedia

In today’s uncertain economic climate, it can be hard to predict what the future holds for even a fairly successful business. How many times have you heard a story where a business has been doing well, has chosen to expand, and then failed because they over-extended themselves by buying a new office, or taking on too many staff.

Outsourcing can help to prevent those problems.

It’s true that there are some areas of business where having on-site staff is a better decision, but there are other areas such as ecommerce fulfillment, customer service, and mailing fulfillment where enlisting outside help just makes sense. Why spend a lot of money on space, equipment, and full time employees when you can’t guarantee that you will even need those facilities in a few month’s time?

Image via CrunchBase

I am guessing we have all head the phrase “would you like fries with that”. This is upselling in its most basic form, but it works.  The idea of upselling has been practiced and perfected by many of the largest online retailers, from Amazon’s soft selling techniques through amazon prime to the many online stores that make it easy to reorder, increasing customer loyalty. Done right it can drastically increase your sites revenue and here are some tips to perfect it.

Image via Wikipedia

There is a newfound avenue of business prospects through the medium of internet. Websites are designed to be the introduction as well as an online store for purchases among web browsers and visitors. This has proven its usefulness which has now led to a large scale presence of established names and companies to small and medium statured companies alike.

There is a need for SEO techniques to be implemented to ensure better performance of a website among the presence of stiff competition on the internet. The first strategy to reckon would be selecting keywords and phrases that aptly describes your website; a viable selection can be made with proper research and assessment of these with software application tools available. You can avail the services from professional companies that provide guidance for online marketing.

Image via Wikipedia

Product pages of ecommerce websites may not be the first page visitors see, but they are the most important “call to action” pages, since it is here that the casual visitor is on the verge of conversion, is about to click on the ‘buy’ button and pay for it by entering his credit card number. It is because of this that website product pages gain significance and are critical for the success of the ecommerce business. In fact businesses spend a lot of money on their product pages for this reason, and may not always get returns in proportion to the expense incurred. A well-designed and aesthetically appealing product page is a big asset and hence it is beneficial to follow the basic principles of product page design.