Business Credit Cards

By Jessica Hupp

In business, nearly everything revolves around finance, so it’s no wonder that it’s one of the most popular topics in business blogging. From financing to setting the value of your work, it’s essential to get good advice. These posts offer some of the best information that’s out there.

Funding & Earning

The acquisition of money is the lifeblood of any business. Read these posts to find out how you can get money through funding and focusing on earning in your business.

1. How A Beggar in Grenada Uses Data to Optimize Donations: Check out this post to find out what your business can learn from a beggar.
2. Open innovation and crowdsourcing: Learn how to finance your project by tapping into large crowds.
3. Starting A New Business Over 60: Learn how to secure financing if you’re an entrepreneur of a certain age.
4. The Art of Bootstrapping: Read this post for tips on developing your business without investors.
5. Can You Make $3,000 in ONE Day?: Think outside the box to earn more money per day.
6. Need Money? Looking For Another Business Loan? Perhaps There Is Another Option: Consider solving problems before automatically reaching for more money.
7. Government Grant Money For Small Business: Learn the basics of getting government money in this post.
8. Truth About Grants: There’s no free lunch–get the lowdown on the reality of grants.
9. Why Women Entrepreneurs Don’t Get the Financing They Need: Find out why women are “playing small” when it comes to business finance, and what can be done about it.
10. 10 Ways To Fund Your Business: From credit cards to friends and family, check out these alternative ways to get money for your business.
11. The Fiction of 20%: Find out why it’s really not that important for venture capitalists to own 20% of your company.
12. My Corporate Valuation Workbook: Get the Cliff’s Notes to financial analysis in this post.
13. The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists: Do you need funding, but keep getting blown off by VCs? Get to the bottom of what they’re telling you.
14. How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Financing Help They Need: Take these steps to locate financing for your business in a responsible way.
15. What are Venture Capitalists looking for?: Find out if you’ve got what VCs want to invest in.
16. Focus on Your IPAs: Income Producing Activities: Small Biz Survival reminds readers to focus on activities that produce money.

Planning

Financial forecasting and planning is essential to ongoing success. Learn more about research and modeling in these posts.

17. Financial Models for Underachievers: Two Years of the Real Numbers of a Startup: Redfin’s Glenn Kelman lays down the numbers of a startup.
18. Please Stop With Your Chinese Math: Don’t let market size deceive you–Chinese math is no good.
19. Inexpensive Ways to Conduct Marketing Research: Get budget-efficient communications with your clientele using these ideas.
20. The ABCs of Cash Flow Forecasting: Get the basics of cash flow forecasting in this post.
21. How to use Inkling Prediction Markets for your business: Harness the knowledge of crowds to predict sales for your business.

Spending

Once you’re earning money, it’s important to use it wisely. Read these posts to consider how to effectively spend money in your business.

22. 25 Gadgets That Actually Save Money: Laptops, power strips, coin sorters and other gadgets can actually pay for themselves in savings. Make an investment with these money-saving gadgets.
23. Bootstrapping Tip: To rent or not to rent?: Find out if renting office space is right for your business or not.
24. Even a Small Leak Can Empty Your Money Bucket Quickly: Avoid draining your hard-won earnings by stemming leaks in your business’ spending.
25. Lease A Car, Don’t Buy It!: If you’ve got fleet vehicles, or just a few executive cars, take these points into consideration when deciding whether you should lease them or make a commitment to buying.
26. Piggybacking on Your Neighbor’s WiFi: If you’re in a highly populated business area, chances are you have a pretty good chance of tapping into some free WiFi. This post considers the ethical and security implications of doing so.
27. Discounts Abound for Small-Business Owners: Get these deals that are designed specifically for small business owners.
28. A Few Ways To Save Money With a Small Business Opportunity: Get started cheaply using these tips.

Customers

Customers are essential to your business, so it’s important that you handle transactions with them properly. Learn how to value your customers and get them to pay their bills in this collection of posts.

29. Ignore a Customer’s Lifetime Value at Your Own Risk: Don’t forget how much money a single customer means to you, or you could lose more than just their business.
30. 14 Web-Based Invoicing Tools To Make Sure You Get Paid: These invoicing tools make getting money from your clients a breeze.
31. What Happens if Your Clients Don’t Pay?: Learn how to handle non-paying clients in this post.
32. Collecting Receivables: Jeff Cornwall encourages readers to wake up and smell the roses–and get customers to pay you what they owe.

Money Management

When you’re operating a business, money management gets more complicated. Read these posts for advice about financial managers and to get good ideas for handling money on your own.

33. Make Sure Your Financial Advisor is Not a Loser: Free Money Finance marvels at the fact that a money “loser” is employed as a financial advisor. Read this post to find out the importance of avoiding hiring hacks like this guy.
34. The Financial Messiness of the Entrepreneurial Life: Navigate the ups and downs of the financial life of an entrepreneur with these thoughts from Inspired Business Growth.
35. Building Banking Relationships That Last: Make friends with your bankers, and they can help you in a crunch.
36. For the love of $$$: Find out how the love of money can present obstacles to launching your venture successfully.
37. Five Effective Ways to Re-Invest Your Profits: When you make money, what should you do with it? College-Startup answers this important question.
38. Planners and Fees: Get smart about the financial planner that you hire for your business. Use these four points as a start to your consideration.
39. Five Tips For Managing Your Finances on the Go: Many entrepreneurs are on the go and don’t have a lot of time to sit down and work on money issues. Use these tips and tools to take care of business without having to stop by the office.

Fairness

Businesses are consumers, too, and you need to know how to fight back when you’ve been wronged by another business. Find out how to deal with common problems in these posts.

40. How to Complain: Get the basics on this essential first step of the righting process.
41. Can You Do Simple Math? Good, Then You’ll Soon Realize Why You Need to Resolve My Complaint: Learn how to reason with companies by spelling out what your complaint means to their bottom line.
42. How To Take a Case To Small Claims Court: If you need to escalate to legal action, this is the place to start.
43. Negotiate This!: Follow these tips to become a smart negotiator.

Business Development & Transitions

Whether you’re still brainstorming about ideas or or about to sell off your business, money is a big factor to consider. Take a look at these posts to understand more about its impact in development and transitions in business.

44. Q&A: Selling Out to a Partner: So you’ve decided to go your separate ways–now how do you deal with the money? Learn how in this post from Bplans.
45. Should You Quit School Because You’re Brilliant?: Business is booming, even though you’re still hitting the books. Is it time to throw in the towel on school?
46. Show Me The Money: In business, everything has a price: Learn why you shouldn’t automatically turn down offers to buy your business.
47. Income vs. Cash Flow: Why Growth Can Kill Your Business: Don’t let rapid growth kill your startup: take this advice from Business Pundit.
48. How to Buy a Business in 10 [not so] Easy Steps: Take these steps when you’re shopping around for a new business venture.
49. Making Money With the Boom Bust Blitz: Manage your assets and liabilities to your best advantage, and you’ll be successful no matter what stage of business cycle you’re in.
50. Is starting a business impossible when you are the sole income earner in your family?: Pamela Slim takes on financial responsibility for entrepreneurs.
51. Sell Your Business in Twelve Steps: Take these 12 steps when you’re ready to let go and cash in on your hard work.
52. Q&A: The Balance Sheet When Buying a Business: Take these financial tips into consideration when you’re acquiring a new business.

Employees & Outsourcing

Your employees are perhaps your most valuable asset. These posts consider salaries, outsourcing, and watching out for losses.

53. Does pay for performance pay?: Get more bang for your payroll buck by considering this question.
54. 10 Ways of Overcoming Outsourcing Objections: Find out why outsourcing can work for your business.
55. Is your business vulnerable to fraud?: Don’t let money slip through your hands by opening yourself up to fraud.
Decide Your Success With Bookkeeping Outsourcing: Get someone else to keep a watchful eye on your accounting to save money and time.
56. Give Your Employees More Rope, Not Money To Buy It: Learn why throwing more money at employees isn’t always the best idea.
57. To Outsource or Not to Outsource: Consider whether or not outsourcing is right for your business by reading this post.
58. Avoid Getting Gypped by Fraudulent Web Designers: Outsourcing web design can be a smart money move, but not if you get burned.
59. Whistlelower incentives?: Consider whether or not you should financially reward employees that report trouble.

Value

Whether you’re setting your prices or considering how much your time is worth, business is all about value. Learn how to set yours and find strategies to improve it in these posts.

61. Whether or not to publish your prices: Find out whether or not you should make your pricing publicly available.
62. Four tasks to increase values or prices in business transactions: Maximize your financial returns using these four strategies.
63. Selling Yourself On The Value Of Your Time: It can be easy to forget to charge for your time, but it’s essential that you do so. Read this post to find out why and how.
64. How Much Money Is Integrity Worth?: Increase your value by improving your integrity and reducing the risk of working with you.
65. 6 Simple Steps for Sales Success: Follow these tips for sales and you’ll earn more from your clients.
66. How Much Should You Charge For Your Web App?: The Instigator Blog answers this essential question.
67. Will Work for MONEY: Are you tired of getting offers that ask you to trade your service for “experience?” Mind Petals is, too–read all about it here.
68. Such a Thing As Too High of An Hourly Rate?: Learn why it’s all relative when it comes to rates.
69. Be Proud of Your Prices: Learn how to stay strong in the face of clients who don’t want to pay what you require.
70. Are You Short Changing Your Business?: Get down to the emotional root of why you don’t want to raise your rates in this post.
71. Top Ten Signs You May Be Charging Too Little: This humorous post takes a look at pricing situations you should avoid.
72. New Price Structure for 2007?: Base your prices on what value you offer, not what everyone else is charging.
73. Business Ethics: Why Doing the Right Thing Pays Dividends: Learn why trust builds value in business.
74. Dollars & Sense: Setting the Perfect Rates: Determine the perfect rate for your business using the guidelines from this post.
75. Flip this product: Adding Value to an Existing Product by Dressing It Up: Sell profitable products using this strategy.
76. Nine Factors to Consider When Determining Your Price: You’ll need to think about things like market demand and your audience when setting the value of your product or service.
77. 20 Ways to Add Value to Your Products and Services: Increase your prices and customer satisfaction with these 20 ideas.
78. Avoiding the horror of the sliding scale: This post asserts that you shouldn’t do sliding scale payments unless you’re in the business of helping people with money.
79. Should the “Free” In Freelance Refer To the Price?: Watch out for “opportunities to build your portfolio.” Success From The Nest says they’re bad news.

Ideas

Although you can’t make money on an idea alone, they’re still vital to sparking a successful business venture. Take a look at these money-making ideas to consider how yours stacks up.

80. Bottled Water Experiment: Neville proves that his idea to make money with no money actually works.
81. Top 20 Dumbest Business Ideas That Made Millions…Or Not!: 10 of these dumb ideas made money, 10 of them didn’t. Consider whether or not your idea is on the million dollar side of the fence.
82. It’s The Economics, Stupid–Why A New Idea Isn’t The Key To Entrepreneurship: Find out why money is more important than ideas in entrepreneurship.
83. Top Ten Franchise Opportunities for $20,000: Take on these low cost franchise opportunities for easy entrepreneurship.
84. Why Didn’t I Think of That Billionaires: Check out these billion dollar ideas that came from creating something their originators could be passionate about.
85. Selling Notes: Neville experiments with selling class notes.

Advertising

Advertising is often expensive, but there are ways to make your dollars stretch in this category. Check out these posts for strategies that will help you get more out of your advertising purchases.

86. The Secrets to Free Advertising: Find out how you can create free advertising in this article.
87. Getting Started with Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing: Get the basics on launching a successful PPC campaign in this post.
88. 6 Tips to Recovering From a Typo in Your Printed Sales Letter or Brochure: Oops! You just made a costly mistake. Here’s how to fix it without going broke.
89. Spending Those Hard Earned Dollars On Advertising: Get the most bang for your advertising buck by considering the ideas in this post.
90. 5 Steps To Turn More Leads Into Cash: Get more concrete responses from your ads using these strategies.

Taxes

Taxes are a headache for anyone, but they’re even worse for business owners. Learn about important tax issues in these posts.

91. The Right Way to Write-Off Business Expenses: Get the lowdown on writing off expenses like travel and vehicle usage.
92. Tax Write Offs When Self Employed: Use these resources to get tax tips you can actually use.
93. Planning a Business Trip: Make your business trip a tax deduction rather than a liability.

Other

These posts cover even more great topics in business finance.

94. 7 Practical Ways to Earn More By Working Less: Get more money out of your work time with these 7 tips.
95. 30 Essential Pieces of Free (and Open) Software for Windows: Find free software that can help you run your business in this post.
96. Online Rival to Quickbooks: Check out this finance software alternative to save money.
97. Here is a picture of my 10 million dollar yacht: Don’t fall for these money wasting schemes that prey on wannabe entrepreneurs.
98. Five Credit Card Fees You Can Avoid: Save money by giving these credit card fees the slip.
99. Managing Time For Maximum Profit: Work smarter, not harder, and you’ll maximize profit.
100. Does a CEO Have Any Business Posting on the Yahoo! Message Boards?: Consider the implications of publicly discussing your business finances by reading this post.