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Hey everyone. We at the DoE know how hard it is to run a successful business. There are many mistakes that first time business owners make that could be prevented if they knew how to run a good business.

That's why we at the DoE have created this guide on how to run a business for beginners. The article is written by Ashot, one of the members of the DoE. It guides users through the ins and outs of running a business. As always, any guide is never truly complete or conclusive. Business owners, if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them! We'll try to integrate them into a new version of the guide in the future.

Now, the guide!

How to run a successful business for beginners v1.0

1.1 Creating an Organization
1.2 The need for an Organization
1.3 Finance
1.4 Choice
1.5 Business Field
1.6 Employment
1.7 Management
1.8 Sales
1.9 Marketing License

1.1 - How to create an Organization account:
For creating an Organization it is required to have 5 gold. Go to My Places, from the drop down menu go to Organizations. Select Create New and follow simple instructions. There are no special names or logos that you need to use chose anything you would like for it won't make a difference in eRepublik. Once you have the Organization set up you would need to go back to your personal account and donate gold to your Organization account.

1.2 - Is Organization necessary:
There are few reasons why you would want to have an Organization to run a successful business. You can own a company and still work for another company to make enough money to support your company in case of a financial crisis. 2) You can also be employed in your own Company and set the amount of money you need to be making in order to buy food and gifts for your wellness. 3) You may change your residency without worrying of taking your company with you.

1.3 - How much is needed to start a business:
The cost of creating a new company is 20 Gold. I would not suggest anyone to create a company once they have 20 Gold. After creating your company you would need to hire employees and pay your expenses to start your business. I would suggest you go around in the market and search for companies that are on sale (http://www.erepublik.com/en/companies-for-sale/country-24-industry-0/1). You can find companies on sale for as low as 14 gold, that is lower then creating one. Use the rest 6 gold to buy yourself money to pay your expenses. Make sure you do some research on the companies you do want to purchase, sometimes the companies could worth nothing, depending on the productivity level. If the productivity is medium or no productivity you want to stay away from these companies. In case you don't find any descent companies to purchase, use 20 gold and create your own company make sure you have enough money to start the business. If you do not have an Organization you would need to make sure you have enough money to run a stable company since you will not have any alternative ways of making money until your company makes you enough profit.

1.4 - How to chose the company you want to buy/create:
By the time you collect enough gold and money to buy/create a company you should be very well experienced in your current job. For those who will have their company set up in an Organization, it is recommended to create a company in the same industry as you have an experience in. This is to guarantee production even if you hire only your own citizen account. On all other instances you may chose the company you like the most or you may do some research and see what the need is for today.

1.5 - Which companies to buy/create:
Many of the companies use raw materials such as grain, wood, iron, oil and diamonds. Others are to make the raw materials. For a starter in the business it is hard to decide which company to buy/create, a Raw Material, Manufacturing or Construction companies. Manufacturing companies require grain, diamonds, iron, or oil as their RM and are optimal with 10 employees. Construction companies require wood and are optimal with 20 employees. Manufactured products take 1,2,5, or 10 production points to make a product, while constructed products need 200 or 2000 points to make a product. As such, manufacturing is easier to enter than construction because there are fewer employees to pay and products are finished quicker. Construction Company has a decent barrier to entry because of the 20 employee max productivity and you have to front the cost of the house/hosp/DS until it sells. Raw Material Companies are much simpler to manage and calculate break-even product price, but they require a lot of initial capital to make a profit because of the productivity scaling with quality levels. Q3 is roughly the level where it becomes profitable (50+20+20=90 Gold). Since it could be very arguable as to which one to chose for a starter in the business, it is your choice to choose whichever one you want. Either way you would need to make sure you have enough funds to cover all the initial expenses and managing expenses before you start making profit.

1.6 - Hiring employees:
Since it is very hard find dedicated employees first you would need to look into your friends list and see if there is anyone you can hire with an affordable wage. If you do not have friends who want to work for you, then you would need to hire others. It is always recommended to hire well experienced employees, however you do not need to do this right away. You may add a job offer to hire beginners with 0 experience in the field. In order for you to decide how much salary you need to post, you would need to go to the human resources to find out what the average salary is now. Now that you know the average salary you need to start hiring. Hire at least as many employees as you have max productivity shown in your company employees section. Once you have hired the employees you need to keep an eye on them to make sure they work every day. If you see that an employee doesn't work for more then 3 days you may fire them and get yourself new employees. Non working employees do more harm then help to your company. But before you go on and fire your current employees you want to make sure you hire new ones first. Non working employees are not completely useless they will increase the efficiency of your active workers. Fire the non working employees after you hire new ones. Another thing to keep on checking is the wellness of your employees. Wellness is a main factor in the productivity, therefore, you mane to make sure your employees are well enough to work.

1.7 - How to keep your employees from quitting:
The best way of insuring steady productivity from your employees is to make sure you keep them happy at all times. The first thing an employee does is he makes sure he gets paid a decent salary. In order to make sure you are paying your employees what they deserve, you need to go to the human resources and see what the average rate for the given skill levels are. Let's assume you have an oil company. Once you go to the human resources you will have to chose the specific industry you are trying to view. In the products section select land, skill level select all and chose the US market. From here you will be able to identify how much would any skill level get paid. As your employees progress in skills you need to make sure to give them raise in timely manner. Always keep funds available to pay your employees. In case you will be short of funds for a day notify your employees that you will take care of the issue ASAP.

1.8 - Selling your products:
You will not make profit from the first day, it takes time, dedication and expenses to achieve your goals. In due time you will be making profit make sure you save up as much as possible. One of the important things is getting higher Q in your production. To get higher Q you would need to have more gold. Once you have higher Q your products will have more value, more value means more profit. Try to get your company to at least Q3 before you progress in creating another company.

1.9 - Getting Market License:
Getting a market license could bring you more profit only if you have enough production. Sometimes it's good to be selling within your eCountry while other times if the need is low in your eCountry you should try to sell it in another eCountry. Since any currency can be traded from gold you should not have any problems of making other currency and trading it for gold.