1. Will my logo be made at a high resolution?

All graphics can be downsized. That its, if you make a logo that is print resolution (generally a large file), it can be downsized for screen resolution and web site use. The problem is when a logo is given to the client at web resolution (72 dpi) and the client wants to print business card, make a banner, or even just have the logo on the site in a larger size. Upsizing images leaves them looking pixelated and jaggy, where as downsizing keeps a graphic file crisp and clean.

The logo on the left was downsized from a larger file,
while the logo on the right was upsized from a smaller file.

Summary: Make sure your logo is designed at 300-600 dpi minimum — higher if you will be making signs or banners.

2. What file format will my logo be in?

If the logo designer gives you a file that is already compressed (for example, in JPG or GIF format), you will not be able to make modifications to the file, change colors, resize it, or remove the background. Where I see this problem the most is with clients who have a JPG logo on a white background and want to put the logo on a colored background — the background has to be removed by hand, bit by bit, which is time-consuming and expensive.

This is the result of changing the background color from white to black without the original source file.

Summary: Ask for your logo to be in EPS/vector format, AI (Adobe Illustrator) format, or PSD (Adobe Photoshop) format with all objects ungrouped or in their own layer.

3. Do I own the rights to the original files?

This is the most disheartening issue that I see crop up: Business owners who have a compressed/web version of their logo that are told they don’t own the rights to the original files when they go back to ask for a new version. You will always need several versions of your logo, so you will need the original files to make those versions down the road. For example, I have been working with the Rockstar Wedding Planer LIVE Grace & Luxury team to get their e-zine out to there subscribers, and as part of that I had to send them their logo in four different sizes, both on a white background and on a transparent background. Making clean, crisp versions of all those would have not been possible if the logo designer hadn’t provided the full Adobe Illustrator files.

If you want crisp logos in a variety of sizes, you'll need your original source files.

Summary: When you make a contract to hire someone for a logo, make sure they will be providing you with all the information and files at the end — including your logo in EPS/AI/PSD format, the fonts used for the logo, and the colors on the logo in both print (CMYK) and web (RGB).

Starting a Small Business

• How to Write a Great Business Plan
  Sure, you might be able to start a simple business without a business plan if you are not looking for funding, but writing out a business plan is an important step to help you clarify your offerings and goals with your business. I have seen many businesses fail from a lack of focus and direction.
• How to Choose the Right Colors for Your Brand
  From your website to your business cards, the colors you choose shape the opinions people will form about your business. Even if you are hiring someone else to create your branding, you should read this article to know what to watch out for.
• 10 Things to Do Before You Start Your Start-Up
  Planning is an essential part of starting a new business, so do your research before you start your business to save you from a lot of costly mistakes down the road.
• How to Write a Marketing Plan
  Even the most innovative products on the market can die a slow and painful death from a lack of sales. The difference? People who meet their sales goals have a clear marketing plan, which enables them to make the right move at the right time.

Your Home Office

• The Basics of Home Office Design
  Some people can just grab a laptop and go, but I find that I am more productive when I use a space that is designed for working. Mine happens to be in half my bedroom, which would kill some people but it is a good location for me. The goal is to design a space that works for you and meets the needs of your business.
• How to Set Up a Home Office
  This one goes into detail about tax deductions for home offices, which is an important consideration for those who work at home.
• Deducting Your Home Office Expenses
  Knowing what you can and can’t deduct off your taxes before you set up your home office will empower you to make more financially sound decisions for your business setup.

Running a Small Business

• How to Run a One-Person Business
  If you’re looking to run a one-man (or one-woman) show, you’re going to need a variety of skills to get the job done.
• 25 Ways to Jump-Start Your Business
  Has your business become stagnant? Get it going again — fast! — with these hints and techniques.

Sales and Marketing

• How to Improve Your Cold-Calling Skills
  I know that I generally do well on a sales call, but I only make warm calls (and I dread those anyway). The ability to turn a call into a sale without seeming like a pushy salesperson is a valuable business skill that everyone should have.
• How to Manage a One-Person Sales Force
  An efficient system is vitally important to a successful solopreneur business. This article will show you how to get there.
• How to Make Money on Etsy
  Are you a crafty person? You can make a great living on Etsy, selling your handmade goods, if you start with some sound business principles and some marketing know-how.
• How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business
  The key to successfully using social media is to drive sales for your business is creating an efficient system so that you are not wasting all of your valuable time online.
• 7 Common Sales Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them
  By learning from others’ mistakes in sales, you can set your business up to be more successful from the start.

Your Web Site

• 7 Deadly Website Sins
  Before you spend money (or hours of your own time) on a web site for your business, read this article to educate yourself on the issues you should avoid.
• How to Design a Great “About Us” Page on Your Website
  This article is a great read for two reasons: 1) The About page is an important piece of your web site; and 2) The process of writing the About page will get you thinking about your marketing messaging, business goals, and how you will sell yourself both on- and offline.
• 10 Vital Items You Should Give Your Web Designer
  I’m not a big fan of the term "web designer" being used here, but gathering this type of information and handing it over to your designer/developer/marketing lead will save you from having to redo the site a day after you finished the first version.

Small Business Inspiration

• And the Money Comes Rolling InMarkus Frind started Plenty of Fish out of his home, in his spare time, and now his site serves up over 1 billion of pages a month and he pays himself $5mil USD a year.
• How Would You Like to Make $6 Million Sitting on Your Couch?
  Paul Mann runs Fetch! Pet Care, a service with thousands of employees all across the nation that brings in over $6mil in revenue yearly — and he does it all from his home.
• How to Make a Million in Your Pajamas
  If you think you can’t make "real money" working from home, think again — not only are entrepreneurs making sustainable income from their homes, they are increasing their profits by saving on overhead for their business.

That, dear readers, is what I would call a marketing fail. You don’t need a degree in marketing to tell you that people can’t buy from you if they don’t know what you are selling.

Example #2: The picture above is from the side of a local barbecue trailer near our downtown. This trailer was parked on a major thoroughfare in Eugene, which also happens to be a one-way street. A large percentage of the population of this city drives down this street every day, and since they are all driving the same direction, they can all see the side of this trailer. I drove past it several times before I finally stopped to figure out what the truck actually said (and snap this photo on my phone). The problem is that the business has chosen fonts with non-standard letters, displayed in a non-standard fashion (the half-circle), with letters that are outlines instead of solid colors, and the whole thing is too small.

What do these two example have in common? Rather than worry about branding, a tagline or the colors in their signs, they probably would be doing considerably more business if they just put their name and offer in a black, Arial Bold font on a white background. As it is now, I doubt I am the only one who can’t read these signs while driving my car, so they are wasting time and losing money with them.

I think people get so hung up on the look of the marketing piece that they never stop to think, “Hey, does this make sense?” If you are paying someone to stand on a street corner with your sign or paying for a premium high-traffic location, is the wording on the sign clearly visible to everyone passing by? Oregon is known for its rain — is the sign clearly visible in all weather conditions? Is the sign simple, contain a clear call to action, and does it actually bring in any customers? If the sign is for outdoor use, is it quickly readable from a distance? Is the name of your company in large, clear print? Think about it — when you are driving your car, how much time do you really have to glance at a sign? There is a reason why all the street signs in town are in a boring font on a solid background.

As I couldn’t leave this article with just two local marketing don’ts, I found this picture of Mattress Mania on 11th in Eugene. They are a good example of what a brick-and-mortar sign display should be when they are in a great location with heavy car- and foot-traffic: clear, easy to read, visible in most lighting conditions, and instantly recognizable as to what they offer. Combined with their zany commercials on local TV, they have created a simple, effective, and clearly recognizable marketing campaign.

To hear the complete series, follow these links:

• Marketing your Website #1 of 5: Focus on Content and Code
• Marketing Your Website #2 of 5: Participate and Network
• Marketing Your Website #3 of 5: Build Your Word of Mouth and Viral Marketing
• Marketing Your Website #4 of 5: Create Press and Write Articles
• Marketing Your Website #5 of 5: Sync Up with Search Engines and Online Tools

If you would like to download the podcast series directly, you can control-click (or right-click on a PC) these links and save them to your hard drive:

• Marketing your Website #1 of 5: Focus on Content and Code (mp3)
• Marketing Your Website #2 of 5: Participate and Network (mp3)
• Marketing Your Website #3 of 5: Build Your Word of Mouth and Viral Marketing (mp3)
• Marketing Your Website #4 of 5: Create Press and Write Articles (mp3)
• Marketing Your Website #5 of 5: Sync Up with Search Engines and Online Tools (mp3)

If you would like to download the podcast directly, you can control-click (or right-click on a PC) this link and save it to your hard drive.

Stay tuned to Small Business Essentials (perhaps by using the convenient subscribe buttons to your right, if you are viewing this at the website!) and I will update you weekly as each one is released.

If you would like to download the podcast directly, you can control-click (or right-click on a PC) this link and save it to your hard drive.

Stay tuned to Small Business Essentials (perhaps by using the convenient subscribe buttons to your right, if you are viewing this at the website!) and I will update you weekly as each one is released.

• The blog was once on a subdomain of my company, and now has its own domain.
• I started at infrequent posts, then went to 2-3 posts a week, and now am at 5-6 posts per week.
• The topics have changed as my voice has developed and my experience has grown.

I have thought a long time about what the purpose of my writing really is. It does not build my client list, so it’s not for promoting my business. (Although, in all fairness, I rarely promote myself on this site.) It hasn’t produced income for me. It hasn’t opened up new job opportunities. It has introduced me to a lot of really wonderful people that I have been glad to message back and forth with. It has helped me sort thoughts in my head and put them into words in a more focused way. Being responsible for posts on a regular schedule and extras such as the Carnival of the Capitalists has made my writing production more disciplined. So I guess you could say that blogging has been more of a writing exercise or a hobby for me for the past year, rather than an actual job.

This is where I got to the point of advertising. I have been debating advertising for a long time, and the debate had taken a new intensity since rebranding the site on its own. While having additional income for my efforts would be nice, there are many cons to putting ads on my site.

Advertising is a Distraction

Unlike linking to more content which would provide value to my readers, advertisements just take them to a place where they will be sold something. I suppose if these things are of value to them (what small business owner doesn’t need supplies or a computer or search engine services?), then that is not too bad.

Blogging is about Trust

For me, placing ads on my site would require very strict control over the content. I couldn’t use a program like AdSense because with small business content, those scammy work at home ads were bound to pop up. The only way I would feel comfortable hosting advertisers is if I had a strict system for selecting exactly which ads and offers would appear on my site. I would then not have to worry about the trust I have built being destroyed by unscrupulous advertisers. I would not accept things like link-buying or paid content, because without transparency I feel like that erodes trust.

Aesthetics are Important

If I didn’t care what my site looked like, I wouldn’t have paid an artist to design it or hand-code all the templates myself. I see so many blogs out there where advertising has just taken over, and it makes me not want to come back to that site. It is easy to do ads the wrong way, and have your site take a turn for the worse. Recently, on BusinessPundit (not to pick on Rob May, because he has no control over the advertising on that site), there were some talking ads that completely altered the experience of the site, and popups that showed up some time after that. I would want to keep my site as distraction-free as possible to make it a unique viewing experience.

Money Shouldn’t Drive Content

If you read a lot of the stuff put out by those internet marketers, they develop their content based on what will sell. They write posts based on Google popularity, SEO keywording, and other false ways of beefing up traffic. I’d never want to be in that situation, to be writing about what is popular just for the sake of increased advertising traffic. By writing for myself, I get to stay true and honest—to write for writing’s sake.

Evaluating my Peers

There are a lot of people that I respect and content that I value that does have ads, like Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends, Rob May at BusinessPundit, Guy Kawasaki at How to Change the World, and Darren Rowse at Problogger (the advertising juggernaut that teaches other writers to advertise!). There are also others that don’t, like Charles H Green at Trust Matters, Chris Anderson at The Long Tail and, well, Rob May at Coconut Headsets. (It is interesting to note that when he started writing for different reasons than he does at Business Pundit, and while he is writing for himself, the ads became less important.) Looking at their sites helps me decide what I do and don’t like, but it doesn’t help me with outside influence on my decision here.

Being True to Myself

I start out this year 2008 with a mission to never settle for less than 100% quality in everything I do here on Small Business Essentials. I continued this commitment by adding the links feed, extending my site to other platforms like Facebook and Twitter, participating in the business blogosphere, and creating (what I consider) to be original, valuable content. Somehow, the thought of monetizing this site through third part advertising diminishes that in some way. This may be only an internal perception, however—perhaps my own issues with money cloud my judgement of what is real in this case.

Limiting my Options

If I choose to not monetize the site, it makes me more actively seek out other ventures that would be income-producing. In this way, it is enticing to keep this blog as my writing playground and to use other means to expand revenue. (That revenue, then, would go back into funding this little hobby blog of mine.)

The Future of Small Business Essentials

I have decided to try a few hand-selected advertising items for the time being to try it out while I consider if this is really what do to. After about a day of thought on this subject, and as of right now, I am leaning towards removing them again and just continuing to write as I always have. I will give it a few weeks to make this decision though, and if the ads are permanent, I may have to do another site redesign to make them fit better with the site.

Thoughts?

I’d love to hear feedback on the ads as they are now, your blog/monetization strategy, the purpose of writing, or anything else for that matter.

Challenge: Can You Stump Business and Blogging?

I know you’re going to read it and then tell me it was not about gas stations needing blogs, but about the benefits of blogging for any and every business. My argument is that this post is absurd and misleading in its self-serving logic. (Of course a site that generates ad revenue based on content for business blogging would say every business needs a blog!) I know the piece was meant to be fun and attract traffic, but this was just over the top. I would also not take such offense if I didn’t see this same sentiment echoed by 95% of the web developers and marketing professionals out there. To combat this problem, and to help the non-tech people just looking for advice on marketing their business and their website, I offer this:

Every business does not need a blog!

As I have written before, there are many reasons why some people should not have a blog. To elaborate on this with the gas station owner:

Writing skills are important.

Many gas station owners, especially in this area, either don’t speak English, speak English as a second language, or lack the writing skills of a professional writer. Running a gas station requires good management skills, but not necessarily good written and oral skills. If you do not speak English fluently or do not write well, your blog is not going to be a strong marketing piece for your company.

Blogging is not cost-effective in this niche.

Which of these takes less time and costs a gas station owner less:

• Setting up and maintaining a blog, or
• Putting out a sign on the corner with prices and specials?

I’m going to make an educated guess in saying the sign is also more effective as well.

This niche has already been done.

Do you think the local gas station will have more internet marketing power than Yahoo! Answers, AAA, or About.com? There is just no way my local gas station is going to surpass the power of a search engine or a social media site.

Conversions and traffic are not guaranteed.

After composing his posts, the gas station owner would then have to spend time building traffic to his site … so now he is spending time marketing both his blog online and his company offline. All of this effort does not mean any of his stumbling-in readers will convert to regulars to build trust, nor does it mean his blog readers will convert to sales at the pump. In fact, I’d guess that the conversion rate from first-timers to regulars, and from readers to gas-purchasers, is pretty low in this scenario.

Gas stations are local businesses.

Very few people will drive more than a mile or 2 out of their way to fill up their gas tank, and it usually has to be quite a deal to be worth it. Having a blog will not attract customers to your station from 3 cities over. What are the odds that people living in your immediate area will find your blog through Google, become a regular reader, and then start using your station instead of their regular one?

Gas stations don’t require experts.

It’s gas, not rocket science—the station provides it and you put it in your car. Many people don’t even know who works there or owns the station because they just pay at the pump and drive off.

The proposed questions can be found on Yahoo! Answers.

Most single-topic quick-answer types of sites don’t have long-term readers or regulars.

Running a gas station is time-consuming.

When the owner is not running his business, do you think he’d rather be home blogging or spending time with his family? My husband works long hours, and I know that thinking about work is the last thing he wants to do when he gets home.

Your Opinion?

What do you think? Do gas stations need blogs? Can every business benefit from having a blog?

Update

The discussion has been continued over at Business and Blogging and the StartupNation Community. Follow the links for direct access.