Posts Tagged ‘business’
Thursday, October 17th, 2013
Photo credit; David Pacey on Flickr
Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter will be live in Australia as of Nov. 13.
The US-based platform, which has helped raise more than $US800 million for creative projects broke the news recently via its online blog.
“In August we announced that Kickstarter would soon open up to projects based in Australia and New Zealand for the first time. Today we’re happy to announce that the day has finally come!,” the blog read.
The company said Australians could start building their projects now and would be able to launch those projects on Wednesday, November 13.
“We thought the month-long gap would give everyone plenty of time to build and tweak their projects before launching. Beginning November 13, they can launch and share their projects with the world.”
Crowdfunding is a modern alternative to traditional funding avenues such as bank loans. It enables people to raise money through pledges from a large number of people, usually through a web-based campaign.
Until now, Kickstarter has only been open to US, UK and Canadian citizens.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, business, crowdfunding, Kickstarter, November, online
Posted in Australia, business, Crowd funding, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, investment, social networking | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 16th, 2013
The Australia Business Review has posted a short guide to Facebook and Twitter, the two social media behemoths.
Photo credit; Jason A. Howie on Flickr
The guide notes that interaction on Facebook is more personal than on some social sites which is a great tool for engaging audiences.
Facebook allows you to post videos, long updates, run campaigns and events, plus pay for promotion. Advertising on the site is easy because all you need to do is plug in the amount of money you’d like to spend on ad placement per day and Facebook handles the rest.
People that like a business page can send messages with questions, or post on the timeline of the page and even negative comments can be addressed in a way that allows others to see you care about customers.
Using Twitter, on the other hand, is good for a business because thousands of people can share your message in an instant. Interaction is similar to instant messaging, only with a potential audience of thousands or more.
As with Facebook, Twitter can be a place where customer service is showcased, but it must be done within Twitter’s 140 character limit.
Using Twitter and Facebook together is often the best choice for business, the guide says.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, Australia Business Review, business, guide, New Zealand, online, social media
Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, Facebook, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, social media, social networking, Twitter | No Comments »
Monday, October 14th, 2013
Photo credit; Naomi King on Flickr
In a reversal of sorts, two women who hail from Napa Valley in California made the move to Sydney to open an online fashion boutique.
While Silicon Valley might seem like the obvious choice for the women, Tessa Mini and Natalia Nowak, moved to Australia instead and were inspired by what they consider Australian women’s fashion consciousness to create Passionista Boutique, run out of their Sydney apartment.
“We package everything, we write all the slips, it’s our baby,” Mini said.
“At first we couldn’t afford a model,” she recalled, so Mini and Nowak modeled the clothing themselves. “I did the entire website myself,” Mini said, and “we do all digital marketing mainly from Instagram and Facebook.”
“We get a steady flow — about five orders a week,” Mini said. Their goal is to grow the business, selling closer to 20 items a week, she said.
Passionista sells a range of clothing including jackets, dresses, tops and accessories. Prices range from $25 to $65 in U.S. dollars. The business ships internationally.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, business, fashion, Instagram, Napa Valley, Natalia Nowak, New South Wales, online, Passionista Boutique, Sydney, Tessa Mini
Posted in Australia, business, Facebook, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, social media, social networking, Success story | No Comments »
Friday, October 11th, 2013
Photo credit; Ben Tesch on Flickr
Online retailers in Australia are more likely to hire staff than traditional bricks and mortar store owners, a Roy Morgan survey shows.
The survey reveals that 16% of online businesses are expecting to increase their staff in the next year compared to just 9% of physical store-based owners.
“With just over half of the Australian population now purchasing online it is not surprising that online retailers are much more likely than bricks and mortar retailers to be planning to increase employee numbers over the next 12 months,” Roy Morgan’s Norman Morris said.
Market researcher Roy Morgan surveyed more than 6,900 Australian businesses in the six months to the end of July for the survey.
Online sales make up 10 per cent of Australian consumer sales, but that figure is growing.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, business, employment, hiring, jobs, online, Roy Morgan, survey
Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 9th, 2013
Swiss ticket reselling marketplace Viagogo has officially launched in Australia after running a nine month beta program in the country.
Photo credit; Bev Sykes on Flickr
Originally launched in Switzerland in 2006, the firm specialises in the resale and distribution of tickets for events. It aims to serve as a fair and secure marketplace solely for tickets, stealing traction away from more general e-commerce sites like eBay and Gumtree.
Founder and CEO of Viagogo, Eric Baker said the company had always aimed to launch in Australia and it even registered a Facebook page called ‘Viagogo Australia’ back in December 2010.
“We want to ultimately be global, we want to be everywhere. If and when people colonise the moon, we want to be on the moon,” Mr Baker told Technology Spectator.
“If there were an opportunity for us to register a Facebook lunar page now, we should probably be looking into that,” he said.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, business, online, Switzerland, Viagogo
Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, Expansion to Australia, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, selling online | No Comments »
Monday, October 7th, 2013
The Australia Business Review has revealed the top three hurdles for small businesses in Australia to overcome to be successful.
Photo credit; Tristan Honscheid on Flickr
1. In top spot is the challenge of cash flow and getting the necessary cash injection to start a business. Banks are less willing to invest in small businesses nowadays so it’s important to manage resources responsibly.
2. Navigating the Australia Tax Office (ATO) is the second most common hurdle for small businesses. Discrepancies that result from honest mistakes, and failure to comply with the many tax regulations can all lead to small businesses falling foul of the ATO.
Under current Fringe Benefits Tax laws, a company can find the ATO looking at it disapprovingly if it spends too much on an employee social gathering, while different types of tax have different tax years, leading to a lot of paperwork and confusion.
Thorough and meticulous bookkeeping and some time spent reading and grasping all the regulations are necessary navigate the ATO.
3. And, lastly, the Carbon Tax can be a pain for new businesses, especially those wanting to do their own production.
Under the scheme, companies considered as top polluters must pay a fee per tonne of carbon released into the atmosphere.
In addition to businesses that have a production arm, it also affects small businesses in terms of the rising cost of the supplies they need.
The carbon tax will be scrapped eventually, but it will be replaced by an emissions trading scheme. New start-ups will need to keep an eye on that, and allow for its effects upon their running costs.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: ATO, Australia, Australia Tax Office, business, Carbon Tax, cash flow, tax, taxes
Posted in Australia, business, Federal Government, GST | No Comments »
Friday, October 4th, 2013
Photo credit; Newtown grafitti on Flickr
Last month, WooCommerce announced that it had officially integrated the platform with Zapier, a service that makes automated updates for you.
The WooCommerce Zapier extension includes triggers that can be set up to send new (paid) orders to Zapier or when an order changes status. From there, you have many possibilities for automation.
The combination of a trigger and an action, on Zapier, is referred to as a “Zap”. Each time a zap is triggered, this is referred to as a “Task”.
Here is an example of some of the things you can do with Zapier in WooCommerce:
- Create a new Xero invoice for new WooCommerce orders.
- Create a new Contact in Xero when WooCommerce orders are paid for.
- Create a new Freshbooks Client from a new WooCommerce Order.
- Add a new row to a Google Docs spreadsheet when a WooCommerce New Order is received and paid for.
- Send a notification email via your Gmail service when a WooCommerce New Order is received.
- Send an email notification when a WooCommerce order changes status. Combine this with a custom filter if you want to limit the email to a specific status, for example, when an order status changes to refunded
- Add a Highrise Comment when a WooCommerce Order changes status
- Adds your paying WooCommerce customers to your MailChimp mailing list
- WooCommerce New Order to Campaign Monitor List
- Append a new line to a CSV file in a Drobpox folder when WooCommerce New Orders are received.
- Send your customer an SMS notification whenever their order’s status changes.
- Send your customer an SMS notification when their order has been received and paid for.
- Create a ZenDesk ticket when a WooCommerce order changes status. Use this Zap with a custom filter to customise it for a specific status – for example, when an order changes status to refunded.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, automation, business, integration, online, Zap, Zapier
Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, investment, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology, Woo extensions, Woo Plugins, WooCommerce, WooCommerce Extensions | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013
Upscale Australian department store Myer is predicting that it will turn a profit from online sales for the first time in 2014, as it simultaneously revealed that its annual net profit fell by 9%.
Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes blamed generous penalty rates and wage costs under Labor’s Fair Work Act for a $10-$11 million negative impact on its $127.2 million profit.
He said he would consult the new coalition government about changing the act.
Photo credit; Matt Trostle on Flickr
“We’re hoping that in dialogue with the government we’re given the opportunity to express that we think stopping increases coming in is important,” he told reporters.
Brookes also cited the ability of overseas online retailers to escape 10 per cent GST on products was also an unfair “free kick” damaging local retailers who were Australia’s biggest private employers.
“We’re certainly hoping that Mr Abbott and his team have a big set of ears to what very much needs to change,” he said.
After growing profit in the first half, Myer’s costs blew out in the second half with the cost of doing business increasing 3.1 per cent to $1.01 billion of the year to July 27.
Those costs are expected to increase another 4-5% this fiscal year, with money pumped into online initiatives, new stores and refurbishments.
However, Brookes conceded that is likely to mean profit falls again in the current first half.
But online sales revenue should hit $50 million this year, making the business profitable, Mr Brookes said, before profit grows again in 2014/15 as the benefits of the current spending emerge.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, Bernie Brookes, business, Fair Work Act, Myer, online
Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, Federal Government, GST, internet usage, investment, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology | No Comments »
Monday, September 30th, 2013
Brisbane businessman Michael French turned the raging floods in that city in 2011 into a successful online business by filling a niche that so many people don’t know they need until it’s too late.
Photo credit; johndal on Flickr
While he watched flood waters near his home, French worried about the state of his office, which held his digital marketing company only a few kilometres away. That’s when the idea for his Bizeo app hit him.
Essentially a dashboard app, Bizeo monitors all available data from servers to engines on key machinery, to temperature to exchange rates and social media for a business that is experiencing an emergency like a flood.
“Business owners spend a lot of their time running around checking on things, but this does it for them, and gives them a single indicator that everything is alright,” French says. “Bizeo monitors the status and data across your whole enterprise, and watches everything at once.”
As many Brisbane businesses struggled in the aftermath of the floods, French realized he could add even more functionality to the app.
“Our cashflow was struggling as our debtors blew out and our sales pipeline struggled as many Brisbane groups went under,” French says. “Bizeo now plugs into your CRM, accounting and social media systems.”
Bizeo received a $200,000 grant from Commercialisation Australia last year and French used those funds to hire a business development manager, and file for intellectual property protections such as trademarks and patents and is currently working with clients in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Mexico and London.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, Bizeo, Brisbane, business, disaster, floods, London, Melbourne, Mexico, Michael French, natural disaster, online, Sydney
Posted in Australia, business, Facebook, internet usage, online business, smartphone, smartphones, social media, Success story, technology, trademark, Twitter, web-based | No Comments »
Friday, September 27th, 2013
Photo credit; David Beyer on Flickr.
The Sydney-based online job outsourcing website Freelancer.com has received a $US400 million takeover offer from a Japanese company.
Adelaide-born entrepreneur Matt Barrie, who owns 50% of the company, is currently mulling over the takeover offer.
The business has gone through massive growth since Barrie bought it as Getafreelancer.com in September 2007, when it had already signed up about 500,000 freelancers and fulfilled contracts worth about $US23 million.
Barrie said he had fielded several offers for minority investment by private equity and venture capital funds over the past four years.
“You name it and there’s a fund out there that has pitched to us,” he said.
He has also fielded offers “in varying levels of completeness” to sell the entire company, but has so far declined.
The company, with offices in Manila, London, Buenos Aires and Jakarta, says it has 8.8 million registered users and has facilitated $US1.2 billion worth of projects.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: Adelaide, Australia, business, Freelancer.com, jobs, online, outsourcing, Sydney
Posted in Australia, business, internet usage, online business | 1 Comment »
