Skip to main content

That community feeling!

Welcome back.
This is the first in a series of posts on websites specifically aimed at start ups and small businesses, links to the websites covered will be at the end of the post.

The internet is a mine of information on a whole host of different subjects, resources and advice for small business and start ups are no exception. You can spend hours browsing through hundreds of websites without finding exactly what you are looking for.
One of the aims of this blog is to keep you informed about interesting and useful online resources and websites that are aimed at small businesses and start ups.

One of my favourite online resources is the Enterprise Nation website

Enterprise Nation was founded by Emma Jones, who has started several small businesses of her own and launched the site to build an online resource and community of small businesses that could support each other, and very good it is too.

As a spin off from the Enterprise Nation website, Jones has also founded another website, Bitsy, which describes itself as “the friendliest B2B marketplace on the web” with the idea again centering around an online community of small business owners which also allows them to advertise their goods or services to other members and the business community in general.

Bitsy has only been launched very recently, so is still in its infancy, but for a very affordable £5 per month, you can advertise your business’ goods or services to the online community. Joining Bitsy is free if you just want access to the forums and blog.

I highly recommend both of these sites, they are well laid out, have a good feel to them, the content is good and you could find many worse places to while away a few minutes looking for business advice and inspiration.

Take a look, I’ll be interested in your views.

http://enterprisenation.com/
http://bitsythis.com/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Small Business Advice on a Beermat

Hello again. Today's post is about the co-author of a well known business start up guide called “The Beermat Entrepreneur”. Mike Southon is both an entrepreneur and business mentor and also writes regularly for the Mail on Sunday  and the Financial Times about small businesses and entrepreneurship. The Beermat Entrepreneur is a business self-help book aimed at people who have an idea for a business and need to know how to take it to the next stage and turn the idea into a viable business. Whilst the book is a recommended read for aspiring entrepreneurs, this post seeks to guide you to some useful resources on Mike Southon’s own website. If you so desire (and can afford to!) you can book Mike for a personal appearance from here, but there are a number of other free resources that may be of more interest. There are a number of free guides to download, some linked to the “Beermat” series but others, such as the useful “Sales pipeline simple spreadsheet”, that are g

Read all about it?

Hi there, and welcome back to Write Away, the blog for freelancers, small businesses, start-ups and anyone interested in working for themselves.   This time I wanted to draw your attention to a great business publication that I have come across recently called “BQ” which stands for Business Quarter. The magazine is full of inspiring stories from entrepreneurs who are running successful and growing businesses, and share their experiences, highs and lows, and tips for how they got to where they are today.   The latest edition (pictured above) contains fascinating articles about microbrewery business Brewdog and a great interview with a former contestant on BBC televisions “The Apprentice”.   The magazine has an excellent sister website, the link is shown below, which has some regional content to it as well, and you can sign up to free e:mail newsletters if you so desire. The website also features a host of content that is very sector specific, so if you are operatin

Small Business Answers?

Hi there, and welcome back to Write Away, the blog for small businesses, the self employed and those thinking of working themselves. Our latest post concerns another online resource that could prove to be a valuable resource for any small business owner or budding entrepreneur. The website is called “My Business”, as usual, the link is included below this post. The website is divided into eight useful sections: Finance & Money, People, Technology, Sales & Marketing, Operations, Import & Export, Future and Cash flow, each one having a number of sub sections that contain valuable insights and advice on that aspect of running a business. The Finance & Money section has some great advice on late payments and how to try and avoid this and further advice on taking small claims through the courts if you need to. The latest Sales & Marketing article contains advice on pitching for new business and the “Top 10 Features” listing deals with questions surrounding IR35 and con