Every now and then, a reader offers to write a guest post in which I have absolutely no clue about the topic at all. In this case, Matthew Bruns of SuretyBonds.com is here to tell us about Surety Bonds. Most small online businesses probably do not require the use of a surety bond but it’s good to understand what they are and what they are used for.

Starting a business is hard work.

Make your life easier — spend a few minutes ensuring you understand the world of surety bonds. These key risk mitigation tools have become an integral part of the business world, from construction and finance to car dealerships and travel agents.

Bonds can make the difference between a thriving venture and a flailing one.

The Basics on Surety Bonds
Surety bonds are often mistaken for insurance, but they’re actually more like a form of credit. They’re basically an agreement between …

One of the main points I emphasize at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com is that you really need to be your own boss or start your own side business in order to build wealth at the fastest possible rate. Sure, you can increase your nest egg by simply saving your money and spending less, but realize that being frugal can only take you so far on your path to wealth. Our day job salaries simply aren’t enough.

There are many ways to make money outside of having a regular day job and thanks to the web and the internet, we can all find ways to have a side business without risking a lot of money. Every now and then, it’s also useful to take a step back and look at some other people’s perspectives on entrepreneurship. Here’s what the blogosphere is saying about starting your own business and making …

First off, I just wanted to thank everyone for taking part in this contest. I got far more entries than I was expecting and the feedback was extremely helpful in determining which direction to take with my future blog entries.

Photo By Vetustense Photorogue

Of the six topics that I presented, the order of popularity from highest to lowest was as follows

Personal stories about obstacles we face running our business
How to guides with respect to building an online store
Motivational articles focusing on entrepreneurship
Marketing an online store
How to increase productivity
Ecommerce strategies to boost sales

Thank you for all of your responses. The lucky winner of this contest is….Sophia of www.ellies-whole-grains.com. Congratulations Sophia! I will be contacting you shortly for your address information and have your phone shipped out immediately.
How The Winner Was Chosen
Picking the winner wasn’t easy but it was definitely fun. I hadn’t used my perl skills …

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for supporting my blog these past 1.5 years. I really appreciate your comments and your continued readership. I also wanted to announce that MyWifeQuitHerJob.com has partnered with HP to give away a free HP iPaq Glisten Smartphone to one lucky reader! The odds of winning this phone are actually much higher than you think. Read on to find out more about the phone and how to win.
HP iPaq Glisten Smartphone Features

The HP iPAQ Glisten is a stylish, 3G smartphone designed for on-the-go professionals who need to stay connected to the people and information they care about.

Here are some of the Glisten’s features:

A quad-band world phone, featuring Windows Mobile 6.5
Built-in Wi-Fi and GPS functionality
3.1 megapixel digital camera
5 hours of talk time and 15 hours standby battery life
Full QWERTY keyboard for fast, easy and …

I recently spent some time working with Adsense on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com so I thought I’d share with you some of the optimizations I’ve made with Google ads on this blog. As many of you may have noticed, this blog makes part of its revenues from Adsense ads which can be found directly above and below the content. But depending on how you arrived at this site, you may not have noticed the ads at all.

Because the income I make from Adsense ad clicks is directly related to the conversion rate of the people seeing the ads, it is to my benefit to only show these ads to interested parties. If too many ad impressions are shown but do not lead to conversions, Google will reduce the payout per click for my entire site. This phenomenon is know as “smart pricing”. In this case of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, the …

This is a guest post written by Joel Ohman. Joel is a Certified Financial Planner™ and the founder of 5 web startup companies. Among the 1000+ websites that he owns, his latest project is www.creditcardchaser.com where he helps people proactively search and compare different credit card offers.

One of the biggest challenges facing many small business owners is the issue of how to manage a company that is bursting at the seams because of rapid growth. Many entrepreneurs love what they do and work hard to turn their “baby” of a business idea into a money making business. However, if an entrepreneur does not prepare themselves properly then they may just find that their baby of a business has turned into a growth spurting teenager complete with hormonal issues and a desire to take your car out for a spin and party with their friends until the wee …

This is a guest post written by Mike Piper. Mike is the author of Taxes Made Simple. He also blogs at The Oblivious Investor where he shares his investment knowledge online for free.

You know the old cliche “knowledge is power”? It’s hard to think of anywhere it’s more applicable than at the intersection of small business and taxation.

But who wants to learn about taxes? *Shudder*

The good news is that you don’t have to be an expert. Here are four ways that even a little tax knowledge can help save you money.
1. Make Sure You Qualify for the Home Office Deduction
The rules for claiming the home office deduction are strict, but the deduction can be huge, so you don’t want to miss out if at all possible. If you qualify, you can deduct a portion of your home repairs, homeowner’s insurance, utilities, rent, or just about any other cost related …

I can’t believe that our second child is due in just under a month! My wife is looking pretty ripe at this point and realistically speaking, the baby could arrive at any time between now and then. Incidentally, our new house also closes escrow on the day after my wife is supposed to deliver. I know it’s poor timing, but it could not be helped. When you find the right house at a good price, you need to seize the opportunity.

Speaking of seizing the opportunity, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about friends and acquaintances who have contacted me in the past about starting their own business. And as far as I’m aware, very few of them have actually decided to pull the trigger.

Every now and then, would be entrepreneurs need a little push. So I’d like to dedicate this post to my friends …

Thanks for sharing your insight!! Your story has inspired my husband and I. I am interested in starting my own online store, however neither my husband or I are from the business background, I am wondering if either you or your wife is from a business or marketing background before she quitted her full time job? For our situation, will you recommend us to take some business related classes? Thanks

My wife has a background in finance. She graduated with a bachelors in economics and worked as a financial analyst at various firms such as Agilent and Intuit. I have a masters degree in electrical engineering.

I wouldn’t say that my wife and I have ideal backgrounds for the business world. Both of us are definitely not marketers and outside of a few years spent studying entrepreneurship, I don’t possess any business experience prior to opening our online wedding …

This past week was especially busy and profitable for our online store. Sales of handkerchiefs and other personalized items were abnormally high for reasons that I can’t really explain.

Perhaps one reason for the increased sales is that I finally got around to posting a link to our store’s recent inclusion in Brides Magazine on the sidebar. Yep, our online store was mentioned in the July/August issue of Brides magazine and it took me 2 entire months to make it stand out on our online store. Pretty dumb I know, but there have been many higher priority items on my plate as of late.

For one thing, the amount of inventory that we’ve been storing has been rapidly increasing and we’ve added a ton of new products to the store in the past month alone. At some point, we will hit the tipping point and will need to …

Lately, I’ve getting a bunch of emails asking me how much time my wife and I actually spend running the store and what our day to day operations are like. All I can really say is that every week is completely different. While on the surface you would think that all we do is pack and ship orders, there is a good amount of customer interaction and other activities that occur behind the scenes.

Photo by Alaskan Dude

As with everything in life, running our store has its share of ups and downs. And while the downs inevitably suck, the variability and unpredictable aspects of running the business are things that I really enjoy. In the interests of trying something different with this blog, I thought I’d occasionally devote a post or so to discuss the highs and lows of running our business. This past week definitely …

Lately, I’ve seen a ton of bad press about various retailers using sleazy sales tactics to boost profits. Because of the recession, businesses are under so much pressure to make a profit that they are resorting to deception and underhanded methods to make a sale. For example, I was completely shocked last week when I read that a very large and well known electronics retailer was accused of purposely denying price match requests and refusing to sell computers without service contracts.

The other day my wife and I were shopping for cell phones only to be bombarded by hidden fees tacked on at the register. While the display price for the phone we wanted to purchase was extremely attractive, it apparently didn’t include a bunch of extra costs that really pissed me off.

Photo By Bonked Producer

What annoyed me wasn’t the money per se, but how the fees were …

If you are on Facebook, you’ve probably seen a viral message being passed around in regards to posting 25 random facts about yourself.

Instead of pretending that I find this practice stupid and childish, I think it’s a great way to get to know some of your friends and acquaintances.

Even though I always write my articles from experience, I find that I reveal very little about my actual personality on this blog. Here’s a chance to get to know me a little bit better.

25 Random Facts You Don’t Know About Me

When I was in elementary school, I had this one buck tooth which grew practically 90 degrees sideways out of my mouth. As a joke, my friends used to give me tin cans to open with my teeth. Thank goodness for braces
In 6th grade, I was a member of honors chorus which was a singing group composed of …

In a previous post entitled 5 crucial subjects that schools don’t cover that you should at home, I ended the article with a paragraph describing how I was going to prepare my daughter for dating when she grows up. Below is an excerpt from the article.

On a more serious note, I’m kind of resigned to the fact that my daughter will eventually start dating with or without my consent. The best way to prepare her for dating is to take her on dates myself. Once or twice a year, I plan on taking her out for night on the town and showing her how a gentleman is supposed to treat a lady. Hopefully, she’ll come to expect this sort of royal treatment whenever she goes out with a boy and will never settle for anything less.

While the majority of readers liked the idea, I did have one reader who …

The million dollar question is always how to get more people to visit your website or online store. In general, there is no way to get traffic quickly unless you have a big budget for advertising. The best thing that you can do, is to lay a solid foundation and your traffic will gradually increase over time. Beware of sites or people that promise you millions of hits overnight. These are all scams. Here are 10 things that you can do to get more traffic to your store in the long run.

Apply to Get Into DMOZ
In a nutshell DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP for short, is a web directory maintained by a community of volunteer editors. It’s special because the search engines, especially Google, place a lot of weight on your website if you manage to make it onto the …

I used to think that C corporations were meant only for large successful companies. When I think of C Corps, I think of big names like Microsoft, Google and IBM and definitely not a small business. In reality, it’s pretty easy to become a c corporation.

Anyone can file for C corporation status, but typically small businesses shy away from C corps until they are solidly profitable. Because the C corporation is probably the most complicated corporate structure that you can possibly have, there are a lot of questions that you should ask yourself before you decide to become one.

Corporate Structure

Legal Structure Overview
Sole Proprietorship
Limited Liability Company
S Corporation
C Corporation

Are You Ready For the Paperwork?
C corporations require the most paperwork of all of the corporate structures. There are complicated tax rules involved and legal and accounting costs as well. In short, a C corp is probably the most …

Once you’ve customized the look and feel of your store and have populated it with products, the next step is to make sure that customers can purchase products securely from your website. In general, customers will not buy anything from your store unless they see a padlock next to your URL when they are entering in sensitive information such as credit cards and passwords during checkout. They will not see the padlock on their browser unless you have an SSL certificate installed on your website.
What is SSL?
SSL stands for secure sockets layer and is responsible for encrypting and providing secure communications on the internet. Many people have the misconception that the information encrypted by SSL remains encrypted even after its been fully transmitted to the website. SSL only encrypts the data during transmission only!
What this means is that the website accepting these secure communications is …

While everyone has different ways to motivate themselves, here are 3 unique ways to give yourself that little extra kick to jumpstart your business.
Look at Your Tax Return
Go ahead and dig up your last years tax return and paste it up on the wall directly in front of your desk. Make sure you highlight your adjusted gross income, your taxable income and your total amount of taxes paid. Now take a calculator and take the amount of taxes paid and divide that by your adjusted gross income. Let’s call this number the “Getting Screwed” percentage or GSP for short. Go ahead and write the GSP clearly on the wall in front of you. Focus on this number because, this is the percentage of your hard earned money that is going straight to the government. If you don’t have any deductions, over …