I am a registered user at Elance, although I’ve never really done too much with the website. A while back I looked into whether or not Elance was a legitimate way to find freelance writing gigs and came to the conclusion that while it might be fine for some people, that it just didn’t really fit within my freelance writing business model at the time, although I am preparing to re-evaluate that. You can see my analysis at is Elance worth it. You can also check out my look at is Guru.com worth it.

(Note on the above. I have a working theory that the big G gives different power to links that are not capitalized in the way that article titles usually are. The idea is that a link in the text of an article suggests that the anchor text is more genuine than when linking to a title. One way of differentiating the two would be looking at how they are or are not capitalized. – Does anyone have any info on this?)

A recent email about a new Elance payment option caught my attention. It is a pre-paid MasterCard. Since I load up most charges to get big credit card rewards that I can redeem for things like travel or cashback, I’m not sure it is for me. The high-end rewards in the Capital One rewards catalog, for example don’t come cheap.

I am always on the lookout for new developments or advancements in the freelance writing world, though, so I looked into it a little bit further to see if it was worth it or a scam.

Elance Pre-Paid MasterCard Payment Option

Getting paid for work at Elance is pretty much like getting paid for writing anywhere else. You and the client work out an arrangement and then, ideally, you both hold up your end of the agreement. An online writing gig website like Elance typically has a high percentage of users that will want to pay freelancers electronically via PayPal.

Getting paid by PayPal for writing is usually just fine once you figure the system out well enough. There are a couple of potential gotchas with PayPal. One is that you have to link a Social Security number to an account in order to withdraw more than $500 per month from a PayPal account. Another is that if you decide to play by the apparent “rules” and setup a business account, you can expect to be nickel and dimed to death by all manner of PayPal fees that the company apparently feels most businesses won’t mind since they get similarly dinged on credit card transactions and have built the cost into their pricing model. Also, transactions that come in foreign currency can have some hefty charges levied onto them.

Otherwise, if you link a personal PayPal account to your SSN, things generally work out. Although, you want to transfer your money out of PayPal as soon as possible. The rules for PayPal accounts are NOT the same as they are for real bank accounts and there can occasionally be some nasty surprises when you find out in what ways they are not the same.

However, Elance offers a different solution for writers working for Elance and getting paid from clients that post projects there. It is called the Elance Pre-Paid MasterCard.

How Elance Pre-Paid MasterCard Works

The Elance MasterCard payment option works like this. First, you “apply” for the credit card. There is no reason to worry if you have bad credit to get this credit card, because it is a pre-paid credit card. That means that there is actually no “credit” associated with it at all. Instead, it is like one of those gift certificate type of gift card that you can use anywhere a credit card is used, or like one of the refillable Starbucks pre-paid card.

Instead of someone buying a $100 gift card and giving it to you, the Elance MasterCard starts with $0 on it and when you select to get paid from Elance via the pre-paid credit card, your earnings get deposited onto the card. For example, if you bid on a writing project on Elance and were awarded the project for $300, when the customer pays you for your work, the $300 does not go to your PayPal account, it gets deposited onto your MasterCard. At this point, your Elance card is like a regular credit card with a $300 limit, but instead of paying the money back after you spend it, it comes off of your balance.

Is The Elance Pre-Paid MasterCard A Good Idea?

All of this begs the question, is using the Elance MasterCard a good way to get paid. The answer depends on several factors. First and foremost is how you use your Elance earnings. If Elance is your main source of income, you will find it difficult to pay the mortgage with a MasterCard. You can make ATM withdrawals from the card, up to $1,000 per day. Although, you’ll have to drive around to a few ATMs to make that happen since most of them have a much lower daily cap for cash withdrawals. You will also be charged for each of those withdrawals unless you find a Surcharge Free ATM (several of them, actually). Plus, the card itself charges you $1.35 per ATM withdrawal. Getting your thousand bucks will cost you $5.40 plus whatever the ATMs charge you assuming the standard $300 cap at most automated teller machines.

Then, of course, you have to take that cash to the bank and deposit it into a real bank account so you can write a check or do an ACH transfer to your mortgage company.

In other words, the Elance MasterCard is not a good idea if you eventually need your money in cash form.

If you have other sources of online writing income, and those pay your “big” bills, then the whole pre-paid credit card thing might work better. You can pay your cell phone bill online with the card, for example, or use it for your trips to Staples. If you only use Elance for supplemental income, you can keep the card as your fun money.

Elance MasterCard Fees

The most important thing to keep in mind when using the Elance credit card option is the fees. There is a fee to get paid, because that is considered “loading” the card. You pay for each and every loading transaction, so if you get get paid on the card for 10 projects, you get charged 10 loading fees. These charges are modest (at time of writing), but can add up, so you should definitely be aware of them. The loading fee is $1.50 per transaction for “standard” and $4.00 for “immediate”. Standard comes with a 2 business day delay.

Also, the card charges a monthly usage fee of $1 if you actually use the card for at least 2 transactions that month, and $3 if you don’t.

There is also a $5 activation fee which is waived if you sign up during the introductory period. Also, don’t forget that there are no credit card rewards points to be earned or redeemed either.

When you look at all the details, I think the Elance Pre-Paid MasterCard is a good idea if you are going to use it to separate out some fun money or set aside dollars from some of the writing projects won for a certain purchase. However, for day to day usage and cash management for running a writing business, I think most people would be further ahead getting a PayPal Debit Card to provide the same functions without a new layer of potential expenses and fine print.

Good Writing, everyone.

One of the things about being a freelancer that many people don’t really appreciate, is that it can be very hard to take time off.

While everyone understands that a freelance writer, or any other contractor, only makes money when the work (and bill hours for projects), most people have a little bit of difficulty understanding that the making money freelancing is only part of the trick.

Someone with a regular corporate job with an office and a cubicle and multiple coworkers wants to take time off, they just put in a request with management. A good manager will ensure that there is adequate coverage for all of the duties required of his employees and then, typically, will approve the vacation request as long as it isn’t during a critical time or otherwise not feasible. If a project comes up the day before the employee is scheduled to leave, it just gets assigned to someone else, or a coworker covers for the employee by doing just enough to keep the project afloat.

A freelance writing business works a bit differently. Most freelancers who are professional writers have a solo operation. There are exceptions (like Arctic Llama) to the rule, and some freelancers are lucky enough to have another professional freelancer that they can count on to cover for them a little bit. But, when it comes to business writing, the client usually wants a specific person (you) to write it. That is why they called you in the first place. So, subbing it out isn’t typically a very good option.

Additionally, while most clients with flexible timetables are more than understanding about a trusted pro taking some time off, clients with hard deadlines don’t have a choice. So, when a very good, long-term client calls on Friday with an important project that they have to have by next Tuesday, the last thing they are interested in is letting someone else you know do it, or waiting for another week.

The phone call with the professional freelance writer usually sounds a little something like this:

Client: “Hi, Brian. I have a really important project that I need on a really tight deadline. Do you think you can handle it?”

Freelancer: “Actually, I’m just heading to the airport. My family is going on vacation. I’ll be out of the office all next week.”

Client: Silence…

For those of you new to the freelance writing world, that silence translates into: Please tell me that you will do my project anyway while you are on vacation, because I don’t like my other options. As most professional freelancers will tell you, depending on who the client is, how important the project is to them, and how forgiving your family is, in a lot of cases, a freelance pro will offer to do just that.

The exception to this state of affairs occurs every year during those glorious four to six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years. During this time, no one is surprised to hear you will be out of the office on vacation. Not only that, most projects that come up during this short time of year are not attached to make-or-break deadlines, since whoever initiated the project in the first place is also very aware that plenty of key people will be out on holidays at that time of year.

That is why experienced freelancers build up a solid January pipeline at year end and then work extra hours in November to earn extra money and pad the bank accounts so that come Thanksgiving, they can take as much time off as possible to make up all of those other hours that didn’t end up quite as “free” as they had hoped.

So, that is why on January 6th, 2010, I am here to wish you all a Happy New Year.

There are a lot of exciting things coming this year for Arctic Llama and our clients. Stick around. Things are going to be very interesting.

Someone recently asked me to write an article about the Best Hosting For Freelance Writers.  It’s a great suggestion.  There is only one problem, I’m not really qualified to write that article due to lack of experience with more than a couple of them.  I will, however, relay that experience here, and also point out other webhosting that has been recommended by sources I trust.  Just keep in mind that except for these first three, I have no personal experience with any of them.

Web Hosting Services I Have Personally Used

• Yahoo Small Business Hosting – Do NOT use Yahoo hosting.  Period. End of discussion.  There are literally dozens of things that average ordinary websites do, and almost every webmaster does once they learn a little bit.  You can’t do half of them on Yahoo Hosting.  You can’t edit your .htaccess file.  You can’t use default mysql or php scripts.  There are standard things that you can use, but you can’t use them the standard way, you have to use one of their tools.  Oh, and don’t even think of putting a WordPress blog there.  Google Yahoo Hosting and WordPress if you don’t believe me.  Nightmare.  I think they still offer WordPress 2.2 which not only is so far out of date there are virtually no plug-ins for it anymore, it is also unsecure because it’s missing literally hundreds of fixes.  DO NOT USE YAHOO HOSTING.  Ok, moving on.
• Dreamhost – Google around and you’ll find lots of mixed opinions about Dreamhost.  I, personally, have never had a problem, and they always have what I need, even if I didn’t know about it when I signed up.  The have one click installs and upgrades for WordPress, so they are perfect for that.  You can change your DNS settings with ease and you can add domains to your same hosting account, so if you want to buy two more domains, you just buy the two names (from them or someone else) and then just add them to your account at no extra charge.  (You have to pay for the names, but nothing extra for hosting.)
• 1and1.com – I have never hosted anything with 1and1.com.  They had a sale when I needed a bunch of domain names, so I used them to buy them, and I’ve bought more from them since.  No troubles, but I haven’t really asked them to do anything either.  One odd thing has come up.  1and1 automatically renews your domain names, which is fine, except that they renew them for one year and there is no way for you to change that.  I emailed customer service and they said that I would have to email the billing department.  That seems like pretty basic functionality.  Also, I have always registered my names the same way, so maybe there is another way, but as far as I know you can only register one name at a time.  That is sometimes fine, but it is a hassle if you want to register whatever.com, whatever.org, whatever.info and so on, or some misspellings either.

Here are some affiliate links.  They gave a discount or something last time I looked, but no guarantees.

Up Next –> Webhosting that comes recommended from sources I trust…(tomorrow)

I’m working on a crash course in Google AdSense for writers, specifically for freelance writers who build their own websites on the side to create a long-term stream of non-client dependent or passive income.

In the meantime, I’ve been wondering how many ads you can have on one page, or how many ads you can have on one site.  Turns out the answer isn’t as simple as a single number, but relatively straight forward.

From the Google AdSense Policies:

• Up to three ad units may be displayed on each page.
• A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed on a page.
• Up to three link units may also be placed on each page.
• Up to three referral units may be displayed on a page, in addition to the ad units, search boxes, and link units specified above.
• AdSense for search results pages may show only a single ad link unit in addition to the ads Google serves with the search results. No other ads may be displayed on your search results page.

Assuming I’m reading that correctly (I’ll be doing some more research), you can have 3 ad units, which are the “regular” or “standard” ads. 

You can also have 3 link units.

That makes 6 total allowable AdSense ads per page. 

Then, you can have 2 AdSense for search boxes per page.  Technically these are ads too, but they don’t really work like ads.  Nothing gets displayed from these unless someone types something in and hits the search button.  In my mind that makes these a sponsored search as opposed to a straight ad.

So, 6 ads, and 2 sponsored searches per page.

If that is not enough for your page, you can also have 3 referral units.

I guess I’m not in any danger of going over.

Ok, so whether you run a freelance writing business, or are someone who hires freelance writers, you need your business blog to rank higher in the search engines.

That’s right, even if your fully SEO-optimized blog ranks #1 for your targeted keywords, it needs to rank higher for other keywords and other searches.  How do you do that?

SEO can (an is) be a long tedious process of trial and error, as well as the consistent application of several tried and true techniques.  But, there are some things that you can do without even trying that will push your blog up through the search engine rankings.  One of those things is frequent updates.

Google Loves Blogs and It Has a Frequent Update Fetish

Google and the other search engines have many flaws, most of which stem from trying to force a computer to make a value judgment.  One of the kinks in Google’s algorithm has to do with the “freshness” of a site.  That is, all other things being equal, a website that has been updated more recently will rank higher. While this is certainly not the end story, it is a fact, and an easily exploited one.

To take advantage of this part of the Google ranking algorithm you need to do just one thing.  Update your blog frequently.  There is some disagreement over how frequently is necessary, but the consensus generally is that at least weekly updates are the minimum and that anything more frequent than daily updates brings little boost.  So, shoot for somewhere in between daily and weekly.

Setup Weekly Mini-Posts As An Insurance Policy

That sounds easy on paper, but sooner or later you will get busy.  Business will take off, family will come to town, babies will get sick, you will get sick.  Whatever it is, during that time it will be darn hard to update your blog.

To combat the inevitable, take a block of free time and sit down and write out a dozen or so posts for your blog.  Not full posts, but rather short and sweet ones.  Make sure they are related, but they do not need to be full length.  Two hundred, or even one hundred words is all you need.

While that length is too short for maximum SEO effect, it will keep your frequency up, which is more important.  Besides, unless you go into super-slacker mode for two weeks, only one or two of these will get posted in a row, so your front page will be full of better length posts.

Type up quick anecdotes, funny stories, fictional events, definitions, quirks of industry, whatever you want, as long as it is related and evergreen (something that is fresh at a later date).  Then, save these posts as drafts.  Now, set each one to post on a certain day of the week every week for as many weeks as you have posts.  That gives you a guaranteed weekly post for the next several weeks.

To best utilize this system, every week you make a “real” post, go into your dashboard and change the future publication date of the automatic filler post that was supposed to happen that week to the week after your last little post is scheduled to go up.  That stretches out your efforts as long as possible.

Get twenty or thirty of these little guys written and ready to go and your blog posting insurance policy can easily last you up to 2 years because you’ll be publishing full posts at least some of the time.

Hire ArcticLlama To Do It For You

Don’t want to write up a bunch of mini-posts, or don’t think you can come up with enough topics.  That, my friend, is what professional freelance writers are for.  Give us the topic (or better yet, point us to your existing site) and we’ll work up a bid.  Don’t worry, it will be fast and easy, which means it will also be cheap.

In the meantime, keep those blogs up to date and watch your site move up the search results pages.

Do you and your website have a privacy policy?  With more and more users becoming concerned regarding their privacy, it can be a good idea to have one on your site.  However, a privacy policy can be difficult to word properly, and while you might think you are covering everything, it is easy to leave something important out.

The Better Business Bureau, or BBB, offers a free sample privacy policy template for public use on its BBBOnline website.  Using their template as a starting point makes constructing your own privacy policy a lot easier.

Lately, my freelance writing business has been taking off online.  So much so, that I really don’t market locally any more.  If someone comes to me, fine, but otherwise, I just don’t have the time with the number of inquiries I get and the number of projects I apply for online.

A subset of the issue is my increasing concern about the value of the brand we are building here at ArcticLlama.  Our name is catchy and easy to remember.  Our only difficulty is in the number of people who cannot spell “arctic” (people don’t seem to remember the first ‘c’) or people who cannot spell “llama” (two ‘l’s).  The latter was expected, the former was not.

Be that as it may, the ArcticLlama name is becoming known within the circles of those who need writers or editors and even those who need analysis and strategic consulting.  This is very good news and we are very happy about it.  However, there is a concern surrounding our name as well.

ArcticLlama is becoming known within the circles of those who need writers or editors…

With literally hundreds of websites out there that we may now, or someday, wish to use for business, networking, marketing, or just plain fun, how do we successfully reserve the name “ArcticLlama” on all of them?  Already, I occasionally run into a service that I tried a few years ago using the name ArcticLlama, which was originally my anonymous online username of choice.  (It was never already taken and it kept me from having to be Brian83203472.) 

You can imagine the concern when I see the words, “The username ArcticLlama is already taken.”  Fortunately, it has always been the case that I had already taken then name either as me (a few years ago) or as the business (and then forgot to do anything with it).  So far, our strategy has been to go out and create accounts using a generic email address on every site we come across that we think might be useful now or in the future, or even sites we just don’t want someone else using our name on.  Obviously, this is not efficient.

Getting a Trademark for Small Business Name Defense

A trademark is not a panacea.  It certainly does not eliminate all potential for problems and abuse, but it most definitely can be helpful in some situations.  The only reason we haven’t done it already is money.  It costs $275 to file a trademark application.   But, when your business is actually making you money, you have to invest in it.  So, we are off to the trademark process.  Stay tuned for updates and a Quick Guide.  (We need to finalize that official name for those and trademark it too.)

Google Alerts for Small Business Name Defense

We have also setup Google Alerts with several key words and phrases.  The best we can hope for from these is to get a notice of things going on with our name and phrases.  Hopefully, being able to nip trouble in the bud will eliminate it altogether, something like removing graffiti right away may make it go away completely once taggers realize it isn’t worth spending the time on something that won’t be there tomorrow.

Copyscape for Small Business and Writers Name Defense

We are testing out a service called Copyscape as well.  It is actually used to check for plagiarism which isn’t really a big concern of ours yet.  It is difficult to steal much of our content because either it gets personalized (like this post) or because it only makes sense in the greater context.  Stealing one page of content is one thing.  Duplicating a dozen takes a little more effort than most scammers are willing to extend.

We’ll see how these and other tactics hold up under the harsh light of reality.  In the meantime, are you protecting your good name?  At the very least, you should be setting up Google Alerts on your domain names and business name, as well as your real name and online names.  Use quotes to keep the alerts specific to you.  For example, “Brian Nelson” brings only alerts on Brian Nelson as a specific phrase, not on a page that has something like, “Brian Smith is taller than Joe Nelson.”

Good luck.  And go Good Guys.

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An interesting thing happened to the folks over at FreelanceWritingGigs.  Apparently, their Google AdSense ads were posted underneath a heading that said “Sponsors” and that got them suspended from the program.

When I read that, I immediately ran back here and to my other sites to check them out.  Sure enough, on some of my sites there were Google ads underneath sponsor headings.  This is worse news than you might think, because many website owners have a single AdSense account that covers all of their sites, so a suspension can be a big deal.

While Google clearly spells out what you can and cannot do in their Terms of Service, referred to as TOS all over the web, that isn’t the kind of thing a a busy freelancer spends a lot of time contemplating.  The relevant Google AdSense TOS terms are on my article about my developing AdSense project.  After all, I have projects due today, articles to write, blogs to update, projects to apply for, networking events to attend, and so on.

The gotcha here is that “Sponsored Links” is fine, but apparently “Sponsors” is not.  The latter apparently implies that the sites from the ads endorse your site in some way, whereas the former implies that some paid or “sponsored” you for the links.  That is pretty subtle, even for a professional writer.

Still, I guess rules are rules.

The real bummer is that it might not even be the website owners fault.  Numerous WordPress and other templates whether paid-for premium themes or free themes and templates come by default with a section heading of Sponsors.  It’s only natural to drop your ad code there.  After all, when a TV program shows commercials it says, “Now a word from our sponsors.”  It is common lingo that sponsors means people that pay for advertising, even if that is not linguistically correct. 

That is what happened to me, at least.  I didn’t want to put up 125×125 graphic ads in the sponsor area, so I dropped in my AdSense code.  Seemed like a good spot at the time.  I guess not anymore.

Grab the ArcticLlama RSS Feed and stay up to date as we develop a quick guide to AdSense for small business and website owners that will hopefully help others (and us) not have these issues in the future.

  Google AdSense is something that I spent a lot of time researching when I first started as a freelancer and building my own websites.  Then, it quickly became something I forgot all about since I never earned a penny.  The problem, of course, was that I ignored all of the advice to build a full content driven site first, and then worry about AdSense.

A Good Guy Makes Money With Google AdSense

So, it was with some surprise when one day I received a PIN number out of the blue in the mail from Google for my AdSense account.  I put it in the “To Be Filed” stack and went about my business.  But, when I got an email informing me that I had to confirm my various information if I wanted to get paid, that got my attention.

Turns out that some of my sites, like my real world personal finance site, had built up to the point where they were getting real traffic.  And, since that traffic was generated from organic search results and the visitors from those search results found real and useful content on my sites, they clicked the ads.  And, when people click the ads the site earns money. 

I made something like $75 in the previous month.  That plus the $30 and $50 months for the preceding months added up to over the $100 minimum that starts the process of Google sending you a check.  Well, actually they electronically deposit money into your checking account.

Quick Guide for Google AdSense for Freelancing Writers

My unanticipated success made me run out and try and figure out what I did, and how I could repeat it, or what I could do to enhance what was currently working.  If you have done any searching for information on Google AdSense and how to use it and make some money from it, you already know where my frustration is going to come from.

The Internet is FILLED with sites claiming to be experts on AdSense and offering tips, tricks and techniques that will boost your ad revenue to the moon.  Yeah, right.  There is a lot of repetition, much of the information is flat out wrong, or out of date, and getting details versus some high-level overview is virtually impossible.

When I did finally sift through all the junk and found the good resources for AdSense info, I was bombarded with maybe too many details, theories, and arguments.  I wasn’t interested in rebuilding my sites in order to squeeze every possible penny from my ad programs, I just wanted to know if there were some simple things I could be doing to make things better.  What I needed was a quick start guide or a Cliff Notes type guide.

Google AdSense for Dummies – Wait, I’m Not a Dummy

When I found the book Google AdSense for Dummies, I figured I was all set.  Only one problem; I’m not a dummy!  Turns out the Dummies book has some of the same flaws as the Internet sites.  Books are inherently out of date from the day they are published (especially Internet category books) and they only get more out of date from there.  Secondly, no one will pay $19.95 for a 12-page book, so even the Dummies AdSense book has way too much info for a successfully busy freelance writer and business man to sift through properly.

An Idea is Born

Since I don’t have time to figure out AdSense from soup to nuts in one shot and there appears to be no quick start guide that has what I need, I decided to correct the situation.

I’ve been interested in “quick info” guides for various topics for a while.  It has been on my projects list for almost a year, but I just haven’t gotten it off the ground.  This latest triumph / speed bump with regards to properly using ads on my various sites has given me the push to get started.  I’ll be building a new site for the end product, but I’ll chronicle the journey here, and on my thinking, theorizing, mind-mapping, blog at Best Hubris.

Wish me luck and enjoy the ride.

AdSense Quick Start Guide First Information

I suppose the first thing I should do is understand the rules of the program I’m using.  They are in the Terms of Service (TOS) on Google’s AdSense website.

The point of a guide like this is not to repeat, but rather to sum up and get the info out quick and easy.  So, in regards to the recent issues at one of my favorite writing sites where they got suspended for having their ads under a heading that said “Sponsors”, I’ll start with what can’t be used with any Google Ads placed on a site:

Google calls this rule: No Encouraging Clicks

The details: (copied from https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=48182 on 01/07/09)

• May not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as "click the ads," "support us," "visit these links," or other similar language
• May not direct user attention to the ads via arrows or other graphical gimmicks
• May not place misleading images alongside individual ads
• May not promote sites displaying ads through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites
• May not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behavior
• May not place misleading labels above Google ad units – for instance, ads may be labeled "Sponsored Links" but not "Favorite Sites"

Now, I just need to distill that down from there.  This should be fun :)

A couple of people took exception to my recent posting regarding the availability of government grants for starting a small business.  Some of the comments were just people ranting without any facts, but some made a decent point.  However, the most common think cited by email-ers was the Small Business Administration’s loan program.  This is, of course, a completely different animal, but, one that merits a bit of discussion.

The SBA has tons of different loan programs, but its main one that people are most familiar with is the 7(a) loan program.  As luck would have it, BusinessWeek published an article on the SBA loan program earlier this year.  I think it merits reading for those of you counting on this route.  The article notes an 18% downturn in the number of loans issued.  Keep in mind, that this was written BEFORE the current credit crisis came into play.

SBA Loan Program Information

Ok, now that you have some current events background, let’s jump right in.

The Small Business Administration does not give out loans for small businesses.  Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something, or misinformed, either way, get your info somewhere else.

The SBA actually guarantees certain loans to small businesses.  Those loans are actually made by banks who set the terms, approve the loans, and collect on the payments.  The only way the SBS gets involved is if the loan is defaulted on (not paid back), in which case, the bank that made the loan may go to the SBA to get its money back.

Before you pay anyone money to give you the “inside track” on small business loans or do anything else for your business, do yourself a favor and take the SBA Free Online Course: Guide to SBA’s Loan Guaranty Programs. This program is free and it is right from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.  Knowing the basics up front can save you a lot of money and heartache down the road.

Business Startup

Now, don’t take me the wrong way.  I am not discouraging anyone from starting a small business, and I am not saying that you should not apply for grants and loans and any other form of assistance you can find.  What I am saying, is do some research FIRST.  In other words, look up the SBA and what it does BEFORE you post a gig on Guru.com seeking someone to help you apply for a Small Business Administration Grant (sic) because your small business will have a woman owner.

Then, you won’t have to worry about wasting all of that time and money.