29. July 2009 by admin.

Article written by Mary O. Foley, Inc. Magazine

Small businesses can save money on Web design by doing it themselves with a variety of new online applications such as Wix, Sprout, and Weebly.

Sticker shock. That’s what Terry Sullivan got when he shopped around to have a website professionally designed for his new catering business.

“I looked into it, and it was between $4,000 and $150,000… that’s pretty expensive,” says Sullivan, founder of Texas Prime Caterers near Dallas, Texas. “I had just started a business, and I didn’t want to spend that kind of money.”

So Sullivan did it himself. After obtaining a domain name and a hosting agreement through 1&1 Internet, he started building. In about nine hours, he had a basic website without e-commerce capability. Not bad for a chef with no code-writing or graphic design background.

To build his site, Sullivan used Wix, a publishing platform application that allows someone to design a website in Flash without knowing code and without using a template. Launched in 2006 as a free service, Wix now offers a $9.90/month premium service, too. Unlike the free version, the premium service offers hosting and does not carry Wix-generated advertising, explains Wix co-CEO Allon Bloch.

D-I-Y Web design grows up

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27. July 2009 by admin.

Article written by Denver Business Journal

Colorado ranks No. 3 on CNBC’s latest list of “America’s Top States for Business.”

The state rose from No. 5 in last year’s ranking by the cable-television business channel.

CNBC’s annual America’s Top States for Business report, released Friday, examines 40 different measurements and groups them into 10 large categories for the survey.

Colorado placed in the top 10 in two of the categories among the 50 states: economy (No. 5), business friendliness (also No. 5), access to capital (No. 9) and quality of life (No. 10). In 2008 the state scored in the top 10 in only two categories.

It ranked above average in technology & innovation (No. 11), workforce (No. 12) and cost of doing business (No. 22).

Colorado’s lowest ranking was transportation & infrastructure (No. 36), followed by education (No. 33) and cost of living (No. 32).

Overall, Virginia scored tops in the nation, followed by Texas, Colorado, Iowa and Utah.

Alaska came in last, followed by Hawaii, Rhode Island, Nevada and West Virginia.

Click here for CNBC’s report on America’s Top States for Business.

Click here for CNBC’s data on Colorado.

And click here for a CNBC video report on Colorado.

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24. July 2009 by admin.

The following article was written by Howard Greenstein from Inc. Magazine.  It is an important reminder to us all that backing up our computer data should be part of our normal business operations.  Our computers and the information they store have become the life-blood of most businesses.  Losing that information permanently, or even just temporarily, can have a tremendous negative impact on your business… in fact, according to recent studies, 50% of small businesses that experience a major data loss, either through hardware failure or theft, never recover and end up out of business within a year.

Unforunately, I know first-hand that having your hard-drive crash on you can be an agonizing event.  We’ve had three of company’s computers crash in the last five years.  Fortunately, we’d had our computers backed up and we’ve been able to restore our files on a new hard drive in a matter hours, but I’ve also known plenty of company owners who’ve failed to back-up their data and have spent weeks trying to re-create their files.

The following article presents a number of options for off-site data back-up.  Our choice for this type of service is Elephant Drive.  Along with convenient online data back-up, they also conveniently provide online filing sharing for anyone looking to collaborate on projects or access documents from the road.  Read the rest of this entry »

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15. July 2009 by admin.

Article written by Nathan Jansch, The Boardroom at Cherry Creek

According to a recently released report by the U.S. Census Bureau the world’s 65-and-older population is projected to triple by mid-century, rising from 516 million today to over 1.5 billion “senior citizens” in 2050.  In the United States alone, the number of people that are 65 and older will more than double by 2050, rising from 39 million to 89 million.

In contrast, the population under 15 is expected to increase by only 6 percent during the same period, from 1.83 billion to 1.93 billion.  Worldwide, the number of children under 15 will still exceed the number of 65+ individuals, but in the U.S. it will be a different story.  The number of children is projected to only rise 37% to 85 million people by the year 2050, making the less-than-15 year olds a minority population to the 65 and older crowd.

Currently, less than 8% of the world’s population is 65 and older.  But by 2030, the world’s population 65 and older is expected to reach 12%, and by 2050, that share is expected to grow to 16%.  As expected, the biggest factors for this aging of the population are improvements in health care and relatively rapid declines in fertility.

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9. July 2009 by admin.

Article written by Nathan Jansch, The Boardroom at Cherry Creek

Focus #4: Make Yourself Visible - As I mentioned in my Focus #2 blog entry a few days ago, it’s pretty much an imperative that your company has a website - without it, you’re lacking a crucial marketing component which will appear to your customers that you’re either, a) not a legitimate business, or b) that your company is too small and unsophisticated to do business with.  Now the good news about having a website is that any more, they can be quite affordable and relatively easy to create.  The bad news, though, is that in many industries just having a website out there in the internet-world is rarely enough.  To truly take advantage of the Web 2.0 internet realm, you need to have an omni-present internet presence to goes beyond just your website - you and your corporate image need to be in front of your current and prospective customers on a recurring basis, in multiple areas, in order to demonstrate that you’re truly in an expert in your field and that it would be foolish for someone to do business with anyone else.  Read the rest of this entry »

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