Home Start-Ups: The Right Recipe - starting an at-home business

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Feb, 1999 by Ronaleen R. Roha

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BOOKMARK THIS WEB SITE

The CCH Business Owner's Toolkit (www.toolkkit.com) is a well-organized powerhouse of a site. One particularly useful feature is the SOHO Guidebook which offers advice for small businesses from strat-up to sale. You'll also find business news, advice columns ("Ask Alice") and downloadable business forms ("Business Tools"), such as model business plans, tax and employment forms, and sample contracts. The site is massive--it has more than 4,000 documents--buy easy to navigate.

The site is free except for "Power Tools," which lets you request a Dun & Bradstreet credit report or conduct a trademark or patent search. You also pay for a smattering of other reports.

PRINT YOUR OWN POSTAGE

Downloadable, digital postage you print yourself may soon end trips to the post office. With Simply Postage (www.simplypostage.com), from Neopost of Hayward, Cal., you plug a small, secure printing device into your computer, then download postage from the Internet. You can then go offline to print bat codes on adhesive labels. You'll pay a rental fee for the device of about $180 a year (plus the cost of postage).

Later this spring, look for all-digital postage from Stamps.com of Santa Monica, Cal. (www.stamps.com). Aimed at companies using $25 to $250 worth of postage each month, the system requires no hardware. While you are online, you print both addresses and bar codes on your envelopes or labels using your own laser or inkjet printer. E-Stamp, of Palo Alto, Cal. (www.estamp.com), and Neopost (www.postageplus.com) are developing similar Internet-based systems. Prices are expected to be $5 to $7 per month, or inn the case of E-Stamp, a $10 service charge per refill.