Tag Archives: whether-or-not

Do You Need Insurance for Your Side Hustle?

The post Do You Need Insurance for Your Side Hustle? appeared first on HostGator Blog . Congratulations! You finally decided to start your side hustle.  You’ve done your research to determine which side hustle is best for you. You’ve set your side hustle goals. You may have even already started building a website for your side hustle . This is fabulous news, and, hopefully, things have been smooth sailing so far.  Now it’s time to delve a little deeper and make sure your business has covered its backside.  In other words, it’s time to learn whether or not you need insurance for your side hustle. To help bring you up to speed, here are the side gig insurance essentials. Why Do You Need Insurance for Your Side Hustle? Owning your own business is beneficial for several reasons. You get to set your own schedule, work remotely, go on vacation when you want, be your own boss, and charge your customers what you want. But, there are some downfalls to owning your own business—namely, you don’t have a group insurance policy subsidized by your employer. Similarly, your personal home and auto insurance don’t cover work-related claims. This means if you run a business that is susceptible to a lawsuit, property loss, and/or business interruption, you need insurance. Seeking out insurance for your side gig will protect you from financial ruin in the event of an incident, accident, or lawsuit. How Do You Know If You Need Insurance for Your Side Hustle? Not every side business is the same, so not every business owner will need the same type of insurance. In fact, some business owners won’t need insurance at all. Whether or not you need insurance (and how much insurance you need) is based upon your risk factor. If your side hustle has a high risk factor, you need insurance. If your side gig has low or no risk involved, then you only need a small policy or may not even need insurance. Here are some things to consider to determine risk: Do you run a side gig where someone could get hurt (bitten by a dog, victim of a car accident, experience an allergic reaction to one of your products)? Do customers come to your place of business? Do you go to customers’ homes? Do you work with the elderly, children or animals? Do you handle any sensitive information or process credit cards? Do you use a car to travel to and from business engagements? Do you use valuable equipment that could get destroyed in an accident? If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then you have a higher risk profile. Take the time to consult with an independent insurance agent about insurance options.  If you answered no to all of these questions, then your risk profile is lower. This doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from insurance. It could mean you only need a small policy. What Kind of Side Gig Insurance Do I Need? Each side gig is different which means the types of policies different business owners need will vary greatly. Here is a quick review of the different types of policies you may need. After reviewing each policy, you’ll have a better understanding of whether or not your business needs the respective type of insurance. Business Owner’s Policy A business owner’s policy is a packaged policy that covers all of the basics. This includes things like vehicle, property, crime insurance, liability, and more. An insurance agent will help you create a policy that is specific to you and your business. This is the most common type of business policy and a good option for every business owner to research. If you are at higher risk for certain aspects of this bundled policy, you can get a separate and more comprehensive policy. These policies include: Professional Liability Insurance – This policy covers claims due to negligence or accidents such as bodily injury or property damage to a third-party.  Crime Insurance – If you need property protection from fraud and theft, this is the insurance for you. Property Insurance – Property insurance protects your own business from natural disasters, fire, storms, theft, etc. Vehicle Insurance –  If you use a car strictly for business, you need a separate business policy. These types of policies will protect your business and your personal assets in the event of damage or a lawsuit. Personal and Advertising Injury No one likes to be accused of libel, privacy invasion, copyright infringement, slander, etc. Unfortunately, sometimes it happens. If you are sued for any of these offences, a personal and advertising injury policy will cover you. Product Liability Insurance Do you make or sell a product? If so, you should look into a product liability insurance policy. This protects you in the event of a lawsuit resulting from a customer getting injured by your product. Since every business is so different, you can work with your insurance agent to customize your policy to your business. Workers’ Compensation Do you employ at least one other individual? If so, you need a worker’s compensation policy. This type of insurance protects you from lawsuits that result from injuries on the job. Keep in mind most states require workers’ compensation for any W2 employees. Cyber Liability Insurance If you store any sensitive, personal or financial information on your computer, then you need a cyber liability insurance policy. This will help you cover the costs related to any potential breach in security . Accounts Receivable One of the biggest risks when starting a side gig is the risk of clients not paying you. If you send invoices to clients, look into an accounts receivable policy. This will cover you financially when clients don’t pay up. The policies mentioned above are among the most popular types of insurance side hustlers should research. Insuring Your Side Hustle for Success Starting a side hustle is the perfect way to make extra money. If you have already researched your side hustle and settled on your business idea, it’s time for the next two most important steps.  First, make sure to set up your website with our easy to use, drag-and-drop Gator website builder . Then, take the time to protect your business and personal assets by looking into insurance. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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How to Find (and Fix) Underperforming Website Content

The post How to Find (and Fix) Underperforming Website Content appeared first on HostGator Blog . How to Fix Underperforming Website Content You put a lot of work into your website and the content marketing efforts you use to get more out of it. And yet all that work just doesn’t seem to be adding up to the kind of results you’d hoped for. On the one hand, you understand that getting attention online is competitive and content marketing is a long game. But on the other, you don’t want to keep throwing time and money at something that’s not working. At some point, any business doing content marketing has to step back and analyze if your website content is underperforming. This post walks you through how to find your poor-performing content, so you can fix it and start enjoying SEO wins again. How to Identify Underperforming Content Whether or not your content is underperforming has everything to do with your expectations. It’s worth checking that your expectations are realistic and in line with what you really want your content to do before you assign it that “underperforming” label.   First, Clarify Your Goals. Different content items should be developed to achieve different goals. For most businesses, a solid content strategy will include content meant to achieve three main types of goals: Driving traffic and raising awareness of your website or brand. This includes much of your blog posts and other educational or entertaining content you create for your audience. Driving leads and conversions. This includes your landing pages, webinars, and any gated content you create. Promoting your products or services more directly. This includes product pages, video tutorials about your products, and demos. Make sure to match the results you judge to the goals of the content to get an accurate measure of its performance. For the content meant to drive traffic and awareness , you should focus on metrics like number of visitors, search engine ranking, and how long visitors stay on your website after they click through. For content meant to drive action , the most important metric is how many people took the action you’re encouraging, whether that’s signing up for an email list, downloading an ebook, or setting up a sales call. For your promotion-focused content , your goal is getting new customers and sales .   Next, Research Content Marketing Benchmarks. Even once you’ve clarified your goals and the metrics to track for your content, knowing what counts as success can be tricky. Is 500 views of a blog post good, or should you be aiming for 5,000? Unfortunately, there’s no one right answer to that question. It depends on factors like how long your website has been around, how long you’ve been doing content, and who your audience is. If you’re just starting out and targeting a really niche audience, then expecting huge numbers is unrealistic and may not even be necessary. But even recognizing all the factors that make a difference here, it can be helpful to have some idea of what’s considered “normal.” Organizations like Brafton and Pressboard Media have researched averages for some common website metrics like bounce rates and average reading time. With some digging, you may be able to find similar research that focuses more specifically on your industry or type of business.   What’s average may not be what’s right for you, so don’t let benchmarks be the only measure you use here, but they can be a helpful guide to setting realistic goals for over time.   Finally, Analyze the Relevant Metrics. Now that you know what metrics to watch for each piece of content and some idea of what’s realistic to hope for, start analyzing your content pieces to determine if they’re performing as well as you want them to. This isn’t as simple as looking at a number and labeling a piece a failure. You want to take time to understand what’s going on with each piece of content. Consider individual factors that play a role, like the quality of the headline and the different promotion tactics you used. A lot of different elements go into what makes a piece of content successful or not and you want to analyze what specifically contributed to this one not working.   How to Fix Underperforming Content Identifying your underperforming content is just step one. Now you have to do something about it.   Diagnose the Reasons. The analysis you performed above should be a big help with this, but also step back and look at the larger trends in what works and what doesn’t for your website. If you’ve found that a lot of your content is underperforming, it might be worth doing a full content audit so you can better see the big picture trends. It’s not always easy figuring out why something did or didn’t work and unfortunately, some of this process will involve guesswork. But use the analytics you have and consider doing A/B testing or customer surveys to fill in the gap in your knowledge and get a better handle on what your audience does and doesn’t respond well to.   Make Improvements. Obviously, this is where this was all headed. When you’ve figured out why a piece of content isn’t working, you’ll know whether or not you should scrap it altogether or make strategic changes to turn it into something that your audience is more likely to appreciate. Based on your analysis, it could be as simple as coming up with a better headline, or it could involve a more extensive overhaul of the whole piece. A lot of the time, you’ll find you don’t have to start from scratch to turn an underperforming piece of content into something that does a better job of achieving your goals. You just need to identify that it’s not working and why so you can turn it into a better preforming piece of content. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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How long should it take for a datacenter to replace a known failing PDU?

I’m trying to learn here, with this thread/poll, whether or not my expectations are out of line regarding a recent experience with a known f… | Read the rest of http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1705466&goto=newpost Continue reading

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5 Signs Your Business Needs A Website

The post 5 Signs Your Business Needs A Website appeared first on HostGator Blog . Building a business website costs time and money. If your business has managed all right without one so far, it’s easy to make excuses to put off dealing with it. But could that procrastination be hurting you? If you’re still on the fence about whether or not building a website for your business is worth […] Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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10 Signs It’s Time To Switch Web Hosts

The post 10 Signs It’s Time To Switch Web Hosts appeared first on HostGator Blog . How can you determine when it’s time to break up with your web host? Often, people decide to stick with their existing hosting provider well past their expiration date. However, this can be very damaging to your website and online presence. If you’re still unsure whether or not it’s time to make the switch, then […] Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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