Tips

"Everyone knows how to invest in the stock market." No, I didn’t believe it either the first time I heard it. I was sitting in the audience of a talk at Web Summit 2014. On stage was a very charismatic gentleman by the name of Yoni Assia, co-founder and CEO of popular social trading network eToro. What he had to say on the matter of trading was very enlightening, and certainly reframed th...
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The UK is experiencing a self-employment boom, with over 4.6 million Brits now opting to be their own boss. What has prompted this shift? Why are so many choosing a freelance career over the security of employment? And what help and advice is there to support this decision? Our friends over at Crunch Accountancy created a short film that explores the highs and lows of freelancing. Over to Sohpie...
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5 Reasons Why User-Generated Content Is The Turbo-Booster of Millennial Marketing Millennials are today’s “head honchos” as far as consumer generations go. Not only are they the current largest demographic in the world (20% bigger than Generation X), but their spending power also surpasses that of any other generation in history. Millennials are also pretty savvy when it comes t...
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Personal branding and your startup- An introduction  There’s a tired old cliché that can be found in almost every marketing related book, blog post and academic journal ever written. It usually goes something like this “People don’t buy from businesses, they buy from people” and like most tired old clichés, this one is usually 100 % correct. It's a less...
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Crafts have seen an incredible resurgence in popularity over the past few years. Hobbies that had, for many years, been resigned to the column headed ‘boring, old lady interests’, suddenly found themselves squarely within the realm ‘fun interesting pastimes’ or, dare we say it, even ‘Cool’. Ceramics, quilting, pottery, embroidery, weaving, knitting, crocheting,...
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Crowdfunding is all the rage nowadays, goodness knows we have been talking enough about it over the past while, incidentally, click here to see some of our recent crowdfunding related posts. But amidst all of this, it occurred to us, having delved into the depths of almost every aspect of crowdfunding, we have never provided a ‘back to basics’ style summary of what it actually is. To ...
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Employment 101 for startups Are you a startup in the process of taking on your first employees? Well, this’ll be of interest then - we asked Serena Manzoli entrepreneur and founder at Wildcat a free legal database for creatives and freelancers, to give us her Employment 101 for startups... “Your startup is doing well, there’s a lot of work to do and you have thought of hiri...
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As we aleady discovered in our Basic Guide to Web Hosting, the term ‘web hosting’ sounds much more complicated and frightening than it actually is. If you are a tad unsure about the concept, and would like to brush up on the basics, then you should take a little wander over  here otherwise read on for a few sensible things to consider when choosing your web hosting package. ...
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Pricing the goods or services that your small business offers is a deceptively difficult and complex task. Few things contained in your marketing strategy hold the level of potential impact to your business as your pricing does. A miscalculation, an overestimation or indeed an undervaluation could all have a severe effect on the performance of your venture. Whilst many have tried to create a sys...
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Why consider seed investment via crowdfunding? We chat to crowdfunding thought leader, Barry James. Earlier this week we highlighted the Crowdfunding: Deep Impact Conference that returns 'up North' this November to Sheffield. Given our love of all things crowdfunding, be they whimsical, wonderful or very investible, we relished the opportunity to have a chat with those folks who have become the v...
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Small Business Marketing, Who is your customer?It might seem like a rather obvious question, but you would be amazed how many startups and small / medium businesses neglect to find out who their customer actually is. Many will have a mental perception of who they imagine their ‘average customer’ to be, without much thought given to how accurate this perception is. Whilst it is true, ...
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The importance of health and hygiene to any food business critical. Food businesses are one of the most common ways that people take the leap into self employment, but the legislation and legal issues surrounding the preparation and sale of food in the UK is so comprehensive, that starting out in this industry can be daunting to say the least. The key to keeping your head above water on these iss...
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