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MONEY

How to Price Your Product

SBA Publications, P.O. Box 30, Denver, CO 80201-0030; (202) 205-6743.

The SBA publication, Pricing Your Products and Services Profitably (FM13), includes various pricing techniques and when to use them. Price: $1.

How to Raise Money

Office of Business Development & Marketing, U.S. Small Business Administration, 409 3rd St. SW, Washington, DC 20416; (202) 205-6665.

How to Raise Money for a Small Business is a free fact sheet that outlines the basics of raising money: where to find it, types of business loans, how to write a loan proposal, and SBA financial programs.

Money to Work on Your Invention

Office of Innovation, Research and Technology, U.S. Small Business Administration, DC 20416; (202) 205-7777. Or Energy-Related Inventions Program, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Bldg. 411, Room A115, Gaithersburg, MD 20899; (301) 975-5500.

Each year 11 government departments and agencies offer more than $475 million in grant money to small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to work on new ideas under the Small Business Innovation Research program. Recently, a consultant working at home received $500,000 to develop a new product for children. A man in Virginia received $50,000 to work on a new dental cream in his basement.

There are three phases to the programs for those ideas that are accepted. Phase I is usually funded for six months with awards up to $50,000. This phase is used to investigate the feasibility of th eresearcher's idea. Phase II offers funding up to $500,000 and is offered if the feasibility phase is successful. Phase III is used for the pursuit of private funding from venture capitalists or other third parties in order to commercialize the product. Contact the SBA office listed above for further information.

BUSINESS COUNSELING

Find Your Customers

Contact your state Office of Economic Development to locate a Small Business Development Center near you. Or call your local U.S. Government Federal Information Center (listed in the phone book) or the main Federal Information Center, (301) 722-9000.

You can use the same source big corporations use to decide the best place to, say, market a home-improvement business, or to get a mailing list of all the women in your neighborhood who are over 5' 8" in order to sell them a new product.

There are three places to go for this marketing information. The best place to get free or very-low-cost marketing-consulting help is your local Small Business Development Center.

State governments offer a wide variety of market information, too. The Department of Motor Vehicles sells information from drivers' licenses and motor-vehicle registrations. You can also get listings of doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, and even delicatessens from state licensing and regulatory offices. Or your state's Census Data Center can identify those zip codes most likely to have young children whose parents can afford orthodontia for them.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture can give you marketing information for thousands of products, from house plants to bull sperm. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Administration provide marketing information, too. Your local Federal Information Center can help you locate the specific office that can help you.

Free Government Experts on Any

Topic

Call your local U.S. Government Federal Information Center listed in the phone book. Or call the main Federal Information Center at (301) 722-9000.

There are approximately 700,000 experts in the federal government, all spending their careers studying some aspect of business that entrepreneurs can tap into. If you are looking for expertise on how to sell a new T-shirt idea, you can call the underwear expert at the U.S. International Trade Commission. This and other expert knowledge is available to you for the price of a telephone call.

Free Consultants

Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE): Contact your local SBA Hotline, (800) 827-5722 or the main SCORE office, (202) 205-6762.

SCORE members work with local SBA offices to provide small-business owners with free advice on all kinds of topics.

Cheapeast Way to Send Out Mail

Marketing Dept., Regular Mail Services Division, U.S. Postal Service, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, DC 20260-6336; (202) 268-6965.

When you do business through the mail, you need to keep up on rate and classification changes when they occur. The U.S. Postal Service puts out Memo to Mailers, a free monthly publication to keep you posted on these changes and other relevant postal news. To be put on the mailing list, write to the above address. For more information about the Memo, contact Communications Dept., U.S. Postal Service, Room 2P420, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, DC 20260; (202) 268-6874.

The Marketing Department of the Postal Service has put together the free booklet A Guide to Business Mail Preparation. This booklet gives you information on addressing for automation, postnet bar codes, and FIM patterns.

Checking Out Business Opportunity

Scams

Contact your state's Business Opportunity Office or State Attorney General's Office.

You should check out any kind of "business opportunity" salesman, and you can do it for free. Twenty-one states have Business Opportunity Laws and have established special offices that will help you check out any salesman's claims and punish wrongdoers. California: (619) 237-6553 Colorado: (303) 566-4560 Connecticut: (203) 566-4560 Florida: (904) 488-2221; (800) 435-7352 Georgia: (404) 651-8600 Indiana: (317) 232-6331 Iowa: (515) 281-4441 Louisiana: (504) 342-7373 Maine: (207) 582-8760 Maryland: (301) 576-6360 Michigan: (517) 373-7117 Nebraska: (402) 471-2171 New Hampshire: (603) 271-3641 North Carolina: (919) 733-3924 Ohio: (614) 466-4986; (800) 282-0515 Oklahoma: (405) 521-0451 South Carolina: (803) 734-2168 South Dakota: (605) 773-4823 Texas: (512) 475-1769 Virginia: (804) 786-0594 Washington: (206) 753-6938

Rules for Selling Products Through

The Mail

Enforcement Divison, Federal Trade Commission, 601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20580; (202) 326-2996.

Since many home-based businesses do business through the mail, you may need to know about the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Mail Order Rule, which requires companies to ship purchases made by mail when promised or to give consumers the option to cancel their order for a refund.

Avoiding Mail Fraud

Public Affairs Branch, Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Postal Service, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, DC 20260; (202) 268-4293. Or Enforcement Division, Federal Trade Commission, 601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20580; (202) 326-2996.

You should be aware of the ways some con artists use the mail to steal from you. To help you, the Postal Inspection Service publishes the free booklet. Postal Crime Prevention: A Business Guide, which shows business owners how to protect themselves. It includes information on different types of mail fraud, check-cashing precaustions, mailroom security, bombs in the mail, and other problems with mail-related crime. If you receive merchandise through the mail that you did not order, you can keep it as a gift. Learn your rights by contacting the FTC and obtaining a free copy of the Unordered Merchandise Statute.

Using Business Reply Mail

Rates and Classification Dept., U.S. Postal Service, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, DC 20260; (202) 268-5316.

If you use the mail a lot in your business to solicit customers, you might look into using business-reply mail. Under this service, you guarantee to pay the postage for all replies returned o you at the regular first-class rate plus a business-reply fee. To use this service, you have to pay a small annual permit charge.

Is Your Name Legal?

Trademark Search Library, Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Department of Commerce, 2011 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Romm 2C08, Arlington, VA 22202; (703) 305-8513, (703) 557-4636.

Before you decide to name your new business, you should find out if someone else already owns the trademark on the name. All registered trademarks, logos, and slogans are filed in the Trademark Search Library, and you can visit the library to research the name you want to use for your business. If you can't get to the library yourself, you can find a professional phone directory. The library staff will not do a search for you if you haven't formally applied for a trademark. However, if you do apply for a trademark, the library will tell you if the name is already taken, and if it isn't, they'll award you the trademark.

How to Pick a Work-At-Home

Franchise