Successful Blog

Credit Reports Matter for Businesses and Consumers

by

credit-history-represents-debit-card-and-bankcard-100297005Whether you run a business or are just your everyday consumer, you more than likely know how important your credit history is, especially when it comes to meeting your financial needs.

For the small business owner, one’s credit score is very important in order to solidify yourself as being financially sound, most notably in the event you need to acquire a small business loan.

For the typical consumer, a solid credit score rings important when trying to get a new or used car loan, a loan to buy a home and much more.

With that in mind, do you truly know whether your credit report is thumbs up or thumbs down?

Obtaining a Loan or Credit Card

Typically the top reason you want a positive credit score is when it comes time to try and obtain a loan. The same holds true in looking for your first or an additional credit card.

Whether you get your information from CreditSesame.com or another such provider, your score will go a long ways in determining whether you get the funds you seek.

For starters, do you know where you stand when it comes to your credit score?

While the number range can fluctuate to a degree, the following scores mean:

  • 630 or below (Bad credit) – This range means you likely have missed some credit card payments, you have no credit card history, or you at some point filed for bankruptcy (personal reasons such as high medical bills and/or a small business that has gone under). One of the down sides to numbers in this range is that you will have to deal with larger interest rates and fees moving forward;
  • 630 to 689 (Average credit) – This range puts you in with millions of other Americans. While not the worst, your credit could be better if you did away with a sizable portion of bad debt hanging around. Numbers in this range can make it difficult to get a loan;
  • 690 to 719 (Good credit) – This range allows you to be eligible for a variety of different credit cards, with lenders also viewing you as a good risk in most cases;
  • 720 to 850 (Excellent credit) – This range is as good as it gets for consumers. Many will have the opportunity to receive cards that offer great rewards.

Check Your Report in Detail

When you get a copy of your credit report, make sure you go over it with a fine tooth comb.

Look for any inaccuracies, especially given today’s world of identity theft.

If you find something amiss, reach out immediately to the fraud departments of those you do business with and have your account placed under review, making sure no money can be withdrawn until the matter is cleared up. You should also have a security hold placed on your credit report.

Whether for personal or professional use (running a business etc.), your credit report and your history of handling credit will go a long way in determining your financial future.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Dave Thomas writes for a variety of websites on topics such as marketing and small business.

Simple Ways to Make Your E-Newsletter More User Friendly

by

By Shaun Chatman

Your newsletter is an important way to get relevant information across to your customer base, clients, or readers. But all of these people will be viewing it on different devices. Use these tips to simplify your newsletter’s content and formatting, to enhance readability and keep your content user-friendly.

Format in a Single Column

You may be tempted to use fancy design work in your newsletter, but the best way to go is a simple format that puts all your information into a single column. Go for a column 500 to 600 pixels wide, and be sure to take into account special formatting for mobile devices. You won’t be able to keep formatting completely uniform over all devices, but you can take many steps to ensure that it doesn’t fall apart and become unreadable on certain devices. Simplicity is your best friend in these instances. Choose a few design elements (like text formatting and social media linking) that make the content easier to consume and then stick with those and ignore the impulse to go over the top.

Break Content into Headings

Your newsletter probably contains multiple points you want to communicate to your readers. Rather than writing it in the style of a letter with each paragraph flowing into the next, create a new heading every time you come to a new newsletter item. Make that heading obvious and separated from the rest of the content. By doing this, readers who are skimming through on a device with a smaller screen will know where to stop and start reading.

Use Images Sparingly

One or two interesting images will enhance the content of your newsletter, but overloading your newsletter with images is a surefire way to make it more difficult to read on multiple devices. Images, by default, require different formatting than text does, so no matter how careful you are, the more formatting you add to your newsletter, the more likely it is something will go wrong. Also, images take longer to load, especially on hand held devices like phones or tablets that may be connected to a 4G network rather than wi-fi.

Streamline Your Content

While skimming through paragraphs of content may be easy on a laptop screen, if someone is reading from his or her phone, it takes longer to scroll through a lot of text. Even with headings, keep your newsletter’s content relevant and brief. If you’re wondering about types of content apt for your newsletter, go for content that your readers can consume in bite-sized chunks. Tips and tricks for your customers, a short letter from the CEO of your company, or lists of significant blog posts or news articles are great places to start.

Remember, it’s not just about formatting. Good content also keeps your newsletter fresh and interesting for your readers. Each newsletter will look different, but by keeping it simple and following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating a newsletter that works on as many devices as possible.

Author’s Bio:Shaun Chatman is a seasoned writer featured on many authority blogs. Writing is his passion, and he spends most of his waking hours writing about everything from Tech to Education. He lives in Dunedin, Fl.

A spoonful of sugar for your next blog post

by

In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game

And ev’ry task you undertake
Becomes a piece of cake
A lark! A spree! It’s very clear to see that

A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way ~Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins

I’m not saying that your blog content is medicine, but if it’s useful information for your audience, there’s no harm in adding a bit of sugar to make it go down easily.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Is Starting a Small Business a Health Insurance Headache?

by

 

multi-ethnic-team-during-meeting-10066408If you’ve been thinking about turning your hobby into a small business or even buying an existing business, you may be hesitant after you start looking into the health insurance aspects of hiring employees.

Thanks to Obamacare, more small businesses are now required to provide health insurance plans.

That’s all well and good for owners who have the resources necessary to fund such plans, but it bodes ominous for startups that are bootstrapping their business.

In fact, the sole requirement for a health plan can deter new businesses from starting up in the first place.

Don’t worry.

Starting a small business doesn’t have to be a health insurance headache.

There are ways around the Obamacare mandate, just as there are ways to comply with the law in ways that won’t negatively impact your business finances.

Here are some effective ways to get your small business up and running – and keep it running – while dealing with health insurance requirements:

How to Get Around the Requirement

If you have zero funds available for a health insurance plan, yet still need employees to operate the day-to-day tasks of your business, hire independent contractors. Independent contractors are in business for themselves.

As such, they are responsible for their own taxes and health insurance.

They work for you on what’s called a “work for hire” basis. You assign them tasks based on their expertise and specialties, and they invoice you for work that is satisfactorily completed.

Independent contractors don’t technically work for you, and are not your employees. Thus, you are not liable to provide health insurance for them.

The management of your independent contractors needs to be systemized so that in itself doesn’t become an organizational headache.

If this is an avenue you’re interested in pursuing, consider hiring a project manager and investing in some kind of online collaborative software to ensure projects get done on time and under budget.

Keep in mind that if you want or expect your business to grow, eventually you’ll need to move to a traditional employee model.

At that time, you will need to implement a health insurance plan for them, and you’ll need to save in order to manage that scenario.

How to Work With the Requirement

The fact is, there are so many complicated requirements within the Obamacare mandate that it can be compared to the complexity of the overall tax law in general.

As the following article shows, a small business owner, will be hard pressed to research and understand the basic key health insurance terms, let alone come up with a health plan by themselves that satisfies the vast legal requirements.

Your best course of action is to outsource your health insurance plan management to a professional company that specializes in working with small businesses like yours.

Otherwise, the vast amount of your time and the time of your admin team will be spent trying to navigate the minefield of employee health insurance.

Whatever you spend on the health plan management company is tax deductible and the return on investment will prove substantial, even in the short term.

As a small business owner, how are you dealing with the new health insurance requirements?

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Kate Supino writes extensively about best business practices.

How To Get Out Of The Habit Of Concealing Flaws

by

By Lindsey Tolino

I’ve had acne since 7th grade. It’s been 15 years now. By the second year of my struggle with acne, I learned to conceal it. I have bought countless bottles of concealer in 14 years. I have learned how to conceal my flaws well.

Makeup

We’re taught to conceal. Not to admit our flaws, but to bury them under a mask. This is true of our businesses too. I’ve seen businesses try to conceal their flaws with social media campaigns, investing in more marketing and pouring energy into public relations, all trying to change public perception without resolving the underlying problems.

When you live with something for 15 years, you hardly even notice it. It becomes a part of life. But, every once and a while, the acne is painful.

Then I notice it.

I think about addressing it, maybe trying to resolve it. But once the pain subsides, I mostly go back to living with it.

Is it like this in your business?

If I stopped wearing makeup to conceal my acne, then I’d have to face the reality that I have it and should do something to resolve it. This is what so many businesses need to do. We need to stop concealing our flaws. We need to stop blinding ourselves to the fact that employees are unhappy, that sales are lower than expected and that our businesses aren’t as healthy as we’d hoped.

But I can’t just stop wearing concealer and say “I love this face of mine, pimples and all.” Because I don’t love it. I don’t want to have broken, unhealthy skin.

We can’t just stop concealing our business flaws and say “I love this business, high turnover and all.” Because if we’re honest, we don’t love it.

We don’t want to have broken, unhealthy businesses.

Our businesses aren’t perfect, but we can’t simply cover it with concealer and expect it to get better. We can’t be content to blindly love them in all their imperfection. We need to care that things aren’t healthy. We need to resolve core issues to make them healthier.

We need to do this if we want to have sustainable, profitable businesses.

So how do we resolve issues in our businesses instead of trying to conceal them?

1. Acknowledge that our businesses have flaws that are making them unhealthy.

This is often presented in a variety of symptoms such as high turnover, high customer complaints or a low number of repeat customers.

2. Investigate the flaws.

At this point, you have to resist the desire to simply treat the symptoms, because ultimately you want to cure the disease. You have to resist the urge to hurriedly pour money into marketing, to hire better salesman or to increase employee salaries. You have to investigate to make sure you understand the underlying cause of the symptoms. This may mean inviting honest conversations with your employees, scrutinizing finances and digging into your own thought process.

3. Decide how much you want to invest in resolving flaws in order to create a sustainable business.

This is an important step, not only to plan out what you’re able to invest, but also to intentionally move forward in resolving issues. When you’ve decided to set money and time aside to resolve an issue, it makes it easier to execute the plan.

4. Work to resolve the issue with what you decided to invest.

Don’t get discouraged in the process. Be persistent and do what you can with what you have.

5. Evaluate and repeat as needed.

Your consistent hard work to resolve issues at their core will benefit your business. When you stop trying to conceal flaws and invest in resolving core issues, you put your business on a healthier, more sustainable path.

Image info: Royalty-free image from http://www.freeimages.com/photo/909988.

Author’s Bio: Lindsey Tolino is a young creative who helps make businesses better. She serves business owners with her words at ToBusinessOwners.com. Follow her on Twitter @LindseyTolino or connect with her on Google+.