This week’s vein of online ore can be found at www.mint.com

Mint.com is a free online accounting site that you can use to track your bank accounts, debit obligations, and investments; plan budgets; set goals; and receive alerts when there is suspicious or off-plan activity on your accounts.

Once you give Mint permission to monitor an account it will update your records automatically every time a change is made to the account, giving you real time graphs and charts showing you where your money is coming from and going to, and how close you are to meeting your …

Let’s face it, even if the economy is currently pulling out of the worst recession in 70 years, money remains tight and the independent entrepreneur needs to consider ways to reduce costs while retaining their brand image and placement.

So, what can a company do on a $2500 budget?

Invest in a custom blog

For $2500 you could have a fully functional and branded blog with custom features.

What does this price buy you?

• A persistent platform you can use again and again, whenever you have an announcement or other content.
• Custom blogs can build up traffic for your own domain, giving it ready-made …
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There’s a reason why old sayings become old sayings: Their pithy truth.

The cobbler’s children have no shoes because the cobbler is just so darned busy stitching up shoes—for everyone else.

I’ve been busy writing web copy—for everyone else. I enjoy the work: With each customer, I met a new and interesting person and learn about a new and fascinating business. The earning a living part is very nice, too.

But I want even more work, and I’ve decided that updating my web site will be the best next step toward expansion. Making that decision wasn’t hard. Making …

Summer is here and we are seeing business people exploring the opportunities. Some want to re-structure their business to adapt to the current market; others want to start anew and follow their true passion. In today’s marketplace, any business endeavor involves the online world. Whether a website is needed just for informational purposes, or whether the website is the business itself, a website is needed—period.

But… not just a website… a good website. And, what makes a good website? Good planning. A website is a tricky thing to plan for.

• It needs to be flexible so it’s successful today and as the …
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At MB/I, a lot of our competition is not the other web development firms you would expect. We actually compete a lot with the friends and family members who know a little code and with the template-based solutions out there. This is because of cost. Small business owners look for less expensive options. The problem is that they typically don’t look at the big picture.

In our experience, the alternative “solutions” we end up hearing about are very problematic. They take months to complete and launch the site. And I’m not exaggerating. There are currently 2-3 businesses (no to mention all …