http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog Small buisness advice, tips, and guidance. Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:53:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A lot of people ask the same questions when they are trying to learn about affiliate marketing, so I have tried to compile all of the answers here in one place. Q. What Is An Affiliate Program? A. An affiliate program is a system where your website posts a link to ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/affiliate-marketing-faqs-for-beginners/ If you run a small services business, you spend a lot of time thinking about where your next customer will come from. Given the time you invest in building a sales pipeline, you might be surprised to learn that almost everything you have been told about the sales process is ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/small-business-sales-lens/ Which is better, the business plan or the executive summary? Academic institutions and the marketplace appear to be moving in opposite directions on this question. While many business students are required to develop 30- to 50-page business plans, we’ve found that these lengthy documents are used less and less ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/the-business-plan-vs-executive-summary-debate/ In my career, I have probably read over 2000 business plans from entrepreneurs seeking their first round of investment capital. I tend to cringe (as do all venture investors) a little bit when folks ask me for an NDA simply to hear their idea. As a general rule, I believe ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/to-nda-or-not-to-nda-the-relevance-of-non-disclosure-agreements/ Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest growing segments of online commerce. Many people often ask me, what is affiliate marketing exactly? The easiest answer I can give is that it is the process by which online businesses give other websites access to tools and marketing collateral to sell products ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/the-top-10-dos-and-donts-of-affiliate-marketing/ One of the great things about starting a business today is the number of smaller consulting firms that can help you. These outsourced partners can serve as an integral resource for your team at an early stage but there is a catch.You can’t do it all so that’s why you ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/outsourcing-you-have-to-drive-the-bus/ So I am reading the lead Wall Street Journal article this morning about the failed performance of the Sprint/Nextel merger. The author goes into all the ways that Sprint has botched the integration, from diluting the Nextel brand to failing to integrate the two networks. He also talks about how ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/execution-as-a-last-resort/ We swore we’d learn from the meltdown of 2000, but we haven’t. In many ways it’s almost worse this time, because we know how the story ends. Here are my Top 5 reasons for believing we’re in a Web 2.0 bubble.5. Too Much MoneyWhile it is a bit harder to ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/bubble-20/ I have been following the residential housing market closely for many now years and have tried over and over to make the case to friends, colleagues and family members that reduced lending standards were the primary driver behind skyrocketing real estate prices over the past five years; not the economy, ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/its-a-lending-bubble-stupid/ Many small businesses get the majority of their new business though referrals, yet they don't view or manage these referrals as they would a traditional marketing campaign. If you want to learn more about referral marketing and how it can lower your customer acquisition costs, you may want to ... http://www.acceleration-partners.com/blog/referral-marketing-done-right/