Whether you are itching to start a dog-walking service or want to sell
photographs by setting up your own agency, the web can help you. From
raising finance to learning how to bring in customers, and revenue too, your
journey towards that first million begins with a single click.
THE BIG IDEA
If you haven’t had your stroke of genius, learn how to brainstorm. Creative
thinking techniques, such as using random words or pictures to prompt new
ideas, are at www.brainstorming.co.uk
and the Creative Block tool at www.spaceforideas.uk.com
similarly tries to prompt you into thinking more laterally.
Still stuck? Springwise.com describes
itself as “brain food for entrepreneurial minds”. This is an idea-spotting
network, with 8,000 contributors in 70 countries who report promising ideas
they have noticed. Among the latest: fan-sponsored bands and sightseeing for
joggers.
If you are still floundering, at www.halfbakery.com
people post ideas that they won’t get round to using themselves. Great fun,
and it might trigger that eureka moment.
THE PITCH
Once you’ve got an idea, you need a business plan. This will help to focus
your thinking and avoid the classic error of not understanding the numbers
or your product properly.
Startups.co.uk has a top 10 list of things
to consider, such as will you be a sole trader, in partnership or a limited
company? Advice on what to do next is laid out in an interactive guide at
the government’s Business Link website (tinyurl.com/285geh).
If you need further help, there are several options. Boggleit.com
is a kind of online Dragons’ Den and an interesting entrepreneurial idea in
itself. For £10 you receive a snapshot impression of your big idea. For £235
the service will consider your cash cow in full and, if it gives the green
light, it will invest in your idea in return for a stake and help you to
develop it (two projects are already under way: www.tungz.co.uk
and www.mobilestats.co.uk). As
an alternative, for £75-£295, the long established and friendly www.abettermousetrap.co.uk
also offers an assessment service.
HARD CASH
Raising money is tricky but you will save yourself considerable grief if you
listen to the audio clips at the Desperately Seeking Finance section of www.bl.uk/
bipc/previous.html. Here, four finance experts talk through the options:
bank loans (banks will look at your credibility, what you want the money
for, your repayment source and your security); venture capitalists (www.bvca.co.uk),
who may invest in return for equity but will want to see expertise in the
relevant area; and business angels ( www.bbaa.org.uk),
entrepreneurs who typically invest £100,000 to £300,000.
Other options include applying for grants (such as from www.carbontrust.co.uk)
or soft loans from, say, government development agencies (tinyurl.com/3atfqb)
or local authorities. Soft loans are usually regarded as “loans of last
resort”, and are for people rejected elsewhere.
If you are under 30, www.shell-livewire.org
hosts a national competition and has help for new startups, and the Prince’s
Trust, ( wwwprinces-trust.org.uk)
offers low-interest loans to unemployed young people with a tasty business
idea.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
You may need to protect your idea or invention from rivals. The UK
Intellectual Property Office website (www.ipo.gov.uk)
outlines the four types: patents; design; copyright; and trademarks.
Searching online for a patent is such a specialised topic that the British
Library, a great resource, offers free workshops ( www.bl.uk/
bipc/workshops.html). The site also has a checklist at tinyurl.com/2d3nz3
on what to look for if using free databases such as www.freepatentsonline.com.
To find a patent/trademark lawyer, search at www.cipa.org.uk
or www.itma.org.uk.
GETTING ONLINE
A website is a crucial business ally and need not cost the earth. Business
Link explains the basics of web-hosting, domain names and so on. To create a
simple online presence, Microsoft’s Office Live (tinyurl.com/2aw38f)
offers three options that cost from nothing to £27. You can even choose a
free domain name.
Many small businesses now opt for simple blogging tools such as www.wordpress.org
or www.typepad.com to host a site and
even sell goods. It’s cheap, easy to do, and can be more readily updated
than one commissioned from a designer.
Moving up a notch, www.homestead.com is
a good template-driven business website design package, but for real
sophistication, the National Computing Centre, (www.ncc.
co.uk/index.cfm ) offers impartial advice and web design services.
Once you have people visiting your website you can generate cash by plugging
in adverts from Google (www.google.co.uk/adsense)
or to beef up your revenue, talk free with the online-ad experts at www.steakmedia.co.uk,
who work closely with Yahoo!.
BUSINESS SKILLS AND TOOLS
Many entrepreneurs fail to understand that marketing includes everything from
having a clear website to responding promptly to customer e-mails. Chris
Cardell, a marketing specialist (www.cardellmedia.com),
says the golden rule is to test and measure the effectiveness of all
marketing activities. We’ll overlook problems with the audio link on his
home page because it contains useful tips on advertising.
There are two key ways to bring people to your website. You can pay by bidding
for keywords that appear as sponsored links on search engines such as Google
and Yahoo!. Or you can learn how to be found by the search engines. This is
a dark art but www.bizmove.com has
useful tips. It sells this information on a CD for £50, but you can read
free extracts on the website.
It’s easy to unearth invaluable information about your competitors at www.companieshouse.com
for a small fee and also cheaper to file your annual tax return online. And
if your site conducts online transactions www.clearlybusiness.com,
a Barclays company, has handy hints on web-based selling (three clicks is
the maximum potential customers can be bothered with). The creators of www.baddesigns.com
have had fun spotting fundamental web design errors that you could learn and
profit from.
HOT LINKS: THIS WEEK’S BEST CLICKS
LED ZEPPELIN REUNION
Despite the decades of old-fashioned rock’n’roll bad behaviour
three of the original members of Led Zeppelin are remarkably still around
and last week announced their first gig in 19 years. The November reunion
will be a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, the late founder of Atlantic Records,
who signed the band in 1968. Tickets will be allocated via a ballot at www.ahmettribute.com.
But for those who balk at the £125 entry (even if it is for charidee)
there’s www.led-zeppelin.com
, a guitar-slamming treasury of Led Zep trivia.
FILE CONVERSION
It would be great if there was only one type of digital file for videos,
another for music and perhaps a third of photos. This is not the case and it
can be frustrating trying to watch videos online or transfer music to an
incompatible music player. Help is at hand, however, at www.zamzar.com
. It converts most common file formats free of charge and works with
multiple files whether stored on your computer or online (in which case you
enter the site’s URL). Either way, you are e-mailed a link to download the
converted files. Handy.
Youdoodolls feature on DD this Monday (22nd), what will grumpy Dragons think of a small canvas doll with their face printed on it?
cass, london,
Another useful site for business funding is http://www.j4bgrants.co.uk which is an online database of grants, awards, tax relief and other forms of business funding
Wayne, Manchester,
Great time for a dot-com Start-up.
Boo.com anyone?
bails, london,