Additional Articles for August 2004 Issue
Web Site of the Month:
www.businessweek.com
While the whole Business Week Online site is interesting,
our readers will probably find that the small business section (www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/index.html)
is the most relevant to them. The site offers a number of free newsletters
to visitors who register. For those with large mailboxes or programs
like Eudora such newsletters can be extremely tempting. We subscribe
to a number of them and manage to read about half.
Obviously, if you’re swamped by work with little time to read material
which isn’t absolutely necessary to your enterprise, this free material
will be of little or no use. So far we’ve written about Web sites which
generally contain specific answers to specific questions. This site and others
like it are probably more for browsing, though you’ll often find material
you didn’t know was out there or didn’t know where to find.
The drop down menus at the home page also include: Business
Week magazine’s
home page, Top News, Investing, Global News, Technology, B-Schools, and Careers.
On this page, you will also find a number of special reports. This week’s
offerings are primarily about technology, but for investors, the site offers
a rundown of 50 stocks culled from the S&P 500.
If you should decide to register for any of the newsletters (www.businessweek.com/register.htm),
you’ll receive an email which gives you a variety of links to potentially
useful stories. The Small Biz newsletter for August 3 contained the following
come-ons: “Winners Make Their Own Good Luck – To
reap the gains and windfalls of a successful business, entrepreneurs must look
to a set of attitudes they will find only within themselves; Techies:
A User’s Guide – Following
a few simple steps can help end your tech-support nightmares. Building
a Business on a House of Cards – Credit card debt has helped many startups, like mine,
through hard times. The trick is never to lose sight of the fact that it’s
real money you are spending; When Heart Meets Hustle, Stand
Back! – If
you have the drive to sell and the desire to succeed, few things in this world
can stand in the way of success, and The Art and Science
of Startup Politics – When
VCs demand board seats, entrepreneurs start to fret about losing control. They
shouldn’t. Selected with care, outsiders can be a boon.
The newsletter approach saves you the bother of remembering to go to the site
and seeing what they’ve posted. If you haven’t time or aren’t
interested in the current offerings, delete it and move on.
The site also offers a Small Business Forum which the site touts “Join
the discussion. Share your thoughts on all things related to life at a small
business. Register for BusinessWeek Online forums here: http://forums.businessweek.com/bw-smallbiz/start.”
Many internet users have a horror of giving out their addresses for fear of
spam invasions and virus attacks and that they are going to get cookied. Reputable
sites like businessweek.com are less likely to involve you in such hassles
(except for the cookies). There’s always going to be some sort of trade-off
in terms of giving when you get. The risk with a site like this one is minimal
and the rewards may be worthwhile.
Many enterprises like Business Week host sites and offer services similar to
this one. If you have a favorite site that you think may be useful to Midcoast
Review readers, please send it along to us addressed to <editor@midcoastreview.com>.