23. June 2010 by admin.

Talk knowledgeably with your clients about their product concerns with help from

Icyball and Thermallball products were designed for managing your pain without toxic ingredients

Other notable Sources (from the personal care site):

• Cal/EPA – OEHHA Toxicity Criteria Database
• California Proposition 65
• California Proposition 65 Chemical List
• California Safe Cosmetics Program
• California Safe Cosmetics Program Cosmetics Companies Page
• The California Safe Cosmetics Program Chemical List

• Icyball – Non-Toxic Pain Relief!
• Alltop – Beauty News
• Barcodes and Ecom
• Cato Institute
• Clean The World
• Cosmetic Design
• Cosmetic Design Europe
• Cosmetic News
• Cosmetics & Toiletries
• Cosmetics Business
• Eco-Office Gals
• Fair Trade Federation
• Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO)
• GCI Magazine
• Global Exchange
• Good Guide
• Green Living Ideas
• Green People
• Green Products Alliance
• HAPPI
• Internet Archive
• Junk Science
• Natural Cosmetic News
• Premium Beauty News
• Recycle Bank
• Skin, Inc.
• Smart 2 b Green
• Sweet Scam
• The Center For Consumer Freedom
• The Nature Conservancy
• TransFair USA
• Tree Hugger
• WWD

Posted in Health and Wellness, Pain Relief, business help | Print | Comments Off

5. May 2010 by admin.

By Mike Small (c) 2010

1.) Your Domain Name Matters - A Lot

Search for just about anything on MSN / Bing and at least three of the top five matches will have some version of that keyword as the domain name. For example if you wanted to optimize for the keyword ‘my domain’ you should try to get the domain name ‘mydomain.com.’ If that is taken, opt for ‘my-domain.com.’ If that’s taken try for a name starting with ‘mydomain’ and ending with a word that is commonly associated. This is called LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing. A good example would be ‘mydomainname.com’ or ‘my-domain-name.com.’ BTW, Bing treats dashes as a space so as long as long as the dashes merely separate words, they are treated much like the non dash version.

2.) There is No Sandbox

Here’s some great news for anyone just getting started. Bing does not seem to care about the age of your domain name. There is no ’sandbox’ like Google has. Many people, myself included, have registered brand new domains and had them ranking in a matter of days.

3.) DotCom Trumps DotNet

Today some search engines like Google will often give .net and .com virtually the same value, and possibly higher value for a .org that is for a recognized non-profit organization. Bing however appears to prefer the .com version. You can even see instances where a ‘.co.uk’ site gets high rankings simply because it uses the exact keyword in the domain name and .co is close enough to .com.

4.) We Like Sub Domains

Most web hosts will let you add sub domains to your website. On Bing, if you have the sub domain mydomain.mydomain.com you are in for some potentially great rankings. The same is true if you have my.domain.com, but to a slightly lesser degree.

5.) Less is More - Part One

We have been trained by Google to try to have hundreds of pages of quality content on every website. Bing adheres to the old policy that they are indexing web ‘pages’ not web ’sites’ (like Google says they do, but Bing appears to really mean it.) This means each page is treated on its own merit so a site with one page has the same chances of being ranked as a site with 100 pages, because each page is genuinely treated individually.

6.) Less is More

The same rule as above goes for on-page text. Pages with 800 to 1,200 words seem to do best on Google but on Bing the reverse is true, with 250 to 500 words being the magic number. Just do not overuse your keyword.

7.) Links are Nice But Not Required

Forget about spending your life building an ever growing number of inbound links for Bing. They do not need them. Your site, for now at least, is judged by its own merits, page by page.

8.) Be Bold not Strong

The original SEO method dating back to 1996 was using the H1 or ’strong’ heading tags in your HTML. Forget them for now. Bing gives higher priority to how you would express importance in a word processor document; larger font and bolded text as the main markers.

Summary: I build hundreds of Bing (formerly MSN) targeted mini sites every year using the information above (as it has evolved) and the results have been consistent top ten rankings. You can do it too!

Here’s my magic formula for a one hour top ranking:

A.) Get the .com version of a three to four word keyword as the domain name (dashes are fine.)

B.) Use the domain name as the page heading in a bolded font, slightly larger than the paragraph text.

C.) Write 400 words of natural sounding text using the keyword up to five times.

D.) Mention the keyword once in the first sentence and once in the final sentence of the page - then up to three times scattered throughout the remainder.

E.) Bold one instance of the keyword. Italicize one instance of the keyword. Use one instance of the keyword as a link back to the same page.

F.) Always fill in your Title, Description and Keywords META tags. That’s it.

Good luck and take care!

PS: This works for Yahoo too.

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22. April 2010 by admin.

How to Avoid Disaster When Couples Become Business Partners

Jean R. Charles

hen every dollar counts — as it especially does in these tough economic times — many couples decide to go into business together.
But just because you live together doesn’t mean that you know what it would be like to work together. Personality traits that might be acceptable at home — forgetfulness or procrastination, for example — can set off alarms in the office. Common traps and what to do…

TRAP: Having differing levels of risk tolerance. Problems arise when one spouse is comfortable with taking greater financial risks or making bigger monetary investments in the business than the other. To determine the risk comfort zone for each of you, start by defining the lines beyond which neither of you will go.
Example: Are you both willing to use your home as collateral for “seed money” or to finance inventory purchases with credit card debt?
If you are the more “risk averse” partner, have your spouse show you the numbers. You may find that there is a greater margin of safety than you realized or, conversely, that you both need to do a little more research before taking the gamble.

TRAP: Failing to establish boundaries between work and home. Some couples find that business is all they talk about, which can put a strain on the relationship. Establish ground rules.
Example: Best-selling authors Paul and Layne Cutright (who co-own The Center for Enlightened Partnership) have established a “no business discussion” rule for their bedroom. Other couples agree not to talk business during dinner or after 9 pm.

TRAP: Not operating as a team. It’s important to present a unified front to vendors, clients and employees. While you both need to agree on who handles what areas of responsibility, you still must function as a unit.
This can be especially challenging when one partner has difficulty making or supporting decisions that are likely to upset a third party, such as refusing to extend credit to a customer or disciplining an employee. Successful entrepreneurial couples check with each other before making any important commitments, back each other up in public and work through disagreements in private.

TRAP: Not having a written agreement. In my eight years as a business coach, I’ve heard the same faulty reasoning repeatedly from couples (”We don’t need written agreements — after all, we’re married”) and watched months down the road as the venture and the marriage unravel because of it. Couples need a detailed partnership agreement identifying the goals for the business as well as the responsibilities of each partner.

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25. November 2009 by admin.

MSE

About Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.

*Your PC must run genuine Windows to install Microsoft Security Essentials.

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4. November 2009 by admin.

The problem appears to arise mostly when users attempt to perform a so-called clean installation of the software onto a hard drive that’s been wiped clear of existing data. The bug doesn’t affect Vista users, who can perform an in place upgrade to Windows 7 without impacting the contents of their hard drives. Instead, it afflicts Windows XP users, who must perform a clean installation in order to jump to Windows 7.

The problem: a Microsoft security feature in some cases won’t allow installation of an upgrade version of Windows 7 onto a clean hard drive, because such versions are meant to be used only on machines with existing copies of Windows installed.

XP users, though fully entitled to use the less expensive upgrade-ware, are as a result seeing an error message when they enter their Windows registration number that in part reads, “The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installations.”

Fortunately, tech support staffers at various organizations have found an unofficial workaround that appears to neatly solve the problem.

XP users who are performing a clean upgrade to Windows 7 are advised not to enter their product key when prompted during installation. Rather, they should move on to the next step and only enter the key once full installation is complete.

The method “works around this issue to activate Windows 7,” notes a support bulletin published by the IT department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where numerous students were apparently having trouble with the issue.

Posted in Secret Santa, business help | Print | No Comments »

25. September 2009 by admin.

http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/posters/minwagebwp.pdf

EMPLOYEE RIGHTS
Under The Fair Labor Standards Act
THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION
U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division
WHD Publication 1088 (Revised July 2009)
PER HOUR
OVERTIME PAY
CHILD LABOR
TIP CREDIT
ENFORCEMENT
ADDITIONAL
INFORMATION
At least 1½ times your regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek.
An employee must be at least 16 years old to work in most non-farm jobs and at least 18 to work in non-farm
jobs declared hazardous by the Secretary of Labor.
Youths 14 and 15 years old may work outside school hours in various non-manufacturing, non-mining,
non-hazardous jobs under the following conditions:
No more than
• 3 hours on a school day or 18 hours in a school week;
• 8 hours on a non-school day or 40 hours in a non-school week.
Also, work may not begin before 7 a.m. or end after 7 p.m., except from June 1 through Labor Day, when
evening hours are extended to 9 p.m. Different rules apply in agricultural employment.
Employers of “tipped employees” must pay a cash wage of at least $2.13 per hour if they claim a tip credit
against their minimum wage obligation. If an employee’s tips combined with the employer’s cash wage of
at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.
Certain other conditions must also be met.
The Department of Labor may recover back wages either administratively or through court action, for the
employees that have been underpaid in violation of the law. Violations may result in civil or criminal action.
Employers may be assessed civil money penalties of up to $1,100 for each willful or repeated violation of
the minimum wage or overtime pay provisions of the law and up to $11,000 for each employee who is the
subject of a violation of the Act’s child labor provisions. In addition, a civil money penalty of up to $50,000
may be assessed for each child labor violation that causes the death or serious injury of any minor employee,
and such assessments may be doubled, up to $100,000, when the violations are determined to be willful
or repeated. The law also prohibits discriminating against or discharging workers who file a complaint or
participate in any proceeding under the Act.
• Certain occupations and establishments are exempt from the minimum wage and/or overtime pay
provisions.
• Special provisions apply to workers in American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana
Islands.
• Some state laws provide greater employee protections; employers must comply with both.
• The law requires employers to display this poster where employees can readily see it.
• Employees under 20 years of age may be paid $4.25 per hour during their first 90 consecutive calendar days
of employment with an employer.
• Certain full-time students, student learners, apprentices, and workers with disabilities may be paid less than
the minimum wage under special certificates issued by the Department of Labor.

Posted in business help | Print | 1 Comment »

31. March 2009 by admin.

1. If I did not receive a Form 1099-MISC reporting the income I received as an independent contractor, then I don’t have to report the income on my tax return. It is not uncommon for companies to either overlook or intentionally fail to send Form 1099 to their independent contractors. The company that fails to report can be penalized $100 for each form they neglect to send out. The higher risk, however, is to the independent contractor because failure to report income carries serious penalties and can even be considered tax fraud. 1099 or no 1099, cash received for performance of services is taxable income.
2. If I volunteered 100 hours for charity and my time is worth $50 per hour, then I have a $5,000 tax deduction on my income tax return. Many taxpayers volunteer to work for their favorite charities. If someone is strapped for cash, contributing additional hours of service can provide a rewarding experience. These taxpayers often try to conclude that their contribution of time should be deductible just as if it were a contribution of cash. That logic is flawed because the value of the services were never reported as income, so there is no basis in the services that were contributed. The taxpayer is actually better off than if the income and offsetting deduction were reported, because there is no impact on self-employment tax or the limitation on itemized deductions.
3. Simply by signing up to a business opportunity, I can deduct otherwise personal expenses. The pitch for many “Biz-Ops” or “Tax Proofing Plans” is that setting up a home-based business will enable the deduction of virtually all expenses of running the home, bringing Federal taxes to near zero. The truth is that expenses are only going to be deductible when a business has a real profit motive, and then only to the extent of the business use allocation. For home office expenses, that limitation includes specific hoops and allocation procedures. For entertainment expenses, there are strict documentation guidelines. There are also hobby loss rules that eliminate deductions for activities that never make a profit.
4. I don’t need to worry about complex tax forms such as AMT or Passive Loss Limitations because I’m not rich. Even ordinary hard-working taxpayers can become subject to these special provisions. A year when income is especially high followed by a year when itemized deductions are especially high can easily trigger AMT. Maintaining rental property can trigger passive loss limitations. There are other special provisions to consider, which makes it important to have professional help or access to good tax guides and software.
5. I don’t need a computer to do my taxes. The biggest single problem with income tax returns is math errors. The use of inexpensive tax preparation software virtually eliminates this category of error.
6. It’s too complicated to track changes in the basis of mutual funds Mutual funds are bought and sold, resulting in capital gain or loss. The gain or loss is not as simple as subtracting the original cost from the sales proceeds. To the extent that dividends and capital gains have been reinvested rather than taken in cash, the basis is more than the original cost. When dollars are moved from one fund to another, there is a taxable event that again changes the basis. Failure to account for all these changes can cause significant overpayment of income tax. If you don’t want to track your basis, consider other types of investment.
7. Any check written to a charity is deductible as a contribution Many checks written to charities are in payment for products or services. These amounts are not deductible. For example, a taxpayer might pay $50 to a church for his child to participate in a youth soccer program. That payment is no different than paying a private soccer facility for the same service, and is not deductible. Sometimes, payments are only partially deductible. For example, a $200 ticket to a charity dinner could be deductible to the extent that the $200 exceeds the fair value of the dinner. The charity will generally disclose the amount that is considered to be fair value for the service.
8. I won’t take any “gray” deductions because I don’t want to be audited. Each expenditure is either deductible or not deductible. Most “gray” expenditures become more black or white with additional research and thought. Taxpayers need to spend the time and effort to properly categorize expenditures and stop leaving deductions on the table. Occasionally, a taxpayer may be unable to reach a clear answer about the deductibility of an item. If the item is unclear, but there is sound logic to support a deduction, then it is usually worth the risk to claim the deduction.
9. I lease my car because the lease payment is 100% deductible. Many taxpayers assume that every dollar spent on a car lease is deductible as a business expenditure. There are two problems with that notion. First, the deduction is only allowable based on the business use percentage - - IT IS STILL NECESSARY TO TRACK MILEAGE. Second, there is a requirement to add an “Inclusion” amount to income for leases of all but the most inexpensive vehicles. The intent of the leased vehicle inclusion is to limit the amount of the annual deduction in the same manner that a cap is placed on automobile depreciation for luxury autos (IRS definition of luxury ­ not common sense definition).
10. I need to spend more on deductions so I won’t have to pay as much tax. It never makes sense to spend a dollar to save 40 cents. It often makes sense to work the timing of an expenditure, or to modify the nature an expenditure to reflect its business purpose. It doesn’t make sense, however, to spend money for the sole purpose of reducing taxes.

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20. March 2009 by admin.

2. UrlTrends

UrlTrends is a service that shows historical trends, so that webmasters can see how their SEO efforts are affecting websites in the search engines. UrlTrends should be used in conjunction with web-logging software.

UrlTrends - www.urltrends.com

3. Favicon

Polish your website by adding a Favorite Icon. When a “favicon” is available on your site, and the site URL is entered in the user’s web browser URL box, the favicon will be displayed beside the URL. This gives the website a more professional and polished look.

Favicon HTMLKit - www.htmlkit.com

4. Color Matching

Match the primary web colors with those used in your logo. Simply choose a preferred color using the ColorBlender service below, and a 6-color matching palette and blend will be automatically calculated for you.

ColorBlender - www.colorblender.com

5. Online WYSIWYG Editing

Online webpage editing allows for collaboration, so that different users can log in and edit web pages.

Edit - www.edit.com

6. RSS Feeds

No longer considered to be just a nice addition, RSS feeds are now a “must have” for popular websites! Create RSS feeds for newsletters, press releases, educational articles, product tutorials, new product promotions, or just about any other sort of web content. FeedForAll - www.feedforall.com

7. MaxEmail

MaxEmail’s very affordable Internet fax and voicemail service allows a fax message to be delivered to an email address as a PDF formatted attachment. This allows fax messages to follow you regardless of your location. And, it also eliminates the need for a costly extra telephone line and a dedicated fax machine.

MaxEmail - maxemail.com

8. Royalty-Free Images

Locate stock photos to incorporate into your web design. Use royalty-free stock photography to add professional, high-quality images to your website.

Photo Wizard - www.photo-wizard.net

9. Submit Corner Web Assessment Tools

These web assessment tools help you use search engines to effectively monitor who links to your website, how many links, and who your competitors are. The tools include search indexing, link tracking, and competitor identification.

Submit Corner - www.SubmitCorner.com

10. Ranks.nl

This service assesses keyword density and prominence of a domain. The tool parses keywords and assesses the number of times a keyword occurs, and then discerns the density of the keywords.

Ranks.nl - ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

11. Webmaster Toolkit

The Webmaster Toolkit is a collection of webmaster tools developed to help webmasters with daily webmaster chores. The suite of free tools and resources included continues to grow, and contains something useful for the beginner and the advanced webmaster alike.

Webmaster Toolkit - www.webmaster-toolkit.com

12. HTML Web Templates

Make it clean and professional. Use easy-to-edit HTML web templates for web design.

Web Design - www.webmaster-templates.net or www.webdesign-elements.com

13. TrafficZap

This website includes script, page rank checker, link popularity checker, and more.

TrafficZap - www.trafficzap.com

14. Compete.com

Web Analytics - Stay on top of rivals with site metrics and audience profiles for the top 1,000,000 web domains. Identify rival search marketing strategies to take your SEM and SEO efforts to the next level.

SiteAnalytics - siteanalytics.compete.com

15. Thumbshots

Easily add thumbshot images to your webpages. Integrate website thumbnails by simply copying and pasting HTML code. Additional software is not needed.

Thumbshots - www.thumbshots.org

Use top-notch tools to make web maintenance and management a little easier.

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13. March 2009 by admin.

Simple, Automatic, Secure Online Backup (Windows and OSX)

- directly from the Mozy Website

Why all the fuss about backup?

Chances are you have a lot of important stuff on your computer like financial documents, email, digital photos, music and more. Unfortunately, computers are vulnerable to hard drive crashes, virus attacks, theft and natural disasters, which can erase everything in an instant.
Current statistics show that one in every ten hard drives fail each year. The cost of recovering a failed hard drive can exceed $7,500, and success is never guaranteed.

I would have lost it all

“When I saw that some of my files were missing, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Then I remembered I had backed up my computer with Mozy. I restored what I needed to, and ten minutes later all my files were intact again.”

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12. March 2009 by admin.

Merchant accounts are required in order to connect your shopping cart to your bank.  The Kewler Company has negotiated with Authorize.net to provide you with the least expensive solution using the most trusted source for eCommerce.  Follow this link and fill out the application materials and we will provide you with access for less than Authorize.net can offer directly.

New Merchant Tour and Web Tutorials
We have created a New Merchant Tour, located at http://welcome.authorize.net, designed to assist new merchants with setting up and managing their payment gateway accounts. The New Merchant Tour is a great place for your merchants to begin familiarizing themselves with the Authorize.Net Payment Gateway.

Additionally, to help with educating your merchants about the Authorize.Net Payment Gateway, we have launched a series of Web tutorials available at http://www.authorize.net/videos. Our goal is to add new videos each month, so please encourage your merchants to check back on a regular basis.

If you have been thinking about shopping cart software, we recommend OScommerce (its open source and very flexible), but there are many others.  We also recommend 1and1.com to host your website which incorporates OScommerce in their eCommerce product.  You don’t need to spend a fortune to get a professional looking online store.  Let us know if we can help.

We now have to worry about PCI fees (the extortion that the credit card companies have forced us to pay annually).  This is their way of passing on fraud protection to the small business.  There seems to be no way around it even if you have the most secure site possible (as we do).  Watch out for these hidden costs as they are not standardized, but are set my your merchant service provider.

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