Investment bottelnecks removed for the Mid- Atlantic Branch of Angel Investment Network

Posted by admin in Investment on Jul 8th, 2010 | 0 comments

Read the papers today, and you’ll feel like start-ups are a rare breed in 2009.  Many sources say less people are starting up companies, albeit successfully too – citing the lack of investors available as one of the top reasons. But perhaps they are not looking in the right places.  

A paper in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Inquirer & Daily News) recently did a story in which a start-up CEO almost seemed to feel like securing angel investment was easier in this market than before.  And it makes sense, since less competition combined with more places to look for funding make this a good time for companies to secure investment.  

It is true that angel investors are becoming more cautious, and one will need a strong, convincing business plan (or some already existing activity) in order to secure such funding, but this has always been the case.  However, sites such as the Mid-Atlantic Investment Network help potential entrepreneurs and existing start-ups alike find more channels in which to reach these investors.  

Many companies will look to raise “Seed Capital” from a wide variety of courses, including friends and family.  But the Mid-Atlantic Investment Network allows members to look beyond that, with the ability to broadcast your plans to other potential investors online.

While technology remains one of the top niches in angel investment (such as the recent development by an entrepreneur in Maryland to develop software that uses facial recognition technology to determine who can see the content on-screen), other fields are also attracting entrepreneurs and angel investors these days.  Our network has active investors and entrepreneurs in fields such as Real Estate, Retail, Business Services, Transportation, Health Care, Entertainment, Agriculture and more.  

A wide range of investors are members, including various angel investors from within Mid-Atlantic regions such as Delaware, Maryland (including Baltimore), Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc), Virginia, West Virginia and Washington D.C, but also features investors located across the country and internationally.

Join the Mid-Atlantic branch of the Angel Investment Network today and find someone to help get your business off of the ground.

Improve Your Business Credit Score

Posted by admin in Business Quotations on Jul 8th, 2010 | 0 comments

Borrow More Money!

Small businesses can improve their credit rating by borrowing more money. You heard me right! Borrow money even when your business does not need it and pay it back on time or better still clear the loan early. Bizarrely, if you have never applied for a loan before then this will negatively impact on your credit score.

The clever way to improve your credit score is by taking advantage of offers that charge you zero percent interest if you pay by a certain date. Why pay the bank interest on a loan when you have money in the bank?

Some lenders offer some very low interest rate loans for asset purchases. Use their loans to buy cars, office equipment or machinery.

Use your cash in your bank to negotiate early payment discounts with your suppliers. Many suppliers with poor cash flow will even offer up to 2% extra discount if you pay their invoices within 7 days.

Lenders base your credit score on your payment history and the amounts of debts outstanding. If you have taken out many small loans and paid them back on time then this will stand you in good stead for when larger sums of monies are required.

Ask for a Quotation First.

When applying for credit make sure you get a quotation first before actually applying for the loan. Lenders will not do a credit search to give you a quotation. They will contact one or more credit reference agencies when you apply for a loan.

Every time you apply for a loan the search gets recorded. You want to keep this “credit footprint” as small as possible.

Do not Move House

Changing your house address can be disruptive to your credit score. Lenders like to see stability and moving house can add minus points to your credit score. If you are planning on moving house apply for your business loans before you move.

Know Your Credit Score

Lenders base their lending criteria based on reports from credit agencies and your businesses trading history. Sometimes credit agencies can get it wrong or still record a debt outstanding that was cleared years ago. For a small fee they will happily send you your businesses credit report. Make sure you examine it for errors and highlight them. They are obliged to change the report if you can prove that sums outstanding have been cleared.

You should check your credit score with the credit agencies at least every couple of years to make sure that there are no errors.

Do not Close Unused Accounts

If you have credit cards that you no longer need, destroy them every time a new one arrives. You credit scores benefits if you have credit facilities from many different lending institutions. Some lenders charge you a set annual fee for a credit card so make sure you cancel these.

Clean up Your Balance Sheet

Get rid of slow selling stock. Dispose of unwanted machinery. This will improve you balance sheet and enhance your credit score.

Boosting your credit score will not only improve your standing with the banks. Suppliers also check your credit score and some even offer better deals to companies that are less of a credit risk.

Ebook and Online Business Opportunities Grow Confident

Posted by admin in online business on Jul 8th, 2010 | 0 comments

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Online business opportunities exist in many forms. Ebooks have gained popularity and confidence over the years, as has work from home opportunities. By capitalizing on this growing market, you’ll be able to work from home and legitimately make money online by providing a needed service to consumers who are demanding information at rates almost faster than produced.

Make money online business opportunities that allow you to legitimately make money from home have escalated over the years along with the popularity of Ebooks. It is only natural that selling Ebooks has now become a prime contender in the market of online business opportunities to help people to be able to work from home and make money online. Online business opportunities and ebooks both faced a term of skepticism in their early days; but time has prevailed, and millions of people work from home every day, and millions of ebooks are downloaded every day.

Science fiction literature introduced the concept of ebooks decades ago, most notably in a 1948 novel authored by Robert A. Heinlein titled “Space Cadet.” In this book, the author imagined students’ textbooks being displayed on their desks like information spools. Perhaps cylindrical spools of text (other than ancient scrolls) are not readily available, but there is no doubt that our boxy desktops, laptops, PDAs, cell phones, Kindles, and Sony Readers can provide an unlimited stream of information in the form of ebooks, much like Heinlein’s book imagined. In fact, one of the most burgeoning markets for ebooks today is the college text book market. Text books are incredibly expensive to produce. Since college students are just leaving home for the first time, often putting work aside for their studies, they are notoriously short on money, and struggle to make enough money to buy the books. Ebook promoters are quickly discovering this market for online business opportunities and are quickly and cost efficiently meeting the educational and financial needs of the students by allowing them to download their textbooks in an ebook format at less than half the cost of a traditional text book.

College books are a relatively new niche for ebook online marketers. An established niche for ebook marketing is in fulfilling a need for the millions of people that are looking for information on how to work from home and legitimately make money online. As interest in work from home online opportunities has increased, so has the demand for business related ebooks. It takes a great deal of research to sort the legitimate work from home online business opportunities from the illegitimate business opportunities, as well as sorting out the profit-making online business opportunities from the work from home opportunities that will result in a lot of work with little profit. Providing information seekers with this kind of information is an online business opportunity in itself.

Society’s confidence in purchasing ebooks is evidenced by the millions of dollars of sales that online book stores like Amazon.com has made through their Kindle (ebook reader) and ebook sales, as well as the increase in the frequency of downloads that the original ebook business leaders, such as the online Gutenberg website, have experienced over the years. The increase and success of websites that strictly sell ebooks is also a vote of confidence and acceptance by consumers towards this growing online business opportunity.

Make money online business opportunities that allow you to legitimately work from home – and make money from home – exist in the growing market of ebook sales. By taking the time and effort to investigate online business opportunities and become familiar with the internal workings of an online business, you can gain the knowledge you need to take advantage of the popularity of Ebooks and start your own path to online business success from the comforts of your own home.