I have been talking with a friend who is a Mortgage Brokers in the lower mainland about finding a niche now for the past 6 months. Finding a niche is not always the easiest thing in a highly regulated and competitive industry. Yesterday when speaking with her I asked why commercial mortgage brokers are not as abundant as just home mortgage brokers. The answer she provided was that it was HARD.

Since reading The Dip by Seth Godin I advised her to start looking in to doing commercial mortgages instead. If she were to spend a bit of time researching that industry and build a solid business plan she can enter in to a market that has very few brokers in it and possible grow her business by 500% or more.

The moral to this post is that if your in an industry where something is hard that usually means that there is fewer people doing it and a bigger pay off if you are able to do it correctly. Finding out how to do it correctly usually means doing research.

Does your industry have a portion of it that is hard that you could niche in?

Do you have a business and want an idea on how you can niche it? Post your business’ name and what type of business it is and I will feature your business in a follow up.

Although we are most definitely in a digital age, some of the best networking you can do still takes place in the real world. Making a strong first impression is absolutely critical when you meet someone and this involves dressing appropriately, having a firm handshake, and exchanging a high quality business card.

One of the most powerful tools in your networking toolbox is your business card, so it is of utmost importance that you invest a fair bit of attention to it. This is comprised of two main components. First, you should hire a professional business card designer to create a business card design that fits what your company does. It needs to speak to your company philosophy and represent you in the best way. If you run a “creative” business, you can have a more exciting design, whereas if you run a more “conservative” business, it may be best to not show off too much flair. Whatever the case, a consultation and a design from a professional is one of the best things you can do. The result will surely be better than what you can create yourself.

Second, be sure to get your business cards printed from a high-quality and respectable printer. You should also use a good card stock. Think about when you exchange business cards with someone. If their card is thin and flimsy, it reflects poorly on what they can do for it and it also seems to show that they are “cheap” and they don’t pay attention to the details. By contrast, if you have a full color card on a nice thick card stock, it exudes a certain level of professionalism, especially if you’ve got a great design to go with it.

Speaking for myself, I had a professional designer create the look of my two-sided, full color business card and then I had it printed at WR Design & Print in White Rock. I couldn’t be more pleased with the result and I actually received several compliments from people who received one of my cards. A good first impression — as evidenced by your business card — can go a long way.

On a side note, you can see one side of my design in this post. That’s the back and it promotes my blog. The front side is for my freelance writing business and it features a similar look and feel. Thanks to Judy Yeung for the design.

Sorry for the late notice on this event but just got the details today. There is a small business expo with 70 tables in Murrayville (Langley) tonight. This is a great way to network with other small business owners. If your in the area tonight drop-in for a visit, I know I will be making an appearance.

When is the event happening?
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 at 6:00 to 9:00 PM

Where is it happening?
Murrayville Hall 21667 48 Ave Langley

Registration
You do not need to register and admission is free.

When it comes to finding out how much your blog is worth, there are several metrics that you can consider. For better or for worse, most people look at things like Google PageRank, Alexa rankings, Technorati authority, and so forth. One metric that really shows how valuable and popular your blog happens to be, however, is the number of people who are subscribed to your RSS feed.

For this reason, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to subscribe to your feed, even if the feed itself isn’t exactly monetized. This way, people are always kept up to date on the latest and greatest your blog has to offer, and it also ensures that they keep your blog on their mind. Contrast this to a simple bookmark that can easily be lost in the mix and never seen again.

By and large, people subscribe to feeds using some sort of aggregator — Bloglines and Google Reader are among the most popular — but there are countless users who do not use such services. In order to capture this more mainstream audience, you should offer subscription via email. After all, everyone on the Internet may not use Google Reader, but they most definitely have an email address. On my own blog, I have recently swapped out the email subscription link in the sidebar to an actual subscription form. The results have not been immediate, but at least I know that it’s there.

The next step would be to promote email subscription. Hint: a contest is a brewing at Beyond the Rhetoric. I’ll let you all know how well it performs.

Last week we asked how much would you pay for a Domain Trademark and only 42% of the people that answered say that $495 was reasonable. We will be adding this service to our bluefurdomains.com site shortly (we will blog about it when it is done).

This weeks question is…

By and large, people work for a single company and get a paycheque every couple of weeks in the local currency. If you’re a Canadian citizen doing the usual 9-to-5 thing in a Canadian office, there’s a good chance that you get paid in Canadian dollars. This makes income tax season a little easier, because you don’t have to worry about any sort of currency exchange. By contrast, if you’re a freelance writer or web designer, for example, there’s a good chance that you’ll have at least a couple of customers who will pay you in funds other than the Canadian dollar. American clients are very common.

The same can be said about anyone with a monetized blog. When you sign up for networks like Adsense, ReviewMe, and Kontera, they typically send their payments out in American dollars, either via cheque or to your Paypal account. What are you supposed to do with this income? Obviously, it needs to reported, but you can’t simply plunk these numbers into your income tax forms on a 1-to-1 basis. The Canadian dollar and the American dollar are close to par, but what if you receive Euros, British Pounds, or Hong Kong Dollars? What then?

Thankfully, the Bank of Canada releases information every year on the average exchange rate over the course of the year and it’s usually pretty safe to stick with this average rate, assuming that you have been receiving payment throughout the year. Historical information based on monthly and annual average rates can be found on this page. For the 2007 tax year, I recommend that you go with the 2007 average exchange rates (PDF format).

Looking at that form, the Canadian-US exchange for 2007 averaged at 1.07478127, or about 7.4%. This is the same number that major financial institutions use when they issue T5 forms (if any of your investments were in a currency other than the Canadian dollar). So, if you earned US$1000 on your blog, you should report C$1074.78 on your income tax.