Easy 1099 and W2 Filing for the IRS Challanged
Its that time of year again, and I am not talking about Groundhog Day, even thought it is an undervalued national holiday (and a equally undervalued and spectacular Bill Murray movie.)
Nope, its tax season. And if you are like me, and run a small business, that’s great for your accountant, and not so great for you, your free time, or you wallet. I wanted to pass on a small tool that made my life just a touch more manageable this year. I work a lot with contractors and consultants, which means a bevy of 1099 activity. There are several avenues you can travel down for your employee W2’s or 1099’s. You can let your accountant take care of it, you can do it yourself, or you can let the magic of the world wide web help you along. Since I am a believer in magic (an an online solutions company), I opted to explore my options on the web.
Most services out there will do your 1099’s, but for a price, and most only make sense if you are doing bulk submissions (20-30+). However, I found a little site, with a very apt name: FileTaxes.com
I searched and searched, and stumbled across this one. One can file single 1099’s or multiple 1099’s for a flat rate of $3.49, a great price for the small business that don’t need a ton of them filed. It also efiles with the IRS, mails them to the recipient, provides you with hard-copies, and emails a conformation upon delivery. You can read more at http://www.filetaxes.com
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This is an article in a monthly series - how to run a business using online tools.
Business, Cool Online Apps, How To | Comments (0)Personal Intro to Your Business Website or Dysfunctial Max Headroom Clone?
I try not to blog too much about what has already been talked about, but could only find one article on gizmoz.com, and since I have been playing with it extensively this morning, thought I would share a bit, and hopefully solicit some feedback.
So to start, what is gizmoz? In short - it is a service that will allow you to generate a talking avatar. You can upload a picture of your face and it will build a 3-D image. It also allows you to put voice to your digital communications. Personal service to the comical extreme. For most of us, once you complete the easy process of building your first (what they call) character-based visual expression, it may come out looking like a dysfunctional mini-clone; eerily reminiscent of the 80’s pop culture icon Max Headroom. So can their be a legitimate business application to this?
I have decided to experiment.
I have produced a short 20 second video clip (see the sidebar to the right) that can be played upon entering my website. From this point on, for the next month or so, I will monitor my analytics account to see if I can keeping more people on my site for longer. Take a look:
Now - I didn’t use myself, since I was trying to give this a hint of professionalism and no matter how many different pictures I used, I couldn’t get it to a point that didn’t make me want to reconsider this experiment. Maybe I am just digitally self conscious, but I’d rather use one of the provided (and admittedly better looking) provided pictures.
Does does this work? We shall see. I will have statistics next month, but in the mean time, take a look, let me know what you think, and if you could ever see using this as an application in your business.
Justin
202-552-1825
Business, Cool Online Apps, How To, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | Comments (0)40+ Real Estate Web 2.0 Websites, Applications, and Communities
The following is a list of 40+ online web 2.0 websites, applications, and communities, some that are in beta (or even alpha) development stages. If you know if one we missed, by all means tell us, this should be an organic, ever growing list.
Home Values
It allows anyone to find rough estimates of the valuation of their home by searching comparable properties. While values are not always accurate, the site continues to get it better.
Beta property valuation tool competing directly with Zillow. It uses Google Maps in its technology mashup and allows you to do cool things like adjust values of properties given certain market conditions.
Valuations give you access to most of the same information that real estate professionals use to evaluate homes. Whether you own your place, are thinking of buying, or even just looking around, you can explore data ranging from property facts, value estimates, and a variety of important indicators of local and national changes in the housing market.
Free service that allows anyone to quickly and easily take the first step to buying, selling, or refinancing a home by providing instant access to property valuations, real estate professionals and additional services. eppraisal pulls together public record data from over 70 million homes to quickly and easily give you an estimated value range.
Listings
Scrapes real estate sites to find listings and brings it all together in a clean, well designed site. Using Google maps and RSS feeds, the site seems to have taken the lead in the future of online property listings.
GPS real estate searches from your cell phone
Craigslists – Google Maps mashup to find properties for rent or for sale in your area. The interface is deceivingly simple; dive in and discover how content-rich HousingMaps really is.
Retrove is a national vertical real estate search engine that allows you to search all types of real estate listings such as MLS listings, FSBO, foreclosures, classifieds and other types of property listings across the nation. Retrove provide you real estate search results that take you directly to the real estate listing source.
Buy, Rent or Sell US Apartments and Homes. A comprehensive real estate marketplace featuring millions of listings.
Property search engine Google maps mashup,aggregating listings from many online sources and making them easily searchable with a GoogleMap-based visual interface.
Next-generation, independent real estate search engine. We crawl and index millions of homes for sale and other properties, then organize and display them on a slick Google Map interface.
Roost offers parallel services - a search for consumers and a new platform for Realtors. Unlike other site, they dedicate their time and resources to being a great search engine and having up to the minute data for a dozen or so markets, with more being added daily.
Neighborhood
Help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property.
Community of homeowners, buyers and renters sharing inside knowledge about their local neighborhoods. Discover a new neighborhood or share knowledge about your own. Track local real estate conditions in your area - what’s selling and what’s not. Connect with neighbors across the country and find out what a neighborhood is really like.
The first real estate search engine of its kind allowing you to rate and review good and bad neighbors before and after you move so you can make a smart real estate decision.
Online service that helps home owners choose the most remarkable neighborhood real estate agents to sell their house.
Apartment search by neighborhood website. In addition to finding apartments, users can search neighborhood profiles, photos, interactive maps and user generated blogs and events. Hubbuzz is an apartment site that incorporates extensive neighborhood information and user generated blogs and comments from anyone in the community.
Comprehensive and customizable real estate Web site that fundamentally changes the online real estate industry by helping consumers make smart decisions before, during, and after the property transaction in ways never before possible. We, at Terabitz, realize that every home exploration is unique.
Estately (Washington State Only) - Beta
Created with the belief that home buyers need context when they’re looking for a home. At Estately you can learn about the surrounding area, the nearby shops, the character of the neighborhood and the style, size and price of a property.
New way of finding a place to live. If you want to move, you can let people in the area know you’re looking. If you want to sell or let a place, you can find interested people quickly. No hassle, no obligation, no estate agents.
Real estate information service that gives those of us who are not real estate professionals independent access to actual unfiltered information that is relevant to what is often our most valuable investment—our home—or any other real estate.
Agents
Agent Scoreboard (Some States)
Search for agents in your local area and read reviews and comments posted by real people that have used their services.
Real estate agent review service that helps home buyers and sellers find an Incredible Agent who can assist them in their real estate transactions.
Free service to consumers that enables you to search for real estate agents using meaningful criteria including: commission, location, sales history, services offered, experience level, and the estimated value of the home you are selling or buying.
Marketing
Classified ad creation, management and submission platform that enables online sellers to quickly and easily create attractive classified ads or “virtual flyers” that can be posted on dozens of leading online marketplaces in a few simple clicks.
Free template and photo hosting for craigslist classifieds
Video network that connects you with people and resources to most effectively market real estate, neighborhoods, cities, events and local businesses.
Use your digital photos to create stunning Internet Shows in less than 5 minutes! They will look and feel like TV commercials!
Online rewards system that enables real estate sellers and professionals to give Buyers and other users rewards.
Info
Supply housing shoppers with the info they need to make sound financial decisions about whether to buy or rent.
Foreclosure Radar (California Only)
Only place where you’ll find complete up-to-date information on every foreclosure opportunity available in California, including exclusive daily updates on every auction.
DIY (always good to know the competition, right?)
Industry’s first online brokerage for residential real estate.
Users are encouraged to list their property for sale for free. Buyer’s can browse listings with new technologies including drag-n-drop favorites, endless scroll searches and can view properties using data, pictures or maps.
Way to buy and sell a home—bringing together buyers and sellers in one place, and connecting all the resources you need to buy or sell your home.
RealEstate Communities
Free Online community for real estate professionals designed to help them promote and grow their business.
Real Estate Social Networking site out there. With a focus on networking, dealmaking, and education, the site brings a professional approach to the world of real estate for both the consumer and professionals.
Online real estate referral network, a business exchange that connects real estate practitioners and service providers across the country and around the globe.
Just Plain Cool Sites
Fantasy Real Estate
Manage your properties with software that lets you track rents, bills, advertisements and invoicing.
Tools of the Times - Part I
When I stumbled upon this site and looked at the tool for a minute or two, I thought, “hey this could be interesting”. After I entered my email and fed it my contact list of 450 people, I went from interested, to amazed, to nervous, all in about 3 minutes. I think for what the tool was designed to do, it works well, and was nice to see people I never even thought to track down in mySpace or Facebook. It also felt a bit like I was intruding, since most of these people post to site not ever thinking that a tool like this would come along.
So whats the tool, and what does it do? You feed it a list of email addresses and it goes and searches 22 sites (everything from flickr, picasa, myspace, to your wish list at amazon.com) and brings you a list of your “friends” (or anyone you have an email address for) and their pictures, blog posts, twitter thoughts, and products they hope to soon buy.
The first thing I thought, is oh boy, I hope that at some point I didn’t add anything embarrassing to my wish-list on amazon. It was a brutal reminder that everything you post on-line sticks around for a very long time and can and will be found, even if you don’t intend it to. Don’t get me wrong, this is a amazing little tool they have going one here. It will consolidate my social networking for my business in ways I couldn’t have imagined just yesterday. You can enter yourself and track all of the places you network in one central hub.
I guess this is the way we are trending with the web. Web 1.0 connected information, web 2.0 connects people. Give it a shot and let me know your feeling on this tool and implication on privacy and your social networking plan.
Local Portals, Targeted Marketing, Amazing Results
Why you should use them to get local info, list your business with, and even own your own…
It started out as the World Wide Web. It was amazing the reach one could have, chatting to someone in Ireland, buying something from South Africa, emailing someone in New Zealand, all from your living room. Everything was about big, wide, and breaking down the invisible boarders of distance that have so long separated neighbors of the world.
Now, we are starting to see a trending back toward local and the community. Google, Yahoo, and AOL all have local portals and searches. Also, independent local portals are becoming big business in the web world. Why, because everyone wins. The people or companies that develop the site do so for branding, marketing, advertising, etc and the users get information on their local community quickly and easily, a service that even the biggest companies have a hard time providing. Why, because it is users of the local community portal that drive the content, and not even Google can keep up with real time information on every local community. It can be expensive to list with nationally based portals, so local small businesses can advertise for much less on a local, community based portal, sometime even for free.
At sites like UrbanaMD.info, a local Urbana Maryland community portal, all businesses can obtain their own webpage for free. This seem counterintuitive if the owner of the site hopes to make some cash, right?, Well, if you look at it, once again everyone wins. The more information listed on the site, the more end users, and the more revenue from advertising. Most of the time the owner of a site is a development company hoping to gain market share through branding - or a local real estate agent or mortgage broker hoping to gain community trust, appreciation, and recognition through providing a community service based application.
If it isn’t obvious by now, my company runs several of these sites, just recently releasing UrbanaMD.info. AT UrbanaMD Joining is FREE, Classified Ads are FREE and UNLIMITED, and basic Business Listings are FREE. Once you join, you will be able to post to the forums, add your business, check out our recipe Xchange, and even create your own “My Urbana Space” page much like MySpace.com. These are only a few of the things going on around here, and new things are being added daily. There are now over 160 local businesses and restaurants now listed under the “Our Urbana” Section
A site like this provides a public service and in using open source software such as Joomla, can be sold as a reasonable priced, pre-packaged application to anyone that is interested (contact us if you are). But this isn’t just a pitch; you should list your business with every local portal possible, getting your name out there as much as possible. But owning and operating a local portal can take your business to the next level.
Some more articles to mull over:
Promote Your Business through Local Web Portals
Local Portals Mean Big Business
Geolocal - Local Internet Marketing for Small Business
.inspiring.estates.
.inspiring.estates. is a content management system (CMS) geared specifically to Real Estate agents, that allows you to manage properties on your website in an easy and effective way. This powerful combination enables you to run a real estate website and use the most user friendly open source Web Content Management System (CMS) available today - Joomla CMS!
Our products are developed based on several case studies and feedbacks from our users. Now you can list and manage your real estate properties easily using .inspiring.estates.
- Easily Manage Properties and Site Content
- Publish and Showcase Properties at the Click of a Button
- Attach an Unlimited Number of Photos per Property
- Advanced On-Site Search Engine
- Search Engine Optimized
- Recommend Property to Friend Feature
- Company and Agent Information
- Allows Individual Agent Login and Listings
- Featured Property Module
- Print Property Details
- Save Property Info as PDF
These are several reasons you can be assured that choosing our .inspiring.estates. is the right investment for your company. Many realtors interested in .inspiring.estates. also love our .inspiring.mail. program, an email managment system.
Announcement, Business, Cool Online Apps, Web Design | Comments (0)BNI - Business Networking International
BNI is a referral based networking group for professionals, plain and simple. Most people have heard of it and some have considered joining. I weighed the option for a year before taking the plunge and wanted to share my experience. Some background…
BNI allows one and only one person per professional group into a chapter at once. SO, there can be only one real estate agent, one web designer, one marketing exec, etc. This allows you to lock out the competition and have sole access to your fellow members (or sales staff if you want to look at it that way) and their network of contacts.
Why it worked for me…
The positive aspects of the group are many. The thing that BNI has helped me and my company does is shape, mold, and hone our image. You have a wide variety of members with diverse background and experience. It is necessary to be able to effectively communicate your business ideas and goals to them and to communicate what make a great referral for you. In my line of work, I tend to speak in straight up DORK. Now, I have brought it down to a slight dweeb accent.
You learn how to forge effective partnerships with others, learning how to listen as well as speak (as previously mentioned). The motto is givers gain, and it is not just a sappy one liner. The more you work to develop the personal and professional relationships within the group, the more you get from the group and the experience as a whole. Each person not only can impart wisdom from years of experience, but your clients and other non-BNI associates will benefit from your acquisition of knowledge as well as your ability to refer experience professional from a diverse array of professions and backgrounds.
Nothing like telling a client, “I got someone for that…”
You will most likely find your “other” in the group. It is that one profession that you just have to have (mortgage broker and real estate agent, web design and computer fixer guy, etc) – they just fit together. This is the low hanging fruit and this keeps the pocketbook happy while you spend the time and effort to train the rest of your BNI associates as your own sales staff.
BNI is a commitment. This isn’t an optional thing, and you can show up late. It is a weekly appointment, just like any other meeting. Some find it hard to make an hour a week commitment to the program. Others find it hard to make the commitment of the 1000 plus dollars it will cost over the course of the year for dues and meeting fees. And to you, you may be right, BNI may not be for you, but it was, and still is for me.
This isn’t a cure all, and should only be used as a small part of your overall business plan, I have seen some sink all their eggs into the BNI basket and wonder why they don’t do the business they want. I have more than paid for my dues and fees a half a dozen time over, and I am still the new guy. I can’t wait to see what happens as I grow and help build the group.
If you are in the DC area and want to stop by a chapter to see if BNI is right for you or you just want to knwo a bit more about BNI, take a look at our website at http://www.bni-gaithersburg.com
Business | Comments (0)