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 …