Beat the Credit Crunch - Get Your Business Online

It seems impossible to avoid the doom and gloom of the recession. Every industry, in one way or another appears to have been negatively affected by the downturn; with mass redundancies and house repossessions becoming an increasingly common occurrence.

But could E-commence be the silver lining on the UK's current dark economic cloud? Well it just might. Competitive prices, easy product comparisons, fuel savings and other convenience factors make online shopping an appealing option for consumers.

IMRG and Capgemini's statistics showed that a number of e-commerce categories saw significant month-on-month growth in March 2009, including the clothing, footwear and accessories market and the gifts segment.

Also, new figures have revealed that total UK e-commerce sales rose by 19 per cent year on year in March 2009.

The fact is, in order to compete in today's ever-challenging economic climate businesses must look for every way possible to reach their target audience. And selling on line provides a whole host of sales and marketing opportunities which would have never been possible before the dawn of the internet.

Therefore it has never been a more important time for small and medium sized businesses, many of whom have managed to make a decent living and avoided the lure of the internet for years, to build a website and start trading online.

These include a radically reduced time to market, improved customer relationships, low cost market entry, easier access to a global market and a significantly wider audience. They are also able to compete with businesses much bigger than themselves, as in the online world, as long as your 'shop front' (website) looks the part, then who is to know that you are not a multi million pound organisation, employing 5,000 staff?

So what draws people to shop on the internet?

o As the internet presents a shopping experience of global proportions, there is unlimited choice.

o Consumers can get what you are looking for and quickly. There's no need to trawl aimlessly round the high street as the perfect product is only a mouse click away.

o Internet shoppers will strive to get the best deals, as the retailers are forced to reduce prices in a bid to beat the competition and win custom.

o There's nothing much more comfortable than armchair shopping, anytime, day or night. If you can provide choice, reduced prices and convenience shopping electronically, there is a substantial slice of the market to be won.

So even with all this negativity across the world, your business can still have the competitive advantage by being online. As long you have a good customer friendly website, email, the framework to get the goods to the customer and a strong web presence, there is no reason why your business can't thrive in the recession.

For web hosting, I recommend Storm Internet http://www.storminternet.co.uk.

How to Open a Tea Shop Online

If you are passionate about tea, opening a tea shop online may be a great idea. It can help you make money by selling tea and at the same time allow you to enjoy various kinds of tea around the world. As a small tea shop owner, you may begin your company with only a computer. It seems easy but making your online tea shop successful is still much challenging. Since four years, we began our oversea door-to-door tea wholesale service, we have gotten to know and cooperate with quite a large number of owners of online tea shops. Some of them now have already had a prosperous business but some of them shut down their shops just one or two years after they launched them. Why? Here, we just listed several steps of opening an online tea shop with some pieces of advice for you.

At first, if you have already had a physical tea shop, you can miss a few following steps but we still suggest you should hurry up if you still haven't had an online shop. You really shouldn't miss the web to cost-effectively reach your countless potential customers and if you are a novice and know little about tea, you should be cautious. Tea is a niche involving a great deal of expertise and you can't expect to earn a lot in a short time.

1. Learn about tea

There are six major types of tea--white, black, oolong, green, dark and yellow tea--and thousands of blends, brews and names within those groups. Tea has significance in various cultures and is touted for health benefits. If you are running a tea shop, you would be expected to be asked questions about it. You'll need to be knowledgeable about the regions tea comes from, the processing methods for tea, health benefits of it and importantly how to store different kinds of them.

Unlike other businesses you can choose, there is a lot to learn besides just how to open a tea shop. Read about tea books, join groups and go to seminars and presentations to get a good understanding of all. Some free online resources are also highly recommended such as Tea Guardian, Chinese Teas 101, TeaUSA and Vicony Tea Encyclopedia. It would take a lot of time for you to learn. If you would get bored of it, you should consider whether you should give it up as early as possible.

2. Register your business

Register your business with the Internal Revenue Service. Fill out an application providing applicable details about your online tea shop. Once you're registered, an employer identification number, or EIN, is submitted for tax purposes.

3. Build an online presence

Build an online presence. You can sell tea through established websites such as Amazon and eBay but we recommend you create you own website. Choose a decent company to help you build an attracting online tea shop. Each of them in it should have photos, descriptions and prices. Choose a reliable Web-hosting company to host the online shop. Its service need to be stable.

4. Purchase tea

Purchase tea by wholesale. Carefully select teas that are proven to be popular, along with rare specialties that can attract individual customers. Try to cover more kinds of teas from China, India, Japan and Sri Lanka. Try to include green, black, white, oolong, Puerh and unique blends.

If you're running a business at home, you may not have a big space to store stock (important: different kinds of teas should be kept in the different ways). You can opt for a drop-shipping arrangement but we don't think it is a good idea because you can't keep your customers information confidential and it is also difficult for you to make your products privately labeled and sometimes easily cause a delay in shipment so it is great to cooperate with the companies that can wholesale bulk tea in small quantities. For example, ViconyTeas have a wide range of Chinese teas and you can wholesale from 1KG per kind.

It is a good idea to use packages with your private labels. During the early stage, we recommend you choose common packages such as blank aluminum foil bags or paper bags pasted with your own labels. It is economical and at the same time can show your identity.

Take the storage requirements of different kinds of teas into consideration when you purchase tea. For example, green tea should be put in cold storage so don't purchase too much if your ice chest have already no space to store it. Black teas can be kept well for more than two years at room temperature only when they are sealed properly so you can make a relatively large purchase if you are satisfied with the batch of it.

Remember the proper time to purchase different teas. For example, you can start purchasing the best Chinese green teas of the current year such as Dragon Well or Biluochun in April while you need to wait and buy such as Jasmine tea and Wuyi Rock Oolong of the current year until Mid-September.

5. Promote your online tea shop

Promote your tea shop in various ways such as social networking, creating a tea blog, tweeting daily tea-related posts and creating a Facebook page for your tea shop. Signing up through an affiliate network to create online ads for your tea store is also recommended. Consult with a SEO & SEM specialist to make out a promotion plan and you can also find several books to learn SEO & SEM knowledge and apply them to your online tea shop.

Forex Trading Business - The Advantages of Trading Currencies and How to Make Huge Gains!

Forex trading is a business and anyone can trade from home and win, with the right education and mindset. In this article, we will look at the advantages of currency trading and how to become a successful trader.

A Forex trading business, is the perfect way to make a second income and here are the main advantages you get:

- Anyone can learn to trade and no college education is required and furthermore, you can learn the basics in just a few weeks.

- You only need a hundred dollars, a computer and an internet connection to get started
You don't need staff, stock or to sell anything.

- Currencies are volatile and provide profit opportunities every day and as one currency rises, another must fall which means there is never a recession.

- You can easily trade in around 45 minutes a day, making it the perfect business for busy people

You can leverage your money to enhance profit potential and if you have a $100.00, most brokers will give you 200;1 leverage meaning you can trade 100 x 200 or $20,000!

Now the above are great advantages but of course you need the right education to win, because 95% of all traders fail to make money but they don't fail because they can't learn to win, they fail because they get the wrong education and have the right mindset.

You need to do your homework and never trust anyone who tells you, that you can make money with no effort - you can't. Ignore all the cheap robots and get rich systems because they lose money. Instead learn Forex charting which allows you lock into trends. You don't need to know anything about economics or the news, you just follow price action - you don't care why prices are moving you just want to get in on trends and make money when they do!

If you learn the basics and apply your system with discipline keeping losses small and running the big profitable trends you can make huge gains in 45 minutes a day or less. No other industry offers you the profit potential of Forex trading so learn this exciting business and get on the road to a great second income.