READ THIS BEFORE STARTING AN E COMMERCE WEBSITE/ONLINE SHOPPING CART

Nowadays, I am working on an e-commerce website http://dealsinemirates.com/,where you will found amazing deals on travel, hotels. Then I thought why not I share my knowledge about the concept of an e-commerce website or online shopping cart with my readers, so I just grab my coffee and start writing. Hopefully, you will enjoy it and post your comments on it.

Before starting how to set up an online shopping cart let me introduce what exactly the e-commerce website is? Let us assume you have a shop and you want to sell your products online or you are manufacturers like a fashion designer, handicraft designer, jewelry designer but shy to go door to door to sell your products, in these both cases you need an e-commerce website or online shopping cart. The products can be digital products like air tickets, hotel vouchers or physical products like we see the product range in amazon.com, souq.com, ebay.com, snapdeal.com and much more.

Let us start. I will explain essential steps you need to take, but the rules and regulations about licensing or registration of business will vary from country to country so you need to check those carefully. But I can assure if you follow the following steps with full dedication you will defiantly establish your e-commerce business easily.

The first step Search a name which suits to your product and a bit catchy so people can remember easily like myntra.com, themodernshop.ca, apple.com. The main objective of your business name is must be easily remembered by people.

The Second step secures your domain name according to your business name and secures your online space which is called hosting. For more information about what is hosting please refer my previous article Hosting Services for beginners.

My strong recommendations to book your domain and hosting services use ipage.com. I am working with this company from last several years and if you found any type of problem with these company you can mail me directly at prakritiaryan1@gmail.com.

The Third step to get a license, permit or you can say need to register your company with the government. As I say before this is not a fixed thing it varies from country to country. But some things are common like you need to get your employees identification number if you are hiring from another country you need to provide them employment visas, health insurances for employees, opening accounts for employees, must have office space. According to my thinking, the main difference is the registration fees which you need to pay to government or taxes else the name are different but the process is almost same. This step also clears your business structure like you want to start our business individual or in partnership extra.

Now Fourth step, a bit technical thing develop your online store which is also called e-commerce website. Now this is totally depend upon tour requirement, if you want your website fast then you can use website builders like shopify.com, where you can pay them on monthly basis like you rent a shop in your daily life, But if you want to become boss of your website so that you can make any type of changes or modifications in your website timely, then you must hire a web design company. An upcoming web design company is http://webartrix.com/, which not only in developing websites but also do the proper research for digital marketing. You can hire freelancers also but I will recommend going for a company instead of freelancer because to develop this type of website you need a graphic designer, coder, data entry operator, payment integration developer, QC and then for promotions digital marketer means a full team. If you hire all these in the form of freelancers may be there will be coordination problem among them or the ways of their working can be different which create confusion in your website and delay your work. So go for a company where a full team already work and you can get satisfied work.

Fifth step, when your website layout is done, with the features of responsiveness, beautiful and user-friendly. Start entering your products. Make sure the product you want to sell, you must be passionate about that product. Choose right vendors or dealers so that you can get products on time and price must be right o that you can also get proper margin or cut on every sale. Try to start with local vendors.The most expensive thing in e-commerce website is shipping of products so try to get some contract basis relationship with courier services. Because all payments will be done online so you must be careful about the payment method you choose. It must be secure as well must be in with cheap rates. The payment gateways you use are connected with bank accounts and they also take commission while transactions so keep this point in mind while choosing your payment gateway. Try to use the payment gateways which are easily available in your place like cashu.com, authorize.net, paypal.com, knet.com. Along with include other payment methods in a website like cash on delivery, Net Banking or e-wallet.

The Sixth step, now you are ready with your business licenses and website what next, to sell your products. Yes, this is the most exciting part of your business where you will start make money. You must start early marketing of your website like make social profiles, word of mouth, submit your website to online directories related to your product, Get registered with online manufacturers. You can increase your sales if you allow other sellers to make their own shops on your website and allow them to upload their products as well. You can get a commission from them to sell their products on your website.

Last but not least, you may found it’s a difficult thing at this stage but if you are passionate about your product, have the right team and using right software or tools, this can be a good option to earn money.

There is a very good book available on Flipkart, Electronic Commerce: From Vision To Fulfillment 3rd Edition 3rd Edition which can help you to understand what is e-commerce exactly? You can purchase it here

Hopefully, you like it please share your comments and opinion in the below comment box.

QUICK LOOK ON TOP 10 BUSINESS SOFTWARE AND TOOLS

Business, as all we know it’s not a single handed thing but a teamwork, in which we give some service, product, a solution to the people, so they can make their life easy or beautiful.

But, nowadays there is so many software available online or offline, which can help us, to run our businesses alone. These are in the form of virtual assistants, virtual executives, online databases or online tools. There are so many and very easily available, some are free and some are paid.

Here I will discuss, only ten main software which can act as a pillar of your business. But trust me if you go to do research by yourself you will found amazing software and tools. 

1) Accounting Software:  One of the important department of the business is accounts.Tally is an example everyone heard about it but now there are so many improve and advance accounting software are available in the market like Xero, QuickBooks, Zoho, Kashflow and much more. The features of these softwares are:

• Convert quotes into the invoices
• Track expenses, billable hours, bills
• Manage vendors, suppliers manufacturers
• Manage inventory, fixed assets

These software price range is from $0-$36, depends upon features and services taken by you. 

2) Backup and Recovery: Unfortunates are the part of the business and hard disk crash or fire in office are the most common accidents which happen in offices. But now do not worry about these type of things, because you have some amazing software available in the market which can help you to take the backup of your data and to recover any time. Some examples are NovaBackup, Acronis True, Genie, TurboBackup and much more. The features of these softwares are:

• Highest level of Encryption
• Cloud integration
• Full system imaging

These software price range is from $0-$100, depends upon features and services taken by you. 

3) Project management software: Business survives only on projects done by it. Nowadays time is everything and every client wants his/her project should be complete on time without any error, so this is one of most important software or tool of the business. Some of best project management softwares are Freshdesk, Confluence, Slack, Trello, Basecamp and much more. The features of these softwares are:

• Budget Management
• Team management
• File sharing,
• Easy to communicate with client as well team
• Client and admin can see work progress online
• Time and Expense Management

These software price range is from $0-$100, depends upon features, services and number of users taken by you. 

4) CRM: The full form of CRM is Customer Relationship Manager. Any software who can help you to manage your customers either in the form of sales, project tasks, marketing automation, support or help is known as Customer Relationship Manager.Some of the examples are Salesforce, HubSpot, SAP, Pardot, SugarCRM and much more. The features of these softwares are:

• Streamline the email marketing
• Give clean report to client
• Real-time data analysis and reporting.

These software price range is from $0-$100, depends upon features, services and number of users taken by you.

5) Database:  In simple words, a database is a group of tables, in which our data get stored. All our applications get to connect with these databases and retrieve the information according to a user request. MS-Access which comes with the Microsoft office is the most common and known database. But now, there are so many other databases which are available in the market with advanced features like Oracle, MYSQL, SAP, Teradata and much more. The features of these databases are:

• Intelligent optimizer to process queries
• Combine unstructured and structured data in a smart way
• High performance for transaction base application
• Security and Safety of data

These software price range is from $0-$100, depends upon features, services and number of users taken by you.

6) Email Application: Emails become the important part of our daily life, whereas in business this is the most important part of the marketing department. Although there are so may other ways but email marketing still have its position or importance in marketing, So keep this point in mind, developers develop so many email marketing softwares like Inky, Sendblaster Mozilla thunderbird, Opera Mail, Zimbra and much more.

The features of these softwares are:

• Built-in calendars
• Auto scheduling of sending mail
• Multiple email accounts
• Easy to use

These software price range is from $0-$10, depends upon features, services and storage space taken by you.

7) Remote access: Sometimes it happens, especially in startups or small businesses where you need to make your client happy at any cost, client give the changes and developer are missing. In these type of critical conditions where the work has to done on the urgent basis and the worker is not available, these remote access software is very helpful. These softwares allow anyone to use the device from the remote location. The other way around, we can use them for real-time editing or changes.  Some of the remote access softwares are Team Viewer, Remote Utilities, Ammyy Admin, Ultra VNC and much more. The features of these softwares are:

• Easy control of mouse and keyboard to a remote PC
• Bult in chat application
• Transferring files
• Cursor Tracking

These softwares price range is from $0-$500, depends upon features, services, and a number of computers taken by you.

8) Security Suite: Security is the major part of our life either offline or online and when we talk about business it becomes the critical need of our business.  Nowadays so many Internet security softwares ar available, who continuously monitoring our devices so that no virus or bug can affect them and steal any type of data. Some of best internet security softwares are Bitdefender, Norton Security, Kaspersky labs, Avast and much more.

The features of these softwares are:

• Antimalware
• Act as Firewall
• Scan all the emails
• Protect login and passwords
• Online backups

These software price range is from $0-$100, depends upon features and services taken by you.

9) Social Media applications:  nowadays, LinkedIn, twitter, Quora, Facebook and many more social media platforms where we need to market our products, services or solutions, so we can reach more users or customers. But when the point comes to post or follow on this platform it becomes a huge project. So to manage all these things there are so many software available in the market like ONEsite, Exo Platform, Hoot suite, Social engine and much more. The features of these softwares are: 

• Give access to all social platforms under one roof
• Auto schedule post, comments
• Follower tracking
• Comments & posts tracking
• Suggestion tools for comments and post creation

These softwares price range is from $0-$100, depends upon features, services, and a number of accounts added by you.

10) VOIP: VOIP means Voice over internet protocol, in easy words with this software we can do instant messaging, internet voice calls and voice conferring altogether. Some of the examples are Skype, Google hangouts, ooVoo, Viber, Jitsi and much more. The features of this softwares are:

• File or Screen sharing for online meetings
• Group video chats
• Serves multiple users simultaneous

These software price range is from $0-$10, depends upon features, services and number of users taken by you. 

There are some other software like calendars, instant messaging, blogging tools, website builders, and freelancer or workers providers and so on. Really want to grow your business without the help of so many people, go and include all these software in your business now.

That’s all for today, hopefully, you will like it. Please share your comments and opinions in the below comment box.

5 WRONGS RESPONSIBLE FOR STARTUP FAILURES

What do you think guys? Please leave comments and share your opinions in comment box

5 TIPS TO START PART TIME BUSINESS

6 EASY STEPS TO START A BLOG

When I start, this blog I was not aware that I will come this far, 60 posts are finished today and I was not expecting even 6😊. Throughout my, this small journey I met so many people who have amazing skills either related to writing, art, poetry or have a marvelous knowledge about cooking, gardening which they can teach to the other people but they do not know how? Then I make my mind to write this article to encourage them to start their own blogs because according to me this is the best and cheapest platform where you can share your thoughts all over the world.

First, who can start the blog?

• The author of a book to promote his/her work.
• For those people who feels writing is passion.
• Want to show their art to the world in the form of image blog or vlog.
• A poet, who can write Shayari, with the every sip of coffee or wine.
• A knowledgeable person, who is always ready to share their knowledge with other people.
• A businessman, who wants to promote their products.
• You follow the daily news on regular basis.
• Make money from home

So if you are any one of above then you are welcome to the blogger community.

How to start a blog?

• Find out the reason for starting your blog
• Choose the domain name and hosting service
• Choose the blogging platform
• Make your blog beautiful
• Write the posts and make the pages.
• Market your blog

Let us discuss each point one by one.

1) Find out the reason for starting your blog: This is the main and most difficult step to start a blog but if you are a skillful person then this is the easiest step for you. Find your reason to start a blog, like you want to solve other problems, share your life experiences and teach them something new, entertain them with your poetry, video or writing. So this is the main step, once you finish this rest is very easy.

2) Choose the domain name and hosting service: Once you decide what is your reason, according to that decide your domain name. Basically, the domain name is your blog name or blog link, which you share with your followers or reader. For detailing of hosting services please visit the link Hosting services for beginners, where you can get full details about it.

Hosting services you will find paid and free both, but I suggest you use paid services because these paid services take tens of your dollars but give you fully support in the form of technically or other ways. Even if you are not a technical person they will set up a blog for you and give fully training.

Here I am recommending some hosting services, which I personally used from last few years.

Ipage.com

Click on any of link and it will redirect you to the hosting service.

3) Choose the blogging platform: Like hosting services, these are also either free or paid. But again I will recommend the paid one.

It is very easy to customize.

These are very cheap.

You can choose your designs according to your wish.

You get the blog in your own name.

You have totally control on your blogs.

Wordpress is the best option among the blogging platforms. You can get beautiful WordPress themes here.  Except this, you can use Blogger, Tumblr, Weebly and so on.

4) Make your blog beautiful: The next step to make your blog beautiful and more over user-friendly.There are some elements which you need to add in your blog.

Subscription box, with which visitors, can subscribe to your blog.

Comment Box, where visitors can share their opinions.

Author Information, if you have multiple authors.

Make sure you have catchy images, beautiful colors, and a responsive design which will fit on all devices. Try to avoid complicated technologies because remember your visitors coming to your blog only for your contents. There are certain WordPress plugins which are used for blogging like WordPress Popular Post, Post Hit Counter and more. Keen to learn WordPress contact me at prakritiaryan1@gmail.com.

5) Write the posts and make the pages: Design is done, now it’s time to real action. Make a post inside your blogging platform. Generally, you will find it in your dashboard with the label of ‘New Post’. Write your contents and publish them with suitable labels or tags. Actually, if you did all the above steps properly this is the easiest part.

6) Market your blog:  The last step to show your work to the world. At this point, you will get a link with your blog name, which you can share with your friends, relatives on Facebook, twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms. You can hire some marketing professionals also who not only market your blog but also get more and more visitors for your blog. Wordpress even have some special plugins which can use to market like tripwire.

Blogging is not only to show your passion about anything but also helps to make money, connect with new people through your comment box, increase your discussion or communication skills, helps other people with information sharing, makes you a better person, improve your writing skills and above all you get self-promotion.

Still, have any doubt mail me at prakritiaryan1@gmail.com, I will surely clear your doubts as much I can and as soon as possible.

So guys, be a good reader and post your comments below in the comment box so we can increase our argumentation skills.  

10 PROVEN WAYS TO FIND LEADS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

I already discuss with you how to start a company, or how to decide target audience for your business. Today we will discuss how we can generate leads for our business. I am sure you all heard about these but if you found something new or want to share something new please do comments in following comment box.

Twitter: Yes, twitter helps you to generate business leads as twitter has millions of users around the world so you can imagine. There are so many ways like use hashtags, search keywords related to your business, share the links, use images and videos, in short, do not make your tweets boring make it a bit interesting so the audience gets attracted to them. Along with learning properly how to use twitter cards or twitter. Search.or twitter. Search.

Infographic: what is an infographic? Information shows by graphics,. but its true you have seen so many infographics nowadays, check my previous post where I put infographics my favorite new year resolutions, it is not only entertaining but also easy to understand. Now how it helps to generate leads. Everyone use subscription or sign up forms on their website, try to put as much information you can put there beside the form and it will become your first infographic.Same if we sharing infographics in social media platforms they got more likes and shares rather than links or text.Think yourself how much links you share today?

Webinars: Another interesting way to generate leads, webinar means web base seminar, Where an organizer organize an online presentation and participants can attend his or her presentation through your computer, browser, speaker, and microphone from the home only. The only way to get register for participants to a webinar is their email address. In this way, an organizer can get easily email addresses of their niche customers in the form of participants.

LinkedIn: A research said 44% of business leads generate by LinkedIn. Everyone know that LinkedIn is purely dedicated to professionals either for jobs or business rather than other social media platforms. In LinkedIn, you can create your own or can send your posts to other groups. The main thing promotes your products only in your niche group for better results. Along with you can make your connections only with those you fit into your buyer’s profile. And this way you can easily get 500-1000 leads in the week for your business, as we know linked have almost 400 million users registered.

Use advanced technology/apps/tools for marketing:  As I mention before, infographics, webinars there are some apps or websites also who help in your marketing and save your time like email software, automatic publish your tweets or posts. Sendblaster is most commonly use for email marketing and HootSuite for automatic publishing.

Answer a question on Quora: With my personal experience I am telling you Quora is a very reliable source for lead generation. But make sure you are not there to promote your company links or blog links. You should give your honest and detailed answers so that you can get upvotes and people direct connect with you. Again, answers only those questions related to your niche market.

Offer Freebies:  Always offer some free software, ebooks, graphic icons or any type of freebies on your website, which can be downloaded by only get registered with your website by using the email address. There are some other ways like you can embed facebook likes, twitter followers or LinkedIn connects to download your freebies.

Live chats on the website: Live chats is the other way with which you can generate leads for your business, by making starting the chat session with a sign-up form like subscription form etc. In this form, you can ask for name, email address and interest of the customer to connect you.

These are some ways who can help you to get business leads, along with, last but not least SEO, Newsletters, Email marketing other social media like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Interview influencers, Podcasts, Forums, Encourage happy clients to provide recommendations

Subscription boxes/landing pages, youtube videos are some other ways who can help you to generate business leads. Also the traditional methods like flyers, word of mouth, networking events where you exchange your business cards extra.

At the end, business is all over give those services to your customers which they relly need. And the key to a successful business is happy clients.

That’s all for today, hey guys please share your opinions in the below comment box. 

FASHION DESIGNING AS CAREER

Do you love to wear latest fashion clothing? Do you want to be up to date with the latest trends? Do you want appreciation with smart, stylish and fashionable clothing? You might be thinking what type of questions I am asking because everybody wants to wear the latest trend and clothing in the talk. Don’t you? Exactly, everyone is fond of fashionable clothes. People like me are now a day ready to spend as much as they can but they want designer clothing. Few people like me consider comfort, color, and fabric also. So what is Fashion designing? Fashion designing is basically an art of applying fashion by fashion designers to clothing or accessories. Fashion designers are actually persons with any sort of degree in Fashion Designing from some institute or college. There are many fashion schools where fashion designing is even taught. In India few colleges where fashion designing is actually taught includes 

·         National Institute of fashion designing

·         Amity University

·         Pearl Academy of fashions

·         Apeejay Institute of design

·         Arch Academy of design

·         National Institute of design

·         Indian Institute of art and design

What you think, fashion designing is easy? Then answer is No, Because of Fashion designers in clothing think about many aspects of geographical location, culture, people, size, shape, fabric and more importantly their taste. They keep in their mind that who is likely to wear a garment and the occasion in which it will be worn. That’s nice. They work on a wide range and combinations of fabrics and a wide range of colors, patterns, and styles to choose from. In India, few fashion designer’s names Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Manish Arora Neeta Lulla, Manish Malhotra and much more needs no introduction as designers. Many actors, actress and high profile people wears these designer clothes.

If we go to the history, then Fashion design is generally considered to have started in the 19th century with Charles Frederick Worth who was the first fashion designer to have his label sewn into the garments that he created.

What are the basic elements of a design? A design can be defined as an arrangement of lines, shape, colors and texture that create a visual image. The principles of design are the rates that govern how elements are combined. The elements are therefore the raw materials that must be combined successfully. 

The following are the different elements of Design:

1. Shape

2. Texture

3. Color

4. Line

These elements are considered as “Plastics” in art language because they can be manipulated by the designer to create desired results. Now let’s discuss each element briefly: 

The Shape in a garment reveals overall attractive feature and hides the less attractive ones. The overall shape of a garment is its outline. The shape is created by the construction of a garment considering overall height and dimensions of the person’s body. The shape can be tabular, bell, back fullness. 

Texture reveals how the surface of a fabric feels and looks. Texture can be smooth, shiny, rough, sheer, dull, clinging soft, stiff and visual. 

The color is the main thing that a customer notices. Color may be stimulating or relaxing. Different colors invoke different thoughts in people wearing them. 

Lines in a cloth are important as vertical lines increase height effect, Horizontal lines short the height effects. Curved lines are of feminine nature and diagonal lines indicate active and sportive nature. 

Now let’s talk about designer’s Work. Fashion designers may work full-time for one fashion house, as 'in-house designers', which owns the designs. Fashion designers may work alone or as part of a team. Freelance designers work for themselves, selling their designs to fashion houses, directly to shops, or to clothing manufacturers.

Nowadays the fashion industry depends more on mass market sales. The mass market takes to care for a wide range of customers and their pocket.

Fashion designer produces duplicates designs by using cheaper fabrics and simpler production techniques. The end product can, therefore, be sold at much cheaper rate. The one example I have in my mind is “Maria B”. Maria-B is the famous fashion designer in Pakistan known all over the globe for their dresses, but duplicate Maria b is easily available at much cheaper rate and that is of course for the mass market. They are sold as replicas.

Do you know China and Bangladesh are the biggest manufacturers of clothing, and other notable clothing manufacturing countries are Indonesia, Germany, Malaysia, India, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, and Brazil? I remember when I was in the USA. Once I visited Kohl’s. Kohl’s sells clothing and you won’t believe most of the clothes were “made in china”.

Do you know that the "big four" centers of the fashion industry are Milan, New York City, Paris and London? Seven countries which have established an international reputation in fashion includes France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, and Belgium.

Today in fashion design has reached new heights by computer aided methods of design. These computers aided programs have enabled designers to change the textures and colors of designs easily and create three-dimensional images of their designs. These technologies have made the tasks easier, faster, cheaper (in some areas), better and reliable. CAD/CAM has substituted manual methods in almost every field. CAD is nowadays part of the qualification for designers. There is some useful CAD software’s available online as follows, OptiTex CAD Software, eTelestia CAD Software. 

Fashion designers often make flat garment sketches in Adobe Illustrator. This is a technical sketch showing all seams and details so that the pattern cutter knows exactly what proportions the garment should have. 

Nowadays, designing clothes has become easier with the use of clothing design software. With the use of such software, creating clothes has become easy. Using this software one can be creative with their design ideas with the help of powerful tools.

I will name some softwares

·         Virtual fashion

·         Dress Assistant

·         Poser

·         Realistic Apparel Templates Pack

·         PhiMatrix Professional

·         NedGraphics Fashion Design

·         Digital Fashion Pro

·         Cameo v5

·         My Label 3D Fashion by Bernina

·         Kaledo by Lectra 

HOME OFFICE DESIGNS

Having a well-planned office structure in the home and equipped with all the required facilities may result in better work performance and relaxing mindset even when you are not in the office. It is very important to have a home office that sooth the mind to make it always fresh and relaxed to have a focused approach in work. It is very common practice in today’s word having an office at home or so call home office.

When planning of establishing an office at home, everything needs to be in a manner including modular furniture, desk, home office equipment, storage, phone service.  We will talk about this one by one so as to build a perfect home office.

Home Office furniture

The most important aspect of your home office is the furniture. That include a lot of things like regular home office furniture, Designer home office furniture or modular home office furniture. All type of furniture is basically for various type of business requirement.

For a normal IT home office, a regular office furniture like a regular home office desk with only 1 or slabs will work.

On the other hand, home office of a lawyer may have modular Home office furniture that may include not only a good bench or Sofa set with chairs but also will involve a large number of bookshelves to carry a lot of books.

But on a different note, the furniture in the home office for clothing collections or wearables may be found in form of designer home office furniture with some high design sofa set with a designer table and chairs. It may have some beautiful and soothing mirrors to check trials.

Home Office Décor

Home office décor depends on both the nature of work as well as the nature of the person who will be using the home office. Nature of work provides the area and suitable position in the home for a home office whereas nature of person decides the style of décor like the color theme, design, location.

For small size work (or like an IT Home office), a very space would be required and could be adjusted even in the corner of any room or a small separate room but for the specific business requirement, the home office space needs to be good and dedicated one and separated from other living areas. Décor also involves the supporting theme of home offices like curtains, lights fan, AC etc and taste varies person to person. Some prefer single color whereas other prefer contrast.

It is very important to have a relaxing décor for the home office.

Home Office Storage

Another major aspect of a home office is storage. Home office storage is extremely important. There should be enough storage available in the home office. While planning the home office, one should consider storage requirements upfront since it is very difficult or a painful task to add storage later due to risk that additional storage may or may not match the existing theme or color scheme. So it is always recommended to choose the storage style and capacity at the time of planning of home office. Home office storage comes in various designs and styles. The best planning of home office considers having the storage capable furniture so as to have the optimal use of space. Storage can be set up along with the attached Almira’s along with walls or as separate storage units. There are a lot of hanging storage spaces available in the market that have a very good storage capacity but take the least space. So it is all about the requirement of the business and home office that decided the storage. But again to remind, always plan the storage much before actual setup to avoid a regret or setup change later.

Home office equipment:

Now when the basic home office is set up the next step is setting up the required equipment. The general rule for Home office is to have as less equipment as possible so as to make the office easily manageable and use as fewer resources as possible and less maintenance cost. Basic home office equipment includes the below:

1) Computer: The basic requirement for almost all type of home office is a computer. It can be a desktop based system or laptop based on need. Any Home office is almost impossible to run without a computer.

2) High-Speed Internet: To run any business smoothly it is required that the Home office is connected with the main office and that creates the need for High-speed internet. It can be a Dongle based or broadband but is almost mandatory for any Home office.

3) Home office Phone: Telephone is another essential requirement for any home office. Home Office phone service can be a single line or multi-line service based on the need of the Home office.

4) Home office Desk: Now this is the main platform where the person spends most of the time while working in a home office. So the Home office desk should be designed or built as per the requirement with sufficient storage, and working capacity. The desk should have a measured dimensions “height, length and width” to make the work as comfortable as possible. A study has revealed that an improper desk leads to many backs or joint related problems in long run.

5) Surge Protector: This is very important to have all the electric equipment’s in Home office to be placed only on surge protected extension cables too as to save it from electricity fluctuation.

6) Printer/Fax: Some home office required a fax machine or printer during their work so it is always advisable to buy the same after good planning. In the case of fewer prints, an ink jet printer is good but in the case of a lot or prints all day, it should be a laser printer.

7) Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS): For the Home office where continuous work is required, the equipment’s should be supplemented with UPS so as to save the ongoing work in case of power Outage.

So overall, a Home office design should be well planned in advance in term of all the things mentioned in the article and this will surely result in saving a lot of costs and repeated work thereafter. 

10 PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

This is well-known fact these days that the Project Management is the backbone of the project. Be its planning of resources, be its effort and cost estimation, be it anything related to project, efficient Project Management is most important and crucial factor in the success of the project. Experts say it takes almost 10-12% effort of total project effort in Management.

Project Management is not as simple as it seems to be. It feels good to project Manager of any project but when it comes to actual execution, he/she is the one who takes the most pressure. In order to have a smooth path for the project, there are a lot of tools and techniques in the market which can not only make the Project Manager’s life easy but can lead to a systematic and controlled execution throughout the project.

In the article, we will discuss the most commonly tools and techniques being used by successful leaders. We will talk about the techniques first followed by the Tool:

Techniques:

1) Brainstorming

This is a most common technique used at the very early stage of everything. This is basically having an open discussion with all stakeholders involved and narrow down to the specific path. This is the easiest way to start a new activity or decision-making process.

2) Critical path (Flow diagram):

This technique helps a Manager to get a quickest and the slowest timelines of the project. In this, all the major milestones act as intermediate destinations that create a path from start to end of the project. Then with help of proper stakeholders, Manager conclude a set of mandatory destination for the project and a way leading through Mandatory destinations is called critical path. This gives Managers a flexibility of delay for the destinations that are not on critical path.

3) Fish Bone analysis

This technique helps a Manager to find out the root cause of any problem in early stages the project. This is basically a Cause and Impact and helps to find out anything that can make a big impact on the project and the possible cause of the activity. So basically it helps in writing down risks in the project.

4) Lesson Learned

This is most commonly technique used by Managers to document the findings from a completed project and use the same in the upcoming similar project in future. Lesson learned can be documented through various project closure meetings. feedback sessions, Feedback surveys. This is very important and essential technique to be used in every project.

5) Variance report

This is another very important technique being used by Manager during the execution of a project and in order to have a better control and governance on the project. Manager document the actual effort and cost being used in the project against the planned. This helps higher management to have an overview on the consistency in the project as well as a confidence for having a good governance.

6) Project Charter

This technique is used to initialize any project. The project charter is a document that contains all the relative information about the project requirement, stakeholders, and tentative timelines. This is generally a one-page document that act as inputs to the actual scope document.

7) Gantt Chart

This is a most important technique that a project manager uses throughout the project. Gantt chart is basically a timeline of complete project and details on the milestones or destinations. Project Manager often uses Gantt chart to showcase the whole project to management instead of the detailed project plan.

Project Management tools:

1) Microsoft Project: This is one of the most widely used project management tools across the globe. Very handy tool that provides almost everything from planning to execution out of the box. Excellent tool for a beginner. It provides a very interactive user interface that seems like a simple excel sheet to use and do many things automatically for the Manager. If you want to track the overall project in very simple and easy way, this is the tool for you.

Product Vendor: Microsoft

License: Paid /per installation or Bulk

Application Use: Desktop Based application

Features:

1) Complete project Plan

2) Resource Detail and dependency

3) Ability to trace the relation and dependency of tasks on other tasks.

4) Out of box Gantt chart

5) A number of reports to be used.

2) Gantt Project: This is just a smaller version of MS Project and often reviewed and compared by a user across the world. Like MS project, it is also an interactive tool but the person using this must have good knowledge of Project Management. It manly focus on PERT and Gantt charts.

Product Vendor: Open source

License: Free

Application Use: Desktop Based Application

Features:

1) Gantt. PERT Charts

2) A number of reports to be used in pdf and word format

3) Project Place: This is a cloud-based tool and being used by number of organization across the globe. This is very interactive and detailed planning and execution tool and a complete project Management solution. Using Project Place once can track to smallest possible activity with resource attached, the status of activity, execution dates, effort spent and much more.  Project place act as a single repository for project planning, document handling. Issue tracker, Meeting notes, meeting scheduling and much more. Whole plan can be divided into the board (phases) and can further be divided into cards (tasks) that can be assigned to respective resources. Once of the best project Management tools if used to fullest capabilities,

Product Vendor: Project place International

License: Paid /per user

Application Use: Cloud (web based)

Features:

1) Complete project Plan

2) Resource Detail and dependency

3) Ability to trace the relation and dependency of tasks on other tasks.

4) Always live and actual status of the project. No need to put anything in any report.

5) Tracking to activity level

6) Single place for all project related documents

7) Out of box meeting scheduler and Minutes of Meeting holder

8) Issue tracking and reporting facility

9) Out of the box resource level report for work load  

TOP MEMBERSHIP WEBSITE IDEAS

There are a lot of online membership website ideas you can earn online revenue from, irrespective of your area of expertise or specialty. Membership sites are where members or users access content on-demand. These membership sites are both content-oriented and user-driven; therefore, users need ideas about questions asked as well as a learning tool to solve their problems.

Those who make use of online membership websites are seeking other people. Some are looking for employers while others are looking for dates. In a nutshell, membership sites are all about connecting people. For instance, you will be looking for many dates to get the right person for you to marry, if you are a single man or woman.
More importantly, as the big social media players such as LinkedIn and Facebook become so massive and widespread that they turned users off, membership ideas are very profitable. Unlike LinkedIn and Facebook, membership sites are not free to join. Interested members have to pay membership fees to join. These fees not only as a filter to keep sites more focused and offer improved value for the aggravated Facebook user, but also generate online revenues for the publisher.

So here are top membership website ideas to serve as mentor and inspiration sites for publishers who want to benefit from this ample opportunity. These ideas will not only inspire any publisher to move ahead but also make a lot of online revenue doing it.

Content Mill

This membership site can be the most profitable but it is work demanding type of membership site. Beginning a content mill will necessitate you to set up a system for providing appropriate content all the time. Podcast to a full-scale periodical is a good example of this type of membership site. Sports or daily stock picks are other examples and they could be time-sensitive content.

Backstage

Backstage is the type of membership website idea where its members are seeking acting jobs. It could be dog training, horticulture, academia, or just about anything. Advertising possibilities are endless for any of these niches, and the audience would gather to you.

Backstage is also a website for actors who are looking for networking, training, and real work. It makes use of a lot of features of a Mequoda System like a freebie as a substitute for email addresses and could represent a website template. It has more than 526,000 unique monthly visitors, and it provides job listings and a search tool that allows actors to search by compensation, union status, ethnicity, age and more.

Dow Jones Private Equity and Venture Capital

This is another awesome membership site with about 83,000 monthly visitors who are looking for business opportunities. Dow Jones is an example of a big media organization leveraging its content beyond newspapers and magazines, using it to offer information to members who subscribe for a fee to locate their business deal, business partner or next investor.

 Members have access to those who are looking for investment opportunities or making deals, financial databases, and news. On the other hand, Custom research is part of Dow Jones product. Therefore, they will do your research for you if you don’t have the time to do it yourself.

Community Membership Site

Protected Communities and Forums are a better way to engage your members unlike helping them engage and connect with each other. These communities and forums can raise a number of the most loyal members of any of these membership site ideas.

Community forums and membership sites are a great avenue for your members to get their questions answered, discuss your products, intermingle with one another, and share other relevant information with one another. Nevertheless, do not set up a community membership site until you have successfully gathered a substantial fan base.

Ancestry

This membership site specializes in genealogical research and it is incredibly successful with 2, 243,000 members as at September 2015. Each month, about 7 million members visit the site looking for genealogy information. In 2007, the online revenue of Ancestry was $166 million but increased to $561.5 million in 2013 and netting $619.5 in 2014.

The Dodge Lead Center

Dogged Lead Center gives a targeted variety of timely Bidding projects right from the database of Dodge. Dodge is distinguished from any other source of construction intelligence because they understand how critical it is to know the market. When you use the power of Dodge Lead Center, you will you stay informed about companies, people, projects, and other resources available in your market and you will be able to capitalize on every opportunity that comes your way.

Customers spend less time researching and more time connecting with key contacts to close sales and win work as a result of the quality of Dodge content.

The Courses

With courses membership website idea you can make use of a WordPress Membership Plugin such as MemberPress to maintain those courses you created with a WordPress if you have a suitable material and Learning Management Plugin such as WPC Courseware or only WordPress itself with a plugin such as Custom Post Types UI.Create members-only areas within your site and protect the privacy of your students and your course materials. Share your password with people taking part in your course, upload the content and you are good to proceed! You get rid of having to send videos, workbooks, and vital updates out independently by keeping all your course materials in one place.

Potters Council

Potters Council is for you if you are one of those who care about education, passionate about pottery and who want to continue making pottery accessible to those who are interested. Potters Council membership idea was created to meet the needs of ceramic artists and studio potters by providing forums for professional enhancement and knowledge exchange.

• Potters Council strives to:
• Support ceramic awareness
• Add to the number of workshops
• Provide a wide range of topics and locations for each workshop
• Support the current art organizations
• Offer career and business opportunities
• Support ceramic awareness.

You are Capable of Making it Happen 

You too can make it happen with these top online membership ideas. All you need to do is to consider your area of expertise and see which of these ideas will generate the most of the online revenue. Adding your unique voice to any of these online membership site ideas could help you turn your expertise into a solid business for you as they have been tried, tested and trusted.