Friday, April 8, 2011

Have you considered overseas markets?

Small and midsize companies produce half the nation’s economic output but account for just 30% of exports. Overall, just 1% of the nation’s 30 million companies export products, and 58% of those that do ship to only one country.
According to a Commerce survey, small businesses’ biggest concern is they simply don’t know how to identify and sell to overseas customers. That’s followed by worries that they won’t be able to get financing and won’t be paid by foreign buyers. Myriad other concerns include language and cultural barriers, shipping costs, theft of intellectual property, cross-border tax differences, and burdensome red tape.
Full article from USATODAY :

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Before launching a startup

Look within and ask these three basic questions before starting a small business of your own:

 
•Do you really want to operate independently and be the person making all the decisions and shouldering all the responsibility?


•Are you willing to work hard and make the sacrifices starting a small business entails?


•Do you have the self-confidence and self-discipline that will enable you to persevere and build your new enterprise into a success?

If you have answered "no" to any of these, you're probably not ready for starting a small business.

Have you demonstrated the following essential entreprenurial qualities ?

The seven most highly ranked qualities were perseverance, the desire and willingness to take the initiative, competitiveness, self-reliance, a strong need to achieve, self-confidence, and good physical health (William E. Jennings, "A Profile of the Entrepreneur" in Entrepreneurship: A Primer for Canadians).

If you have answered yes, and written the successful stories when you have demonstrated these qualities, whether it is in business or raising kids or in other life challenging situations, then ......

What is the real problem you are solving for the marketplace?

When you have completly satisfied yourself that you are ready, willing and able, then you are ready to assess the business aspects of your idea.

Arete Consulting can help you each step through the Start-up "fog" from researching and validating market demand , to distribution channels and evaluating and attracting a management team.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

top social neetworking sites

Top 10 Social Networking Sites in China

CR-Nielsen has published the latest statistics of the most popular social networking services websites in China with 51.com topping the ranking list by weekly independent visits of 14 million people.


1. 51.com - 14 million unique users visit per week
2. Xiaonei.com - 9.5 million
3. Chinaren.com - 7 million
4. Kaixin001.com - 3.5 million
5. Myspace.cn - 2 million
6. 5460.net - 1 million
7. Wangyou.com - 1 million
8. Ipart.cn - 1 million
9. 360quan.com - 900k
10.Cyworld.com.cn - 800k


Tencent's SNS website Q-zone, which claims to have over 200 million users every month is not included in the top ten SNS websites in China.

State of the net


“State of the Internet” report highlights Internet trends worldwide, including strong growth in Asian usage, in social networking, video entertainment and in Google’s dominance of search.

In 1996, two-thirds of the world’s online population was in the United States; now, the U.S. accounts for only 21% of worldwide users, comScore notes. Internet usage in Asia and the Pacific rose 14% in the last year and will account for 42% of users in two years.

The total number of internet users worldwide is projected to reach $1 billion by March 2010: 4 out of every 10 will be in Asia, and only 2 out of 10 will be in North America.


There are 77.5 million more Internet users today than this time last year

Other key findings from the report:

China and South Korea are already seeing local providers give U.S. sites a run for their money – language may be part of the challenge, but also cultural preferences.
Broadband is driving faster usage growth outside the U.S. New adopters, particularly in emerging countries, are bypassing outmoded narrowband connections and going straight to high bandwidth.
Broadband facilitates multimedia and online entertainment, and those two categories will only continue to grow as the world online population grows – Witness Youtube.
Communication tools, e-mail and IM, are still the killer category of usage in all regions, followed by Social Connections and Multimedia Entertainment.
Travel and E-commerce are virtually non-existent outside of the developed world. Growth will take off once the proper infrastructure is developed, primarily in Asia Pacific.
Portals and vertical content categories, such as finance, health, autos, etc… enjoy moderate growth rates in the mid-teens.
Google is the dominant search brand in most countries, including most of Europe and Latin America, with a few significant exceptions — countries where Chinese, Korean, and Russian languages dominate.
Chinese language search engine Baidu currently ranks #3 in worldwide search market share, behind Google and Yahoo!
The number of worldwide visitors to social networking sites has grown 34 percent in the past year to 530 million, representing approximately 2 out of every 3 Internet users. MySpace and Facebook are in a tight battle for the global leadership position, each attracting more than 100 million visitors per month.
Online video has become the dominant online entertainment format, led by the global popularity of YouTube with more than 250 million visitors in January.
The Internet has become an important source of news for most Web users. The top 10 global news brands show great diversity between country of origin, including the U.S., U.K., China and South Korea.
Ad Networks are necessary for large players to expand the depth of their effective reach and will be increasingly gaining momentum, somewhat at the expense of branded sites.
The Ad Network consolidation race will soon turn global given the size of international audiences that could be aggregated.
The web already delivers 40% more advertising Gross Ratings Points than TV in the US, and more than twice as many ad impressions per user.
Online Video is growing fast, but still faces significant challenges of scale and monetization.
The Mobile Web is coming and will be a substantial source of usage with high speed access and friendlier devices. It is possible for it to eclipse the PC based web outside theUnited States.
A combined Yahoo! and Microsoft would reach over 173 million unique visitors (94% of the US audience), but would still be a distant second in search.
The full report