I use Google mail (gmail) as my primary mail client, as well as for my personal emails. While I see many advantages to using gmail, its certainly not a slam dunk as a choice.

The Good: Its free (but most other email clients are too), It accessible from anywhere with an internet connection (like on vacation — is that good ??) Since your email is not stored locally on your PC, if your PC fails you still have your email. There is over 6 gigabytes  of email storage which is a lot. It integrates with Google maps so you can get a map to an address directly from an email. There are various clients for smart phones/PDA’s that allow you to check your  email separately from your main email and access your gmail address book (for email addresses only)-I use the Blackberry version. You can pull up to 5 other email accounts into your gmail client so you can consolidate your email

The Bad: Since it’s online, you need an internet connection to read your saved emails.  You don’t have the ability to create folders and sub-folders (It uses labels to organize, but its only one level).  Reading through emails tends to be a bit slower than with a PC based email client.

The Ugly:  Google reads all of your emails and generates all advertising based on  their content. Since the free service is free, Google can change the terms of service at will. Google will update the web client from time to time and you will need to get used to a new client.

Full Disclosure: I receive advertising revenue from Google, Inc, but I am not being paid or encouraged to promote this product.

Google is a trademark of Google, Inc. Blackberry is a trademark of Research In Motion, Inc.

From my house I can access four unsecured wireless (Wi-Fi) networks. If I wanted to, in addition to surfing the Internet on their dime, I could access all of the files on their network and steal any confidential information that they had. (which is a federal crime). If you have a wireless network you need to follow some simple steps to secure it:

1. Get out the directions for your wireless router set the security to WEP128, or WPA (only if all you have is windows computers and not other devices like a Wii, or a Wi-fi ) . You’ll need a 16 digit password. Make sure you write it down you will need it later.

2. If your router has a default password, change it.

3 . Go to each of your computers and setup your secure wireless network with the password.
 

• Setup a Windows XP Secure Wireless Connection http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/setup/wireless.mspx#4
• Setup a Windows Vista Secure Wireless Connection
  http://www.ehow.com/how_2172150_wireless-connection-laptop-windows-vista.html

There are times when you want to send an email to multiple people, but don’t necessarily everyone to see the email addresses of the other recipients. The easiest way to do this is to put all of the recipients names in the blind carbon copy (BCC) section of the email. Everyone will get the email, but nobody will be able to see other addresses.

I started this blog at the beginning of the year with the hopes of helping people start and manage home and small businesses. As I have been researching and posting articles for this blog, I’ve noticed that there is a wealth of information out there about running businesses (my favorite sites are listed under general business in the sidebar). Most of these sites can give you the same information that I can, and some in much more detail. (One of the best is the US Small Business Administration, go to their website and take advantage of their services and information — you paid for it with your taxes.) The information that I was providing was too general not providing much extra value for small business owners. 

After some deep retrospection I have decided to focus this blog on an single area of running a business — Information technology(IT). IT is an area that I have over 20 years experience with.  The new sites goal will be “to help part-time and full-time home business use technology to effectively and efficiently grow and run their businesses”.  The look is going to change a bit, but I hope that information will be  valuable to my readers.

Your customer is the life-blood of your business. The better you know your customer the more you can grow your business. You need to constantly profile your customers so you know how to focus your promotions.

For example, I was talking to a friend of mine who is selling his house and he was lamenting how few people have looked at his house due to the bad housing market. I asked him about the house, This house is a mid priced  ranch (not a starter but not a luxury home either) house in the  Atlanta market. He also told me that the the people who have looked at the house (seriously) tended to be retired or near retirement. We bounced this  information around for a while, and realized that what these folks had in common is they probably already owned a home outright, and didn’t have a lot of pressure to sell that home (or pay two mortgages) before they could  buy a new one. And since the house was a ranch it would seem that this type of house (no stairs) would be a good fit for someone who is retired. So perhaps this house could be marketed to well off people, near retirement who already own a 2 story home, and want somewhere they can retire to. It also illustrates how profiling your ideal customer can give you insight into how to market your products or services.


Below is a partial list of questions to ask when profiling your customers. Always keep an open mind when profiling your customers, you don’t want to write off new markets because you ‘think’ you know your customer; do some real research to confirm or refute your beliefs. Also remember that not every area listed below will be part of your customers profile– look for areas in common.

1. What are your customers demographics ?
   
• Age
• Income Level
• Whey they live
• Marital status
• Etc.
  
2. How did they find out about your product/service?
• Advertising
• Referrals
• Ratings
  
• Location
  
3. If you sell multiple products or services what combinations are most common ?
   
4. How much to your best customers spend ?
   
• The ones that spend the most money
  
5. What is the average amount your customers spend ?
   
• In other words,how much money do most people spend
  
6. Where else do they shop ?
   
7. What do they like most about your product or service ?
• Try a survey to find out the information in questions 1,6-10.
  
8. What caused them to decide to buy your product or service ?
   
• It may not be what they liked most.
  
9. How many customers are repeat customers vs. new customers ?
   
10. How much do they know about your company, its products and its services ?
    

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