Personal credit
If you’re starting out, the chances are you won’t be able to get financing from the bank. If you have a good spending limit on your credit cards, this will be the easiest way. The interest rates may be high, but it will be the easiest way to get money right away.

Borrowing from family
This option can get complicated at times. Only borrow if you know you’ll be able to pay the debt back. Also make sure that your family is very aware of the risks of your startup. If they feel that your startup will be a success you’ll have no problem borrowing from them (as long as they have money in the first place).

SBA
The Small Business Administration does offer loans to some businesses. They may be easier to get than from a bank, but you’ll still need a good business plan and some other sort of funding. You can check out their website for more information on their loans.

Prosper.com
Prosper is an online personal lending marketplace. You sign up and request a loan and investors can put up anywhere from $25 or more towards. Once you’ve got the amount you’re looking for from different investors, you’ll sign a contract and start paying it off. The interest rates on these loans depend on your personal credit rating.

If you know of any other small business funding resources, please post them in the comments.

How To Finance Your Startup is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice

Is your company B2B? Do you just cater to businesses, and not to the public? If that is your target market, it might be hard to do effective marketing on social media websites like Facebook. Facebook’s main users are there to connect with their friends, family, and coworkers. It would be much harder for your company to gain many customers from this advertising medium. One social media website that might work for this business model could be LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is primarily made up of business people and entrepreneurs.

It may be more effective to advertise in your local community’s newspaper, chamber of commerce, or in the yellow pages. These are the most effective marketing mediums for B2B companies.

Are you a strictly local company? If you have a brick and mortar business and only have one location, your target market on websites like Facebook and Myspace will be small. Although Facebook ads have an option to target by location, you’ll still have a harder time to get new customers because the users on Facebook are there to connect with their friends, and not to look for companies to buy something from.

You will gain more customers if you advertise in local newspapers and the yellow pages, because those publication sources are more likely to target your market.

Is your product or service exciting? What if you sell custom CNC machined tools? Or screwdrivers? These products are not very exciting, and don’t grab much attention. You may have a really great niche and sell great locally, but many people won’t click and ad that’s selling screwdrivers. You’ll just be wasting money on advertising your products on social media websites.

If you sell these types of products or services, advertise in trade magazines. This will be one of the best ways to advertise because it’s geared exactly towards your niche and target market.

So before you go off spending money advertising on Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., take a step back and try to answer those three questions. There is absolutely nothing wrong about not advertising on social media, it just means it’s not the best way to reach your target market. Try to find better advertising mediums that suit your business model and in turn bring you more customers and more revenue.

Is Social Media Marketing Right For Your Business? is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice

Your business’s livelihood depends very much on you. When you’re an entrepreneur your whole company depends on you and your success. Making a profit, attracting new customers, and paying taxes all fall on you, and if not done successfully, your business is very likely to fail.

Your level of stress will increase significantly. Are you getting paid this week? Well, that all depends if you’ve made any money. Forget about a steady paycheck, especially if you’re just starting out. If you’re dedicated to make your business a success you’ll most likely be cutting down your salary to compensate.

Bookkeeping, sales, invoicing, hiring and firing, and business spending will all be done by you at first. You will get stressed out more often than not trying to keep everything under control. At one point in time you’ll think to yourself why you ever decided to quit your day job.

Forget the 9 to 5 routine! At first you’ll be lucky if you have any time off. Getting your business off the ground will take time, lots of time. You’ll end up working most nights and weekends just to keep your business afloat. And if you’re planning on taking a vacation, you can forget about it for the first couple of years. You’ll be stressing out about everything you won’t even have the time to think about taking a few days off.

There is a high chance of failure. Most businesses fail within the first five years of operation. And yes, your business is part of the statistic. Starting out you have a much, much higher chance of failing than succeeding. A fear of failure will reinforce the above two statements: increased stress and long work hours. Instead of pursuing entrepreneurship, the fear of failure keeps many people in their cubicles working 9 to 5.

But wait, there’s light at the end of the tunnel! I’m not trying to discourage anyone from starting and running their own business, I’m just highlighting some non-glamorous situations that every entrepreneur will face. There are as many, if not more, positive aspects of being an entrepreneur, as there are negative. Just because there are downsides, doesn’t mean it should discourage you from achieving your goals and dreams. It just helps to be realistic.

The Downsides of Running a Small Business is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice

Learn To Manage Your Time Better

Running your business, especially if you’re in it solo, can seem very stressful at times. You may feel like you’re all over the place and can’t get anything done. One way you can overcome that is by managing your time bette.

One of the first things you need to learn how to manage your time is to prioritize. When you start prioritizing, you’ll notice that some of the tasks you were doing were pointless and redundant.

Prioritizing your workload will not only reduce your stress, but will give you more free time to focus on making your business a success. Here are a few tips on how to prioritize and enhance your time management skills.

1. Make a list
Make a list of all tasks you have to do each day. Be as specific as possible – this way you’ll find out what things take most of your time and what tasks are important. An example of a list can be as simple as check e-mail, follow up on current orders, call up prospective customers, do bookkeeping, and so on.

2. Rate each task
Take each task from the list and rate it on importance AND urgency. You can use a scale from 1-5, one being least important or urgent. You’ll notice that some tasks may be important to do, but they’re not urgent, and you can do other things that demand your immediate attention. For example if one task on your list is to check your business e-mail, you can rate it as a 4 in importance, but 2 as an urgency. This means that it is important to follow up on your e-mails, but it can wait.

3. Eliminate or consolidate tasks
When creating a task list and rating it, you’ll find that you can consolidate some of the tasks, or even eliminate them. Using the above example of checking e-mails, you can set a specific time to check them. Instead of checking every few minutes or half hour to see if there’s anything in the inbox, set a specific time to do it. A good way to consolidate this task would be to check e-mail twice daily; once in the morning and once in the afternoon. You’ll notice that you will save a lot of time, and that it really wasn’t that urgent to check on your e-mail constantly.

4. Rinse and repeat
Once you’ve created a list of all your tasks for the day and you’ve rated them in the order of importance and urgency, use it each and every day. At first you may want to write out your plan of attack each day, but soon enough you’ll get used to the new way of doing work that it will come naturally. It is very important that you’re strict about your priorities and that you follow them at all time, otherwise you’ll go back to your old habits.

If you’re feeling a bit skeptical about this or think that you already have all of your priorities straight, experiment with it for a week. Start making daily task lists, prioritize them and follow the program for a straight week. You’ll be surprised by how much time you’ll save! You’ll finally stop stressing about shuffling paperwork, and will be able to focus on your company more.

If you have some tips on how you personally manage your time better, drop a comment and share with everyone.

Learn To Manage Your Time Better is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice

My Twitter profile is http://twitter.com/OnSmallBusiness.

If you’re using Twitter and want to get all the info on the go, follow me!

Small Biz Talk is on Twitter! is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice

1. Small Biz Talk
Hey, I gotta put myself in here!

2. Small Business Administration
This is a government website that has a ton of information on running and opening a small business. It gives you tips on business plan writing, marketing, loans, necessary legal paperwork, and more.

3. StartupNation
StartupNation has lots of articles regarding starting up your business, and also offers a forum to ask specific questions regarding marketing, operations, and business planning. The only downside, to the website is that the forums aren’t very active, and at times contain spam, which isn’t fully moderated.

4. Entrepreneur.com
This is a web version of a print magazine. They do, however, offer web only articles and also have a forum similar to StartupNation.

5. Business.com
This website is also similar to Entrepreneur.com, but offers more of directories of businesses, products, and services. They do also offer some articles on tips and advice, but it is not only geared towards small business.

These are only some of the top websites that can be big resources for small businesses and startups. I’ll follow up with another list next week with more resources. If you have any that you may suggest, please leave a comment on this post.

Top Small Business Resources is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice

One of the online print shops that I personally use and recommend to other small business owners is PrintPlace.com. It’s an easy and affordable way to get any sort of printing you need. And the greatest thing about it, you can order in small quantities, unlike at traditional printing shops.

I use this service for the consulting company I work for, PB Consulting Group, to order business cards, brochures, post cards, and letter heads. There are many other online printing shops, but I use this one mainly for the quick turnaround time and small quantity orders.

Online Printing Resources is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice

We work with small businesses and help them with  operations, advertising, management, website optimization and search engine optimization. We also help them form new processes in their company, eliminate costs, and increase revenues.

We also work with new start ups with registering their business, setting up their finances, writing business and marketing plans, market research and more.

Hopefully by working there I’ll be able to offer more in depth advice on small business issues, tips and advice on this blog.

The company’s website is www.mypbgroup.com

Small Business Consulting Company is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice

1. Register your business and get an EIN
If you’re trying to separate your business and personal credit, the best form of owners
hip for your small business would be an LLC. Once you register, get your Empoyer Identification Number (EIN). Your EIN will be used for all of your business transactions and for your business credit. You won’t need to use your own social security number. You can apply online for your EIN number on the IRS website. The website also includes more information on the number.

2. Get a Dun & Bradstreet DUNS number
D&B is kind of like Experian and Transunion for businesses. You can use your DUNS number when applying for credit and the lenders will report to the agency. It will show lenders your credit history, if you made your payments on time, and how much debt you have. For more information and to get your DUNS number, you can visit the D&B website and get one online.

3. Get an office supply store credit
This is probably the easiest way to get your business credit started. Many office supply stores like Office Depot and Staples offerstore credit for small businesses. They also report regularly to D&B, so you’ll start building your credit history in no time. And since you’ll most likely need office supplies for your company, might as well use their store credit to pay for it. Both Office Depot and Staples let you pay off all at once or keep a revolving balance for larger purchases.

4. Get a business credit card
Once you start building your credit slowly, get a business credit card such as Visa or American Express. These will be beneficial because not only do they report to D&B, but they’re usually accepted everywhere. You can make most of your business purchases on your credit cards and build up your credit history. Try only to have a couple of business credit cards, and keep a watch on your balances. Only use them as needed, and don’t spend them on unnecessary purchases.

Take home advice
Using the above steps will allow you to build your company’s credit history. You will no longer need to leverage your personal assets in order to get a loan. Many banks and other lenders look at your D&B profile to check your history, and once you’ve built it up, it will be much easier to secure a loan without personal backing.

You will want to build your credit history because in the future if you ever decide to expand or start a new project, you will not need to tap into your business cash flow, and will be able to finance it cheaply.

If you have any other tips or questions regarding building business credit, please comment on this post.

How To Build Business Credit is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice

Search Engine Optimization
There are many great resources out there on SEO. My goal here isn’t to define what it is and all different strategies of it, but to just give some simple tips. The biggest focus on SEO are keywords. Make sure that your content on your website has a good amount of keywords relating to your subject. Putting in significant keywords in your content will make it easier for people to find you when searching for that particular subject.

If your website is about fishing, just having “fish” and “fishing” as your main keywords in your content won’t give you high traffic results. If you’re giving out good advice how to catch fish you may want to focus on keywords such as “tips on catching fish” “catch big fish” and so on and so forth. Many people don’t just search “fishing” on search engines, they tend to refine their queries. So if you want to cater to the crowd that’s interested in catching fish, use the latter keywords and you’ll most likely be ranked higher on search engine results.

Link Exchanges
Link exchanges get mixed reviews from people whether they get you quality traffic or not, and rightfully so. To get quality traffic to your website, only exchange links with websites that are related to yours. Going from the previous example, if your website is about fishing and catching fish, it wouldn’t make any sense to exchange links with a website about computer software. It may seem like common sense, but many website owners will exchange links with anyone that’s willing. Websites that would help you get quality traffic would be websites about fishing equipment, good fishing spots, fishing techiques, etc.

Creating more link exchanges based on relevancy will not only get you quality traffic, but if you’re selling any products or services will give you more relevant leads (prospective customers) to your website.

Participating on Forums and Blogs
Participating on forums or commenting on blogs can get you quality traffic because you’re creating relationships and rapport with people with a similar interest. Find a forum that’s related to your topic and genuinely get involved in the discussions. Answer questions that people may have, establish yourself as someone who’s genuinely knowledgeable, and you will gain credibility. Add your website to your signature, and from time to time you may reference your website in your posts. This method will also give you more traffic that’s higher quality and more tailored to your target audience.

When commenting on blogs, use the same strategy as above. Don’t just comment “GREAT POST!!” and think that people will automatically click on your website. Add something of value to the reader, expand on the certain post, and genuinely get involved in the conversation.

Some final advice: Never pay for services that promise you thousand hits a day for a small price. These are almost always scams. These people will deliver traffic to your websites, but it will not help you one bit. Most people are paid small amounts to surf such websites, and the more they surf, they more they make. So in essence, it would be beneficial for someone who’s getting paid to visit your website to leave it as soon as possible and go to the next one.

Getting quality traffic to your website is not a fast or easy process. It takes time to build quality traffic, but in the end you’ll be glad you did. If you have similar advice or any other comments, please leave a comment on this post.

Get Free Quality Traffic To Your Website is a post from: Small Biz Talk - Small Business Tips and Advice