Mistakes happen.

If you’ve been in business for a while, you know by now that mistakes are part of the process. New businesses and startup companies are slowly learning this.

Nobody is perfect, but some mistakes happen on a larger scale than others.

But here’s the thing: lots of these mistakes can be avoided.

That was my inspiration for writing this guide. There are certain common business mistakes I see people making all the time.

Brands are making these mistakes only because they don’t see them until it’s too late.

Realistically, there are hundreds of mistakes different businesses make each day.

However, I wanted to focus on specific types of mistakes.

Your business always needs to be growing. If sales start to plateau or even drop off, it’s going to be a major problem for your company.

But you can prevent a plateau by avoiding these common mistakes I’ve identified.

Use this guide as a reference to correct any of the mistakes you’re currently making or to avoid making them in the first place.  [click to continue…]

Your domain name is very important. It would be a mistake to gloss over the process of coming up with a name. If you take your project seriously, then you need to start off on the right foot with your name. After all, it’s going to be with you for the lifetime of whatever business or project you intend to use the domain for.

Many of the guides on how to buy a domain name or how to build a website tend to gloss over this process as well. It is often assumed that the best approach is to just register whatever domain name is available and call it a day. I think this is a big mistake.

There’s nothing wrong with registering a domain name that is available, as long as you’ve thought it through and are intentional about it. In fact, I would encourage that. The issue is that in many cases, people don’t even realize that there are other options. Getting your hands on the optimal name is more doable than you might think.

In this guide, I want to walk you through my process for buying a domain name, starting with how I go about coming up with a name in the first place.  [click to continue…]

Every business needs to be active on social media to be relevant in today’s digital world.

If your company is on social media, you’re probably uploading photos to your profile on a regular basis. Pictures and other visual elements will improve your marketing strategy.

But it can be challenging to find the right pictures to post.

Let’s say you want to upload at least one new picture to a social platform each day. That’s 365 images per year.

Many businesses don’t have a library of that many original photos. They just take random pictures and post them to their profiles last minute without putting much thought or effort into it.

This will be a major problem for your business if you’re using a similar strategy.

Everything you share with your followers on social media must have a purpose. To get the best results from your campaigns, you need to produce content of high quality.

Fortunately for you, modern technology allows you to have a professional quality camera in your hand or pocket at all times.

You don’t need fancy equipment to take great marketing photos. All you need is some basic photography skills and inspiration for your subjects.

Every day, 300 million pictures are uploaded to Facebook. Instagram has an average of 95 million photos uploaded daily.

If the photos you add to social media don’t look professional, they’ll hurt your brand image. That’s why I identified these 12 tips to improve your social media marketing photos.  [click to continue…]

Dropshipping is when you sell a product that’s shipped directly from the manufacturer to your customer. It is never held by you in a warehouse or a spare bedroom, and you’re not responsible for the packaging or shipping. Your dropship partner takes care of all that.

Sounds dreamy, right? No warehouse rent to pay, no upfront investment in purchasing inventory, and no shipping work on your end. Those are the perks.

But those are also the drawbacks. You don’t have the inventory in your warehouse, so you don’t have control of a customer ordering something that’s out of stock. There’s no shipping work on your end, so you can’t control the shipping speed, or the packaging. Long ship times = canceled orders. Weird packaging = bad reviews. And, you’ll still need upfront money for advertising, building your website, and all the other steps you’ll need to take to start your business.

And, because you’re basically outsourcing those storing and shipping tasks to your dropshipper, you may not have as great of margins that you would if you took that all in house.

Like any business partnership, before you get involved you need to do your research on who you’re working with, what it’s going to cost you, and what you’re expecting to get out of it.

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Starting a business is daunting.

There is so much to think about and so much to do.

It’s hard enough trying to figure out how to build and grow a business. The last thing we want to think about is figuring out how to put together an operating agreement or picking the right accounting system.

The good news is that all of the things that need to get done in order to start your business have been done a million times before. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel or waste brain power on figuring out what to do.

There are at least 23 things that you should do when starting a new business and we can walk you through each one of them step-by-step.

  [click to continue…]