As financing options like credit and loans continue to dry up, many start-ups have looked to venture and angel fund investors for lifelines to finding funding through the downturn. “With the banks off the scene, as an entrepreneur you’re looking around going, ‘Where do I turn now?” said Sarah Endline, founder of New York City-based Sweetriot, which produces dark chocolate candy in recyclable packaging. The company is on the hunt for $250,000 in growth capital.

Endline was one of 50 small-business owners from inner city regions across the country who flocked to One Bryant Park in New York City last week for an opportunity to pitch their best proposal to 47 potential investors. The event was sponsored by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a Boston-based non-profit focused on small businesses in urban areas, in partnership with Bank of America and the Small Business Administration.

The round of pitching was the culmination of a larger program, Inner City Capital Connections, that trains small-business owners on how to secure capital from investors. After a series of workshops and classes last month, the start-ups reconvened at the new Bank of America tower to test the mettle of what they had learned through networking, panels, and “speed dates” with investors.

According to a report published by the organization, inner-city small businesses attract 31 percent less growth capital than the average U.S. business. Through the program, ICIC hopes to close the gap and has aided start-ups in obtaining $335 million in growth capital since the event’s 2005 inception.

“Many of these entrepreneurs are trying to do everything, and they don’t have the resources to devote to going out and finding what alternative sources of financing are out there,” said Deborah Shufrin, senior vice president and director of programs at ICIC. “The first conversation happens here.”

The event culminated with five entrepreneurs making their best pitch to a panel of investors and an audience of other small business owners. After the investors were asked to choose their favorites. Sweetriot was a favorite, as was Coalescence, a Columbus, Ohio-based manufacturer of food ingredients.

“We believe we have a great story, but it’s nice to see that others believe it as well,” said Angela Cauley, CEO of Coalescence, who runs the company with her husband, Ian Blount. Cauley and Blount were warned by the panel that a company run by a married couple might not be appetizing to other investors. “The dynamics of a husband and wife team can be successful, but there’s always the possibility of bringing business problems home,” said Gene Todd, a managing partner at Emerging Market Venture Partners.

Shufrin said she hoped the event would produce actual investments down the road. “There will be a lot of information exchanged between the funds and companies,” she said. “Ultimately, it will become a marriage if they both agree.”

Last week we talked about basic blogging tools and techniques you should pretty much always have.

But when you think of maximizing what your blog can do for you there are some other tools you’ll want to make sure you have. Blogging can be awfully time consuming and I want to help you blog smarter not harder. While there are a many many ways you can get the most out of your blog, some ways are simpler and more universal than others.

Here are 13 of the simplest yet important tools and techniques you should be using to maximize the value of your blog:

1. SEO support – if you are considering using your blog to boost your search engine rankings, make sure your blog supports all of the features that Search Engines want to see in your content. Things like explicit, unique title tags and good meta description tags. For a pretty complete list of the things you’ll want to include in your HTML code see this post I did explaining how to optimize your site for Search Engines. Often blogs require a plugin to enable you to control/edit the items in the list I provided.

2. Get stats on your blog. The same way you want to know how your Web site is succeeding, you’ll also want to know what’s working on your blog. How many page views and unique visitors are you getting? Where are visitors coming from? How do they find you in search engines? Which posts and categories are most popular? You can either use the analytics software your blog hosting company provides, or install Google Analytics. WordPress.com has it’s own stats tool and self-hosted WordPress has a Google Analytics plug-in that makes installation relatively simple.
3. Automated email updates. As with most marketing, you have to do it consistently in order to maximize it’s value. But consistency can be awfully time-consuming. This is why we love technology! Feedburner and Feedblitz are two great tools to use that simplify your blog email marketing. They both will take care of two major tasks for you 1) enabling visitors to sign up to receive an email when you make a new post to your blog 2) automatically send the email each time someone posts to your blog. If you want to see how this works subscribe to this blog here Yes that was a shameless plug, but the point I make is no less valuable because of it!
4. TweetMeme retweet counter. This little tool is a quick and easy way to get your posts retweeted and show their popularity. Note that it doesn’t work so well if your title tags are not unique.
5. Categories. Make it easier to find things on your blog. It’s great to have things organized by date but this isn’t particularly intuitive to a reader who is looking to find out what you write about or looking for help or answers on a specific topic. Use categories to help readers find what they’re looking for and put the categories in your sidebar. Don’t be afraid to put a post in more than one category. Remember the categories are for your *reader* so make them as intuitive as possible to the reader.

I Can Email You When I Post to this Blog Click here to get notified of new posts to The Internet Strategist by Email

6. Feed & email tool. Note that Feedburner and Feedblitz can also help you set up a feed and do all kinds of neat things with your feed. But most blogging software comes with an internal feed tool. If you’re wondering what RSS is, here’s a nice definition of RSS, but my explanation is basically if you’re using myAOL or iGoogle or myYahoo and you have stories from different online magazines and Web sites appearing on those pages, you’re probably using RSS. It allows you do see the most recent headlines from CNN or Inc. or the Economist without having to visit the site. The headlines are clickable. Click on the headline and it takes you to the article. Neat!
7. (re)Captcha. Captcha is the tool that asks users to type in a set of letters or numbers before submitting a form. This tool is now available as a plugin for Web sites and blogs. (re)Captcha is captcha with a consience. While commenters are typing in the confirmation text, they are also helping to decipher text from very old books being saved by digitizing them. If you allow comments on your blog, you will definitely want some sort of spam defense. Even though it will not eliminate all comment spam it will help A LOT.
8. Comment following. Make sure that people who make a comment will be notified when others comment on the same post. Taps into the voyeur in all of us. Super viral.
9. Links to your clones. Make sure that if people like your style they have ways to connect with you. Enabling them to subscribe to your RSS feed and automated email update is great but how about you on Twitter? You on Facebook? You on LinkedIn? While you may not want to promote all three of these choose at least one and close that loop in the relationship with your reader.

Related Articles by Maisha: 8 Basic Blogging Features You’ll Actually Use Blogging for Coin Build Your Blog Blogging’s 11 Big Payoffs pt 2

10. Comment moderation. If you open your blog to comments (which you don’t have to do) you must review the comments. You will get spam. Spam looks silly on your blog. If you have some sort of captcha system the spam will be minimized but you will want to prune your blog of spam on a relatively frequent basis depending on how much traffic you get.
11. Related Articles. I love this feature both as a blogger and a reader. It allows people to find other great content that they will probably want to read if they’re reading the current article. Very easy to do and also viral.
12. Your own domain name. Unless you already have a brand (or you’re leapfrogging off of someone else’s), I do recommend getting your own domain name. It shows dedication and seriousness. If you’re just starting out can you have a successful blog without one? Of course! Is it harder? Of course!
13. What now? Provide some indication of what you want people to do if they like your blog. Just read more? Consider hiring you? Buy a book? Come see you speak? Shop at your store?

Get Your Blog Featured
I will be highlighting a variety of companies as examples in upcoming posts. If you’ve had success with your Blog and can describe results/back it up with real data, you can submit your Blogging strategy here.

Get a Free Blog or Web Site!
Even in a bad economy there’s a silver lining. I’m giving away a free Web site! If you’d like to be the lucky business owner tell me about your business and why you should win here. I acknowledge I’ll be choosing the winner purely based on my own discretion. Heck I may even choose more than one. I look forward to seeing your entry!

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

• 8 Basic Blogging Features You’ll Actually Use
• Blogging for Coin
• Build Your Blog
• Blogging’s 11 Big Payoffs pt 2

Meltdown in Dubai? The boom that put indoor ski slopes in the desert and man-made islands in the Persian Gulf looks to be coming to an end. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Dubai World, a state owned company controlled by the city-state, announced that it would stop paying back its debts. The Wall Street Journal has the news and says that the United Arab Emirates has not yet promised to bail out the faltering company. Zachary Karabell has a thoughtful analysis of the situation: “What led to Dubai’s rise was a vision of Arab entrepreneurialism, easy credit, and anything-is-possible attitude,” he writes, predicting that the oil rich nations, which use Dubai’s malls and nightclubs as a playground, will ultimately bail it out. “Even a doomsday scenario for Dubai‚ ‘complete default‚’ wouldn’t be a global disaster,” he predicts.

What is the going rate for “10 lords a-leaping?” Any romantic out there with the notion of giving their true love the gifts mentioned in the Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” should be prepared to fork over some serious cash. As the Chicago Tribune reports, financial firm PNC Wealth Management did a cost analysis of the items mentioned in the song and the total came out to a staggering $87,403. PNC, which has been doing the study since 1984, checks jewelry stores, dance companies, pet stores and other sources to figure out the price of everything from a partridge in a pear tree to 12 drummers drumming. Surprisingly, this year’s cost increased less than one percent, or a mere $794, from last year’s cost of $86,609. PNC attributes the modest increase to lower energy costs and fewer wage increases. The 43 percent rise in the cost of gold accounted for the largest price increase, as the five gold rings went from $150 to $500. The most expensive item in the song? Nine ladies dancing topped the list with a cost of $5,473 per performance.

How to Kill a Great Idea. In July 2008, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington announced that he was looking to build a low-cost tablet PC meant for web surfing. But today he writes that “the entire project self destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication.” Here’s his take on the messy divorce surrounding the CrunchPad.

Indian entrepreneurs find you can’t go home again. In the next five years, 100,000 “returnees” will move from the U.S. back to India as part of the “desi diaspora,” drawn in part by India’s booming economy. But for entrepreneurs steeped in Western business education, returning home is proving difficult, reports the New York Times. Harvard’s Vivek Wadhwa reports that 34 percent of repats found it difficult to return to India (as opposed to only 13 percent of Indian immigrants who had difficulty settling in the U.S.) Cultural ties, says the Times, “are overshadowed by workplace cultures that feel unexpectedly foreign, and can be frustrating.” The problem is compounded by the fact that they “look Indian but think American,” a managing partner at global executive search firm tells the Times.

The company behind this season’s “must-have” toy. As any parent with a young child already knows, this year’s surprise “must-have” toy is the Zhu Zhu Pets toy hamster. Yahoo News has an interesting profile of the company behind this latest fad, a small firm called Cepia Inc. of St. Louis, which has just 16 employees in the U.S. and 30 in China. As one mom interviewed in the story explains, these tiny robotic hamsters are now “more scarce than an H1N1 vaccine.” The furry hamsters retail for about $10, but their scarcity has led them to pop up on eBay and Craigslist for around $40. Toy industry vet Russ Hornsby started the 6-year-old company when he was 56, and the company has recently had to add three more factories in China in an attempt to meet the demand. A lot of factors have contributed to the Zhu Zhu Pets massive popularity, but some of it can be traced to Cepia’s savvy marketing strategy which got the word out on the hamsters through a mix of local cable ads and parties thrown by “mommy bloggers.”

One way to boost your brand? Open up your API to outside developers. Netflix users looking for a good movie to watch tonight can visit Instantwatcher, which highlights critics picks from the New York Times hidden in Netflix’s streaming movie catalog. But Netflix isn’t the one that created the application to make life easier for their members, reports AdAge . The app was created after Netflix opened up its API. An open API is an interface that gives third-party software access to your data or code. Then those third parties can mash up your data (pulling in data from another source, say the New York Times) and build new tools on top of it. Netflix isn’t the only one, Twitter’s success is often credited with opening up its API, which spurred a solar system of third party apps around its service, like Twidroid for Android or Tweetdeck on Adobe Air. Geoff Bremner, the CEO of Modern Climate, who’s worked with Best Buy’s open API likens it to “a wall full of electrical outlets, each with a label: customer data, pricing data, inventory. We can just plug into that and we don’t have to talk to anyone in IT at Best Buy.” Adds AdAge, “In some ways, opening up APIs means tapping into an army of technologists.” We said the same thing when we wrote about how Etsy uses its open API to entice developers to work for free.

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Ever since The Consumerist broke this story earlier this month that Apple is canceling the warranties on products exposed to cigarette smoke, the techarazi have been having a field day.

Sound crazy? Here’s the “deets” as my eight year old daughter would say:

1. Apparantly, there was a man in Iowa who took his two year old Macbook in for repairs at an Apple store in West Des Moines. They called him later to inform him that they were voiding his warranty because it had been exposed to cigarette smoke. What’s more, they were not willing to work on it at any price because of the dangers of exposure to second-hand smoke.

4. Apple, so far, is not responding to any press questions on this one.

Perhaps, they should!

I admit that when I first heard about this I actually felt sorry for the smokers. I usually don’t side with smokers. For example, I was in San Francisco when smoking was banned in the bars and I’m here to tell you that its a damn fine law.

This sounded pretty over the line, however.

What puzzled me, however, was how the repair people knew the unit had been exposed to second hand smoke. How does it evidence itself? Is it that bad?

Answer: yes!

Actually, smoking can really mess up a computer. The fan sucks the smoke right in and tar builds up on everything around it.

Here’s a picture of what it looks like when that happens.

I spent some time reading discussion threads and blogs written by computer repair types. Apparantly, it’s a common complaint just how nasty it is to deal with a computer gummed up with tobacco goo.

Black Friday, the day when many retailers hold post-Thanksgiving blowout sales, is generally referred to as such because stores are able to pull themselves out of the red and into the black. Last year, however, the name took on a more somber connotation when a worker at a Long Island Wal-Mart was trampled to death as eager customers surged into the store. Now, in an attempt to prevent similar tragedies, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has released guidelines to help retailers protect their employees and customers.

“It’s not uncommon for people to be injured, it is uncommon for people to die” during a Black Friday sale, says Jordan Barab, OSHA’s acting assistant secretary of labor. “We’re not trying to specify exactly what each employer is supposed to do, our main message here is that you need to have a plan.”

Understanding how crowds of shoppers behave–and what is motivating them to come out for a Black Firday promotion, aside from the bargain basement prices–is the key to such planning. For shoppers, Black Friday sales are “partially a social phenomenon to sort of exercise their shopping prowess against this mass of people,” says Kevin Leicht, a professor of sociology at the University of Iowa, and a member of its Center for the Study of Group Processes.

In addition to having a competitive element, Leicht says that Black Friday sales are also something of a spectator sport. “Some people go to the Super Bowl, others go to the Indianapolis 500, others go to Black Friday,” he says. As crowds gather, the likelihood of one shopper’s getting in trouble for fighting dirty for that last Tickle-Me-Elmo decreases. With anonymity comes a diminished sense of responsibility.

This social phenomenon that Leicht discusses may explain why Black Friday is still such a big event. He says, “You would think with all of the possibilities for online shopping and as much retail competition as there is, that the Black Friday phenomenon would be decreasing if anything, and it’s really not.” He suggests that making deals more selective by having them on different types of goods at different times can take some of the heat out of the experience.

Of course, the problem with that measure is it could detract from the atmosphere of scarcity that retailers often seek to create on Black Friday. OSHA believes that it’s guidelines will help retailers be safer without breaking the bank. Says Barab: “I think generally people are happy to know that there’s some planning going into their safety, so no, I don’t think [the guidelines will] cut into [retailers‚] profitability at all.”

Some of OSHA’s guidelines such as making a plan, communicating it to employees and ensuring that you have enough staff and security are pretty intuitive. Here are some suggestions you may not have already considered:

Well before shoppers start arriving, set up barricades to corral the crowd. Position the start of the line away from the entrance to the store and make sure it has breaks and turns at regular intervals so customers can’t easily push from the back of the line.
If you have hot ticket items that you know people will rush for, consider using an Internet lottery.
Offer numbered wristbands or tickets to early birds, and allow them to access sales items ahead of the rest of the crowd.
Equip your personnel stationed outside of the store with radios, mobile phones, or walkie-talkies, so that they can communicate with their co-workers inside the store. Also, use a PA system or bullhorns to address the crowds.
Let customers in in small groups and, when the store hits maximum occupancy, wait until other shoppers leave before letting in more people.

What are business owners handing out to employees and customers this holiday season? They can expect less gifts, reduced bonuses, and fewer raises, according to a recent study. The American Express (AMEX) OPEN Small Business Holiday Monitor, which interviewed 516 businesses, found that 57 percent will alter their gift-giving behavior because of the economic downturn. Only 47 percent of SMBs are planning to give holiday gifts to customers, down from 52 percent in 2008, while some business owners are offering supplemental holiday rewards to their employees, such as more flexible working hours or extra time off.”We’ve seen this trend towards making sacrifices across the board building with business owners since early fall of last year,” said Alice Bredin, business advisor for AMEX OPEN. “I think that’s the case for business owners who believe better times are around the corner as well as those [that do not].”For Kay Woods, owner of Precious Treasures Childcare, a Chandler, Arizona-based childcare facility that offers services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the 2009 holiday season will be more about small gestures. “I was unable to give out raises this year, but we do [other] special things for our teachers,” Woods explained. “To show them we appreciate all they do, we gave out teacher tool boxes, at my expense. It’s got stickers, staplers, posters, and markers in it. [This is] a stressful time, so we put in things for them to be creative.”This year Woods was forced to cut employee hours for budgetary reasons, but she was able to avert letting go any of her 18 staff members, and she is working to keep it that way. Woods hopes that the cutbacks she made this year will allow her to give raises in 2010. This holiday season, Woods says she will write each staff member a personalized holiday card to show her gratitude, although in the past she took her staff out for a holiday luncheon.”We’re more than just childcare, we are a parent resource center,” she said, noting that despite the sacrifices, she believes the mission of the business remains most important. “I don’t like to say I’m stressed out, I like to say I’ve got some interesting times on my hands.”

It’s that time of year when we remember a historic coming together of two sides, each of which had much to be wary of. I’m speaking of Pilgrims and Indians, but I’m also thinking about partners in business.

During this month’s Inc. Business Owners Council: Greater New York “Let’s Get Down to Business” event, our topic was partnership agreements. In particular, we focused on the downside of partnerships: the deaths, divorces, disabilities and other hazards of life that can bring a business down when there’s no planning in place that considers the affects of such events.

Most would agree that a death of a partner or a key employee would deliver a shock to a fragile business eco-system. But a far more likely scenario, according to the statistics, is a disability or a divorce. Most in attendance at the event, when asked if they were prepared to be in business with their partners’ spouses, were strongly opposed to that idea. And yet it happens.

We circulated a white paper, written by Russ Alan Prince, Hannah Shaw Grove, and Ted Tafaro entitled “Unprepared for the Unthinkable.” I posited to the group that the reasons for planning for such an event should be second nature to business owners at this point. After all, most of us have begun planning for a second macro-economic event (by building up cash reserves or diversifying our banking relationships) in the wake of last year’s credit crunch. It stands to reason that an event which occurs within our business, while equally unexpected, is far more likely to occur than a once-in-a-lifetime financial domino effect.

Our speakers were top-notch, each with something unique to offer:

Michael Ellison, a business owner (along with his father) of market research firm, Corporate Insight, offered a glimpse inside his own planning process so others could learn from his thought process and his mistakes.

He was joined by Todd Angkatavanich of law firm Withers Bergman. Todd is a longtime friend of Michael’s and, together, they walked us through the partnership planning they’d done for Michael’s business over the past several years.

It’s safe to say that most attendees in the room were uncomfortable with some of the issues being raised. They agreed that these kinds of discussions were much harder than the ones they first had when they started their businesses.

That’s precisely why the best time to conduct these conversations is when things are relatively hunky dory between you and your partners, says Todd. When things are going well, you can imagine yourself on either side of the “Three Ds”–death, disability, divorce–situation. So you don’t want to cut any kind of deal that you, yourself, wouldn’t want to be subject to, no matter which end of the table you find yourself.

Todd laid out four clear steps for us to consider when constructing our partnership agreements (he also shared that the cheapest way to get a partnership agreement done is to have given each of these some thought before bringing an attorney into the mix).

Step one: If something happened to your partner and you are buying shares from him/her, is your partner a family member? Or a professional colleague or friend? The I.R.S. cares. If it’s a family member, they assume that your deal is “cooked” and your numbers are not based on fair market value. If it’s not a family member, they will scrutinize less.

Step two: Lay out the scenarios for each of the different possibilities. What happens in the event of a death? Divorce? Disability? Bankruptcy? Voluntary retirement?

Step three: What’s the formula for determining the fair market value of the shares?

Step four: What are the different ways you might pay your ex-partner in each of these events? A loan from the company? A life or disability insurance policy? And is the buyout required? Or is it optional?

These are the big issues partnership agreements raise. Like Pilgrims and Indians at the Thanksgiving table, we’ll have to work these out with our partners if we are to be prepared for the unthinkable events of life.

I’d like to especially thank our sponsor, Exceptional Risk Advisors and its CEO, Ted Tafaro, for joining us on this three-state tour during a balmy November. Like the hair club president, he’s not only our sponsor, he’s also a past member of a family business.

In addition, I’d like to thank our site hosts: Mercedes-Benz of Greenwich (thanks for the Maybach tour!), Herald National Bank, and Rothstein Kass.

Your hospitality made each event a friendly and warm gathering.

That’s it for the 2009 program year, folks. We’ll be back in January 2010 with an electric program designed to help business owners reach higher heights and make the year a big success. Thanks to all who participated in 2009 and, as ever, if you’d like to learn more about Inc. Business Owners Council, please feel free to contact me at: lewis.schiff@inc.net.

As my column before the Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to share a story about a company that is successful by “making everyone happy for 5 minutes a day.” At the recent Web 2.0 Expo in New York City, I got a chance to interview Ben Huh, CEO of CheezBurger network and Pet Holdings, Inc(company name was officially changed). You know, the folks who make http://icanhascheezburger.com/, the site with the silly pictures of LOL* cats , the Fail Blog http://failblog.org/ (a top 10 YouTube channel) and other sites where you can spend minutes or hours laughing and clicking ‘next.’ (It might be a site you hope your boss doesn’t see on your screen when he walks by.)

And yet, you could tell the boss they improve morale. Huh told me the company motto about making everyone happy “is a crowd sourced philosophy- it came from the users sending email saying the site cheers them up. They turned that into our mission.” That’s fitting considering that users create the content and make each other happy. “It’s their world, we’re just helping them,” said Huh.

So, as we’re all laughing, Huh and his Pet Holdings Inc.Cheezburger Network are laughing all the way to the bank. With nearly 50 million page views a month (self reported for the network), and over 1 million unique visitors for ICanHasCheezeburger.com (according to Compete.com statistics), the network has some serious revenue potential. (Pet Holdings is privately held and do not disclose earnings).

What lead to the growth of this site? Huh had been part of a failed DotCom startup, and had spent time after that working with other CEOs and entrepreneurs trying to learn what made businesses successful. He knew of the Cheezburger site started by Eric Nakagawa and several others, and was brought in to help as it grew in popularity. He raised money to buy the site outright via an angel investor in Seattle. Once he bought the site he did one thing: Nothing. “I thought, don’t screw it up. Don’t change anything, run it the same way. I inherited a site generating revenue, so the trick was not to put it in the red.”

As the network of sites grew, Huh has added people, always making sure the revenue pays for the new hires. While people still perceive them as “2 guys in pajamas in their mom’s basement,” today Pet Holdings Inc. has 26 employees and full time contractors.

“Believe it or not, spending less than you earn is hard. The ‘If I build it they will come’ inclination is very strong,” said Huh. Growth is mostly organic -they purchased a few sites, but majority of them they built themselves. As the network grew larger, they were able to launch more sites, more frequently. Each new site is like a niche cable network, with a different audience and revenue based on their interests. Typically, the new ideas come from the users telling them what sites to build – and contributing all the material. “We get more that 10 thousand submissions of content per day,” said an amazed Huh.

Some of that content has been republished as best selling books. The I Can Has Cheezburger book is currently 17^th in Humor and 8^th in Cats, Dogs and Animals on Amazon, 1 year after publication. Two new books have recently been released.

Failure, he told me, IS an option. “If you fail hard, you can’t get back up again, and you’ve destroyed opportunity. If you make small mistakes that you learn from, you can adapt. A good entrepreneur isn’t supposed to ‘not screw up’ but to find out what works.

Ben’s favorite humor site? “It’s still I Can Has Cheezburger. I save it to the end of the day, when I’m tired, and I savor it. The creativity of the users is fascinating and so unexpected.” And the ultimate irony for this humorous LOL Cat entrepreneur? He doesn’t have any cats - he’s allergic to them.

How can your business grow by making people happy? Discuss in the comments below.

Bonus video: Behind the Scenes at Fail Blog.

*(LOL means Laughing Out Loud)