http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:35:25 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en My lamp manufacturing business primarily markets on the Internet, leading me to spend much time, energy, and thought on how to best use the Internet and various tools available for marketing, selling, and analysis. It looks like we've done some things right, as our primary product, a music lamps for ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2010/03/internet-marketing-2/ Over the past few months I have become very sensitive to effective and ineffective web sites as we have worked hard to continually improve and measure the effectiveness of the site for our line of lamps - www.ektralamp.com. One of the best commercial sites I've run across lately I discovered when ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2010/03/702/ In the past I've mentioned the value of boards of advisors for even the smallest businesses. With advisors you will have a sounding board, mentors, and possibly even hands-on help when you need it. But you need to carefully select your board, nuture it, and most important, listen to what ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2010/01/boards/ Here is an innovative financing strategy for cash-strapped businesses. It's called royalty financing. It works like this: The business borrows money against future sales and in turn pays a small percentage (royalty) of each invoice to the lender until the loan and interest is paid off. I've just recently run ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2010/01/royalty-financing/ I'm not sure that availability to capital for small businesses has improved much over the past few months. From what I've seen, many small businesses have had credit lines reduced or terminated, and have difficulty finding banks who are willing to extend credit. There seems to be some activity by ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2009/12/financing-small-businesses/ From all accounts, more and more of our shopping is done on-line from the comfort of our homes. Retailers, and even commercial distributors, recognize the value of the Internet and keep making improvements to their web sites to enhance our on-line shopping experience. Very few companies, however, can meet the standards ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2009/12/a-standard-for-on-line-shopping/ Dell Computer Company, Apple Computers, Microsoft, Google, and E-Bay share much more than only occupying space in the computer-sphere. Each of these businesses was founded by people who was not satisfied with the status-quo, who looked at the world differently, and constantly asked "why?". These businesses not only started with ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2009/12/what-is-your-iq-innovation-quotient/ As we are in the season of thankfulness and thanksgiving, it occurred to me that an introduction to the discipline called Appreciative Inquiry would be timely. Briefly, Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is the process of change management that seeks out the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. Instead ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2009/11/appreciative-inquiry/ A publication editor contacted me this week asking for my input into an article they are thinking of running about what small businesses can do to cut costs. This got me to thinking that business owners should not be focused on cost cutting but rather on increasing profit and improving ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2009/11/cutting-costs-or-increasing-profits/ An alternative financing source that has gained traction over the past few years is peer-to-peer lending facilitated by on-line site such as www.lendingclub.com, www.prosper.com, and www.peerlendingnetwork.com. Small businesses hit with high credit card interest rates and which can't find banks willing to lend money are increasingly funding their needs with ... http://blogs.geniocity.com/limkemann/2009/11/peer-to-peer-lending/