I just received a copy of the J.K. Lasser’s Your Income Tax 2006 book, and as always, it is one hefty book. There’s something intimidating about reading a very thick book, more so when it deals with taxes. Taxes are not my most favorite things in the world, but like death, it is one of the inevitable realities of life. There’s less than 45 days left for this year, and it is time to start thinking about taxes. To reduce your tax liability, you may want to increase your business expenses. Perhaps you’re thinking of designing and printing a new

There’s a new place where your business must be seen. It’s called Google Base – an experimental (beta) new product that Google launched recently. It is described as a classified ads marketplace — and more. You can list your products for sale (30 days maximum), jobs, websites, news and articles, events, even recipes. It seems that you can list anything that you offer to the public. Best of all, it may even be your ticket to inclusion in Google’s search database and other products! As the blurb on the Google Base says You can describe any item you post with

For about a month, my blog was blacklisted by the new pinging service Pingoat, which considered it “spam” and “objectionable.” A search engine dropping your blog like a hot potato is one thing, but another service putting you in their blacklist for spam is another. Both are never pleasant, but the last is akin to a slap in the face (ok, that’s me being a drama queen). The issue was resolved after I posted in Pingoat’s discussion forum requesting that the blacklist be removed (emailing the owner did not work). Judging from the fact that their forum contains a category

In my conversations with many small business owners and home business entrepreneurs, branding is almost always considered the turf of big boys. Afterall, who has time to think of branding when they are busy selling and marketing their businesses? This is especially true among solo entrepreneurs doing everything by themselves. This mindset is unfortunate to a certain extent as small entrepreneurs can benefit tremendously from properly positioning their businesses into a brand. They may not have the deep pockets needed to run branding campaigns, and their businesses may not become household names, but we small entrepreneurs can learn a thing

The webmaster community is all agog nowadays of the ongoing Google update. In an effort to combat spam and improve its search results, Google periodically changes its algorithm in ranking websites. However, this particular update, codenamed Jagger (in honor of Matt Cutts), is different from all others. First off, it comes in three stages, the first stage of which started around end-September (some say Sept. 22), and two months later is still ongoing. Many suspect that new ranking frameworks are being implemented, in particular Trust Rank As with every update, some gain better Google rankings while others see their traffic

I was just thinking of signing up for an advanced web analytics tool for WomenHomeBusiness.com (our current web stats software only gives us the basic), but Google just released their Google Analytics tool. It is by far the BEST analytics software that I know of that is free. Some of the features that I like: – it’s able to track basic visitor information– it provides conversion information from your Google Adwords account, as well as track performance of banner campaigns, email campaigns, etc.– it allows you to create groups or sections of your websites and track statistics on this particular

This week’s issue of PowerHomeBiz.com’s newsletter Home Business Alerts can be found here: http://www.powerhomebiz.com/newsletter/2005/nov10.htm