PRIME business club

The world-conquering search engine can either decimate your sales through a whim of its coding, or deliver a flood of new customers or ad revenue. This US article from Fortune Small Business looks at the tactics small businesses are using to make the best of the Google world.

Britain’s love affair with the Internet has reached new heights, according to research revealing that almost three-quarters of the nation’s net users have high-speed broadband connections. Almost 10 million households now use broadband to access the net, outstripping the number of old-fashioned dial-up connections by three to one.

Grants to ordinary businesses are relatively rare in the UK, and vary from place-to-place. Now in an unusual move Liverpool City Council has decided to offer £500 grants to help new firms on its patch get off the ground.

The grant will be available to all new businesses starting up within Liverpool City Council’s administrative area, but is particularly aimed at those excluded from mainstream sources of business finance.

The scheme is open to self-employed sole traders as well as larger businesses. Applications should be made through one of the local business start-up agencies, which can assist with a business plan.

For more information contact Nicola Gleave, Head of Enterprise at Business Liverpool, on 0151 233 5326, or email info@liverpoolchamber.org.uk. The web site is www.businessliverpool.co.uk

Shell is offering awards of up to £40,000 to as many as 18 small businesses across the UK. The judges are looking for business proposals that are innovative, commercially viable and that will lead to greenhouse-gas reduction. Entries are required by midnight on Friday 10th November 2006.

The contest is open to UK firms that have been trading for at least three months and that have fewer than 250 employees. The legal form doesn’t matter - sole traders, partnerships and social enterprises can participate too as long as they have a viable business proposal for a product or service to combat climate change.

Monday 21st of August sees a major change to postal charges, as the UK Post Office switches to a system based on size as well as weight. An ordinary envelope up to half the size of a standard A4 sheet will normally be a basic ‘letter’, costing the same price as now (30p or 21p); up to A4 size will be a ‘large letter’, charged at the next price up; and anything bigger will be a ‘packet’. But items of above average weight or peculiar shape may cost more than this suggests.

Over one million unemployed people aged between 50 and 65 want a job but can’t get one, according to a new report by the TUC. Only one in eight workless people in this age bracket had retired and were classed as “affluent professionals”, while many who are still keen to work have been forced against their will onto welfare. This is ageism in action.

When Graham Watkins and his wife sold their company, they had no idea what would be involved. Now Graham, 53, has written a book recounting their experiences and the lessons learned. “It pays to start early”, says Graham. “The process was far more complex than we had imagined. It involved an enormous learning curve and could have easily ended in disaster.”

“Exit Strategy - a practical guide to selling your business” by Graham Watkins, is published in the UK on the 14th August, price £12.99. It’s available from Amazon. ISBN 1905108192..

Age Positive has published a league table of 149 towns, cities and counties in England ranked by how well they are doing at providing jobs for older people. Slough is best, with 73.9 per cent of 50 to 69 year olds in employment, and Hartlepool the worst with only 31.8 per cent. The bottom 10 are:

Tower Hamlets : 42.9

South Tyneside : 42.9

Isle of Wight : 42.9

Redcar and Cleveland : 42.3

Sunderland : 41.5

Salford : 40.5

Hackney : 37.9

Knowsley : 37.0

Liverpool : 36.6

Hartlepool : 31.8

SCOTLAND is the UK’s most entrepreneurial region accirding to a study for UBS Wealth Management reported in The Scotsman newspaper. Scotland’s claim is based on the success Scottish firms have had on attracting venture capital. For every one million inhabitants London has 53 venture-backed companies - but Scotland has 54.