Oil markets have continued to push the price of oil up this week by a further 7.3% to close at just over $68 a barrel for crude – last week this rose by 6.2%.

It has been a good week for the stock markets with all world indices rising on the week, with the best performer being the China Hang Seng index, which rose by 6.3% on the week.

End of the week saw:

If you are not sure what blogging is and you are a bit unclear about setting up your own business blogging site then this article might help you to get started.

Website URL
Before starting any website or blog you need to understand what the term URL stands for, which is – Uniform Resource Locator and in layman’s terms URL is the address of the page of a website or a blog. If you look at the top bar you will see that the URL on this page is http://www.in-business.org.uk/what-is-blogging/.

Blog
You might be wondering what a blog is, as there are still many people out there that might have heard of the term, but are still unsure as to what it this term means. The term blog is an abbreviation of “Web Log” which is effectively what it is, as a blog is a diary of posts listed in date order and displayed on the Web or Internet.

Blogging Platform
This is the background software which is used to create and run your blog and in most cases there is no need to pay for this software, as there are plenty of adequate free ones out there. The most popular are WordPress and Blogger (Blogger is not as good as WordPress, as you cannot use this as a sub-directory to your main site, if that is what you desire, so WordPress would be better) you can also use Joomla too and there are others too.

Blogging
So if you have a blog then you are a Blogger and then the process of creating and posting an article in a blog is called blogging.

Blogger
Someone who owns a blog and posts about a subject they know – a niche showing their expertise.

Within the blog you will have certain sections and terminology you need to understand, as follows:

Post
As noted before a blog is a log on the web of articles in date order and each one of these articles is referred to as a post.

Comments
Once you have published a post, blogging software allows visitors to your site to make comments about your post, which is what makes a blogging site different to a normal website. You have full control over these comments and there is software to help protect you against spammers. I recommend if you use WordPress for your blog that you use Akismet which will automatically detect those pea brained spammers out there.

Category
Certainly if you use WordPress you can categorise each post under one or more Categories, which helps visitors to read posts that have been categorised into certain topic areas.

RSS feed
The RSS feed where RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or alternatively “Rich Site Summary” and allows people to subscribe to receive information from the likes of blogs and to receive news headlines that they consider interesting. In order to receive and read these headlines you will need a Feed Reader. Every blog will have a link to a RSS feed and all blog posts will be listed on this feed and looks like this – if you click this RSS Feed link for in-business.

Blogroll
On each blog site there will be a set of links to other blogs or websites that a blogger considers to be relevant to the content of the blog. These site links are sometimes listed in the Blogroll; however, this heading can be changed to suit your site.

Archives
Each month that passes your blog posts will be aggregated into the month in which the post was made and then these are listed under the Archives section of the blog. You will then be able to click on the blogs prior months to see what was written in those months.

Ping
A pig is something that is very useful for blogs and the search engines. Each time that a post published on a blog the post page is “Pinged” off to all the major search engines. This in tern leads the search engines to visit your site and then update their directory and record your new content. Once your blog has got a high relevance on the Internet you can find that a post will be found on the likes of Google within hours of posting. The following are “Ping sites:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2/
http://ping.feedburner.com/
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php/
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2/

This means that the search engines contain up to the minute information about your blog and is why blogs are so important for traffic to your business and your company website.

To answer the question “Does my business need a blog?” then you need to look at how it can benefit you before deciding on whether you need one or not.

These days many businesses are adding a blog to their website, as they firstly acknowledge that it is a good traffic generation tool and it helps to tell your audience that you know what you are talking about…let me explain…

Every time you post a page on the internet you give yourself another opportunity of getting that page found on the internet by potential customers. It is worth researching key search terms for your business and your business products and services. Once you have researched this by using SEO tools like Wordtracker FREE keyword suggestion tool you can use these key words to create posts that will be searched for on the Internet and then find your site.

Once you have your “Key Phrases” which include your “Key Words” you can then start to build web pages based around these words. Using a blog for this purpose you can write articles based upon your key words, which will not only be found if they have been optimised correctly, but will also tell your customers more about that particular service.

In your article on the blog the title should include your “Key Phrase” and “Key Words” and then you should go on to include the same phrases within the article, some of which should be boldened and at least one of them linking off to your main website. This will help the search engines to index your page and thereby find you for the terms you desire.

If you do decide to have a blog associated with your business website then I suggest you use good blogging software like WordPress, which is what has been used to run this blog – and what is great is the software is FREE!

Once you decide to have a blog you must make sure that you keep the content up-to-date and you must make sure that you write articles on a regular basis – I would suggest at a very minimum of one per month, which would mean 12-articles per year, but even better one per week. You can get your employees to help with article ideas and topics and get them to help with writing them, so that you spread the load.

All world stock markets rose by good percertages this week and the French CAC more than recovered the loss of last week to rise by 20% on the week as coinfidence starts to creep back to economies around the world.

The bumpy ride on the crude oil price continued this week on a rise of 6.2% to close at over $60 per barrel again.
End of the week saw:

If you are looking to print business cards for your business then be careful about using services that offer “free business cards”.

There are two things to point out to you about these so called “free business cards” and the first is to be careful of companies like Vistaprint! We needed business cards in one of my businesses and our manager at the time recommended Vistaprint tome. My manager told me that the cards are free, so I thought why not and agreed to let her go ahead and order some “Free” cards – well we did pay for them because we wanted to add some extra services.

The cards arrived, but and a BIG BUT – my business card started to get charged with £9.95 per month for some kind of subscription service, which I am still not sure what this is.

When we contacted Vistaprint, which was not an easy thing to do in the first place, as they seem to make it incredibly difficult for customers to make direct contact, they agreed to cancel the subscription and did originally offer to refund the money already paid out. However, nothing of the sort happened and I felt that I was simply told a lie, I also feel that this was simply a delay tactic so that they could then take yet more £9.95 payments. Vistaprint never did cancel the direct debit and when we tried to make contact again we found it impossible to do so – they also never repaid the monies taken from my bank that were never knowingly agreed to in the first place!

The only way to cancel this was to contact our bank directly, who stopped any future payments, however, we were left out of pocket and no refund was made. What apparently happens is that when you register for the free cards, if you want to upgrade the business cards, if for example, you want to have then delivered more quickly, then you pay for this using a credit card. Vistprint then automatically subscribe you to this £9.95 per month charge and you only find out when you get your next bank or credit card statement.

To me this is a shoddy practice and to be blunt - it is a “Scam” – if you type in “Vistaprint scam” to a search engine you will see many websites listed telling you not to use Vistaprint and quite frankly I agree with this. I would certainly never recommend a company like this and would never ever use them again!

The secondary reason for not using “Free Business Cards” is that when you give them out to other business people they look “Free” and people get to know the designs used by these companies – so you look “Cheap” in front of other business people. It is much better to have your own corporate ID and logo on your own business card design, which in most cases does not usually cost the earth to produce when you use a reputable printing company.

To increase traffic to your business website and to improve your rankings on the search engines and on sites like Alexa then you should look at business directory registering.

A business directory like for example U.K.Business directory receives high traffic volumes (this site had an Alexa ranking of 105,184 on the day of writing this article, which is a respectable traffic rank). Business directories like this tend to be top of the search engines for business type searches and if your site is listed then you will receive your share of this traffic.

It might be that you are listed under one category and the person looking for one service might see your site under another category too, or even simply find you for the search they made in the first place.

To find other business directories to get listed in simply do a search on the term “Business Directory” or “Business Directories” in your favourite search engine and then go through this list. You will normally have to enter a reciprocal link to the directory site and in some cases you might need to pay an annual fee.

In my opinion you should be able to find enough directories that offer a free listing in their directory so you should not need to pay for this service. However, sometimes by paying a fee you get listed quicker and you can get a priority listing at the top of your section.

A fall on the world stock markets across the board happened this week and one that stands out above the rest is the French CAC40 which dropped by 14% this week – this could lead to a number of take-over bids from overseas, subject to the usual French preventative rules.

The crude oil price fell this week by a futher 9% have lost 5.5% last week to close at under $60 per barrel again. Gold has also continued to fall this week closing at a new low of $913.
End of the week saw:

If you are considering setting up in business and you are not sure what to do then how about a list of businesses you could begin – so here is a list of small business ideas:

- An online business selling products using a drop-shipping company – like umbrellas or women’s shoes or perhaps perfumes.
- Become a plumber – even during a slow-down plumbers seem to be in demand and can earn significant sums.
- Set up take away business selling pizzas or burgers – in a slow down these types of business always prosper, as people tend not to go to restaurants as much, but will still get a take away with a bottle of wine. You do have the option of setting up a franchise with this line of business, but you have to consider the fact that a per cent of your turnover will be taken by the franchisor.
- Set up a gym, which is where Duncan Bannatyne made a large percentage of his fortunes – remember a good tip of his, which is to make sure your location has a 360 degree population around the site. In other words if you were to choose a location on the coast you have just limited your customers numbers in direct driving distance from your gym, as there will only be houses in a 180 degree arc on one side of your site.
- A cake making business is something you could start up from your kitchen and begin by supplying to weddings and local shops.
- A cleaning business cleaning homes and/or businesses – if done correctly and once you begin employing people you can make a lot of money doing this.
- A gardening and landscape gardening business is a business which is always in demand.
- A handyman come maintenance type of business.
- Building and maintenance business.
- Computer maintenance and hire company and in particular computer network support, as this is always in demand.
- Wedding services business, including photographer and a wedding planner – most women are very good a planning weddings and most will have done so in their life, so why not do this for others.
- An ironing service.

Think about what you are good at or what you have trained to do as there will be business opportunities in whatever field you are in. When you are thinking about your business idea it is always worth considering the “expandability” of your idea.

So if you choose a cleaning business, then there is nothing wrong in starting out doing the initial work yourself, but ads things expand you can then begin to employ others to do the cleaning work so that you can begin to sit back and manage the business – this way your business will become an asset to sell in the future – the less you are involved in the day-to-day running of the business and so long as it is profitable, then the more it will be worth to others to buy.

This week we saw the Nationwide bank launch a 125% mortgage which will hopefully be the beginning of the end of a time of limited borrowing during times of credit crunch lending!

The Nationwide’s new loan facility is to help existing customers who want to move, but can’t because they are in negative equity. The way this new lending works is that the customer will be able to borrow up to 95% of the value of their new home, so they will need to have a 5% deposit.

Subject to fulfilling certain conditions, customers will then be able to add the negative equity from the house they are selling to the new mortgage, so long as this amount of extra lending does not exceed 25% of the new homes value.

For example:

A customer has an existing house worth £175,000 with a mortgage of £250,000, which means they are in negative equity by £75,000.

They want to buy a new house that is worth £275,000, on which the Nationwide would potentially lend £261,250 (which represents 95% of the value) – they will need a deposit of £13,750. This extra lending is subject to a few conditions and their new “stress test”. This new stress test will ensure that customers are still able to afford the mortgage repayments if interest rates have risen to 9% or 10% once the fixed-rate element of the loan has expired.

The maximum extra they could borrow in this case would be 25 per cent of £275,000, which is £68,750. So in this example they would not be able to borrow the whole of the equity short-fall of £75,000 and would therefore need to put a further £6,250 into the deal.

Nationwide customers will be offered a three-year fixed rate mortgage at 6.73 per cent or a five-year one at 7.48 per cent on the 95 per cent portion of the mortgage. Interest charged on the negative equity element of the borrowing rises to 7.23 per cent for three-year fixed and 7.98 per cent for five-year fixed.

These rates are quite high in the present market so customers will obviously be quite desperate to move up if they are willing to pay these high fixed rate mortgages!

This week saw most major stock markets fall by a small percent, with most staying more or less at the same level as last week.

The crude oil price fell this week by 5.5% to close at just over $65 per barrel and gold have fallen back too this week by a small margin.
End of the week saw: