In order to compete in the modern marketplace, every business and not-for-profit including traditional “brick and mortar” operations, sole proprietorships, and even mom-and-pop style organizations should have an Internet presence.  Ignoring the massive amounts of customers and patrons who surf the web every day and expecting to prosper in the next decade is akin to hiding under a tree in a thunderstorm: it sounds like a good idea until the lightning strikes.

Many small businesses fail to acknowledge, or refuse to admit, that traditional media outlets are struggling.  While television, and to some extent radio, are still fairly strong players in the local market, print media such as circulars and newspapers are hurting:  readership is declining, classified sections are shrinking, advertising costs are rising.  Nationally, many large newspapers are either in–or headed toward–bankruptcy while their smaller cousins are either switching formats (daily to weekly, etc.) or going out of business altogether.  Even those that are still operating have been forced to cut back services.  My local, the Ellsworth American, had to recently start charging subscription fees to its previously free online version because so many of its everyday patrons were opting to read it online rather than actually buying the paper.  Several national and international papers including the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World are doing the same.

Why Should you Get Your Business Online?

Continuing to count on cheap paper advertising that actually reaches consumers just isn’t a viable option anymore. The Internet has taken advertising to the next level of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. So why (and how) should traditional businesses build an Internet presence?

1) Impression: by creating a website or joining any of the web 2.0 social media networks, businesses not only create an impression that they are forward-thinking and prepared to do business in the future but also appear responsive to their customer’s ever-changing needs. Simply put, by making it easier for consumers to find the products and services they need and want, businesses will become more valuable to those customers.

10 years ago would any of us have envisioned being able to order takeout online? Probably not but Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, and other fast food restaurants now offer that service to the modern consumer. In addition to take-out you can also order groceries flowers, and even fine wine online.

2) Engagement: every good salesman knows that the key to getting consumers to buy is getting them actively engaged (and keeping them that way) with a product or business. That’s why car dealerships send you birthday cards, Christmas cards, and thank you notes long after you’ve traded in the automobile you bought from them.

The Web offers even small companies that unique ability to engage customers in the dialogue like never before. By building an attractive, interactive site where potential customers and clients can hear what a business has to say, see photos of the products they are advertising or of the people selling them, or even watch video demonstrations of those products, business owners can create a relationship with consumers without ever having to meet them.

The interaction doesn’t have to stop there. Why not have an online forum where past customers can post reviews of products and services they purchased from you, or where potential customers can ask questions; ask for e-mail addresses and send out periodical notices or promotions; have online contests or post satisfied customers photos? The sky’s the limit.

Locally, one of the dealerships in my area gave away a car last year. All consumers had to do was post a photo of themselves kissing the car on the dealership’s website. Nationally, you can now follow JetBlue on twitter and find out if your flight is behind even before you get to the airport.

You don’t have to get a customer into your showroom before you introduce them to yourself and strike up a conversation anymore. Think of your website, your social media presence, or your web correspondence as the “back door” through which you should invite customers.

3) Incidental Revenue: while some businesses are better suited to earning incidental revenue from their web presence, any business can do it—if they know how. Services like Google’s Ad Sense, and affiliate programs such as the ones offered by Amazon and eBay allow you to make money without really having to do anything. By simply posting ads or affiliate links on your site or sending those links and ads out in messages or e-mails, you have the potential to earn money. While affiliate programs often require a consumer to actually purchase a product they come across by clicking on your links, Ad Sense allows you to earn income (though quite a small amount in the beginning) if your customers simply click on the ads.

The best part about the services I mentioned is that you can control everything about the ads from what they look like, to what products they display. For example, you could use an Amazon widget to advertise a product complementary to one you sell on your site (say HDMI cables for gaming systems, or a “For Dummies” guide about gardening if you sell plants or seeds.)

By giving consumers access to products that you can’t or don’t provide you will be adding value to their day and they will be more likely to remember your name in the future. However, be careful not to advertise products that compete with yours—don’t advertise Amazon books if your bookstore. Chances are you won’t be able to compete with the prices of an online mega-marketplace.

There are also link sharing services out there and people who will pay you to advertise their sites on yours. You can also swap banners so you can advertise on their sites as well.

Even if you decide it’s not for you, it’s in your best interest to learn about these forms of incidental income.

It’s Not As Bad As You Think

These are just a few of the benefits of catching up with the times, and giving your the business to boost it needs to compete in an increasingly digital marketplace. It may sound scary, a bit overwhelming, and frustratingly difficult, but getting online is easier now than ever before. For more on that read the second part of this article: Getting Your Brick and Mortar Business Online is Easier Than You Think

Feel free to drop by my website www.therealrobertpalmer.com to see how I can help you get started online.

Greensulate™ is what its inventors call “low-tech biotech.”  Created by allowing mycelia (the roots of mushrooms) to grow in agricultural material such as buckwheat and cottonseed hulls , the material can be formed into strong rigid board-style insulation that passes all ASTM tests for mold growth, water sorption, and vapor transmission.  The product is also completely safe for humans to handle install without the use of protective gear and clothing. 

While the material isn’t the first green alternative to petrochemical insulation, it’s one of the only board-type insulation alternatives available, making it extremely desirable for building contractors who cater to green home buyers. 

Because the material is literally grown and not manufactured, it can be customized in a matter of hours by substituting different component materials to provide unique strength characteristics.  The inventors had also wondered if the unique properties of the constituent materials would lead to any special properties and they were thrilled to learn that the finished material is flame resistant and earns a class 1 fire rating.

The same process used to create Greensulate™ is also used in the growing of mycelia-based packing materials trademarked under the name Ecocradle.  As an alternative to Styrofoam, the material performs extremely well and can be custom shaped by altering the container in which the material is grown.  Ecocradle material is completely biodegradable and some enterprising users even recycle the material as mulch for gardens.

In a relatively short amount of time, the company and its products have gained a tremendous amount of interest being featured in Popular Science, PopTech, and even appeared on an episode of CSI:  NY.

To learn more about Ecovative Designs or any of its revolutionary biotech products visit the company’s website at:  www.ecovativedesign.com/

The Habitat for Humanity has a long history of preserving building materials through well organized demolition and acceptance of donated goods.  Originally, this started as a way to save the organization as much money as possible.  By reusing materials they pull from one jobsite on another or taking materials local contractors or business owners no longer needed, the company was able to run a much tighter ship—very important indeed when your organization depends on monetary donations for financial support.

However, as an added “side effect,” the process of reusing those materials ahs helped to keep hundreds of thousands of tons of building materials out of landfills and eliminated the need for the manufacture of an equivalent number of new products–which is an extremely costly endeavor in environmental terms.

Habitat for Humanity’s ReStores are just a natural extension of that green behavior.  The retail stores, located in forty-eight states across the country including Hawaii, take donation of everything from building materials to fixtures and even appliances and sell those items at drastically reduced prices to the general public, building contractors, and even other retail outlets.  Not only does this process keep those materials from rotting away in landfills, it also generates a revenue stream for the volunteer organization. 

The company has also recently added ReStore items to its online store including recyclable pens constructed with cornstarch barrels, 100% corn plastic travel mugs, and a pen/pencil set made from recycled paper. 

This is just a small part of the organizations environmental initiative which includes affiliate training, Energy Star compliant building codes, and their Healthy Housing information program designed to help partner families “enjoy healthier, more energy-efficient and durable housing at the lowest possible cost.”

Often times when we think of green building practices and materials we rush to judgment and assume that those products and services will inherently cost more.  Habitat for Humanity has discovered a positive model for green building that actually saves money. 

For more on the Habitat for Humanity ReStore program or to find a ReStore near you, visit:  www.habitat.org/env/restores.aspx

The answer is most definitely yes. Most squeeze pages suffer from poor design, poor layout, repetitive themes, and very few of them actually standout from the crowd. If you want to learn what you’re doing wrong, have a look at this.

http://hubpages.com/hub/SqueezePagesdontWork

You’ll learn:
1) The biggest mistakes you can make when creating your own squeeze page.
2) What to look for when your outsourcing agent gives you a page for approval.
3) How to stop turning away prospects with poor design, functionality, and hyperbole

Feel free to leave your comments and for more info on internet marketing, check out the widget below.

 

                In 1938 the Fair labor Standards Act attempted to regulate the number of hours employers could demand that their employees worked per week in order to put an end to near slave-like conditions in which people were regularly forced to work twelve to eighteen hours a day.  The act established the forty-hour work week, and provisions for overtime pay that we all have come to accept as standard.  But even now a forty-hour workweek may seem like science-fiction to some.  In the year 2000, a study found that twenty-five percent of fulltime employees regularly clocked over forty hours in a week.  Ten percent worked fifty hours or more.[i] 

As Maine’s economy gradually catches up to the world’s by swaying away from traditional production-focused industries such as commercial fishing and timber harvesting toward high tech research and service related industries, are all of those extra hours really worth it?

The Math!

                With OPEC predicting that the price for a single barrel of crude oil will top two hundred dollars, consumers should expect to see the price at the pumps surpassing the five dollar per gallon mark sometime in the near future,[ii] making the first and most immediate concern on most people’s minds these days the sky-rocketing price of gasoline. 

Take a second to break the numbers down.

·         Maine is currently home to 600,020 employees.[iii] 

·         Roughly eighty percent of them commute to work by car (figure is based on national average though, in Maine, I would suspect the actual number is much higher due to lack of mass transit options in rural areas.)  That’s 480,016 people travelling to work by automobile. 

·         The average commute for each of them is nineteen miles each way (which translates into twenty-three minutes per commute.) 

·         The average mileage rating for cars currently on the road is twenty-one miles per gallon.

·         Currently regular unleaded is hovering rslightly under four dollars per gallon. 

Add it all up and Maine employees are currently paying an average of $3,474,401 per day just to get to and from work.  Multiply that by five days a week and you get $17,372,007.  Break that down to an individual level and the figures are even more startling.  One person can expect to spend roughly $1,800 per year just travelling to and from work – and that’s at current gasoline prices.

                Also, keep in mind that over twenty-percent of Mainers have commutes of forty-five minutes or more, and that those figures don’t even include all of the miscellaneous expenses of owning an automobile such as loan payments, maintenance, and insurance which can run upwards of $6,000 per car, per year.  The cost is compounded even more when more than one person works outside the home in each household.

The Human Element.

                Not all of the harmful effects of overworking are strictly financial.  Sixty to seventy percent of atmospheric pollutants are caused by automobiles.  A total of fifty percent of a person’s daily exposure to “ultrafine particles,” pollutant particles which are linked to cardiovascular and respiratory disease and are produced in-part by combustion engines, occurs during the daily commute due to the tendency of those particles to concentrate in high levels inside automobiles.[iv]  With cardiovascular disease alone costing Americans $400 billion dollar per year,[v] reducing, even incrementally, an individual’s risk for developing such health risks would be worth a considerable sum.

                More surprising perhaps are the social detriments of extended workweeks.  Studies have consistently found that people who regularly work more than forty hours per week tend to drink more alcohol, smoke more, gain more weight, and be involved in more work-related injuries than those who work forty hours or less.  In addition, they are more likely to suffer from depression and, those who are married, are more likely to file for divorce.[vi] 

                Social risk factors such as alcohol abuse and tobacco usage may lead to chronic health conditions and familial “baggage” that leach not only money from employers but employees from the available work force.

The Solution?

                Many corporations and individuals are looking to a four-day work week as a viable alternative to wasteful overtime and sky-rocketing transportation costs.  Indeed, one survey by Human Resources Management, found that thirty-eight percent of companies are offering some sort of “compressed” workweek (a typical forty hour week that is accomplished in four ten hour shifts rather than five eights.)[vii]  Some corporations and individuals are going so far as to mandate thirty-two hour workweeks that are more in line with a European sensibility.

                Ryan Carson, web designer, applications builder, and founder of Carson Systems, has been working a four-day work week for years.  How, he asked himself, would it be possible to successfully run his business by working twenty-percent fewer hours?  The answer came to him when he realized that “there will always be more work to do.  Working more hours won’t change that.  In fact, working more is actually counter-productive.”[viii]  By precisely managing the time he allows himself, his work gets done and with fewer unnecessary interruptions leaving him with “more peace.  More time to think.  More time to enjoy life,” he says.  “It’s fabulous.”

                The idea is not new.  The oil crisis of the ‘70’s prompted many corporations, individuals, and institutions to shorten their own schedules to conserve precious resources and energy and even before that, innovators such as W.K. Kellogg (founder of the cereal giant) reduced their standard workweek from forty to thirty hours.  Even so, the idea has not been quick to catch on in Maine – perhaps because of the Puritan work ethic Americans in general and especially New Englander’s have chosen to espouse.   

                The key to successfully making the change, says John Challenger of Challenger Gray and Christmas, a nationwide consulting and coaching firm, is shifting the focus away from hours worked toward performance during those hours.[ix]  In essence, employers need to stress quality over quantity.  By cutting out unnecessary meetings, lost time during commutes, wasted time at the “water cooler,” and setting clear, attainable goals for their employees companies can focus and hone the work apparatus they already have in place into a product-driven juggernaut and potentially increase their productivity by as much as twenty-five percent.[x] 

                Several municipalities across the country have adopted shorter workweeks and have either realized or expect to realize significant savings.  

·         The state of West Virginia is considering cutting municipal workweeks to four days and estimates it will save 65 million gallons of gasoline per day. 

·         Marion County Florida has adopted a similar program and expects to save $250,000 per year.[xi]

·         Birmingham Alabama has decided to compress its employee’s week to four ten-hour days which is estimated to save $500,000 to $1 million in the first year in fuel costs alone.  

                Recently, school districts in Maine tried to institute similar changes but education Commissioner Susan Gendron denied the request to shorten the school year to 175 days.  The length of Maine’s school year, she pointed out, is state regulated and cannot be change without legislation.  The request was made after district boards recalled the extraordinary circumstances that inspired Governor James Longley to allow such a change during the energy crisis of the ‘70’s. 

                Though the measure was temporarily defeated in Maine, school districts elsewhere have successfully adopted modified weeks.  One such is the MacCray school district in Maynard, Minnesota.  Superintendant Greg Schmidt was happy to reveal that the school year would now be 149 days instead of 172.  Each day would include sixty-five extra minutes of instruction to compensate for the shortening.  The change to a four-day week occurred after finance committees calculated a total savings of $50,000.[xii]   

                In addition to the monetary savings, several school districts in various states that have had four-day weeks for some time regularly reports less instances of student violence, increased test scores, and stricter adherence to rules laid down in the student handbook.[xiii]

Is it all good news?

                Even if job markets do shift from hourly quantity-based pay to project and goal based, there will necessarily be deficiencies.  It would be nearly impossible to complete the same amount of work in thirty-two hours as could be done in forty.  Those deficiencies would be most noticeable in industries that require a five, six, or seven day presence – such as customer service and hospitality.  To recover those lost hours, employers may find it necessary to search out new employees.  Even so, the financial impact is negligible.  Indeed, economists have found that, in the long run, it costs an average of twice as much to pay current employees overtime as it does to hire another person to cover those extra hours – even when the figures include benefits packages, taxes, and training![xiv]  Also, hiring more employees will decrease joblessness and the drain on social services such as welfare.

The future looms large . . .

                Whether or not they think it is a good idea, Maine employers may be forced to adopt some form of compressed workweek sooner than they think. 

                Dave Vaughan, executive director of Neighborhood Development Services in rural Ohio, recently faced such an ultimatum.  When several of his employees informed him they would be searching out jobs closer to home or getting done altogether because the expense of travelling had overshadowed the wages they earned by working, Vaughan agreed to a four-day work week.

                “In rural areas like we are, gas price increases are more challenging because we don’t have the mass transit alternative – we can’t jump on a bus or take a train,” he said.  With no alternatives, he had to make the change because he couldn’t afford to and “didn’t want to lose people.”[xv]

                With more than sixty percent of Maine classified as rural and over twenty percent of Maine workers commuting an hour and a half per day, many Mainers will soon be approaching their own personal threshold.  Already, many workers find that they spend the first hour or even two of each shift working just to earn enough to buy the gasoline that got them there.  If the price of crude, and coincidentally the price of gasoline, rises as high as some speculate, soon going to work might not be worth it! 

                Is a four-day workweek a viable option to avoid crisis?  More and more individuals, companies, and corporations believe that it is.