Work.com Small Business Community Blog

Startup Idea: Starting a Gardening Business by Melissa Paxton

Melissa Paxton, an active contributor to Work.com, just wrote a new Work.com guide: Starting a Gardening Business. As owner of a garden business in Durango, Colorado, Melissa works with local businesses and homeowners to create and maintain xeric and native species gardens. Here are some of her tips and tactics for starting a gardening business:

• Many local garden centers and nurseries offer commercial gardeners discounts on products. Sign your business up for these and be sure you're accessing potential customers via any gardening classes and workshops your local shop may hold. Take advantage of these excellent, reciprocal resources.
• Get educated! Take the time to learn as much as you can about gardening in your geographical location and become familiar with the native and other plant species that thrive in your region's Plant Hardiness Zone.
• Get your name out in the community! Advertise your business in the local papers, and by posting flyers and business cards at local garden shops.
• Additional advertisement opportunities can be found by listing your business online. Try an ad on the Lawn and Garden Yellow Pages.

Read more in: Starting a Gardening Business.

Technorati tags: Melissa Paxton, gardening business, gardening, work.com

Anita Campbell - 5 Steps to Win a Business Award

Anita Campbell, Work.com community leader for the Startup channel, and editor of the Small Biz Trends blog, just wrote a new Work.com guide: How to Win a Business Award. As someone who is often called upon as a judge, she offers great insider tips about how and why to win a business award. Here are 5 steps from Anita's guide:

1. Follow the award application guidelines to the letter. Judges are not clairvoyant. They have to go by what is on the application, and if you don’t write it in the application they may or may not dig through your marketing brochure to find something applicable.


2. Create a template for award submissions. If you do not know where to start for creating a template, look to proposal writing guides and tips available on the Web.


3. Be persuasive. After all, you have to convince the judges that your business should win. So put your best marketing hat on. Just remember to be authentic.


4. Above all else, have a compelling story. Awards are in large part about PR. The businesses that have interesting, compelling and well-told stories always have the advantage over businesses that can’t seem to get across the impressive things they have accomplished.


5. Edit. Then edit again. You know what they say about making a first impression, and this is your first impression to the judges.

Read more in Anita's new Work.com guide: How to Win a Business Award.

Technorati tags: Anita Campbell, business awards, small biz trends, work.com

Top 20 Popular Guides: SEO and More

The top 20 most popular Work.com guides today are:

1. Learning Search Engine Optimization
2. Creating a Great Business Plan
3. Low-Cost Businesses You Can Start
4. Business Logo Design
5. Foreign Exchange and Currency Converters
6. Small Business Blogs
7. Finding Venture Capital
8. U.S. Postal Service Business Mailing
9. Word-of-Mouth Marketing
10. Racks, Shelving and Display Cases
11. Creating an Employee Manual
12. Finding Home-Business Opportunities
13. Creating an Elevator Pitch for Your Startup
14. Finding Commercial Real Estate Listings
15. Sample Business Plans
16. Angel Investors
17. Incorporating a Business
18. Protecting Your Business from Computer Viruses
19. Making Money on CafePress
20. Marketing Your Business With a Blog

Is yours one of them?

Stay tuned for a Work.com redesign that will allow you to see more of the most popular guides than the current five we show on the homepage. Linking to your guide, adding your guide to digg and del.icio.us, blogging about your guide, putting your guide URL in your signature, and emailing your guide to friends and clients are all ways to improve your guide popularity.

Technorati tags: work.com

New Guide of Note: Remote Check Deposit

Dan Kehrer, Work.com Editor, just wrote Guide to Remote Check Deposit, an amazing new technology that allows businesses to scan checks right from their desks to be deposited directly into a business bank account.

The tools are in place and being offered by more and more banks nationwide, along with Web-based providers. It’s all amazingly fast and simple. Using a special desktop scanner, you convert checks to digital images, and then deposit them to your bank account via the Internet. The efficiency is jaw dropping, and costs minimal (scanners start at $225, and will probably get cheaper). No trips to the bank. No filling out deposit slips. No making photocopies of checks.

Read more about remote check deposit in the New York Times or at USA Today's Small Business Connection blog.

Technorati tags: remote check deposit, check scanning, check 21, work.com

New Guide of Note: Doing Business in the U.S. for Non-Americans

We've noticed that Work.com members come from all over the world: many parts of the U.S., Beijing, Bucharest, Buenos Aires, somewhere in France.

If you are not from the U.S., but are interested in doing business in the U.S., there's a new guide for you. Greg Brown, editor-in-chief of Latin Trade Magazine, has recently published Guide to Doing Business in the U.S. for Non-Americans.

If you have experience doing business in the U.S. as a foreigner, share what you've learned.

Technorati tags: U.S. business, Greg Brown, work.com

If You're a Woman Starting Your Own Business

I am always on the lookout for new small business blogs (so if you know of any, let me know). Today I found Slate's BizBoxBlog, which features writing by Grace Bonney, founder of design*sponge shop and the design*sponge blog.

In Grace's latest BizBoxBlog post, Being a Girl in Business, she describes people's reactions to a 23-year-old woman running her own business:

“You’ve got to be kidding if you want me to believe that a 23 year old girl runs this site.”

“Are you sure you know how to run the finance end of this? Don’t you have an ad guy I could talk to? It’s ok if you don’t know numbers, you could just stick to design…I can suggest a great guy to help you with the hard part.”

“Come on, who really runs the site? It’s fun to have a cute girl on the cover but I’m sure you’ve got some ad guys I can talk to, right?”

Grace offers her tips for dealing with such comments. If you're a woman in business, don't miss them. Also, remember that there are definitely advantages to being a woman in business - find out how it can pay to be a woman owner.

Technorati tags: woman-owned business, BizBoxBlog, Grace Bonney, design*sponge, woman entrepreneurs, work.com

George Appiah's Favorite Guides

It's always interesting to see what others consider their very favorite Work.com guides out of the current collection of 1134. I recently found Internet business consultant George Appiah's site,  Ghanaplex.com, where George tells us his Work.com guide picks:

1. Guide to Business Loans from Family & Friends
2. Guide to Building a Socially Conscious Company
3. Guide to Word-of-Mouth Marketing
4. Guide to Low-Cost Businesses You Can Start
5. Guide to Cross-Cultural Communication

By the way, did you know that you can save your own favorite Work.com guides to My Work.com?

What are your favorite guides?

Technorati tags: George Appiah, ghanaplex, work.com