business resources

There are certain perks for being a discipline and well-organised business owner. One of the perks is on credit cards financing for business purposes.

As you might already aware, credit cards can make or break your business, as well as your personal finance.

Using your credit cards under strict management will give you the opportunity of non-interest bearing loan.

Credit card financing - free source of business funding

Credit cards ‘offer’ you a 30-day period loan - meaning, if you pay your credit card bill on time, your ‘borrowed’ money do not bear any interest. This means, you have to pay in full for your credit card bill, and avoid paying minimal payment at all cost.

What kind of credit cards offer is for you?

0 APR credit card is the common offer by credit card issuers that you should look into when applying for an account - you pay no interest, fees, and other related credit card charges for a certain period of time.

The purpose of credit card issuers offering 0 APR program, to me, is to encourage consumers to use credit card balance regularly, with the hope that consumers will keep ‘borrowing’ when the offer expires.

[click to continue...]

If you are dealing with multiple business units, you always could use a help or two from others.

The basic rule of thumbs is not to be a control freak - that is, having all your business under your sole control.

Why?

The best idea of entrepreneurship is to delegate, delegate and delegate. This way, you preserve your most valuable resource - time - and use it either to build more businesses or to have it yourself - a privilege most people don’t have.

Business delegation and business process outsourcing (BPO) can be achieved through my favourite outsourcing method - hiring a virtual assistance.

Virtual assistant help you build a real business, not another job

The idea of starting a business is to make it grow, becoming a real business, not another job.

Job?

Yes - many business owners are sole proprietors. They operate their own one-person company.

If the owner is having problems, so is the business. If the owner stop working, the business stop running, too. If this is your case, then you are having a job, camouflage as a business.

Virtual assistant can ‘redeem’ you from your job-business.

A virtual assistant (VA), hence the name, is your independent assistant, helping you with various job functions and work, such as office administration work, personal assistance, data entry, bookkeeping, and even website design.

The benefit of BPO to virtual assistant

[click to continue...]

Here is another business resource recommendation for you - online yellow pages.

I know - it’s not Web 2.0, but it’s evolving well, and as many web directories are, well, for websites, you have no choice other than the online yellow pages if you want to find city-specific information.

In my case, I always look for city-specific information that is useful for my business trips, as well as leisure.

Online yellow pages offer portability and ease of use - forget those bulky books with pages coloured in yellow in them :)

I was an old fan of YellowPages.com, but I never used the site anymore - I see the listings, but not recommendations.

I stumbled on several alternatives of online yellow pages a while ago, searching for a better online yellow pages. From several alternatives on the Net, I always use DexKnows.com

City specific info

I use DexKnows.com particularly to look for city specific recommendations. To better describe, let’s say I want to seek info on Orlando, Florida - the place I always eager to visit.

From the DexKnows.com city-specific pages, you can see plenty of resources, such as local businesses and, of course, people.

[click to continue...]

The best thing happening to entrepreneurs is unlimited options.

Being an entrepreneur makes you break traditional boundaries and go with the best options and opportunities offered on the deal table.

In business financing, as an entrepreneur, you are often offered (and doctrinised) by the common financing options - using bank loans, borrowing from friends and family, searching for venture capital, factoring, and using credit cards.

But what if your previous bankruptcy is haunting you? What if you don’t have collaterals to take bank loan because you are in bootstrapping mode? What if you are having a mediocre credit score?

Some would suggest you to take a job and get into the workforce again. Some would suggest you to stop trying to be an entrepreneur at all. Some would even suggest you to borrow from loan shark!

If you are in such position and bothered by those suggestion, then consider other, non traditional, financing options.

Personal short term loan

You might have heard about payday loan, cash advance and other alternative route to financing. If you are considering those options, please also consider personal short term loan.

Personal short term loans, in simple, are personal loans that don’t require paperwork and long approval process, like the traditional bank loans, and do have a lower APR than payday loan, along with a convenient payment options.

Short term loans, or installment loans, allow you to pay off your loan in installment fashion until your balance is paid off. This way, your loan payment and due date is predictable.

[click to continue...]

Although financing your business with credit cards is a two-edged sword - it may sounds like a good idea or a risky business financing - many people turn to credit cards to finance their business.

One major advantage why people use credit cards financing is due to the ‘right’ combination of moderately high interest rate and the amount of credit card limit with no-collateral attached.

Why people use credit cards to fund their business

No matter how risky credit cards-based business is, there are actually success stories of people using credit cards as their leverage.

Why people would use credit cards to fund the business? Most of the cases, they avoid bank loans, because they need collaterals and strict (and complex) credit application approvals.

Why people would not turn to their friend and family for borrowing money? Many says that borrowing from friends and family is more risky than using a credit cards, as it involves risking the relationship.

Real life case studies

My fellow businessman once told me that his friend start a business and seek for partnership to join the business, with a requirement that the partner should have credit cards - the higher limit, the better. Soon he formed an LLC, with 6 or 7 partners and a startup ‘investment’ value of $75,000 in credit cards fund. The last time I heard about him, his small business is doing great.

One more case - I have a relative who finance some of his businesses (Yes - he has multiple small businesses) with credit cards. Although his business involves high volume transactions with low profit margins, he insisted to use credit cards, mainly because of the point rewards - he said that, the reward itself is a ‘nice’ addition to the business’ profit.

The last case is very interesting to me - let’s dig deeper on my relative business plan.

The use of reward credit cards as your business cash flow account

[click to continue...]

Despite all the negativities around payday loan, it is proven to be one of the methods that may help you fund your online business startup.

What is a payday loan?

Payday loan or payday advance shares a similar concept to cash advances - a short term loan granted to borrower that should be repaid in full, plus a relatively high interest, when the borrower receive his/her next paycheck.

Typically a payday loan amount ranges between $100 and $500 and is due in less than one month period.

The use of payday loans

Payday loan is one of the strong candidates to finance your small online startup that requires less than $500 in investment fund.

The main benefit of payday loans, especially for those that are offered online, is fast turnaround time, easy to apply and low-credit-score-friendly. The main drawback, of course, is the high interest rate, typically around 400% APR.

One example of online payday loans provider is Payday One, offering state licensed cash advances, based and licensed in the US.

In my opinion, payday loan is best fit for a part-time entrepreneur, full-time employee with poor credit score (due to a previous bankruptcy, for example) entering the online business market, as Internet business are typically low in investment.

How to start an online business with payday loan: a possible scenario

[click to continue...]

There are practically numerous methods to fund your business, short term.

Short term business loans are needed if your business is in need of immediate cash. Some examples would be purchasing equipment, store remodeling, and even paying off debt.

The most common way to fund such short term business financing need is bank loans and borrowing from relatives.

Bank loans involves collateral, or if not, a form of personal guarantee. With the today’s tightening credit control practiced by banks, It would be difficult to obtain a loan these days.

Borrowing from relatives might be your best bet. However, in my opinion, borrowing from relatives is a more difficult and riskier than a bank loan. How come? Simple - you put your relationship at stake, and a single problem with your payback will put a strain in you relationship that could last for a long time.

Alternative funding: business cash advance

If you run a small business with a good amount of your business transaction are credit card transaction, business cash advance could be the solution for you, especially when bank loans and relatives funding are difficult to obtain for some reasons.

Business cash advance is basically a form of lending, which lenders pay borrowers a fixed amount of cash now, in exchange for a fixed percentage of the borrower’s future credit card transaction value until the contract is fulfilled.

Just like any other small business loans, there are pro and cons with this kind of business funding.

Pros of business cash advance

[click to continue...]

Small business owners are always looking for resources on money and finance. I do, too.

In my case, I look for money and finance info in authority sites, feeds and newsletters, news portals, and social bookmarking sites.

Authority site on money

The first thing you always want to know is which products and services are the most appropriate for your situation, at the most affordable rates.

If you go online to seek for such information, you always want to find sites that compare services and products.

I just found a resource - it is UK-based, but very much useful for a more general audience - Money.co.uk.

Money.co.uk is one of the resources on money that offer you wealth of information on money and finance, as well as comparisons on credit card, mortgage, insurance, and many more.

In my opinion, it is a financial authority site with wealth of information, more in quality and quantity than finance information sites I often visit before.

I particularly enjoy and find useful information on credit card quotes, as well as insurance quotes comparison.

You can also compare mortgages and if you don’t want to compare anything at all, you may find the money news and tips section helpful.

Finance feeds and newsletters

I will most likely subscribe to exceptional websites or blogs that offer RSS feed subscriptions or newsletters. If a site offer them both, I usually subscribe to both.

I can access wealth of information from a ‘dashboard’ - in this case, Google Reader, then visit an article or two that interest me the most.

[click to continue...]

As a small business, you always have to look for solutions that either help you make more money or save you money.

One of the items in the overhead department that can be minimised for cost cutting purposes is your business stationery and promotional material printing.

Business stationery refers to business cards, letterheads, and envelopes, while promotional material refers to brochures, posters, flyers, stickers and other items important for your marketing campaign.

Business stationery and promotional material printing: Choices, choices

When deciding for your business printing needs, you have several options to take and to consider:

• Print yourself, the DIY style
  It seems to be a good solution for cost cutting. However you have to carefully calculate the cost - from my experience, DIY your printing is actually cost you more money per item.
• Outsource to print shops
  This is the most conventional way to have a professional result. Printing cost is the main thing to consider if you decide to outsource to print shops - it can be quite expensive four you, especially if you are still in business startup phase.
• Outsource to online printing
  Online printing does offer what print shops offer, at a fraction of print shops’ printing cost.

My take - online printing

[click to continue...]