As you may have noticed, last week the 123-reg team were at The Business Show in London Olympia and it was great to meet so many of our customers, deal with the odd query and get feedback on how we can better serve you and help you on the road to success in your business.

It also gave us the opportunity to catch up with a number of business experts there to speak and share their wisdom with the many wannabe, soon-to-be and early stage entrepreneurs and business people. We asked some of them to share their single top tip for those thinking of starting out in business and this is what they said:

Rachel Elnaugh

Former Dragon’s Den star Rachel is a business speaker, author and mentor and through her Business Alchemy mentoring programme aims to help mentees turn around their financial fortunes quickly and with strong strategy.

My one tip is just something very simple. Follow your heart, work for your passion and do something you love.

Brad Burton

Six years ago Brad turned pizza delivery boy just to keep his start-up business afloat and now he is one of the biggest names on the motivational speaking circuit. Inspired by being told it would “never work” he now heads international business breakfast network 4Networking and is a best-selling author.

One tip? I’ll give you a tip: Spend 100% of your time being 100% you.

Ritu Sethi

Former Asian Business Woman of the Year and experienced lawyer Ritu, combines her legal know-how with her passion for business running a successful legal practice The Sethi Partnership, guest speaking and also authoring her book Having It All Now.

Write down your idea. Shut the door. Sit down and work on it alone. Schedule an appointment with yourself, just like you’d schedule an appointment with your dentist for your teeth, or a doctor for a cough. Do this with yourself to actually work through your idea. Only then can it become a real living entity otherwise it is just a thought in your head and most thoughts just drop.

Russell Hall

Former London cabbie Russ proved dreams can come true if you put your mind to it, co-founding the globally successful Hailo taxi smartphone app with two fellow cabbies and three fellow entrepreneurs.

If you’ve got a successful concept just keep pushing on and on and on. Have the passion to believe in what you are taking to market and just keep moving it on. You will find success and you will find that people recognise that success and help you make it come about

Bill Morrow

One of the most-respected names in the Angel-investment sector, Bill Morrow is a serial entrepreneur who has been creating, building and selling businesses for the last 25 years. He is founder and CEO of Angels Den, Europe’s largest equity funding facilitators, bringing business Angels and entrepreneurs together.

My top tip that will help you attract funding, is make sure you understand the business inside and outside. You must understand the metrics of the business. Make sure you understand the drivers of the business – where the money is going to come from – and actually how you will measure it. Until you do that you are not going to be able to convince anyone that you OWN the business, that you are RUNNING the business and that you are able to CONTROL the business and that you will be able to look after their investment

Nick Moss

Managing Director of the Prysm Group, the organisers of the successful Business Show Nick knows a thing or two about what it takes in business, with a track-record to prove it.

Failure. To build a successful business, accept in advance that you will continually fail. There will be numerous occasions where you won’t see how to turn things around. At this point you must persist and then persist again.
Nobody has ever created anything good without having a long list of failures. The trick is to win the war and accept you might lose some battles. The most common theme amongst successful entrepreneurs is that they don’t give up. Ever!

 

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If content is King, then we can say that SEO is Queen (most of the times, a drama Queen). Everyone knows that article optimisation as well as creating fresh and engaging content can help you not only build a loyal following but also attract links.

This article is a short ‘Wordpress SEO for articles’ guide that you can use for article optimisation. So, make sure to bookmark it so you can easily access it whenever you need to write a search-engine- friendly post for your blog. It will explain how to optimise articles in order to achieve a better search engine visibility and get more organic traffic to your site. How do I know this? Because WordPress SEO works for us.

Let’s begin…

SEO for WordPress blogs

To make it easier for you to understand how WordPress SEO works, I’ve chosen a random post from our 123-reg blog so I can describe the exact steps to simple article optimisation.

Add a title for your post

The first step to optimise articles is by setting a correct title. Usually, the title of your post will be used to create the URL so here are three main things you need to consider:

• Use your main keyword in the title
• Try to place the main keyword at the beginning of the title.
• Keep it as short as possible.

Double check the URL

If you’re using special characters in your title (like apostrophes, quotes or pound signs) check out the URL to ensure these characters don’t appear inside the URL. If they do, then use the EDIT button and remove anything extra aside from words, numbers and hyphens used for separating words.  A shorter title means a shorter URL which can only help because long URLs are never fully displayed in search engines’ result pages.

Optimise articles for specific keywords

When it comes to WordPress SEO for articles, you want to make sure your post turns up in search engines’ result pages for certain terms. Thus, I recommend you employ your main keyword a minimum of three times throughout the copy as it will help that word(s) to be perceived as a keyword.

• Don’t use it in consecutive sentences;
• Don’t use it too often as it will fall into keyword stuffing. While correct SEO for articles is important, making your posts informative, useful and attractive should be your main focus. You want your readers to read and enjoy the articles you write so that they become loyal readers.
• SEO for articles also means using synonyms and variations of your keyword across the post and not the same keyword over and over again.

Adding URLs

You also need to pay attention to the website addresses that you include in your post as these are also contribute to the correct SEO for articles on your site. When adding an URL into your post, check it to ensure it’s functional, is not redirected and doesn’t open a 404 page and…

• ALWAYS start URLs with HTTP://
• Use descriptive anchor texts, even if these are long.
• Avoid “click here” anchors in favour of “Visit our Website Builder page”, for example.

Adding images

The descriptions you give to the images included in your post are also important part to WordPress SEO. When adding images to your post, make sure you add an ALT tag. Just go to HTML editing and in the <img> tag you will see alt=””.  Wordpress adds it automatically without assigning it a value. Add a short description between the quotation marks that best describes the image you used to help with SEO for articles.

SEO for articles 101

When it comes to SEO for WordPress blogs, there are a few things you must keep in mind when adding the meta title and meta description for your post:

 1. Meta TITLE

• The maximum length for SEO for articles should be 68 characters, including spaces.
• WordPress can automatically add your brand name at the end of every title if you want it to. So, if you choose this feature, then keep in mind that the name will add up to the total number of characters in the meta title.
• Make sure your title isn’t too long. I recommend a maximum of 68 characters including your brand’s name and character spaces.
• Use your main keyword at the beginning.

2. Meta DESCRIPTION

• Maximum length should be 154 characters, including spaces.
• You can use the first paragraph if it contains the main keyword and doesn’t go over 154 characters.
• You can write your own in which case you should use the main keyword to ensure correct SEO for articles.

3. Meta Keywords

Find out which search engines sends your most traffic to decide if meta keywords are really necessary. If most visitors come from Google, then you can leave the Meta Keywords box blank as Google ignores the meta keyword tag included in the article optimisation. Other search engines like Yahoo and Bing still give the tag some value.

As you can see, SEO for WordPress blogs can be a child’s play if you can spare five minutes for every post you publish. And you definitely should because WordPress SEO can help you get more traffic to your site and also increase your site’s rankings.

Are you using WordPress SEO to optimise your blog posts? In your experience, has SEO for articles helped you get more traffic to your blog/ site?

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Jonathan Brealey is one of the key figures in the UK hosting market over the past decade, starting his career in the industry in 1997. At this time Jonathan realised that even though the Internet was becoming increasingly popular, web hosting services were predominantly technical in nature. Jonathan and his brother Tim set out to change this with the launch of 123-reg and Webfusion in 1997.

After seeing both businesses grow rapidly, Jonathan and Tim identified reseller hosting as an undeserved and stagnant market they could tangibly improve. On this basis they then moved on to launch Heart Internet, which has constantly raised the bar for reseller hosting leading to it being named the UK’s fastest growing internet company in 2009.

Given Jonathan’s knowledge of our industry we took the opportunity to sit down with him to get his views on what help and advice he can offer to help fledgling entrepreneurs grow their own successful businesses.

The first question that we asked Jonathan was just how significant the decision to set up 123-reg has ultimately been in opening up the internet to entrepreneurs who may have been put off by the price of domains back in the late 1990’s. ‘In 2000, domains were a bigger story. 123-reg was, and still is, all about buying online. 123-reg was an instant success. The reasons we were competitive on price was because we wanted to build large market share. We were not hooked on profit. 123-reg was making money but our main aim was to make 123-reg the number one choice for domains which it clearly is today.’

Setting up one thriving business might seem daunting to most of us but the fact that Brealey has set up three successful businesses in 15 years makes him an authority and a respectable individual to absorb knowledge from. It is Brealey’s opinion that with every venture you undertake, the business person behind it becomes stronger. ‘We have done things differently at Heart than Webfusion, and that is normal. Of course, we have made mistakes, but business is a constant learning cycle.’

For Brealey, the tools for success of any business are inside the entrepreneur. ‘Anybody wanting to do it has to be serious about it. You have to believe in what you are doing. Key to this is you have to be prepared to change. You will start off being the guy who does everything but as you grow; your staff will end up doing things that you were once doing. You have to accept that people do things differently.’

While success may come at a price, Brealey believes that owning your own thriving business is what should ultimately motivate a businessperson. ‘It is not just about financial rewards. Building something that people respect is the ultimate. Heart has an incredibly loyal customer base and we have a lot of brand advocates who are passionate about what we do. That keeps everybody motivated here.’

What any budding entrepreneur can take from Brealey’s story is the passion that is needed for each customer. ‘It may sound like a cliché but nobody knows what we should be doing better than our customers. I genuinely want to work with our customers because it has a two way benefit. I can’t tell you just how many things we have done thanks to direct customer feedback. We aim to make customers lives significantly easier.’

Brealey’s advice is not simply for those who are looking to set up their first business. In the opinion of the entrepreneur, people are continually gaining knowledge and should always look to the future. ‘Second time around you have experience of doing it before, and that is enormously important. I have also learnt a lot building Heart Internet as well.’

Brealey does feel that there needs to be a more positive view of entrepreneurs that might not get it right first time round, something Brealey believes could be holding people back. ‘One of the things I think is a real shame in this country is that when a business fails, it is seen as a real failure. In the United States things are far more positive. They seem to have the view that if you fail and come back, you will probably get it right second time around. I much prefer that style.’

The prevailing message is that young entrepreneurs need to go for it, be bold, exhume passion and success is achievable. ‘Anybody wanting to do it has to be serious about it and you have to believe in yourself. I certainly had a number of people along the way that I relied on for advice. Go and seek somebody like that out.’

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Matt is the founder and CEO of Domainmonster.com, which was acquired by the Host Europe Group in May 2012. On joining the Group Matt was appointed ‘Head of Domain Strategy’ and is now responsible for managing its international domain portfolio and strategic development.

When Matt founded Domainmonster.com in 2006, he had a vision for a registrar that could offer exceptional pricing, whilst still delivering old fashioned superior no wait customer support. Prior to founding Domainmonster.com, Matt held various Senior Technical Marketing roles in marketing and technology companies including Adobe, Quark & Vertis.

Mansell’s initial interest in domains came when working for Adobe in 2001. For Mansell, it was striking that domains were never considered core business for Hosting providers, something that presented an enormous opportunity. ‘Having a domain is imperative, especially when developing a brand. A domain allows the consumer to feel connected.’

For anyone looking to start their own businesses, it is Mansell’s assessment that having the right domain is decisive. No matter how great your design is, or how effective your offline marketing may be, Mansell believes that you are fighting a losing battle if you do not have the most appropriate domain to deliver your brand.

‘When I began, it was a difficult process of acquiring what we started to call the Monopoly set of domains. We started by registering the available Meshdigital.net. We then purchased Meshdigital.com and then added the .co.uk with a successful backorder. Over the years, we then acquired, or caught via backorders, various uses of the brand Domainmonster and international extensions of it. Despite this process being costly in the short term, it allowed us to establish a real brand which has been pivotal to the continued success of Mesh.’

With that being the case, it may seem somewhat daunting for a novice to know what domains are right for their business, a point Mansell is more than happy to offer his advice on. ‘The three most important TLD’s are always:com, .net, .org and of course your local TLD, in my case, .uk.. If you see your business expanding into Asia or Europe, make sure you purchase the top level domains of those countries most important to your business. Of course, the .com is hugely important but local TLD’s are pivotal to any business, as are emerging domains that have been very successful like .co and .me. I would encourage anyone with aspirations of starting their own business to invest in the future and acquire the right domains as soon as you can and most importantly while you can.’

When Mansell started Domainmonster.com, many may felt that the domain market was saturated, and that a new entrant couldn’t compete in the space, but Mansell does not believe that should dissuade anyone with a business idea. ‘There are two ways to make money, be it niche or mass market, but better than that– we ended up being both as Domainmonster.com’.’

Any entrepreneur who decides to sell their business clearly makes one of the toughest decisions of their career. It may have been easier for Mansell to stick with Mesh but his reasons for selling were clear. ‘Selling Mesh to make money was never my plan. After eight years, the decision to sell was difficult, but every business has its lifecycle – its own natural progression. I was once told that any business needs about ten years to mature before becoming successful – so I was happy to achieve it in 8!’

When talking with Mansell you quickly glean that this was the right sale. The selling of Mesh to the Host Europe Group provided Mansell an opportunity to return to big business but also to stay connected with the IP he created at Mesh in his new role as Head of Group Domain strategy. ‘I wanted to return to big business. In a strange sort of way, I wanted to get back into the politics and challenges that a big business throws at you. The sale of Mesh afforded Mesh access to the faster growth and infrastructure of the wider Host Europe Group business and put me back in the hot seat of big business’

Mansell’s commitment to his job is phenomenal. Those who have worked with him will testify to his total commitment and passion for what he does, something Mansell believes can be accredited to his own personal success. ‘Without doubt, passion is part of it. I have never seen myself as having to do a job, because it has never been a chore for me. Every day’s a holiday and always has been.  I can’t wait to go to work on a Monday.

‘Your greatest resource is your own hard work. If you do not know something about how to improve your business, go out and learn it. You are the resource! If you think that you can come into the office at nine and leave at five, you will never be successful. You need to slog it out and make the most of the opportunity for that day. That often means late nights, early starts and an ability to turn stress into action.’

As Mansell alluded to, the day to day running of business is something an entrepreneur should thrive on. ‘The best piece of advice given to me was to get away from the admin. You can’t get bogged down with it. The only way you will be successful during the day is to be doing business. Sending emails all day is not a valuable use of time, sometimes this simply has to be done out of hours or you’ll sink and never reach your destination. The nine to five working day has to be about doing business with whatever tools work for that day –  you should never lose sight of this.’

So what about ideas that haven’t taken off? In Mansell’s view, it is extremely important to be open and honest with yourself, especially if you are a one man band. ‘Everyone in business will make mistakes, but you must learn from them. The single worst thing you can do is be blind to reality. Not every idea you have will be the best in the world, sometimes you have to take it on the chin and move on.’

Being acutely aware of how to manage your business in the most effective way is the reason Mansell believes entrepreneurs are ultimately successful. So what final advice would Mansell give to somebody wanting to set up their own business? ‘Make sure you manage money effectively, manage, protect and create intellectual property and of course, actively acquire, defend and develop your brand with your domain portfolio.’

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Nick Leech started his career in the magazine publishing industry, joining Future Publishing as an Advertising Manager. Leech began selling advertising space for companies in publications including .Net, Internetworks and Business 2.0. In 2000, Leech recognised an opportunity in the market and along with a colleague set up Euston Digital, an agency specialising in search engine marketing. In 2012, Leech was headhunted by the Host Europe Group as its new Group Marketing Director.

Nick Leech sat down with 123-reg to offer his personal experience and give his advice to young entrepreneurs in 2012.

So how did Leech go from selling advertising to running his own successful search marketing business? Leech began with an initial belief that he could do things better, a thought many people in business hold. ‘Euston Digital wasn’t about creating a unique product but more about providing a service that was better than the competition. This was my true inspiration – I knew I could do it better than others.’

Nick Leech is an entrepreneur, despite his own modesty. Realising ones potential is sometimes the main stumbling block, something anyone who wants to start their own business can learn from. While Leech may be somewhat embarrassed to be described as an entrepreneur, his non-traditional path into the business world and story of success should be inspirational to those who might one day takes the plunge. ‘I wouldn’t describe myself as a typical entrepreneur, because I have always seen my investment as low risk. Added to that, the economic environment was better in 2000. Maybe where I am different is I have always seen commercial potential in an idea.’

When you have a great idea and can compete with the competition, there is no need to borrow vast sums of money. ‘When we created Euston Digital there were a lot of people doing things badly, a lot of money was around at the time and there was a serious opportunity if we did it correctly.’

What makes Leech’s story so relevant is that it was not a unique idea, in many ways this is what sets him apart. Leech’s story is one for the masses, an individual who was good at something and had the passion and determination to make it a success. ‘That eureka moment normally costs a great deal of money. What people can take from my experience is to do what you are good at and do it well. The only real cost should be your time and passion.’

It is the Marketing Director’s belief that commitment, passion and skill are essential ingredients for anyone wanting to set their own business up. ‘Working within the service industry, what set us apart was the effort we put in for our clients. Clients saw the passion and the extra effort we were putting in for them. That goes a long way.’

So what advice would Leech offer those wanting to gain a presence on search engines? ‘When you start a business you need to be thinking about how you can rank well on Google. The sooner you do it, the better for your business. There is a perception that this opportunity has been taken by big corporations. However, upstarts are constantly finding way to challenge and even beat large competitors.

‘Do not feel like the ship has sailed. There is still so much potential online.’

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If you’re looking to jazz up your site and want to know where to find free fonts or how to create free fonts yourself, then read on. If not, read on anyway, a font can do many things for your site.

Although there are many websites that offer free fonts, we know how hard it is to find good places with free quality ones that are licensed for commercial work. From experience, most of those sites include either the same boring freeware or have so many ads and popups and are so spammy that you feel like you have to wash your hands after just looking at them.

So, if you don’t know where to find free fonts, we’ve done the hard work for you and put together a list with some fantastic resources where you can get truly unique and quality freeware. Also, if you’re feeling inspired and want to create your custom ones, then read on and we’ll show you how.

So, where can I get free fonts?

One of our favourite sites to stock up on free fonts is DaFont.com.

Not only does this site offer more than 17,000 fonts for free sorted by style but it’s also very easy to use. These are all freeware, shareware or public domain and you can also test them out before downloading and using them in your projects.  This may not be the biggest freeware site on the web, but it definitely has quality ones so give it a chance.

FontSquirrel.com is another great site with quality free fonts for download (and a very cool name!).

They offer well-designed and unique freeware fonts and these are all licensed for commercial use. This newbie site is not very large but it’s worth keeping an eye on it.

FontSpace.com also offers a decent collection of more than 18,000 free fonts shared by designers around the world.

*Remember to check the copyright conditions on these fonts as some fonts are ‘Free for personal use’ or require you to purchase the Full version in order to use it for commercial purposes. Also, make sure you review the terms and conditions included and keep the original archived in case you will ever need to prove permission of use.

Can I get fonts to work online?

Sure, Google has its webfonts site which allows you to use styled fonts online. You can download fonts for free in return for a ‘contribution’ of anything from $0 to $100, depending on how generous you’re feeling.

How do I create my own font?

If you can’t find the free font you want or simply want to use one that is unique, you can just create your very own custom font.

Here are the steps to creating your own font:

1) Write or sketch down the entire alphabet (upper case and lower case) and also characters such as underscore, hash, commas, brackets etc.

2) Scan or take a picture of your future font.

3) Open it in Photoshop or any other photo editing tool and adjust the threshold so that you have pure black on pure white. (Blue on white or other contrasting colour should work fine too.) Once done, save the new image but don’t overwrite your original.

4) Import the new image into Illustrator. Select the image and then go to Object > Image Trace > Make. You will then be left with a vector version of your font.

5) You will need to expand the font so that you can select each character separately from each other. Go to Object > Expand… and then make sure that Fill and Stroke is ticked.

TIP: Use the direct selection tool to make sure there are no overlapping paths that could ruin your font.

6) Copy and Paste the vector character into your Font creation program.

7) Save your font and name it appropriately.

8) Install your font on your computer and start using for your own projects.

How to convert this new font into a web-ready font

If you have designed your own font then you can use FontSquirrels @font-face generator to get a downloadable pack which includes all the web-safe font files for you to be able to use your font online.

Now that you know where to find free fonts and how to create your custom ones, it’s your turn to share. What other free fonts resources are you using?

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Great domain names are hard to find so when a catchy new domain extension becomes available, you need to snap up your perfect domain before anyone else gets a chance. A .sx offers something valuable to any website owner – users looking to buy from a business that knows how to stand out from the crowd. A .sx domain is just that – sexy and different.

If you don’t know much about .sx, then it’s time we talk about it. We’ve created a very useful infographic that will explain what a .sx is and why you need one to stay ahead of the competition.  But first…

Did you know?

•  12 per cent of all websites on the Internet are pornographic.

• There are more than 20 million searches for ‘sex’ every month in the UK. That’s almost the same as the number of searches for ‘football’ in the UK.
• London, Manchester, Birmingham are the top three places in the UK where people are most likely to search for ‘sex’.

Yes. Those are all true and if you want to see more sexy stats, then check out the full infographic below.

 .sx is the country code top-level domain for the island of Sint Maarten, an autonomous country within Kingdom of the Netherlands but anyone can register one. So, if you’re looking for a sexy sounding domain for your adult website or want a catchy one that can help market your business online or protect your identity on the Internet, then it’s time you order your .sx domain.

.sx domains have become available to register as of the 15th of November 2012 so you’d better hurry and secure yours soon to ensure no one else snaps it up before you do.

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the largest domain names registrar in the UK

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SEO is not a set-it-and-forget it process. You can’t just work a few hours on your on-page SEO and then expect your site to climb to the top position on Google. If this were possible, a lot of us would be out of a job.

Optimising your site for search engines takes time and if you do it white-hat you can build the level of trust that Google searches for when it determines what results to return. No one can deny the importance of on-page SEO as you need a clean and easy to crawl architecture, a solid on-site linking structure and content that is optimised for strong keywords. However, on-page SEO is not enough. You still need to build trust and authority on search engines. If there’s no trust, then it’s unlikely that your site will have any chance of competing with others in the industry.

So, how can you gain trust with links?

Have popular bloggers review your product

Getting high-quality links from authority sites that are already trusted by search engines is the way to go. These sites have already earned trust for their niche and by getting some love from them via links your site will also earn some trust. For example, if you are selling shoes online, you want to get some love via links from quality shoes or clothing related sites.

A fantastic way to do this is to have popular bloggers review your products. There are plenty of authority bloggers that are known to write reviews about various project so what you can do is to reach out to them and make them an offer they cannot refuse. For instance, you can send them your product for free so they can test it and write a review about it. So, they get a great product while you get the word out there about your product. It’s a win-win.

Create content that people will want to share

Use content marketing to create a clever or hilarious message/ infographic/ video, etc that raises awareness on your brand. If it’s amazing, people will not hesitate to share it again and again. Sure, not all the links you acquire will come from trusted sources, but some of them will make it all worth it.

Send out press releases

This is the easiest thing you can do to increase your link profile. Use a distribution service, free or paid, to share your press releases but make sure these are of interest for your customers and potential clients. If your press release is not newsworthy, then it’s not worth reading it. We’ll talk about how to optimise your press release in a future post.

Your turn now. What are you doing to climb the ranks in search engines?

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Today is StartUp Britain’s #STARTUPDAY! Their aim is to celebrate the ever-increasing contribution that start-ups make to the British economy and we think that’s a pretty good thing to be celebrating. The StartUp Britain bus, has been travelling the nation spreading entrepreneurial spirit for the last four weeks since we saw it at Youth Enterprise Live. It arrives at the British Library for the next couple of days so if you are in London, get along. There are also a series of events being organised by StartUp Britain Local Champions. Whether you can make an organised event or not though, here’s six ways you could play your part in getting the British economy going once again:

1. Help a start-up

If you are not a start-up yourself that doesn’t mean you can’t be involved. Just giving your business to a new start-up goes a long way to helping them develop as a business. Better still if you have some business skills why not offer them about for free. Networking is key in the current business world and if you can do a favour for a startup who knows where it may lead.

2. Fund a start-up

Finance, or lack of it, is probably the biggest barrier facing would be entrepreneurs at present yet there are more and more innovative schemes offering people the chance to link and find investment and others find investable opportunities. The trendy way is via a crowdfunding scheme where businesses invite interested people to invest relative small sums in their projects in return for small gifts or the like. Recently US-success Kickstarter launched its UK specific site but there are plenty of others like CrowdCube and WeFund if you can’t find a suitable project to invest in at first.

3. Start a start-up

Feeling empowered and inspired? Launching your own start-up needn’t be as daunting as it sounds. There is plenty of advice and guidance available on the StartUp Britain site and here at 123-reg we  have solutions for a whole range of online operations whatever your technical knowledge.

4. Donate a product or service

Money is tight for everyone, but if  you can donate something that is already part of your own offerings you can minimise that cost also boost your own customer base. Getting an up and coming business using your services or products can be a great way to increase your own brand awareness too as they are more likely to pick up some press coverage than your own business if you have been going longer, it’s the nature of the beast. The recipient will no doubt be more than grateful and keen to recognise you and name-check in any interviews too.

5. Mentor a new business

If you really want to help a business grow into a success, giving them the benefit of your wisdom and experience is the greatest gift you can give. We’ve all made mistakes in business and helping others avoid those is not only rewarding for you but also benefits the growing business. Being a mentor needn’t be massively time-consuming either. Often it is just being on the end of a line for a second opinion or as a sounding post. A mentor doesn’t interfere with the  other person’s business either, you are there to share knowledge, skills, information and put it all in perspective. The idea is to foster the personal and the professional growth of the person or persons you are mentoring.

6. Re-tweet a start-up

If you really don’t have much time or spare investment then just a simple message of encouragement for a new start-up can be a wonderful thing. We all like being told what we are doing is good, so in the early days of worrying if you are doing the right thing, a message of support from those already doing it can give a big lift. A tweet is the quickest and most public way of achieving that.

Get Involved – Tweet #StartUpDay with what you plan to do and don’t forget to tag @123reg in there too.

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This week is Global Entrepreneurship Week

It’s the world’s largest campaign to promote entrepreneurship, and is promoted in 115 countries between 12-18 November this year. In the UK, the campaign is hosted by Youth Business International, a global network of initiatives that help young entrepreneurs to start their own business, in partnership with Barclays.

The theme for 2012 is Pass it On! urging people to offer the practical help & support needed by early start-ups and individuals who are considering taking the plunge. Last year over 900 partner organisations got involved in the week in the UK alone, reaching 213,000 people through 2,305 activities. This year that’s already at 2,900 events with over 270,000 participants. Have a look for an event near you.

Events are being held for all those thinking or already running a business. You are never too old or too young to learn nor to start up your own business and this week more than any is a great way to get those ideas up and running. Over the next month at 123-reg too we will be offering more words of advice and inspiration to get you and your business online. There’s no business in the modern world that won’t benefit from a professional and reliable set of internet services.

So whether you are looking for simple web-hosting, email, or looking to go full ecommerce we have solutions for your inspirational business project. You don’t need masses of technical knowledge either as it’s as simple as 1-2-3 to get started especially with products like Website Builder.

What you do need is to be inspired and hopefully the events of #GEW2012 and the articles on this blog will be the springboard you need to set your business off in the right direction.

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