Nancy Stevens is a home-based image consultant. For seven years, her business Altered Image has been helping men, women and the corporate environment look good and feel good.

In an interview with Enterprise Nation yesterday, Nancy shared her knowledge of colour to help homeworkers look and feel their best. The advice to dress in smart casual clothing ("So that if someone came to the door you wouldn't be ashamed!") was well received.

But the sticking point for readers on Twitter and in the comments was the assertion that women are more likely to succeed if they wear makeup.

The discussion led us to ask the question, when you work from home, do you need to make much effort at all?

"That's the joy of working from home," said Twitter user @mooosh. "Not bothering!" As a 5-to-9er, slipping into something more comfortable is the first thing that @mooosh does when she gets in from work.

In the comments, Claire Brown of Miso Funky agreed that you should make an effort when meeting clients, but was "horrified" at the suggestion that women should wear makeup to increase their chances of success.

Her comments echoed Twitter user, @bugsandfishes. "One of the real benefits of being self-employed is that you don't have to conform to an office culture like that."

What do you think?

Is Nancy right to suggest that women are more likely to succeed if they make more of an effort in their appearance? Or do you agree with @EmilyCagle - where you work, e.g. dedicated space, is more important than what you wear?

Do you have to bother at all? Colin Shelbourn wrote in the comments, "Video Skype opens up the possibility that you only need to be smart from the waist up." But is it okay work in your pyjamas?

Tell us what you think in the comments below.

San Sharma

Social Media Consultant and Web Designer, Author, Moonwalker, etc.

Photo credit: Telefonat by epha.

Mr & Mrs: Drabwell and Hymes

This time last year we kicked off our ‘In Love and In Business’ series with profiles of two businesses; DaisychainBaby and Inch Punch Design. We go knocking on their home office doors once more to ask how business is going.

DaisychainBaby

Read about Lindsay and Peter 12 months ago. 

And now?

The past 12 months have been very exciting for DaisychainBaby.co.uk. When we were last featured, we had only just dipped our toe in the water as far as taking DCB on the road was concerned and I was worried as to whether Pete would be happy with taking a step into the spotlight when he’s normally much happier behind the scenes. A year later and it’s a very different story. We threw ourselves headlong into showing at events, the biggest for us being a pitch at the Thames Festival in September 09 – 2 days on the south bank of the river where up to 750,000 people potentially walk past! Our travels have taken us as far afield as Witney in Oxfordshire and Royston in Cambridgeshire and just about everywhere in between. We’ve taken our stand to baby shows, dog shows (!), craft markets, country shows, fetes and festivals. One of the more unique venues involved sharing a barn with “small animals” (a shy chinchilla, dozy rabbit and several fearless mice) at Standalone Farm in Hertfordshire.

Our first year of business has been a huge learning curve – whilst the website has come on in leaps and bounds and we achieved our turnover goal for Year One, we’ve realised that it’s all too easy to become complacent and when the sales are rolling in, you think that you’re there, you’ve made it. Wrong. It’s still unpredictable and takes constant work. The events have helped enormously in building a solid customer base and spreading the word. It’s been lovely when people have bought from us in person and then subsequently bought online, or returned to us at our regular events because they’ve been so happy with their previous purchase. This alone makes the 6.30am starts in winter, when you’ve been working all week long and really want a lie-in, worth it.

I think we would both agree we’ve learned so much about each other too. We started off doing the events together, then had a couple of quiet ones so realised it was a waste of time for both of us to be there doing nothing. We decided it was better for Pete to drop me off and head home (of course if we’re feasibly close enough to do this) and work on the website. It didn’t last long – I was enthusiastic to begin with but then found it very hard to work the events by myself. I missed the opportunity to go round talking to other stallholders and network, especially at one off markets, and I missed him. For one reason and another we sometimes don’t see a great deal of each other during the week, so it’s important we’re together at weekends, even if that is drinking the 50th cup of tea waiting for a sale that might not come. So he rejoined me and we’ve realised we work much better as a team than by ourselves.

We also react differently to successes or lack thereof. I get motivated by good times and tend to stomp around in a black cloud if we have a bad day. Pete is the opposite – he gets very frustrated if things aren’t going well and uses it to kick start his involvement and tends to relax more if the good times are rolling. He’s probably got the right attitude!

With both of us working Monday to Friday and then having to spend all day out and about on Saturdays and Sundays, it’s certainly the kind of thing that can test a fledgling marriage! This year we know which events will work and which won’t (give or take), so we can plan our roadshow much more effectively, leading to more quality time for us. We’re excited about the year ahead, but with a far greater emphasis on getting that work-life balance spot on so both we and the business continue to flourish.

• DaisychainBaby

Inch Punch Design

Read about Siobhan and Craig 12 months ago.

And now?

Over the past 12 months our business has continued to grow and we have become more focused on the areas of design that we want to work in. We have developed stronger ties with our main clients and the number of new clients gained as a result of referrals has increased.

Being in business and in love is definitely as good as ever.  As a couple we work well together and this team work is reflected in the excellent service that our clients receive. They know they can rely on us to come up with innovative design ideas that are cost effective and meet tight deadlines.

Spending 24 hours together 7 days a week is always going to be a challenge but it is one that we enjoy and good communication is still the essential ingredient for making our business work.

• InchPunch Design

Make profit from the web

Small Business 2.0 claims to be "the only event in Britain dedicated to helping every small business profit from the web." Here at Enterprise Nation, we'd agree with that claim.

Attend the event on Saturday 23rd January (at a cost of only £10) to discover:

• Get More From Google: Learn from Google and make a success of search engine marketing.


• SEO Savvy: How do you get top billing on the search engines? Our experts give you the inside scoop.


• Profit from Ecommerce: Get more from eBay, Amazon, other marketplaces and your own website. Are you getting your share?


• Websites that Work. And Work Harder. Is your website attracting customers and converting leads? There’s always room for improvement. Learn from our experts.


• Market Online: Ensure that email marketing and online advertising is adding to your bottom line.


• Get Serious about Social Media: Embrace Twitter, Facebook and MySpace and ensure that blogs, podcasts and online communities are part of your plan.

The event starts at 10am and takes place in Novotel London West.

Emma Jones from Enterprise Nation will be opening the event with Dan Wilson and staying all day to listen, learn and offer tips on how to start and grow a business from home.

Please come join us - it will be time well spent.

Register for Small Business 2.0 on the link below.

• Registration

What is Tuxebo?

It is an independent online marketplace that matches people looking for scaffolding and skips with companies that provide them. We speed up the time taken to get scaffolding and skip quotes and allow people to quickly compare deals.

How did you come up with the idea?

I started another company first acting as a middleman/broker between people buying and selling heavy construction and quarrying/mining machinery. I started a website to advertise machinery for sale. Through running this, attending tradeshows and listening to clients I discovered there was a great need for my services in the rental industry. The buy/sell market was very competative but the rental industry was untouched and very big. I pitched the idea to my partner, Manvir, and we eventually managed to getting funding and backing from a major technology seed fund in Silicon Valley. We launched the company in June 2009.

How are you promoting the site?

Online, SEO, trying to get into mainstream media / publication material like your book and pestering everyone I think may be of help including the people at FlyingStart.

How did the Flying Start programme help get you established?

Flying start helped me start working with my co-founder Manvir Kenth. It helped him and I formulate a plan, define our goals and set milestones. Mainly it helped us focus our minds on the idea with no distractions and encouraged us to look at it from different angles whilst getting other peoples opinions, criticisms and feedback. Flying Start encouraged us to define our industry, market, user and clients.

What are your plans for the business in 2010?

To expand nationwide, grow our client and user base, increase employee count and provide a redeveloped website better addressing user and client needs.

What's the most important item in your home office?

It has to be the computer. This is an internet company. After that it's the phone. Although we are an internet company we do a huge amount of sales calls and talking with customers and users. In the early days of a business I think you have to do what it takes to get money in the door and survive and grow rather than stick to any predefined concept of a business model, plan or idea. Just follow the revenue and do what ever it takes to make the numbers go up. Working from home helps us bootstrap, be flexible and removes the constant threat to cash flow posed by overheads.

• Tuxebo.co.uk


• Flying Start is a programme to help students and graduates start their own business


• Image: Stag Scaffolding Sculpture, courtesy of Creative Review

Tips for top results

If your site - or an editorial piece, blog recommendation or social recommendation - is listed on the first page of a Google or Bing search then people will see the name, even if they do not click the link. In this sense SEO is ideal for competitive positioning as your site will appear alongside other businesses of the same theme when users search for keywords. The higher you are ranked above these competitors, the more traffic will be directed to your site as people will perceive you as valuable.

There are a few things to remember when you decide to "optimise", i.e. make more visible your web page.

Goal 1

Goal 1 is to make engines find your pages. For this you simply have to make sure your site is indexed, which means submitting your URL to the search engine. Make sure you submit your site manually - don't wait for them to discover you as this can take up to nine weeks or in the worst case, they may not even get around to it. Search for 'submit a site' in the major search engines, and it will provide you with the link to apply.

Goal 2

Goal 2 is to ensure the search engine determines your site as the "best" result for a search. To achieve this goal you must consider the following areas of your web page:

• Content: Ask yourself, what is it that I am publishing and how is it useful to internet users? The more clear-cut and targeted the content, the more optimised your site will be.


• Backlinks: Think about the incoming links from other relevant pages, known as backlinks. If you have backlinks, you are effectively being endorsed by other webpages. You could do this by establishing reciprocal backlink agreements with websites in your subject area. Don't forget to use all of the free social networking tools at your disposal to give you additional authority; use Facebook, Google Maps and Profiles, Twitter and blogs to provide cross-links which will give you even more additional authority.


• Authority: Google will recognise an authoritative site and put it first in the rankings. To make yourself the authoritative page you need to be the obvious answer for a given search term. For example, if you google the term "news" then BBC is the returned result because it is seen as the most obvious place to find news. Consider how your web page is useful to users and match your key words closely to it. Put these keywords in the body of your site but also think about the header metatag (the description the search engine sees when indexing your site).


• Domain name: The URL text is all important, but the greatest secret is that the domain string is the most significant part. For example in <http://cadbury.co.uk/> http://cadbury.co.uk, "Cadbury" is the most important part of the URL because it takes you straight to the official site. If you can't get your prefered domain name with a .com or .co.uk, then buy and leverage your own .tel domain. .Tel is a digital business card, giving instant online presence and putting your contact details online. For SEO, .tel is superfast, it can be your authoritative domain and it leverages the search engine's love of domain streams.


• Age: It takes time for a website to creep its way up the search engine rankings, so be patient. Search engines will generally put your page in a purgatory sandbox for the first three to six months to avoid spamming and any attempt by professional "optimisers" to manipulate Google's page ranking. The older your page, the more trusted it will be by search engines.


• Page load time: Google will put you further up the rankings if your page loads faster - it's as simple as that. 5 seconds is too long, 1 second is good, 0.2 seconds is exceptional. Try to achieve faster load time by reducing the clutter and complexity of the design on your page. Be careful of using Flash and Rich Media content, as it makes it difficult for search engines to read your information. Don't ever duplicate content - you can't spam the index by putting two domains with the same content and get two results on the search engines. Search engines are on the look out for people who try and exploit the system and cheat algorithms.


• Community activity: Add external points of presence to your site such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, which you can update regularly. Try to be active in forums, where you can present yourself as an expert in your field and provide valuable information. Also, be aware that traffic coming from online communities is much more valuable than search engine traffic, as it improves the value of your information in the search engines themselves.

A final tip

The most important thing to remember when practising SEO is never to try and cheat the system - keep it simple and systematic. Stick to the rule book, use the above SEO tactics, and wait for your page to make its way up the rankings. If you get more traffic and ultimately business on the back of this, then you know SEO has worked for you.

Henri Asseily, Telnic

Fulfilment by Amazon

They started with books, then it was CDs. Now Amazon are selling Fulfilment? They've clearly gone mad, but there's a method to the madness. Amazon Fulfilment is a new service that promises to grow your business, improve your customer satisfaction and increase sales.

Here's how it works:

• You send your products to Amazon


• Amazon stores your products


• Customers buy your products (hopefully!)


• Amazon picks and packs your products


• Amazon ships products to customers

Amazon is known for its on-time delivery service and its professional (if somewhat wasteful) packing - and now you can pass those benefits onto your customer.

You must have an Amazon Pro Merchant account to register for FBA. That starts at 86p per sale or £28.75 per month for unlimited sales. Amazon Fulfilment is priced by storage space, handling, 'pick and pack' and weight.

Follow the link below to find out more about selling on Amazon, about Fulfilment, a full list of prices, FAQs and some examples.

• Fulfilment by Amazon

Are you an Amazon Pro Merchant? Are you considering selling your products through Fulfilment by Amazon? Let us know in the comments below.

San Sharma

Social Media Consultant and Web Designer, Author, Moonwalker, etc.

Photo credit: Grab Life by the Stamen by ecstaticist

Let’s take a business

This feature will not apply to all businesses but let’s take the example of someone providing goods and services to consumers (a craft business) and someone offering professional services (a book-keeper.)  This is how they each become profitable by week end.

Example 1: The craft business

Monday

• Make item with cost of raw materials being £5.50


• Photograph item with family camera, ensuring professional/high quality presentation 

Tuesday

• Upload profile and photo to 3 craft sites which levy a small charge (or free) for listing and exercise a sales commission. Sites such as:

Etsy.com – listing fee of 20 cents per item and 3.5% sales commission

MISI.co.uk – listing fee of 20p per item and 3% sales commission

Coriandr.com - listing fee of 20p per item and 2.5% sales commission

Wednesday

• Promote product via Twitter and Facebook. Include a link to the shop so people can click and buy


• Send an email to friends and family (personal, as opposed to group email) to announce the product and, again, with a link 

Thursday

• Upload pictures of your product to Flickr so the large audience there can see it too


• If you have a webcam, make a short recording of you making products and upload to YouTube


• Call local stores and boutiques to ask if they would consider selling your stock 

Friday

You’ve attracted interest and made a sale! Sales price is £25.99

Cost of making sale:

Raw materials: £5.50

Listing fee: 20p

Sales commission: 78p

Marketing & promotion: zero cost but your time

Profit for the week: £19.51

Example 2: The book keeper

Monday

• Start a blog using free blogging platforms such as blogger.com or wordpress.com – with helpful posts on book-keeping technique, this will help you be seen as an expert in your field


• Promote blog via Twitter


• Produce business cards. A pack of 50 cards can be bought for £12.99 from Moo.com 

Tuesday

• Attend local networking event


• Post in online business forums with helpful book-keeping advice 

Wednesday

• Approach small business sites with an article for them to upload that will interest & assist readers (include a link back to your blog so people can make contact)

Thursday

• Call local accountancy practice to ask if they require outsourced book-keeping

Friday

• Secure first client! Contract to carry out book-keeping for local home business at rate of £50 per month.

Cost of making sale:

Business cards: £12.99

Promotion and networking: zero cost but your time

Profit in first month: £37.01

Doing the sums

The beauty of both these examples is that all this promotion and sales generating activity can be done by ‘Working 5 to 9’ ie it’s possible to keep hold of the day job and build your business (and profit) by working nights and weekends.

The secret is in keeping costs low (by being home based and making the mot of free social media tools) and focusing on making that first sale. In which case, it’s perfectly possible to realise profit in just five days. What’s stopping you? Get that business started!  - Emma Jones

NB. This feature is based on user accessing a home/shared/library PC or laptop so costs of IT equipment are not included.

 

A call for change

The commitment referenced was this:

“The third thing, which may sound like a small thing but I think it's actually significant - a huge number of small businesses are started in people's homes. But do you know what? Many social landlords forbid you to run a business from your home. We're going to change that as well in discussion with social landlords.”

It is heartening to see David Cameron and the conservatives go public on their support for home business. With thanks to Mark Prisk MP for his support of, and commitment to, the sector.

Enterprise Nation will continue to make the case for more change with the result being more businesses being started and grown from home.

In the meantime, this comment is a step in the right direction. – Emma Jones

A natural environment

According to the Live Work Network, the planned scheme consists of a mixture of four and five bedroom homes and slightly smaller three and four bedroom properties. 

The proposed houses will be a mixture of contemporary and traditional designs and will use natural stone, timber, glass and slated roof. The homes and business units will be grouped round a courtyard to echo the style of the traditional ‘steading’ type development found in the area.

The development is based on recent research showing significant local demand throughout rural Aberdeenshire for housing in which occupiers are able to work in a business type environment.

Simon Laird, of developers Angus Estates, said:

'The communication technologies of the 21st Century mean that people do not now always have to travel the country (or even the world) for business meetings.  What people do need, though, is a good working environment.'

• Source: Live Work Network


• Image: This monument to William Wallace was erected in 1888 and stands just outside His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen, Scotland

When I wrote a post for Enterprise Nation yesterday, Make your own website in 5 minutes flat, I may have written myself out of a job!

I'm a web designer and use WordPress as a foundation when I build websites for my clients. In my article yesterday, I made it fairly easy for people to use WordPress to build a basic website - and cut out the middle man at the same time.

Of course, it's the 'middle man' - in this instance, me - who'll build something a bit more bespoke, so I'm not really worried. But I am thinking, if you're a web designer, what are some of your secrets?

• If you use WordPress, what are your favourite plugins?


• Do you use themes or templates? Where do you find them?


• What software do you use - to build the site, provide services like email marketing, etc.?

The topic could be really useful - for home based web designers or home business owners who do it themselves.

So, click here to visit the Technology forum and share your secrets. You might help a fellow web designer, a home business, or a potential customer...

• Web design secrets... Shhh! via Enterprise Nation forums

Photo credit: Mazze Has A Secret by chasingfun

San Sharma

Social Media Consultant and Web Designer, Pop Culture Critic, Author, Moonwalker, etc.