The Raging Tech

DepositNow! Online Check Deposits

A relatively new service called DepositNow! (they’ve been around since 2004) allows small business owners, eBay power sellers, online retailers, and other people who might need to deposit a lot of checks, scan their checks and deposit them online from a normal computer.

This technology has often turned people off, because previously when you purchased a check scanner, that’s all it could do: scan checks. DepositNow! has developed their own check scanner that’s about half the price of other check scanners (about $225 USD) and can be used as a regular scanner as well.

Unfortunately, depositing checks online is only available to customers who bank in the United States. However, this could be a really useful service to anyone who has to daily make bank runs to deposit checks, especially in light of the recent rise in gas prices. The savings on gas almost make this scanner pay for itself after a month or two!

Think not only about the money you’ll save, but the time: instead of wasting time running to the bank before opening your store, you could be done in less time without leaving the office, and tend to other things that might need more attention. Or maybe just use the time to sit and have a cup of coffee and relax!

Visit DepositNow to sign up for online check depositing, use promo code “THE RAGING TECH” and you’ll receive $25 off the price of the scanner. That’ll also get me $25 if you become their customer, which will help me put gas in my car!

See Where Your Web Host Stands

It’s important when choosing your Web Host, a place that will serve up your web site’s pages, that you choose one that is going to be able to grow with you. “If you build it, they will come,” is often the mantra of young start-ups trying to make it on the internet, but it’s true that if your idea does hit a home run you’ll want something that can stand up to the traffic hit.

You can read web hosting articles about which web host might be best for you over at Web Hosting Rating. Whether you’re a small start-up or a big ol’ tech news website, you might find out you’ve been missing out on a better deal.

You Can Sell Almost Anything on eBay

Did someone you know recently die? Funerals are expensive, and so are coffins. But in today’s buy-everything-on-the-internet tradition, you can absolutely find it on eBay. I first got this idea when my uncle died a few years ago. I was trying to bring some levity to give people a chance to laugh. We all missed him dearly, and he always made us laugh.

I was at my mom’s house sitting at her computer and I said “Hey, I bet we can save the family some money and order the casket online, and get it rushed. That’s probably faster and cheaper than picking one out in the store. I’ve never bought a coffin before, do they come in sizes?” and my family burst into laughter. Then they came over to see the screen, and were amazed to actually see the item for sale.

Some caskets can cost thousands of dollars. This is a substantial savings over what you’d be pressured into buying from the local funeral home. This is especially helpful if your recently deceased loved one hasn’t bothered to purchase life insurance, or they owe so much you can’t afford to bury them.

If people can sell anything on eBay, so can you! Brick-and-mortar iSold It stores are setup especially for people who don’t want to bother learning to post their own auctions or handle their own money collection. You basically pay the iSold IT store to sell it for you, and they give you what’s leftover after eBay and their fees and shipping costs.

Build SEO with .EDU Backlinks

If you looked at that headline and went “Huh?” - you’re probably brand new to the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There is an entire business industry setup around helping web site owners, blog authors, and online publications optimize every page - make that every word of every page of content - highly optimized to be indexed by search engines like Google or Yahoo!.

Search engines each have their own algorithms for indexing and ranking pages - there are books, seminars and get-rich-quick schemes all surrounding the cult of Google Page Rank. Businesses seem to live and die by their Google PR. The better optimized your site, the higher your page rank will be. A page rank is what determines how high in the results your listing is when customers are searching on certain keywords.

If you want people to find you, you want to be earlier in the search results, right? If your competitors are in front of you, your potential client might go with them first, and that means lost sales or ad revenue. Google and other search engines want their search results to be the most relevant, so they check things like your site’s meta-data and description and match it to keywords.

Back-links are when a site with more credibility or popularity than you links to your site. If it has a higher page rank than yours, it helps your page rank grow. Search engines rate links from sites with .EDU addresses as more relevant, because only educational institutions are allowed to have them. Since school teachers and administrators and professors are likely to be more researched (or so they think), an edu link is worth a lot to growing your site’s relevance within search results.

Also, just a link on a .EDU site isn’t going to help. Search engines look at the content around a link, so a link on the side of a page not surrounded by content is going to be less relevant than a link surrounded by content in an article, for example.

Package Your Product: Labels Sell!

When you walk through the store and are making your purchasing decision, the label of a product can often have a big impact on whether or not your first impressions of a product are good ones. A nice looking label conveys a professional company and a well-made product. If you’re a small business trying to succeed on the market with your product, you want it to seem that way, right?

Getting a professional label made is an important part of selling any product. A Food Label, for instance, should contain pictures of the food looking delicious and prepared for eating, and should clearly display the brand name.

You’ll want your label to be brightly colored, and stand out from the others. If most people in your market use red labels, use something different. If it’s right next to them on the shelf, you’re more likely to get people to try your product.

LabelWorld is a provider of labels for different products, especially foods and beverages. Keep in mind though, these are not for small orders, like custom labels for wine at a wedding, so expect to make a large order for more of a business use.

Crazy Cross-State Trips are Awesome

Last weekend I went with a friend half-way across the state to help him move his sister out of her apartment and into a new one, due to some domestic problems with her boyfriend. Friday night, we stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, and then Saturday we moved her and that night stayed at an Embassy Suites hotel. That’s the same kind of hotel we stayed in on my weekend trip back in February, so we took advantage of the happy hour free booze from 5:30 - 7:30pm.

I had two Manhattans, two of some drink the bartender named “Whatchamacalit,” a margarita, two rum and cokes, two whiskey sours, and I finished off with a regular diet coke. I was fine going back up to the room and hanging out and watching TV and talking with my friend and his parents, and I kept dozing off, so I finally went to bed.

Sunday was a long day - spent some time at my friend’s parents house while they did business, and I worked on a new project I’m involved in: Tech Jaws - a tech news site. Check it out, show it to your friends, and be sure and Digg any articles you think are interesting!

JustTrade: A New Digg for Stock Trading Tips?

If you’ve been looking into ways to save or invest your money lately like I have, you might have taken a daunting look over at the stock market exchange. If you’re already familiar with trading stocks, you may already have been helped or hurt by OTC (over-the-counter) stock trading tips, or maybe a shady broker.

JUSTtrade is a neat site because you can rate individual tips and posters to the site, meaning that their future tips might be rated higher and be considered more trustworthy. Also, you can pick up some good advice on how to trade and what to trade.

A post on the homepage, for example, hasn’t been rated much yet, but sounds like a neat tip on buying gold low this morning and if the price holds, could see a huge rise later in the day for a nice profit. If I had the money to invest, I’d have gone through to the exchange mentioned and invested in gold and made a killing by this afternoon.

I don’t have the stock savvy or the finances to lose while learning right now, but maybe some of you who do own stocks could take a look at this site and gain some more insight into OTC trading, or maybe even offer some to others.