Latest Posts

The short answer is "yes"; but the long story is how to get there. It's not just about self-promotion, it's about building communication. That's why it's both social and media.

Have you considered outsourcing? Try it out FREE for one week! If you are interested in outsourcing work for as little as £299 p/m to professional full time employees working in a wide range of fields: Website Developer, Administration, Back office, Virtual Assistants, SEO, Marketing, Call Centre, Data Entry and many more! Visit www.staffindia.dvpe.co.uk/job-types-outsourcing-jobs.html

I can't imagine that Flash is on the way out: I believe that most online television material uses Flash to deliver it to the user (such as IPlayer etc)? Not to mention YouTube. If I am wrong then I would be interested to know :)

I used to read quite a lot about the 'sandbox' thing a few years ago Tim, but I haven't heard it mentioned much of late... perhaps that no longer exists?

Does anyone around here offer this service? If so please post here with a few details and rates please. Thanks Lianne

I'm currently helping a friend who runs a small business look into getting her own (small) office space somewhere in the South East rather than working from home as currently. She has two other employees so would need space for three people, so it really could be quite small. Anyone have any tips or advice on what the going rate is, and where to find business premises / small offices that are available... are there websites out there that list commercial premises and office space?

I tend to agree with you Tim. PR can also backfire, advertising more rarely so.

It sounds like a good idea of the site. The problem is that it is one of those sites (like many others) where you really need lots of traffic and users and posts for it to be worthwhile. It's the classic internet chicken and egg, and very few sites manage to crack it: but when they do, they tend to be very successful. I wish I knew how to crack it: but sadly I don't! I suppose advertising it as much as you possibly can to your target market of students and any learning insitution you can think of would be the way to go, although it could cost quite a lot of money to do so...

Give it a go Stephen :) Although there are billions of blogs out there, this means that there is room for billions more, so yours may as well be one of them. Also remember that of the billion (or whatever) blogs out there, about 99% are dead, being used heavily for about six months at best by the user before they gave up due to lack of interest and abandoned the blog. Just remember to ensure that you have spam filtering enabled and moderate posts: otherwise as soon as your site gets any search engine interest you will inundated with spam posts by nasty robots!

There are lots of way in which text messages are being used. I have often wondered if there is some sort of business opportunity for a private company / new website to set up and offer a valuable text service, but I've never worked out what that is. Businesses either offer information for free or on a paid basis. For instance banks may text your bank balance or similar to you: here they pay for the text and get nothing back BUT hopefully will improve your experience of the bank, make it easier for you, and therefore retain your custom long term. Other services are more straightforward: for instance those that charge you to download ringtones, or perhaps specialist information or a convenience service: texting football results that you can activate when you are out of the country for instance. And of course perhaps the biggest use is to do with competitions, and having people text in the result and paying something like 50p - £1: if you get enough entries, these I can imagine would be hugely profitable for the companies that run them. As for a small, run of the mill business offering a text service: the problem would be getting the numbers up to make it viable, how you do that... well if I knew I might be a little better off :)

Interesting - is there a very anti-entrepreneurial sentiment in France then? I didn't realise that. I think the US probably has the best attitude, with the whole 'American dream' thing that is has going on, although studies in social mobility show there is no greater chance of someone working their way up to the top as it were in the States than in Western Europe. But they certainly encourage ambition a lot more over there.

I saw a report saying that the public sector still has many more sick days on average per person than the private sector. Clearly since there is no reason to think people who work for the public sector have worse health than the private sector, there must be a higher number of 'sickies' in those figures. Are there any legal rules that exist that say (for instance) if you have more than X sick days a year your employer is able to sack you, or at least take some disciplinary action or similar?

As mentioned by localweb above, a very important point is that it is something that you should do ONGOING. Some companies will, say, pay for a month's SEO, and may get a little benefit, but then that will fall back over time. It needs to be an ongoing thing, gradually doing bits and pieces that over time will improve the rankings, so that you can a gradual and gentle upturn in traffic over the course of time. Adding fresh content, gradually building quality in bound links, improving page content and targetting, over a long period of time, all help, and should derive as much success as paying out for the SEO.

Hi, I have recently acquired 700,000 emails through a partnership arrangement. However I have been unable to send emails in bulk as my host says I can't. I need to go through an email marketing company who would handle the load for large fees. Any advice on the best way to send bulk emails and monetizing the email list. Cheers

PR is very hit and miss, I think it either has very little (zero) impact or just occasionally it has a HUGE impact. But most of the time it has zero. Advertising is more easy to measure, particularly online, and tends to have more assured results.

What is the cost of this service?

So what's the consensus on the old Google sandbox idea here then... specifically the idea that any new website isn't allowed to achieve it's "full" ranking for a year after it has been launched. Is there still any truth in this, and if so how much?

Telford... I didn't think anything interesting ever happened in Telford! Then again it is called Sage World so perhaps that's still the case ;) What is Sage World?

Hi All, We areabout to launch the only UK built and hosted search engine and are looking for experienced sales staff to sell the ad space on there. The commissions are fantastic. If this is of interest to you please e-mail me to discuss further. kerry.glover@searchers.co.uk Kind Regards Kerry

We are a mobile software development company primarily, but we also build websites & make them look all pretty. As a business we have been running since June 2002 and we are based right in the heart of England ( Sheffield) . So if you have an app idea or would have a website idea which you'd like developing then please give us a call on 0114 278 0775 www.squareware.co.uk

I would like to introduce a business planning service from Wisteria Business Plans. We offer custom business plans. we are very new so only have a microsite at present which is www.wisteriabusinessplans.co.uk.

Hi I am currently looking to start up a business and have been told that I require a business plan. I was wondering whether anyone can help me by telling me what I should be looking for from business planning agents, ie what services they should be offering ie do i want 1/2 or more meetings? in person or on the phone etc. also should i be expected to carry out all the market research? Also what sort of price I should be paying. Thanks

If you want company formations, our sister company does them online for £24.99 at www.wisteriaformations.co.uk

Hi all! I am basically new to this forum although I used to lurk a bit. I’ve visited a lot of business forums but.. A friend of mine just set up one called www.howtobusiness.org . He is really enthusiastic about business and I believe this will also be a great forum for us business minds to visit. So why don’t you give it a little look/try? Thanks. (p.s: don't forget to visit www.howtobusiness.org ;) , thanks)

I'll pass the info on to my daughter - she has a degree in law and tax and has just been called to the bar, she may be interested.

This is not uncommon - it amazes me to see that such large companies have websites that dont function and are often also full of dead links.

Wordpress is the bees knees, with a little know how and knowledge it can be made to function as the best CMS there is. Google loves Wordpress also so - that helps. I highly recommend it :)

SEO is an ongoing process and should be something you think about on a weekly basis. There are some good SEO people out there (and some awful ones too) My advice would be only use them if they will explain and show you evidence of the work they have done on your behalf. Simply buying software like IBP is#nt a magic bullet. You need to work on media distribution, back links and keyword ranking on a regular and ongoing basis to rank highly.

Having a few flash features on a website is fine - too many and it blocks search engines from spidering your site so, flash is always best used sparingly in SEO terms.

F you are interested in outsourcing work for as little as £299 p/m to professional full time employees working in a wide range of fields: Website Developer, Administration, Back office, Virtual Assistants, SEO, Marketing, Call Centre, Data Entry and many more visit www.staffindia.dvpe.co.uk/job-types-o...utsourcing-jobs.html