NYC Office Space and Entrepreneurs
The official blog of Sunshine Suites.
As small business owner, if you have started hiring employees you will quickly come to realize how much work is involved with keeping an accurate payroll. This information must be kept accurate to comply with strict IRS criteria. Considering how intense all the record keeping involved is, most small companies are best suited just employing the aide of a payroll management service. Let’s look at how to weigh your options in the payroll management search.
Right off the bat, you have a few options in terms of how you would like to submit your payroll to the service. The most common options are online, via phone and via fax. Be alert if you are opting to submit payroll online. Many payroll solutions who utilize online payroll with seemingly be the most affordable. Often time this is because your entire payroll processing experience is self-service and completed online. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is something to certainly be aware of if that is not what you are looking for.
If you begin pursuing an online / self-service payroll solution be certain to discuss with the company just what support is in place in the event that you need it. Many of these solutions are offered as 100% self-serve, leaving you on your own if you have any questions or serious concerns. The upside to this type of solution is if you know what you are doing with managing payroll and simply need a system to process it for you, this will end up being the most affordable solution by a landslide. However, keep in mind that when you need support or have a question, it might not be there. If you are still unsure of yourself, it may be worth it to pay the additional premium of working with someone over the phone.
Payroll services that allow you to handle your payroll over the phone will often (but not always) have access to more dedicated customer support. Services that utilize the phone tend to be a lot more hands off for you than any one that makes you enter the times for the week over the internet. How phone payroll services tend to work, is your payroll rep will call you at the end of each week asking how many hours each employee worked. From there, they will handle sending the checks (or direct deposits) to your employees no the correct payroll day.
Once they are made aware of how many hours each employee on the payroll worked, they will proceed to do the following:
-Pay the employee via check or direct deposit.
-Calculate how much you owe in payroll taxes and pay that to the IRS on your behalf each payroll.
-Calculate how much you will need to pay into each respective employee’s disability and social security fund. Then make the appropriate payments on your behalf.
-Handle filing all workers compensation information and all appropriate disbursements.
One crucial factor you will want to discuss with any payroll service that you consider working with is if their payments are bonded and insured. What makes this so important is you are designating the payroll service to pay taxes on your behalf. If you are not working with a bonded agency, and anything happens to the tax money before they pay it to the IRS for you, you will still be held responsible.
As with any business decision, don’t shy away from conducting due diligence. Call up numerous vendors and ask them flat out what makes them better than their competition. This will help you make the most informed decision possible, minimizing the chance that you will make a decision you later regret.
So, you think you’re ready to start expanding an take on your first employee? Congratulations! Before you do, check out the following critical information that will help the process go as smooth as possible.
#1 Getting the Technicalities Correct: Is it an Employee or a Contractor?
The IRS is beginning to take “worker misclarification” extremely seriously. This occurs when your company indicates that they are utilizing the services of a third party contractor to get out of having to pay into disability, social security and payroll taxes. Hiring a contractor would also force that person to file their own taxes when they are due. When you have an employee, the company is required to withhold that tax from each paycheck and pay it directly to the IRS.
According to the IRS, they determine how a worker should be classified based on three characteristics. First, they are concerned with how much control the employer has over the party in question. If you have the ability to dictate what the employee should be doing and when, they are no longer classified as a contractor. Additionally, if the job requires specific training, it is very difficult to classify it as working with a contractor at that point. Next, the IRS is concerned with who determines the payment schedule. If the employer has full control over determining when and how the party is paid, they are seen as an employee.
The IRS indicates that if you have the ability to specifically dictate what the person in question should be doing, and when, they are most likely going to be classified as an employee. In contrast, if you only have the ability to dictate the end result that you are looking for from the person and make payment based solely on said end result, it is a contractor.
So now that the IRS has laid out in clear terms their expectations for what makes an employee vs a contractor, they are expecting full compliance from employers. Like any other time the IRS wants compliance, they enforce it by threatening large penalties for failure to comply. In this case, companies that are found guilty of worker misclarification are required to pay all back payroll taxes, a misclarification penalty and an additional penalty since you technically completed the wrong forms.
#2 Get Everything in Writing Up Front
A plethora of employee problems can be avoided through simple prevention. The easiest way to do this is simply write up a document outlining what you expect from your employee and what you need to prohibit them from doing. Having this from the get go can save a lot of time and frustration in the future if they claim they didn’t know about a policy. For example, if you don’t want your new hire to discuss certain aspects of the company, have them complete a non-disclosure agreeing to that. Chances are they will not have any objection as long as the terms of the agreement are reasonable.
Trying to build out an effective email marketing campaign from scratch isn’t an easy process in any regard. Most people struggle with what is known as the “white page syndrome.” Looking at a blank page and trying to think of what write out is one of the most frustrating things to start with. Let’s look at how you can create an effective email campaign without having to worry about not having an idea. Additionally, let’s look at how to build an email list from scratch.
When you are trying to capture leads to your email list, the best way to get people to give you their information is to offer them an incentive to do so. We covered this in our lead generation post, but let’s just reiterate the basics. Ideally, you want to give your users a reason to give you their name and email address. Your give away doesn’t have to be anything too complicated, just something compelling enough that people will subscribe. Usually, as long as it is relevant to what you know your audience is looking for, they will spring for it.
Once they have subscribed, you should begin to email them what is known as a sequence. Sure, you have to initially email them what you promised, but beyond that you can get creative. You have them opted in to receive any thing that you determine to be relevant. Keep in mind that they have the ability to unsubscribe from your email list at any time. The goal is to keep producing enough value that they will have no desire to do so. Your emails should remain relevant to the initial offering. As long as you are doing this, even if you are selling the readers, you shouldn’t struggle to retain them on your list.
The hardest part of getting people to read your emails is going to be getting them to open them. You only have one shot at getting them to open it and it is with your subject line. Here are some tips to write the most compelling subject lines possible:
Try asking an open ended question. Ask your users something along the lines of “Trying to figure out ___?” “Still struggling with ____ ?” Anything along those lines that will really speak to your users.
Promise something “secret.” Using the word “secret” or implying that there is a secret included in the email.
Tell your users to open the email. This one is so obvious that most people don’t consider it. Using verbiage along the lines of “Open this email.” and giving them a reason to do so.
Now that you know how to write a powerful subject line, make sure you are following up by delivering excellent, relevant content to your audience. This will keep them on your list for as long as possible.
Being a small business owner can be overwhelming and many times you’ll want to bring on hired help. While it’s not always practical to have full time, salaried employees, the internet makes it easy to locate and hire freelance labor. However, there is no shortage of freelance horror stories. Let’s look at how your business can get the most out of utilizing freelance labor.
Having a positive experience with a freelancer, starts with hiring a freelancer with a proven reputation. This can be established in one of two ways. First, you can begin hunting for freelancers by asking friends in your industry about freelancers they’re had good experiences with in the past. Word of mouth is one of the best ways to get reliable, freelance labor. Another excellent method is to look on the popular freelnace boards such as Freelnacer.com, Elance.com, Guru.com and oDesk.com. Each of these sites have a “review” profile of each freelancer on there. The most effective way to select a freelancer is to see who has reviews that were left on work completed that is similar to what you are looking to hire for. For example, if you are looking to hire a designer to create a logo for you, their ideal reviews should mention previous logos created for their clients. Chances are is people were happy with their logo creation in the past, you will be too. On top of looking for relevant previous jobs, check if anyone had a very unpleasant experience with the freelancer in the past. If they have reviews indicating things like failure to meet deadlines or poor communication, you may want to look elsewhere.
Starting with a freelancer who has a proven reputation is a great way to maximize the potential of a positive experience. Another very helpful trick is to outsource only tasks that don’t require an in-depth understanding of your company’s goals or processes. Ideally, the projects should have a limited scope and duration. This will help you assess the freelancer on a per-project basis and limit your risk associated with the job. In this case, if you are underwhelmed by the efforts your freelancer puts in, you can select a new one for work in the future.
Of course, while hiring the most qualified people and designating them only limited tasks can help minimize your risk, you will still want to maximize on labor that they are completing. Doing so requires management, and sometimes even micro management. The best way to get the most out of your freelancer is to require CONSTANT communication from them. If you are paying hourly, require hourly status updates. If you are paying on a per project basis, require the freelancer to communicate each milestone they accomplish. In the event they are unable to meet a deadline, require them to communicate this before hand so you can always be on the same page. Indicate to your freelancer how important deadlines and communication is and how it can break the deal with them if they are unable to do one or the other well.
On top of hiring qualified freelancers, making them aware of, and accept your terms from the get go is a surefire way to maximize your success of hiring a freelancer. Of course, keep your expectations realistic to ensure that you are going to have them met every step of the way.
Freelancing, regardless of the niche, can be a somewhat hard industry to break into initially but once you get situated and a steady clientele base it can literally become the dream profession. You get to decide your hours, you get to decide your pay, and you get to decide pretty much everything involved in your particular job. If you don’t like to work on Wednesdays-it’s no problem. Do you like working in your pajamas- Why not? Basically, all of the little quirks of working for someone else that annoy you can be eradicated at your whim. But the biggest advantage of being a freelance can easily also become its biggest flaw as the corporate world’s idiosyncrasies are set up that way for a strategic reason and leaning away from certain ones can literally be bad for business.
Case in point-when you are a freelancer you usually start off with your home being your business. That comfy couch replaces your ergonomic office chair, the coffee machine is your literal coffee pot and the TV is never out of reach. These luxuries can be good in moderation but can also turn your freelancing career into a disaster, which is why it is imperative that all freelancers keep an office whether it is a second bedroom retrofitted into a home office or an actual office space within a rented out building. I know you are probably thinking to yourself “why would I quit my job to get rid of the corporate atmosphere only to re-embrace it?” Well, the answer is quite simple actually-efficiency.
Since you already set your own hours of operation, frequency of work load as well as general location of work, you are set up to have a higher propensity for slacking off. Any experienced freelancer can shoot off an anecdotal story about how a TV show marathon kept them from completing an order for a client or how “a few more hours of sleep” can turn into an entire day in bed with you adamantly defending your actions to…yourself. Having an office space gets your brain out of leisure mode and into work mode which is what you need when you don’t have a boss who can fire you for being lazy. By making an office space you can effectively separate work and play within your mind which will undoubtedly lead to more efficient and productive working time.
That’s right, creating an office space will help you keep your work load balanced and keep you productive which is your only means of procuring money as a freelancer. Furthermore, freelancing inherently involves more than just doing the work. You have to file documents, keep a ledger, bill clients, etc…all of which need their very own organized home and the coffee table surely isn’t the best fit. Keeping an office allows you to also keep office space to store all of these vital documents that keep your freelancing job afloat. You have to remember that becoming a freelancer doesn’t mean you don’t have a business or boss to report to because this isn’t true. As a freelancer you become your boss and you become your business so it is necessary to treat yourself as your business since at the end of the day you literally are.
While creating a home office space is an option, another is investing in renting a shared office. Shared office space will vary in price, but it is often designed with a freelancers budget in mind. While many freelancers believe that working from home is an ideal scenario, others acknowledge the truth that it doesn’t always work out as planned. For many, it pays to get out of the house an in to a formal place of business.
In summary, keeping an office space is a vital choice for any freelancer for a plethora of reasons. It allows you to effectively separate work from play, increases productivity, and creates an efficiently run business that any professional would be proud of.
Have you ever heard of using a “hashtag” on Twitter? Maybe you’ve seen people on Twitter write a word, phrase or series of letters preceded by a “#” sign. This is what is known as a hashtag. Let’s take a look at what hashtags are, and how we can leverage them as small business owners to drive more traffic to our blogs.
Hashtags are very similar to the “tag” feature of most blogging platforms. It uses key words to indicate what the post is about. The primary function of hashtags (and even tags in general) is to add a sortable element to the post. A hashtag can be a broad topic (such as #Marketing, #PPC, #SEO, #SEM, #SocialMeida) or very specific to an event (such as #ASE10, #ASW10, #SESNY.) Either way, you should be leveraging conversation on it to get your business in front of a relevant audience.
To “talk” on a hashtag, all you have to do is include the tag, preceded by the # sign in your tweet. What this accomplishes is listing your tweet among all of the others that have the same tag. For example, if you were discussing a hot new hip hop track, you could tag your post #HipHop. Any interested parties that search for, or routinely follow #HipHop will see your tweet. Tweeting on these hashtags about relevant things that the community is looking for can get your brand serious exposure to your target audience. Keep in mind that you are not trying to spam links or sell on the hashtag. Just put out great information that your audience will want to read. Not only will this you prominent within the community, it should help get you some very relevant followers and even clicks to your site.
There are numerous shows, concerts and events throughout the year that have a hashtag associated with them. It should go without saying that if you are at the show, this is an invaluable way to see what is going on, and who is where. However, don’t overlook this opportunity to see what is happening at events you could not attend. Many times people will be live blogging a play by play of what is happening. Even if you are not at the event, you can make use of the hashtag associated with it to network with conference participants. Don’t be shy! If someone on the hashtag is talking about something that interests you, send them an @ reply and be sure to tag that with the # too!
It goes without saying that if you’re not on Twitter, you should be. But if you are on Twitter and not using hashtags to your advantage, you are truly missing out on an incredible opportunity.
Sunshine Suites’ Shiners shatterbox make it their mission to motivate youth to action. With their forums, videos and events, Shatterbox brings a passion for Do It Yourself ethos to young people that’s wildly contagious. As such, we approached them for hints and tips for kids and teens who might see the work of, say, Gary Vaynerchuk, or our own managing partners Cheni Yerushalmi and Joseph Raby, and wonder how they, too, can become self-made successes. In their own trademark voice, shatterbox presents, exclusively for Sunshine NY blog readers, their tips for young entrepreneurs.
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This post is a continuation of a series about how to utilize various internet advertising platforms to generate leads for your business.
Using pay-per-click traffic is only one effective way to drive relevant viewers to your lead page. As relevant as it is, the primary downside of this advertising medium is your restriction to target only based on key words. Let’s look at another rapidly growing online advertising medium that will allow you to show your ad to your ideal consumer based on demographics.
Many times companies know who their target demographics for their product or service are, they just need a platform to put their ads directly in front of that specific demographic. Enter social media advertising. The two most prominent players in this space are Facebook and MySpace. Both of which allow you to run advertising campaigns that will be displayed to people in the demographics you specify. Both Facebook and MySpace allow you to target by geographic location, age, gender, relationship status, education level and more. MySpace will also allow you to target based on parental status.
Facebook’s platform allows you to create ads that consist of a headline, an image, and body ad copy. MySpace on the other hand allows you to upload banners in any standard IAB compliant size. No banners? MySpace also offers a unique tool called the AdBuilder that will help you build banners on the fly. If you are working with a limited budget, using the ad builder tool and Facebook’s propriatery ad format will help you get campaigns up as quick and affordable as possible. However, having your own banners created to run on MySpace will probably get you noticeably better results in the long run. You will have more control over the images, text placement, call to action etc, which can all result in more clicks to your landing page.
One thing that is crucial to keep in mind when running display campaigns, is to test and optimize every variable in the process for maximum profit potential. For example, if you are only running one banner or text ad, to one demographic, you may or may not do well on the campaign. In the event of the latter, you will have to proceed to guess what worked out well, and what did not before continuing. Ideally, try a few different banner or text ad designs. Three to five is a good place to start, but the more you are running, the clearer you will be able to distinguish which is working well and why. Target each of the ads to not only what you believe to be your ideal demographics, but also one or two other sets of demographics as well. You may be surprised by what is working out and you will never know what works unless you test. Testing numerous variables is not going to be useful unless you are tracking which ads are performing best. Take cull advantage of Facebook and MySpace “conversion tracking” (pixel) technologies to determine which of your ads is bringing in the most leads for the lowest cost.
As you optimize your ad campaigns, you will begin to learn which ads are driving leads for the least amount of money per lead. Of course, the goal will be to drive as much traffic to this as possible. However, do not rule out any ads that are performing well and are driving you leads for a reasonable price each. While you want to drive the majority of your budget to the best performing ad, runner ups can help bring in plenty of new business for a feasible price.
This post is a continuation a series about how to utilize various internet advertising platforms to generate leads for your business.
Search engine marketing is a very effective, targeted way to help your business generate new leads. The beauty of search engine marketing is that you only have to pay for the advertisements when someone successfully expresses an interest in your offering. This is achieved by paying on a “cost-per-click” model. Let’s dive into which search engines you can advertise on, how this type of advertising works, what it costs, and some tips for successful campaigns.
Each of the three most prominent search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN “Bing,” all have their own ad platform. Their respective platforms are AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and adCenter. Something very important to remember with this model is how the targeting works. On this platform, you can indicate which keywords are relevant to what your business is offering. When a surfer enters one of the keywords that you are bidding on into a search query, assuming you are one of the highest bidders, your ad will be displayed. Noting this, consider what type of information or services your ideal client would be searching for and target accordingly. A great tool to help you generate lists of relevant keywords is the Google External Keyword Tool. Start by entering a few phrases that your audience might search for in the “word or phrase” box. Then click “Search” and browse the keyword ideas. From here you can check off each keyword that you feel is relevant and download the list.
Search engine advertising pricing tends to be very reasonable. You are only charged when someone who sees your ad, clicks on it. For the most part, a click on your ad indicates that the person clicking is somewhat interested in your offering. Since you’re only showing your ad on relevant search results, and only paying when someone is clicking your ad, this is one of the most targeted advertisement platforms available. Pricing is set based on a bidding model. The higher your bid, the higher on the results page your ad will be displayed.
In addition to having to target relevant keywords, it is very important to make sure your ad copy clearly indicates what you are offering. This is crucial because you want as many relevant people to your site as possible. For example, if you are offering something for free in exchange for completing your lead form, indicate it. At the same time, make sure the verbiage of the ad clearly states what your company offers. It is not worth attracting people to click your ad if they are not interested in what you are selling since you have to pay for these clicks. Using numerous ad copies can help you determine which is driving the most relevant traffic for the cheapest price.
For best results, you will want to drive the search engine traffic to the lead page that you have created for your service offering. (For tips on how to create or optimize your lead page, read Part One of this series.) Each of the advertising networks will have a very useful feature called “conversion tracking.” it is highly recommended that you take full advantage of this functionality so that you can optimize your campaigns accordingly. Conversion tracking will give you a small line of code to place on the page after the successful completion of your lead form. This will pass information back to the advertising platform about which ad copy and keyword delivered the conversion. Data from conversion tracking can help you quickly determine which of your keywords and ad copies are performing the best, and which are too expensive to maintain.
This post is the first in a series about how to utilize various internet advertising platforms to generate leads for your business.
One of the most obvious problems that small businesses face is struggling to get new customers or targeted leads for their business. Luckily, the internet makes this process easier and even more cost effective than ever before. There are numerous different ways to generate leads online including Search Engine Marketing, Social Network Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and client referrals. Before you start attempting to collect leads, your first priority should be to create or revamp your lead capture landing page.
One of the most important factors in determining the success of your landing page is the content. Most landing pages focus too much on what they are offering as opposed to why what they are offering is so beneficial to their potential leads. As author David Meerman Scott says, “Nobody cares about your products (except you). What people do care about are themselves and ways to solve their problems.” Keeping this in mind can have an incredible impact on how well your landing page converts. Putting it in perspective, consider if you came across a page that discussed a certain product. Are you really going to give your information over just because the product is somewhat relevant to your interest? Maybe. But consider if you find a page that explains how the same product will, in one way or another, make your life significantly easier. Chances are, you will be a lot more interested in the latter. The same goes for your potential clients.
Another huge factor in determining landing page conversion rate is the placement of the lead form. Ideally, the entire form should sit “above the fold.” This means that the visitor should be able to view all of the fields, as well as the submit button, without having to scroll down.
Lead page conversions will also increase if you have a very strong and clear call to action. The call to action is where you specifically tell visitors what they need to do to receive the benefits that you outlined for them in your page content. “Looking to solve XYZ problem? Contact us!” Consider offering a special offer of some type to get people to complete the form. Any thing from a special discount, “free consultation,” even a free short report can tremendously help you get more conversions on your page. Never forget that people like anything free, as long as it has a perceived value to it.
So what should you ask for on your form? Most of this depends on your business model. Lead forms often work on a “less is more” basis. The less information you request, the more leads you will capture. A great method to implement this is ask questions that are relevant to your offering, but only requiring crucial fields like “name,” “email address” and “phone number.”
There are simple other ways to help increase landing page conversions. Using an autoplaying video or audio can help gain the attention of a user and reinforce the call to action. Putting testimonials on this page can really help add social proof for your potential clients. Also consider using a time scarcity tactic. Anything from “limited time offer” to “expires (today’s date) at midnight!” are effective.
On Friday, we will begin to cover how to drive relevant visitors to this landing page using search engine marketing.
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