In the UK, the new financial year begins on Sunday, April 6. What sort of year can we expect in these troubled times?

Businesses on the brink

On some of our money sites we’ve begun writing about reliable stores of value for investors looking for a safe haven for their cash. The Money Log plumps for traditional timepieces. How to clock up a profit on clocks.

Marshall Sponder, who authors our Art NYC site, has been writing about the businesses shutting up shop in New York.

Over at Syntagma, John Evans has been considering the fate of our own business, Syntagma Media. We seem to be very well placed, but who knows how bad it will get before it gets better?

There’s no doubt we’re in for hard times in the upcoming financial year. How well small business copes will depend on how well prepared it is and how free of debt and obligations to cash-strapped institutions.

We wish all our readers a very happy new financial year.

When searching for something to build a business around, don’t forget your early training.

Maybe you trained in a trade or service before abandoning it for something else. Either you were bored by your employment or you were offered an appealing way out.

However, when it comes to starting your own business you need to be master of your craft. What seems exciting in the mind’s eye, may not be at all feasible when you and you alone have to make it work and earn revenues.

Here’s a good example of that. Over at Syntagma, there’s a piece by John Evans on how Google’s attempts to knock competitor’s advertising off many websites, set his mind pointing back to early training.

I’ve been writing about my interest in the economics of the retail sector for a year without very much happening. Now the long-gestated project is beginning to come to life thanks to our contacts with a number of specialist retail analysts …

The idea goes back to my initial training in information science at the Central Office of Information in London.

Read Syntagma moves into specialist information products here.

A New Series on Business Startups — Part 10

In the third part of a long interview John Evans, founder of Syntagma Media, gave to retail analyst Gerry Reynolds, he discusses online advertising in some detail.

If you’re involved with advertising on the internet, whether as a buyer or seller of space, this will give you plenty of insight into how it works and which systems to use for specific purposes.

Here’s a taster :

Gerry : I’d like now to look in more detail at the essence of the business, its income, i.e. advertising. What are the main parameters of online advertising?

John : Online advertising is relatively new, so it still has more than a shade of the Wild West about it. It’s improving all the time, though, and growing very fast …

Read the whole article.

A New Series on Business Startups — Part 9

Many people dream of quitting their day job and starting their own business on the internet. It seems simple enough, doesn’t it : working from home, low costs and boss of your own time?

But what about the technical side, the long lead-in to a decent income, and the flakiness of many internet projects?

John Evans, boss of Syntagma Media, has given an interview about the trials of creating an online content business to Gerry Reynolds, business consultant and retail analyst.

Here’s a preview :

Gerry : What are the economics of an online income stream? […]

John : If you set no upper limits, you’re really at the mercy of events. It’s no good having a $10m business if your costs are $11m. Mr Micawber defined that problem 150 years ago.

The trick is to set an upper boundary that gives you the best split between receipts and obligations, building in the vagaries of the tax system, of course, and depending on the amount of effort you can comfortably provide. Everyone will reach a different conclusion, but it has to be within your comfort zone. You are, after all, in this for the long haul.

Gerry : So you’ll not be selling the business?

John : I’ve personalized the business so much, it’s hard to see who would buy it now. But the idea of creating an empty shell of a company, with no branding, so that anyone can buy it, just isn’t how I do things. I’ve always preferred chocolates to boxes.

Read both posts here : #