Part 1: Sue Berk of Sue Berk Designs

Sue Berk Designs, founded in 2002, makes painted ceramic crosses, frames, and baby blankets. Sue Berk had no formal art training, but always had a love for it. Her background includes a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas, working in high tech marketing and product management, renovating houses, and making her own tiles for home renovations.

I think the most important thing that Sue Berk did was make the jump from a service-based business (where she was hand-making all her own ceramics for customers) to product-based business (where she could replicate her product in mass quantities). Service-based businesses limit your income because you can only make as much money as you have hours in your day. Sue could only paint so many items in a single day, and the more she painted, the less time she had to live the life she wanted. Switching to a product-based business allowed Sue’s income to take off while still allowing her to enjoy the rewards of seeing her designs in customers’ hands.

Website: Sue Berk Designs

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures

Part 2: Mike Koenigs of Traffic Geyser

Mike Koenigs got started at an early age, teaching himself how to program at the age of 14. His first company, Digital Café, a multimedia agency that produced games, movie websites, and other interactive experiences. He’s created over 300 web sites and more than 30 products, and has a quite impressive list of clients under his belt. Mike is also credited for inventing the "Internet Infomercial" for marketing and selling products or services with video on the web.

Mike Koenigs does two things that I really like:

1. He solved a problem in his own life, and then went to help other people like him solve the same problem. For every niche entrepreneur out there, there are many others who are in the same boat and have the same struggles you do. Being a DIYer who solves a problem for yourself puts you in an excellent position to solve that problem for others in your situation. Also, by serving people similar to you for your product, you already have an excellent understanding of your target market.
2. He takes a lot of notes. Whether you use a notebook or a mind-mapping program, I have found that jotting things down serves a record of my ideas and helps me process or refine an idea. Sometimes I see my notebook as a business colleague that I am bouncing ideas off — the ideas are inside me and I have the power to bring them to market, but I need a sounding board to help me refine and clarify them.

Website: Traffic Geyser

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 2

Part 3: Matt and Emily Griffin of Bakers Edge

Matt Griffin came up for the idea for his specialty brownie pan in 1998, but didn’t launch the company with his wife until 2002, and didn’t get the pan to market until 2005. They followed a very unconventional path, from winning an ideas competition (and $25,000 in cash from VISA and MSN), to being picked as one of Oprah’s Favorite Things.

I think Matt and Emily Griffin are an excellent study in perseverance — their product took 5 years of thought and processing to come to the market, but they still did it. Many people think they have to be first to the market to have any success, but a solid idea with a strong plan will make it whether it takes 1 month or 10 years.

Website: Bakers Edge

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 3

Part 4: Steven Woolley of ooTunes

ooTunes doesn’t have an exciting website or celebrity endorsements, but it is the #2 iPhone app of 2010 on CNET and one of Tech Digest’s Top 10 apps for 2009. Steven Wooley’s one-man software development team created an app with an average of 4 stars on 798 ratings with raves on both the app’s functionality and on Steven’s customer service in adding new features and addressing problems.

Steven Woolley is proof that you don’t need heavy funding to launch a serious business — he got started with nothing but a laptop and iPod, both of which had been given to him as gifts! You also don’t need many products to keep your business running strong, as Steven only really makes money from one. The important part is that he works hard on the one product to make it the best it can be, so that his customers keep giving him rave reviews and the sales of his app continue.

Website: ooTunes

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 4

Part 5: Rob Walling of Software by Rob

Rob Walling has been building web applications professionally for 10 years, working as as a consultant, a freelance developer, the development manager for the City of Pasadena, and a team lead for the world’s largest prepaid credit card company. His current "internet portfolio" includes sites like Dot Net Invoice, Wedding Toolbox, and Apprentice Lineman Jobs.

The thing that stands out about Rob is DIVERSITY. He doesn’t rely on any one income stream to meet his monthly numbers, which softens the blow to his finances if one of his sites doesn’t do well in a given month. I think Rob should also be applauded as being one of those small business owners that keeps the economy strong, as he not only pays himself income, but also employs virtual assistants (VAs) to help him run his day to day operations.

Website: Software by Rob

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 5

Part 6: David Wood, author of Get Paid for Who You Are™

David Wood is fast becoming one of the foremost voices in online marketing and lifestyle design, having built a rewarding hobby into a million-dollar online empire that allows him to work and play from anywhere in the world. His book and website helps entrepreneurs turn their passions into rewarding careers by building internet businesses. He breaks his launch plan into five simple steps, and incorporates giving back into the overall vision of building a business.

I think David is spot on when he describes his only limit as being himself now. When you work for yourself, as I do, I have the choice of launching my idea today or one year from now. All I have to do is decide to "feel the fear and do it anyway" (as David says), push through it, and get it done.

I also like that David had so many coaches assist him along the way. So many solopreneurs think they have to do everything on their own, but that isn’t true. It is important to build your own tribe (colleagues, friends, coaches, or financial advisers — whoever it may be!) to see you through your business. Just find the key people who you need to succeed in your business and surround yourself with them.

Website: Get Paid for Who You Are

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 6

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.

I learned a painful (and expensive) lesson recently, courtesy of Google Checkout. If you are a small business providing services to your clients, please read the rest of this story to decide for yourself whether or not you will risk offering Google Checkout to your clients as a payment method.

For most of my projects, I take two payments — a 50% deposit at the start, and the rest around 30 days later (or at the site launch if that comes first). This method seemed like a good compromise with my clients, decreasing the financial risk for both client and developer. The deposit is generally non-refundable under most circumstances because it pays for my time helping the client determine the course for their site, and I put a lot of time and effort into site planning.

Last spring, I started a project under these terms and accept a deposit through Google Checkout. Due to communication issues, the project progress stopped. (I won’t go into details here because this article is not about placing blame.) The client wanted 100% refund on his deposit, but I explained that I had already spent time on the project and could not offer him that. He opened a dispute through Google Checkout, in which we went back and forth for a while. I offered to give him all my notes, plans, and theme files for the project so that he could take them to another developer to complete the project. He refused, saying those files do him no good and that he wanted a website. I relented, offering to finish the site if he would close the dispute. He did not close the dispute — he wanted either 100% refund or a site. Not being able to trust him with an open dispute, I let the project go.

Months later, the client decided he still wanted his money back and he disputed the charge with his credit card company. I got a notice about the pending action and wrote up a lengthy response to the matter, sending in my earlier offer, my refund policy, and all of the ongoing conversations with the client as evidence. Google sent me a response a few weeks later, telling me that I had lost the dispute and that they were withdrawing the amount from my account in addition to a $10 fee for losing the dispute. Their reasoning was basically that their payment protection did not apply to service-based transactions. Regardless of the case I argued, I would have lost. He got his files and my time for free, and I was left with a -$10 balance in my Google Checkout account.

But the pain didn’t stop there. I had recently switched around my accounts after my bank increased fees on accounts, so the account Google tried to take the money from was no longer valid. Google then sent me a letter stating that if I did not repay the amount within 10 days, they would shut off all my Google services. As I use Google for Analytics, Gmail (Google Apps for Business), Feedburner, etc., I had no choice but to immediately pay up the amount plus the fee.

If you have a service-based business, I strongly suggest that you use PayPal if you want an easy credit card processing system. As a solo entrepreneur, I don’t do enough credit card volume to warrant having a merchant account solution, so I rely on 3rd party credit card processing. PayPal does a good job with seller protection and their dispute process, so I will be continuing on with them.

I have already removed all Google Checkout links from my site, and I will no longer be using my account there. Their fees are the same as PayPal anyway — I only started with them to offer my clients a choice and because Google automatically deposits the money into your account within a few business days. (With PayPal, you have to manually transfer it after receiving money.)

There is just no excuse for letting a buyer get a full refund on their purchase months after they made it. Google Checkout’s system would allow someone who purchased a site 6 months ago to get a full refund on it if, say, their business wasn’t working out or their traffic didn’t build the way they wanted it to (both of which have nothing to do with the developer who made the site). Clients shouldn’t be allowed to get automatic refunds just by disputing the charge with their credit card company.

For your protection, don’t do business with Google Checkout if you are a service-based business.

Flickr photo by Patrick Hoesly.

I have worked for clients with a wide variety of content management software and strategies — WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, ColdFusion, publishing through programs like Dreamweaver and FrontPage, proprietary systems, using PHP includes, no system at all (using flat HTML files) — and WordPress is by far the easiest for the web developer, the marketing/content person, and the site owner to all use. What does this mean? WordPress allows small businesses to get up their sites faster and more cost-efficiently than ever before. If you need more reasons to try WordPress for your content management, consider these:

WordPress is made for writing.

WordPress allows the user to write in the browser window effortlessly, just like using a traditional word processor. The writer doesn’t have to worry about code or formatting while writing — the code writes itself in Visual Mode and formatting can be added to an article with a few easy clicks later on. When combined with my browser’s built-in spellchecking, I have no need to open a word processing program. WordPress has revision capabilities built right in — it autosaves my work as I type, and it lets me revert back to or compare my writing to earlier versions with a couple of clicks.

WordPress makes drafts simple.

With several save modes on posts — Draft, Pending Review, and Published — writers can work on several articles at once, save them for editorial review, and publish them when they are ready to go. Want to publish your articles according to an editorial calendar but write them in advance? WordPress makes it easy for content makers to write and preview articles before scheduling them for publication. (This article, for example, was written directly into WordPress hours before the publication time!)

WordPress won’t embarrass you with its code.

If you have ever had to look at code generated by most WYSIWYG editors (such as FrontPage), you would know how terrible it is. The code is often several years outdated, bloated with unnecessary tags, and impossible to edit without breaking the rest of the page. WordPress-generated code, however, is not. It doesn’t add anything you didn’t ask it to add, and it doesn’t break any of the premium designs that people pay for!

WordPress is very flexible.

A self-hosted install of WordPress (that’s wordpress.org not wordpress.com) can really be molded into whatever kind of site you want, driven by the powerful WordPress engine. With hosted solutions (Blogger, Blogspot, Homestead), you are limited by the constraints of the system and how it is organized. With DIY builders like GoDaddy’s Website Tonight, you are limited by the design of the software. With WordPress, I have yet to find something I couldn’t build.

WordPress has the backing of a strong community.

Discussion forms, sites dedicated to WordPress hacks, and a strong developer community mean that you will probably be able to find the answer for whatever problem you may come across. A strong user base also means a wide variety of available add-ons and plugins to make your WordPress installation even more useful. If you happen to need something you can’t find already available in a plugin, widespread support also means that you can easily find a web developer capable of writing a plugin or added functionality for you!

WordPress offers thousands of themes and theme frameworks

Years ago, the only way to get a nice site was to build the whole thing from scratch. Now with themes and theme frameworks, you can customize and deploy a ready-to-sell site in a matter of hours. Premium theme sites such as WooThemes, Elegant Themes, StudioPress, and Theme Forest dramatically slash your development costs and deployment times, saving you thousands on your web launch. If you’re just looking for something simple (and cheap!) for a personal blog, there are also many free themes available.

If you want more than six reasons to use WordPress, sign up for the Small Business Essentials free newsletter in the top right. I will be working on an expanded list of WordPress features, and other goodies, to release monthly to my newsletter list. Join today so you don’t miss out!

Flickr photo by Team StickerGiant.

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.

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.