Steve Parks

I run a website for readers of my books at www.flyingstartups.com.

It's a free site, and members keep online diaries (Pilot's Logs) of the development of their businesses, and help each other out in the forums.

We've now upgraded the site and re-designed it to make it faster and easier to use - so do take a look at www.flyingstartups.com.

If you improve your writing skills you can improve your sales.

Before any of your prospects become customers they will read your website, your leaflets, your letters, and catalogues. At a basic level they will make judgements about you and your company from the writing - is the spelling correct, is it believable, are you dependable, etc.  read more »

When you launch a new business (or want to refresh an old one), you'll want to develop a brand tha makes you distinctive and attractive to your customers.

The first part of this is working out why your business exists, and why customers will choose you.  read more »

Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide author: John Jantsch asin: 078522100X

Here's a review of a book called 'Duct Tape Marketing' that sounds great.  read more »

It's important to know exactly what your competitors and customers are up to and track developments in your industry. I find Google Alerts fantastic for this.

You simply visit that page, enter some keywords, and you'll then receive a regular email update whenever Google finds anything new on that subject on the web! How useful is that!  read more »

Email has become the primary communications medium for most entrepreneurs these days - but that leads to the problem of Inbox Bloat, and important things get lost or forgotten as a result.

Sound familiar? Well, to swing to the rescue, here's a great collection of tips on keeping control of your email.  read more »

Here's a great tool for startups. If you're not quite ready to be able to shell out for Microsoft Office, then Zoho.com might be just what you're looking for.  read more »