If you are looking for a business to start and own one to five acres of land, you may not have to look any farther than your own backyard. Small farming operations that specialize in just a few products can supplement, or even replace, your regular income if you choose the right products to offer. Here are three ideas you can use to start a small farming operation of your own.
1. Aqua Farming – Aqua farming is the practice of raising fish, shrimp, or other aquatic creatures. Most operations also process what they produce and package it for sale. Although raising seafood can be a very rewarding experience, it can take a considerable investment in time and money to start and operate. As one might expect, there are local, state, and government regulation that needs to be adhered to as well. And, since this will be a new type of farming for most, one has to take into account the training and education that needs to take place in order to learn the business well enough to prosper.
2. Garlic and Herbs – Another type of non-traditional farming is to specialize in growing garlic and herbs. To give you the absolute best chance of success, you will want to plant a variety of different herbs. You do this because some varieties will just not flourish in your soil or climate. This is the same for garlic as well. Keep in mind that if you are considering growing these types of crops, you will want to grow them organically if you want any chance of selling them beyond your local area.
3. Specialty Vegetables – The third type of farming listed here is the growing of specialty vegetables. It should be no surprise to anyone this country has many immigrants who yearn for the foods they knew and loved in their home country but are almost impossible to find here in the U.S. Depending on the area of the country you live in, you might be able to get a few crops of green leafy vegetables and a couple crops of onions, beans, and the like during a single growing season. Offer what you produce to Asian, Middle Eastern, and other small specialty markets as well as the larger American markets.
For the many people who own a few acres and have wondered how they could turn some of that land into an extra income, here is the way. By concentrating on small, well chosen crops, their land can yield a rich harvest that can include various aquatic creatures, garlic and herbs, or vegetables to serve the many specialty markets locally or around the United States.
Aldar Nagy is the author of The Business Startup Resource, which offers new business profiles, ideas, advice, and other resources to help you when you are starting your own business. The Business Startup Resource can be found at: http://www.businessstartupresource.com Check back often, new business profiles are being added all the time.
Intended Audience: Small Business Owners/webmasters and anyone new to the world of web design and search engine optimization (SEO) particularly those working with small businesses, organizations and sole traders.
When launching a new website there are a number of key issues to address in order to get your new website off to a good start and get it indexed by the search engines particularly Google.
Create a Sitemap
A sitemap file is used to inform the search engines about the content of your website in terms of the number of web pages, their names, and the priority of each page and the frequency of change. There are a number of online sitemap generators that you can use to create a sitemap though always check before submitting your sitemap to Google that it is complete and contains all the web pages that you want indexed.
Create a robots.txt
A robots.txt informs search engines about which content you do not want indexed by the search engines. For example most websites do not want their images or documents directories indexed by Google and a robots.txt file can be used to prevent their indexing.
Install a Google Map on your website
Most small business will have a requirement for an interactive location map on their website for one or more of their locations. Websites that use the Google Maps Application Programming Interface (API) tend to be indexed more quickly than websites that do not use this facility.
Note: All of the above items should be completed prior to your website going live.
Add Your Website URL to Google
As soon as your website is live then you should submit your website URL to Google to let them know the website is ready for crawling and indexing. You should also add your website URL to Bing and Yahoo at this time. Instructions to add your website URL to the above search engines can be easily found on each search engine.
Utilise Website Monitoring Tools
Once your website goes live it is very important to monitor its progress closely during the early weeks to ensure it gets indexed and there are no content issues. Tools such as Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer are useful in this regard and will allow you to ascertain which web pages have been indexed, display backlinks, uncover content errors etc.
Obtain Relevant Links
Good quality relevant links are also important.
More information about this topic can be found at SEO for Small Businesses.