New York SBDC Research Network

Many programs that are less than $25,000 are listed at FedBizOpps ; ones over $25K MUST be, but smaller ones are not prohibited. One should sign up with the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) and the SBA , as it says here . Beyond that, creating a relationship with the particular department is a good idea.

The Business Owner's Toolkit - Total Know-How for Small Business is a useful website that provides guides, tips, and pertinent information for small business owners. This week, I received an email about an article on Tax Tips for New Business Owners . Based on the a checklist from the IRS, the article provides information on common tax issues that all new business owners must address, including: Choice of Business Entity Tax Obligations Employer Identification Number Recordkeeping Accounting Period Accounting Method

So, you want to know, for business or cultural reasons, what holidays are celebrated in various countries. Here are some suggestions: Time and Date lets you choose a date until 2015 and choose the country. CountryReports is also useful. Though you need to scroll through the months to see the holidays, you can choose a country or region. My favorite may be Earth Calendar , a "daybook of holidays and celebrations around the world. For the purpose of this web site a 'holiday' is any day that recognizes a cultural event, and not necessarily a day when businesses are closed. *** Madonna - Holiday The Bee Gees- Holiday

City-Data.com is a useful website that has collected and analyzed data from numerous sources to create as complete and interesting profiles of all U.S. cities as possible. The website has over 74,000 city photos not found anywhere else, graphs of latest real estate prices and sales trends, recent home sales, home value estimator, hundreds of thousands of maps, satellite photos, stats about residents (race, income, ancestries, education, employment...), geographical data, state profiles, crime data, registered sex offenders, cost of living, housing, religions, businesses, local news links based on their exclusive technology, birthplaces of famous people, political contributions, city government finances and employment, weather, tornadoes, earthquakes, hospitals, schools, libraries, houses, airports, radio and TV stations, zip codes, area codes, air pollution, latest unemployment data, time zones, water systems and their health and monitoring violations, comparisons to averages, local

I've been checking out the blog put out by WorkingPoint , an "online, small business solution." They have been putting out some interesting articles such as Essential Ingredients for Small Business Success and 19 Ways to Drive a Steady Stream of Traffic to Your Website . It's fun site - periodically, you'll come across the Botpreneur, who is ready for (business) action. WorkingPoint offers free invoicing, bill & expense management and bookkeeping, with additional services for $10 per month. This article explains that the founders of WorkingPoint "worked for Intuit and were behind the creation of QuickBooks and Quicken. They believed Quickbooks had become too complicated and that the small business software segment was ripe for SaaS-based innovation."

When I am assisting a business with start-up information, I find that industry statistics are particularly helpful. A wonderful source for industry statistics is the Economic Census. A useful information tool available from the Economic Census are Industry Snapshots . 2007 data is available for the majority of 6-digit NAICS codes and snapshots can be obtained for 3, 4, and 5-digit codes as well. Each snapshot provides comparisons between the current census and the previous one. Maps of the United States divided by state are provided that show various industry statistics, including sales per capita, number of establishments, payroll per employee, etc. There is an option titled "Compare YOUR Business" that compares a single business to national averages. And a "Did You Know" feature provides interesting factoids on the Industry. All in all, this is a useful AND interesting tool from the U.S. Census.

The authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die and Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard have made some related resources available on their website heathbrothers.com . Free with registration, the tools available here are probably most useful if you have read the corresponding book(s), but are helpful even without that additional context. There is a framework and first chapter available for each title, plus a podcast series, a guide for creating successful (“sticky”) presentations, and more. (Tip o the hat to hillsearch.org)