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Business basics – managing cashflow
April 19th, 2010
Managing cashflow is vital for small businesses to survive. For those new to business, or perhaps those looking to start up in business, cashflow is basically the movement of cash in and out of your business and it’s one of the most important aspects of running a small business. The ideal position is always to be ‘cashflow positive’ – this is when the the costs of a particular service or product that you have delivered are due after you’ve been paid, for example, you buy 20 widgets and agree with your supplier that you can pay them 30 days later, the next day you sell all 20 widgets to a customer who agrees to pay you 10 days later – the result is you’re cashflow positive, the cash from your customer is in the bank before you owe your supplier and everyone is happy. Unfortunately, the chances of this happening in the real world are very slim – so what can you do about it?
Cashflow forecasting for small businesses
The key to managing cashflow in a small business is forecasting – knowing what cash you need, before you need it. A lot of the costs associated with running a business are what are classed as overheads, or fixed costs, which you will need to pay out regardless of how much work you’re actually doing. Typical overheads include wages, insurance, rent and transport and these will generally be fixed amounts paid on the same date each month. The variable costs are harder to account for, but need to be carefully planned so that you can keep as much cash in your business as possible to make sure that you can pay your bills on time.
On a very basic level, which is enough for most small businesses, a simple spreadsheet is enough to manage cashflow. Set up a column for each month and list your fixed costs for each month, broken down line by line. Next, list your variable costs
Tips for the perfect job interview session
April 7th, 2010
Holding job interviews for new members of staff can be a daunting prospect for a small business owner who has little or no experience of the process – but if your small business is growing, the chances are that you will need to hold job interviews sooner or later.
Perfect interviews are all in the planning
It might seem like an obvious thing to point out, but the secret to finding the best new member for your team starts long before you hold interviews. Choosing a new member of staff has to begin with defining what skills and attributes you need in your organisation, so make a list of what you need from the perfect candidate – they must have experience of ‘x,y and z’; they must have ‘x’ qualifications. Then make a list of ‘nice to have’ (things that would be good, but aren’t essential in the role) – additional knowledge of ‘a’; qualification ‘b’, etc. You should be using these lists to write your advertising and also the job specification for the new position, these will help you to attract the right candidates for interviews because the advert will describe the role and what the essential and desirable skills are.
On to the interviews
Now you should be at the stage of preparing for your interviews and here are a few tips to make the day as stress free and productive as possible.
1. Prepare a separate job specification for each interview.
You’ll need to make notes on how each person meets the criteria you’ve set – make a couple of sheets which list the main criteria for the role and give yourself some space to write down the facts given by the candidate. Don’t forget to put the candidates name and date of interview on the sheet!!
2. Get the setting right.
The old days of a big desk, you at one end and the candidate at the other are long gone. You and the candidate need to be comfortable and relaxed – you’ll only get the best out of an interview if you both are. Look at the room and how it’s set out – get rid of big physical barriers between people; make sure the room is light and cool and make sure that you have refreshments available.
The google sandbox effect
April 6th, 2010
What is the google sandbox effect?
Search on google for ‘google sandbox effect’ and you’ll find many websites discussing whether or not the sandbox exists. The theory goes that google has a ‘play-pen’ for new websites that seem to be making too much effort to improve their ranking by building lots of links over a short period of time – the effect is that your site might not rank well for your intended search terms until google decides that your site is to be trusted. Most people agree that google does this to prevent spam sites from building up huge numbers of links very quickly and appearing high in the search results when trying to sell fake goods or pharmaceuticals (or something similar) – it makes sense when you look at it this way, the google sandbox allows time for a sites’ ‘trust’ to be analysed and for the ‘here today gone tomorrow’ sites never to make it to the top of the rankings.
So does the google sandbox really exist?
This is something that really divides opinion – some say it does, others say it doesn’t. We’re firmly in the ‘sometimes’ category! Many of the sites we build and optimise are fairly small in the grand scheme of things (less than 20 pages initially, but building as and when the owner has time to add content) and we’ve never seen the sandbox effect on any of these as there is very rarely any ‘agressive’ link building – it’s normally done gradually over three to six months or so. But for our new site (this one) site, we decided to see what would happen if we tried a bit harder and it would appear that we may have made it into the mystical google sandbox!!
If you look below, you’ll see a screen shot of a rank check for some of our main keywords after about 6 weeks of the site being live.
