1. Incorporating your business adds a certain level of professionalism or credibility to your business.

2. There are some tax advantages associating with incorporating.

3. It eliminates the risk of exposure to lawsuits that could cost you your personal property, possessions or assets.

4. Becoming a corporation or LLC also gives you the ability to raise money fairly quickly by selling shares to investors.  This is a great way to expand your business without having to front a bunch of money.  In a time when credit markets are tight and getting small business loans is increasingly difficult, incorporating your business can allow you to have funds to market your business more aggressively.

5. Having a corporation allows you to establish credit in your business name.  This can be advantageous if your personal credit is not the best.  In some cases you will need to submit both your social security number and business credit for a background check when applying for loans or for credit.  However, this is not always the case and even so, your business credit carries weight to offset your personal credit if it is not so strong.

6. Changing or transferring ownership of the Incorporated business is much easier and smoother than it is if you are simply a sole proprietor.

7. You can also choose the option to incorporate offshore.  There are several advantages to doing so but one major advantage is protection of your privacy.  It is much more difficult for someone to conduct an investigation into your business.  You can also keep your personal identity protected when incorporating outside of the United States

1. Focus More On Customers That Count

More than likely you have a handful of customers that provide the bulk of your business.  Spend a little more time and money on marketing  to them.  You can offer them added services at special rates or you could even pay them for referrals that they send you.  In fact, you could even offer to pay them a modest amount for every time their referral pays you for your services.  That would definitely be a motivating factor in getting them to send you a lot of referrals.  Also, since they are typically your happiest customers, they will give you the warmest leads.

2. Have A Newsletter

Never underestimate the power of newsletters.  This could be a physical newsletter in the mail or an email newsletter.  Email newsletters are much less costly.  Send it out once a week to your customers.  Include tips on body care and occasional throw in special discounts if used by such and such date to include a sense of urgency.  For email newsletters, you can use constantcontact.com for premade email templates and email sending services.  Makes it very easy for you.  Be sure to always ask for your customer’s email address so that you can send them notices of special discounts and useful information.  This is also a great way to get the word out on your retail products.

3. Accept Credit Cards

Many of your competitors do not offer this service.  This will give you a competitive edge.  It also gives your clients an opportunity to pay when they are short on cash.  A good move especially in a down market.  A Dial Pay account you can use with just a cell phone is usually an ideal fit for a message therapist.  You can use it in your place of business or at a clients location.  When you accept credit cards by phone, it is also less costly on the monthly fees.

If you are a small business that accepts tips and are not a restaurant, then it is a bit different of a process.   Many non-restaurant small business merchant accounts try to set up their accounts as “Restaurant with Tip” but this is against Visa regulations and causes all transactions to downgrade to Non Qualified which can increase transaction cost by 50 to 100%.   So How do you accept tips then?

First, you will need to let your credit card processor know that you are setting up your account as “Retail plus Tip”.  The procedure for processing the tip is not like that of a restaurant but still very simple.  When you accept credit card payment from your customer you will need to ask them if they would like to leave a tip.  If they do, enter the amount on the terminal and the card will be charged for the purchase amount plus the tip amount.  Tear off the receipt and give it to the customer and you are done.

Making sure your merchant account is set up properly will prevent you from paying needless high fees and save you lots of headache.

How so?

Really, it is very simple.  Always ask for your customer’s email after the close of the sale.  Let them know it is to send them updates on industry tips and strategies or for ways for them to save their business money.  You can also use their email address to send them notices about any special promotions you may have in the future.  Most of the time, you will find that your customer will readily agree to give you their email.

Now What?

Next, go online and find a good all in one email sending service.  I prefer to us Constant Contact.  They have templates you can use and can be customized for your business.  It even allows your customers to unsubscribe from the list (a must for proper email etiquette).   Once you compile your email list and set up your customized template you can now add money saving tips or advise.  To do this, go to any article directory on the net and you can find an article you like and copy it to your newsletter.  The directories allow you to do this as long as you keep the author’s website link at the bottom.

Send your customers one of these newsletters every two weeks to a month.  Every now and then write your own article relating to a special promo you are running or perhaps you could even advertise a customer referral program.

The key is to do this on a regular basis.  Waiting longer than a month to send emails to your customers could be viewed as spam so be sure to stay on top of it.

Solution?  Accepting credit cards over the phone!  In this economy, why limit yourself to only cash or checks?

When applying for a merchant account of this type, you will need to have decent credit and 3 months of your last bank statements to submit as well.  Thisis due to the normally large average transaction size.

We offer all of the following…

1. Free Terminals
2. Free programming shipping of terminals to your merchants
3. Large cash bonuses
4. Large residual Interchange Split
5. Online account management
6. Weekly bonus payouts

Call us and compare our services to your current processor and say you heard about our program through Chargeonphone.com.   1-800-909-2124.

Interchange cost is set by Visa and Mastercard and is the cost that is the bottom level at which merchant account providers can write your rates.  If they write your rates any lower than this cost, they essentially lose money on your account. Any thing above interchange equals a profit from your account.

Even experienced merchant level salesmen are, for the most part, unable to understand or even explain exactly what interchange or interchange pricing is.  The reason for this is that each transaction can very by classification depending on the card type, i.e. a rewards card or corporate card and also varies by the type of business that merchant is.   This is very confusing to the average person to say the least.

So instead of trying to break down all the different rates for each scenario, let me just make a recommendation in regards to getting the most out of this new found knowledge of yours.

Tell your merchant account provider that you want interchange plus pricing.  This means that you want every transaction to be at cost, plus a percentage added on top of it.  .20% is a competitive amount that still allows you to have a great deal on your fees and still allow the processor to make some money on it.  If you are a larger business that does maybe $75,000.00 a year or more, .10% would be more beneficial to you and still agreeable to the processor since your higher volume will compensate for the lower percentage.

Remember, knowledge is power and I hope this post gives you enough power to keep as much cash in your pocket as possible.

Discover is now mostly hands off when it comes to setting up on your merchant account.  Now, you acquire it by simply checking off the little box on your merchant application.  But what about the rates?

More good news!  The rates are now exactly the same as your discount rate and transaction fee.  Also, there is no longer an activation fee for your first transaction.  This means more savings for you and probably more business for Discover since more merchants will be signing up for their service.

What about American Express?

Currently American Express still charges its own rate and transaction fee and also requires a $25.00 first time activation fee.  However, it appears that it will be following suite with Discover to at least some degree in Fall of 2008.

So what does this mean to you?

This means you should definitely heck off the discover box on your merchant application.  It is at no extra expense to you and will only increase the payment options of your customer base.

The answer to that question is yes, but if you are a bigger risk than they accounted for and something goes wrong, they are left holding the bag.  In fact they are responsible for each transaction you make for up to 6 months.    But let me tell you, I see it happen all the time.  Here are a few examples of what will get a merchant in trouble with their processor…

1. Excessive monthly sales volume

2. Going significantly over the agreed average ticket size

3. Excepting a transaction for a product that would be listed under a different business   type or (SIC) code

4. Getting an excessive number of chargebacks

5.  Breaking apart a transaction for a single purchase over a period of days or weeks.

The above scenarios can all be managed and should be in order to prevent your funds from being held up to six months or worse yet, having your account shut down and being placed on a TMF list (like a black list that prevents you from applying with any processor until your situation is resolved to the satisfaction of your first processor).

For numbers 1,2 and 5 above, simply stay within your agreed to limits and require your customers to pay by cash or check for amounts that exceed those limits. If you have a good record in this regard, I would suggest applying for a limit increase every 6 months.

For number 3, if you want to sell items from a completely different business type, fine.  Open up another merchant account specifically for those items.

For number 4,  you can avoid chargebacks by always having a clear return and or refund policy which does not include a “no refund policy.” Provide good support to your customers and always deal honestly with them.  This wil help prevent excessive chargebacks.

Keeping your merchant account in good standing is essential for the success of your business.  Make sure you treat it that way!

A Dial Pay merchant account would fit this mold perfectly.  Simply stated, this way of accepting credit cards is done through any regular phone or cell phone.  You can charge your clients card anywhere and at any time as long as you have your cell phone with you.  This is great for house calls.   And of coarse the simple fact that you accept credit cards by phone means that you now have a form of payment you are providing your clients that allows them to pay you even if they are short on cash.

Another added benefit to you is that you can also use it to collect payment on some repeat clients that may be a bit behind on their payments to you.   If they are short on cash, no problem!  Just tell them to pull out their credit card.

With all of this flexibility and the fact that Dialpay accounts require no expensive monthly fees, it is definitely a must for every massage therapist!