Recently someone asked me some questions that I think are on the mind of everyone who is thinking about buying tax liens. People want to know how much money they need to get started in tax lien investing and if this is something that they can use as their main source of income. In this article I will give my experience of what it takes to get started as opposed to how much money you need to invest in order to turn buying tax liens into your main income source.

First let me make it clear that tax lien investing is only one of my income sources. I use it as Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s Featured Business Loan Resource: Maryland Direct Loans and Guarantees CDBG–ED provides funding to commercial and industrial economic development projects. Program funds are dispersed to a local jurisdiction in the form of a conditional grant and are then used for public improvements or loaned to a business.

Depending on whose stats you pay attention to, approximately 80% of small businesses fail within their first 5 years of operation. In many cases, its not that a particular business could not succeed; there just wasn’t sufficient time to figure out how to succeed.

Which brings us to the worst small business financing strategy ever.

Here’s how it works: Read the rest of this entry »

The Permanent Fund to Alleviate Extreme Poverty directly supports microloans from tax-deductible contributions. No overhead, no administrative fees, no fundraising costs are paid for with donated money to the Fund. Every gift to the Permanent Fund provides perpetual benefits. As loans are repaid, the money is loaned out in perpetuity.

MicroCredit Enterprises provides loans and guarantees to qualified MFIs. It launched its lending operations in 2006. It finds creditworthy, locally-run and locally-controlled microfinance programs around the world and provides these organizations with affordable, interest-bearing loans so that they can expand their operations. Priority is given to organizations that serve a high percentage of deeply-impoverished individuals and families, particularly women, and operate in isolated, rural communities.

Hunter Douglas Endowment for Microfinance Sustainability
MicroCredit Enterprises has established the HunterDouglas Endowment for Microfinance Sustainability, which is currently funded at $1 million. Operationally, this fund serves as a liquidity account or bridge financing to respond to unexpected financial emergencies in the MicroCredit Enterprises overseas loan portfolio.

See More of MicroCredit Enterprises here

Micro Lenders: A company or organization that offers small loans to businesses that are generally unable to obtain financing from a conventional source. Microlender loans often range from $5,000 to $25,000 at interest rates higher, but not always, than those charged by traditional commercial banks.

Micro loans first started in underdeveloped countries to help the poor become entrepreneurs. The loans were generally small. Today this has all changed. Micro loans are now available throughout the United States and one of their principle groups is women! Because women have had…

Finish: What Are Micro Loan Lenders? here

Being classified as a small business isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it means that you may qualify for a large amount of support from the Small Business Administration or “SBA”.

When you are in business for yourself, it is critical to develop a good knowledge base, and that is also what will help you wade through the myriad of small business loans.

So Let’s Look at How SBA Loans Work

The first thing you need to understand is that you as a business owner are not going to deal with the SBA yourself. The SBA does not act as a principle lender. Instead it backs loans made to small businesses that might otherwise not find a favorable market in traditional lending circles. This means that you will still seek financing from your regular source of lending: banks or other private financial institutions, and if they feel that you have merit but perhaps do not quite meet their more stringent requirements for a loan they put the loan forward to the SBA as a security backing. Read the rest of this entry »

No matter what, your business is it is likely you need supplies. For some companies it may only be a matter of office supplies and equipment, for others it might be an entire product line brought in for re-sale. No matter what type of business you are going to be dealing with vendors. Because of this you are in the perfect position to build your business credit in a way that will benefit your company in several ways.

Even if you can afford to buy your paperclips with cash—don’t. Right from the start you should be contacting vendors that you will be doing business with and enquiring about the possibility of trade credit. Use your business name, address, and pertinent information to obtain vendor accounts so that it is your business that builds credit not your personal credit history. Read the rest of this entry »

There are two main reasons objections come up in selling and there are sales tactics you need to successfully deal with them. One reason is a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the customer to realizing the close is imminent. They bring up an objection to slow down the process. These objections are the ones you can get past easily by just acknowledging them and carrying on with the close. Let’s assume you are starting to write an order and the customer says, “Hold it, that’s a lot of money for a computer system.” Some salespeople stop here and leave. Did the customer say he wasn’t buying? All he said was it was a lot of money and he is probably right. Try using a sales tactic like, “I understand” or “Yes it is” and keep writing the order. About 40% of the time, the objection won’t come up again because it was just a delaying reaction to the close. But, in 60% of the cases, you still have work to do. That’s when the following sales tactics can help. Read the rest of this entry »

Before you go a bank or financial institution to request information for commercial loans, you should ask yourself the following questions:

How comfortable are you with your past decisions of the finance company? You should know what kind of commercial funding to consider. For example, what kind of rate would feel more comfortable with? Do you feel secure about your history of repayment of commercial loans are personal loans?

When financial institutions give commercial loans, they tend to focus on three main ratios. Read the rest of this entry »

Foreign Exchange Market, or Forex as it is commonly called, is an international exchange market to buy and sell different currencies from around the world. An investor has the ability to buy and sell these currencies in order to create gains from small movements in the value of one currency over another. The Foreign Exchange Market or Forex is open from Monday at 0:00 GMT until Friday at 10:00 GMT. For this reason Forex traders are not limited to the general time constraints of the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ.

This versatility attracts many investors to become Forex traders. The liquidity of the Foreign Exchange Market is also very attractive for the Forex investor as trades range from 1 to 1.5 trillion dollars on a daily basis. These massive amounts of trades make it extremely difficult for any one trader to affect the market. Read the rest of this entry »