Business Generation

Over the past few years problems with finances, higher mortgage rates, and the global financial crisis has plunged many people into severe financial difficulties, and as a result of this many homeowners have been unable to keep on top of their mortgage repayments.

The high level of mortgage defaults over recent years has resulted in many people having their homes repossessed, which naturally caused a great deal of concern amongst consumers and officials. The recession also took its toll on the ability of homeowners to make repayments on their mortgages, with many people losing their jobs as a result of the recession.

However, with the recession now over and the financial markets easing up the level of mortgage repayment defaults has been falling recently.

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Here’s an updated list of contests, competitions and awards for small businesses, brought to you every other week as a community service by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com.

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Intuit Green Grants for Small Businesses
Enter by July 18, 2010

Enter at Love a Local Business. Follow the instructions to complete the Local Hero Challenge registration form and 10-question survey.  Limit one nomination per business.  One person may nominate multiple businesses using seperate Local Hero Challenge registrations with a unique email address for each business.  Winner will receive a $500  grant, plus sustainability training.

Bonus Nomination: Earn a bonus nomination for your business by adding a post to Intuit’s Facebook Wall including your business name, city, state, and the name of the badge that your business earned after completing the Local Hero Challenge sustainability survey. (Note: You m

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Especially during the busy summer travel and vacation season, lots of credit card consumers will be faced with an often-perplexing question or choice. Should they go ahead and pay extra for auto insurance when renting a car, or decline it and hope that they are covered by their credit card membership’s insurance program?

Sometimes the cost of a daily rental car insurance premium is a huge additional expense that can escalate the cost of auto rentals into the stratosphere. But without it, if there is an accident, the renter could wind up owing a car rental company the price of a brand new car. So

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There are millions of sources of business advice. Some are good. Some are less good. It is often relatively straight forward to keep asking people for advice until you find someone who advises you to do what you wanted to do in the first place. This can be good. But it is unlikely to lead you to decide to do what you should do.

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

10 Step Decision Making Process

If you are unsure, it pays to talk to experts at several points in this process. However, experts can only advise in the stages up to the point where you make a decision. Use

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As a small business owner, you know the importance of blogging. You also know how important it is to get coverage from other blogs. But getting blog coverage means knowing how to pitch. It’s about making your email to that blogger stand out and make them want to hit the Reply button instead of just directing you to trash. And that’s not always easy.

As a blogger and a SMB business owner, I’m constantly getting and sending out pitches. And there’s an art to it. Here are 5 Dos and Dont’s of pitching bloggers for coverage.

DO:

1. Know Who To Contact: Businesses quickly get in trouble when they create a rudimentary press list and then mass email everyone on it. This is s

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In another recent post, we talked about the cost of hiring employees. However, some of those costs can be given back to your small business in the form of government grants.

The new healthcare bill that was recently signed into law in 2010 by President Obama contains provisions that provide money to small businesses that promote and operate wellness and prevention programs for their employees. About $200 million in grants will be given out over five years, starting in 2011. These grants will be earmarked for small businesses with 100 or fewer employees and will be administered by the US Health and Human Services Department.

How can your business benefit from these grants?

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