By devoting extra caution and time, commercial borrowers can avoid serious business opportunity investment financing mistakes. The most obvious benefit will be to reduce the potential for critical commercial loan problems, both now and throughout the life of the business financing terms arranged.

A key factor that distinguishes business opportunity financing from other forms of business financing is the lack of commercial property ownership. Although the transaction will usually involve a long-term lease agreement, the buyer is acquiring a business that does not include real estate in the purchase price.

The two mistakes described in this article are more typical than expected by most commercial borrowers. While we will not be addressing all possible business opportunity financing problems in this article, we will include two of the most severe issues to anticipate and avoid.

Length of Business Financing -

A common mistake when acquiring a business opportunity is to finance the acquisition with business financing that expires within two to five years. One reason for this occurring is the failure to negotiate a longer-term lease, since it is typical for financing terms to expire with the lease.

A viable solution is to insist on a lease that is at least ten years long. This will facilitate business finance terms that can typically be for a ten-year period. One key factor that limits business opportunity financing to a ten-year period is due to the absence of commercial real estate collateral.

Use of Excessive Seller Financing -

Although nominal seller financing (such as 10-20%) can be helpful to a business financing transaction, attempts to finance either entirely or primarily with seller financing are generally inadvisable. There are several different issues which can result in this being a serious mistake.

If a seller is providing most or all of the business acquisition financing, a formal appraisal might not be obtained. While this appears to offer the advantage of saving the cost of such an appraisal, it also eliminates an important method of determining if the purchase price is appropriate. It is also not uncommon for a seller to have acquired a business appraisal that is used to substantiate the purchase price for the business they are selling. An appraisal financed by the seller is not likely to be an independent business value estimate.

An additional restriction when using excessive seller financing is that it typically will cover a period of three years or less. This will necessitate refinancing within a period that is not always practical to do so. A loan history up to 48 months will be required by some lenders prior to refinancing a business opportunity loan.

Solutions and Strategies for Avoiding Business Opportunity Investment Loan Mistakes -

Business borrowers should thoroughly discuss options with a business financing expert before proceeding with investing and financing programs. These efforts will be worthwhile since the potential business finance mistakes described above can be overcome successfully. Borrowers should seek out advisors capable of providing candid solutions in their efforts to obtain a better picture of complicated business opportunity financing possibilities.

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Maxing Out Credit Cards

For the record, there is nothing wrong with using credit cards. But if you are attempting credit repair you must understand the relationship between your card balances and your scores. Max out your cards if you must, but pay them down if you need your credit scores to be at their best the next 60 days. A maxed out credit card can cost you over 100 points on your credit score.

Opening Store Cards

Opening a store card may mean getting a discount, and saving money is a good thing. But store cards carry a triple credit repair threat. First comes the inquiry, next is the hit you get from opening a new account, and last is the high likelihood that the credit limit will be set very near the amount of your purchase. Together these three add up to major credit repair trouble.

Excessive Pre-Mortgage Activity

If you are getting ready to get a mortgage you better stop all non-essential credit activity. Too many people make the error of purchasing furniture, appliances, decorating items, and more, on credit, in advance of closing on their home. All of this credit activity can set your credit repair effort back and kill your credit scores at the very moment you need them the most.

Closing Old Accounts

When it comes to your credit score, old accounts are good accounts. As a credit repair rule of thumb, if you wish to optimize your credit scores, you can aim for having five open credit cards, including MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Discover. If you have accumulated more than five you may close them without worry, but otherwise don’t close your accounts or you will hurt your credit repair effort.

Counting on Refunds to Make Payments

If you pay for an item with a credit card and then return it, the store will credit your card. This does not mean that you don’t have to make your scheduled credit card payment. Don’t count on refunds or amounts in dispute to offset a scheduled payment or you will almost certainly end up with a late payment on your credit report and more unwanted credit repair problems.

Making Consumer Statements on Your Reports

If you dispute an item on your credit report you will be offered the opportunity to make a statement of up to 100 words. Don’t do it. I’m sorry to report that no lender will consider your story. Your comments are of no credit repair value and will only serve to draw attention to the issue and may even linger long after the derogatory item has fallen off. If you have made a statement you may write to the credit bureau to have it removed.

Waiting to Rebuild Credit

No matter how bad your credit may be it is important to start the rebuilding process right away. Many people decide to wait until their credit repair efforts have succeeded. Credit rebuilding is not the second phase of credit repair, it should be done concurrently. If you can’t get approved for regular credit cards, rebuild your credit with secured cards.

Trusting the Credit Bureaus

Don’t believe your eyes. Three quarters of all credit reports have errors. Just because a derogatory item is on your report does not means that it is correct. Errors may be generated by creditors, or by deficiencies in the credit reporting software itself. Because of the loose standards used by the credit bureaus for matching data millions of people have information on their reports that belong to other people.

Ignoring Collection Letters

If you get a letter from a collector don’t ignore it. You have thirty days under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to demand the collector document their legal right to collect. This is an important credit repair tool. You also have the right to ask for an objective accounting of the amount they say you owe. If the collector cannot provide the documentation requested they must cease their collection efforts.

Doing it Alone

You don’t have to manage your credit repair on your own. If you are too busy to make the effort that credit repair requires just contact a reputable credit repair service. They will insure that everything possible is being done to clean up your credit reports and maximize your scores. Good luck!

Copyright © 2008 Ian Webber. All Content. All Rights Reserved.

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I look at a lot of sites on a daily basis. There is a lot of common problems I see on the sites. Some people may have tags establishment or misuse of tags that have no real purpose. I have compiled a list of the top 5 do-it-yourself SEO mistakes. It is safe to say that many do-it-yourselfers can have at least one of these errors on their sites. These should help you avoid these costly mistakes and often pull you in the ranks.

1) Keyword tag – Seo Services

A keyword is the beacon of keywords, but not for keywords. You can not just stuff this tag with keywords that your entire site is related. The tags must reflect the keywords only on that particular page, not the entire site and not all of the keywords you think your site could be searched. Also, you should not have more than 20 words in the tag. You should not repeat any word more than 3 times. If you sell tickets, for example, do not write: Broadway tickets, the circus tickets, hockey tickets, boxing tickets, and so forth. Do use Broadway, the circus, hockey, boxing, tickets and so forth.

2) Description tag – It is sometimes used as a replacement for or combined with a description tag. However, more and more people are using these keywords to stuff. Search engines like Google are interested in what is on the page. More specifically, what visitors can see. In my opinion, the abstract tag has no place on a site.

3) Description Tag – The idea behind this tag is to describe what the “page” is about. Keywords related to the page should be implemented as well. The limit on words should be 20 to 25. I see a lot of site owners stuffing this tag with keywords, or having a description that is just as long. Stay within these guidelines and you will be fine.

4) Title tag – This, I believe, is the most important tag. This is the first tag the search engine bed. He tells what the search engine of the “page” is about. Do not put your web address here. Do not add your company name at the beginning of this tag either. It should not exceed 60 characters.

5) Content-If you notice, I received comments on the relevance of the “page”, not your entire site. Each page has its own keywords. Tag the title tag, description and keywords. All these keywords should be the same. Add it to your content as well. Now your page should be fairly well optimized.

Why is it that the sites fall short? Simple, the content is not optimized. Search engines are, for the most part, pretty basic. You enter a search term and it retrieves sites containing those terms while also taking a number of other factors into account. So if your site does not have these terms, how will you find it? You will not. More to do with keywords and you will experience the same result, but for different reasons. Sometimes, while reading about SEO can be bad. Try too many tricks, tips or methods is like too many cooks spoil the soup. At the end, they may do more harm than good. These rules are very easy to be followed by all. And the doubt? Always consult or hire a professional SEO Expert.

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Everyone wants their websites to be search engine optimized, or SEO-friendly. However, there are some common errors that people make when they’re doing SEO work on their site, and these errors can actually cost them that highly coveted top ten ranking that everyone wants. Here are some things to avoid when doing SEO work on your website.

Remember the ALT tags! Almost every image on your website (not including the background and any images that serve as buttons and the like) needs to have ALT text. This is the text that shows up if the image doesn’t load. More importantly, however, it’s the text that tells search engines what the image is since the programs can’t actually see the picture. A good ALT tag will include two or three of your keywords, and it’s a great place to stick in extra keywords that the viewer will (hopefully, unless your image is missing) never see.

Don’t use the same title tag on every page of your site. While it may be easy to simply write one title for your homepage and then leave it on every page, this is another place where you’re losing out on a place to stick keywords. Vary the title for each page so that search engines will notice the difference, and try to include different keywords for different pages.

Avoid scripts! While Flash and the like are becoming more compatible with search engines, it’s still difficult for more search engines to see inside Flash objects. This means you’re losing places to put meta tags, ALT tags, and more.

Don’t just write for robots. While writing articles with a high keyword density might get your page ranked higher by the search engine, it’s going to send actual human readers away. They don’t want to read anything redundant or clumsy. “Our furniture store in London provides great furniture for London residents looking for furniture designed specifically for London” is going to either annoy readers or make them laugh at the horrible writing. Be sure your SEO phrases and such can be integrated into the text seamlessly so they don’t stand out and don’t over-use them.

Also, actually write your website text yourself (or hire someone to write it). Don’t plagiarize – don’t copy and paste text off of one website and put it on yours without making it clear where the text came from. Too much duplicate text on your page will be flagged by search engines.

Likewise, avoid any bad SEO practices like hidden text or keyword stuffing. Hidden text refers to adding a ton of keywords at the bottom of a website and then making them the same color as the background, effectively hiding them from viewers. Search engines still see them, however. In the past, this was a technique that did actually make search engines rank sites higher, but today’s robots are smart enough to recognize this technique and ignore it. Likewise, keyword stuffing, or making a webpage that’s almost nothing but keywords, raises a number of flags in search engine robots and may actually get your pages ranked lower.

Finally, make certain all of your links describe where they’re going. No one likes to click links that aren’t clearly described by the surrounding text or give a good idea of their target. Plus, links are another factor a search engine uses to determine site relevancy, so not clearly marking them is detrimental in several ways.

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