Computer problems? We all have them. The problem is most of us don’t proactively do anything until we are already in trouble and something isn’t working.
I just saw this the other day and after reviewing I think it is a great tool for anyone. Personal computer, small business, just about everyone needs this at one time or another. www.iyogi.net is your savior when you get in a bind. They can help with everything from computer problems to digital cameras and even help if you have a virus on your computer. For $140 a year you have unlimited help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To me that is a secure feeling to know if I have an issue at 11pm at night I can instantly, and I mean instantly, get help.
I love the slogan too. “great tech support, good karma”. Everyone hates it when their computer has an issue and these guy are there in snap and happy to help with anything. Check it out at www.iyogi.net.
I reported a few months back about my like of BigCommerce as a great commerce cart and I am here to report about another. CoreCommerce is a competitor to BigCommerce and from everything I have seen they do a very nice job from start to finish. A couple things really stand out for me which CoreCommerce. First, they push updates on a weekly basis so they are improving the system all the time. Second they are integrated with the Sage gateway so you can use it free instead of having to use a paid gateway like Authorize.net. BigCommerce has promised this for some time but its at their whim and I honestly don’t see it happening any time soon so if I had to recommend an ecommerce software system today I would say to check out CoreCommerce.
I was also poking around their site over the weekend and tested out their online help. I waited about one minute and had a knowledgeable person that was helpful, but I was purposely trying to stump him and sure enough, he put me on hold for a minute or two and found someone who knew the answer. On a weekend that impresses me.
If you are e-commerce software hunting. Check out CoreCommerce. I like it.
Have you noticed how ridiculously priced time clocks are? I mean come on, its a clock that punches time. How hard can this be? It’s not like its even a new technology.
I found a VERY cool new product that is inexpensive for businesses to keep track of employee time and it has a web based interface. Check out 
WirelessTimeClock.com. They dumb it down for you with just two offerings. The first clock is just $99 and it plugs directly into your internet connection. The second is just $199 and it is WiFi enabled so you can put it anywhere and it will talk to your wireless router.
So what makes this cool is once you get the time clock, you log into their web based interface and the uAttend system keeps track of your employees time effortlessly. The clock talks to the web site and you can then log in and review and even submit to their payroll partner to close the loop and print the payroll checks.
I haven’t seen a system this easy yet and I love how inexpensive it is to get started. Plans start at just $18 a month for up to 9 employees. 100 employees and over is still only $99 a month. Check it out at www.wirelesstimeclock.com.
So when I decided to sell products online I was immediately intimidated by the hundreds of options for shopping carts. There are so many to choose from and trying to figure out which one is the best for your business is a job in itself. There are plenty of free shopping carts out there and even more that you pay to use their system but the trick is finding one that works for your business.
Up until about 6 months ago I always recommended clients went with the free carts and start simple. Make your business earn the need to take the next step to a paid system. The problem I keep running into though as the free carts always lack something. Not customizable enough or not compatible with a certain gateway.
Finally I was having a discussion with one of my partners and we started talking about Big Commerce. Big Commerce is a new shopping cart system from Interspire and I cannot tell you how much I like it. It fills in all the gaps the other carts were lacking and they are winning award after award for their cart. It isn’t free but you start out right the first time and it can handle anything you need to sell online.
What I love the most about this system is it makes you look like one of the big guys. All the fancy features you see on huge commerce stores like Old Navy or Gap are available in this cart, and it starts at $25 a month. I could go on and on to list features but honestly once you see their site and what it can do it will speak for itself so check out Big Commerce and see for yourself.
I am sure all of you know as soon as word gets out you have your own business vendors come through the woodwork to try to sell you something you need to make your business better. One of the reasons I started this blog is there are thousands of services out there and I wanted to help communicate the ones that have worked well for me. There is a new way to advertise your business that is really starting to grow and I believe it is really going to take off.
Text message marketing or SMS marketing is quickly gaining speed in the advertising industry. At first I thought this was a terrible idea as having received text message marketing from Verizon, my cellular provider, I was immediately irritated as I did not ask for them to do this. Then it hit me. I didn’t ASK for it. Permission marketing is the most powerful form of advertising because you have essentially given permission to someone to market to you. You have said “I like you and it is okay for you to talk to me about your goods and services.” Permission marketing is far more powerful than any other form of advertising and your return on investment is much greater than interruption marketing where you throw money in the wind and hope your ad reaches the right people.
Text message marketing is powerful because almost everyone has a mobile phone now and are constantly attached to it with all the new features coming out on mobile phones. I looked at a lot of companies offering this and I really like Trumpia. First and foremost they give you a free trial. If it doesn’t work, cancel, but my guess is you won’t. It has the ability to set up mobile keywords so you can tell your fans to text message “Tshirt” to special number to automatically sign up on your list. Then you can blast out messages to give specials on Tshirts for your new Tshirt company. Pretty cool, huh?
I think given some time this new platform is going to really be popular so check it out and be on the cutting edge. I like it.
So you have decided to be in business. Now you need to be official. A few weeks ago I found MyCorporation.com. They help you set up a corporation, LLC, as well as a number of other very important business forms you need when starting a business. Here are some necessities that you need so dont delay in getting them.
- DBA
- Federal Tax ID
- Trademarks
- Copyrights
- Domain names
MyCorporation.com is owned by Intuit, which we all know from popular programs like TurboTax and Quicken. What I really like about it is it is easy and pretty inexpensive and you can trust it coming from Intuit. Set up a corporation or LLC for less than $300 and know it is done right from the experts.
I cannot recommend highly enough you get started right and I think MyCorporation.com helps get you there.
Every now and then we all need to fax something or someone wants to fax to us. For the last 5 years I have used a fax to email service where I have a toll free fax number I can give to people and when they fax to me it is delivered to my email inbox as a PDF. Put simply, I LOVE IT. I can also email to a fax machine directly from my inbox. The service is very cool and it’s very cost effective.
These services are popping up all over but the one I really like is MyFax.com
. It’s reliable and for $10 a month I can send 100 pages and recieve 200 pages of fax. They have several other plans but this basic one works great for me as I don’t do a lot of faxing. You can get a local or toll free fax number so choose what works best for your business. The other really cool feature is they archive your faxes for a year so you can go back and look at past faxes if need be.
Check out MyFax.com. They also have virtual phone service programs at My1Voice
So on the list of the 10,000 things you need to do is get your business set up to accept credit cards. If you are new to this its going to be a painful learning experience. If you aren’t new to this you know there is so much nonsense involved and either you or someone you know has been personally burned by some company that was supposedly cared about you and your business.
As I have said before, I research things to death. I get a bug in my brain about things and I don’t stop until I know all I can. When I started to look into merchant processing, the more I learned the angrier I got. This whole business is about smoke and mirrors. Don’t pay attention to what this hand is doing, just watch what the one in front of you is doing.
Here is how it works. Let’s take Costco’s too good to pass up offer of 1.64%. Sounds great! In fact, I can tell you first hand that is below the cost of what Visa and MasterCard set for rates for the Qualified Rate. Remember what I just said there. Qualified Rate. Depending on your plan you set up with your merchant processor, you have a series of rates you pay, and I can promise those who sign up with Costco, almost none of it is at 1.64%. What Elavon (the merchant processing unit behind Costco) isn’t telling you is that you have two other rates you pay, and those two rates are very high. This is called a tiered rate plan. You basically have three rates you pay.
- Qualified Rate – base rate on basic Visa/MasterCards with no benefits attached to it
- Mid Qualified Rate – rate you pay on basic cards you key enter instead of swipe
- Non Qualified Rate – rate you pay on benefit cards. International cards, mileage cards, and all the other cards we love to use as we rack up points. (Most merchants do not realize that we as merchants bear the benefits of this service for people who carry these cards.)
Every merchant pays these rates in one way or the other and the trick most credit card processors do is offer a low teaser rate and don’t mention the Mid and Non Qualified rates. Check it out for yourself, you will see what I mean. This is how Costco/Elevon gets their business. I searched and searched on the Elevon site and still couldn’t find what my true rates would be.
The next game is the contract. Say you find a company that does offer reasonable rates. Now you have to go through the contract with a fine tooth comb and make sure you aren’t locking yourself into something you will regret later. Common tactics in this industry are to offer a low rate, don’t discuss the “other” rates, and lock the merchant into a contract so they can’t leave and if they do it will cost an arm and a leg to try to get out of the contract.
Frustrated yet? So was I. I started looking for who was real and who wasn’t. I realized that the offers that were too good to be true literally were so I started looking for what was “fair” and what wasn’t. Going on the assumption that they all have the same costs it is how they present their service that matters. Service, now there is a novel concept. How about a company that actually cares about me and my business? Yeah right.
Believe it or not, I found it and I tell every business I know about them. ProcessingPoint is the first one in the business that actually cares about my business and where I am trying to go with it. Their rates are fair but most importantly to me, there are no term contracts, no cancellation fees and nothing hidden. All the rates are disclosed and I mean all rates. What’s more you work with one person from start to finish to three years later and have a question about your account. They strive to build relationships with their clients and not just amass as many merchants as they can and try to make a buck off of each. Don’t get me wrong, they are in the business to make money, just like you, but they are fair about it and they let you walk away at any time because they bet on the fact you won’t because their service is so much better than anyone else.
Rather you are starting out or just looking to decrease your costs it is worth checking this out.
So you have opened a new office and you realize as you open on your first day the walls are plain and dull. You already sank a considerable amount of money into getting the place open, setting up the phone system, and securing your inventory. Interior decor was just not on the list of what you need to spend a lot of money doing. Welcome to my two cents on how to decorate your office on the cheap.
Step one – Check outAllPosters.com
. They have an amazing selection of all kinds of art posters that once framed look very good and prices cannot be beat.
Step two - check your local paper for coupons to Michaels. They frequently run 50% off coupons on their frames and its a great match for what you get at AllPosters.com.
There you have it.
Face it, one of the worst things about being in business is all the “other things” you have to get done to keep the doors open and the lights on. Payroll and payroll taxes are at the top of my list of the big headaches of being in business.
You have two choices. Do it yourself or outsource it. There are plenty of good companies out there like ADP or Paychex but my favorite is one from www.payroll-outsourcing-services.com. I have referred several clients there and they have on average saved 40-60% off what the other guys offer. They handle the payroll taxes and guarantee accuracy. What is easier than that?
My advice…don’t fret it. Outsource it and forget it. www.payroll-outsourcing-services.com
