February 25, 2008

Protecting Your Self from Auction Scams

If you are selling or buying on Ebay or other auction sites, it is important to protect you or your business from auction scams. Here are some tips on some of the most prevalent auction scams.

There are many auction scams that people try to use in order to scam you or your business out of money. If you are a member of an auction site or a payment processor such as Paypal, beware of spoof emails. Spoof emails are emails are emails that look identical to emails sent by Ebay and Paypal and that ask you for financial or personal information. A rule of thumb is to never click on any links in an email and never give out any personal or financial information to an email. If you think the email is legit, visit the site to see if there is a message for you or contact the site directly.

If you are trying to buy an item on Ebay and the item is sold out, sometimes people try to scam you by contacting you and offering you the option of purchasing the exact item. The catch is that they won't put up an auction for the item and won't take Paypal. They ask you to directly send the money via Western Union. Don't fall for this scam. There is no way to protect your money via Western Union. If you would like to bid on an item, ask them to post an auction for it and only accept to pay with a money order, cashiers check or Paypal. So follow the above tips to protect yourself from auction scams.

February 20, 2008

Business Cards: The Face of Your Business

Business cards are a very popular way of providing your contact information to others. Business cards are used for a variety of reasons including promoting your service or advertising your business to others and are an extremely important tool. In our busy world, it is often inconvenient to write down someone's information. Being able to simply exchange cards with all that information is very quick and easy. It allows the accurate information to be accessed over and over again. How many times have you wrote down a phone number and put it away? The next time you pulled it out, you couldn't remember what the number was for. Business cards eliminate that from happening.

What should you put on the card?
It is important to make sure all your important contact information is on your business card. Make sure you include your name, business name, address, phone numbers, email address, and web page if you have one. It is also recommended to include your title or type of business.

It is very unprofessional to cross out information on your business card. It is important to make sure everything is correct before distributing them. You are better off paying to have new cards printed when your address or phone number changes than to give out the card with the new information hand written on it. This seems to be very unprofessional, and it is not likely the individuals receiving them will take you seriously.

Make it grab your prospective customers attention
With so many other business cards out there, how do you get yours to stand out and grab people's attention? The best way is to create a unique business card. Most are on stock white paper. Select a different background color for your business card. Scarlet, red, and pink make nice background colors that boldly stand out from the rest.

If you have a company slogan or logo, include them on your business card. In addition to making the card look professional - the receiver of your business card will remember the slogan or logo longer than anything else on the card. It can jog their memory to go take a look at your business card again down the road.

Who to give your card to
Be selective and creative about where you distribute your business cards. The best way to promote your business is to hand out your business card. This allows the receiver to put a face with the card. It creates a feeling of realness attached to the business card. Avoid leaving piles of business cards on the counters in bars and restaurants. They often won't get used properly and in some cases, it might give those who see it a negative image of your business practices.

People often throw out old business cards. To prevent yours from getting worn out and then thrown out, have them laminated. While it does cost a little bit more, it will ensure your card will hold up to the elements and it is less likely the receiver will throw it away.

Business cards offer individuals a great way to network and promote their product or service. Being creative in your card design, including complete contact information, and personally distributing them will all help ensure that handing out your business card will result in generating new business for you.

February 18, 2008

Common Tax Deductions

One of the ways that can help offset expensive costs to small businesses is common tax deductions. The government realizes that small business can help the economy grow and are an extremely important foundation to this country. In order to make sure that new businesses form and innovation continues, the government entitles entrepreneurs common tax deductions that can help take the bite out of lots of expenses. Here are some tips on common tax deductions.

Make sure that when you start a small business you talk to a tax accountant or verse yourself in what is considered a common tax deduction for small businesses. Many people think that there are many deductions that actually do not exist, causing them to spend thousands of dollars with no hope of deducting the cost on their taxes.

One of the many common tax deductions are legitimate business expenses. If you have costs that are paid out in order to do business such as special software, leasing a delivery truck or office computers, you can deduct these costs off of your taxes

Another common tax deduction for small business is to deduct a percentage of your home mortgage or rent due to a home office. Be careful on this tax deduction. Lots of times the IRS will flag you, making sure that you are using that space solely for business purposes.

If you drive to a sales meeting or to visit customers solely for business, you can also deduct mileage on your car. Usually the rate is around 44.5 cents per mile, but it does change frequently. If you are looking for common tax deductions for your small business, take a look at the above tips.

February 11, 2008

Sell CD's and DVD's Online


Looking for a great auction site opportunity, sell CD's and DVD's online. Many people love to collect and buy their favorite music CD or movie on DVD and some of these people usually shop online to buy them. Here are a few tips on selling CD's and DVD's online.

One of the great reasons to sell CD's and DVD's online is because there are so many distributors that are willing to sell you great media for low prices. You can even buy the hottest movies for a great price, if you buy them from a wholesale or distributor.

For many merchants that sell CD's and DVD's, they choose to sell niche movies or niche media products. For instance, you might want to only sell Western movies or foreign films. While not as popular as blockbuster movies, niche categories aren't as competitive and you might find them more profitable for certain titles.

Many CD and DVD merchants also like to sell to certain niche audiences; you might market and sell religious music and video to certain niche markets or foreign films to certain language speaking audiences. So if you are looking for a great product to sell, choose CD's and DVDs.

February 7, 2008

Get the Most Out of Affiliate Marketing

If you are developing web sites for profit, then it is important that you understand the benefits of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing has been popular for years, but has exploded in popularity just recently because it is easier than ever to sell as well as customers to buy affiliate products on the web. Here are some tips on the getting the most out of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to market and sell a product. A person or company that creates a product to sell usually doesn't have the resources to reach millions and millions of web surfers so he offers the product to affiliates to sell to their web visitors for a cut in the profits. An affiliate is a web developer that creates web sites for profit. Most affiliates sign up to sell a product, post the product on their web site and if a customer purchases the product, the web developer will make a cut of the profit- usually from 5 to 75%. Most purchases are usually tracked by a special affiliate link or cookie to tell the creator of the product who sold the product and how much commission must be paid.

Many web developers make their livelihood by selling other people's products. The best part about affiliate marketing for web developers is that no product needs to be held in inventory or shipped out. Everything is handled by the seller, the affiliate web developer is paid only for making the sale or lead. So if you want to open up a new revenue stream, look to get the most out of affiliate marketing.