NEW YORK (AFP) – Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL unveiled a joint advertising agreement on Tuesday designed to take on Internet giant Google.
The deal will allow the ad networks operated by the three companies to offer some of their display advertising inventory to their respective customers.
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NEW YORK (Xinhua) – Bank of America (BOA) announced Monday to sell roughly 13.1 billion common shares of China Construction Bank Corporation (CCB) to generate approximately 8.3 billion dollars of cash.
The sale accounted for about half of BOA’s current hold of CCB’s shares.
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Even if you are just starting your business, you can still be approved of a merchant account if you meet the conditions required by the merchant account provider. You must be at least 18 years of age, you must be the owner of the business or an authorized representative of the corporation, and your products or services must pass their risk assessment test. There are also certain personal and business documents you need to submit to some providers.
Setting up a merchant account has almost become a must for every business in order to accept credit card payments and increase sales. You do not have to worry even if you are just starting your business. You can be approved of a merchant account as long as you meet the requirements of the banks and other institutions. The following are the basic conditions they will require from you:
You must be at least 18 years of age
When you are applying for a merchant account, you are also getting into a contract. You need to be of legal age to go into contracts and therefore, must be at least 18 years old to apply for merchant account.
You must be the owner of the business or an authorized representative of the company
If your are the owner or the sole proprietor of the business, you must be the one applying for the merchant account. If it is a partnership or a corporation, you need to be the authorized representative of the business in order to submit and complete the application. It is just like in opening a simple business bank account, wherein you need to establish ownership of the business and authority over the account you are opening.
Your products or services must pass the processor’s risk assessment test
Especially when applying for an offshore or international merchant account or applying in a bank, some institutions require businesses to undergo risk assessment test for security purposes. The products and/or services of your business are evaluated whether low or high-risk. Low risk businesses have no problem as long as the other requirements are met. High risk businesses, on the other hand, such as gambling websites and those selling pornographic materials, will have a difficulty in applying for a merchant account.
You must be able to submit the required papers
To make sure that you are capable of opening a merchant account and that your business is legitimate, there are selected merchant account providers that require you to submit some of the following documents and IDs, depending on the institution:
Some providers offer you almost instant approval of merchant account applications without so much documentation requirements. These institutions are usually those who limit their applicants to local residents only. Examples are those who only cater to businesses within US, wherein they can easily verify the legitimacy of your business. Be careful, though, when choosing the best merchant account provider as some may not last for very long and your business might be affected in the future. Choose a provider that has good reputation, reasonable rates, and the best service to help you make a more profitable business.
While advertising is a multi-million dollar business, many business owners (especially when just starting out) can’t afford most advertising options. It can be on the expensive side, and outreach many more modest budgets.
Networking is usually the first thing that is eliminated when a business starts cutting back on its expenditures. After all, since networking by definition is something that is done above and beyond with other businesses as partners, it would not seem to be that integral to the average business.
However, if you are looking for an innovative way to get through an economic downturn that does not involving massively laying off your employees, then networking with another business might be just what the doctor ordered. After all, when you network with other businesses, you pool resources in order to create a final product that is more than the sum of its parts. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that doing such a thing during an economic downturn could be bad for the finances of both businesses, but the far more likely outcome is that such projects could stimulate growth in both businesses at a time when growth is hard to come by.
This does not mean that you should snap up the first networking opportunity that comes along however. You should evaluate each potential joint venture and then choose the one that is most likely to provide in areas that your company is lacking. Try to find a company to work with where you can reciprocate this need as well as such a partnership will benefit both parties enormously.
[tags]economic_downturn, expenditures, joint_venture, networking_opportunity, partnership[/tags]
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