It used to be that a small business owner typically had only a few choices to manage his accounting and bookkeeping functions, and most were costly, time intensive, and difficult for a layman to understand. In addition, accounting systems had to be loaded onto a computer’s hard drive, which had the effect of creating one person in the company responsible for all of the functions.

Today, online accounting is quickly becoming the choice of many small business owners. Here are a few reasons why:

Mobility

Because your records aren’t stored on a computer’s hard drive, the accounting program can be accessed from anywhere you can get an Internet connection. It is great to have access to your quoting and invoicing functions right where you are meeting customers. Imagine talking with a customer about a project and creating the quote or invoice right there on the spot.

You are also able to keep track of your key business numbers when you are traveling overnight or working off site from your main location. This allows you to keep up to date and ready for anything at all times.

Multiple Users

Because the new web based online accounting systems aren’t limited to a single computer unit, it is much less expensive or cumbersome to add multiple users to the system. For many of the new online accounting systems, it is just a matter of assigning a user name and password and the level of access you want someone to have.

Yes, that is right. It is possible with a web based accounting system to limit access to only those areas a user needs to see. For example, you can give your sales force access to quoting and invoicing, but not other areas of the business’s records. Business owners can even give access to their CPA, saving the time and hassle it has traditionally taken to transfer accounting records for consolidation.

Security

While at first glance it may appear that a web based online accounting system is less secure than a static system saved in a hard drive, this is not the case. While it is always good to beware of the security of your records with some of the free online tools, commercial systems are very safe for data security. And, you are able to avoid the risks with using a system loaded onto your computer, such as hard disk failure, computer viruses, or even theft of the computer.

Online web based accounting is the future of small business accounting, so be on the lookout for a system that will support your needs now and in the future. There are a number of free options available, but you will probably find they are limited in application and will not grow with your company’s needs. You will also want a system that you can get reporting and financial management analysis tools any time you want.

Everybody’s looking for an edge today, and many small business owners are looking at the Law of Attraction to see if their business can profit from its principles.

The law of attraction, simply stated, says that whatever we do, think and say will result in a change in our circumstances.  That change can be positive or negative, depending on whether what we are doing, thinking and saying is positive or negative.

Many people avidly apply the Law of Attraction for big and lofty goals, but repeatedly ignore that the Law is at work in the small every day things as well.  This oversight can often sabotage all other efforts for positive change by creating unintended counteracting negatives.

For example, many small business owners are experiencing negative Law of Attraction in the area of their recordkeeping

Most small business owners hate accounting.  They generally put their recordkeeping off until they have no choice, then rush through it just to get it done.

However, under the Law of Attraction, sloppy bookkeeping indicates you don’t expect abundant sales as your books and records are not ready for them.  By keeping your accounting up to date, the message you send is that you are ready for when the sales start to pour in.  The positive Law of Attraction is at work, and working together with the bigger goals you have set your chances of success are greatly increased.

What are some positive ways you can keep up with accounting without spending time you don’t have?

Your top priority is to find an accounting system that you understand and is simple to master.  Online, or web based systems are best, as you can access your records anywhere with Internet access.  You also have less worry over losing data due to hard disc failure, viruses or theft.

Next, make sure that you have plenty of telephone support, rather than chat room or email support only.  Your time is too valuable to have to wait hours or even days to resolve an accounting issue with virtual support.

Finally, take the time to learn what your online accounting program can do and use the business reports and resources to monitor your sales and profitability.  A good accounting program will include analytical reports as well as historical, so you can track leads, conversions, and more.

Accounting will never be fun, but the motivation to keep up with your recordkeeping lies in the message it sends out through the Law of attraction.  To paraphrase from a favorite movie, when your books are ready, the sales will come.

My most challenging part of copywriting to sell something online has always been the task of writing benefit statements. And, second to the headline, the benefits are what sell people on your product, service, idea or even political opinion.

In comparison, the other parts of copywriting that people might find challenging, such as stories, headlines, and great price offers were easy. But creating a benefits list drove me crazy; that is until I learned how to come up with one or more benefits every minute.

You might remember from any basic sales course that people do not care about features nearly as much as they want to know the benefits. Knowing the truth to that, I started to take a closer look at what benefits really are. They’re action items, right? You “save” money or “stop” wasting time, for example. So, why not start out all benefit statements with action verbs? Here’s the process:

1. Get a long list of alphabetized action verbs.

2. Put the list on your desk or computer screen where you can see the entire list.

3. Begin with the first verb in your list that begins with the letter A and read the verb out loud and make a sentence out of it that describes one benefit of your product.

As an example, “Accelerate” is the first verb on my list.

So, I might say that my product helps to “accelerate” fingernail growth.

4. Write as many benefits as you can and don’t stop! You’ll weed out the benefits later that don’t have as much punch as you thought. Don’t worry about duplicates right now either. Just let your brain consider your product and freely create the benefits as they come to you.

5. Now is the time that you will prioritize your list from most important to least.

This process has worked for me not only to create great benefits lists, but also for writing articles for my website like “35 Reasons Why a Blog is Better than a Traditional Web Site for Your Business,” or “50 Ways to Kill a Perfectly Good Seminar”.

Use my list of verbs or create your own and start creating your killer benefit statements in just 20 minutes. Most of the time, you won’t need more than a great list of 20 benefits.

Marty Dickinson is the president of HereNextYear, Inc., a all in one Internet marketing company in business for over 15 years. His specialty is Internet marketing solutions for small business owners, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to find out about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.

Summer is right around the corner and that means time on the hands of students with a summer break. In a tight economy with lots of older folks competing for traditional summer jobs, this might be the perfect opportunity to try something a little different. In the past manual labor or food service were the main options, today, a student only needs to look inside his or her own experiences to find ways to make money on the Internet that older adults can’t invade.

Videographer

Yes, there are many video experts already making a living on the Internet. But, with video the hottest thing on the web, an enterprising student can find a lot of small business owners willing to hire them over the expensive video production companies to find a low cost way to add video to their site, You Tube or their blog. Even better, offer a package that can do all three. A student’s current mobile device could create good enough quality videos for most purposes.

Social Networking and List Building

Many students have practically grown up with MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, and know all the cool ways people can use those resources. Time to expand that experience to the business world and help all those small business people who know they “should” be involved, but don’t know how to get started or have time to learn what to do.

Offer a social media set up and training package where you do the setup and then offer training and support. You could even tie into the package newsletter and list building service and email promotions into the mix.

Affiliate or Referral Marketing

Promoting products or services for others is an ideal way for a student to earn extra income over the summer and even beyond. There are the traditional affiliate products, offered through Clickbank.com, CommissionJunction.com and other affiliate marketing portals. With these, you typically earn a large percentage of any sale that is made through your affiliate link. Many people make a great living at this type of marketing, but beware that the competition is fierce and there is a lot to get started.

Another option that has less competition is to offer to send referrals to qualified service providers. This may take a little more time up front to find vendors you trust that are willing to work with you, but after that your job is simply to refer people to the vendors for the services or products they need, and when they buy, you earn.

Sure, times are rough and it will be hard for students to find traditional jobs this summer. But opportunity abounds for those that are willing to think and work outside the box. The added bonus is that the experience will build what can possibly become a lifetime of entrepreneurship that you just can’t get working at the local fast foo place.

“Don’t quit,” has become a phrase used so often that it has almost lost its meaning.  But with our world as much in flux as it is today, it is critical for a small business owner to develop the necessary skills to persevere even when things get off track.

There’s a lot of talk today about how impossible success is to achieve.  There is definitely a negative emphasis among people that makes it easy to believe you can’t achieve what you want.  But remember the story of the tortoise and the hare.  Although it may take a little longer, if you stick with it, you can make things happen this year for your business.

The big question then becomes:  how?  The strategies Napoleon Hill outlines in the classic “Think and Grow Rich” work as well today as when he wrote them.  Based on those principles, it really comes down to a three step process:

Set a Goal

First, set your goal.  Not just any goal, but a goal that you want so badly that you are willing to move heaven and earth for as long as it takes to achieve it.  This is what Napoleon Hill aptly calls a “burning desire.”

This should indicate that you can’t set out to achieve too many objectives at once.  You need to focus on those that you are truly passionate about, and keep that focus going until you have won.

Set a Plan

Next, you need to set a plan.  In other words, now that you know what you want, you have to ask yourself what you are willing to do to get it.

Be honest with yourself and don’t include anything in your plan that will cause you to procrastinate, or even worse, quit.    Expect that your plan will challenge you, but have fun with it too.  You don’t have to suffer on the road to success.

Take Action

The final step is to get started.  That part is easy the first few days.  The harder part is to continue to take action day after day even when you aren’t seeing immediate results.  But you have to follow through on that plan you set with some action every day.

Faith is believing you can achieve your goals without seeing any tangible proof that you are right.  What will set you apart from those that try this or that and quit is your ability to follow through on the above three steps until you succeed.

There’s no argument that Internet marketing is an important tool for the success of your small business. What has gotten lost in the message is how exactly to get started in Internet marketing without losing your shirt with one of those “we do it all for you” Internet marketing companies.

The problem with completely outsourcing your Internet marketing is that the key to all sales is personal connection, even in Internet marketing. But because there is no face to face, the connection becomes grayer and grayer the farther you get from your potential customer. You, not an outsourced company, have the passion, knowledge and desire to make your business a success.

True, you can use outsourced help to make the Internet process easier to handle once the base has been laid, but you, as the founder and owner of your small business cannot completely distance yourself with the process. Don’t worry, getting started with building the Internet marketing foundation is easy, by following these simple steps:

Have Fun

The truth is, most people use the Internet for enjoyment, and the best way to genuinely reach people through the Internet is to have fun as well. So relax and get to know some of the great options available to you. Yes, sometimes it will feel like you are wasting your time and you’ll never “make any money” out of your efforts. But Internet marketing is all about being able to see beyond that mentality and how the tools out there will help you as you start to promote your products and services.

Social Networking

The foundation of Internet marketing begins with social networking. This shouldn’t be surprising if you have had any success with your small business off-line, as the concept is no different. If you like, respect and trust someone, you are more likely to do business with them.

So your first step is to get used to talking with people through online resources such as Twitter and Facebook. These resources are ways to meet people online and converse with them, very much like a 24 hour networking event. Most have search tools and formed groups that will help you to hone in on the same folks you would seek out in an off line situation.

Forums

Once you have become comfortable with the chatty social networking resources, consider participating in forums. You can find many forums right in your line of expertise by searching Google or other search engine.

With forums, your goal is less “social” and more to establish the credibility of an expert. People go to forums to ask questions about problems or concerns they are having and you can answer them. Practice until you feel proficient answering people’s questions about your area of expertise.

Your goal with all of these steps is to do research you will use to build your credibility on the Internet. When you find out the questions that people are asking over and over again about your particular area of expertise, you will know the information you should cover in your website and through more advanced Internet marketing techniques.

Nothing described here will make you a million dollars overnight. But, it is the true way real small business owners are increasing their business and sales every day through the Internet, and you can get started today, without spending a dime. These simple and enjoyable steps are the foundation for all Internet marketing and are committed to the concept that makes money online and off: providing value to people so they trust, like and respect you and want to do business with you.

Planning a website that will achieve the goals you have set for your business is probably the most difficult part of the entire Internet marketing process. Yet, most people completely bypass this important step or, worse, just turn the whole project over to a website designer to handle.

By strategically planning your new website or an update of your existing website, you will ensure you have a marketing piece that showcases your business to its best, allows you to be in control of ongoing content updates, and achieves the goals you have set for your business. Here are a few steps to use in the planning process:

1. Write down on a piece of paper everything you think the visitors to your web site might want to know about your product or service. If you are planning a website for a school, for example, the visitors would be interested in how man students attend, classroom sizes, staff information and sports offered. Brainstorm every possible topic someone might want to know related to the industry, product or service your website will be offering.
2. Put yourself into the visitor’s shoes. Visit some websites and review them as if you are in the market for the services those sites have to offer. As a visitor, what do you like and dislike about each site? Are you driven to take action? How easily can you find what you are looking for? How many times do you have to click to find what you are looking for? Take notes on all this information with the purpose of making your own website as visitor friendly as possible.
3. Do keyword research to find out what visitors will be searching for. Google has a free keyword research tool that will work fine for this purpose. Type in a general phrase such as “high school” and see what other keywords come up. These are the topics that people are searching for already. With this information in hand, you can plan your website to feature content that answers people’s questions.
4. Make sure to plan your website to grow. Avoid websites that can’t be easily expanded to add more pages or products. A good website is a constant work in process.
5. Plan a website that you can control, rather than be at the mercy of a web designer to make even small changes to your website. Successful Internet marketing today relies on a dynamic website with fresh content added often, and having an antiquated website that only your designer can change will just not work anymore. Your new website should be on a platform that lets you add content quickly and easily.

There are really essentially two kinds of people. Those who are genetically organized, and those who are not. Do you feel you are in the second category? Fear not! There are ways to stay organized in your small business.

The benefits are many. An organized business person is able to get more work done in less amount of time. They forget important events less. They feel less stressed and out of control. So here are some practical tips for those of us who don’t have the organizational gene built in:

Don’t Let The Sun Set on a Mess

Never leave your workspace at night until you have taken a few minutes to clean up your desk. Gather your pens, stapler, and other tools together so you can find them in the morning. Throw out the trash and get rid of any used cups or other things that don’t belong.

Most important, quickly go through the papers cluttering up the desk and stack them somewhat in the order they need to be tackled in the morning. While you’re at it, start a to-do list for the next day, and label each item “A” “B” or “C” depending on how important it is to complete.

By taking 5-10 minutes to complete these simple tasks each evening, you will find renewed motivation in the morning to tackle the day ahead.

Group Your Working Product in 3s

There are those who have a file folder for everything and know immediately where anything is. Then, there are the rest of us. I have found the best way to organize my working papers so that I can actually find something when I need it is to use the rule of 3.

The idea is simple. Never have more than 3 stacks going at a time. The first stack contains the most pressing items you hope to accomplish within the day. The second stack should hold those that need to be handled within the week, and finally those within the month. This may take a few minutes to create the first time, but in the long run it will save you tones of time from having to look through every paper on your desk for the one that you really need.

Don’t Wait

Ultimately, the longer you wait to find an organization system that works for you and your small business, the more opportunities you miss for your small business. Being organized allows you to spend more of your day focused on your small business and making it a success. And remember, one person’s organization is another person’s nightmare. So find a system you can call your own and stick with it.