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PRIME has negotiated an exclusive discount for Business Club Members from voxclever, who provide virtual office services for start-ups and small businesses.

To take advantage of this offer and claim your discount you will need to use the PRIME code when contacting voxclever.  

What is a virtual office?

If you run a small business from home, are often out on the road for business, or at customers’ premises, you know that sometimes it’s necessary to have an office for meetings or important calls, but renting office space is expensive. voxclever provides professional answering and call forwarding services,  access to meeting rooms, mail sorting and forwarding  without the expense or hassle of running your own office full time.

Discount code: Prime30

voxclever contact details

Phone: 0203 402 2086

Email:  sales@voxclever.net  You will need to put the PRIME code in the email to claim your discount.

Features

voxclever Virtual Office offers:

  • A prestigious business address in a prime location
  • An exclusive telephone number for your company
  • Professional telephone answering in your company name
  • Mail and fax sorting and forwarding
  • Call forwarding or diversion to voicemail
  • Access to voicemail remotely
  • Full business support with meeting rooms, admin and more
  • Fast set-up of facilities within 24hrs

Please note some of the services mentioned above are not in the standard Virtual Office package and will cost extra.

To find out more go to: http://www.voxclever.net/ 

Or call: 0203 402 2086

Or email: sales@voxclever.net 

The competition season is now in full swing. There’s still time to enter some of the bigger awards. And on a smaller scale there are also a couple of quick-to-enter competitions with useful small prizes from Paypal and from printing firm Moo.

1. Your Big Year

Your Big Year is a free competition to encourage global citizenship and social responsibility through entrepreneurship. It is now open to applicants.

Thousands of enterprising entrants will compete for the prize of a 12-month trip around the world by raising as much money as possible for a group of short-listed charities.

PRIME is one of the 24 charities that have been selected to receive support from the funds raised by the fundraisers in this competition.

If you see yourself as an enterprising individual who would like to travel the world and help out in local communities, Your Big Year could be just what you’re looking for.

Winners will be given the opportunity to meet World Leaders, celebrities and inspirational entrepreneurs. They will live in different communities, learn leadership skills and join volunteer projects – from teaching children in South America to conservation work in Asia. They will be given the tools and support to share their experiences via the global media.

For more details – and to register your interest – visit www.yourbigyear.com

2. Moo Business Card Project

More a competition than a fancy award, cult printer Moo is offering to redesign the business cards of 500 small businesses. To enter you send them a photo or scan together with a hundred-word plea, and if they don’t like your card they’ll redesign it for free and print you 50 free cards.  Yes it’s a marketing ploy and really a clever  offer, but Moo does boast some wonderful designs. Though the offer site looks American Moo is a British-based company, and the competition is open to businesses in the UK.

3. Win £100 with Paypal and Enterprise Nation

Photo by Onio-n at FlickrClosing date for entries: November 2010
This one is really quick to enter – you just tell home-business site Enterprise Nation what you’d spend the £100 on, using this uber-simple form. You don’t have to wait long either, as 20 winners are announced each month. The competition promotes Paypal as you must have a Paypal account to collect your winnings, but these are easy to set up and already genuinely popular with small businessess (Paypal is the standard payment mechanism used on eBay.

4. Other awards

There are many other awards aimed at larger companies, and some significant awards that apply to just one region or industrial sector. There’s a good list maintained by Boost Marketing at www.boost-marketing.co.uk/awards/.

Note that some awards charge an entry fee. The ones we feature above don’t. Fees can be large – the “Green Business Awards” and the “Internet Business Awards” each cost £250 to enter, while entering the “National Business Award” will set you back £175. Unless you expect to get shortlisted there are probably better ways of spending your promotions budget.

See also elswhere on the Internet:
Business awards – are they worth the cost and effort?

How to win awards (advice on the benefits and costs from Smarta)

Though it takes time to enter an award it can be a useful exercise in presenting your business to others. And if you get shortlisted or win one of the categories you are likely to get publicity for your business – and usually also a prize.

Setting up a web site is a high priority by most new businesses. But not everyone has the experience to do it for themselves from scratch – or the money to buy in the expertise from somewhere else.

This is where simple Do-It-Yourself solutions come in. This post updates previous discussion on this topic (see Internet category for earlier posts), and renews two offers we’ve been running for some months.

Example web site page
1. Getting British Business Online – a free basic business web site from Google and BT

There are many approaches you could take, but let’s start with something that is entirely free. Getting British Business Online is backed by the UK government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It’s run for them by campaigning group Enterprise UK, but the technology comes from Google and BT.

We’ve just had confirmation that this scheme now continue at least till 31st of December 2010. So far 20,000 businesses have taken advantage of the scheme.

To get a web site going you need to register a domain name – which is the web address such as example.co.uk for you web site, find a hosting firm which is where your site will actually live, then design your site and upload all your content. One way simple DIY packages achieve simplicity is to guide you through steps and offer all these services on one place.

With the GBBO package you get:

A free web address provided by BT: Choose from any available ‘.co.uk’ domain name. This is free for two years, after which you can pay to renew it.

Free hosting, provided by Google. Google told us this will remain free forever as long as your site remains below a certain size limit, currently 100Mb. This is big enough for the great majority of simply sites, but you can pay for extra space should you need it.

A free site-building tool: You build your site using an easy Wizard-type tool provided by Google, which lets you upload your own words and images, and alter them later whenever you want. You choose your initial design from a selection of pre-defined templates. You can swap to a different template later or tweak the design if you want to.

To register go to www.gbbo.co.uk

You need to have a working email address and a mobile phone. The mobile is only used once, during the initial registration process. You give the set-up wizard a mobile number, and it then immediately sends a text message to it containing an activation code. You type this code into the on-screen setup form, which lets you continue on to set up your free web site.

The type of web site you can build with the free Google tools provided by the GBBO scheme are fine if all you want is a fairly simple site containing pictures, text and videos. It can do a good job of describing you and your products in a kind of online brochure.

However, if you want to sell products off the page and take payments from customers online, it’s not so good. It is possible to link a GBBO site to Paypal and take credit card payments this way, but currently it doesn’t provide a proper shopping cart facility. This is more what you need if you have number of products you want to describe and sell from your site.

Box photo of Mr Site web site creation product
2. Your own online shop from Mr Site

There are several options here, but one of the simplest for newcomers to building web sites is Mr Site.  This is a paid-for commercial product, but PRIME has just renewed an offer we ran at the end of last year, passing the full 40 per cent discount on to PRIME Business Club visitors.

One reason we like Mr Site is that it is well documented, so if you don’t know what you are doing it you can read an explanation which by web standards is relatively free of jargon. It also has a business focus that makes it very appropriate for PRIME’s audience.

With the discount a year’s use of the Beginner package will cost you £15 rather than £19.99, a year of the Standard package £22.74 rather than £34.99, and of the Pro package £59.9 rather than £99.99.

These prices include the registration of your own domain name (such as www.example.co.uk or www.example.com), the use of Mr Site online web site creation tools, templates and shopping cart, plus hosting for a year. You can use an existing domain name you have already registered.

To get these prices go to the special PRIME discount link and enter the word “PRIME” into the offer code box. You can upgrade between the levels at any time, so you don’t have to worry too much about making the right choice now. If you want to continue using the Mr Site service after a year prices revert to the normal level – these are shown at the foot of the page. Currently they are £20.28 annually for Beginner, £34.88 for Standard and £95.88 for Pro.

The different levels differ mainly in the number of pages you can display and the amount of space you can use for your text and images. The Pro package has the best ecommerce support and features to help make the site more visible to search engines. But all come with a shopping facility with images and stock control, the ability to take payment from customers via Paypal, and with email box.

Paypal is a large international electronic payment service owned by eBay. This means that you have to sign yourself up separately with Paypal for a Paypal account, and pay Paypal transaction charges. But the big plus is that you can get up and running fast and you don’t need to worry about processing credit card payment or getting credit card merchant status.

Customers can pay you straight off your web site (or by email) using a credit or debit card – they don’t themselves need to sign up with PayPal. Paypal can also handle cross-border payments and currency conversion, for an extra fee.

3. Other options

Of course Mr Site and the GBBO scheme aren’t the only way of getting a web site up and running cheaply. We cover some of the others in the site credits description of how this web site is done. For www.primebusinessclub.com we use a lot of Open Source software, which is cheap or free, but unfortunately sometimes quite complicated.

For a person starting out on their own without existing Internet skills the learning curve could be high, and the time spent could divert effort from other areas of the business that need it more urgently.

This means that only some of the many cheap options are worth considering, especially those aimed at beginners with the hosting included, so there is much less of a technical nature to do. Some of these services are free, usually because they are advertising funded, and they can be good way of getting something up quickly and starting to learn about web publishing.

You can instantly set up a free blog at Blogger.com (owned by Google), and at WordPress.com, to name two well-established and well supported ones, with huge communities of users. Typepad only has a 14-day free trial, and thereafter is quite expensive, but is also very beginner friendly and tends to appeal to people in the media or arts or who have visually-appealing products.

Social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter may be enough if all you require is an online presence that is mainly about yourself, and they are all free. But all three suffer from a trivial image, and Facebook in particular is still blocked by many traditional businesses that fear their employees will waste time on it. This means that though such sites can be very helpful to your business if it relies on word of mouth and personal contact, you may also need a conventional web site too where you can present your offer in a serious manner.

Another option worth investigating if you plan to start trading from your site and taking payments for goods is BT Tradespace. The basic service is free, and you get a shop and the ability to take payments using Paypal. This service also offers opportunities for networking to find customers and suppliers, and for some businesses may be a good place to start.

Date: Wednesday 19 May 2010
Venue: LT 0, Baker Building, University Engineering Department, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1PZ 
Registration: 13:00hrs / Starts 14:00hrs

Doug Richard’s School for Startups is running an event on starting and growing a successful business. Doug has offered PRIME Business Club members (i.e. anyone who has registered for a free start-up pack from us) an exclusive half-price discount.

Here’s the offer

Standard Entrepreneurs Ticket: £95.00 + VAT
EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT FOR PRIME: £45.00 + VAT
Use code: PRIME
GO HERE TO BOOK

Details from School for Startups

Doug Richard, serial entrepreneur and original BBC2 Dragon, moves ahead with his ambitious plan to fast-track entrepreneurs and business owners onto the road of success.

Summary

Following the huge success of our seminars around the UK, Doug and the School for Startups team are taking their nationwide tour to Cambridge. A must-attend event for any budding entrepreneur, “Start Here! Starting and Growing a Successful Business” is hosted personally by Doug Richard and is the cornerstone of the School for Startups curriculum.

The University of Cambridge is delighted to be hosting the Doug Richard’s School for Startups, which comes at a time of heightened interest in entrepreneurship and self-employment for both students and graduates. The University of Cambridge has a thriving enterprise community, Cambridge University Entrepreneurs (CUE) are the oldest university enterprise society in the UK and run one of the most successful student-lead business creation competitions in the world. Collectively, CUE alumni companies have gone on to secure over £33 million pounds of investment.

Event Details

Before an entrepreneur invests valuable time and money into a business idea, there are key essential questions they should ask themselves:

  • Who are my customers?
  • What makes my proposition attractive?
  • Do I have a sustainable competitive advantage?
  • What type of industry am I in?
  • Do I have the right skills and experience?
  • What is low cost marketing?
  • How do I write a successful business model?
  • How can I make money?
  • Who else do I need to make this work? 

Hosted personally by Doug Richard, this seminar provides the framework within which entrepreneurs can answer these questions for themselves and offers an educational, insightful and inspiring introduction to how to succeed in business. 

For further information on all School for Startups events visit: www.schoolforstartups.co.uk

Early Bird Entrepreneurs: £65.00 + VAT
EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT for Early Bird PRIME Olderpreneurs: £30.00 + VAT
(offer available until 5th of May 2010)

 

Tutoring eBook coverTutoring web site the Tutor Pages is offering a free 65-page ebook on how to set yourself up as a private tutor.

 Contents include:

  • who can tutor in the UK
  • how to establish credibility and promote yourself
  • understanding relevant tax and insurance obligations
  • tips and research on effective teaching
  • templates and links to recommended websites
  • www.thetutorpages.com/free-tutoring-ebook

    Example web site pageGetting British Business Online, the governmnent backed-scheme that offers UK small businesses a free web site, is now live.

    Partners include Google, Enterprise UK and Paypal.

    You get:

    A free web address: Choose from any available ‘.co.uk’ domain name.

    A free web site: You build your site using an easy Wizard-type tool provided by Google, which lets you upload your own words and images.

    Try it now at www.gbbo.co.uk

    clever gecko logo

    PRIME has teamed up with UK business set-up specialist Clever Gecko to offer our members a FREE Health Check for their businesses.

    To get this offer go to the special PRIME landing page.

    Business Doctor is predominately aimed at those people who have already started their own business and would just like some advice on how they are doing. The check-up will give you an opportunity to discuss any concerns you may have about your business but also for the Doctor to highlight issues that may not be obvious to you.

    If you are still just contemplating starting your own business then Business Doctor can still help by assessing your business idea for viability.

    Clever Gecko is one of the UK leaders in business start-up services, dealing with every type of business from a window cleaner to a corporate consultancy. With unrivalled access to their Partners a Clever Gecko client can, on average, save up to 54% on things like stationery, printing, logo design, website design/hosting and insurance. So whatever your business, a call to Clever Gecko is probably one of the best calls you’ll ever make.

    They understand that starting your own business can be a very stressful time; full of questions,uncertainties and worries and sometimes you just need a helping hand. Their friendly, plain language, hands-on approach makes them perfect for people starting out in the business world.

    Disclosure: We are not taking any commission or affiliate fee on this offer to enable the maximum saving to be passed on to you. PRIME has asked Clever Gecko to offer this service FREE to our clients so that they receive the greatest benefit.

    Extract from www.tfl.gov.uk  

    JOB seekers can now benefit from half-price bus and tram travel to make it easier to get to interviews, libraries, Job Centres and other amenities.

    Eligible Londoners in receipt of Job Seekers Allowance or the new Employment and Support Allowance can now get the same half-price travel concession that those on Income Support currently receive.

    The move is part of the Mayor of London’s Economic Recovery Action Plan.

    Click here to read the full story

    Go to www.london.gov.uk to find out if you are eligible

    Anyone over 60 in London should qualify for FREE travel anyway, at least at off-peak times. You can get a “Freedon Pass“. This is available to men as well as women from the age of 60 (even though men don’t qualify for a pension till later). It doesn’t matter whether or not you are working or not – age and residence are the only criteria. How to apply.

    Logo of Regus Get Started schemeServiced-office giant Regus has launched a series of offers to help cash-strapped small firms beat the recession. Pride of place among them is three-months free space for new startups.

    “You have to start somewhere”, says Mark Dixon, founder and CEO of Regus. “I began at the bottom so I know what it takes to get things moving. Despite the gloomy economic outlook there is still opportunity for businesses to flourish.

    “Through our Get Started campaign we want to encourage people to fulfil their entrepreneurial dream by making it easy for them to set up a new venture – giving them and the economy a much needed boost.”

    You can apply online here by submitting brief details of your business or planned business. Competition is likely to be fierce, so it is a good idea to apply early. Places on the scheme are limited.

    Here is what successful applicants get. If you have a clear plan and are ready to get started then Regus will provide free office space for up to three months. If your business plan is not yet finalised Regus will provide day offices for intense planning and meeting rooms so you can can meet with potential partners, suppliers and customers in a professional setting.

    The scheme is also backed by British Chambers of Commerce, which will be running a series of mentoring sessions for new entrepreneurs in Regus centres across the country.

    “We believe the key to kick-starting the economy is to help our entrepreneurs create new enterprise”, says Mark. “I’d encourage other private sector companies to support the movement and develop similar packages.”

    Mark launched Regus 20 years ago after thinking up the idea on a business trip to Brussels. He noticed how many business people were forced to work from hotels for lack of a more professional environment they could simply rent at short notice as and when they needed it. His first business centre along these lines – in Brussels, has since expanded into a global chain of 950 business centers in 70 countries.

    Book coverPRIME has teamed up with publisher Kogan Page to get you a discount off any of the publisher’s books. Kogan Page specialises in business books, and have many relevant small business titles. To get the discount just order via this PRIME book shop link (opens in new window), which shows a selection.

    At the moment the discount is running at around a third off regular prices, made up of 25 per cent off from Kogan Page and 10 per cent off courtesy of PRIME, but we’ll be reviewing the exact deal in August.

    UPDATE: It’s now running at 19 per cent, made up of 10 per cent from PRIME and nine per cent from Kogan Page.

    Disclosure: Currently PRIME gets a further 10 per cent of the discounted price from any purchase you make. We are hoping this new revenue stream go a little way towards helping to fund the free guides we ourselves produce.

    Book coverIf you are still thinking about whether to start in business or not, the Essential Business Guide has an 80-page workbook to help you think through the issues. You can download it as a PDF for free to read or print out. The company – which writes books and courses for small businesses, also has two worksheets (in Excel format) you can also download.

    If you don’t have Excel on your machine you can still make use of the worksheets. If you get yourself a free Googlemail account it comes with other free software, including a spreadsheet program that can read these files.

    WeBooks logoAll the 150-or-so books from WeBooks.co.uk can be read for free online. The publisher makes its money if you buy a normal paper book or a printable PDF version should you tire of tabbing through page-by-page. But it is perfectly practical to read the whole book for free online, or at least dip into the relevant sections.

    Here are some of the titles in the business list.

    coverBook-keeping and Accounting for the Small Business
    (Peter Taylor) A useful guide to managing accounts & choosing accounts software, as well as information on double entry bookkeeping, double entry accounts and small business tax.


    cover
    How to Start Your Own Gardening Business
    (Paul Power) All about starting a business in the gardening industry, including writing a gardening business plan, financing the business and managing the accounts.


    cover
    Preparing a Winning Business Plan
    (Matthew Record) A full guide to writing a business plan. It explains what a business plan is, why you need one and how it should relate to your business idea, objectives and projected growth.


    cover
    Raising Finance for Your Business
    (Mark Blayney) Covers funding a business, getting a business loan, as well as looking at the lending market and other sources of finance.


    cover
    Raising Start-Up Finance
    (Phil Stone) Covers different ways of building capital, sources of finance including business grants and business loans, as well as how to assess the true cost of borrowing money.


    cover
    Setting Up a Complementary Health Practice
    (Patricia Bishop) Setting up a health business, including information on working from home, the start-up costs involved, marketing your business and achieving a healthy work-life balance.


    cover
    Setting Up and Running a Limited Company
    (Robert Browning) How to start a limited company, from writing a business plan and choosing a company name to dealing with company accounts.


    cover
    Start and Run Your Own Business
    (Alan Le Marinel) G
    uidance on starting and running a business, tips on preparing and managing accounts, and ways on raising business finance.


    cover
    Starting a Business in the Country
    (Wendy Pascoe) An in-depth look at starting a rural business – including start-up costs, rural advertising, working from home, marketing and research.


    cover
    Starting a Sandwich – Coffee Bar
    (Stephen Miller) How to set up and run your own coffee and sandwich business, from planning and creating your own identity, to hiring staff, sourcing suppliers and the daily running of the shop.


    cover
    Starting and Running a B and B
    (Stewart Whyte, Nigel Jess) Covers starting and running a small bed and breakfast business, including conducting a feasibility study, writing a business plan and financing the business.


    cover
    Starting and Running a Catering Business
    (Carol Godsmark)
    This guide includes a wide range of information, from writing a business plan, marketing, promotion and retaining customers.


    cover
    Starting Your Own Business
    (Jim Green) From the initial start-up costs, writing a business plan and marketing your business, to the different types of businesses and how to go after government grants.


    cover
    Starting Your Own Childminding Business
    (Allison Lee) Detailed guide to starting a daycare business, including the regulations, start-ups costs and running the business.


    cover
    The Kitchen Table Entrepreneur
    (Paul Power) Covers the initial stages of starting a business, including conducting market research, writing a business plan and self-motivation.

    Click to download Bootstrappers Bible by Seth Godin - 1.3Mb PDF file How do you start or grow a business if you don’t have much money? The answer according to US marketing guru Seth Godin is to focus on the advantages that your lack of resources brings. and build a business that consciously makes use of them.

    This is not a collection of money-saving hints and tips. Instead it’s about something much more important. It’s about getting your business model and marketing strategy right so your success does not depend on resources you don’t have but is instead based on exploiting to the full what you do have. That’s why The Bootstrapper’s Bible is already a business classic.

    Download The Bootstrapper’s Bible by Seth Godin

    Don’t be put off by Godin’s American style. By page eight he has got the local cultural references over with and is well into a solid comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of rich and poor businesses. The remaining 90 or so pages is inspirational stuff, and likely to spark practical ideas about how you can turn your situation to your advantage.

    A note on printing the PDF: it prints out fine on A4 as long as you select landscape.

    There’s an interesting business story behind the work itself. It’s based on a book Godin wrote about 10 years ago. In paper form it sold about 10,000 copies before going out of print. Godin then got the rights back and adapted it into a downloadable e-book that Amazon sold for $3 a pop for another 18 months. Godin then decided there was one more thing he could do to extract value from it – turn it into the current 103-page PDF and put it out completely free.

    Within a week of this free version becoming available Godin estimates that more people had downloaded and read it than both previous versions combined. This of course brought him no new revenue – but it did powerfully promote his more recent in-print books that do. So at very little cost to himself he has got large numbers of people sampling his product.

    Continue reading »

    Alan Rae, author of One Man BrandLet renowned marketing expert Dr Alan Rae talk you through the essentials of doing business – for free. Adapted specially for PRIME from his course One Man Brand, each programme lasts 30 to 40 minutes and consists of Alan talking you through the key business principles accompanied by illustrations and slides. You can access them instantly now from your PC. Just click on the links below.

    1. What’s Your Story

    2. Telling it in Writing

    3. Telling it Face to Face

    4. Telling it On-line

    It’s very simple – just click on the link, wait about 10 seconds for the programme to load, and – if your machine is capable of handling the podcast format, sit back and listen.

    Most machines will run this course without difficulty, but if you are finding it blocked on a work machine try it from home – some firewalls block the flash podcast format.

    It requires a browser with Macromedia Flash installed and a PC or laptop with sound capability.

    Once the programme is going you can jump backwards and forwards in the programme using the page up and page down keys.

    Free: marketing workbook

    There’s also an accompanying 20-page workbook by Alan Rae, called “Your marketing plan”, that we are making available for a limited time only. It helps you define your customers and work out how best to approach them. Download your copy now by clicking on the link below (PDF format), then print it out and go through it with a pen or pencil to get started on Your marketing plan.

    Skype logoSkype allows you to make cheap calls to normal phones worldwide – and free calls to other people with Skype. You install some software on your PC to get it working – or buy a Skype handset from somewhere like Tesco.

    You need also Internet access – home broadband is ideal. As a result small and home businesses have been much more active in adopting this way of making cheap phone calls than big businesses or the public sector, which are saddled with more complicated Internet arrangements.

    There is discussion of the pros and cons of Skype in the forums.

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