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If you own or manage a small or medium size business, maintaining or even obtaining health insurance for your employees is one of your leading concerns, just as it is for your employees. According to a brochure put out by the Georgia Small Business Development Center, employees overwhelmingly consider health insurance to be the most important fringe benefit a business offers them.

Kaiser’s Health Tracking poll for June 2013 found that more than 70% of young adults aged 18 to 30 surveyed said that health insurance was very important to them and worth the price. Of uninsured Americans, “obtaining insurance” was very important to them. Cost was the biggest barrier to obtaining it, either on their own or from their employers. And with reason: the national average cost of employer-sponsored health insurance for an individual is $468 a month and $1,312 for a family of four.

Most small and medium size employers must look their employees in the eye and answer to their communities. As human beings, we want to do right by others even as we know it is also in our best interests. According to the Department of Labor, recruiting and employee turnover account for about 30% of small businesses their salary expenses.

America is one of the few developed countries that link health insurance and health care to employment. Until this changes here are some tips to help you save money when purchasing health insurance for your employees.

• Go to http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/ and navigate to the Insurance Marketplace. This marketplace is meant to allow individuals and small businesses to compare health care plans, ask questions and learn about eligibility for tax credits on insurance and health care plans. Open enrollment will begin in October for January 2014.
• If you employ up to 25 employees, you’re probably eligible for a tax credit of 35% to offset the costs of insurance. Links to further information are here.
• Go to your state’s insurance commissioner’s website for similar information tailored to your state.
• Your state may have a plan to subsidize or reduce the cost of employee health insurance.
• If you can join a cooperative in your state or city, do so. Cooperative associations allow businesses to negotiate more favorable rates for purchase health insurance by creating a larger pool of insured, lowering the insurers’ risk and lowering premiums.
• Ask if your professional or trade association allows you to purchase coverage through it for you and your employees. Your local Chamber of Commerce may offer such a service to their active members as well.
• Talk to your employees and find out their needs. If the fit is right, consider a non-traditional arrangement, such as high-deductible insurance plans combined with Flexible Spending Accounts, Health Savings Accounts or Health Reimbursement Accounts. These plans allow you and your employees to contribute pre-tax dollars and may accumulate from year to year.
• Find an honest insurance broker who cares about finding the best plan for her/his clients. One excellent way to do this is ask business people you know: word-of-mouth referrals from people you trust are advertising money can’t buy.
• Contact your state insurance commissioner to check for sustained complaints, both about your broker or about whatever insurers and plan(s) you are considering.
• Any company that you decide to purchase a plan from must be licensed in your state. In addition to your state insurance commissioner, an excellent resource for consumer information about health plans is the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

You may also choose to self-insure your employees but you should do this without having a risk analysis and a cash-flow analysis performed. Even if both analyses indicate that self-insurance is prudent, you should buy a stop-loss plan that limits your loss if claims—whether by an individual or in the aggregate—exceed a pre-determined limit. The Self-Insurance Institute of America is a good place to begin your research.

The larger solution is to become politically active and work towards the health care solution you believe in, be it single-payer health care, fee-for-service, or something in between. “Becoming politically active” however, does not mean engaging in the vitriol, ignorance, cruelty and vulgarity that has so contaminated America’s political discourse and dead locked the political process. Rather, it means reasoning as a citizen with other citizens: speaking to each other in civilized, dignified, rational language about the country we share, the lives we want to lead and how we wish to live together.

For as long as it has existed, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been in a heated hunt-down for Americans who under-report income and who evade paying taxes outright. Why such a persistent effort? Consider this: for 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, the IRS collected 86% of what it was owed in taxes. That may not sound too bad, except when you realize that this works out to an estimated $385 billion shortfall- the vast majority of which came from under-reporting income.

It was recently reported by The New York Times that one of the easiest ways to cheat on your taxes is to be the sole proprietor of a Schedule C business. The IRS knows this, but realizes as well that finding these tax cheats is not so easy.

In an effort to crack down on tax evasion and focus their auditing, the IRS conducted a survey of sole proprietors with Russell Research in the beginning of 2012. The investigators divided a representative sample of sole proprietors into those most and least likely to pay their full tax burden and then made comparisons between the two groups. The results of the study were published earlier this year, and they provide some interesting insight into which sole proprietors are most likely to be tax cheats. Here is a brief summary:

• Men were less likely than women to be tax compliant. While males made up 59 percent of the more compliant taxpayers, they composed 65 percent of the less compliant ones.

• The more employees there were, the less compliant the owners (average employment of 6.6 versus 3.6).

• Owners of professional, scientific and technical service businesses, health care and social assistance, and arts, entertainment and recreation businesses were more likely to be compliant than owners of construction, and real estate and rental and leasing businesses.

• Owners of businesses with lower sales tended to be more compliant (average sales of $47,000 versus $87,000).

• Owners of businesses with lower expenses tended to be more compliant (average expenses of $12,000 versus $50,000).

• Owners who complete their own tax returns on their own tended to be more compliant (32% percent of the more compliant sole proprietors, versus only 21% of the less compliant ones). Those in the low-compliance group also expressed less trust in tax preparers. Although most used a tax preparer, they were less likely to follow the preparer’s advice.

• People who were more cynical about the tax system, those who had more negative attitudes about the IRS, and those who were more skeptical about the value of government activity, tended to be less compliant.

• Respondents from the low compliance groups tended to be suspicious of the tax system and its fairness, whereas those from the high-compliance communities viewed govern­ment positively.

If you happen to fall into one of the groups most likely to cheat on your taxes, be warned: the IRS is stepping up its efforts to catch those who try to shake their tax obligation. This means conducting more audits specifically among these “high risk” groups. Given this, make sure you do your best to be prepared for an audit if it does come. This means making your best effort to prepare your tax documentation, staying current with the major tax laws (or hiring someone else who will), making sure your business documents are complete, clear, and accessible, and making an effort to accurately fill out your tax return forms.

Do you know who your direct competition is? If you’re a small business purveyor of artisanal popcorn, you might think your direct competition is other popcorn providers — big or small. You might even consider only those in the same regional area as you as your direct competition. But what about other firms that provide salty snacks and movie fare? Or other local snack sellers? Your direct competition isn’t always obvious, and even when it is, it can be tough to compete. Once you’ve got all of your direct competition down, you can slowly start to create a plan to tackle and outperform your competitors.

Here are a few tips to help make this happen:

• Provide amazing customer service. If there’s one place where small businesses have the upper hand, it’s the attention they can provide to each and every customer that walks in the door or clicks into your website. Making every customer feel like they’re your first and most important gives you the “personal touch” advantage over bigger companies and is a step in the right direction for repeat business.

• Take advantage of technology. In today’s market, having a strong web presence is paramount, but it takes more than a website. With social media channels on Facebook and Twitter, you can tackle customer service quickly, giving you an edge against larger retailers that might not have the time and attention for each and every customer. When you do setup your website, provide e-commerce, provide a mobile website and be sure to keep dynamic, fresh content coming so that search engines will keep your website at the top. Also, spend some time figuring out how users are getting to your competitors’ websites to make sure you cover all of your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) bases.

• Court your current customers. As a small business, you have the ability to pamper your current customers in a way that larger retailers simply don’t. Create rewards programs, special sales for repeat customers and run ambassador programs to use your current customers as brand evangelizers. Whereas large companies tend to see a faceless crowd of consumers, small businesses have the opportunity not only to acknowledge their consumers but to make them feel like royalty.

• Know your niche and stick to it. Many companies take on more than they can handle after perfecting the art of a simple service or product. Small businesses that stick to what they know, what they’ve perfected, they have a greater chance at keeping their consumers. Everyone goes to Marco’s Taco Cart for lunch because he does tacos well, not because he offers a little bit of every cuisine. When a large retailer takes on every market, it becomes a jack of all trades and a master of none. Be the proud master of your niche, and your customers will take notice.

If you’re confident in your business and focus on personal service, you’ll have no problem taking on your direct competition. Know your niche, dive into the digital market and big retailers will have nothing on your small business!

In a world where business communications are moving at the speed of light, trade show marketing may seem like a dusty relic… from the outside. If you’ve had any experience manning a trade show booth or attending such an event, then you know that trade shows are alive and well. They remain hubs of intensely concentrated marketing, presenting, and networking.

According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), 81% of trade show attendees have buying authority, and 99% of marketers say they find unique value from trade shows they do not get from other marketing mediums. The top most valued aspect of trade shows are the ability to see lots of prospects, customers, and other players, such as suppliers and resellers, in one place all at the same time.

But all of this activity presents a couple of major challenges for the presenting companies: how do you stand out from the crowded field of other presenters and how do you help to ensure that you are connecting to the right people?

This is where social media comes in. If you can think strategically and get the ball rolling before the actual trade show event takes place, then here are three ways you can increase trade show success via social media:

Generate some pre-event buzz. Set up an event page on your blog or on Facebook specifically for the upcoming trade show. Not only will this help to build excitement for the event, but interacting with customers before the show will give you a better idea of what they want to see.

Spice up your contests and giveaways. Trade shows have become synonymous with swag. But, you can break away from the custom key chains and pens by offering a few big-ticket items that will draw more interest to your booth. The catch is that to snag these top prizes, visitors must interact with you via social media.

Maintain relationships. One of the biggest benefits of encouraging social media engagement among attendees is the ability to maintain a connection with these people long after the event has ended. You can encourage trade show visitors to follow your social media sites by letting them know that you’ll be running a series of special promotions after the trade show.

In short, for many businesses, trade show marketing can be a lucrative endeavor. But, you may have to think outside the box in order to maximize the benefits. Social media provides the tools to help you do just that.

Image credit: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

“Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1789. So, so true. However, proper preparation for taxes can make the process a bit less painful, and a whole lot easier.

Every year, from about mid-March, millions of Americans begin the mad rush to prepare all of the paperwork necessary to file a month later. For small business owners it can be next to impossible getting the tax work done in time, while maintaining ‘business-as-usual.’

Besides the obvious extra time and hassle that nobody really wants to deal with focusing on taxes every spring, there are many other significant advantages to beginning the tax preparation several months in advance, some of which can be quite lucrative.

First of all, a meeting with your accountant in the middle of the year allows you to assess the financial situation of your business in relation to your expectations at the beginning of the year. If you are exceeding your projected goals, you can find ways to reduce the projected taxes by purchasing equipment necessary for your company that may not have been budgeted for. If your profits are not meeting expectations, reducing your estimated taxes will help you not over-pay the IRS in April.

Knowledge is the key. Knowing exactly where your business stands will allow you to pay only the taxes that are required – overpaying your taxes can only be recovered when you file the following year, and to avoid underpaying and facing the fines that can accompany even an inadvertent mistake in that realm.

According to the US Small Business Administration, nearly 90% of small business owners turn to tax professionals to prepare their annual returns rather than doing their own taxes. If you are already working with an accountant who is aware of the tax laws relevant to your business, as well as what changes can be expected in tax laws in the coming year, then it only makes sense to meet with the accountant well enough in advance to make use of the laws that can help your business spend as little as possible on its taxes.

This need not be the case. There are several reasonably simple, non-time-consuming steps can help you can file your annual tax returns much more easily, with far less stress, and most importantly, without taking you away from the daily operations of your business and it just takes a few hours per month.

Of course, this does not discount the time factor. Millions of Americans – individuals and businesses – wait until the last minute to file their tax returns. Once the panic sets it, there is no time to focus on anything other than getting all of the relevant paperwork organized and fast. Small business owners can do themselves a tremendous service by keeping track of records, making certain they’re well organized and easily accessible. This includes sales records, inventory, returns and allowances, expenses, payroll, travel, advertising, office supplies, rent and utilities.

Spending an hour or two every month to keep all of these records up-to-date in a well-organized filing system will make the process go much more smoothly, thus enabling you, the business owner, to focus on much more important things – like running your business.

Bitcoin, the newest variation on the e-wallet theme, is making a lot of noise these days. That’s not the jingling of loose change – Bitcoin is strictly a virtual currency – but rather the vociferousness of the arguments for and against this peer-to-peer electronic payment system. A closer look at Bitcoin, together with its pros and cons, is in order.

What’s It All About?

The idea behind Bitcoin first saw the light of day in 2008, in a paper authored by a mysterious individual or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The motivation was to transfer value remotely via computer, smartphone or tablet independently of any central authority.

As a payment method for goods or services, Bitcoin acts as an alternate form of currency. Unregulated and based on complex algorithms, Bitcoins are seen by some as the wave of the future and by others as the next great American financial disaster in the making.

Small Business on the Bitcoin Bandwagon

Small businesses are leading the way in accepting this new invention, as they have more flexibility to update their processes than larger firms. Many entrepreneurs see distinct advantages in accepting Bitcoin over conventional payment methods.

The High Cost of Getting Paid

Traditional customer payment methods each have their own costs. For example, credit card charges place a heavy financial burden on business owners and approximately one in 100 credit card sales end up as chargebacks – charges disputed by the cardholder for which the merchant takes a loss. While cash may seem a simpler alternative, it must be counted, balanced and physically transported to the bank. It is also something fewer people are carrying around with them these days.

Bitcoin services, however, cost about 1% of sales, in contrast with approximately 3% for credit cards. Transactions may not be simply dissolved by an unhappy customer – a refund process must be requested from the merchant. There is also the additional benefit that Bitcoin currency can’t be casually siphoned off from your cash drawer.

Up to Speed

Bitcoin transactions are faster, meaning you end up with money in your pocket much more quickly than waiting to be reimbursed by the credit card companies. Ultra-portable and simple for consumers to use, Bitcoin also facilitates profitable impulse purchases.

The Cool Factor

Geeks love Bitcoin’s bleeding-edge technology and even those without an advanced degree in Computer Engineering think it’s kinda cool. This cachet may serve as a business advantage, helping a small enterprise stand out from the competition as modern and dynamic in customers’ perception.

Consumers enjoy the ease of buying and selling Bitcoin on the Internet. Payment in land based stores is equally hassle-free; all it takes is a smartphone to scan the retailer-provided QR code.

Too Good to Be True?

So what’s the catch? Still in its infancy, Bitcoin is experiencing growing pains. The currency fluctuated dramatically in value over the past year – soaring from $5 to $266 and back down to $103. Even more alarming, customer withdrawals of Bitcoin funds in US dollars were temporarily put on hold in mid-June 2013 for system “upgrades.”

Money-Transmission Laws

Banking regulators are looking askance at the new currency system, warning that users will be penalized if they breach state money-transmission laws. Senior Counsel Paul T. Crayton of the California Department of Financial Institutions recently warned the Bitcoin Foundation of potential fines of $1,000 per violation or per day for transmitting money without a license.

Last but not Least

One of the simplest but most cogent arguments against gung-ho adoption of Bitcoin is simple – not enough other people are using it. Accepting Bitcoin from your customers isn’t worth a hill of beans if you can’t then turn around and use the currency to pay your suppliers and landlord. True, you can convert the contents of your Bitcoin wallet into dollars for payment purposes, but that detracts enormously from the convenience of the system.

You Be the Judge

So the jury is out on Bitcoin. Weighing the pluses and minuses of this radical new system, you decide whether Bitcoin is right for your business.

For a small business, storing information on the cloud makes a lot of sense…and dollars. The most common rationale for choosing SaaS is to save money on infrastructure, servers, IT and licensing fees. However, security is a pressing concern in connection with any data that’s out there in the Webosphere.

 

Hacked

Hacker attacks are unpredictable and can take a number of damaging forms: data tampering or defacement (the #1 motivation, according to the 2009 Web Hacking Incident Database Annual Report), data theft, denial of access to online information.

Learning to keep cloud-based business info secure is an essential management survival skill.

 

Hack-resistant?

Before signing up with an online data storage system, check the Collective Intelligence Framework’s open source sites to see whether (and if so, how often) the cloud company has ever been hacked. This will indicate which service providers to avoid.

 

Know Who You’re Dealing With

Who’s handling your data? Know exactly who has access to your data and what measures they’re taking to protect it. Request the right to audit so that you can verify the security practices actually meet the standards spelled out in your contract. Find out what happens to no longer needed data from your company. Ensure that your SaaSprovider is certified in security standards by the International Organization for Standardization. Above all, pinpoint a human being you can hold accountable if security is compromised; responsibility for breaches is all too easily sloughed off and lost in the clouds, so to speak.

 

Caveat Emptor!

Cloud storage providers can be ingenious but they are not infallible. Furthermore, their primary purpose is to facilitate information storage and access, while security concerns may suggest just the opposite. To take a well-known example, Google states in its Terms of Service:

“When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google … a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works …, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”

In other words, while you technically retain ownership, Google can do pretty much whatever it wants with your info. So consider encrypting highly sensitive client or financial information.

 

Backup

Just as ‘location, location, location’ is the key formula in real estate, ‘backup, backup, backup’ is a simple formula for protecting your cloud data in case of loss or theft. The trusty external hard drive’s life of usefulness is not over yet.

 

Chain of Fools

Avoid linking your online accounts, otherwise known as “daisy chaining.” The last thing you want to do, in case of hacker attack, is open the door for them to move through your Amazon account, say, to your email and social media accounts, marauding and pillaging along the way.

Google offers a two-factor authentication system to improve security. When you wish to log into your account, a temporary password is either texted or generated via smartphone app for an extra layer of protection.

 

Remote Wiping Services – The Dark Side

Use remote wiping services with caution. While in theory these services improve security by allowing you to remotely erase data from your laptop, smartphone or tablet if it is lost or stolen, the reality may be frighteningly different. Hackers can gain access to your wiping service and merrily wipe clean your still-very-much-in-use device. An independent wiping service is safer than one that is part of an SaaS package.

 

‘Fake It’

One ingenious tip for protecting password protected accounts is to simply input fake answers to personal questions of the “What was the name of your elementary school?” variety. Then you’ll have to keep track of all your little white lies, but a password manager/wallet will make quick work of that.

 

Be Prepared

Plan ahead. Put a data theft protection program in place before an attack occurs. Even more useful is preparing an action plan, ready to implement should a determined hacker make his way through all the protection you have in place. Once again, encryption is your best friend. Researchers at MIT are currently developing end-to-end encryption that allows information to be used without ever decoding it, for example, by ascertaining whether two pieces of data are identical. This is an excellent means of protection, as it ensures your data is usable only for your purposes and not for malicious intent.

Is uncertainty about the direction of federal policy hindering small businesses, causing them to hold back on expanding, hiring, and investing? This very question is at the center of a heated public debate.

According to small business owners, uncertainty and misgivings about future tax and regulatory policies is indeed hindering the recovery of their operations and adversely affecting plans they might have for expansion. Findings from the Small Business Optimism Index published by the National Federation of Independent Businesses reveal that small business owners are not only pessimistic about the economy, but that their pessimism remains at pre-recession levels. Conversely, measures of the same index for large companies exceed pre-recession levels. Leading economists attribute this parity to the reliance of small businesses on the domestic economy. Since small firms are less diversified geographically and productively, they have smaller margins for error; therefore, a weak economy at home weighs more heavily on their operations than larger firms. Furthermore, without a large in-house team of analysts to advise them of current risks, small business owners may be more alarmed by news reports regarding fiscal tightening and the debt ceiling.

Basic economic theory largely concurs with these hypotheses, underscoring the concerns currently expressed by small businesses regarding their inability to anticipate future policies coming out of Washington. As explained in a 1983 paper by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, when the future is uncertain, business owners delay costly capital investments and refrain from hiring so as to avoid discovering down the road that they made an erroneous decision. Without knowing whether or how tax and regulatory policies are going to change in the near future, business owners naturally refrain from planning to expand, hire, or invest. Stated otherwise, economic theory predicts a negative correlation between government policy uncertainty and small business plans to expand.

In the current economic milieu, small business concerns include:

• The short-term and long-term economic security of their operations
• Effects of tax increases on their bottom line
• Spending cuts
• Changes to health care benefits requirements and liabilities
• Another fiscal blowup in Washington
• Opening a new office
• Hiring new employees
• Availability of financing (i.e. getting a bank loan/qualifying for a credit line)

Adding salt to their wounds and fanning the flames of economic uncertainty, small business owners are increasingly getting turned down for bank loans, with some banks declaring them a “high risk business.” Unable to establish a credit line, some owners turn to cash-advance companies, only to be hit with exorbitant interest rates by lenders.

The facts on the ground are that the recent fiscal deal has done little to eliminate political uncertainty from small business owners. According to recent polls, 70% of small business owners do not trust Washington and do not think that now is the time to expand. Unfortunately, the consequences of their uncertainty only lead to further low economic growth. With small business owners ‘sitting on their hands’ and neither investing nor hiring, the economic outlook appears dismal indeed.

The title of this post aside, no matter how many times we may hear about growing from our mistakes, if we’re being honest with ourselves, no one really likes to fail. In business, the heartache of failure can be compounded by the loss of significant sums of money, the inability to further employ your workers, and in general, letting down your loyal customers or the public or both.

But, if you find yourself smarting from a near catastrophic mistake, you’ll have a lot to benefit from pausing a bit along the way instead of putting all your energies into bouncing back. The more comfortable you are with the mistake and the more you’ll be able to gain from it because…

Failure is the best motivator. Difficulty makes a person push harder. When we feel squeezed, we are in effect pushed out of our comfort zone, and we may feel all the more motivated to produce, to accomplish, to inspire, and to be even better than we were before we fell. Another side benefit to this is that the harder we work, the more passionate we may become about what we are doing. Consider this quote from Mark Cuban: Don’t follow your passion; follow your effort.

Failure is the best sifter. It puts all distractions into the background and leaves us to focus on what is truly important. If we were caught up in the feverish pace of doing business, then it stops us in our tracks and forces us to re-examine and re-evaluate our goals and our actions. Once the things that are the most important are in front of us, it pays to take note because…

Failure is the best teacher. A somewhat sad truism is that we can often be so caught up in the daily rat race that we don’t even see where things are off, and we only wake up when a big mistake slaps us in the face. But, at least at that uncomfortable moment, we are actually the most receptive to change. If you can realize this and really look at the factors that brought about the failure you can end up learning some very powerful lessons.

In short, failure and mistakes happen, and when they do, you’ll have a lot to gain by sitting down with them and embracing them, instead of trying to run away.

When we think of seasonal marketing, we typically think of the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, businesses need customers throughout the year so it’s important to understand how seasons effect your customers and therefore your sales.

It’s important to follow the advice of Business Coach and Think Productive Productivity Ninja Grace Marshall and her friend Carrie Wilkerson that seasonal marketing involves far more than the traditional gift-giving holidays. It also involves the seasons of the year, client anniversaries, causes of particular importance to you and your particular product cycle. They particularly recommend that you think of the seasons as a cycle, rather than dates on a calendar.

Specifically, marketing for summer should be built around the idea that most people associate summer with recreation, vacations and fun. Your summer displays should be built around bright colors and the long hours of daylight and activity that make summer different for other seasons. Stay open later, if you can, to accommodate evening shoppers, and offer discounts for rainy days, when people are likely to change their plans for outdoor activities.

You should put your summer goods on sale at the beginning of summer and promote sales of summer goods together. For example, sell steaks for grilling together or alongside grills, charcoal, lighter fluid, barbeque sauce. You can discount summer goods if people buy them together: buy sunscreen and a swimsuit together and take 10% of both.

It’s important to remember that traditional gift-giving holidays also fall in summer, including graduation and Father’s Day. Some fathers may be thrilled with a book on night fishing for trout and others, with a new rosebush for the gardens they carefully tend, while graduates may be thrilled with some brilliant sheets or towels for their college dorm or apartment.

When preparing for seasonal marketing, work backwards from your known busy times so you can order inventory and printed material. Plan your budget and consider hiring creative freelancers during the off season to help you plan your campaign. Then hire extra staff during the busy season itself. Allbusiness.com recommends that whenever possible, piggyback your marketing campaigns onto each other and continue to advertise on a reduced scale through your slow season so that your brand is in people’s minds when they are ready to buy.

When, exactly, should you begin planning your summer marketing? It depends on what your business and industry. If you own a local deli or grocery store, it probably won’t make sense to advertise summer specials early in the spring, but you should probably be planning your summer advertising. If you are a local winery or bed-and-breakfast, summer campground or resort, many of your customers plan months in advance. They need to know you exist before and while they are planning their vacations, rather than when they are on them. John Alexander, Co-Director of Training at Search Engine Workshops, recommends that your on-line content should be researched and visited by the search robots at least one month before your busy season. He cites a particular case of beginning Halloween promotions for a costume store in July, rather than the traditional September since by September traffic was spiking by 50 to 60% each week. Certainly, once you stop planning for one particular selling season, you should begin planning the next.