Entrepreneurship

An entrepreneur wrote to me about an online business he started last year. “We’ve had an amazing run so far, with more than 10,000 unique hits every day on our Web site and a 30 percent gross profit margin on sales of more than $250,000 in our first year.

There are two burning questions businessowners need to ask when it comes to social media: How do people generate actual sales (as opposed to marketplace “buzz”) from these things? Who is looking at these things more than infrequently, and are they looking to buy stuff or just schmoozing?

A businessowner who decided to share ownership with his employees writes: “For the past several years, I have operated a very successful service business. We are a limited liability company and while I am the sole owner, I have several W-2 employees.

Corporations — both large and small — are looking to “outsource” a lot of internal functions to outsiders. If you’re thinking about setting up a consulting business, here are 12 things you will need to get started:

Three words explain why many former corporate executives prefer to buy a franchise rather than starting a business from scratch: safety, security and support. But behind every successful franchise, there is a supportive team of people who make the model work.