Joy Olivia Miller

Archive for the ‘Business News’ Category

Coffee news started, by Jean Daum, in Winnipeg, Canada is a weekly news publication that is delivered to restaurants, coffee shops, gift shops, motels and other small eateries and shops.  Coffee news was created to offer small bite size amounts of news and advertising to the customers of individual stores and was built upon the belief that when consuming information and advertising in small amounts you have a better return.

Coffee news has benefits to local advertisers that larger print publications cannot offer.  The ads are less expensive, they advertiser has exclusivity in their area the week there ad is running, ads are being read three times per day as people are eating different meals, all ad sizes are the same allowing fair exposure and the reader typically reads the entire print due to it’s small size. 

One unique component to this business is the home based nature.  This franchise was designed to allow a person to start a desktop publishing company from home.  As with any franchise you have access to the system that has proven to work.  From ad copy, to print layout, vendor contacts, marketing cooperatives, ad slicks and support the Coffee News Franchise allows you to start with no experience. 

This franchise system is a good part time business for someone looking to make some extra income.  However, looking at the model it is limited to the growth you can achieve.  As a local publication you will be limited to your ability to grow locally and will not have the ability to expand beyond 20 licenses.

The cost for the franchise fee is $8000 and is good for four years.  In addition to the up front fee you will pay an ongoing fee of $80 per week for each license you are awarded. 

It is important to fully evaluate all businesses prior to making a decision.  Understanding the strengths and the weaknesses of the model will allow for you to position yourself for business success rather than business failure.

CNBC investing could be interpreted in many ways; it could be that you are involved in trading using CNBC stocks. Well, it is a media entity and you are probably investing your time watching their updates from time to time relative to your business because it is naturally a business oriented news media. Having CNBC investing is a having a guide at which you will be making a decision in your business. CNBC investing almost covers all business entities around the world.

Source for Business Information

The network is a good source on a daily basis on business, they are very informative and you could have smart decisions using their guidance and publications. They are not biased that is why they are entrusted to inform business enthusiast ahead of time the things or scenarios on a particular country where status of that countries stocks are known and the trending of their markets. CNBC investing is purely of business concerns, with less of the other side of the news being of second priority as their slogan would say “first in world business”. Practically CNBC investing is a good source of business news.

People who gets bored with watching business news are people who do not have much concern about business, they may even say it’s none of their business where in fact, business news is suppose to be everybody’s business. Just take a look at what happened to the economy the recent years, the business community went down and it dragged a lot of people affected much of the living conditions. A lot of people didn’t saw that coming, not even some of the speculators in the stock market. A lot of businesses needed to close down, mass lay-offs of various companies took effect it was one of the worst conditions experienced not just in the business world but the whole country and eventually the whole world particularly economies that are tied with the economy of the United States.

Our Involvement

Now, what can we do to contribute to the development of the economy, this would rather be something that many people would say “leave it to the economists” but we are actually a part of it. This does not suggest that you watch CNBC investing news regularly or any other news media pertaining to business. What I am trying to tell you is that we can contribute by spending on what we need and save more for tomorrow; if you can think of something that you can earn from aside from employment, the better. There are times when your country would need you more than you need it, the successes of the individual in a country is also its success, it will not have many money if you don’t patronize what it offers. And how can you buy if you have nothing? Do you have to rely on your country to give you something all the time, think out of the box and improvise on how you would earn more than what employment can offer, CNBC investing may help.

Google Places Business Listings is trying to insure that it is top dog among the Local Search Engines real soon. They just have so many ideas that are so clever, useful, and inexpensive. This one could be called the Twitter of local search.

Since you, as a marketer or business owner should be checking your Google Places Analytics daily or at least weekly to see trends and make revisions in your strategy for both Google Places and your other online advertising, you can quickly put up a news piece in the box in the upper right hand of your Google Analystics page, just under the “Post it to your place page.” And since Google seems like they forgot how to name things after they created the great name Google, I’ll name this for them. Google Places News Flash.

Now your News Flash will appear on the listing in a highly visible location just under the major items such as name, address, and category.

This is the easiest, fastest way to generate a following yet. Now just watch how Google integrates this into their other products. But for now, local business owners have yet another reason to love Google Places. Use this idea to put up the daily special at a restaurant, or the standings in the Tour de France for a bike shop. How about giving a one hour special for any retailer, and you give the special at the same time every day. You can even use it just to proclaim the most important aspect of your business’s special niche or reason for existence.

The possibilities are limitless, and you can add a link to your website, blog, or other URL just as I did above.

Marketing is one of your businesses most important tasks. Make sure you are getting your message across.

One great way to do this is to use newspaper inserts in your advertising campaign.

First, decide where you are going to advertise. I use the smaller weekly newspapers instead of the bigger daily papers. The weekly papers are usually much cheaper.

My weekly paper only charges about $40.00 per 1000 inserts.

Another reason to use inserts is that you can target specific zip codes.

For example, in the 78209 zip code you run an advertisement focused on businesses, while running an advertisement targeting residential customers in the 78248 zip code.

This is a powerful method of targeting your marketing messages.

The benefits don’t stop there! With a display ad you only get a small space to promote your products or services. With inserts you get as much space as you need.

You can produce a single double sided page or a multi-page insert. Which do you think has the greatest chance of getting your message to the most customers?

Display Ads All Look the Same

To me, almost all display ads look the same. How do you get your message to stand out from the crowd? You use bold text, borders, and huge headlines work to draw attention to your advertisement. However, they still must compete with every other ad in their section.

Inserts Stand Out

All of these tactics work with inserts, but you have much less competition.

Tip: Use colored paper to make your insert stand out even more!

How do you use inserts to promote your business?

1. Select the markets you desire to target and develop the insert targeting that particular market segment.

2. Locate those markets by zip code.

3. Print the inserts at your local printer.

4. Deliver your inserts to the newspaper and they will insert them into the papers going to the zip codes you select.

For my business, a typical insert campaign looks like this. Five thousand insert divided between three zip codes. Each zip code receives a targeted message printed on bright gold paper with black ink.

The cost is about $80.00 per thousand. Forty dollars to the newspaper and $40.00 to have the inserts printed. I write my own advertising copy. Total cost is about $400.00 per run.

My experience is that I get a much better return with inserts than with display advertising.

The key to an effective marketing campaign is to target your customers with multiple exposures. One shot marketing just doesn’t cut it!

Tip: Create an insert that gives your customers information they want to keep for reference later. Consider a short information booklet to accomplish this. One 11 x 17 inch piece of paper makes an inexpensive, but effective four page booklet! See my article Marketing Your Business with Tips Booklets.

Coffee News is a weekly publication that began back in 1988 in Manitoba, Canada. It was started by Jean Daum, an advertising expert, whose independent research led her to believe that people are more susceptible to advertising while they are eating. The concept is simple- a brief newspaper that is delivered free to coffee houses, restaurants, and motels. How brief? Well, Coffee News claims that it only takes 8 minutes to read and therefore, due to its brevity, people will read it from front to back. The paper focuses only on news that is entertaining and upbeat, including horoscopes, jokes, trivia, and therefore appeals to its readers. The theory is then that readers will read not only the features but also the advertisements.

Coffee News has been franchising since 1994 and startup costs for the new franchisee are estimated at just under $10,000. There is an $8,000 franchise fee and an ongoing royalty fee of $75 per week. There is no in-house financing available for the start-up costs or franchise fee. Exclusive territories are offered and the parent company looks for individuals with sales, advertising, and marketing experience. As a franchisee, you will need to sell advertising space in your publication. This is how revenue is generated.

The Coffee News franchise can be run out of your home and it does not need to be owner operated. However, approximately 98% of the current franchisees are owner operators. A 3-day training course is offered at the company headquarters in Bangor, Maine and a mentorship program is also available for new franchisees. A monthly newsletter is also distributed by the parent company which offers tips and strategies from other franchise owners.

If advertising sales is something that appeals to you, then you might find the Coffee News opportunity to suit your needs. However, if it does not, then you probably should search elsewhere for a business startup.

If you are a small business owner, you know there was welcome relief in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, popularly known as the Stimulus Act. So what was so great about the Act? Among other things, section 501 reduced the fees paid by borrowers so they did not have to pay the dreaded “SBA loan guarantee fee”. This was traditionally 2% of 75% of the loan amount on the large 7(a) loans. Also, section 502 increased the guarantee percentage which pays banks their losses upon default, from 75 to 90%. Cause for celebration? Absolutely. But we must temper our excitement with the fact these benefits may no longer be in effect if Congress does not appropriate more money. In fact, some pundits think it may run out in December based on the volume of SBA loans.

To understand this, you have to get a grasp on why more money is needed. Prior to the Act, banks were given more incentive to make loans because the SBA would step in and pay their losses by a certain percentage. When the guarantee rate went from 75% to 90%, coupled with a higher default rate because of the economy, the Feds had to shell out more money to the banks. And then there was the waiver of SBA guarantee fees which are subsidized by taxpayers-you and I. Without the money, those incentives go way.

So, things were really percolating along as a result of these incentives. In the beginning of 2009, the SBA approved approximately 165 million loans. But by July and August, the figure had risen to 320 million and 400 million respectively. More loans simply meant more risk-increased expenditures by the government.

And so what is Congress doing to find the extra funds? It is probably unlikely to secure additional appropriation in the new Stimulus Act amendments since they have already passed committee and did not include such measures. Instead, Congress is looking into any unused money under our friend (depending on what political aisle you’re sitting on) the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). This originally allocated funds to prop up the secondary market. Amendments to that bill could provide some of the appropriation necessary.

Translation: as small business owners we don’t care what you call it or who’s doing it, just as long as these incentives continue. The fact that there are actually banks making small business loans does wonders to provide needed capital and at least keep our hopes alive in this anguishing financial market.

So what does that mean to me as a small business owner? I’m not interested in a large loan with a lot of paperwork. I simply want a streamlined loan application where I can receive unsecured monies in the neighborhood of 5K to 50K . The last thing anyone wants to see is this type of loan going away. Well, you are in luck. Because of these incentives, banks are actually making these loans under a popular program called SBA Community Express. It does not require business plans, tax returns, or financials , and is now running at the rate of approximately 7.75% or $60 per month for every $5,000 borrowed. We can only keep our fingers crossed that this golden egg laid by Congress remains available.