DBA,or doing business as, is a legal term that is used when your business is operating under a fictitious business name instead of the owner’s name. For example, “The Gap” is a fictitious business name because the name of the business does not include the names of the store owners.

Because it is impossible to know who is actually responsible for the business from a fictitious business name, the government requires you to file a DBA statement in the interests of consumer protection. It’s different in every state, but in the state of California, not only do you have to file a statement with the county, but you also have to publish your fictitious business name in a local newspaper for a set period of time as well. Why does California force you to do this? It’s because publishing your DBA in the newspaper cements your …

DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP for short, is essentially a web directory much like Yahoo’s except that it is maintained by a community of volunteer editors. What makes ODP special is that the search engines, especially Google, place a lot of weight on your website if you manage to make it onto the directory. In the case of Google, this usually results in a higher page rank and an immediate ticket out of the Google sandbox.

Of course, DMOZ wouldn’t carry so much weight if it was easy to get in. The problem with DMOZ is that because it’s run by volunteers, it can take forever to make it on the directory if the person in charge of your category doesn’t review sites often. The fact that it takes forever to get in coupled with the fact that you can’t really …

With Google being the number one search engine in the world, there’s always a lot of emphasis on optimizing your website or online store to rank high in the search results.  One of the metrics that Google uses is something they have coined as page rank.  Page rank is the way Google ranks pages based on the relative importance of a particular website. Your page rank is directly related to the quality of webpages that directly link to your site.

Because of this, many people are absolutely obsessed with page rank and go out of their way to establish a high number of links to their website.   Our online store routinely gets requests for reciprocal linking.  The question of the day is is this worth the effort?
Getting Random Reciprocal Linking Will Get You Nowhere
In the early days, it was just a matter of getting any links to your website.  Over …

In the course of running your store, you will inevitably have to deal with many types of different vendors. Some vendors won’t give you the time of day whereas some vendors will be practically begging for your business. Some vendors will be reliable whereas some vendors will be flaky but inexpensive.
Every vendor that you will deal with will have its own set of priorities and perspectives, many of which will differ from your own. Because you may not always see eye to eye, it is important that you deal with your vendors in such a way that your goals and their goals become aligned.
Make Your Expectations Clear
Many problems that stores face with their vendors stem from misunderstandings and differing expectations. Whenever we deal with any new vendor, we always present all of our needs and expectations up front. For example, here’s a general checklist of …

With every store, you’ll inevitably attract a certain class of customers that will only shop in your bargain bin. These people will skip all of your nicer merchandise and go straight for the cheapest stuff that you carry in your store. Often times, these people will also ask for a further discount as well on top of the already heavily reduced price.

We had one of these customers purchase the cheapest item in our store for $6.50 the other week. Quite frankly, the set of handkerchiefs he chose were kind of ugly. They were not selling well and we had marked them down 3 times already because we just wanted to clear them out of our store. All of our clearance items are for final sale only.

Anyways, this fellow received the handkerchiefs in the mail and called us up because his wife hated …

Unless you are selling products that you invented yourself, chances are that you’ll have direct competitors in your space. If you don’t think you have any, then chances are your market is so small that you’re probably not seeing much demand for your products anyways. It’s important to keep track of your competition on a regular basis to see how your store sizes up. It’s also important to check the web periodically to see if new competitors have popped up. With our store, we perform thorough web searches on our key product lines at least once a quarter.

Since businesses are living entities, you’ll find that your competitors are constantly evolving. If you’re not making adjustments as well, a small shift in the market could put your store out of business. We look for very specific things when analyzing our competitors as outlined below.

New Products
The …

Designing a clean, good looking website is not enough to guarantee a successful online store. While it certainly helps to have a great looking site, you are destined to fail unless you find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition. Below are a few ways to do just that.

Provide Good Content
Good product descriptions or reviews regarding your products instill confidence in the buyer that you know what you are selling. If you provide helpful and accurate information, psychologically a customer will feel obligated to make their purchase from you (even if your prices are slightly higher).

For example, in our online store (we run a wedding linens store), we have free dedicated pages on how to make art and crafts with the products that we sell. Customers feel like they are already getting something for free even if they don’t end up buying anything. At …

This particular customer from the east coast purchased some wedding handkerchiefs from our online store about 10 days in advance and had them delivered directly to her wedding venue. The one mistake she made however was that she addressed the package to her maid of honor instead of either herself or the wedding planner. As a result, the people at the wedding venue had no idea who the handkerchiefs belonged to and the package got lost at the wedding venue itself.

So the day of the wedding, we received a bunch of calls. Since, we are on the west coast and there’s a 3 hour time difference between here and the east coast, we got a series of back to back calls starting at 5am. Our normal office hours are 10-5pm and I always pipe our business calls to my cell phone when no one is in …

Every now and then, we get a customer that drives us totally insane. While it isn’t fun to deal with these customers, working with these difficult people make for great stories to tell our friends. This particular customer that I’m writing about was a very headstrong lady that gave us a really hard time about our products.

Customer: “Yes, I’m interested in your linen towels. Where are they from?”

Me: “Many of our products are from Asia. These particular towels are made in China.”

Customer: “Hmm, China huh? Do you happen to know whether these towels were created from exploited Chinese laborers?”

I was taken aback by the question and needed to gather myself a bit before answering.

Me: “No ma’am, I’m not aware of any illegal labor practices that were used in the creation of these towels.”

Customer: “Did you know that [insert random percentage here] of Chinese laborers are …

In order to deduct your home office, your business must follow the following rules.

Your home must be your principal place of business. This means is that you conduct all of your business related activities in your home and you have no other set locations where you do business
You must have a special area sectioned off for your business. This might be a separate room or the garage. Anywhere that you store inventory or products counts as well.
You must actually conduct business at home and use the dedicated space solely for business. This one sounds like a no brainer, but this is to prevent people from setting up a fake office and taking it as a deduction. What this also means is that you should remove the bed and dressers from the room as well.

If you meet the above rules, the way you handle the deduction depends …

The biggest advantage for small businesses is a little Internal Revenue Code known as Section 179. Section 179 allows small businesses to deduct up to 108k of assets completely every year. What this means is that you can deduct up to 108k of business equipment, computers, furniture etc… without having to worry about depreciation or other tax calculations. Of course, section 179 comes with a few requirements that must be met.
Purchases must be used mostly for business
The official rule is that the asset that you are deducting must be used for at 50% or more for business. Let’s say for example that you are trying to write off a computer in its entirety for a given tax year. You should make sure that you are using this computer more for business more than pleasure and be able to demonstrate this if you ever get …

Deducting entertainment and meals is often a gray area that people take advantage of. My general rule of thumb is that as long as you don’t abuse the tax code, you should be fine. I use what I call the “bullshit” code. If I can tell my wife with a straight face that a particular expense was used for business purposes, and my wife doesn’t think its BS, its usually good enough for me.
Officially though, anything you expense must obey the following rules.

The entertainment expense must be reasonable and accepted in your field of business – For example, if I’m selling vegetarian food over the internet, it most likely wouldn’t fly if I took the employees out for a steak dinner. In any case, you get the point.
The purpose of the entertainment expense must be to bring in revenue – For example, if you are hosting …

Ever heard your spouse complain that you never go on enough vacations? Using your business as a tax shelter is a great way to fund your next vacation without breaking the bank. With proper planning, you can get your business to pay for and write off most of your trip!
For starters, the trip’s primary purpose must be for business. As long as your destination is not completely random, chances are you can find a way to do business there. Below are some general guidelines on what and how you can deduct during your travels. Keep in mind that you can only deduct expenses on those days in which you are actually conducting business.

Lodging is can be deducted in its entirety
Food can be deducted 50%
Transportation can be deducted 100%
Laundry and Mobile Office related fees can be deducted 100%

There are 2 ways of deducting your …

One of the key reasons for starting your own business is that it can provide an effective tax shelter. Many of the expenses that you incur during day to day operations can be deducted directly from your taxable income. Since there are many misconceptions regarding what can and can not be deducted, I thought that I would go over some of the common items that small businesses can write off.
The Tax Code
The tax code is a little bit vague which is why many people get themselves into trouble. A deductible business expense is defined as any expense that is ordinary and necessary for the business and not extravagant. The expense must also be primarily used for business and not for personal reasons. While it is up to you to interpret the above statement, its best to always error on being conservative. For example, …

Deducting your vehicle as a business expense is a bit tricky but well worth it, especially if you’re putting a lot of miles on your car. The number one rule of thumb when expensing your vehicle is to keep detailed records. Make sure you use a trip or mileage log and write down each and every mile that you are using the car for business. This sounds like a major pain, but its not too bad if you keep a log book and pen in your car at all times. Whenever you drive somewhere, just write down your starting and ending odometer value for all business related travel.
There are 2 main ways to deduct your car, the mileage method or the actual expense method.
The Mileage Method
This is the simplest way to deduct the use of your car. Simply take the number of miles that …

Even if you sell quality products and deliver your products in a timely manner, you’re still bound to have to deal with irate customers at some point in time. Sometimes they are mad because you are completely in the wrong but most of the time, they are mad due to something beyond your control. Here’s 4 tips to remember the next time you’re in a bad situation with a customer
Keep Your Cool, Listen and Empathize
Your customer might cuss you out over the phone or they might make ridiculous demands. No matter what, you should never lose your cool or be sarcastic in any way. In practice, this is easier said than done and if you feel like you’re going to lose it, hand the phone to someone else.

We had one customer who was absolutely livid that her order arrived one day late (she paid for …

Selecting a credit card merchant and gateway is not inherently a difficult thing to do. But if this is your first online store, the evaluation process can be a bit daunting due to the sheer multitude of options to choose from. To make things easier, you should always select a credit card merchant that is supported by your shopping cart out of the box.

For example, below is a list of merchants that are supported by OSCommerce out of the box

Authorize.net
iPayment
2Checkout
PsiGate
SecPay

Paypal Website Payments Pro is also a popular credit card processing vendor which is supported by a number of popular shopping carts as well.
Description of Potential Fees
The main reason it is hard to evaluate the various credit card vendors is due to the various fees that you have to sort through. I’ve tried to list the different kind of fees that you could encounter below along with …

Many people who open an online store naturally assume that drop shipping their items is the best way to go. After all, you don’t have to deal with the hassle of carrying inventory and the product companies themselves are responsible for getting your orders to their end destination. While drop shipping, when employed successfully, can result in a low effort, low risk business model, many online businesses fail to consider the following disadvantages.
Customer Support
Because the delivery of your product is out of your hands, you may run into customer support issues when your customer does not receive their item on time. When you stock your own items, you can always make sure that your products will be delivered in a timely manner.

When you drop ship, handling customer returns can be a huge hassle as well. Even though your customers are actually buying their products from the …