Computer Work From Home Businesses

Computer Work From Home Businesses

If you want to use your computer to work from home their are many businesses out there that allow you to do so.  The problem is which business opportunity is best for you and how can you avoid the scams ?

If you start to look through the working from home jobs available you will indeed be spoilt for choice.  They all tend to be pretty much the same thing ie MLM or Pyramid schemes.  You join a scheme and pay a fee and then you try to get others to join and pay the same fee making you a commission and also the person who recruited you gets a commission too.

These are not scams at all as they are completely legitimate work from home jobs.  The companies offer a product for that fee.  It just so happens that most of the people who join these work from home business opportunities are not interested in the product but only the opportunity to make money.

Of course with such online jobs you only get paid for your results.  If you spend 100 hours marketing and no one signs up you won’t get paid anything.  Whereas the guy who only spends 1 hour marketing and happens to be lucky enough to get a signup will make a commission.

Not too many people like the idea of working for nothing but when it comes to computer work from home businesses you must be willing to risk your time and try out a few business opportunities before you stumble upon one that works for you.

I tried a lot of these online opportunities and found them all to pretty much be the same.  Someone recruited me, I recruited a few others but then those ones that I recruited were unable to replicate the process and they dropped out after 1 or 2 months.  So in the end I dropped out too as it didn’t seem like a very stable business opportunity.

Off all the opporunities I tried only Work for has actually made me money.  Not a lot mind you, but I tried about 10 different online schemes and this was the easiest and most profitable.

The most interesting experiment was with Teamwork Revolution Power System TWRPS.  It was a 2×8 matrix which gave promising potential for spillover.  In the beginning it was exploding like crazy.  However when it started it was free to join.  Reality hit when paytime came and less than 10% of the early registrants actually paid and stuck with the program.  Since then people have been dropping out quicker than they have been signing out so in the end it was yet another let down.

Work for however was a simple one time payment of and it doesn’t have anyone dropping out as you never need to pay again and therefore no need to drop out.

So I will just stick with the simple program and continue to promote it as a hobby and who knows, 6 months or a year from now I could be making 00s per month from it.

Find More Home Businesses Articles

5 Ways to Use Internet Marketing for Online Businesses

5 Ways to Use Internet Marketing for Online Businesses

It’s easy to jump on the latest craze of Internet marketing for online businesses. Unfortunately, the latest trend isn’t always the most effective way to market your online business. Low and no-cost online tactics exist to effectively market your business.

While some of these options require basic search engine optimization (SEO) and writing skills, other methods are an open door to boosting your online business sales.

Article Marketing

When you write informational articles that solve your customers’ issues or cover topics related to your business, you position yourself as an expert. Being an expert builds your credibility with your potential customers and increases your chance of converting prospects into clients.

You can post articles on websites to drive traffic to your website and you can also use these articles on your own website and blog to provide information to visitors and help with your search engine rankings.

Online Press Releases

Another form of Internet marketing for online businesses is the use of SEO press releases. When you write an SEO press release, the goal is to increase traffic to your website by using keywords scattered throughout the press release and posting it to online sources.

Free and paid press release submission services can help you distribute the release and broaden your reach. As an added bonus, SEO press releases can land you a TV, radio or print publication interview that can provide further exposure for your online business.

Organic Search Engine Rankings

You can pay for various types of online marketing techniques to help boost your listing in the search engines. You can also accomplish this for free by using keywords on your website, scattered throughout your blog posts and in your online articles. This helps you to gain positions in the search engines when people search using the terms you’ve used.

Blog

According to a recent Associated Press article, millions of business bloggers are generating income based on their blogging efforts alone. Blogging is the number one way to drive quality and targeted traffic to your website.

Search engines love blogs because blogs have up-to-date content, which means it always contains fresh content. Blogging does require a commitment, so post to your blog two to three times per week to create an effective way to market your business online.

Webinars

The Internet has turned the effective live seminar into a webinar conducted online. Webinars allow you to share your expertise and broaden your reach by removing geography from the equation. Webinars are information sharing sessions to build your credibility and a soft-sell approach to converting attendees into clients.

You can either use all five of these Internet marketing tactics to boost your online business sales, or find some combination that works best for you. The more involved you are and the more consistently you implement each method, the better chance you have of increasing awareness of your business, increasing your website traffic and increasing your web sales.

Obama Assuages Fears of Deflation While Pushing Small Businesses Back on the Agenda

Obama Assuages Fears of Deflation While Pushing Small Businesses Back on the Agenda

(Austin, TX) November 24, 2008 — In an attempt to conquer the mounting fears of depression and deflation, President-elect Barack Obama’s Saturday radio address touted a stimulus plan far grander than what had been advertised during his campaign – 2.5 million new jobs over the next two years with a price tag between 0 and 0 billion. While Obama campaigned on relief for small businesses, it might be awhile before we see those proposals come to fruition.

Obama further restored investor confidence with his announcement of New York Federal Reserve President, Tim Geithner, 47, as Treasury secretary. Obama holds that Geithner offers “an unparalleled understanding of our current economic crisis, in all of its depth, complexity and urgency.” Much of today’s deflation anxiety stems from observance of the widespread banking crisis which hit Japan during the 1990s. Tim Geithner was “Treasury attaché in the Tokyo embassy for the first half of that decade” (Bill Powell, Time Magazine). Although officially released Monday, word that Obama was likely to choose Geithner sent stocks soaring at the end of last week.

Over the past 5 years, we’ve seen salaries struggle to keep up with inflation and therefore Americans have been borrowing more and more money. Core inflation, a measure of inflation excluding items that face volatile price movements (like food and energy), is now negative which has increased the average American’s buying power. This obviously helps workers even if it hurts companies. However, when consumer prices fall, spending collapses. As seen in the Great Depression when “supply swamped demand, driving prices down,” lower prices also raise the threat of deflation (Dallas Morning News). The U.S. Labor Department reported that consumer prices fell 1 percent in October from the previous month, the biggest fall since 1947, and while the consensus is that deflation is a remote possibility, it should still be taken very seriously. In a recent interview, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said “the nation is on the brink of the same kind of deflationary spiral that pushed down prices, closed businesses and obliterated jobs during the Great Depression” (Lori Montgomery, Washington Post)

What would deflation mean for the country?

1.    As prices fell and old debts stayed fixed, companies would have a harder time repaying those debts and bankruptcies and unemployment would more than likely increase.
2.    Deferred spending would further slow the economy. If people feel they can count on prices dropping, they wait until the next month, or the next month, etc. to make a purchase and while they wait, the economy spirals downward.

Richard Berner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley, writes, “The ultimate bastion of defense against deflation is a Fed committed to avoid it at all costs” (Bill Powell, Time Magazine). What might the Fed do? According to Reuters’ Alister Bull, “some economists believe the Fed will cut [interest] rates to zero over the next three months.” Obama and his economic team plan to hit the ground running, hoping to pass a strengthened stimulus plan as soon as the President-elect enters office on January 20th.

For the small business owner, however, relief may not come as quickly. Matthew Bandyk (U.S. News) argues that “while many industries from life insurance to the automotive companies have been asking for a piece of the bailout money, it is harder for small businesses to get Washington’s ear. Large businesses make the argument that the economy can’t afford for them to go bankrupt.” The financial crisis and another stimulus package now top the already substantial list of topics likely to eclipse small business issues.

The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, led by Sen. John Kerry, has urged current Treasury secretary Henry Paulson to “use a portion of the rescue package to purchase government-backed small business loans through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP)” which would “provide immediate relief to small businesses shut out of the credit market because of a paralyzed system” (Market Watch). In October, on the other side of the election, Obama proposed a “small business rescue plan” or tax incentives and loans. CNNMoney.com’s Stacy Cowley and Emily Maltby reported the following:

Obama’s new plan calls for the SBA’s loan guarantee programs to temporarily eliminate the fees they charge lenders, and for the agency to increase the guarantees it offers to banks that lend to qualifying small companies. Additionally, he wants the SBA to expand its facility for directly lending money to small companies through its Disaster Loan Program.

While the Disaster Loan Program is designed to aid businesses affected by natural disasters, it “does occasionally offer loans to help with nontraditional disasters” (CNNMoney.com). “There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making, and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better,” Obama said Saturday with the kind of honesty the American people will need to suffer the storm. The question is how many small businesses will go under while waiting for the change Obama’s promised?

About ChooseWhat.com:

ChooseWhat.com, the entrepreneur’s resource site, offers business consumers practical information about basic, but important business product categories (ie: phone systems) and specific comparisons of the vendors. We strive to provide you with clear and accurate information and insight allowing you to make a quality buying decision in minimal time.

Internet Marketing for Online Businesses – Strategies that Work

Internet Marketing for Online Businesses – Strategies that Work

Internet marketing for online businesses could create an impression of complexity and confusion to the newcomer. The buzz that is generated by online marketing is rooted from the concept that the online advertising cost is considerably cheaper with respect to the scope it covers. The world online is characterized by convenient interaction among different parties – a kind of setup that hasn’t been established by other media. The direct exchange of feedbacks and follow-ups between the buyer and the seller is made possible by this medium. The establishment of a new niche in the internet has turned out to be more and more difficult as companies learned to harness the mediums power to boost their sales.

Thus, it is totally necessary to invest time and patience in order to establish and maintain an edge in internet marketing. The dynamic nature of the online community requires one to undergo extensive technical conditioning and training. A superior understanding of the demographics of the consumers must be at hand, backed with a strong business plan.

Due to the complexity and unpredictability of the market, there is an urgent need for choosing and implementing the most effective strategy when coming up with internet marketing for online businesses. The planning of internet marketing for online businesses demands a meticulous analysis and implementation of the formulated strategy because the market is becoming so complex each day. A target audience must be decided and one has to be as specific as possible. There are criteria that need to be observed in order to precisely pick your target market. It may be based on their particular population segment or their common interest. Businesses get help from search engines in locating their market since consumers would be seeking for them. It’s just a matter of presenting their products and organizing their websites that these companies get to win that consumer.

Included in the business plan that has to be formulated by a company is its portfolio of competitive elements that would make their position stronger. One has to focus on advertising the elements that make it unique and not on the things that make it better. Uniqueness defines a company exclusively; being better can achieved by others given the opportunity to create revisions and upgrades. This should be constantly the same. You cannot say one element today and change it the next day. The online business requires one to be consistent at all times. Focus on the one thing that makes you different and build your strategy on that. Constant revisions and alterations of a marketing strategy would confuse the strategists and even potential consumers. That’s why it is very important to know what and who you’re dealing with in order to choose the perfect marketing strategy for you and you get to stick to it too.

After everything has been thought of and prepared, the final step would be to implement you’re your plan of internet marketing for online businesses. Normally, a timeframe needs to be set in order to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.  Constant goal setting and feasibility testing will help you determine if your strategy is effective.

Michigan Health Insurance – are you Covered? Health Insurance for Small Businesses

Michigan Health Insurance – are you Covered? Health Insurance for Small Businesses

Individual Health Insurance:

Individual health insurance is coverage intended for one person. If you are self-employed or run your own business, you don’t have access to a group health insurance plan through an employer, and must purchase your own coverage from one of the many health insurance providers located in your state.

There are some pitfalls to obtaining your health insurance from the private sector. For instance, limitations exist that might make it difficult to derive guaranteed benefits from a private insurance policy as an individual. Private companies have a right to ask you for information regarding your current and past health, and are also allowed to reject you for insurance purposes based on your health status, or impose limitations on your coverage.

Blue Cross Blue Shield, on the other hand, is required by law to sell individual health insurance to any resident regardless of health status. This is referred to as guaranteed issue. They must also refrain from charging you more due to any current or preexisting conditions ¨C this is called community rating. HMOs are also required to sell health insurance to any individual during the 30-day open enrollment period that occurs each year.

Individual health insurance policies can vary depending on the company. There are no laws that force private companies to offer the same health insurance products so coverage plans from different providers can offer quite different coverage. But certain benefits for health insurance must be provided in the coverage, including mammograms and diabetes care.

read more: Michigan Health Insurance

Why is Online Advertising Necessary for Offline Businesses

Why is Online Advertising Necessary for Offline Businesses

Business world and the digital age:

We are living in a world which is increasingly becoming digitalized day by day. With the arrival of internet much of the information now is present in the forms of bits and bytes. Internet acts as a data stream which receives and delivers information at a high speed in a more efficient manner. This revolution of technology has more or less turned our world into a ‘web world’.

In this era of cyberspace many people prefer buying online because online transactions are easier and fast, so the companies and the brands also have to change their ways to win this business race in intense competitive environment. These companies and brands have to reach out to the consumers too in a manner which is both reliable and effective to serve the customer’s needs. This two way flow of business information gave rise to online business, which is also called ‘e-business’.

“E-business involves the use of electronic platforms, such as intranets, extranets, and the internet to conduct a company’s business”. (Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong 2003, p.74)

Online advertising:

E-business gave rise to a marketing phenomenon ‘online advertising’. Online advertising refers to promotion of a product on the internet using various internet features. Kotler and Armstrong (2003,p.89) defines online advertising as the advertising which is visible to the consumer while they are browsing the web and this type of advertising mainly includes banner and ticker ads, interstitials, sky scrapers and other forms.

Need for online advertising:

When the brands and the companies went online, they felt a need for advertising their products in the wired world. This gave rise to online advertising or e-advertising. The basic motive behind online advertising of any company is to become global and attract more business. Advertising online offers a new dimension and a unique charm to the product which is an additive advantage.

How it works for offline businesses:

A question might arise in one’s mind that how and why a car company located in Japan would like to reach to a person in a Middle Eastern country? Well, the answer is quite simple, for why we could say ‘more business’ and for how the answer is ‘online advertising. Online advertising offers many benefits to the offline businesses, such as

Monetary advantage:

Online advertising provides monetary gains to a business which it can’t gain locally. These financial benefits would ultimately lead to a more progressive business which is the dream of every single dweller of the corporate sector. Online advertising might just provide the chance to a local offline business to claim its share in the global market.

Wider recognition:

Online advertising provides an offline business a wide spectrum of recognition. If, an advertisement is posted on the billboard the amount of people noticing it would be way less than the people noticing an advertisement pasted on the internet that is because of more usage rate and also because no time limitations. By advertising online a local business company might just be a global brand one day.

More reach:

Online advertising produces a chance of world wide reach to a company. For an offline business it could offer it international outreach and diverse consumers. Philip R.Cateora and John L.Graham (2003, p.245) says “Internet cuts transaction costs and reduce economies of scale from vertical integration; it reduces the economically optimal size for firms. Lower transaction costs make it easier for companies to develop a global reach”.

High profitability and Security:

Online advertising provides a business with high profitability and makes it secure in competition of international marketing. A secure business is more beneficial and reliable and offers the owner much more satisfaction then an insecure one.

Conclusion:

The art of advertising is necessary for the survival of every business but if you want to succeed you would have to go a step ahead and that is ‘online advertising’. For an offline business it is necessary to make sure that they do not lag behind in this intense race so therefore they to make sure of their grounds in this competitive atmosphere, to fight they would need to advertise and to conquer they would need to advertise online.

Find More Advantages Of Extranets For Businesses Articles

Liability Insurance for Small Businesses

Liability Insurance for Small Businesses

There are over 80% of the businesses in United States that are run in partnerships or individually. For almost all of these small businesses, these kinds of ownership may put the business and individual at a liability risk. Having appropriate and adequate small business liability insurance can then protect your business and you from fiscal damage.
A general crisis for a limited company or an incorporate is that the trade owner may believe he is completely sheltered from individual liability and that liability insurance is not necessary at all!  This however is not the case always, you tend to be personally liable if:

If you have signed up a guarantee for a personal loan If you happen to injure somebody personally Acting in an irresponsible manner Following illegal and corrupt business practices Not operating your business as a separate body

Business Liability Insurance

Business liability insurance safeguards and protects small businesses when there is a lawsuit or against personal injury and property damage. This insurance will cover the compensation for a lawsuit and other legal costs. There are several kinds of liability insurances depending on the size and kind of your business. They are:

General Liability Insurance: this is also know as Commercial General Liability-CGL and is one of the best insurances needed to protect your small business. General Liability Insurance covers personal injuries, property damage and false advertising claims. Professional Liability Insurance: Businesses that provide services are generally recommended to have this kind of insurance known as errors and omissions. This kind of insurance covers your business against errors and omissions, malpractices and negligence. Doctors, independent contractors and other technology consultants are required to carry Professional Liability Insurance. Product Liability Insurance: small businesses that are into selling and manufacturing consumer products are required to have this kind of insurance in case the consumer is affected by the usage of the product. The coverage amount and risk mainly depends on the kind of business you own. A scrap material retailer will generally have lesser risk than a kitchen stove maker.

Group Rates: most of the business groups and trade associations provide good benefits and lower insurance rates for their members if they become a part of their association

Coverage Amounts: Be sure to shop around and look for lower rates before you buy a Liability Insurance. Also make sure to assess the policy details to see what is included and excluded from the coverage!

Getting in touch with a Specialist Broker who has experience in working with the industry will enable you to get good rates and best coverage required for your small business.

Credit Markets for Consumers and Small Businesses Continue to Worsen

Credit Markets for Consumers and Small Businesses Continue to Worsen

Consumers and small businesses are seeing no improvement in credit markets. Indeed ,credit availability is worsening and the cost of credit is actually rising. The Administration and Congress have willfully contributed to these worsening credit conditions  by continued socialization of capital markets, assaults on success , coddling of  large but incompetent , worthless  but politically favored enterprises and  shameless feeding of special interests. If stimulating failure, pessimism and anxiety are the objectives then The Stimulus is working very well indeed.

There are several signs that credit markets are continuing to deteriorate:

•1.       Insurance companies saw a decline of billion in statutory capital in 2008. The decline continues in 2009. Credit downgrades for several insurers lie ahead which will raise their cost of capital , reduce the sales and underwriting of new policies and force a further shrinking of the balance sheets via asset sales to reduce their risk profile. Hartford, Prudential and MetLife have all sought regulatory approval to obtain treasury capital infusions.

•2.       American Express disclosed that  past due payments in February rose again, following increases in January and December 2008. Following this disclosure, the cost of protecting European corporate bonds from default went up.

•3.       A survey by the National Small Business Association revealed that almost 75% of businesses with less than 500 employees(these businesses rely on corporate credit cards and lines of credit for short term, inventory and seasonal financing) are experiencing a deterioration in credit availability and an increase in credit card and credit line  interest rates. Banks are sharply curtailing credit limits and lines of credit yet raising interest rates, sharply.  In the last decade such businesses created 60% to 80% of net new jobs in the US.

•4.       Consumers are defaulting on all credit card payments in unprecedented numbers. Charge -offs rose to 7.1% in January 2009 compared with a year ago and the worst is still ahead. Citigroup may cut credit lines by 0 billion, Bank of America by 0 billion, JP Morgan by 0billion and American Express by 0billion……a total of .5 trillion in 2009.

•5.       The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund is approaching complete depletion. At the beginning of 2008, the fund had billion.At the beginning of 2009 the fund had billion. The FDIC projects an additional billion in losses thru end 2013.Insurance companies saw a decline of billion in statutory capital in 2008. The decline continues in 2009.

•6.       A large wave of commercial real estate shopping/shopping mall bankruptcies is coming. This year about 75,000 stores have already closed(the evidence is clear in every town and city) The retail industry thinks that, at least, 4 times as many more stores will close in 2009. Entire malls will shut down.

•7.       By early March 2009, junk bonds were yielding 19% more than Treasuries of comparable maturity. A yield spread of more than 10% is termed distressed. This means that the interest rate on a 10 year junk bond is now around 22%( 19% plus  very close  to 3%  on 10 year Treasury bonds). In effect, credit markets are now effectively closed to thousands of fairly large companies whose debt is rated below investment grade .As the current debt of these companies matures they will not be able to refinance. The only recourse is to massively shed costs by reducing business activity and firing scores of thousands of people in the second half of 2009.

•8.       The cost of protecting investors against a default of US Government debt has risen  sharply. This cost is 60% higher in Mid March 2009 than at the end of 2008 and 7 times higher than a year ago. The credit worthiness of the US is now about the same as France.

This week the Federal Reserve decided to, literally, print .15Trillion dollars, a move that can only be justified if the US were in a prolonged and major world war that necessitated total national mobilization. Quite likely the move is one of desperation, following the news that in the past 90 days foreign interest in buying US Government bonds has evaporated. Foreign governments such as China and Russia have been quietly shifting into gold and into US Government notes( very short term obligations, unlike bonds). With foreigners losing faith in US Government debt and US citizens less and less able or motivated to buy US debt, the government is buying its own debt. Foreigners have also been net sellers of Agency(Fannie, Freddie) debt for the past several months.  Readers will recall that in the Fall of 2008  Fannie and Freddie as well as AIG turned to the Chinese government for a bailout. Only when  the Chinese recoiled,  were Fannie, Freddie and AIG nationalized.  

   The consequences of this move to print dollars and brazenly debase the currency , within months(not years), will be rising energy, food and clothing prices as the dollar is debased. Military spending will decline sharply and threats to national security will multiply. The flight away from the dollar and into hard assets(gold, later silver, weapons , oil, metals  and soon  agricultural  land) has begun in earnest now. Competitive currency devaluation and trade conflicts and contraction  will follow.

 The result will be a lethal combination of high unemployment, high inflation  especially in the price of daily necessities, and high interest rates. Poor and lower middle class individuals and families will be ravaged. This is a prescription for grave social disorder in the US  which in turn will have consequences we cannot foresee.

Millions of Americans are re-learning  and the majority culture will have to relearn(or perish) that when debt is used by equity to make more equity, debt is good. When debt is used by equity to finance gross self indulgence, debt is very bad indeed. In 2009, in America, equity liberates; debt enslaves. In time, we will go back to making and doing real things for real people. The alternative hardly bears thinking.

Unless these fearful credit conditions  created by the Fed, Congress and the Administration, aided and abetted by the majority culture, are reversed and consumers and real businesses doing real things can get affordable credit in required amounts, the US economy will continue to shrink. The prospects, at present, are that the political elites in the America have embarked on a course that will cost another 2 million jobs in 2009.

More Stimulus Money For Small Businesses Articles

Get Collaborating : Sharepoint Alternatives for Small/medium Businesses

Get Collaborating : Sharepoint Alternatives for Small/medium Businesses

The Need for a SharePoint Alternative

According to Gartner Group, Forrester, companies will spend 0 billion a year by the end of the decade on intranet and collaboration hardware, software.

MS SharePoint – A Big “No No” for Growing Businesses?

In the hyper-competitive 21st century, executives are pressed from all quarters. On the one hand, they need to be flexible, always on the move, and on the other hand, there is also a greater need for teamwork and information exchange. This underlines the importance of collaboration technology – document management, intranet & extranet portals – for running an efficient business. This is just as true for growing businesses, faced with tough competition and limited budgets.

The SharePoint Burden

- High Upfront Investment

- Pricey Hardware

- Specialized IT Staff

- Ongoing Maintenance

- No Email

- Inappropriate Features

Unfortunately, growing organizations have had to contend with an ill fitting solution. The most prominent solution, MS SharePoint, was crafted for an entirely different segment – big businesses with very different needs and huge IT budgets. SharePoint requires pricey hardware, huge implementation, technical expertise, & has features often wholly inappropriate for the small to mid sized business context.? Even worse, it offers only a partial deal, lacking email capability, which forces companies to purchase communications and collaborations tools piecemeal.

This backbreaking burden often proves to be a major distraction, channeling energies and resources away from important areas. Thus the quest for a viable SharePoint alternative.

The SAAS Model – Win-Win for Growing Business

“Most of the start-up application vendors are selecting SaaS as their primary model, and increasingly as their sole model for delivering applica?tions.”

Dave Mitchell,

Director, SAAS Strategy IBM

Although it would have been true 8-10 years ago that growing businesses did not have many alternatives to SharePoint, the landscape is much changed now. Modern day technologies and approaches have spurned a new breed of solutions which open incredible collaboration possibilities even while offering a much better cost-benefit deal. Moreover, many such solutions are targeted specifically towards the hitherto neglected small to mid sized business segment.

In recent times there has been a discernible movement towards the software-as-a-service (SAAS) model. This holds true not just for the SharePoint hosting market, but for just about any software technology, with web based office suites, video editors, telephony solutions, operating systems and what have you. There’s talk of “death of the desktop” and behemoths like Microsoft lagging in the race with solutions like SharePoint.

The SAAS Advantage – Bettering SharePoint Vices

The SAAS Advantage

- All SharePoint Features

- No Hardware

- No Upfront Investment

- Business Email?

- Added Features

- Outlook Integration

- Universal Access

- Low Monthly Fee

The SAAS model offers certain basic benefits which make it the best alternative to MS SharePoint, and especially suitable for growing companies. Firstly, the solution is hosted at the solution provider’s, saving the customer the effort of setting up, configuring and maintaining servers, and hiring specialized support staff. These solutions are ready to be used from day one, requiring little more than the user getting on a browser and signing up.

The hosted model also scores from a security point of view. These solution providers often have security expertise and technologies not available to smallish firms.

Secondly, almost no upfront monetary investment is needed. The cost structure is usually a low monthly user based subscription fee. This ensures that companies pay only for what they use, and there is no obligation of carrying on with a bad solution to recover initial investment. Companies have the flexibility of opting out whenever they please.

Get All That is Good About SharePoint

Almost all of the good alternatives to SharePoint duplicate its entire feature set. Like the ability to store and organize documents online, and share them across the board, along with rich document management features – versioning, access permissions, change notifications, comments etc.

Or the ability to publish dedicated intranets/extranets for employees and groups within the company or clients and partners outside it. These solutions also allow for a great deal of customization where intranet/extranet look and layout can be intricately managed; and select collaboration tools be added, like shared documents, calendars, contacts or project management. In some cases there are added layers of customization where information access to people at different levels within the same intranet or extranet can be managed. Some solutions even allow users to build entire websites.

Beyond MS SharePoint

Some of these solutions even go beyond SharePoint, and offer a whole tool box of features for almost the entire range of small business needs. For example, one sharepoint alternative has an email system inbuilt in its toolkit and also allows customers to set up custom business email for their companies. MS Exchange like features such as the ability to share contacts, calendars and tasks are also included. Extra features like polling and forums are thrown into the mix. This saves companies the need to purchase solutions piecemeal for different needs.

Flexibility

Flexibility is another hallmark of SAAS software. Since all you need to access them is a web browser, you can use the entire feature set from any internet enabled device – mac, windows, desktop, laptop or handheld. This allows team members to stay connected even when they’re traveling, and saves time and costs setting up dedicated VPNs for external parties. Anyone who has internet is on the “network”.

Moreover, plugins allow these solutions to communicate seamlessly with other software. These solutions can be used in tandem with popular softwares which are a part of every company, for example Outlook.

The hosted model also renders unnecessary the need to download and install updates regularly. The provider simply keeps adding upgrades, patches and new features at his own end and these are instantly available to the users of the software.

Conclusion – Decision Criteria

Even within vendors who provide SAAS software, a decision is to be made. A comparison of various SAAS SharePoint Alternatives is provided in the next page. Some important criteria that need to be considered while making the selection are:-

· Do they provide the basic SharePoint feature set?

· What kind of initial investment is involved in terms of effort and costs?

· What are the costs?

· Is the solution scalable as the organization grows?

· What kind of security do they provide?

· Are there additional features? (relevant to needs)

· How well are features integrated within the solution

· Can their system communicate and integrate with commonly used software like Outlook?

· Do they provide support and training?

Obama says banks should lend more money to small businesses to help spur recovery, create online jobs on these websites

Obama says banks should lend more money to small businesses to help spur recovery, create online jobs on these websites

Big banks that got big bailout bucks should return the favor by lending more to qualified small businesses, President Barack Obama says.

 

In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama said too many small business owners remain unable to get credit despite administration steps to jump-start lending, which was virtually frozen when the financial crisis took hold last year.

 

“These are the very taxpayers who stood by America’s banks in a crisis, and now it’s time for our banks to stand by creditworthy small businesses and make the loans they need to open their doors, grow their operations and create new jobs,”

 

Obama said. “It’s time for those banks to fulfill their responsibility to help ensure a wider recovery, a more secure system and more broadly shared prosperity,” said Obama.

 

The president said the administration will “take every appropriate step to encourage them to meet those responsibilities.” He did not specify what those steps might be.

 

 Obama’s were the latest instance of the populist tone he has employed to pressure the financial industry. Earlier this week, Obama criticized the banking and finance industries for working through Congress to try to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Agency he have proposed.

 

He accused them of “using every bit of influence they have to maintain the status quo that has maximized their profits at the expense of American consumers, despite the fact that recently those same American consumers bailed them out as a consequence of the bad decisions that they made.

 

 “The financial bailout package cost taxpayers 0 billion.In his address Saturday, Obama said small businesses have created nearly two-thirds of the nation’s new jobs over the past decade and a half.

 

 “They must be at the forefront of our recovery,” he said. This year’s 7 billion economic stimulus package made billion in tax breaks available to small business and cut the costs of Small Business Administration loans, Obama said.

 

 Last week, he asked Congress to increase the size of some SBA loans and announced a plan to provide low interest loans to small banks that agree to lend more money to small businesses.

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