If you have a great voice and a passion for storytelling, becoming a voiceover artist may be the perfect career path for you.
With the increasing demand for audio content, there has never been a better time to break into the industry.
To get started, take a look at this video to discover four important steps to develop your skills.
Even though the demand for flexible employment continues to grow, finding a job as a freelancer isn’t easy. With the help of freelance websites like Fiverr, your search for work could be made simpler.
Fiverr is one of the more popular online platforms that connects businesses with freelancers offering a wide range of services. It stands out because clients come to you rather than you having to seek out and bid for job projects.
With millions of active buyers and sellers, it can be challenging for you to stand out and attract new customers on the platform.
Here are six tips on how to get started and find customers on Fiverr:
By following these tips, you can increase your chances of getting noticed by potential customers on Fiverr and building a successful freelance business.
For more help with setting up a profile on Fiverr, check out these resources…
Getting Started On Fiverr – The Ultimate Guide
Chris Hanna | Nov 15, 2022
https://sophicalcontent.com/getting-started-on-fiverr
How to Get Started as an Anywhere Worker
Karen Maristani | Jul 26, 2022
https://blog.fiverr.com/post/how-to-get-started-as-an-anywhere-worker
How to Work on Fiverr? | Step by Step Guide To Work on Fiverr Without Skills
Varsha Pillareddy / Mar 6, 2023
There are many factors that contribute to a startup’s success, so the folks at Staff.com, a global employment website based in Sydney, Australia, created this infographic on those factors, or chances that your startup will fail or succeed.
The infographic also includes some research on projections for the best sectors to start your new business.
If you need some inspiration to start a small or home-based business, you don’t have to look too far. Stop and think for a minute about providing a service in the local market of your own neighborhood.
Whatever type of area you live in, there are services you can provide to your local community that people will pay you for. Begin brainstorming for ideas and opportunities by conducting research. Peruse the phone book, search the Internet, physically look around the neighborhood, and talk to people in the area to see what types of businesses are in your local area.
After you get a sense of the kind of services that are available, answer these questions … Is there a business service that is lacking? What does my local area need that I can provide?
For example, do you live near a business district? People who work in offices are busy today and often need help running errands. Starting an errand running business solves particular delivery problems for people or businesses.
Let’s say you noticed a local listing of a small mail order company. That business may need someone to regularly pick up brochures from their printer. Upon further research, you may find other errand services in the area. If so, set your prices in line with your local competitors.
Perhaps you live in an affluent area where there are big houses with significant gardens — gardens that will need tending and houses that will need maintaining. If you have a knack for gardening or you’re pretty handy with tools, people would be willing to pay for such maintenance.
You can promote your local business service in community newspapers or through popular online listings like Angie’s List and LocalBlox, which specialize in connecting neighbors to a myriad of local service providers, including businesses, professional services, and community activities.
Here are ten more ideas designed to help you think about the type of services you could provide for your neighbors:
1. Provide a lawn maintenance service
2. Provide a swimming pool maintenance service
3. Provide a handyman/odd-jobs service
4. Start a dog walking service
5. Provide an external painting service
6. Provide an internal decorating service
7. Run a local fitness group
8. Run a local newsletter and sell advertising space
9. Provide a carpet cleaning service
10. Provide a shed or garage clearing service
Before pursuing a local business service, call your county or city administration office to make sure you are allowed to operate certain businesses from your home. Your city might have local restrictions or zoning laws that prevent you from running certain home-based business.
For more inspiration, take a look at these 50 Small Business Ideas for Your Local Area for an expanded list of local service prospects within your neighborhood. Some of the opportunities may require that you to get specific training (and possibly experience) or invest in the right tools for the job.
Overall, your time and investment in tools will be worth it. Potential customers will be prepared to pay for that knowledge, experience, and just the fact that you have the tools to perform the service.
Source: Business Ideas Daily
Launching a startup is a never-ending learning experience of what to do and what not to do when starting a new business venture. Aspiring entrepreneurs will never know what to expect unless they either start from scratch and learn by themselves or look at what others have already done and hope to profit from their experiences.
The “learning from others” approach is the premise behind a book called The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest Growing Startups from Their Founding Entrepreneurs by David Kidder.
In the Startup Playbook, Kidder, who is an entrepreneur, offers his own success formula for starting a business by relying on the experiences of highly profitable ventures that started from very modest beginnings.
Kidder demonstrates his lesson-learning approach by illustrating famous success stories from entrepreneurs such as Chris Anderson, who became famous through a publishing startup that built an important niche with broad online support; Charles Best, who made money by developing a philanthropic marketplace where people could meet to raise money; and Tom Gardner, who launched Motley Fool to make tons of money by charging a modest flat fee for high quality investment advice.
The Startup Playbook delivers plenty of examples of how to take a product from concept through to full implementation while making money on practical ideas that work. Overall, the book serves as a helpful resource for anyone with a new idea that seeks to commercialize it and reap the benefits of happy customers and large profits.
Source: BlogCritics.org Book Review: The Startup Playbook by David Kidder
Entrepreneurs love to take an idea and customize it to the needs of a potential customer. That’s what starting a business is all about, isn’t it? Sure, you can add your own creativity to any concept and market it as a unique selling proposition (USP), but that doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel.
In fact, customizing a concept isn’t a choice; it’s a necessity if you want your business to be successful. All you have to do is find an unserved need in the market, look at its potential to offer something different and fill that gap.
For example, have you ever been charged a late fee for returning a past due rental video? You probably grumbled about paying the late fee, but you paid it anyway. Well, when a video store charged Reed Hastings a $40 fee for the “Apollo 13” DVD because it was six weeks late, he didn’t get mad, he got inspired.
Hastings wondered, “How come movie rentals don’t work like a health club, where, whether you use it a lot or a little, you get charged the same?” It was from this thought that Hastings created Netflix, a flat rate DVD rental-by-mail service. From its start in 1999, Netflix has grown into a big business with revenues topping $1.3 billion.
Finding Your Business Idea Is Only the First Step
How do you go about finding the right idea to start a small business? Begin by listing what you are good at, what you like, what things bother you? What would make your life easier?
Get a piece of paper, make a list and write down the answers to those questions to help inspire your ideas. So it might look like this:
Things I am I good at:
• Solving problems correctly and effectively
• Calming people down when they are upset
• Expressing emotions in ways that build healthy relationships
• Reading between the lines to understand someone’s real feelings
Things I like to do:
• Immersing myself in a good story when reading novels
• Spending quality time with my family and loved ones
• Playing computer games on my PC
Things that bother me:
• Finding poor spelling and grammatical mistakes in published books
• Picking up my dry cleaning
• Being stuck in traffic jams
Things that would make life easier:
• Having a personal chef to prepare my dinner
• Creating a chic capsule wardrobe on a budget
• Finding a dry cleaner that delivers
Of course, your list will be unique to your talents and pet peeves, but you should start to see themes and ideas emerging. In the above list, for example, opening a call center that provides customer service is one option, starting a fiction editing service is another.
Once you’ve created your list of potential business ideas, focus on the ones that are feasible and weed out the ones that don’t appeal to you. If you are passionate about something, but don’t have the knowledge to turn it into a business, keep it on the list. It’s easier to figure out how to acquire the skills and knowledge to start a service than pursuing something you’re not passionate about.
Settle on the idea that has the most promise and do some market research. If the idea looks promising, move it to the business plan stage.
Source: PressPort: Why Starting a Business Doesn’t Mean Reinventing the Wheel
6 Steps To Finding Your First Business Idea
When it comes to starting a business, you always want to follow the proper guidelines to make sure your startup will grow and become a successful venture.
The truth is, there are no set rules to follow, according to Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs, a business strategy book written by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham, columnists for Inc. magazine.
Brodsky and Burlingham say there are “mental habits” that can help street-smart entrepreneurs grow their business, resolve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise.
For example, many new business owners start out with the primary goal of growing their company, usually for no other reason than believing that’s what they are supposed to do. However, the book’s authors say, “You don’t have to grow at all if you don’t want to… there’s no rule of business that says you must.”
Street Smarts includes many helpful ideas and concepts for would-be entrepreneurs who are in the process of honing their ideas, and establishing a direction and goals for their own business.
In her review, Palletenterprise.com’s DeAnna Stephens Baker explains how the book does a good job of avoiding abstract ideas. Instead, the authors modify their best advice in the form of a comprehensive guide for managing a variety of businesses.
The book delivers a worthwhile read that’s full of real stories, examples and details that explain how anyone can apply their business ideas in real-life situations.
Brodsky is a veteran entrepreneur who has founded and grown six businesses. Along with Burlingham, he has chronicled his entrepreneurial journey in his column in Inc.com.
Source: PalletEnterprise.com
Being unable to find investors to finance your business endeavor is not an excuse anymore. Entrepreneurs are collecting money from crowd funding websites like Kickstarter and Chipin, which offer accessible and low- to no-cost entry platforms for funding projects, expanding businesses and launching startups.
Crowd funding, or crowd financing, is the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their resources, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. These communities are used to support a wide variety of activities, including disaster relief, citizen journalism, support of artists, and yes — startups and small businesses.
“These types of communities have made themselves quite valuable in today’s ‘Mom and Pop’ market,” says John Cerasani in his YFS Magazine article, 5 Ways to Start a Small Business Without Capital. “With a short profile video describing your business idea and fun perks for potential donors, entrepreneurs have a platform to raise funds without giving up control or equity in their ventures.”
Kickstarter, a crowd funding website for creative projects, has funded a diverse array of endeavors, ranging from indie films, music and comics to journalism, video games, and food-related projects. The platform also showcases entrepreneurs seeking financial support to help expand their small business.
Yancy Strickler, Co-Founder of KickStarter.com, tells how people are funding their entrepreneurial endeavors using his website.
In one case, San Francisco-based entrepreneurs Rachel and Greg Malsin launched Project Juice as a personal mission on Kickstarter to “nourish” the Bay Area community with their fresh, nutrient-dense fruit and vegetable juices. They successfully raised $15,579 (the original goal was $15,000) to help remodel their kitchen to meet the standards of city compliance, purchase industrial refrigeration units, launch a user-friendly website, and obtain license and permit fees.
Apparently, Kickstarter’s crowd funding platform is an idea whose time has come. According to its website, about $347 million has been raised for projects so far (though much less has been raised for successful projects).
ChipIn is another Web-based crowd funding service that simplifies the process of collecting money from groups of people. Once you create an event with ChipIn, the site will process and track all payments that contributors “chip in” via PayPal. You can also monitor events simply by logging into your account and viewing your dashboard.
As people donate to your event, you’ll be able to track the progress of your event using the ChipIn widget, which can be inserted on blogs, profiles, and websites.
Crowd funding is a financing option for prospective entrepreneurs who are hoping to develop an idea into a business, and those who might already have a business going but need financing to take it to the next level.
Here are five tips when considering crowd funding for your next project.
Becoming a successful entrepreneur requires thorough planning, creativity and hard work. But how will you know if you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? To consider whether you possess the characteristics and skills to become a successful entrepreneur, there are key questions you must ask yourself.
Remember “Twenty Questions,” the parlor game where a person chooses a subject but does not reveal this to the others? All other players, who are questioners, have to figure out what the subject is by taking turns asking questions that can only be answered with a simple “Yes” or “No.” The premise for this game can be used to examine your natural aptitude at entrepreneurship.
In fact, the U.S. Small Business Administration sets the stage for a realistic set of 20 questions you should answer to make sure you’re ready to start a business:
Jason Feffer, Co-Founder of SodaHead.com lists questions to ask yourself before developing an idea. Be sure to ask yourself these questions before investing time in kick starting a business.
Starting Your Business 