Sunday, April 05, 2009

65 Websites for Business Owners

The internet is a virtual library for small business information. Sometimes it is hard to find the things that are worth reading just by a quick search on Google, but today we have found a great list of websites that all business owners should have in their bookmarks.

Whether you are selling the best weight loss pill, or the best beer ever made, there are plenty of things that can help you win in your market. Information that others have discovered, and now share is indespensible to that goal. Click here for a list of 65 Business Websites that will help you along yout journey to the top of your market.

4 Great Start Up Resources

In the beginning it is hard enough just to bring all the ideas together to get rolling. Having some helpful resources to make it easier is obviously a must. Doesn't matter if you are opening a chicken franchise, or a pawn shop, there are people that understand business out there willing to help.

Most of these resources provide counseling to get started. Some of them are even free such as SCORE, which is a A nonprofit that provides free online and in-person mentoring via a national counseling force of 11,800 working and retired business owners and executives in nearly 400 chapters.

These resources will giveyou the opportunity to gain legal advice, one-on-one couseling, funding reserch, and many other important helping hands.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

How to Raise $1 Million In One Year

If you think you can get a loan from a bank righ tnow then by all mean have at it. Good luck as well, BTW.

A much more interesting idea I saw today was that you can earn up to $1 Million in Las Vegas by doing something that has nothing to do with the black jack table, or any other casino venture.

Available to any business in the world, the Nevada state registered offering (NSRO) allows companies to legally register and distribute company stock shares to Nevada residents and qualified visitors. Small businesses are allowed to offer 1 million shares at $1 per share over a year's time, making it possible to raise up to $1 million in just a few months.

Sound slike a dream come true eh? Well Steve Trussell is still excited by his chances to raise up to $1 million this year to fund his growth plan. HE headed to Vegas and is hoping to find a way to raise money with out having to get a loan from a bank who are holding out money like an appetite suppressant makes you hold out on food.

"It's less expensive than doing bank financing," says Ed Apenbrink, who retired last year as Nevada's director of securities registration and licensing. "It's more of a sure thing in the sense that banks don't seem to be lending these days."

"Nevada is a business-friendly state; it's the new Delaware for corporations," Trussell says. "The business climate there makes it a good place to incorporate and raise money." Trussell is still in the fundraising stage of the offering and hopes to raise between $900,000 and $1 million in Nevada this year by self-distributing his stock.

But not every NSRO company is looking for big bucks: While in office, Apenbrink saw numerous offerings for companies planning to raise as little as $10,000 or $20,000.

"A business owner might have a contract to hang drywall in several hundred houses in one subdivision, and he might want to raise $30,000 to buy equipment," he says. "There's no stated minimum, but there is a practical minimum. Sometimes companies just can't do it if they're only raising a small amount because of the costs of compliance."

Those costs include legal fees and accounting fees, but no more than 20 percent of funds raised can go to sales and upfront costs.

VERY interesting.