I’ve been following a thread on my Women Designers Group mailing list where one of the designers shared some language from their contract, and a number of others commented that it sounded apologetic. Like ‘if I do this for you I will have to bill you for it.’

One of the respondees was dead on - saying that hey - this isn’t a hobby! This is a full-time (or more than full-time) professional job. There’s no need to apologize to someone you’ve worked for when it’s time to be paid.

I’ve struggled lately with billing for hourly work. Do I charge up front? Do I invoice on the back end? I’ve found that I have a few clients that I always invoice that pay extremely promptly - no worries there. I have a few others that I’ve invoiced once that took weeks and weeks to pay; that won’t happen again. I hate having to ask for money that’s owed me and sound like I’m apologizing for troubling them again, and again…

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If you’re looking for new ways to grow your business, and make more by doing less, join me on Wednesday, August 27th when I interview Sheri McConnell

Founder and President of the Association for Web Entrepreneurs on her secrets for turning what you know into cash.

Ever thought about writing a book or ebook, starting a membership organization, or doing your own coaching programs, seminars or teleseminars? Then you won’t want to miss this info-packed interview.

Because whether you want to create a new, home-based business, or just add another revenue stream or two to your current business, Sheri is going to show you what it takes make it happen during this one-hour teleseminar.

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There are so many different ways to use social media in this newly connected internet world, and as a social media agency it’s our job to make sure all of our clients understand how to best utilize the space. Yesterday, I stumbled upon a fantastic guest post on Social Desire by Mark Hayward. Mark and his wife Terrie own the Palmetto Guesthouse, a small bed and breakfast in Culebra, Puerto Rico. His post–What the hell can social media do for me?–begins with a conversation he had with another small business owner.The short story: Mark asked this small business owner if he had a website and was shocked when the answer was “No”. The small business owner explained that he had run a successful magazine for over 20 years and he didn’t see the point in changing anything now.

What’s the point of changing now?

Today, over 70% of the US population is online, and in 2006 a study on social media participation by Charlene Li of Forrester research found that nearly 50% of these internet users actively participate online. This means they connect with each other, read or write blogs, create or watch online videos, listen to podcasts, and participate in social networks.

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I got an email from Wolfgang Berger in Germany, asking if I would like to take a look at a relatively new piece of web conferencing software from his young company, Conferendum.

I took him up on the offer, and we went through a demo, followed by a small amount of playing with the presenter’s interface on my part. I haven’t used it enough for a full product review, but I wanted to tell you about two innovative implementations in the software. Web conferencing products are getting more and more similar, so it’s always fun and exciting for me when I see a product that introduces a new slant on a piece of functionality.

The first function involves making it easier for your audience to see content on a shared PowerPoint slide or work document (you can display a snapshot of content from most Microsoft Office documents). In addition to standard annotation tools such as drawing colored lines on the screen, you can specify an arbitrary rectangular region that you want zoomed.

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If you’re looking forward to start up a small business enterprise, investment happens to be a key concern. How much, how less and where exactly; these are the preliminary encounters.

Open source software has a lot of options for the business world, alongside the home user bandwagon. Apart from the other generic features, Open Source Software at times have a greater degree of customization as compared to their proprietary counterparts. This very fact is pretty evident with the fact that several large companies like — Google, Amazon, Yahoo, et al run their servers on Linux, again an Open Source OS.

The idea behind this article is not to force start you to follow the Open Source path, but to make you look at the same as an alternative before you shell out a few hundred or thousand dollars for a close
source and non-free product which does pretty much the same as it’s Open Source and free alternative.

Before we move on, I would like to clear out that free software and Open Source Software are two different entities, though they often come as a bundle!

Today, we shall have a look at a few Open Source Software which may just help you kick start your business.

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Long-time readers know that I am no fan of webcams for business presentations in public webinars. It’s almost impossible to create a professional video image that matches audience expectations created by our collective exposure to commercial productions such as television programs and high end studio webcasts.

But my antipathy does not apply to webcams used in collaborative sessions with people you already know. Why not invoke a little more personal interaction in your virtual meeting? Goodness knows, video is a hot selling commodity today in the web collaboration space.

One of the many problems with setting up a good space for video is getting rid of distractions in the background. I remember watching a professional presentation instructor give a webcast from his office. His webcam broadcast not only his image, but the desk of a fellow worker behind him, who came and went during the course of the webinar. It was immensely distracting and I found myself concentrating on my attempts to see what was on the other guy’s computer screen!

When I work from my home office, I am plagued by the same problem. I have bookcases against the wall behind my chair that are filled with knickknacks and paperwork. They don’t look very good as a backdrop to my video meetings.

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Adobe’s launch of a hosted suites of services, not to mention this huge shift with Acrobat 9, now a web-powered tool, shows the company’s focus on combining the best of web office tools with their current set of products.

Another major change in Adobe’s steer towards their online presence is that of the just launched Acrobat.com. It is the combination of their online meetings tool - Adobe Brio, online Word Processor - Adobe Buzzword and online file sharing - Adobe Share. This new announcement comes with the release of their latest offering - Adobe Acrobat 9 - with Flash built into the PDF experience.

Adobe Buzzword

Buzzword is the word processor from Adobe and sports a sleek and elegant design interface. Of course, Adobe uses Flash/Flex to prove the UI and interaction complete with a WYSISYG tool. Adobe have taken care that your Buzzword document whether on a large screen or small screen or on a printed page, what you see on the screen - fonts, letter spacing, colors, and graphics - are all reproduced perfectly.

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Whether your business sells business-to-business or business-to-consumer products or services, it is important to create and nurture diverse communication channels. Why? For multiple reasons, all of which help expedite the timely and targeted distribution of information.

For example, if your business launches a new product, how are you going to get it in front of consumers? Without fresh, existing channels, you would have to rely on expensive advertising via pay-per-click or be forced to wait months for a search engine optimization effort to take shape. A lack of existing channels creates time and cost barriers that can prolong the dissemination of information and push out the time to realize revenue. Yet, if you created and continually nurtured various communication channels (each with a specific purpose) you can drastically reduce time to revenue by gaining speed and lowering cost.

What are some communication channels worth creating and nurturing? Some of the best involve:

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There’s a very interesting sales tax issue brewing here in Boulder, as reported in the local paper. Seems that someone in city hall has gotten the inspiration to tax a local coffee house, Vics, for the hundreds of free cups of coffee they hand out to frequent customers.

Lots of companies in Boulder have the customer loyalty device in question: a frequent buyer punch card or similar. I have about a dozen of them in my wallet or car glove compartment and they’re all generally the same: get ten punches and the eleventh is on the house. Whether it’s an expensive coffee drink, a burrito, a smoothie or even a sandwich, companies from Safeway to Wahoo’s Fish Tacos have these ubiquitous cards.

According to the paper, Vic’s owes the city approximately $3,000 in unpaid sales tax, which is being labeled “use tax”. Rather than just pay it or register a complaint through the chamber of commerce, Vic’s has brought its fight public by putting up a Web site and hosting a fund raiser for its legal fund. You can check out the site at Vic’s Espresso.com.

I’m torn on this issue because on the one hand, I really like the loyalty card idea and it does help me decide to return to my favorite haunts on a regular basis, but tax revenue from commercial transactions are also an important source of funds for the city and the myriad of services I enjoy as a resident too.

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Search Engine Roundtable notes that the Google Local Business Center is allowing businesses to enter their own, custom categories. While this new functionality has been around for a few weeks now, it is an important one and addresses a major need that both Mike Blumenthal and I have highlighted previously — I recently spoke about this issue again at the SMX West session on Local Search & Blended Results. Previously, businesses could only select business categories from an unusually short list of categories. Exacerbating the issue, some businesses achieved other category associations outside of Google’s sharply limited taxonomy when their listings found in other yellow pages providers such as Superpages were absorbed into Google Maps, including the more comprehensive categories found in those other content sources.

Under the new functionality, businesses may type in custom business categories, and the interface also provides helpful potential term using the Google Suggestion Tool:

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