Task 1 - Benefits of starting your own business

Extension task 1 evaluation

I will write about what are the benefits to start your own business. The business can be online or branch business, there are different type of businesses like being a Privat or Public Limited Companies/Sole Trader/NGO/Franchasi, but I will write just for a normal business without complications.

• You are your own boss
  
  - Your decisions
  - Challenge
  - You do not have to work with someone else if you want
  - You control your working life
  - Flexibility - you decide when to work (hours/days)
  - To be boss means to be powerful than normal person
  - You control everything in the workplace
  - You can do what you are interested in
  - You can do what job you have dreamed before
  - You choose where do locate your business
  - It might change the world, as Levi Roots, Bill Gates, Karen Millen and Lord Alan Sugar.

• Money (Power)
  
  - Can be very profitable, if your business success will make profit more than a normal wages.
  - If your business is not about money, then you can be NGO boss and help to people in need. It might be with clothes/water/education/health or etc. You have the posibility to make the world better place
  - If you raise enough money, you can develop your business or create another business as well

• You can have second career
  
  - Depends on your business, you can set up your business until you are working somewhere else, by that way you will have 2 careers and 2 job incomes
  - If you are hard worker you can work in your business in day/night time and other job in the opposite shift

 

Task 2 - Benefitsand Risks of online business

Project Extension Task 2


I will write about the possible benefits to the business and customer in developing an online business. I will list some the ideas down.

There are different benefits for an online business for the owner and clients, they are:

• Saving money (less expenses)
  
  - You do not have to pay same amount of money if you have just warehouse (gas, electricity, water, council tax)
  - The start up costs will be low, because will need only a warehouse to keep the goods and will need to buy products
  - You do not need to rent/buy a premises to make it a shop
  - No decoration needed
  - Need fewer staff, even they can work at home front of the PC (depends on how busy is the business)
  
  - The producs online are cheaper than the producs in the shops (same product).
  - Can find offers/discounts
• Time saving
  
  - All you have to do a create a web site, that will take few hours only
  - You have to just send the purchases which will take a minutes
  - Your business will work 24/7
  
  - Flexibility - You can run your business online,even while you are in holiday (same for customers, they can make shopping and they will have the product at the billing address
  
  - The customers can buy the product at any time
  - They do not have to waste their time on the way to go to the shop
  - Just order and will come to your house without wasting time
• More options for shopping
  
  - You can offer to the customers all colou/size of the products
  - You can see what products people prefer
  - Different type of deliveries (1st class/2nd class/Economic way)
  - You can compare the items easily
  - Different methods to pay (Debit card/Credit card/Voucher/PayPal)
  - Better description of the product
  - Buying some old or unused producs cheap
  - Different brands (different choices)
  - Privacy, some people prefer to have some privacy for privat items

There are many benefits of a business to be managed online, even you don't need an office for it. Saves you lots of money, save you time and etc. As aslways something have good and bad points, that type of controlling have risk as well.

There are different risks like:

Legality: One of the biggest risks is that in some places the product you sell might be not illegal to use and that can make you lots of troubles. Shipping to these areas without knowking is legal or not will be one of the biggest mistakes you will do in your life. Some of areas require collection of sales tax on internet sales, that is for legality as well.

Fraud: Another big risk of Internet business is fraud and deception.There are few different way to verify the person who pays by credit card or bank account, you must check the person is it the owner of the bank account.You could send out a product to find you have been given false information, that can be bad and end up of both money and the item.

Startup Costs: While you are designing your website for yourself, many organisations spend lots of money to have a professional website designed by professionals and pay for copywriters to provide them with web copy. You have to pay for domain name and website hosting as well, if your business is not browsed to often or the competition is big or is not in the 1st few pages the chance to visit it is less then the 1st placed ones.

Internet Security: You need to know the potential security risks as well, because if your business needs to collect payment information, customer data your website could be in a risk of targetting by hackers or authors of malicious software.You need to make sure that you online business is safe if you need a security for it, you can protect with secure server and firewall in place

Task 3 - Evaluation

Task 3a

Personal S.W.O.T.

In this extension part of my coursework I will do a personal S.W.O.T. (Strengths/Weakness/Opportunities/Threats) analyse for myself.
 Strengths

• I.T. Skills
• Maths Skills
• Honest
• Good Leadership
• Good organiser
• Well Motivator/motivated
• Rich knowledge of different languages
• Good Punctuality
• Mature
• Good team worker (Prefer alone)
• Serious
• Good sense of humour
• Good communication skills (speaking/listening especially)
• Good negotiator
• Self control
• Responsible
• Experience with cash handling (working with cash money)
• Gentleman at all the time
• Some business knowledge
• Good listener

Weakness

• Need to improve my English
• Impatient
• Lack of work experience
• Not enough good punctuality
• Can be easily distracted/angry (depends on the situation)

Opportunity

• I have chance to improve my English at College, take extra lessons
• I can start to work somewhere to have some more experience
• I can read books and write some more staff to improve my punctuality
• I can develop my skills from my strengths
• Improve the other communication skills

Threats

• I need to practise all of the languages that I know, because without practise the languages can be forgotten.
• My weakens, that I can be easily distracted can develop if I don't control my emotions

Task 3b

Find 2 jobs I could do now

In this extension part of my assignment I need to find two jobs that I will be able to do them now with my skills and abilities. I need to describe what the jobs what me to could do and I will describe what I can do.

 https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/GetJob.aspx?JobID=1777221
http://www.legendfootwear.co.uk/

Warehouse Assistant Job

In this job place they need someone who can lift and carry the stock into the warehouse, that person will need to be able help to the customers to find what do they need. Good communication skills are needed and usual control of stock have to be done to maximise the availability
I have work in few places where has needed a physical skills (Construction area, fast food delivery companies,warehouses). Last all summer (2012) I have worked in a warehouse before I start college again, my employer was satisfied and let me work some holidays there.


The skills that I cover for that job

- I am good organised person
- I have good calculation skills (have qualifications)
- Good communicator with few different languages
- I am flexible person, I always can change my working hours/replace my mates position, when they are missing
______________________________________________________________


https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/GetJob.aspx?JobID=1773780&JobTitle=Coffee+Lounge+assistant&tjt=coffee&where=n17+0ll&rad=20&rad_units=miles&pp=25&sort=rv.dt.di&vw=b&re=134&setype=2&AVSDM=

Coffee lounge assistant.

They need a person who will work one day (Sunday) in a week, the assistant will provide services for the customers by making and selling sandwiches/tea/coffee and etc.

The skills that I cover for that job:

- I have some experiences of making a coffee/tea/sandwiches from my previous school and I have coffee/tea experiences from some jobs.
- My free time is perfect for that job, because I am student in college only 3 days a week and I can do that job in Sunday while I do another job for the rest of my free time.
_________________________________________________


https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/GetJob.aspx?JobID=1785269&JobTitle=Part+Time+Sales+Assistant+(Shopfloor%2fYard%2fCar+Park)&tjt=sale+assistant&where=n17+0ll&rad=20&rad_units=miles&pp=25&sort=rv.dt.di&vw=b&re=134&setype=2&AVSDM=

Part Time Sales Assistant (Shopfloor/Yard/Car Park)

Company: Selco Builder's Warehouse

The employee will need to have excellent customer skills (knowledge/organised/flexibility/communication skills). The job is almost physical because the employer will need to sell heavy items and need to carry items in/out of the warehouse. There no working hours are mentioned to cover. The person who will apply for the job at least needs to have some experience of similar job. They need someone with good memery to remember the order of items in the warehouse and need some math skills to calculate control the amount of the products.

The skills that I cover for that job:

- My maths skills are very well (have qualifications)
- I have experience as warehouse assistant for couple of months
- Good communication skills from job/college
- From experience I know how the manage the things at the warehouse


Task 3c

Career Development Plan

In this part of the coursework I will describe my career plan for the next few years. There will be included my education and my job that I want to do.

Currently I am student in WKC and I do business course and functional skills (Maths level 2 and English Level 1). Firstly I want to finish my education in Westminster Kingsway College (Kings Cross Centre) for Business Enterprise and ICT level 2 with good degree (Merit or Distinction). I would like to apply for next year course in Westminster Kingsway College (Victoria Centre) for Access to Higher Education Diploma Business level 3 and do Functional skills (English level 2).

I have no plans after this course, because I am considering to improve my knowledge about business in University or start my own original business I have planned in these days. I might keep studying in university and make a new target to develop myself in finance area, but I might start my own business that I have shared with my parents and took some ideas from people who have similar business.

If I do my business idea, after one or two years when I am sure that I survived with my small business, I will keep developing my business and open new branches to increase my profit. I would like to start to do some other course related with my education and do some other job while my own business run it self.

I plan to improve my languages that I know (Bulgarian, English, Turkish and retake Russian language courses), after undertood these languages properly I might take course for my dream language (Spanish). I dream is to learn this language, because sound lovely language, I have plenty Spanish talker friends and there are many countries that speak it (I have open branches in these country as well, if my business is successful)

Task 5 - Compare the web sites

Project Extension Task 5 

http://marks-spring-project.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/project-extension-task-5.html

I will have to use 3 different business web sites. I have choose the websites from my Task 1 and I will compare these 3 sites by (images, videos, fonts and etc.)

The web sites are:

http://www.postoffice.co.uk/

http://www.superdrug.com/

http://www.redcross.org.uk/

Post Office's Web Site: The website of that business have simple few images, which are not with big size and open easily when you are in the site. There are no videos to complicate the site, they have used the home page cleverly to advertise different type of services. The font and the size are quite good, they are not coloured to make it to look beautiful, but they made it to look simple for the users. The navigation of the web site is with drop down boxes The purpose of the site is to provide services and help to make sales by Internet. 

Superdrug's Web Site: This web site also is simple to use, but not like the post office's one, because there are plenty of advertises. The images are with small size and it helps to the website to load fast, even without videos works more fast as that one is. The font is simple as the post office's is and the navigation of that site is also with drop down boxes. The purpose of that site is to make online sales for the clients.

British Red Cross's Web Site: This web have different type of images with different sizes to advert the happens, needs and etc. in the world. Normally this website have few videos to help the people to understand their purpose/target. One more time the font is easy to read. The colours are one of the most used colours in the web sites.


Superdrug's web site is more colourful than the other 2 websites, there have plenty of adverts but the others even do not have half of it. I think that the British Red Cross's web site is the most complicated one because there have different services like providing health and safety services, applying services, donations and etc. Post office's web site mainly is for providing information to the community, about what kind of services they do. They also have a sepparete site for shopping, for a different goods that superdrug doesn't offers.