Countless business articles and journals discuss common mistakes business owners make when starting their businesses. I’ve also learned a thing or two (or 10) about these types of mistakes from successful entrepreneurs and a variety of news sources for small businesses.

Read on to learn about these 10 common mistakes, and how you can avoid them when you start your business.

1. Market misread

A good idea can be just that, and nothing more. As an entrepreneur, you must assess and understand the true demand for your product or service before taking the idea further. Nabeel Mushtaq, chief operating officer (COO) and co-founder of AskforTask.com explains, “Whether it is underestimating [or] overestimating costs, appealing to the wrong target demographic, or poorly gauging the demand, misinterpreting your market can end your business before it even starts.” …

In one of my previous posts, I wrote about what has been happening over the past three months at PICR (now Bloom.io). I also promised to write another post and share what’s going to happen to PICR in the coming weeks and months.

I was hoping I will have something exciting to share with you. I do and I don’t. Let me explain how that can be:

As I wrote earlier, we launched to clients in the Portland area. We also started testing marketing channels — first, trying out standard channels like Google AdWords and Facebook ads. After close to two months, we realized that nothing was working. …

Why do people find it important to capture moments in their lives with photography? Is it simply to document a moment in time? Or is there more to it?

I decided to look at some recent data, reports and articles from a variety of sources to answer those questions. As it turns out, there’s simple answer to these questions. In this post, I’ll share the trends, uses, motivations, and benefits related to taking photos that I discovered through my research.

Photography shifting from memory tool to communication tool

It’s a no-brainer that people take photos to document an experience to help them later recall it. But this trend is changing, as professor Jose Van Dijck explains in a quote in this article, “Even though photography may still capitalize on its primary function as a memory tool for documenting a person’s past, we are witnessing a significant shift, especially among the younger generation, toward using it as an instrument for interaction and peer bonding.” …

Calling all Portlanders (in Oregon). Have you been thinking about hiring a professional photographer? Maybe for a wedding, a family photo, a professional headshot, or to sell a home for your real estate client? If so, read on…

We recently launched PICR in the Portland, Oregon area. PICR offers a new way of connecting professional photographers and clients. Over the last two months, we’ve worked hard to populate our photography platform with qualified local photographers, and they’re ready to get to work. For you.

The Story of PICR
Why PICR? We were working on another product startup when we ran into an unexpected problem: We couldn’t easily find a high-quality local photographer in the Portland area who was both available and fit our budget. The photographer we hired was from out of state and ended up being more expensive than we anticipated. …

A couple of posts back, I recounted the story of how PICR was born just eight months ago. Since then, time has flown by like we were aboard a rocket ship. In today’s post, I want to share with you everything that happened during that rocket ship ride.

Since early March, we’ve made dozens of what I’d call “micro pivots,” minor changes in direction based on having built functionality, tested it, and identified what needed to change because it didn’t work. We counted on feedback and assistance from numerous photographers who rolled up their sleeves to help test the platform. This was hard, intense work. …

Every week I receive two or three requests from local entrepreneurs/wantrepreneurs. They usually ask me if they can pitch their business idea over coffee or lunch. Over the last year, I probably met with around 20 of these individuals. Most of them have one important question for me: Does my business idea have the potential to succeed?

I recently thought about what makes an idea have success potential, and if it’s possible to recognize that potential early on. My conclusion? You can’t.

It’s impossible to know if your business idea has the potential to succeed. In my experience, a business idea alone is worth about a negative million U.S. dollars. Why? Because you would have to spend a million dollars to figure out if it works. …

Last summer, my family and I attended the wedding of one of my sisters in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. All of my siblings and their families came to celebrate the event. Just a few months later, when my sister and her new husband received their wedding pictures, they realized that one of our sisters was missing from the family group picture. She was at the wedding and with all of us for the group pictures, but the photographer accidentally cut her out of the frame of each shot. …

Many people believe that they can create and launch a successful startup online. They think that they can magically make money just like Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook. They see the Internet — web sites, social media sites, and mobile apps — as a place where all they have to do is stake their claim and the money will start rolling in. Many just know they can make a better version of what’s already out there. In all fairness, that’s partly because we only hear about the startup successes, rarely the startup flops.

This post, aimed at those who think they’d like to launch a startup, discusses 11 indicators that you may not be ready to launch a startup. Should any of these indicators hit a nerve, you might want to reconsider your plan. If not, you’ll likely waste time and money, and worse yet, belief in yourself. …