1. Google Local. The 800 pound gorilla of everything Internet. With a listing here,  your company will show up on local searches on the web, and on cell phones. It also helps to ensure that when someone types your business name into Google, they will get accurate information.
2. Bing Local Listing Center. Bing is currently  a chihuahua nipping at Google’s heels. But, you should never underestimate  Microsoft with billions of dollars to spend on marketing their new search product.
3. Yahoo Local. While not the behemoth it was 10 years ago, Yahoo still has significant reach — especially with all those yahoo mail users.
4. Yelp. Yelp is not a search engine per se, its a group of listings with comments and ratings. If Yelp covers your area, and users are commenting on your industry and/or business, you need to claim your listing respond to comments.

Not only are these directories available on your potential customers’ desktops, they are also on your customer’s mobile phones.  Making sure you are listed gives you a better chance of being found in the home and on the road.

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What do you think about local search ?

Toilet Paper Entrepreneur ‡

Since its after Christmas, and you are probably flush with a bit of holiday cash, and you are ready to start on a new business endeavor…how about about spending some of that money on a book? The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur is small book (175 pages) that cover a lot of ground about starting a business.

Ok, before I start, why might you ask would I review a business book on a tech site?  Two reason: first, most computer books are boring, you probably wouldn’t want to read them even if they were ‘good’. Second, this book is peppered with tips about how to use tech to help run your business on a shoestring budget.

The book’s primary focus is small ‘bootstrapped’ start-ups. If you are  planning a $5MM venture round, while some of the techniques in the book could be useful, you are probably not the focus of this book. On the other hand, if you’ve got an idea for a small business, or you are running small business this book may be for you.

The first two sections of the book cover motivation, and creating a vision of where you want your business to go, while the second part deals with a more nuts and bolts approach to running your business.  If you are just getting started running your business, or trying to decide where you want to go with a business,  this book could be very helpfull to you. Be warned, the author, Mike Michalowicz uses some crude language, so it’s not for the under 16 set, but its very easy to read, and he is able explain concepts well.

Here is the tech tie in, throughout the book there are gray boxes with TPE TIPS, a good number of them deal with Internet tools to help you run your business. Its like a getting an extra bonus in your book.

Whether you get the book or not, the author also has a blog that’s worth reading.

Buy this book at Amazon‡

To the Families of those who have died defending our country: Thank you for your sacrifice, it is appreciated and valued.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Winston Churchill

Now that I’ve gotten everything set up I’m planning to convert my business documents to Google docs. I also plan to start creating websites for each of my clients major projects. I hope that will make communication easier.

By the way, Google apps standard edition is free. With it you get up to 50 users, shared calendars, shared contacts, websites sites, and docs. Since it’s free, you do get ads in the email client.

Because of it’s functionality, and value Google apps is a great tool for very small businesses. But, before you take the plunge, read my post on the the ‘Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ of Cloud Computing

1. Web Address – I’m using Solutions4Tech.com– A site I registered with GoDaddy.com‡
2. Company Name — I’m using the web address
3. Inventory — Initially, that’s my closet.
4. Regulatory Issues — These are already setup through Solutions4Stuff,LLC.
   -Business License
   -Sales Tax
   -Business Organization
5. Payments — (My Favorite Part) – I’m going to use Paypal for now because I have an existing account. The down-side is  cusotmers will have to leave my site to pay, and it may be confusing. (Even with integration PayPal usulay requires you go to their site)  Luckily I sususpect my customers are used to buying stuff with paypal and won’t be too discouraged.
6. Shipping — I’m using my UPS Online account which integrates with Acutiva Commerce very well.– I’m happy about this

Lucily since my last post, Auctiva fixed most of the issues that I had, and now I have my own Terms and Conditions and I’ve put them in the header instead of on the front page.

“Fun”  Stuff that’s left to do:

1. Entering more inventory –Entering  Inventory is very tedious,  you need pictures, and descriptions — but at least it pays off in the end
2. Entering sales tax info — The state of Georgia has more than 70 different sales tax jurisdictions (mostly counties) . Auctiva lets me setup tax by zip code, but I still have to set them each up and each county doesn’t necessarily follow a zip code perfectly.  Georgia is not the most  Internet business friendly state.

I have 10 items with an estimated average  $12.50 final sales price, and I’m guessing it will take, on average, 3 weeks to sell them.  (I’m not counting PayPal fees, since you have to have some type of payment method) I plan to sell my items with the default 7 day auction style and a ‘Buy-It-Now’ button. Here’s what I would have to pay eBay:

The cost of a single listing is $0.35 for a standard 7 day listing plus a  $.10 for ‘Buy-It-Now’ (fee for a price over $10.00) for a total per listing of cost  $0.45.  I have 10 listings so my per week listing cost is 10 x $0.45 for a weekly listing cost of  $4.50.

Muliply my weekly listing cost times 3 to cover my three week sales average and my total cost is now $13.50 for my 10 items over 3 weeks just to list (doesn’t matter whether they sell or not)

Once you sell an item, you pay eBay an additional percentage. In the case of my items the eBay fee is 8.75% (the percentage gets lower the higher the price)  So my total final value cost is 8.75% x $12.50 x 10 (items) or $10.94

The total cost to sell  my 10 items is  $24.44 (13.50+10.94). Thats 19.6% of sales.

That quite a bit to give up on a sale (in addition to the cost of processing the payment -about 5%).

But what does eBay bring to the table for all that money and effort?  Millions of potential buyers, who know that when they need to find something,  they just go to eBay– and this is a heck of an advantage. There is no way I can possibly get that kind of presence for about $25.00. But then again all I have to do is sell my stuff, not the millions of items listed on eBay.

My challenge is to see if I can sell my stuff for less without eBay. Next time,  I’ll let you know what platform I have chosen to use for my sales and why (which just may surprise you).

1. Use a firewall (built in to windows) make sure its turned on.

2. Install antivirus/antispyware software, use it, and  and keep it updated..

3. Keep your system updated. (Turn on automatic updates)

4. Secure your wireless network.

Resources

Microsoft Security Information

Secure your Wireless Network Please!

Worst Twitter Post Ever: Ketchum Exec Insults Fedex Client on Mini-Blog