Portable Document Filing has been around a long time. Banks have been using PDF technology for years in data processing departments. Checks would get scanned in the banks’ computer and photocopied just in case if there was a minor discrepancy. From there, a photocopied PDF file was created on microfiche.

Then Adobe started expanding their software resources. They created software called “Adobe Acrobat Reader”. The Acrobat Reader allows for certain encoding factors to read documents in a photocopied PDF format and transport those documents regardless of orientation into the reader by converting them to PDF file(s). The module in Acrobat Reader opens up similar to a book. It also has various other functions including speech to text recognition.

Many documents in the business world are emailed in PDF form. Now that laws have changed to certify PDF documents as “legal” documents, more businesses are using these documents as contracts and agreements. You should have a copy of Adobe Acrobat on your computer and if not, go to www.adobe.com to download the latest version.

You can also set the document for editing purposes. You can configure Acrobat to not set any editing changes or you can create fields on the document that can be edited by another person or party. Usually, documents are sent to you in non-editing mode. Acrobat documents can be formatted as forms and questionnaires. Colorful brochures can also be in PDF format.

You can create your own PDF documents on line through www.Adobe.com. You can PDF your documents up to five times free before a charge is incurred. Then, to create more PDF documents, you have to buy the Abode Acrobat Professional Package. This gives you unlimited PDF generation for books, manuals and special papers that you want archived or produced.

You can also produce and read e-books with a module that fits right into Acrobat Reader. You must install a plug in that you can download from the Adobe Web-Site (www.adobe.com) to activate the Digital Reader Edition.

There are other PDF readers and software that you can obtain but Adobe is the most widely used by SOHO’s.

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1. WHAT AN E-BOOK IS NOT
2. The Portable Generation
3. Why a Mini E-Book and what are they?

But what if you are a SOHO owner who is not on the internet yet and you want to be on the net but you don’t know the first thing to do? Well, stay tuned, these articles are to assist you in understanding the World Wide Web in its most simplistic form.

Instead of going into the history of the internet, I’ll just lay down some simplistic key facts that will amaze you. First of all, the Internet has been around for more than 60 years! It just didn’t pop up overnight! The internet was used by the government, certain educational institutions and the military for private messaging and research. The communication lines were already in place. This is how governments obtained data on certain countries and passed it along to high ranking officials.

Things such as instant messaging were done by the military. Programmers developed routines so that computers could talk to one another during the course of a world wide event. All of these computers tied together create a “web” or a community of computers, hence the name, “World Wide Web”.

When the Soviet Union reconfigured its strategies and government in 1986 and the Berlin Wall fell, it led to a series of events to make this private network public. The network was not “usable” anymore because of the shift in political thought and countries were more open to share information. Most of the communication lines that existed since 1945 were sold to private companies, such as AT&T and after that, the Internet was born!

So the Internet didn’t come out of nowhere. The lines of communication were already established. So now that you know a brief simplistic history, let’s see how you go about developing a web presence!

Related posts:

1. Your Web Presence Is Important – Part 2
2. Your Web Presence Is Important – Part 4
3. Your Web Presence Is Important – Part 3

Most copywriters would be in total agreement with that. The question is: have they done anything about it? And the same question goes to new and wannabe freelance copywriters.

So what CAN you do about it? If the phone’s stopped ringing and your e-mail Inbox is full of nothing but unopened spam – it’s time to take stock. The first question is (and it seems almost quaint in the year 2006): Do you have a website?

If not, you need one. Your website is you, your business, your life-blood and your ‘copywriting DNA’ all rolled into one! Without a website, you’re dead meat. As a copywriter, your first step is to write your own website. Make it as comprehensive as possible. Become a website copywriter!

And if you’re a relative newcomer, read round the subject, look at other copywriters’ websites and create the best website content you can that will reflect well on you as a professional freelance copywriter ready to take on the world. There are endless articles on the Internet about website content. That’s for later. To begin with, you must look at the work you’ve done as a copywriter and then attempt to classify it. This is a personal matter that will be made public very soon – so make sure that what you say is credible.

Make sure you get a good designer – and establish some kind of visual concept at the outset that looks professional without getting in the way of your copywriting message.
Your website needs to be ‘visible’ to search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. That means your website content must have substance. The pages should be long enough to contain the keywords of your business in such quantity and density that the search engine ‘robots’ will salivate. You’ve also got to look at the so-called ‘meta tags’ that will apply to each of the pages on your website. As well as keywords, you’ll need a title for every page and a pithy description, both of which should contain the keywords that are relevant to that page.

Make no mistake, it will be a big day when you launch your freelance copywriting website!

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1. Internet Options for SOHO
2. Making Money with Articles: Freelance Writers
3. Using Forums and Blogs for Your SOHO Business

There is no supervision. SOHO owners don’t have bosses telling them what to do or looking over their shoulder. This is a shock for most SOHO owners because when they start their business, they are expecting a partner to come along and boost their mentality.
This calls for having the discipline to work by yourself and being accountable to yourself.

Many times, you will feel like you’re on an island with no one to turn or talk to. The work days can be long and as you go past the bathroom, you notice that the bed you just got out of you is beckoning you back into it but you’ve got eight assessments that you have to do! Now that’s tempting!

Then there is the issue of pets. Most pets, such as dogs, love major attention and sometimes you have to stop and provide your dog or cat with attention which could cut into your work period. You also have other “unpleasant” activities, such as the urge to see Judge Judy, Judge Mathis or a rerun of the Avengers on the A&E channel.

But you must put all of this aside and think about the clients needs first. I think it’s a good idea to designate an extra bedroom or room as the official office. At 5:00pm, lock that office and continue on with your life. Make yourself have great work hours (9:00am – 5:00PM). After work, you can do whatever you want to do until it’s time to go to bed.

You have to be very disciplined when you work from home. It’s tougher to work from home than it is an office because you’re mostly by yourself but look at your office as a major player in the economy. It’s a place that people can come to find solutions and answers in the realm of small business.

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1. Putting a Work Area in Your Home.
2. Creating a Home Office
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The first email client is Microsoft Outlook Express and the name says it all. It’s a quick way for you to get in and check your email without all of the extras.

Microsoft Outlook Express supports POP server technology for businesses that have their own web server. There is an accounts function that asks you everything about your POP server and all you have to do is input the information that you’re ISP gives you concerning your POP server account.

MS Outlook Express has an address book function to load or import addresses to. You can also export addresses to other formats also and it also has a format to convert addresses to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

All standalone email clients have newsgroups functions and MS Outlook Express is not different than the others. It’s easy to set up through the Tools>>Accounts menu.

If you have Microsoft Outlook Express, it also integrates with Microsoft Word XP for Mail Merge functions and operates smoothly.

Thunderbird by Mozilla is the next email client and it has a lot of bells and whistles. Actually, Thunderbird starts up faster because it has less programming code. There is a Thunderbird version for Linux users.

Thunderbird is an open client mail system. You can add many components on to the system and program your own modules but let’s stick with the basics. It has all the features that MS Express Outlook does but there are some specialized features, such as, loading your own mail call sounds, robust junk mail controls that you can REALLY customize and message grouping. You can also program JavaScript routines into your mail client.

There are other email clients that are available. Eudora is a very fine program that is similar to MS Outlook Express.

So if you don’t want to go through your suite in MS Outlook, you can always check your email independently using these programs.

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2. A Podcast Client
3. Meet Your Deadlines!

1. GET RID OF THE FEAR! – Nothing to be scared about in joining the web community! Think of it as gathering new friends and new clients!
2. View sites that are the same business as yours! See how they’ve structured their site (what are the most frequent colors, how their home pages, what grabs your attention?)
3. If you’re a non-programmer or web developer, find a web developer and tell them your ideals.
4. Once you found a web developer, ask them to do a “mock up” drawing of your site.

So now, you’re sitting down with the web developer and you have this information of the type of site that you want. The web developer should consult with you on the tone of the site, the look, the “load” time (how long it would take a site to appear after people type in your web address) and content.

WARNING flash! Many SOHO business owners think web developers are also marketers and that it’s their responsibility to come up with marketing slogans and content. Not true and if you find a web developer that has a background in business development, you’ve found a rare individual! Most web developers use the abstract side of their brain and only provide the look and tone of the site. That’s why they are called WEB DEVELOPERS!

It is up to you to create the CONTENT for your company and you might want to look at other sites to see what content they use to get a few ideas. If you get stuck, get a writer or a marketing representative from your local Chamber of Commerce to assist you. If you have your content together before you go to the web developer, it makes their job much easier.

If you and the web developer come to an agreement, then it’s all good. Web-sites can range from $35.00 per page to $300.00 per page and up. The price depends on how elaborate the site is and how many graphics, pictures and original programming is in the project.

So your project has started. What next? You need a URL and a server! Your site has to be placed on the World Wide Web and we are going to see what elements you need to do that!

Related posts:

1. Your Web Presence Is Important – Part 3
2. Your Web Presence Is Important – Part 2
3. Your Web Presence Is Important – Part 4

VOIP technology has been around for over five years and it’s simply a phone system and an internet system both using the same line to communicate with a customer or view a web-site. The technology integrates the passing of voice and data through the same internet line.

When you buy a VOIP system, you will receive a specialized modem to hook to the back of your computer. What this modem does is decode whether you are calling a telephone device or if you are trying to view web pages on the internet. This device is called a VOIP hub.

The hub sends out a signal over the internet that tells the network whether it is a voice or data call transmission and sends the information accordingly.

There are skeptics that say that some transmissions aren’t clear and precise and that there is downtime associated with these systems but it depends on the part of the country that you’re in and fiber optic technology. Many big cities have the fiber optic technology to run clear streams of VOIP so it’s really not a problem. Many phone companies have started to provide VOIP as an alternative to regular phone and internet service bundles. They see the growth and importance of a VOIP set, with lower costs so many people are switching to a more dedicated service.

Vonage is a big player in integrated voice and data systems but you may want to check out their track record before installing these systems for your own SOHO.

VOIP is the wave of the future in which internet, voice and high speed data can be on the same line.

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1. Automating Your Marketing Systems
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3. Developing Customer Data Systems

This part is simple because it plainly states how you are going to operate and what systems are you going to use to enhance your operations. This includes the best hours to operate your SOHO. Since the majority of SOHO’s are small home based businesses, more discipline is needed to separate home from business.

If you had a storefront and you posted a sign that it would open at 9:00am, you would be there at 9:00am. With most SOHO’s, you can roll out of bed, go into the next room and start doing work but you still need the discipline to ignite yourself daily to get your responsibilities and tasks accomplished.

So operational goals should consist of what you will do daily to make your business a success. It includes setting time frames for business maintenance, accounting and administrative paperwork, and important people that you should keep contact with (contracting officials, new and old customers, marketing channels). All this is a part of daily operations that will help make your business a success.

The operational goals can be listed on a sheet of paper when you start your SOHO and as you get into the swing of things, you can start doing those things automatically. You’ll find that your business will start humming and rolling at a smooth pace.

A major problem that most SOHO’s have is managing time. Your operations action plan should have certain time frames established so that there is a balance in completing tasks. For some owners, it’s hard not to work seven days a week because of the urge to get things done.

Theory shows that if you can’t get things done in eight hours, it will be certainly hard to get things done in twelve hours.

Establishing an operations plan will assist you in planning daily activities within your SOHO so that your time is balanced and effective.

Related posts:

1. Setting Up SOHO Operations – Part 2
2. Developing Your SOHO Business
3. It Takes Discipline!

First of all, your web-site has to be optimized and carry certain keywords for it to be ranked anywhere. There is no magic trick to working the search engines because many search engines have their internal rules on how a site should be index and that index happens according to keywords.

Keywords describe a site from a group of words and phrases. The web developer can assist you in finding the correct keywords for your site. The web developer can place those keywords inside of the HTML code for the search engines to pick up and use to get the site a higher ranking.

Search engines and search directories operate differently. www.google.com is a search engine that ranks site activity and has robots that index your site according to established search engine rules. A search directory puts your site in a bulletin board type directory. Yahoo is an example of a search engine directory and it has a business development function that features your site at different pricing levels.

Most business people think that you load the site and then people will automatically come to your site. That’s not true. You need to provide some kind of marketing function so people can know that you exist. If your search engine is not in the top ten, then you’re like the invisible man. Never seen or heard!

The search engine is important to your business. It’s also good to know what’s going on as far as your sites’ development by only listing the top five ranked search engines that will highlight your business!

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1. Works Well With Other Websites : Three Key Ways to Profit from Search Engines
2. The History of Internet Search Engines
3. A Brief History of Search Engine Optimization

There are two programs that are leaders in the small business technology industry that SOHO business owners need to be familiar with. Let’s do a review of QuickBooks and Peachtree Accounting.

QuickBooks is the most common package that SOHO’s use. There are many different configurations for QuickBooks. There are versions for non-profits, versions for small office networks and versions that come with software that integrates into cash registers but we’ll talk about the basic small business version.

QuickBooks has an easy company setup. It provides you a list of company templates to use to set your company up. For example, if you are a consulting company, just pick the consulting company setup in QuickBooks and as quick as you can cook two minute grits, it’s done! No problem!

You can create extra accounts in the general ledger, load customers and vendors into databases within QuickBooks. QuickBooks has automated numbering for invoice and purchase orders so it’s easy to go back into the history files and see what’s going on. The report functions are pre-made and you can basically create custom reports from drop down modules in the reporting function.

Where QuickBooks falls short in the basic small business version, is the inventory feature. The inventory feature is good in the other QuickBooks package that supports small business terminals and inventory control.

Peachtree is the opposite. It’s a little more involved to setup up than QuickBooks but it has a dynamic inventory feature that allows you to create stock numbers and sub-part numbers if you’re a business that operates in any type of stock or manufacturing. It’s good for handling more advanced features of inventory control.

When you pick an accountant or bookkeeper, they will probably ask what type of system that you are using. There are certified QuickBooks and Peachtree Accountants so the choice is yours.

I recommended that SOHO owners take a basic automated accounting class through their local business development office or chamber to get familiar with these packages and then decide, based on their operations, which is the best package to get.

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1. Your SOHO Financial Goals and Objectives
2. Automated Telemarketing and Its Benefits
3. The Story of ASP Web Hosting