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Top 25 Websites Offering Small Business Help

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Help for Small Business

With the vast amount of information and resources available online it can be quite a challenge for entrepreneurs and small business owners to find the small business help they need.

From deciding whether to start a business, setting up or acquiring a business, raising capital, acquiring credit, marketing, social media marketing, working with customers, growing your business, working online, selling online and much more it’s vital to have access to resources you can depend on.

Below are my top 25 all time favorite websites that provide small business owners the much needed support, news, information, resources, and tools needed to succeed in business today.

  1. AllBusiness.com -AllBusiness.com has a variety of small business resources, advice, and business ideas for entrepreneurs and small businesses to start, manage, finance, and build a business.
  2. Bplans.com -Bplans.com offers free sample business plans, business plan software, business calculators, and articles on writing a business plan, starting a business, and other small business topics.
  3. Business.com -Business.com provides an extensive and helpful business search engine and business directory designed to help its users find the companies, products, services, and information they need to make the right business decisions.
  4. Business.usa.gov -Business.usa.gov helps small businesses understand their legal requirements and locate government services from federal, state and local agencies.
  5. Businesscreditblogger.com -Businesscreditblogger.com has been the go-to source for business credit information providing expert information about building business credit, business credit scoring, business credit reporting and business credit cards.
  6. Copyblogger.com -Copyblogger.com is an invaluable source for business owners wanting to learn more about how to gain more traffic, links, and subscribers for their company website.
  7. Credit.com -Credit.com covers all aspects of personal credit and includes free interactive tools and unbiased product comparisons.
  8. Entrepreneur.com -Entrepreneur.com offers a comprehensive range of practical information for small business owners including articles, videos, tools, newsletters, and message boards.
  9. EntreWorld.org -Entreworld.org is a collection of resources for entrepreneurs designed to support and help build entrepreneurial economies. The content on the site focuses on starting, growing and locating support for your business.
  10. Franchise.com -Franchise.com serves the franchise community by serving both as a unique search tool for finding the right business for sale and a franchise industry resource that offers franchise information, franchise industry news, and resources.
  11. Frannet.com -Frannet.com provides an overview of franchising and provides helpful advice and guidance to determine if you are suited to being a franchise owner.
  12. Inc.com -Inc.com is the online version of the magazine Inc. It provides information, products, services, and online tool for entrepreneurs.
  13. IRS Small Business One Stop Resource -The IRS Small Business Resource covers a broad range of tax resources for entrepreneurs and small business owners including workshops, forms, and publications.
  14. Knowthis.com -Knowthis.com is a leading information and resource website in marketing, market research, advertising, selling, promotion, and other marketing-related areas.
  15. MoreBusiness.com -MoreBusiness.com is filled with sample business plans, marketing plans, templates, sample contracts and business agreements to help entrepreneurs start and grow a small business.
  16. Mashable.com -Mashable.com is the top source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture. The business section offers tips, tools, social media resources and guides you will find extremely helpful.
  17. SBA.gov -SBA.gov is run by the U.S. government and it is dedicated to helping small business owners by giving a wide range of sources for technical, managerial, and financial help and assistance.
  18. Score.org -The SCORE Association is a nonprofit and resource partner with the SBA. It offers a wealth of free online and face-to-face business counseling, mentoring, and training for startups or for existing businesses hoping to grow.
  19. Smallbiztrends.com -Smallbiztrends.com is an award-winning online publication for small business owners and entrepreneurs. A great resource to track, explore and learn from trends affecting the small business market.
  20. Socialmediatoday.com -Socialmediatoday.com helps teach business owners how to leverage the power of social media with insightful information, tools, tips, and strategies.
  21. Startupnation.com -Startupnation.com is a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs with easy-to-follow, practical information to start and grow a successful business.
  22. Toolkit.com -Toolkit.com offers more than 5,000 pages of free cost-cutting tips, step-by-step checklists, real-life case studies, startup advice, and business templates to small business owners and entrepreneurs.
  23. Forbes – One of the most trusted resources for the world’s business and investment leaders, providing them the uncompromising commentary, concise analysis, relevant tools and real-time reporting they need to succeed at work, profit from investing and have fun with the rewards of winning. Forbes.com includes real-time original reporting on business, technology, investing and lifestyle.
  24. Veteran Entrepreneur Portal -VA OSDBU quickly connects Veteran entrepreneurs to relevant ‘best-practices’ and information. Collectively, VEP offers direct access to the resources necessary to guide every step of entrepreneurship.
  25. Youngentrepreneur.com -Youngentrepreneur.com is one of the largest online forum communities for entrepreneurs worldwide. Learn and network with business professionals including venture capitalists, private investors, industry experts, inventors, and successful entrepreneurs.

Care to share a website or free resource that has provided small business help for your startup or existing business?

Ready to build your business credit? Become a member of my Business Credit Insiders Circle and gain access to a proven step-by-step business credit building system. A system that provides you access to vendor lines of credit, fleet cards, business credit cards with and without a PG, funding sources and lenders that report to all the major business credit bureaus. Submit your name and email below for details and receive a free business credit building audio seminar ($597 value) =>

To Your Success In Business and in Life!

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About the author

Marco CarbajoMarco Carbajo is a business credit expert, author, speaker, and founder of the Business Credit Insiders Circle. He is a business credit blogger for Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp, the SBA.gov Community, About.com and All Business.com. His articles and blog; Business Credit Blogger.com,  have been featured in ‘Fox Small Business’,’American Express Small Business’, ‘Business Week’, ‘The Washington Post’, ‘The New York Times’, ‘The San Francisco Tribune’,‘Alltop’, and ‘Entrepreneur Connect’.

Why Improving Your Personal Credit Score is Good for Business

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Improving Your Credit Score

 

Small business owners are becoming acutely aware of the importance of establishing business credit scores that are completely separate from their personal credit scores.

In addition, many have found this to be a viable solution to overcome personal credit challenges that prevent them from obtaining credit.

While strong company credit files and scores can open the doors for various types of financing business owners should continue to work on improving personal credit scores as well.

This can benefit their business in several ways:

First, with good credit scores you have more choices for obtaining funding simply from the fact that certain lenders require a personal credit check as part of their approval process.

Secondly, it strengthens the credit picture of your business overall as many lenders will consider your personal credit scores as a strong indicator to how you will handle your company’s financial obligations.

Finally, a potential business partner or investor will look at your personal credit scores as a factor for determining how financially responsible you are.

This alone should bring you to the conclusion that raising credit scores is not only good for your business today but it’s also vital to its long term growth as well.

Here are several strategies that you can apply for increasing your scores:

*Become an Authorized User – If your spouse has an existing aged credit card account then add yourself as an authorized user on that account. As an Authorized User you gain all the credit history of that particular account as if you had been on the account since it originally opened.

Keep in mind your credit history does not affect your spouse’s account, but any activity, negative or positive from the Main Account Holder (your spouse) will affect you the Authorized User.

*Pay More than the Minimum – Add $10.00 or more on top of your minimum monthly payment and make three payments a month with each payment received ten days apart from one another.

By making a payment higher than your minimum payment and increasing the frequency of payments triggers the positive action or activity on your account. The system will automatically report “More than Minimum Payment Made “to the credit agencies.

The frequency of your payment lets the creditor know you can afford MORE than your current credit line. This triggers two things.

  1. It triggers the internal system of the creditor to offer you a higher credit limit automatically in about 6 months. Credit Card companies do not like receiving more than one payment a month so since the best customer to a creditor is one that’s always in debt they will entice you to use more credit by increasing the limit.
  2. The credit scoring system (FICO) will calculate more positive action in one month rather than just once a month and give you points for every payment you do make.

While there are many more strategies for improving credit scores pay close attention to some of the more obvious ones. This includes maintaining a 30% debt to credit limit ratio on credit card accounts as well as correcting any errors or obsolete information you uncover on your reports.

Even though every business owner has a unique file with all types of factors that make up their scores these simple yet powerful strategies can give you that extra boost you need so your business can reap all the benefits.

Looking for ways to improve your credit score while obtaining business credit? Become a member of my Business Credit Insiders Circle and gain access to a proven step-by-step business credit building system. A system that provides you access to credit building services, vendor lines of credit, fleet cards, business credit cards with and without a PG, funding sources and lenders that report to all the major business credit bureaus. Submit your name and email below for details and receive a free audio seminar ($597 value) =>

Marco Carbajo is a business credit expert, author, speaker, and founder of the Business Credit Insiders Circle. A business credit solutions membership helping business owners build small business credit. He is a business credit blogger for AllBusiness.com, a subsidiary of Dun and Bradstreet and author of “Eight Steps to Ultimate Business Credit” and “How to Build Business Credit with No Personal Guarantee.” His articles and blogs have also been featured in American Express Small Business, Business Week, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Tribune, Scotsman Guide, Alltop, Entrepreneur Connect, and Active Rain. 

Smart Credit Cards are an Idea Whose Time Has Come

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Smart Credit Cards

 

It’s amazing to see how credit cards have evolved over the years and while the first ones were issued back in 1951 it wasn’t until the 1970’s that the magnetic stripe changed the face of financial cards.

But today who would have thought that the black or brown stripe you see on the back of your credit cards would come up against a far superior and smarter adversary.

Basically there are two ways a smart card is different from a magnetic stripe card: the amount of data that can be stored is much greater, and some smart cards can be reprogrammed to add, delete or rearrange information.

One of the companies making headway into bringing these ‘smart’ credit cards into the 21st century is a company called Dynamics. Just last week it won the People’s Choice Award at the DEMO conference held in Silicon Valley, California.

At the conference CEO; Jeffrey Mullen demonstrated the Dynamics Card 2.0 and how a cardholder can switch the card from one account to another with the press of a button.

So with this ‘smart’ card you can literally have your personal and business account accessible on one single credit card.

Another cool feature he showed was an added level of security that no other typical credit card or commercial credit card could possibly compete with.

The credit card numbers on the face of the card would be obscured so nobody could view them unless the cardholder entered a security code. How’s that for an extra level of protection?

Dynamics Card 2.0 includes an Electronic Stripe which is the world’s first fully card-programmable magnetic stripe that can be read at any existing point-of-sale (POS) magnetic stripe reader.

The device itself can change any bit of information on this programmable stripe at any given time. What’s also impressive is the fact that this new technology does not require any change to the 60 million magnetic stripe readers currently operating today.

So when can we expect these smart credit cards to hit the marketplace?

According to Mullen there are financial institutions that have these cards in the field for testing as we speak. So you can expect this new generation credit card to become available very soon.

To learn more about the Dynamics Card 2.0 you can watch Jeff Mullen’s DEMO presentation.

Looking to rebuild your business credit? Become a member of my Business Credit Insiders Circle and gain access to a proven step-by-step business credit building system. A system that provides you access to vendor lines of credit, fleet cards, business credit cards with and without a PG, funding sources and lenders that report to all the major business credit bureaus. Submit your name and email below for details and receive a free audio seminar ($597 value) =>

Marco Carbajo is a business credit expert, author, speaker, and founder of the Business Credit Insiders Circle. A business credit solutions membership helping business owners build small business credit. He is a business credit blogger for AllBusiness.com, a subsidiary of Dun and Bradstreet and author of “Eight Steps to Ultimate Business Credit” and “How to Build Business Credit with No Personal Guarantee.” His articles and blogs have also been featured in American Express Small Business, Business Week, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Tribune, Scotsman Guide, Alltop, Entrepreneur Connect, and Active Rain. 

Top 3 Reasons to Incorporate Your Business

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Incorporate Your Business

If you’re just starting a new business it can be tempting to decide on operating your business as a sole proprietorship simply because it’s one of the easiest structures to create because you don’t have to do anything to start one.

You just decide to run your business in your own personal name or through a fictitious name. You don’t even have to set up a separate bank account or maintain business records but I strongly suggest that you do.

This particular structure is also called a Schedule C business, because when you file your personal 1040 tax returns the income and expenses for your business are reported on a Schedule C that’s attached to it.

Even though the sole proprietorship is easy there is a great deal of risk that comes along with it. So before you decide to go the easy route let me share with you the three main reasons why you should consider incorporating your business.

Liability

Liability is major issue because in a sole proprietorship there’s no barrier between you and your business. If the business can’t pay its bills, creditors will look to you personally to make up the difference. If the business buys a vehicle, you buy that vehicle. If a client gets angry and sues the business, you get sued too! If you have employees and they get into trouble on the job, it’s your trouble, too. You and your business are inseparable. You’re one big target. Even though there’s no cost in selecting a sole proprietorship there’s no protection either.

Taxes

Anyone who’s ever collected a paycheck knows that you lose 6.2% of the first $106,800 of your gross salary on Social Security, and another 1.45% for Medicare (except Medicare has no cap – you pay on every dime you make.

But what you may not know is that employers are required to match those amounts, along with any state payroll tax amounts. So that’s a minimum of 15.3% right off the top of your income. In the right incorporated business structure you can minimize the hit and avoid payroll taxes on a good portion of that income. If you’re using a sole proprietorship or a general partnership you’re stuck.

Audit Risk

According to the IRS’s own statistics, sole proprietorships and general partnerships have a 1 in 7 chance of being audited, versus 1 in 50 or higher for incorporated businesses. The IRS figures that the more casually a business is operated, the more likely it is to have some mistakes in its record-keeping and improper deductions that can be denied or reduced.

Now that you know the main reasons why you should incorporate your business here are the four main types of structures to choose from:

According to entity specialist Megan Hughes of U.S. Tax Aid these are considered “safe” business structures because they offer protection for their owners. Each structure listed is treated as a separate being with its own tax registration with the IRS and state agencies. It files its own tax returns and it can also create its own credit files completely separate from that of its owners.

So before you decide to incorporate your business make sure to take the necessary steps in selecting the right structure that best fits the needs of your business from both a tax and asset protection standpoint.

If you’ve been doing business up to now without a business structure, both the IRS and your state government default your business into either a Sole Proprietorship or a General Partnership so consider incorporating your business and avoid putting your personal credit and assets at risk.

Ready to incorporate your business but have questions? Contact my entity specialist Megan Hughes at [email protected]. Be sure to let her know that Marco referred you!

Looking to start building business credit? Become a member of my Business Credit Insiders Circle and gain access to a proven step-by-step business credit building system. A system that provides you access to vendor lines of credit, fleet cards, business credit cards with and without a PG, funding sources and lenders that report to all the major business credit bureaus. Submit your name and email below for details and receive a free audio seminar ($597 value) =>About the author

Marco Carbajo is a business credit expert, author, speaker, and founder of the Business Credit Insiders Circle. A business credit builder system providing no personal guarantee business credit. He is a business credit blogger for AllBusiness.com, a subsidiary of Dun and Bradstreet and author of “Eight Steps to Ultimate Business Credit” and “How to Build Business Credit with No Personal Guarantee.” His articles and blogs have also been featured in American Express Small Business, Business Week, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Tribune, Scotsman Guide, Alltop, Entrepreneur Connect, and Active Rain.

Benefits of Forming an LLC for Your Small Business

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Forming an LLC

 

While all types of entity structures serve a specific purpose forming a Limited Liability Company (LLC) for a small business is growing in popularity. It’s a structure worth looking into from both a tax and asset protection standpoint.

LLCs are great for businesses that:

  • Are being used to invest in appreciating assets such as real estate, stocks, bonds or other securities
  • Want to have the maximum flexibility to distribute profits and losses amongst owners (called Members)
  • Anticipate that all of their Members will live in the United States

LLCs allow you to:

  • Have flow through taxation (i.e., the profits and losses flow through to the personal tax returns of the LLC’s Members), avoiding the double-taxation of C Corporations
  • Protect the assets of the LLC from lawsuit judgments against individual Members
  • Protect your family home and assets without losing the valuable IRS homeowner deduction
  • If set up properly, to allow for estate-planning and succession to your children on a tax-free basis through gifting

Instead of shareholders, a limited liability company (LLC) has members, who either operate the LLC directly or leave it to be managed by a separate group of Managers, or Managing Members.

Members and Managers are protected from liability in the same way that officers, directors and shareholders of corporations are which means that as long as they are acting legally and in the LLCs best interests, they will not be found liable for debts or other liabilities incurred by the LLC. The most that you can lose as a Member of an LLC is what you’ve put into it.

Most LLCs do not pay separate taxes and often don’t even file tax returns. Like an S Corporation, the net profits of an LLC are distributed to the Members in proportion to their individual ownership percentages. Members must then declare and pay taxes on their individual share of the LLC’s net income in the same way that S Corporation shareholders do.

LLCs are also ideal structures for holding real estate. They receive very favorable tax treatment with capital gains, which makes them very attractive business structures to not only hold real estate but other appreciating assets too. According to my good friend and entity specialist, Megan Hughes of U.S. Tax Aid, the three top reasons are protection, cost, and speed of creation.

LLCs also have a special legal protection in many states that corporations do not. If you are sued personally and own shares in a corporation, those shares can be seized and sold by a judgment creditor. That means you could lose control over all of the assets in that corporation. But an LLC, on the other hand, receives special legal protection in many states that prevents a creditor from seizing a Member’s ownership interests. The assets in that LLC stay safe.

Not all states offer this level of protection, so you might want to discuss things ahead of time with your legal advisor to see what the status of LLC law is in your state.

If you’ve been doing business up to now without a business structure, both the IRS and your state government default your business into either a Sole Proprietorship or a General Partnership so consider forming an LLC and avoid putting your personal credit and assets at risk.

Are you already incorporated and ready to build business credit? Become a member of my Business Credit Insiders Circle and gain access to a proven step-by-step business credit building system. A system that provides you access to vendor lines of credit, fleet cards, business credit cards with and without a PG, funding sources and lenders that report to all the major business credit bureaus. Submit your name and email below for details and receive a free audio seminar ($597 value) =>

Marco Carbajo is a business credit expert, author, speaker, and founder of the Business Credit Insiders Circle. A business credit solutions membership helping business owners build small business credit. He is a business credit blogger for AllBusiness.com, a subsidiary of Dun and Bradstreet and author of “Eight Steps to Ultimate Business Credit” and “How to Build Business Credit with No Personal Guarantee.” His articles and blogs have also been featured in American Express Small Business, Business Week, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Tribune, Scotsman Guide, Alltop, Entrepreneur Connect, and Active Rain. 

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