Search
Recommended Sites
Related Links





   

Informative Articles

How and Where to Advertise Your Small Business Online
OK, I'll admit it, I'm a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to marketing. I let my free ebooks, articles and newsletter do most of my marketing work. But I also realize that in order to succeed in business, you must spend SOME money advertising. And...

Is Incorporating Your Small Business Best For You?
There comes a point in time when every small business person contemplates on whether to incorporate their business or not. A lot of times small businesses start out sole proprietorships, and then become incorporated as the business expands...

Old Fashioned Computing Practices Cost Small Businesses £18 Billion Annually Says Fasthosts
Small to medium size UK businesses are wasting money every day and putting the future of their business in jeopardy through old fashioned computing practices, which are costing them £18 billion annually. This is the conclusion of the Server...

The Do's And Don'ts Of Launching A Small Business Website
Launching a new small business website is often a long and painstaking process. And for most small businesses, the endeavor rarely ends in success. The terrain is mapped with freelancers, firms, and consultants that don't offer the same services and...

Website Content for Small Businesses: What Should Be on Your Website
Is your small business web site ineffective as it is? Or, are you taking the leap onto the world wide web for the first time? Either way, you're searching for the answer to the question, "what does an effective website contain?" Well, there is...

 
3 Essential Tools for Starting and Maintaining a Small Business

We believe that there are 3 factors that drive the success of small businesses.

1) Acquiring start-up capital

2) Finding customers

3) Accounting for, budgeting and controlling sales and expenses

The following resources will help your small business achieve these success factors.

Acquiring Start-Up Capital

An adequate supply of capital is essential as many profitable businesses fail because they don't have enough cash to pay their employees and suppliers. But what is an adequate supply of capital? The only way to tell is by doing a significant amount of research on your potential market and formally documenting this in a business plan. I'm sure you know that a business plan is a very important document that is crucial to convincing your banker to lend you money.

There are two ways to obtain a business plan.


1) Do it yourself by amending a business plan template, or

2) Hire a professional to do it for you.


Obviously obtain 1) will be a great deal cheaper.

Our research led to a website that has over 60 high quality and free business plan templates. We also found a directory that you can use to easily find a business plan writer in your city – where ever you live in the world.

Finding Customers

Finding customers is a difficult and expensive task for service business owners such as accountants, lawyers and plumbers. We believe that a cost effective marketing strategy for service business owners is to simply give all their personal contacts a few business cards.

Our research led to a few websites that have pre-designed business card templates. We felt that the diversity and quality of these designs was outstanding. In addition, we found that you can obtain a significant saving by finding a printing service on the Internet. We found that you could get 2,000 full color business cards for as little as US $150.

Accounting For, Budgeting and Controlling Revenue and Expenses

Accurate accounting is very important for small business owners. It's essential that you have timely access to information that could make or break your business. If stocks are running low – you need to know about it. If a large proportion of your debtors haven't paid – you need to know about it. If you do not react to these situations quickly you may have a situation where you don't have enough money to pay your employees – or worse still someone is stealing cash out the till.

Our research led to a website that compares and reviews top accounting software for small businesses. The cheapest software cost US $89.99 and the most expensive software cost US $1,499. It was interesting to note that the top 3 ranked websites were not the most expensive and cost between US $250 - US $300.


Hopefully you now have an idea of some of the tools that you can use to grow and maintain your small business. If you would like to benefit from our research please visit our website. We do not charge for this research and offer the content freely on our website.

About the Author
Best Quality Small Business Resources

Ryan Hough is the webmaster of best quality small business resources.com, who's aim is to help you save time and money by finding reviews and case studies that will enable you to choose the best resources at the right price.