The Need To Outsource

Most small business owners start out doing everything themselves. If you continue doing everything, your business can’t grow. That leaves two options: outsource or hire local employees.

The do-gooder government has made hiring local employees a real hassle. pay requirements, Equal Opportunity, payroll taxes, and the possibility of getting sued if you try and fire someone, just to name a few.

Your other option is outsourcing. It’s just like hiring the services of an independent contractor and in the new digital age that contractor can be local, national or international. Contractors can by hired for a specific project or for continuing operations.

Here are the advantages of outsourcing: Read more.
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Small Business and the Cloud

There’s been a lot of talk lately about “the cloud” and how it affects businesses. First, what is the cloud? The cloud has often been synonymous with the whole internet, so what we’re talking about here is cloud computing. It’s been more commonly called Software as a Service (SaaS) and refers to software applications hosted on the Internet like Salesforce.com and Google Apps.

Technically, in addition to SaaS there is also Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service. For example, Salesforce.com also has Force.com which acts as a PaaS, allowing developers to add on to the basic Salesforce.com software. Amazon Web Services acts as an IaaS for storing data, streaming video and other options in the cloud.

Cloud computing can be public, private or virtual private (you get a private section of a public provider). It’s really like using a mainframe computer in the 60′s – all the outlying parties use one main computer. It’s just that now that computer is on the web, not in the basement.

So what’s the big deal, you ask? You may be a small business owner with only a few computers. But, here’s the rub. What if you grow? How do you scale your business? Read more.
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Web Site Design – DIY or Outsource?

Create your own web site or hire a web designer?

There are several questions you need to ask yourself before deciding to build and edit your own sites or seek a professional web designer:

* How often will you update or make changes to your site?
* How many web sites will you be building?
* How complex (how many pages) will your website(s) be?
* Will your site be static or dynamic?

As a general rule, if you have more time and less money, you learn to do it yourself; if you have more money and less time you can contract it out.

FREQUENT WEB SITE EDITING If you are going to make frequent changes to your web site such as add new content, new articles, new products, etc, it pays to create, or at least edit, your web site yourself. You don’t want to have to run to your webmaster and pay $25 every time you change some content or want to test a new design or color scheme.

Many people will tell you that you don’t have to know the underlying html tags to edit web sites. Perhaps, but it’s LOTS easier if you know basic html. It’s not a complex “programming language” or anything, it’s just tags that tell the browser what to do. Once you have a basic understanding, the rest will come along in a “learn as you go” manner. Just go to Google and type in “learn HTML”.

You’ll also learn basic layout and formatting using tables and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Again, if you start with a few simple sites you can learn as you go.

Read more.
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