When the Bank Says No, Where Do You Go?

Not long ago, if you had a need for financing and your business finances were in good shape, it seemed banks would line up to get the funds in your hands. Those days are all but gone now. Small-business lending has declined sharply in recent months, with Bank of America, the largest US small-business lender, cutting their lending in this sector by 6.2 percent during the seven-month period ended in November. Overall, US banks reduced their lending during the same period by $12.5 billion.

What this means for some small business owners can be a scenario that would keep anyone up at night. Imagine having to turn down an order from Costco or Wal-Mart because you don’t have the funds to produce the products they’re requesting. Even if on a smaller scale, it is disturbing to say the least to turn away any business due to lack of working capital for production. The good news is that, for many businesses in this position, there is a solution. A growing sector of the financial industry is saying yes to small businesses where banks are saying no.

What is Purchase Order Financing?

Companies such as Hartsko Financial provide financing to companies that have a purchase order from a creditworthy customer. The PO financer is more concerned with the financial strength of your customer than they are with that of you or your company. They will request a Letter of Credit (LC) from your customer and issue an LC on your behalf to the producer of your products, whether domestic or international. In this way, your finances aren’t as much in play, because they are facilitating the transaction at both ends. Basically, if you can prove you’ll get paid, they will send a letter of credit to your supplier. When you complete the order, the customer pays them, and they send the proceeds to you, less a percentage for their efforts.

The Price Tag

PO financing doesn’t come cheap. At Hartsko and other established firms, like Dallas-based King Trade Capital, Expect to pay as much as 3.5 percent for the first 30 days, and 1.25 percent for every 10 days thereafter. The quick math points to an annualized percentage north of 40 percent, which is obviously significant. So be sure your ducks are in a row and the order process is short enough to be able to pay the PO financer back quickly. If it’s going to take more than 60-90 days, this might not be the solution for you.

While pricey, this sector of the financial industry has grown significantly over the past year, largely because, for many small businesses, it’s the only solution that will allow them to fulfill large orders, expand into new markets, or start up in the first place. If you think it’s a good solution for you, do your research, solicit feedback from others who have tried it, and let us know how it goes.

Template or No Template? What You Need to Know About Web Design

Your site is your handshake. It’s the first impression many of your clients will have of your company. If your site looks sloppy, amateurish, or unprofessional, people assume your business is sloppy, amateurish, and unprofessional. For most entrepreneurs, this is not big news. We know the importance of our web presence. What many may not know is how to have a great site without spending a fortune with designers and developers. If your website’s functionality is your business – like with membership or gaming sites – you might not have much choice. On the other hand, if you use your website as a way to present your business, products, and services to the world and don’t require advanced development, you might want to consider web templates.

It used to be that a template site could be spotted a mile away. These days, templates are more sophisticated, and the sheer number of template designs available makes it possible for you to create a site that’s unique, individual, and far from cookie-cutter. In fact, for as little as $50.00, you can even get a full flash site, at template sites like FlashMint.com. Another template provider, Allwebco Design, has some of the coolest non-flash site designs out there for around $120, as well as some good information for the newbie website creator.

Words of Wisdom

The design of your website is not something to be taken lightly, and there are some things to look out for when choosing a template provider. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Free is a relative term. If you’re really bootstrapping it and looking for a free template design, there are plenty of sites where you can find good looking templates at no cost. Just be sure the site you choose isn’t more trouble than it’s worth. Open Source Web Design (OSWD.org) boasts 2,080 free template designs. Take some time in choosing one though. OSWD has three important features to look at. First, users give designs star ratings; secondly, people are able to comment on the designs; and last, they show the number of times a template has been downloaded. Look through the comments. You’ll find that many are just commenting on the look of the design, which is less helpful than those commenting on its functionality. The comments you want to look for are those, for example, telling you that the design looks great in IE7 but not so good in Firefox, or that the tables only line up at certain screen resolutions. You’ll want to be sure your chosen design hasn’t been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times too. You might still be unique within your industry, but the fewer downloads, the less chance you have of looking just like someone else.

• Expect to support yourself. Don’t expect any technical support when choosing a free template. For the most part, they aren’t difficult to implement, but you’ll want to have at least a basic understanding of HTML, or know someone who does and can help you if you get stuck. Even sites where you pay for a template are notorious for a lack of customer support, so do your homework. Most sites, like Template Kingdom, will tell you the format of the source files being provided with your download. If the source files are in Dreamweaver or Photoshop, you’ll of course want to have those programs and know how to use them before choosing that template. Or you can use the template, knowing you’ll be limited in the amount of customization you can implement. One bit of advice, regardless of your level of expertise: Always keep your originally downloaded files in a safe place, and create a separate copy you can work to perfect. That way, no matter how badly you mess something up, you can always start from square one if you have to!

• Memberships, buyouts, and template tweakers. Some template sites offer a membership price for unlimited downloads. Unless you are designing sites for a living, it is unnecessary to join them. Many of the customer complaints out there have to do with memberships not being cancelled upon request and other issues surrounding recurring billing, so again, do your homework. You will also find several sites, like Template Monster, offering quality designs for download, but also offering templates with a “buyout” option. This option will cost you as little as $800, up to over $5,000, and it only ensures they will remove the template from their site going forward. It does not guarantee the design hasn’t been used before or even downloaded thousands of times. For that kind of investment, you can find a designer to build a comparable site and provide one-on-one support. The same goes for sites offering to customize or “tune-up” an existing template. With the number of designers hungry for work right now, browsing Craigslist, Guru, or Elance might just render you a better deal.

So the bottom line is that you don’t have to spend all your startup capital to have a cool site. Templates are a great alternative to costly custom sites, as long as you take the time to make sure you’re getting what you need. If you’ve used a template site, join the conversation, and let others know about your experience – good, bad, or ugly!

3 Steps to Navigating the Copyright Gamut

Picture it: Two weeks ago you wrote what just might be your greatest work.  It’s a masterpiece of a blog post, and before you submit it to the Pulitzer committee, you want to see where it’s ranked on Google, so you enter a unique phrase from the post, and up pops your article – but on someone else’s site, with someone else’s name on it!  And not only are they taking credit for your work, but their site is generating ad revenue, and you’re not seeing a dime of it.

 

If you’re a writer and something like this hasn’t happened to you yet, chances are, at some point, it will.  Plagiarism runs rampant on the Internet; so much so that both professional writers and entrepreneurs with great website copy to protect can often feel powerless to stop it.  But take heart.  Your work is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA), and there are steps you can take to guard your work from those nefarious thieves out to steal your stuff.  Of course it makes sense to put a copyright tagline on your copy, but that’s not enough.  Take these steps to stop plagiarizers in their tracks:

 

Step 1

Make it easy for people to contact you to get permission to use your work.  In many cases, your copy, or parts of it, might show up on another site simply because the site owner wanted to pass on the great information you provided.  If this is the case, they won’t have changed the byline and might have even given credit to you as the original author.  You want this to happen on your terms though.  Have a policy, whether internal or posted on your pages, which outlines exactly how and under what circumstances you want your work used – always after they’ve gained your permission.  For example, you probably want a link back to your content, rather than a reprint.  Whatever your policy, making it easy for honest folks to learn it is good business.

 

Step 2

You’ve done what you can to keep the honest people honest, and now you need to find out if your work is being used anyway.  There are some very easy ways to find your work out on the net.  The simplest is to find a unique phrase within your content and do a Google search for it.  (Quotes around a phrase will look for the whole phrase, rather than the individual words within a phrase.)  For example, if this was your post, you might search for, “nefarious thieves out to steal your stuff.”  Chances are, there aren’t a lot of other articles out there with that exact phrase in them.  Another great tool for finding plagiarized work is Copyscape.com.  Just enter the URL for your page into Copyscape, and the site will search for your work, providing a list of sites they find using portions of your copy.  They’ll provide ten results for free.  Their premium service offers content theft protection that will cost you five cents per search and allows you to batch search your entire site and even copy and paste offline content.  Side-Note: You can also use Copyscape to find comment spammers.  Because it searches for all content within your page, if someone is posting the same comment on blogs all over the place, like, “Try this cool dating site at ….com,” it will pick it up as copied material.

 

 

Step 3

Ok, you’ve found copyright violations.  People are using your stuff without asking.  What now?  You don’t have to go out and hire a high-priced attorney to fight plagiarizers.  The first thing to do is send a polite but firm and professional email to the site owner.  You can either use the contact information on the site, or do a WHOIS search for the info.  This email is simply a request to remove the content from their site.  Because many who are using others’ content are doing so because they don’t know any better, think of this as an opportunity to educate them.  Be sure to include the URL for the page on their site where the material is located as well as the URL to your original content, and instruct them how to link to your content if they’d like to share it with their site visitors.  Then check back in a week to see if your content is removed.  Usually, this will do the trick.

 

If you’re clearly not dealing with an amateur, and you suspect they are making a living off of stealing the work of others, or if someone refuses to comply with your request to remove your material from their site, skip right to filing a copyright infringement notice.  This can be filed with Google, and they provide instructions on doing so on their site.  You’ll need to send the notice to Google by snail mail and/or fax.  Google will then send a letter to the copyright infringer on your behalf, which looks something like this.  This is especially effective if the thief is using AdSense, Blogger, or Picassa, as these are Google properties, and they will threaten to deactivate their accounts.  The exact same letter that you send to Google can be used to a violator’s hosting provider and search providers as well.  A sample letter is available on LearnAboutLaw.com.

 

 

It’s your work, and you have the right to protect it from those who would profit from it without your permission.  Hopefully these tips will help you do just that – without the cost of lawyers, injunctions, and other such ugliness.   If you’ve had success with other (legal) methods, be sure to let us know!

Market Savvy: How and where to sell your online business

Sometimes it’s unavoidable.

You spend countless hours designing, building, and promoting your website. You put your blood, sweat, and tears into your business. Then the unpredictability of life happens and you’re faced with the unthinkable: your creation must be sold.

Thousands of websites change hands every year. While not all of the scenarios are as dramatic as above, it can still be a very daunting prospect to many website owners who have no idea where to start. Before slapping a “This Website for Sale” sign on your website, here are some things to consider.

A Lesson from the Boy Scouts’ Motto – Be Prepared

There are several things you can do to prep your online business for the sale. Information gathering is one of the best ways to be prepared for negotiations with potential buyers.

Traffic Statistics

Buyers are going to want to know specifics, such as how many visitors you get each month, how many times visitors view the pages on your website, how you get found, popular keywords, and more. Google Analytics is a great tool to use for this purpose. Have at least three months worth of statistics to show your buyers, though a year would be preferable.

Rankings

Not all buyers will ask for this, but it’s good to be prepared just in case. Find your Google page rank with a free page rank checker like PRChecker. You can also see how your website traffic ranks against others at Alexa.com.

Average Monthly Revenue

Get your financials in order. Buyers will almost always want to see records that substantiate your revenue claims. You’ll want to have 12 months of records, if possible. Often buyers will pay the equivalent of one year’s worth of revenue.

How Much Would it Cost to Duplicate

Consider how much it would cost to rebuild your business, including designing the website, acquiring quality content, finding relevant links, building traffic. If it would be easy and inexpensive to duplicate, your site may lose some of its value. In preparation for a sale, beef up your business by adding value through the design and content. Make your site irresistible!

Brand & Reputation

A good, strong brand is important. You can increase your brand’s visibility by consistently getting your logo and business name out there. You can place ads on relevant websites, develop strategic alliances and link exchanges, write articles in which you position yourself (and your company) as an expert, create a strong social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, etc.). Collect documentation for all of these things. Also, ask your previous customers for testimonials on your products and service. This will help attest to your good reputation.

What it’s Worth

There are all kinds of website valuation tools on the web. But the reality is it’s difficult to determine exactly how much a website is worth because it depends on so many factors. At the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is how much a buyer is willing to pay.

Where to Sell Your Website

There are a number of website marketplaces on which you can list your website. Here are a few of our favorites:

YoungEntrepreneur.com - Websites for Sale

Flippa.com

DNForum.com

Sedo.com

And Remember…
As with anything in business, you’ll want to protect yourself against getting burned. Do your research, work only with reputable companies, and go with your gut. Be a savvy seller and it will be “smooth sale-ing” all the way to the bank.

Apple’s iPad: Entrepreneurs Will Love It – When They’re Not Working

If you keep up on technology news even a little, you know that Steve Jobs recently announced the late-March launch of Apple’s new tablet computer, the iPad. The buzz about the device is in full swing, so we scanned reviews and public opinions from all over the web, to answer the one question we’re most concerned with: Will entrepreneurs want to be first in line at the Apple store on release day?

The short answer is, “probably not.” Don’t misunderstand – this is a very cool device. It does all an iPod Touch does and gives you more room in which to do it. Several apps, such as email, the photo app, and maps, have been revamped for the iPad as well. And there is no doubt developers are by now feverishly working to tweak their already-compatible 140,000+ iPhone apps to look great on the iPad’s larger screen.

So it’s not that the iPad isn’t useful or exciting; it’s just that (priced between $499 and $829) it is very unlikely to take the place of your comparably-priced laptop or desktop, for work purposes. By nearly all accounts, this is more of a device for home and fun than for work. In fact, it seems the reviews of the iPad can’t help but refer to lounging at home: “…seems like it would be a great way to read a book, curled up on my couch,” (SF Chronicle) and “…a casual computer for the living room couch.” (CNET)

Now, if your business involves reviewing websites or HD YouTube videos, or reading books, the iPad might be an additional tool for you. There’s no denying the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen offers a great web experience, and the included new iBook software makes reading books on the iPad a pleasure. But if you’re looking to do the kind of work most of us in business need to do, you won’t be pitching your laptop for the iPad. Even with the available iWork suite ($79 extra), a lack of multitasking abilities, no SD or USB slots, and a smaller-than-standard on-screen keyboard might make serious work a challenge.

Based on feedback from several reviewers (Macworld, PC Advisor, and Gizmodo for instance) and scores of laypeople (example), the Apple iPad is seen by most as a larger version of the iPod Touch/iPhone. If you consider those devices business tools, and you like the idea of an enlarged version, have a closer look at the iPad. If not, stick with the solutions you use now for business and think about getting an iPad for fun.

What do you think of Apple’s new iPad? Is it something you think you’ll buy when it is released? Share your opinion below.

« Previous Page — More Recent Posts »