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Starting up your own consulting business can be a scary and challenging thing to do, especially if you have always been employed by another company. Becoming self-employed throws up a huge amount of responsibilities and tasks you will never have had to deal with before, such as accounting and managing staff, and it can be a completely different animal to having a 9-5 job. Starting up a new business can be very costly and investment can run into thousands of pounds. However it is possible to start up without any initial layout and keep your business plan low risk.

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One of the biggest fears held by most website owners is that any small mistake they make in producing their content or interacting their users will immediately lead to precipitous drop in their ranking at major search engines like Google. And, while it's responsible to avoid these pitfalls and mistakes altogether, it's worth noting that an immediate and mind-blowing drop at the internet's search leader is simply not likely in many cases. Such a theory was proved correct by an SEO firm which recently decided to deliberately destroy a reputable website's search engine rankings. As part of its project to make a first-page result into a last-page afterthought, the company loaded that website up with more than 50,000 undesirable links. This included forum posts, blog comment links, and other links placed into the sidebar for the sole effect of destroying the site's reputation.

You can use Facebook to increase traffic to your blog. With a little effort and ingenuity, you can draw from almost a billion users to give your own website a healthy shot in the arm. Regardless of what you blog about, you can find potential readers and customers on Facebook and route them to your blog. When these visitors arrive, you can convert them into subscribers and paying customers. You have almost unlimited potential when you use Facebook to build your blog, but you need to do more than create a Facebook profile and page to make a difference. The following tips will help bloggers build traffic by leveraging Facebook.

Are you looking for opportunities to help improve your visible presence online? As a blogger, marketer or freelance writer, you are likely to have to contend with a massively over saturated market with too much competition to stand out.

Obviously, you can do things the hard way. You can spend hours every week on Twitter, Google and various blogs looking for guest blogging opportunities - which is more or less the only way a writer can reach the public these days.

Or you can try a simpler way that is called MyBlogGuest.

What Is MyBlogGuest?

The idea is pretty simple. You sign up and bring with you all those posts you want to market to other blogs. When you sign up, you can also sync up your social media profiles (such as Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and others), as well as blogs or websites you own or regularly write for. This helps them determine your “power”, while also promoting you and your sites.

Once you are signed up and your profile is saved, you can get to work. Write great guest articles and upload them. These will all go into the Article Gallery. Once there, blog owners can look and make bids on the piece. They will tell you where and when they will want to post. Immediately, you get to choose the best offer and end up with a high powered link to add to your current sample collection.

Cover of The Art and Science of Web Design

With the world turning more and more to the internet for things these days, it has become increasingly apparent to many business owners that there is no way to compete in today’s market without creating a strong online presence for yourself. Every company should have a website that is engaging and aesthetically pleasing in order to attract more customers from a wider set of backgrounds. Advertising through word of mouth and some forms of media have become primitive in the face of the online search engine. Nowadays, if someone wants something, all they have to do is search for it. That’s why it is so important to have a great website with lots of content. If you intend on making money and creating a name for your company, you have to create a strong online profile, and much of that involves having a great website. But unless you are schooled in the art and science of web design, you will find it very difficult to create the kind of website that you need in order to get people to visit it. For this reason, it might be wise to hire a good web designer. If you are looking for a good web designer to help create a great website for your company, then here are a few things that you should pay attention to as you start your search.

When you think about your site being hacked, you probably imagine an unmistakable notice, like a flashing screen with "HACKED" in large letters across the page. But in reality, you may not know that your web site has been hacked until much later on when a lot of damage has been done. Today's hackers are getting more sophisticated with the tools and methods they use to hack web sites. But knowing the signs and what to do in the event of a hack can help you to recover.

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During recent years in field of search optimization, there has been a push for SEO strategies to incorporate what is known as social media optimization. Older, more established companies that still go the way of the dinosaur will say that there's no verifiable impact because most social media provides links that are "nofollow" Though it was a relatively small test, the data behind this infographic shows otherwise.

We at TastyPlacement, Inc. decided to conduct a test of six similarly situated websites. While the results are not concrete, the tendencies that each nearly identical website displayed are signs that are trustworthy enough which to take note.

In fact, the results make sense once you take a look at each of them. It makes sense that Google, no matter how sophisticated its algorithms may ever be, will find that the most reliable search results are those which people manually "approve". The basis for Google Plus activity affecting search engine ranking therefore make sense, as does the amount of Google Followers, Facebook promotion and even Twitter tweets.

Many people find themselves extremely busy that they need to employ an assistant, but rather than hire a real person, many people are now turning to the help of virtual assistants.

What is a virtual assistant (VA)?

Virtual assistants are individuals who work from their own home office and are considered an independent contractor. These individuals are not technically an employee of yours, so they have their own equipment and pay their own benefits and business expenses. 

What are the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant for your online business?

Since virtual assistants specialize in their area of expertise, you will know that you are hiring an individual with the knowledge to take care of your business. They tend to have a firm grasp on their tasks and can perform well above your expectations. Virtual assistants can usually start the job without needing any training, unless you use a special software or program.
Virtual assistants are also more cost-effective. If you only need the assistant to work part time, you can have them work part time instead of hiring a full time employee. These individuals can also help alleviate your day to day responsibilities so you can spend more time focusing on your business.

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For every small business owner, having a website is a great asset to the rest of your endeavors, whatever they may be, and in order to make the most of all of your resources, you must do what you can to keep each arm of your business operating at its highest potential. In the old days, it was much easier, simply having to make sure that your shop was clean and you had a smile on your face when people walked in, but nowadays it is far more complicated than that.

Fawkes the Firefox and the Million Dollar Homepage guy (Photo credit: remisser)

With the rise of the online world, there are those individuals who have managed to capitalize on all the opportunities it brings to make their fortunes. Whether you sell Ford Mustang parts and classic Mustang parts, your own artwork or run a blog, you can learn from the lessons of these successful online entrepreneurs and apply them to your business.

Check out these unlikely success stories of online business.