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: From Wikipedia

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Tweetie, TwitterFon, Twitterrific, Feedalizr or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. Twitter had by one measure over 3 million accounts and by another, well over 5 million visitors in September 2008 which was a fivefold increase in a month.

Here is what Twitter is in a nut shell:



How to get started with Twitter:

Twitter 101:

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Bookkeeper Accused Of Stealing Nearly $400,000 From Employer

A bookkeeper for a local company is accused of stealing money by paying her own credit cards with company funds. I’m sorry to say it, but it reminds me of the movie Matchstick Men with Nicholas Cage. The conman’s famous saying is “I didn’t steal it, you gave it to me!” In order for her to steal that kind of money over four years, she had to go virtually unchecked the entire time. All the money was put right in her hands with no accountability!
First off, insurance expert Scott Simmonds has great tips to avoid employee theft.

Second, being in the business of financial management and bookkeeping, I can throw in my two cents to help others avoid this tragedy.

Do an external audit of your company every year with an accounting firm. An external audit would pick up on anything suspicious, so fraud could never last more than a year. As an added benefit, you will also be fully prepared for the IRS should they come knocking.

Insist your bookkeeper provide financial reports and read with a careful eye. If you don’t understand reports, call me. Every business owner should know how to interpret financial statements.

Don’t let your bookkeeper sign checks. Instead, use the bookkeeper to enter the data and produce invoices. Have someone else pay the bills online and sign the checks the bookkeeper prints.

Lastly, consider using a service to do your books (note the conflict of interest here). With a service, you are dealing with a company that carries the responsibility for its own employees and will work directly with you on your finances.

Following these tips insulates you from giving all your company’s money to your bookkeeper. Bottom Line: Never let any one person have total financial control and autonomy. People holding money need to be accountable to someone, or the temptation may just be too great.

Mike Freeman

Building a System

I talk with a lot of business owners and one of the biggest differences that I see between business owners that are successful vs those that struggle is the concept of a business systems. I remember reading the book "Cash Flow Quadrant" By Robert Kiyosaki a while ago and I think that the phenomenon of being self employed (working in your business) is amplified with small company's for some reason. I love and hate this story because it is so true.

Excerpt from the book Cash Flow Quadrant
By Robert Kiyosaki

"Once upon a time there was this quaint little village. It was a great place to live except for one problem. The village had no water unless it rained. To solve this problem once and for all, the village elders decided to put out to bid the contract to have water delivered to the village on a daily basis. Two people volunteered to take on the task and the elders awarded the contract to both of them. They felt that a little competition would keep prices low and insure a back up supply of water.

The first of the two people who won the contract, Ed, immediately ran out, bought two galvanized steel buckets and began running back and forth along the trail to the lake which was a mile away. He immediately began making money as he labored morning to dusk hauling water from the lake with his two buckets. He would empty them into the large concrete holding tank the village had built. Each morning he had to get up before the rest of the village awoke to make sure there was enough water for the village when it wanted it. It was hard work, but he was very happy to be making money and for having one of the two exclusive contract for this business.

The second winning contractor, Bill, disappeared for a while. He was not seen for months, which made Ed very happy since he had no competition. Ed was making all the money. Instead of buying two buckets to compete with Ed, Bill had written a Business plan, created a corporation, found four investors, employed a president to do work, and returned six months later -with a construction crew. Within a year his team had built a large volume stainless steel pipeline which connected the village to the lake. At the grand opening celebration, Bill announced that his water was cleaner than Ed's water. Bill knew that there had been complaints about dirt in Ed's water Bill also announced that he could supply the village with water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ed could only deliver water on the weekdays ... he did not work on weekends. Then Bill announced that he would charge 75% less than Ed did for higher quality and more reliable source of water. The village cheered and ran immediately for the faucet at the end of Bill's pipeline.

In order to compete, Ed immediately lowered his rates by 75%, bought two more buckets, added covers to his buckets and began hauling four buckets each trip. In order to provide better service, he hired his two sons to give him a hand for the night shift and on weekends. When his boys went off to college, he said them, 'Hurry back because someday this business will belong to you.' For some reason, after college, his two sons never returned.

Eventually Ed had employees and union problems. The union was demanding higher wages, better benefits, and wanted its members to only haul one bucket at a time. Bill, on the other hand, realized that if this village needed water then other villages must need water too. He rewrote his business plan and went off to sell his high speed, high volume, low cost, and clean water delivery system to villages throughout the world. He only makes a penny per bucket of water delivered, but he delivers billions of buckets of water everyday regardless if he works or not, and all that money pours into his bank account. Bill had developed a pipeline to deliver money to himself as well as water to the villages.

Bill lived happily ever after and Ed worked hard for the rest of his life and had financial problems forever after.

The end."

Easy SEO with Traffic Blazer

Traffic Blazer helps you submit your site to these popular search engines:*
Traffic Blazer makes it a snap to promote your business online, increase your online visibility and make money on the Internet...in four simple steps! NO technical expertise is necessary. If you can type and click, you can use Traffic Blazer! It even works with Safari, so Mac users can enjoy the benefits, too! Still not sure? We even included the comprehensive Traffic Blazer Help System, offering tips, guidance and detailed tutorials on search engine optimization and the search engine industry.
4 Steps to Success:
	Search Engine Optimization - Position your Web site for the best possible ranking with leading search engines. Traffic Blazer's keyword and site optimization show you the words and phrases search engine users search for (powered by Yahoo!'s Sponsored Search). NEW! Improve your site’s search engine performance with the latest news and developments from Search Engine Land, delivered directly to the News and Article feeds within Traffic Blazer.
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	Submission - Easily submit your Web page(s) to leading search engines. Around the world or region-specific, it's up to you. Traffic Blazer helps you submit your site to more than 200 search engines and directories in all! NEW! Target your local audience. Submit your site to local search engine programs like Google® Local, Yahoo!® Local, Live Search (MSN) and Local.com™. * For brick-and-mortar businesses only; not available to online-only businesses. Or use Traffic Blazer to submit your blog to more than 75 blog search engines and directories.
	Reporting - No more wondering about results. Traffic Blazer is loaded with reports that give you answers, including Link Popularity to gauge the crucial number of inbound links to your Web page; List Checking to verify that your Web page is listed with the Internet's leading search engines and directories; Alexa®/Google® Rank to assess your page's online performance; Competitor Rank to compare your site's search engine ranking to that of your competitors; and Keyword Ranking to learn your current ranking on AltaVista®, HotBot®, Lycos®, and MSN®.
*Traffic Blazer supports submission to AlltheWeb, AltaVista, AOL, A9, Dogpile, Netscape, Excite, and Hotbot by enabling submission to search engines Google, Yahoo! and Windows Live, which provide the search results for these search engines and portals. All search engine names are registered trademarks of their respective owners. All rights reserved. Details.

Tips to Choose a Great Business/Domain Name

These days, every business is an online business. Whether you plan to utilize the web for
web retail, online marketing or both, the first step to establishing an online presence is securing a memorable domain name for your business. (For the internet new-comers: An example of a domain name is upstartsolutions.net) See if your Domain Name is Available

Here are some tips for snagging a great domain name:

1. Consider domain name availability as well as registered business name availability while still naming the business. This will keep thing simple and avoid unexpected disappointments. Example: We had already designed the logo for a new accounting business with the name The Bottom Line. Clever, right? So clever that it was already registered in almost every state as a corporation and as a ficticious business name in their county over 50 times in variation. Every variation of domain name was also already registered. Check availability first...
   
   
2. Consider if the name you are seeking will lead to competing markets, or negative associations (both are bad) Will the common mis-type of your url lead to a competitor? You may consider a different domain name. Will the common mis-type lead to offensive content? Definitely reconsider. Example: We were designing a website for an online Mom's group who had chosen the name "Hot Mamas". Totally innocent on thier part. However, this domain name and innumerable variations are common URLs and search terms for, you guessed it, porn. Not a great choice...they went with Mama Mafia instead!
   
3. Creativity does not trump Clarity! Avoid repeating letters between words (like mossservices.com), or anything you are going to have to spell over and over to clients (your email address will most likely use your domain name, so try to keep it simple). If using initials for your business, try to avoid similarly sounding letters, since these are easily confused and clients may not have a reference for what the acronym stands for. Example: When we were still new, we had an angry call back from a client who demanded to know why we let him choose the domain name tps.com for his "Total Protection Services". He explained that all day long he spent listening to confused customers calling to clarify: "ctf? ebx?", instead of using those calls to sell his actual product!
   
4. If you have a unique name for your company or product, be sure to immediately register it. It is not always malicious, people have a way of getting the same idea at the same time. Also, when you are excited about a new idea you have the tendancy to share, but think twice. Buy the name, then tell everyone about the new idea. We've seen proud business owners surprised to see that they now need to buy a recently registered domain back from someone whom they "shared their idea" with. Don't be held hostage, don't share your idea until you own it.
   

If you discover someone else has already claimed the name you want, don’t be discouraged. If you are just starting out and have just selected your business name in the planning step, consider searching potential new names for domain availability before committing a name. If you are dead set on the name you have, you may have some hope yet: Often entrepreneurs allow their domain name registration to expire or are willing to sell their name to you at a reasonable price. Most domain name registration services provide contact information for domain name owners or offer a way to bid on domain names that are up for sale. You might also consider your domain to be a memorable tagline rather than the business name. For example: Upstart Solution's tagline is "You've got a great, idea. Now run with it!" so another possible domain name might be "runwithit.com"

Upstart Solutions offers a number of low-cost web services to not only register your domain name, but also set up email and websites for you, complete with e-commerce capabilities. You can See if your Domain Name is Available here!