Do the words you use confuse or clarify? Innovation: Difference Engine: Pilgrim's progress. 10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Small-Business Attorney. When you hire an attorney, that professional will be handling some of your company's most sensitive legal issues so it's important to hire someone you feel comfortable working with. "A good attorney is also a counselor at law," says Ed Leach, a small-business attorney in Charlotte, N.C., and former district office attorney for the Small Business Administration. "When you have a relationship like that with somebody, it's got to be a trust relationship. " Here are 10 key questions to help you find an attorney who is just the right fit for your business: How much experience do you have with my industry?
Such issues as intellectual property, franchise agreements and service contracts require special knowledge and skills, says Leach. Find out if the attorneys you're screening have worked with a company similar to yours and if you can speak with any previous clients. What is your approach to conflict resolution? Will there be anyone else handling my work? How do you bill? Home. Health Care. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Affordable Care Act or ACA) enacted comprehensive health insurance reforms designed to ensure Americans have access to quality, affordable health insurance. Learn what the law means for small businesses and self-employed business owners. Affordable Care Act 101 Webinars for Small Business SBA and Small Business Majority have teamed up for a free webinar series, where small business owners can learn the basics of the Affordable Care Act and what it means for their business and employees.
Webinar content will generally be the same each week. Key Provisions of the Affordable Care Act The Affordable Care Act includes a variety of measures specifically for small businesses that help lower premium cost growth and increase access to quality, affordable health insurance. The Health Insurance Marketplace in Your State The Marketplace is a new way to find quality health coverage. Insurance plans in the Marketplace are offered by private companies.
S Could Benefit from New Research and Development Tax Credit. Entrepreneurs could benefit from a new research and development tax credit that has been proposed by bipartisan lawmakers in Congress. If it passes, the tax credit would bring serious savings to startups that spend money on innovation before they have turned a profit. Dubbed the Startup Innovation Credit Act of 2013, the bill would allow qualifying companies to claim the Research and Development Tax Credit against their employment taxes. Typically, a business deducts its research and development expenses from its taxable profits, which means the current R&D tax credit is useless for any startup that has not yet started making a profit. Under the proposed bill, if a startup is not yet making profit, it will still be able to reap a reward for investing in innovation by deducting its R&D spending from its employment spending. To qualify for the tax credit, a startup must be fewer than 5 years old and have less than $5 million in total revenues.
How Much Did That New Customer Cost You? In his book, The Fusion Marketing Bible, author Lon Safko focuses on ways to analyze your marketing efforts and leverage synergies across platforms to produce the best results. In this edited excerpt, Safko lays out the crucial steps to determining your plan's effectiveness: the cost of customer acquisition. Every business should look at its cost of customer acquisition twice a year and after each campaign. The old business adage goes, "You can't manage what you don't measure.
" Yet we fail to measure these costs all the time. We seldom take the time to see how effective our marketing was. A poor return on investment can have a variety of causes. Maybe your demographic has shifted, or maybe your prospects are getting their information from a new source. Here are some typical industry standard cost of customer acquisition values, the amount of money each company spends on average on marketing and advertising to acquire just one new customer: Congratulations. 10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Tax Accountant. When it's time to look for a tax accountant, you want one who not only can help save you money and avoid potential trouble with the IRS, but also can provide useful information for your business. "We tend to think of accountants as numbers people, but a good accountant does more than just figure the numbers," says Ed Lyon, co-founder of the American Institute for Certified Tax Coaches.
"A good accountant will communicate what the numbers mean to us. " So shop around, interview accountants and figure out which one is the best fit for you and your business. Here are 10 key questions to help you make the decision: 1. 2. 3. 4. Related: For Help at Tax Time, a Matchmaker for Accountants 5. 6. 7. Related: Your Startup's Top 3 Most Trusted Accounting Allies 8. 9. 10. Jane Porter is a freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. 5 Deadly Sins of SEO and Online Marketing. Internet marketing can be a minefield.
There's no official textbook on proper strategy or tactics. It's up to business owners, and the marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) professionals they might hire, to figure out what works and what doesn't. Since becoming an SEO consultant several years ago, I've stumbled over many of these proverbial mines, and so have the clients I've worked with. Not every mistake is a terrible one, though some should have been avoided. Here are five fatal online marketing and SEO mistakes that you should steer clear of: Related: Beyond Basic SEO: When Hiring a Consultant Makes Sense Recent Articles From Jayson DeMers 1. One of the important changes that occurred as a result of the Panda update was the promotion of websites in Google's search results with lots of strong, quality content. When planning your onsite content strategy, create quality content that adds lasting value. 2. Related: Why Buying Backlinks Is Bad for SEO 3. 4. 5. 3 Mistakes You Are Making Trying to Grow Your Company.
Success of Crowdfunding Puts Pressure on Entrepreneurs. Leah Nash for The New York Times Kickstarter’s booth at the XOXO tech conference. Kickstarter has helped about 30,000 projects raise money. Leah Nash for The New York Times The XOXO tech conference ended Sunday. The challenge of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter was a popular topic at the event. But last week Apple announced a redesigned iPhone that is not compatible with the dock — and because of manufacturing delays, some of the project’s original backers were still waiting to receive theirs.
“I’m just hoping to get mine before the iPhone 6 ships at this point,” one backer wrote on Kickstarter. Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are letting designers and other creative people connect with audiences who want to finance their dreams, and they are becoming increasingly popular. But for the creators of these projects, getting the money is sometimes the easy part.
Much of the time this works out. Mr. 25 Things I Learned At iDate Australia - Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business. OPW - Nov 9 - The Australian Internet Dating Conference, covering the Asia Pacific just finished up. Here's a few things I learned. - There are 1.1 million monthly idaters in Australia.- Oasis and RSVP and POF are the idating leaders.- 5% of the 2100 scam victims reported to ACCC lost $100k+ last year.- Operators say scammer safety warnings don't deter users.- The iPad is the 'happy' device, used for entertainment and non-work apps. - Consider using YouTube TrueView, Homepage and First Watch ads.- Use Google Adwords Social Extensions and you'll see 5-10% CTR uplift.- Use 'Ripples' on Google+ to Identify influencers.- Use piktochart.com for quickly developing infographics.- When planning content, use Google Trends and Linkedin Today to see what's making news.- Use Spezify.com to identify content partners and search multiple media platforms and Hittail.com for getting content.- For Influencer marketing: Traackr, Klout, Marketing Cloud, Twitalyzer, Followerwonk.