The good news is that the unemployment rate fell slightly this month, down to 8.1 percent from April’s 8.2 percent. The bad news is that this decline is likely because more people gave up looking for work. Additionally, the U.S. job growth slumped in April for a second straight month.
Since it is apparent that we are still in the midst of a bit of belt-tightening, I thought it might be a good time to discuss a financing option you may not have considered before: accounts receivable financing.
When other small business financing options like bank loans or angel investors is limited [...]

If you have credit problems or haggling with a banker isn’t your cup of tea, peer-to-peer lending may be a viable alternative. Peer-to-peer lending involves borrowing directly from another individual without going through a traditional financial institution. Although it can be as simple as borrowing $1,000 from your friend, it is now done so quite frequently over the Internet.
So, if you are considering this method of financing, you may wish to know what the pros and cons of doing so are. Let’s find out!
Pros
Lower Rates
This is not a certainty. However, interest rates on peer-to-peer loans can be lower than traditional [...]

Getting any business off the ground requires a certain amount of money, and often that means going into debt to secure start-up funds. If you borrow money from a lending institution and need to pay it back over a specific period of time at a special rate of interest, you are engaging in what is called “debt financing.”
There is a cost to having this money available to you, as you realize when you calculate the cost of paying back the loan. If you borrow $1,000, you will need to pay back that amount, which is called the principal of your [...]

Filling out a load of paperwork at a bank and waiting seemingly forever for an approval isn’t fun for most people. Also, the fact that credit problems can severely restrict your access to traditional means of credit can be a major problem. So, whether you wish to avoid traditional loans or do not have access to them, you will need another source of lending if your small business requires outside financing.
If traditional means of credit do not work for you, you may have the option of using a private loan. A private loan is a loan from an individual – [...]

Bridges connect the “here” and “there” on transportation routes and in stages of life. In finance, bridge loans connect businesses with where they are and where they want to be. They are short-term loans that allow certain circumstances to occur before the business can put permanent financing in place.
When are they a good idea?
               For healthy small and medium-sized businesses, they can be particularly useful to secure timely, excellent deals in real estate or other business acquisitions. They can usually be secured faster than permanent financing by using real estate as collateral.
Bridge loans usually range in the areas of $100,000 [...]

Under the conventional lending model, banks stand as an intermediary between those who save and those who borrow. Those who save earn a small amount of interest from the bank on the money in their savings accounts, while those who borrow pay an interest bank often several times larger to the bank. By harnessing various Internet-based technologies, however, peer-to-peer lending offers a different model.
Instead of taking the risks and the rewards in the way banks do, peer-to-peer platforms help individual lenders and borrowers to contact each other and originate loans. Individual lenders collect the interest, and the platforms earn their [...]

When it’s time to get necessary cash together for starting up a new business, it pays to look at all of the options on the table. Small business leaders can really benefit from a fuller and more detailed understanding of various loan options when they go to meet with lender reps. It’s a lot like taking a trip to a car dealer’s lot: when you are face to face with the lender, there’s no time for “learning as you go.” An informed borrower will be able to make the most of available loan opportunities.

Why Unsecured Cash Loans?
The first thing that [...]

Want to get your caffeine fix and help small businesses at the same time?  Tomorrow, April 4th, you can!  When you purchase a $10 dollar Starbucks card for only $5 through Google Offers, not only will you receive 50% savings, but you’ll also be helping out small businesses.   For each $5 gift card sold through Google Offers, Google will donate $3 to Create Jobs for USA, Starbucks’ fund to help small businesses and job creation in the US.  Remember the wristbands?
They are a symbol of Starbuck’s effort launched late last year to create jobs in America.  When you make a [...]

Throughout the month of March, news outlets have been reporting on the Obama administration’s new plans for the U.S. Small Business Administration to make small business loans more attractive to banks and other lenders. Part of this new deal for small business leaders, according to current plans, consists of waiving fees that were previously collected to guarantee a certain percent of a business loan. The other part of this is that guarantees on small business loans are going to go up to 90% from previously lower percentages like 85%.

What’s the Big Deal About a 90% Guarantee?
The percentage of a business [...]

In many conversations about small business funding and how to get it, there’s a major element that’s missing. We’ve addressed this before in different ways, but for many small business leaders, it comes down to whether the prospective loan will truly boost the small business, or start dragging it down. Here are some very relevant ideas to think about BEFORE you start to pursue a business loan.
Can You Handle the Debt?
Sometimes, it takes a finance expert to point out to a potential borrower that the lender has absolutely no incentive to act in the borrower’s favor. Although it can seem [...]