All Activity

PPC performance conversations often focus on best practices. Account structures should be clean. Match types controlled. Budgets scaled gradually. Campaigns should avoid overlap. Everything should be logical, efficient, and easy to explain. That foundation matters. It creates consistency and avoids obvious inefficiencies. But it’s not where the biggest gains come from. Looking back over the past 10 years, many of the most meaningful performance improvements didn’t come from refining those frameworks. They came from testing ideas that didn’t quite fit them — things that felt slightly uncomfortable but aligned with how platforms actually behave. In practice, Google Ads and Meta don’t optimize toward best practice. They optimize toward signals. Once you think in those terms, your approach to performance changes. Control still matters more than you think (SKAGs aren’t actually ‘dead’) Single Keyword Ad Groups were widely written off as automation improved. The narrative was simple: machine learning removed the need for granular control. Structure mattered less. In practice, that wasn’t entirely true. In several accounts, reintroducing SKAGs on a small subset of high-intent, high-revenue keywords led to immediate performance gains. Query matching tightened, ad relevance improved, and conversion rates increased. This wasn’t about reverting to old structures across the board. It was about recognizing where precision still adds value. The takeaway is more nuanced than “SKAGs work” or “SKAGs are dead.” Control still matters, but only where intent justifies it. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with Broad match works better when you aggressively constrain it Broad match has always carried distrust. Too much expansion. Too little control. Too much reliance on Google’s interpretation of intent. In practice, one of the most effective setups combines broad match with aggressive negative keyword management. Instead of restricting input, you let Google explore — then shape the output. Search term mining becomes the control layer. You continuously remove irrelevant queries and reinforce valuable ones. This creates a system where reach expands without fully sacrificing relevance. The shift is how you apply control. You don’t control broad match upfront. You control what it learns from. Target Impression Share changes behavior when visibility matters more than efficiency Target Impression Share is usually positioned as a defensive metric. Used for brand campaigns. Used to protect coverage. Rarely used for growth. Applying it to non-branded, high-value terms feels counterintuitive. You prioritize presence over efficiency. In certain cases, that trade-off is worth it. By pushing aggressive impression share targets on commercially important queries, you increase SERP dominance and reduce competitor visibility. Conversion volume increases, even if cost efficiency softens. Here, bidding strategy becomes less about optimization and more about intent. If your goal is to own a space — not just compete — efficiency can’t be the only metric. Conversion tracking isn’t the issue. Conversion weighting is. Most lead gen accounts correctly track multiple conversion actions. Form fills, phone calls, email inquiries — all captured and visible. The issue isn’t tracking. It’s interpretation. When you treat every action equally, the platform has no reason to prioritize one over another. In one account, assigning values based on the likelihood of becoming an MQL changed optimization almost immediately. Phone calls were weighted highest, email clicks lower, and generic form fills lower. Switching to Maximize Conversion Value didn’t increase total conversions. It improved their quality. The distinction matters. The platform isn’t misoptimizing. It’s optimizing exactly what you tell it to. Competitor bidding works because intent already exists Competitor campaigns are often dismissed as inefficient. Higher CPCs. Lower CTRs. Messier reporting. All true. They also deliver something most prospecting campaigns struggle to create: existing intent. Users searching competitor brands are further along in the decision process. They’re not exploring the category — they’re choosing within it. In multiple accounts, competitor campaigns consistently converted—not at the lowest cost, but with high commercial intent. With clear positioning, strong differentiation, and relevant landing pages, they became a reliable strategic layer. You’re not creating demand. You’re intercepting it. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Top-of-funnel keywords don’t convert. They still drive performance. There’s a tendency to remove anything that doesn’t convert. Informational queries. Early-stage searches. Broad, non-commercial terms. Individually, they rarely justify spend. Collectively, they influence the entire account. Introducing top-of-funnel keywords not expected to convert improved lower-funnel performance. Remarketing pools strengthened, audience signals improved, and high-intent campaigns became more efficient. The value is indirect but measurable. This challenges a common assumption. Not every keyword needs to convert. Some build the signal that drives conversion elsewhere. Audience assumptions are often wrong. The data usually isn’t. Audience targeting often starts with a clear hypothesis. Who the customer is. What they care about. How they behave. In one account, the data told a different story. The “ideal” demographic underperformed, while adjacent audiences converted more efficiently. Instead of forcing the account toward expectations, you follow the data. You shift budget, expand targeting, and improve performance. This tension is common in PPC. What you expect to work and what actually works aren’t always aligned. Clean structure is often a management preference, not a performance driver There’s a strong bias toward clean account structure. No overlap. Clear segmentation. Tight control. It makes accounts easier to manage, explain, and audit. It doesn’t always make them more effective. In several cases, allowing controlled overlap between campaigns, match types, and keyword themes improved coverage and performance. Instead of cannibalization, the system used overlapping signals to make better auction decisions. This challenges a long-standing assumption. Structure should support performance—not limit it. Product feeds are strategic In Shopping campaigns, the product feed is often treated as backend work. Ensure accuracy. Ensure completeness. Then leave it. But the feed directly shapes how products are interpreted and matched to queries. Rewriting titles to prioritize high-intent keywords, reordering attributes based on performance, and testing naming variations all improved visibility and CTR. These weren’t cosmetic changes. They changed how the algorithm understood the product. In Shopping, your feed is your targeting. Treating it as static limits performance. Retargeting is one of the fastest ways to test what actually works Retargeting is usually treated as the safest part of the funnel. High intent. High conversion rates. Predictable performance. That makes it an ideal testing environment. Using retargeting audiences to test messaging, offers, and creative variations creates faster feedback loops and clearer results than prospecting. You can then scale winning ideas with confidence. This reframes retargeting. It’s not just a conversion layer. It’s a testing environment. See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with How top accounts really win After 10 years in PPC, the biggest shift isn’t the platforms — it’s how they actually work. Best practices still matter. They’re the foundation. But they’re not where advantage comes from. The accounts that outperform understand how signals are interpreted, where systems can be influenced, and when to step outside what’s considered “correct.” Because the goal was never to follow the playbook. It was to outperform it. View the full article

Why inherited technical debt, content quality, and link history limit early SEO gains despite new expertise. The post Why Your New SEO Vendor Can’t Build on a Broken Foundation appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

WhatsApp is finally getting a long-awaited privacy feature that allows you to display a username rather than your phone number, which will remain hidden from other users. This feature has been in the works for more than a year, with few details released as to its functionality and ETA. While it's still not rolling out to all users just yet, we now know a little bit more about how it will work. According to WABetaInfo (and as reported by 9to5Google), WhatsApp is set to launch usernames to a very limited number of accounts as part of a phased rollout. This means that you may not have access to this update now—but you should consider the switch as soon as it becomes available to you. How to add a username to WhatsAppOnce the username feature is widely available, you should see the option in your WhatsApp profile settings (go to Settings and tap your profile name and photo). On the pop-up, you can choose to create a WhatsApp username or select your existing Facebook or Instagram username instead. According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp has a handful of rules for new usernames: Usernames can contain only lowercase letters, numerals, periods, and underscores. Usernames must include at least one letter. Usernames cannot start with "www." or end in a domain (such as .com). Usernames must be be 3–35 characters in length. Usernames on WhatsApp must also be unclaimed across other Meta platforms—so even if a username appears available on WhatsApp, you won't be able to choose it if someone else is using it on Facebook or Instagram. If you have an existing username on either of the latter, consider the potential privacy implications of making your accounts easy to identify across platforms before linking that same name to WhatsApp. Along with a WhatsApp username, you'll also be able to set up a four-digit code, which other users will need to enter when they message you for the first time. Username keys allow you to limit communication to trusted contacts. View the full article

Privacy laws are tightening, browser extensions are blocking data, and ad platforms are demanding cleaner data. As a result, how you track user behavior online is changing fast. Server-side tagging can help you reduce data loss while collecting cleaner, privacy-compliant data. Here’s what server-side tagging is, when it makes sense to implement it, and our experience with providers like Elevar and Littledata. What is server-side tagging? Traditionally, tracking scripts like Meta Pixel or Google Analytics run in the browser. This is client-side (browser-side) tagging. With server-side tagging, those scripts run on a server you control instead of the visitor’s browser. Instead of the browser sending data directly to multiple third parties, it sends events to a first-party server endpoint (often a Google Tag Manager server-side container). The server processes, enriches, and forwards the data to tools like Meta and Google Analytics — on infrastructure you host (such as Google Cloud Run) or through managed providers like Elevar or Stape. This allows for: More control over your data. Cleaner page performance. Better alignment with privacy laws. Beyond these benefits, server-side tagging gives you more flexibility in how you enrich and transform data before it reaches ad platforms. You can standardize event names, filter out low-quality events, and add custom parameters to improve audience segmentation. This creates a more reliable, unified data foundation across tools like Meta, Google Ads, and Klaviyo, leading to stronger optimization signals and more confident decisions. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with Is server-side tagging right for you? Server-side tagging isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, but for many brands it’s becoming essential. It may be the right choice for you if: You need to meet strict privacy or compliance requirements Server-side setups don’t automatically anonymize data, but they give you more control over how it’s processed and shared. This makes it easier to support compliance with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and platform consent requirements. You can apply consent logic, filter or hash sensitive fields, and control which events and parameters you send to each platform based on user permissions. You want faster website performance Client-side tracking can slow page load times. Server-side tagging helps your site run faster by shifting data processing off the browser and onto the server, boosting user experience and SEO. Faster pages can improve conversion rates and reduce bounce rates, especially on mobile, where every millisecond counts. You want more accurate tracking (despite ad blockers) Ad blockers can disrupt client-side scripts, but server-side tagging bypasses many of these limits. It helps platforms like Meta and Google Ads collect more reliable data for attribution and optimization. It doesn’t eliminate blocking or consent requirements or recover all lost data, but it can improve signal reliability compared to browser-only setups. You’re investing heavily in paid media If you’re spending heavily on Meta, Google, or other paid channels, better data accuracy can directly impact your return on ad spend. Server-side tagging helps ensure conversion events are delivered consistently, allowing algorithms to learn faster and optimize toward higher-value users. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. How to implement server-side tagging You have two main options: build it yourself or use a service provider. Option 1: Internal setup Building your own setup gives you full control but requires technical expertise and ongoing maintenance. You’ll also need clear documentation and QA processes to keep events accurate as your site evolves and new features launch. Your setup might look like: Set up a GTM server-side container Host on a platform like Google Cloud Run or Stape Migrate key tags (GA4, Meta CAPI, etc.) Add logic for PII hashing, cookie consent, and filtering Monitor server costs, performance, and data integrity Option 2: Use a server-side tagging service Platforms like Elevar, Littledata, and Triple Whale simplify this by offering turnkey solutions that integrate with tools like Shopify, Klaviyo, Meta, and Google Ads. They handle infrastructure, updates, and many edge cases, so you can focus on strategy instead of engineering. Our direct experience: Littledata vs. Elevar We’ve implemented Littledata and Elevar across multiple Shopify environments. Each serves a different type of brand, and understanding the difference is key. Littledata: For simpler technology stacks and budget-conscious brands We first implemented Littledata for a Shopify brand focused on improving visibility into Klaviyo and strengthening owned marketing channels. In that context, it performed well, passing additional Klaviyo events and improving email-driven reporting. Littledata is a strong fit for: Early-stage or emerging Shopify brands Teams with moderate paid media budgets Teams prioritizing email/SMS over aggressive paid scaling Brands with relatively simple tech stacks Businesses that want better tracking without enterprise-level cost Littledata’s affordability makes it accessible if you want better attribution without highly customized, platform-specific data engineering. In more performance-intensive environments — especially where paid media relies on precise in-platform reporting — we’ve seen limitations with fully aligned Meta conversion data and consistent GA4 session and revenue reporting. At scale, even small discrepancies can affect bidding strategies. Littledata’s support is relatively lean, so resolving nuanced discrepancies may require additional internal validation. If you have in-house technical resources or less aggressive optimization needs, this may not be a major concern. Elevar: When brands outgrow entry-level solutions As you scale paid media spend and demand more precise attribution in Meta and Google Ads, the margin for tracking error shrinks. You’ll likely reach a point where you: Spend heavily on paid acquisition. Optimize toward blended ROAS across channels. Make bid decisions based on in-platform conversion data. At that point, you need more advanced infrastructure, deeper data enrichment, and specialized troubleshooting support. When your needs shift, so should your solution. This is where a solution like Elevar comes in. Set yourself up for success with server-side tagging Server-side tagging is a technical and strategic upgrade. It: Supports privacy compliance. Speeds up your site. Improves performance by making your data more accurate and reliable. Future-proofs your measurement stack as browsers limit third-party cookies and platforms prioritize first-party data. As privacy restrictions grow and ad platforms evolve, this setup only becomes more valuable. If you invest early, you’re better positioned to maintain strong attribution, build richer audiences, and make smarter media buying decisions. The goal isn’t just to recover lost data. It’s to build a more resilient measurement framework that adapts as platforms and regulations change. Server-side tagging gives you ownership over your data pipeline and reduces reliance on fragile browser-based signals. When implemented well, it becomes a long-term advantage, enabling clearer insights, stronger attribution, and more confident optimization across every channel you invest in. View the full article

Leadership and management lessons aren’t always figured out off the bat. Making some mistakes and realizing that what works for you doesn’t work for everyone else is valuable. It’s impossible to go back and change the past, but you can think through how you manage now and see if it’s still effective. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members about their staff management lessons and how their approach has evolved. Their insights can help you lead your staff better without having to make those same mistakes yourself. Here’s what nine Impact Council members shared—hard earned pearls of wisdom. 1. ALIGN ON GOALS Earlier in my career, I sometimes moved so quickly that I didn’t always pause to clearly define what success looked like for my team. When people don’t have clarity on objectives and KPIs, it can lead to wasted effort and frustration. Taking the time to align on goals not only empowers people to do their best work, it also reduces the need to micromanage and builds a much healthier team culture. I’ve also learned that constructive criticism should be balanced with encouragement and recognition. — Muneer Panjwani, Engage for Good 2. DELEGATE EARLIER I would have delegated earlier and with more trust—not just tasks but real ownership. Early in management, it is easy to hold tightly to the methods that helped you succeed. Over time, you learn that growth requires letting go of control, and that creates room for others to lead. People will not do things exactly the way you would, but that is not a flaw. When you give someone space to solve problems their own way, supported by coaching and clear guardrails, you are investing in their confidence and future. That is how you build a team with depth, strengthen succession, and create a culture where people feel seen, trusted, and capable. — Mike Sewell, Gresham Smith 3. SLOW DOWN HIRING I wouldn’t have been so quick to expand staff based upon the expressed desires of other staff. I have found that employees will sometimes slightly overemphasize the need for new staff for reasons that don’t necessarily work to the company’s benefit. It could be that they want to ease their workload, could hire people they’ve told that they could hire, or simply feel their role and career will be more important with a bigger staff. I’ve had teams of five to eight people doing the work that easily could have been done, possibly better, by two to three good people. — Eric Basu, Haiku, Inc. 4. MORE STRUCTURE, EARLIER I’d give more structure earlier. My instinct as a founder has always been to manage the way I’d want to be managed. For me, that’s high autonomy, lots of freedom, trust by default. And for the right people, that works beautifully. But I’ve learned the hard way that not everyone thrives with a blank canvas. Some people genuinely do better with clearer guardrails, more frequent check-ins, and explicit expectations. — Lindsey Witmer Collins, WLCM Software Studio and Scribbly Books 5. CLARITY IS KINDNESS Earlier in my career, I sometimes lived with misalignment for too long, hoping performance issues would resolve themselves instead of confronting them directly. I’ve learned over time that clarity is kindness. If the strategy is clear but the team isn’t aligned to deliver it, that’s on the leader. Now I move faster to align people to the mission, because transformative moments require A+ players who believe in where you’re going and can execute efficiently. — Chris Ball, 6sense 6. TEAM SHOULD REIMAGINE WORK I’d have challenged my team to reimagine how we work from first principles much sooner. For years we refined and optimized existing processes, which felt responsible but kept us anchored to old assumptions. The biggest unlock as a leader has been giving people permission to question everything about how we deliver value and rebuild from scratch. It sounds obvious, but most organizations keep layering improvements on top of methods that were designed for a completely different era. The breakthroughs come when you stop iterating on the old and start building the new. — Peter Smart, Fantasy 7. LEAD WITH EMPATHY I wish I had led with more empathy and consideration for the whole person. In my early career, I emulated what I witnessed other managers do, which was to create strict professional boundaries and expectations. In reality, great leadership requires you to honor the whole person, and show grace towards whatever challenges they have outside of work: parenting, caretaking, illness, etc. — Bo Zhao, Baby Gear Group 8. CHALLENGE STATUS QUO I would have encouraged employees to challenge traditional boundaries, question the status quo, and be open to reimagining established practices. Progress comes from daring to do things differently, and I believe that if something has always been done a certain way, that’s exactly the reason to ask if there’s a better approach. If I could go back, I would have fostered that mindset even earlier. I’ve seen firsthand how teams rise when they’re supported in dismantling those artificial ceilings that limit how they see their roles, growth and impact. — Melissa Puls, Ivanti 9. VALUE HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS I would have pivoted sooner from valuing pedigree to human consciousness. AI has rendered academic credentials obsolete. Much like Palantir’s shift away from degrees, the old hierarchy is collapsing. At the bread and butter, we use AI to automate the repetitive, but this taught us a profound lesson: The ultimate skill now is “the proof of being human.” My management focus is now ensuring our team holds the master key to context and empathy. We treat AI as a tool, freeing our people to architect soulful narratives that machines cannot replicate. Leading now means balancing automated logic with irreplaceable human wisdom. — Sooyoung Cho, the bread and butter brand consulting LLC View the full article

Starting a sole proprietorship can be a smart choice for those looking to maintain control over their business as they enjoy a straightforward setup. You’ll need to think about a unique business name, secure the necessary licenses, and stay on top of your tax responsibilities, as income will flow through to your personal tax return. Comprehending these elements is essential, as they lay the groundwork for your venture. So, what are the key steps you need to take to successfully launch your business? Key Takeaways Choose a business name and conduct a name availability search to ensure it’s not trademarked. Register your DBA with the local county clerk if using a fictitious business name. Obtain necessary licenses and permits based on your industry and location. Maintain accurate financial records and report income using Form Schedule C with your tax return. Consider opening a separate business bank account for streamlined financial management and tax filing. What Is a Sole Proprietorship? A sole proprietorship is the simplest and most common business structure in the United States, allowing a single individual to run a business without the need for formal registration. To set up a sole proprietorship, you just need to start operating your business under your legal name. If you choose to use a different name, you’ll need to file a “Doing Business As” (DBA) registration in your state. When starting a new business as a sole proprietorship, you’ll enjoy minimal startup costs and full control over decisions. Nevertheless, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re personally liable for any debts and legal issues that arise. Furthermore, this structure benefits from pass-through taxation, meaning you report your business income on your personal tax return, simplifying tax preparation. Many freelancers, consultants, and small service providers successfully operate in this straightforward business model. Pros and Cons of Sole Proprietorship When you start a sole proprietorship, you gain complete control over your business decisions, allowing you to act quickly without needing input from others. Nonetheless, this independence comes with significant financial responsibility, as you’re personally liable for any debts or legal issues the business may encounter. Comprehending these pros and cons is essential for making informed choices as you initiate your entrepreneurial expedition. Control and Decision-Making Running a sole proprietorship offers you complete control over business decisions; it also comes with significant responsibilities. You can adapt quickly to market changes without needing approval from partners or shareholders. Nonetheless, this autonomy means you bear full financial responsibility for any losses, making it crucial to make informed choices to avoid excessive liabilities that could impact your personal assets. The simplicity of tax preparation streamlines financial decision-making, as all income is reported on your personal tax return. Still, attracting investors or securing loans can be challenging, potentially limiting your growth opportunities. Moreover, the lack of formal structure may affect your credibility, influencing decisions related to client engagement and partnerships. Careful planning is key for long-term success. Financial Responsibility and Risk Operating a sole proprietorship offers you significant control over your business; it furthermore places the full weight of financial responsibility squarely on your shoulders. As a sole proprietor, your personal assets are at risk if the business incurs losses or faces lawsuits. Here are key points to reflect on: You report profits and losses directly on your personal tax return, potentially resulting in lower overall tax rates. Minimal startup costs make it appealing, but you assume all financial risks. The lack of liability protection means personal property is exposed to claims, unlike other structures like an LLC. Understanding these financial responsibilities and risks can help you make informed decisions about your sole proprietorship expedition. Steps to Start a Sole Proprietorship Starting your sole proprietorship begins with choosing a business name, which can simply be your legal name except you decide to register a “Doing Business As” (DBA) name. Once you’ve settled on a name, you’ll need to register your DBA with the local county clerk if it’s different from your own. After that, obtaining any necessary licenses and permits specific to your industry and location is vital to guarantee compliance with local regulations. Choosing a Business Name How do you choose the right name for your sole proprietorship? Start by considering your legal name as the default, but think about a “Doing Business As” (DBA) name for better representation. Here are some steps to guide you: Conduct a name availability search to confirm your chosen name isn’t already trademarked or in use. Choose a name that reflects your business’s nature and is easy to remember, as this impacts marketing. Think about your online presence; check for domain availability that matches your business name. Taking these steps will help you establish a strong identity for your business, making it more memorable for potential customers as you maintain compliance with legal requirements. Registering Your DBA Registering your DBA (Doing Business As) is a crucial step in establishing your sole proprietorship, allowing you to operate under a name that reflects your brand. To register a DBA in Texas, you must file an Assumed Name Certificate with the county clerk’s office where your business operates. This process involves completing a form that includes your legal name, the DBA name, and your business address. There’s usually a small filing fee, which varies by county, so check with your local clerk’s office for specifics. Once registered, your DBA name enables you to market your business effectively as you remain the legal owner. Remember to renew your DBA registration periodically, as required, to maintain good standing and avoid legal complications. Obtaining Licenses and Permits When launching your sole proprietorship, obtaining the necessary licenses and permits is essential for legal compliance and smooth operation. Requirements can vary markedly based on your business type and location, so it’s important to research thoroughly. Consider these steps: Visit your state government website to understand specific licensing requirements and local regulations. Determine if your business requires federal licenses, especially in regulated industries like healthcare or finance. If you use a trade name or DBA, file for the Assumed Name with your local county clerk’s office for legal recognition. Don’t forget to keep track of renewal dates for licenses and permits. Failing to maintain compliance can lead to fines or even suspension of your business operations. How to Register as a Sole Proprietorship Starting your adventure as a sole proprietor involves a few key steps to guarantee you’re compliant with local regulations. First, if you plan to operate under a name different from your legal name, you need to register a “Doing Business As” (DBA) name with your county clerk’s office. Next, check if your desired business name is available and not already trademarked. Depending on your business type and location, you may need specific licenses and permits, so be sure to research local requirements. As you don’t have to obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN), it’s wise if you’ll hire employees or want to protect your Social Security number. Finally, if you plan to collect sales tax, register for a Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Following these steps will help you start your business on the right foot. Business Tax Responsibilities for Sole Proprietors Once you’ve set up your sole proprietorship, you’ll need to understand your business tax responsibilities. As a sole proprietor, your business income is taxed as a pass-through entity, meaning you report it on your personal tax return using Form Schedule C alongside Form 1040. You’ll likewise pay self-employment taxes on your net earnings, calculated with Schedule SE. Unlike corporations, you won’t file a separate business tax return, simplifying your tax preparation. Here are a few key responsibilities to keep in mind: Make estimated tax payments if you expect to owe $1,000 or more, using Form 1040-ES for quarterly submissions. Take advantage of various deductions like business expenses, home office deductions, and health insurance premiums. Consult a tax professional to maximize your deductions and guarantee compliance with tax regulations. Staying informed about these responsibilities can help you manage your finances effectively. Maintaining Your Sole Proprietorship To guarantee your sole proprietorship runs smoothly, maintaining accurate financial records is crucial. Tracking your income and expenses helps you understand your business’s financial health. It’s wise to keep at least three years of tax returns and financial statements for analysis. Even though Texas doesn’t require specific records, maintaining employee records, including working hours and payment slips, guarantees compliance and proper management. Regularly renewing your business licenses and permits keeps you compliant with local regulations, avoiding fines or interruptions. While opening a separate business bank account is optional, it simplifies distinguishing personal and business finances, making tax filing easier. Don’t overlook your tax responsibilities, including sales and use taxes, payroll employment taxes, and various local government taxes. Establishing proper accounting practices aids in compliance and helps you stay on top of your financial obligations. Maintaining these elements will support the longevity and success of your sole proprietorship. Is a Sole Proprietorship Right for You? Choosing the right business structure is a significant decision that can impact your operations and financial obligations. A sole proprietorship may be suitable for you if you want full control over your business and prefer simplicity. It’s the easiest structure to set up and offers pass-through taxation, which can lower your tax rate. Consider the following factors when deciding: You’re a freelancer or consultant with variable income streams. You’re comfortable taking on personal liability for business debts. You don’t need extensive funding or investors. However, keep in mind that attracting investors or securing loans can be challenging, as banks often view sole proprietorships as riskier. Weigh these pros and cons carefully to determine if this structure aligns with your business goals and risk tolerance. Making an informed choice now can save you time and resources later. Frequently Asked Questions Do I Need to Report My Sole Proprietor to the IRS? Yes, you need to report your sole proprietorship to the IRS. You’ll report your business income and expenses on Schedule C, which is attached to your Form 1040. If you earn $400 or more in net income, you must file a tax return, regardless of any tax owed. Furthermore, you’re responsible for self-employment taxes, including Social Security and Medicare, based on your net earnings. Keeping accurate records is crucial for compliance. What Are the 7 Disadvantages of a Sole Proprietorship? When considering a sole proprietorship, you should be aware of seven key disadvantages. First, you’re personally liable for business debts, risking your assets. Second, the informal structure may undermine credibility, complicating client and vendor relationships. Third, raising capital is tough since lenders see you as high-risk. Fourth, growth potential is limited without a formal structure. Fifth, all decision-making falls on you, leading to stress. Ultimately, you lack support from partners or stakeholders. Is It Better to Be LLC or Sole Proprietor? Choosing between an LLC and a sole proprietorship depends on your priorities. If you want simplicity and lower startup costs, a sole proprietorship might suit you. Nevertheless, if you seek personal liability protection and a more credible business structure, an LLC is better. Although both structures benefit from pass-through taxation, an LLC provides greater flexibility in how it’s taxed. Consider your long-term goals and potential risks when making this decision. Do I Need an EIN Number if I Am a Sole Proprietor? You don’t need an Employer Identification Number (EIN) if you’re a sole proprietor without employees. You can use your Social Security number for tax purposes. Nevertheless, obtaining an EIN can be advantageous; it helps separate your personal and business finances, improves credibility, and simplifies opening a business bank account. Applying for an EIN is free and easy through the IRS website, making it a smart choice for many sole proprietors. Conclusion Starting a sole proprietorship can be a straightforward way to launch your business. By comprehending the requirements, including registration, tax obligations, and ongoing management, you can establish a solid foundation. Weigh the pros and cons carefully to determine if this structure aligns with your goals. As you navigate the process, stay organized and informed to maximize your chances of success. In the end, a sole proprietorship offers flexibility and control, making it an appealing option for many entrepreneurs. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Your Guide to Starting a New Sole Proprietorship Business" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Company blames high energy costs and regulatory uncertainty in blow to Starmer’s effort to build ‘sovereign’ AIView the full article

What should you do if you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep? This is one of the most common—and frustrating—forms of insomnia. It turns out there’s a biological reason for it. And there are things you can do that may help you drop off again quickly. If you’re an entrepreneur or business leader, this may have happened to you more than once. Starting a business and being responsible for a team of employees means you may have a lot to worry about. In the middle of the night, those worries seem to grow more powerful and harder to set aside or ignore. You find yourself stuck going round and round in an endless cycle of negativity. Pretty soon, it’s morning, and you have to face the day feeling exhausted. Middle-of-the-night insomnia. Middle-of-the-night insomnia affects about one out of every five people. It’s even more common than having trouble falling asleep in the first place. And there’s a biological explanation, according to psychologist and sleep expert Michael Breus. In a recent Washington Post interview, he explained: “Every person on earth wakes up between 1 and 3 o’clock in the morning.” This is because our body temperature naturally starts falling around 10 p.m. That sets off melatonin production and signals our bodies that we should start heading for sleep. Between 1 and 3 a.m., our temperature naturally starts to rise again, and we shift into a lighter stage of sleep. Often, we wake up, but most of us are barely aware of it. We shift positions and go back to sleep. Except, sometimes we don’t. Some of us have a lot more trouble falling back asleep, a problem that may be worsened if we have a lot on our minds. We wind up, mentally spinning our wheels, and sleep becomes that much harder. If this happens to you, here’s what to do. 1. Resist temptation Your hardest assignment for falling back to sleep might be not doing most of the things you instinctively want to do. For example: Do not pick up your phone or other mobile device, or even an e-book. Many studies have shown that looking at screens interferes with falling asleep, even if what you’re looking at is something relaxing, such as a puzzle or light reading. You may really, really want to break this rule. Don’t. You might also be tempted to get out of bed, especially to go to the bathroom. But standing up and walking will raise your heart rate, making it harder to fall back asleep, Breus said. And, he added, sleeping on your side can create the false sense that you need to pee. So he recommends lying on your back and counting to 30. If you still need to go to the bathroom, then go. Finally, and perhaps most frustrating, do not look at the time. A sleep expert told me this years ago and I find it a hard instruction to follow. But I can attest that if I resist the urge to see what time it is, I do fall back asleep more quickly. Looking at the time throws your brain into planning mode, and that’s not what you want. 2. Do some controlled breathing Breus recommends 4-7-8 breathing, in which you inhale for a count of four, hold your breath for a count of seven, and then exhale to a count of eight. I’ve used this method many times myself to fall asleep and it really does work. Anahad O’Connor, the Washington Post health columnist who interviewed Breus, writes that it’s made a huge difference to his own chronic middle-of-the-night insomnia. The reason this breathing technique is so effective is that it affects your vagus nerve, the longest nerve in your body. When you slow your breathing and make your exhalations longer than your inhalations, it slows your heart rate and sends a message to your body to relax. This means that any breathing technique that makes your exhalations longer than your inhalations may help you fall asleep faster. Even something very simple, such as counting to four on your inhalation and six on your exhalation, can work. In yoga, techniques like these are called pranayama, or controlled breathing. They are a powerful way to help yourself relax. 3. Stop your worries from overwhelming you I’ll admit that it was much easier for me to write that sentence than it is for any of us to actually master our worries. But you can be certain that, whatever troubles you may be facing, sleep deprivation will only make them worse. So it’s worth making the effort. Meditation is one very effective way to conquer your worries and help yourself sleep—and you can do it while lying in bed. Breus suggests tensing and then releasing one part of your body after another—for instance, starting with your toes and working your way up your legs. This is similar to a form of meditation called a body scan and can help you calm down and fall asleep. O’Connor also recommends cognitive shuffling, which is a clever way to introduce completely random images into your mind. This mimics the way our minds tend to wander just as we’re dropping off, and it provides a good distraction from whatever we’re fretting about. Whichever technique you try, the more you can do to pull your mind away from whatever’s bothering you, the higher your chances of dropping off quickly and winding up with a good night of sleep. There’s a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or tip. (Want to learn more? Here’s some information about the texts and a special invitation to a two-month free trial.) Often, they text me back about their thoughts and experiences and we get into a conversation. Many of my subscribers are solopreneurs or run small businesses, and some of them struggle with middle-of-the-night insomnia themselves. Trying some of these techniques might help them—and you—finally get a better night’s rest. —Minda Zeitlin This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

If you're using Gemini in Chrome (the sidebar you can summon via a button in Chrome), then you might be happy about the latest feature that showed up in Chrome Canary. After running a prompt...View the full article

Google's CEO says that informational queries will become agentic search and that search itself will be an agent manager. The post Google’s CEO Predicts Search Will Become An AI Agent Manager appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Defence secretary says mission was monitored ‘24-7’ by British warshipsView the full article

Hybrid work is here to stay, but the "meeting equity" gap is wider than ever. Hybrid meetings can quickly become a frustrating experience for remote participants if the technology makes communication difficult. When remote employees feel like "flies on the wall" rather than active participants, engagement drops and productivity suffers. View the full article

GoPro’s announcement that it plans to cut 23% of its workforce this week didn’t come as a complete shock to anyone who’s been following the wearable camera maker over the past few years. Once a leader in the action camera market, the company has seen its stock fall from highs of more than $93 in 2014 to just 80 cents today. The $10 billion valuation it once boasted is a distant memory. (GoPro’s current market cap is just under $122 million.) Now it’s betting on an ongoing turnaround plan to stabilize the business. Part of that plan involves becoming an even leaner operation. GoPro will lay off 145 of its 631 employees starting in the second fiscal quarter. That will result in charges of between $11.5 million and $15 million. Prior to this week’s cuts, the company said it had reduced its costs by 26% from the previous year. That hasn’t been enough to restore profitability. While the company had targeted a return to the black by the end of 2025, it instead posted a $9.1 million loss in the fourth quarter. A long history of troubles GoPro faces plenty of challenges today. Tariffs have slowed its turnaround, rising memory costs are eating into margins, and supply issues have weighed on the bottom line. But many of its problems predate those pressures. At the height of the company’s popularity in 2014 and 2015, founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman pushed to expand beyond cameras, launching both a media division and a drone unit meant to compete with DJI. The move drove a surge in head count, which peaked at 1,600 employees, and in R&D spending, which shot as high as $358.9 million in 2016, more than double what it had been just two years earlier. Neither bet paid off. The media division shut down in 2016, and the drone was pulled from the market after experiencing battery failures mid-flight. In 2014 Woodman was the highest-paid CEO in the U.S., receiving a stock package worth $285 million. By 2018 that salary had been reduced to $1. (He voluntarily waived the remainder of his then-$850,000 annual salary in March 2025.) As GoPro ventured further from its core product, the competition grew, not just from drone makers but from smartphones, which became more rugged and capable of shooting 4K video without the need for a separate device. Many of those companies also built easy-to-use editing tools, an area GoPro chose not to prioritize, pushing away another segment of its user base. GoPro has tried to right the ship with layoffs before. In 2024, it cut 139 jobs, about 15% of its workforce. Two years earlier, it cut 270 roles. In the 14 months before that, it reduced head count twice more by 100-plus employees each time. None of those cuts returned the company to profitability. Yet despite its profitability issues, GoPro has continued to produce new generations of its cameras—and the next will be introduced later this month at the NAB Show. Those, the company says, will be powered by a new GP3 processor that will be “more professionally focused than ever before,” with larger sensors and expanded features. GoPro is no stranger to professional users, but whether that consumer segment will be enough to turn things around remains unclear. The clock is ticking. In late March, Nasdaq notified GoPro that its stock was at risk of being delisted for failing to meet minimum bid price requirements. If shares don’t stay above $1 for at least 10 consecutive days before late September, they will no longer be allowed to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. View the full article

In a world where Jack Dorsey can go on Zoom to announce he’s laying off 40% of Block’s workforce, explicitly so he can replace them with AI, while wearing a hat that reads “LOVE”, only to see his company’s stock skyrocket by 24%, there’s no cultural use for a Big Tech satire. We’re obviously already living in one. Nevertheless, Emmy Award-winning creator Jonathan Glatzer has made such a show anyway. The Audacity, which premieres on AMC on April 12, is a sharply observed, well-acted series about the self-serious zillionaires disrupting our very humanity. The show’s Achilles’ heel, however, is timing. In the same way it became tough to watch Veep after The President was elected president—and even tougher to make it, apparently—watching a comedy about Big Tech’s utter lack of ethics in the wake of DOGE and any number of recent developments is just depressing. But at least Veep’s satire of government incompetence had been on TV for years before reality rendered it redundant. The Audacity’s timing problem extends to the fact that an earlier show had already hit some similar targets, at exactly the right moment. Fittingly enough for the era of enshittification, this show is like a less fun, wholly unrevelatory version of HBO’s Silicon Valley. Mask-off mentality The Audacity tells a sprawling story, mostly centered on data analytics CEO Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen). He is, if you can believe it, an enormous a-hole with a powerful algorithm and zero scruples. One of the other series leads is Park’s therapist, Dr. JoAnne Felder (Sarah Goldberg), who has negligibly more scruples—when we meet her, she’s using confidential dirt from her well-heeled Cupertino clientele to make a quick buck on insider trading. If this already sounds like a nightmare blunt rotation, rest assured every other founder, coder, and hanger-on in the ensemble is also ethically compromised in some way—more often, in just about every way. Watching them squirm might make for more riveting TV, though, if there were any ambiguity as to whether this portrayal had a basis in fact. At least it was more riveting back when we watched it on HBO’s Silicon Valley. At the time that show debuted, in 2014, CEOs were still striving to cultivate an optimistic mythology of techno-idealism. All Mark Zuckerberg wanted was to “make the world more open and connected.” Elon Musk’s then-recent open-sourcing of Tesla’s patents was an altruistic effort to go green and save the planet. With the Arab Spring of the early 2010s looming in the rearview, Twitter was still a force for democratizing speech around the world, rather than a misinformation-spreading machine that also generates AI revenge porn on command. And Google was a year away from, in a bit of a tell, abandoning the slogan, “Don’t Be Evil.” It was in this smarmy environment that Silicon Valley took a sledgehammer to the moralistic facade surrounding Big Tech, exposing the venal, devious swamp just beneath. The character Gavin Belson (Matt Ross), for instance, CEO of that show’s version of Google, was a Zen-coded walking-word-cloud of TED Talk jargon—who also happened to be a vengeful, law-breaking megalomaniac. That incongruence between his public and private personas had juice at the time because viewers could only speculate on its accuracy. All we had to go on back then was the fact that it sure seemed like Belson’s real-life counterparts were completely full of shit. Now we routinely find out that companies like Meta are actively pursuing harmfully addictive products, even though they’ve been warned about their potential for harm, and it seems perfectly in keeping with everything else we know about them. After witnessing Zuckerberg, Musk, Jeff Bezos, and many other tech CEOs free themselves from the pretense of a moral imperative recently—shredding any policies that might be considered “woke” and openly embracing the authoritarian president they’d once opposed, not to mention exchanging the mission to save the planet for the mission to build more data centers—every ounce of ambiguity has evaporated. It’s impossible to puncture an illusion that no longer exists. The post-privacy era Another widely held assumption about tech companies that now seems almost adorable in retrospect is the idea that they took reverent care not to violate users’ privacy. Back when Silicon Valley was first airing, there remained at least some doubt around the vast extent of data mining and surveillance. Jokes abounded online about whether Amazon’s Alexa was maybe listening, or if it was actually just a coincidence when Instagram served up ads about whatever you’d just been talking about—and we didn’t yet know that we were the punch line. In a post-Cambridge Analytica world, however, far more people understand data harvesting as just an unfortunate fact of modern life. If they didn’t read about it in the news, they may have absorbed it from some of the frequent breach notification emails clogging their inboxes, inviting them to change a vulnerable password or two. The only surprising aspect about how data mining is portrayed on The Audacity is that any of the show’s characters would be surprised about it. And yet here’s military veteran Tom Ruffage (Rob Corddry), aghast at the notion that shady CEO Park has only been pretending to care about Ruffage’s fellow veterans in order to partner with an organization that serves them. When it comes to Big Tech’s lack of concern over our privacy, the cat’s already out of the bag—and it’s been caught running down the street by the Ring Search Party camera network. The state of surveillance is now such that the same sort of panopticon deemed so unethical it made Batman’s tech guy resign at the end of The Dark Knight is now a real product featured in a Super Bowl ad ostensibly about finding lost pets. So it’s neither surprising, revealing, nor particularly entertaining to see The Audacity’s main character build a hypercharged version of that tool. Instead, it’s just sadly relatable, in exactly the wrong way. The real shame of it is that The Audacity does occasionally hit exactly the right note. In a pitch-perfect, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it joke, ethically compromised therapist Felder’s young son has the middle name “Barack.” Another diamond-cut gem is when one young character is surprised that the daughter of a tech CEO isn’t allowed to have a smart device, she fires back: “Arms dealers don’t give their kids landmines.” Details like these suggest there’s still plenty of mockery to be mined from modern-day Big Tech. Just not enough of them to sustain an entire TV series, and certainly not right now. Who is a show like this even for, at this moment? Who is meant to laugh cathartically while watching introverted tech genius Martin Phister (Simon Helberg) consult the AI robot he made, after they’ve just read the news that Zuckerberg himself has built an AI to assist him with CEO duties? Where is the evidence of any demand for seeing the depraved hellscape of 2026 tech culture gently wrapped on its knuckles by Zach Galifianakis? Perhaps the only industry better than Silicon Valley at serving consumers something they never asked for is Hollywood. View the full article

The title cards for British actor Riz Ahmed’s new dramedy, Bait, are a colorful explosion of letters and numbers. If you look a little closer, each one reads like a code hidden in plain sight for you, the viewer, to unravel. Bait is a six-episode series that debuted on Prime Video on March 25. It stars Ahmed (who also created and cowrote the show) as Shah Latif, a struggling actor whose leaked audition to play James Bond incites a media frenzy. Each episode tracks Shah’s exponential spiral as his private life is made public, forcing him to contend with his own identity, belonging, self-worth, and the cultural narratives mapped onto him as a British-Pakistani actor competing for a historically white role. Bait To create the show’s title cards, its creators tapped the London branch of the design firm Pentagram. Firm partners and brothers Luke Powell and Jody Hudson-Powell used a system of color filters and letterforms to encode multiple different words and messages in each sequence. These practical effects create a visual language that mirrors the show’s core theme of an identity in flux—and cleverly invite the viewer to do some soul-searching of their own. Bait A system of secret messages From the beginning of the brainstorming process, Luke and Jody’s team knew that they wanted to explore the idea of being “under the spotlight” as a visual proxy both for the classic James Bond opening sequence and Shah’s public spiral. “This led us to explorations around spotlights vs searchlights, color scrollers and black light—different graphic methods at the boundary of spy thrillers, acting and theater—trying to find a space that could talk to the complexities of the shifting inner and outer perceptions of Shah’s identity,” says Alice Sherwin, a senior designer at Pentagram who worked on the project. Bait Ultimately, they landed on a system that combines color filters with with a series of what Sherwin describes as “secret message reveals.” The base of every title card is the same: a white background with a myriad of multicolored letterforms and numbers layered on top of each other. Then, in each episode, a different colorful filter—similar to the gel scrollers that are commonly slipped in front of theater lights to quickly change their hues—is applied over that base, bringing certain messages to the forefront and relegating others to the background. Bait As these filters are shifted into place, new layers of meaning to the show’s title, Bait, are revealed. In one instance, the Urdu symbol for “bait” appears directly above the word loyalty, which is how the word is defined in that language; in another, the word troll appears beside “provo” as a subtle reference to the British slang interpretation of “bait” as a provocation; and in a third, disparate letters come together to spell “of a trap,” i.e., bait as an incentive. Bait These hidden messages serve as a clever way of hinting at the series’ connection to iconic spy media, alongside the monospace font, ABC Rom Mono, which was chosen for its blocky, code-like setting. Below the surface, they also work to subtly foreshadow Shah’s struggles with the definition of “bait” in the context of his career and identity. The repeated hiding and revealing of information reflects Shah grappling with both being in the spotlight and trying to control it at the same time. “All of the show’s titles exist in a single typographic layout, and information is concealed and revealed each episode through the filters, reflecting how all identities the protagonist has as a British-Pakistani man, and the versions of these that others project onto him, exist at once,” Sherwin says. Bait The real genius of Pentagram’s treatment is how it not only visually captures Shah’s struggles to untangle his identity, but also invites the viewer into the process. By pausing on the title cards, hunting for double-meanings, and finding new details, the viewer themselves becomes a part of the decoding. It’s a meta concept for a show that embraces nuance and complexity rather than attempting to deliver clear conclusions. View the full article

What voters are really being drawn to is confident leadership that appears to offer new solutionsView the full article

Pedestrians wearing headphones who are unaware of their surroundings pose an accident risk for cyclists—especially if those pedestrians are blasting their favorite tunes in noise-canceling headphones that block out the rest of the world. A new bike bell is designed to pierce that bubble. Škoda, a Czech automaker, calls its new DuoBell an analog solution to a digital problem. It’s a mechanical bell, but the company says its the first to engineer a sound that specifically tricks a headphone’s algorithm. The Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) technology employed in headphones works by detecting outside sound and playing back an inverted signal that cancels it out. The DuoBell works by emitting two sounds the headphone can’t cancel. One sound is designed to be within a frequency in ANC’s narrow blind spot that it can’t invert, and another is too fast and confusing for ANC to process. Škoda partnered with researchers at the University of Salford in England to develop the DuoBell. The company also worked with creative agencies AMV BBDO and PHD on the concept, and production company Unit9 helped build the prototype. Škoda says it plans to make the underlying findings of its research for the project public. “Bicycle bells have remained almost unchanged for over a century, but the world around them has not,” Ben Edwards, an executive creative director at AMV BBDO, said in a statement. The team determined DuoBell’s frequency using acoustic testing that found headphones with ANC had a hard time scrambling sounds in a narrow frequency range between 750 and 780 hertz. An additional resonator (which is why the bell is named DuoBell) produces an even higher-frequency sound at a rapid but irregular rhythm to further confuse headphone algorithms. The need for a smarter bike bell comes as cycling and noise-canceling headphone use grow simultaneously. Škoda cites a 24% increase of cyclist-pedestrian collisions in London in 2024, where up to half of pedestrians wear headphones. In the U.S., injuries to pedestrians wearing headphones more than tripled in six years, researchers at the University of Maryland found in 2018, while elevated gas prices today are pushing more Americans to travel by bike or scooter. Škoda, which is known for cars like its best-selling Octavia, a compact hatchback, actually started as a bike manufacturer, and today it’s a Tour de France partner. The company says it designed the look of the bell as a tribute to its design language, with colors, materials, and finishes inspired by its cars. Researchers found the bell had a reaction distance of up to 22 meters, or about 72 feet, giving pedestrians crucial time to realize they’re stepping into a bike’s path. The DuoBell also underwent real-world testing trials with Deliveroo, a U.K. delivery app, and Škoda says couriers asked to keep it after the trial. Cyclists might not have to keep shouting at zoned-out pedestrians for long. View the full article

Why our lengthening lifespans are not entirely welcomeView the full article

Google’s Chrome is taking browser tabs vertical. The company announced this week that it’s beginning to roll out an option for users to stack their tabs in a panel on the left side of the browser instead of horizontally at the top. For tab hoarders like me—who get lost in a million tabs while trying to remember which favicon went with which website, or who have multiple websites open with the same favicon—vertical tabs will give us more information to determine which tab is where. It even works when you have so many open that you have to scroll to reach the end. The vertical tab interface has two modes: a collapsed version with just the favicons, and an expanded version that shows the full text of the page titles too, no matter how many tabs are open at once, unlike in the horizontal view. “This layout is perfect for multitasking, saving you time by making sure you never lose a tab,” Chrome product managers Alex Tsu and Jess Carpenter wrote in a blog post. To turn on vertical tabs, users can right-click on a window and select “Show Tabs Vertically.” Chrome is also introducing “reading mode” in its latest update, which is a full-page text interface that removes visual distractions. Google is pitching reading mode as a tool for deep focus. Many of Chrome’s most recently shipped updates are targeted at one of two aims: either adding AI functionality with Google’s Gemini or keeping up with alternative browser competitors. The Browser Company’s Arc browser launched in 2023 and had vertical tabs and split view before Chrome did. Google did not respond to a request for comment. While Chrome might not get to features like vertical tabs first, when it ships them, it reaches a mass audience. Chrome is far and away the most popular browser, with about 66% market share worldwide, according to Statcounter GlobalStats, a web analytics firm. So while Chrome isn’t the first to market, as the industry leader it can adopt the best innovations from smaller competitors after the fact to discourage platform switching among its existing users. (Think of how Meta rips off features like Snapchat’s filters and stories for its own apps, for instance.) Regardless, the update meets an urgent need, as tab hoarding is common. A 55% majority of respondents have trouble closing tabs, and 30% call their habit a “problem,” researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found. Plug-ins like Skeema can help rank tabs by priority, and with vertical tabs, the UI to do it yourself is now built in. View the full article

America’s housing market is finally starting to tip in favor of aspiring homeowners. A new analysis from Realtor.com reveals that nearly two-thirds of the biggest housing markets in the U.S. have now moved into “balanced” or “buyer-friendly” status, while only a quarter of the major markets still favor sellers. That’s in sharp contrast to 2021, when low interest rates and a buying frenzy gave sellers the upper hand in 98% of the top U.S. housing markets. Out of the top metros, only 26% qualify as seller’s markets right now, with a relatively large ratio of home shoppers to housing stock. Of those cities, 46% are in what Realtor.com calls a “balanced-loosening” phase, trending toward giving buyers the advantage; 16% are now solid buyer’s markets, where home shoppers have the most leverage. While most major metro areas are finally trending in favor of buyers, 12% of the top 50 metros are moving in the other direction—toward a “balanced-tightening” stage that precedes a full-blown seller’s market. Still, regional trends look very different depending on where in the country you’re looking to buy or sell a home. The new analysis shows that nearly all housing markets favoring buyers these days are in the South, while the Midwest and Northeast have the strongest concentrations of market conditions that benefit sellers. That variation is in sharp contrast to the seller-friendly nationwide homebuying blitz of a few years ago. “A national picture is useful, but when making a real estate decision, the local details are what really matter,” said Danielle Hale, Realtor.com chief economist. “Right now, a homebuyer in Houston or San Antonio is navigating a very different market than someone in Hartford or Milwaukee.” A heat map of housing markets In the report, Realtor.com depicts the housing market phases as the hands of a clock, with peak seller-friendly conditions at noon (think the COVID-era housing frenzy) and buyer-friendly conditions closer to 6 o’clock. After a seller’s market peaks, it transitions into a balanced phase before eventually cooling off into a buyer’s market, with more inventory, price cuts, and more leverage for home shoppers. The major seller’s markets currently in their peak are the metro areas of Chicago; Indianapolis; Hartford, Connecticut; and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Southern cities including Atlanta; Austin; Jacksonville, Florida; and Nashville are all entering the early stages of a buyer’s market. Realtor.com considers housing supply, inventory balance, market competition, pricing pressure, and price adjustments to determine what market phase a metro area is in. A market’s status as buyer- or seller-friendly offers a useful snapshot of what homebuyers are grappling with; it isn’t meant to be a perfect predictor of home prices, but it can be useful. Housing signals like Realtor.com’s new analysis offer a glimmer of hope for would-be homebuyers who’ve been frozen out of the market, but they’re not out of the woods yet. The era of ultralow mortgage rates helped many first-time homebuyers in the early years of the pandemic, but the housing market has been off-kilter ever since. Many would-be homeowners found themselves facing impossibly high monthly payments as mortgage rates spiked, inventory dried up, and high home prices lingered. While the housing market gridlock finally started to ease early this year, homeowners face an unpredictable spring season. With a new war in the Middle East weighing on the economic outlook, in early April mortgage rates hit their highest levels in months. Higher rates drag fresh concerns about housing affordability into the busiest homebuying phase of the year—just as many Americans were hoping to catch a break. View the full article

This new outdoor fireplace—called the Totem Chiminea—would be at home in an art museum. It stands 5 feet tall, has a bulbous base that tapers into a slender flue, and is coated in porcelain enamel that comes in earthy colors such as sage green and burnt red. When you light a fire inside it, it emits warmth as well as a glow. At $4,500, it is not a casual purchase. But Neighbor, the 5-year-old brand that creates it, has found that many consumers are looking to invest in outdoor furniture that is as beautiful and thoughtfully designed as the pieces within their home. Neighbor was founded in 2020 in Phoenix by three friends—Nick Arambula, Chris Lee, and Mike Fretto—who had previously worked together at the direct-to-consumer mattress brand Tuft & Needle. As they surveyed the furniture industry, they realized that outdoor furniture tends to be an afterthought for many companies, rather than something they ask their best designers to tackle. At Neighbor, the team would focus entirely on the design of outdoor sofas and lounge chairs, concentrating their energies on making the pieces as beautiful and durable as possible. The company launched during the pandemic amid an already crowded market, when Americans were flush with stimulus checks and looking to spend more time in their gardens and patios. Its revenue grew elevenfold from 2020 to 2021. In the years since, the brand has found that Americans have continued to want to invest in their outdoor spaces. Particl, a third-party e-commerce tracking firm, estimates that Neighbor did around $24 million in e-commerce sales over the most recent six months. The furniture maker’s pieces, which tend toward minimal aesthetics and natural materials, stand out in an industry that is replete with the same synthetic wicker textures, sprawling sectionals in neutral tones, and faux wood that is obviously made of plastic. The reason for this homogeneity is partly because many furniture brands aren’t designing the pieces themselves, but instead are ordering from the same manufacturers’ catalogs. Arambula believed Neighbor’s competitive advantage was that it has a distinct point of view. “We tried to take a pretty strong perspective on design from the very beginning,” he says. “We didn’t want to just be slapping our brand on something someone else had designed.” Aaron Whitney, Neighbor’s VP of design, is trained as an architect, and it shows. He begins with the materials, most of which are natural, including real wood, aluminum, and stainless steel. Neighbor uses Grade A FSC-certified teak, an unusually dense hardwood with a high oil content that has made it the preferred wood for boatbuilding for centuries. The brand’s steel is 304 or 316 stainless wherever possible, not mild steel with a powder coat that will eventually chip. When using synthetic materials, including for a rattan collection, Neighbor chooses ColorCore high-density polyethylene (HDPE) that’s dyed all the way through, so there’s no surface degradation. The design philosophy that has emerged from all of this is not a distinct aesthetic—like mid-century or Scandinavian—but a discipline. “My goal is usually just to simplify things,” Whitney says. “It’s less about style and more about utility, but it is certainly not boring.” His goal is to pare down the design as far as it will go, then add life back in through function and color. The result is furniture that customers describe as versatile, and that can work in a hyper-modern home as well as a more vintage-inspired one. The Totem, for instance, looks like outdoor fireplaces that were popular in the 1960s and ’70s. Its design came out of Whitney’s own experience. He had been renovating his house and hunting for one of the cone-shaped hanging fireplaces, known as chiminea, that were produced by brands like Malm and Preway in the 1960s—the kind you see in mid-century California ranch houses or in movies set in that era. The vintage market for those pieces was thin. The modern market was thinner. “Everything else you see for a chiminea is just like a really minimal, cheap metal cone basically.” At the same time, Whitney observed that throughout the Southwest, traditional clay chimineas are everywhere. The design of the fireplace includes a narrow flue that draws smoke upward. The wide base radiates heat outward, a passive engineering solution that predates the smokeless fire pits that are very popular right now. “Chimineas have been solving that problem for centuries with a very straightforward design,” Whitney says. Neighbor took the traditional chiminea’s logic, modernized it with clean lines and distinct colors, and made it out of steel with a porcelain enamel finish—similar to the durable coating on cast-iron cookware—which won’t blister, peel, or fade from heat. It also has functional features to ensure it works well, including stainless steel legs that keep it level on uneven surfaces. The whole thing disassembles for storage; the tall chimney pieces pack back inside the firebox. Whitney imagines it as the focal point in an outdoor room. “I see this piece for people that truly want an outdoor living room setup,” he says—less a portable fire pit and more an architectural object that the rest of the furniture arranges itself around. Neighbor has found that people from all across the country are drawn to its products. Roughly a third of the brand’s customers come from California and the Northeast, which Arambula attributes to the fact that people from the coasts tend to be quicker to adopt new brands. But a growing number of its customers come from the Sunbelt states, where people spend nine months of the year outdoors. More recently, the company has seen a significant boost in revenue from the trades, including interior designers, architects, and hotels. In December 2024, historically one of the company’s slowest months, Arambula received an inbound call from a luxury hotel on the Las Vegas Strip for a $500,000 order. That’s when the company decided it made sense to start developing products specifically for the commercial market. The Totem, though, is very much designed for the homeowner. It’s an architectural statement piece that is slightly retro—the kind of thing that makes your neighbors wonder where you got it. View the full article

Let’s get one thing straight: I love my 2015 Toyota Sienna minivan. But after a decade of navigating dirty dog paws, diaper changes, puking toddlers, cross-country road trips, dystopian Maritime Canadian winters, and more, it might be time to consider a succession plan. So, like reportedly half of American consumers using LLM search today, I recently opened up a chatbot and asked it to help me find a new car. My opening prompt was simple: What is the best vehicle for a family of four, that has to deal with daily commutes, winter weather, all in the $50,000 price range? According to ChatGPT: Best overall: Mazda CX-90 Hybrid Best for reliability and resale: Toyota Highlander Hybrid Best for commuting and family size: Toyota RAV4 Hybrid / Honda CR-V Hybrid Best for space and comfort: Toyota Sienna AWD Hybrid (Wouldn’t you know it?) According to Claude: Top pick: 2026 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid AWD Plus, four “strong alternatives”: 2026 Kia Telluride 2026 Hyundai Palisade XRT 2026 Subaru Forester 2026 Honda Passport From the same prompt, two LLMs came up with 10 vehicle suggestions and only a single model in common. That, in a nutshell, is one of the newest, most compelling challenges facing major brands and marketers right now. Those LLMs’ results didn’t happen just naturally. They’re the result of everything the brands did, intentionally or unintentionally, and what was written about them online. And each LLM interprets and prioritizes all of that information in its own special way, so figuring out how to get to the top of every list—and knowing what each LLM is saying about your brand—is now a key task for every brand’s marketing department. Welcome to the GEO speedwagon. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and overall LLM visibility are in the midst of a gargantuan hype cycle. According to an October 2025 McKinsey report, 50% of Google searches already have AI summaries, and that’s expected to rise to more than 75% by 2028. At that point, $750 billion in U.S. revenue will funnel through AI-powered search. The McKinsey report says brands that are unprepared could see a decline in traffic from the traditional search channels by as much as 50%. Gaggles of startups are pitching AI slop factories as a solution: promising to quickly create hundreds of pieces of content with key information about brands that will get picked up by LLMs and regurgitated in their responses. What’s proving more useful, however, are tools—like Profound, Bluefish, Scrunch, and Emberos—that help marketers monitor, track, manage, and influence how LLMs find their brands. Profound announced a $96 million investment in February at a $1 billion valuation. Brands and marketers who may be feeling a bit behind on all of this need not panic . . . yet. Sources I’ve talked to describe this moment in GEO as 1998 for search, or 2006 for social media—the very beginning stages of a transformational moment. The biggest difference is the pace of both technological development and audience adoption. Now is the time to be building the foundations onto which a bigger part of your business will be built. Brand executives and CMOs are on a sliding scale of acceptance of this messy new world of AI discoverability, ranging from diving in headfirst to dipping their toes to going full Lloyd Christmas and trying to ignore the whole thing. GEO and the services and tools surrounding it have been labeled everything from snake oil to THE FUTURE. The reality is, of course, somewhere in the messy middle. For this story, Fast Company spoke to major brand executives, leading ad agencies, and startup founders to detangle the hype from what really matters. Here we’ll break down: The unexpected power move that will make your brand more visible on LLMs Why GEO is a racket, and the reasons it’s not How major brands and agencies are approaching GEO right now (and their plans for the future) Consider this your no-BS guide to GEO. First up: Your foundation matters From talking to executives across brands, agencies, and startups, it’s clear that GEO is not a short-term game you can win. The brands that will dominate LLMs are the brands that are already owning their paid, owned, and earned media. These are brands with consistency and clarity across their brand content, website, and social channels, not to mention their outside media coverage. Public relations veteran Jim Prosser recently argued in a piece titled “GEO is a Racket,” that GEO is really just about having a good overall communications strategy while monitoring how your brand is showing up in LLMs. And he’s right. That old chestnut of everything your company does is a brand action has never been more true. Except now, all of these brand actions aren’t simply spread across the internet but distilled down to answer a single LLM prompt. All the good, the bad, and the ugly is right there, in an instant. When you ask an LLM about a product or brand, it sources material from everywhere it can, prioritizing the most credible and most high-profile sources. It utilizes what your execs say on LinkedIn, what your customers and employees say on Reddit, what major publications and meaningful influencers say about you, and what you say about yourself in your own advertising and content. These have always been important factors in a brand’s overall identity. What LLM search does is make everything accessible all at once. “There’s a lot of hype around it, but at the same time, it has basically confirmed marketing fundamentals,” says Meghan Signalness, global head of media, marketing planning and operations, and agency leadership for Philips’s $4 billion personal health consumer business. “In some ways it’s just SEO sped up.” Signalness says her team has done plenty of GEO audits, and that the biggest thing that moves the needle is simply showing up consistently. “LLMs are looking at what words are most associated with your brand. That’s old-school marketing,” she says. Set up your content for success Chris Neff, global chief AI officer at award-winning ad agency Anomaly, says brands must optimize their own digital assets—particularly their websites—since roughly 60% to 65% of AI citations can derive from the brand’s own content. This has led to a resurgence in value of brand landing pages because they have the citable assets and structured architecture that bots require to reference a campaign. This extends to a brand’s FAQs, says Brad Nunn, vice president of media at ad agency Gale, noting that clear, factual, one-sentence answers are the single most effective way to ensure LLMs do not make incorrect assumptions about a product. “You’re not creating vagueness,” he says. “You’re mentioning the brand up front, and you’re saying exactly what it’s solving. You could add more after the fact if you want to be cute but you want the first sentence to be super clear, super tight, and factual.” According to James Cadwallader, cofounder and CEO of AI-native marketing platform Profound, owned content gives LLMs the best opportunity to talk thoughtfully about what your brand does. “You’re trying to give AI the opportunity to understand your business better,” he says. To make sure all of this content is working, Ally Financial CMO Andrea Brimmer says her team is constantly auditing and correcting how the brand shows up online. They use a tool called Scrunch to look at where and how the brand is showing up in LLMs. They analyze the findings with what Brimmer calls weekly “scrums” of multidisciplinary teams made up of PR, tech, HR, and a dedicated AI team within the marketing organization. From there, they work to build and maintain the brand’s presence through new content that shows up in the right places. When they find that LLMs are citing outdated or incorrect information, they intentionally create new content and work with PR to correct the original sources being cited by the bots. Then comes the more intangible art of making sure all the ways a customer sees, hears, and experiences the content are aligned in order to make your brand’s online presence as clear and consistent as possible for the LLMs to find and understand. “We’ve come to realize really quickly that brand has never been more important than it is now,” Brimmer says. “And when I say brand, I don’t mean just the marketing part of the brand. You better have really damn good customer experience and PR around your products, you better have a strong reputation in the marketplace, you better show up as a good citizen of the world, and you better treat your employees really well because all of those elements of what makes a great brand are more important now than ever before.” Build a spiderweb of authority For now, LLM search still prioritizes sources high in expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. But things can be complicated when one of those sources has wrong information. Brimmer describes this moment in marketing as a “Wild, Wild West” phase where brands must engage in “hand-to-hand combat” to ensure they show up accurately on probabilistic LLM chatbots. Her team has experienced the unpredictability of LLM search firsthand. When Ally announced in December that its customers could now deposit cash into their Ally checking accounts in person at Walmart, it was a big deal for one of the largest online-only banks in the U.S. But the brand had a problem: Major LLMs were still telling users the bank didn’t offer this feature. Fixing that misinformation was a long-term content play. The brand began creating more specific content to highlight the feature on its own site and elsewhere, as well as trying to correct sites where there was information saying it wasn’t a feature. Google, Meta, TikTok, and other major search and social media companies have robust brand liaison departments to help marketers better utilize their platforms. So far, AI companies don’t seem to be following that model, leaving brands to chart their own paths. This will undoubtedly change once there is advertising of some kind integrated into LLMs. But for now, companies must fend for themselves in making sure the source information is accurate. Getting the correct brand information into the world means showing up where people—and LLMs—are looking for information. On Reddit, for example, Philips conducted an “Ask Me Anything” event with credible engineers and doctors to provide high-authority, factual content on a platform AI models heavily scrape to see how providing credentialed human expertise there would impact the brand’s visibility in LLM models. The results were encouraging, but Signalness is quick to acknowledge that it’s far from an exact science. The rules can change suddenly, as when Reddit began limiting AI companies’ ability to scrape comments of millions of Reddit users for commercial purposes. Philips has done similar LLM visibility testing with its influencer strategy. “While we know there’s a role for influencers, in the context of an LLM there’s not as much of a role for that 20-year-old with a cellphone as there is for a doctor, a dentist, or another professional,” Signalness says. “So it’s stripping away a lot of noise, which is really refreshing.” Make a human fingerprint Forget churning out never-ending content to feed the algorithm. Quality still beats quantity. All of my sources said brands should avoid using anything resembling AI slop, because people are increasingly seeing that as (shocker!) creepy and inauthentic. Taryn Crouthers, CEO of agency Big Spaceship, highlights a significant “trust gap” between marketers and consumers. Marketers may be all in because they see the value of how AI can help make work more efficient, and more personalized at scale and all of that, but when consumers hear AI, they tend to tune out or get actively repulsed. “So now brands need human fingerprints or evidence of effort,” Crouthers says. “You can make something using AI and make sure that the GEO attributions are all there, but you need to also show the human side of that storytelling, how hard it was to make it, why you made it, how you made it. That helps people be more comfortable with it and more open to the message.” Ndidiamaka “Ndidi” Oteh, CEO of Accenture Song, says that if strong SEO was rooted in product attributes and specific description, LLM visibility goes beyond that by its conversational nature. “Take a black crewneck sweater,” she says. “We are now moving to the attributes that are connected beyond just that it is a black crewneck. It is about the flow, it’s about how it’s perfect for an afternoon ski trip—things you would never have had as part of your traditional attribute criteria because it’s not specific to the product.” What’s next After search comes agentic commerce, which will revolutionize e-commerce and require seamless integration between all aspects of a business. But we’re not there yet. Oteh says that link between commerce and LLM search, for example, where you’d find something you like and buy it right then and there within the LLM, is not quite ready for prime time in new agentic channels. “Even in rudimentary examples where the tech can sort of do it but not at scale, we’re finding that a lot of companies’ supply chains and order management systems just aren’t set up in a way where they can take signals from anywhere,” she says. Signalness also points to LLMs’ lack of readiness for providing the data brands need in order to responsibly utilize their platforms and justify the investment. “We know this is the step we need to take, but ‘Dear LLMs, let’s partner to take the step,’” Signalness says. “Some of us in the brands are saying, ‘Okay, let’s go start testing, but here’s our list of questions.’ And the answers to those questions aren’t coming back clearly.” Healthy brands will be healthy with just a few moves, primarily around monitoring. According to McKinsey, only 16% of brands currently track AI search performance systematically, which is key to identifying misinformation or visibility gaps. So while there is snake oil in the hype around how to build, grow, and maintain LLM visibility, for many major marketers its importance is very real. “This is the direction of travel,” Signalness says. “So get comfortable.” Just like a ride in a brand-new minivan. View the full article

Conforming loan limits are determined using a home price index. A congressman is proposing a switch to an income-based metric, creating more jumbo mortgages. View the full article

When managing your small business finances, choosing the right Intuit can make a significant difference. Various firms offer customized solutions, from bookkeeping to payroll services, designed to meet your specific needs. Comprehending these options is essential for effective financial management. Some firms excel in automation, whereas others provide personalized support. As you explore these top online accounting firms, you’ll uncover valuable insights into how they can help streamline your financial processes. Key Takeaways Bench offers reliable bookkeeping and monthly reports, making it ideal for freelancers and startups seeking consistent financial oversight. Pilot automates routine bookkeeping tasks, providing specialized accounting services and CFO options for high-growth tech startups. QuickBooks Live provides personalized bookkeeping with seamless integration for existing QuickBooks users, focusing on small business needs. Bookkeeper360 delivers flexible hourly services with payroll and tax preparation, ensuring clarity with financial dashboards tailored to business requirements. inDinero combines bookkeeping with CFO services, offering real-time insights and strategic planning for small businesses needing comprehensive financial support. Best Online Accounting Services Overview When you’re running a small business, finding the right online accounting service can make a significant difference in managing your finances effectively. Several top online accounting firms cater to diverse needs. Bench stands out for reliable bookkeeping and monthly reports, perfect for freelancers and startups. If you’re part of a high-growth tech startup, consider Pilot, which automates routine bookkeeping tasks, saving you time and effort. For those already using QuickBooks, QuickBooks Live offers personalized bookkeeping, ensuring smooth integration with your existing system. Bookkeeper360 provides thorough services, including payroll and tax preparation, along with financial dashboards to improve your organizational clarity. Finally, inDinero combines bookkeeping with CFO services, delivering real-time insights and strategic financial planning. By choosing the right outsourced accounting firm or virtual accounting firm, you can focus more on growing your business as well as ensuring your finances are in expert hands. QuickBooks Live: Cleanup Bookkeeping Excellence QuickBooks Live shines at providing cleanup bookkeeping services, ensuring your financial records are both organized and accurate, especially as tax season approaches. This accountant company specializes in helping small businesses manage their financial data effectively. They offer three online bookkeeping plans to cater to different needs, providing expert guidance and tax resources. If you need immediate assistance, the one-time Live Expert Cleanup service is available for just $150, making it an affordable option for those in a pinch. After the initial cleanup, QuickBooks Live’s services start at $300, positioning them competitively in the small business bookkeeping market. With a customer rating of 4.5, QuickBooks Live is recognized for its reliability and efficiency, making it a trusted choice for small businesses looking to streamline their bookkeeping processes. Botkeeper: Innovative Solutions for Accounting Firms Botkeeper provides automated bookkeeping solutions that can greatly streamline your accounting processes, reducing the need for manual tasks. It integrates smoothly with various accounting software, allowing you to maximize your existing tools as you benefit from advanced automation features. With pricing starting at $69 per license and professional support options available, Botkeeper offers a scalable solution customized to the needs of growing accounting firms. Automated Bookkeeping Solutions In today’s fast-paced business environment, many accounting firms are turning to automated bookkeeping solutions to improve their operational efficiency. Botkeeper offers customized solutions designed particularly for accounting firms, allowing you to streamline processes with minimal manual intervention. Starting at $69 per license, with a minimum of 10 licenses, Botkeeper’s scalable pricing model adapts as your firm grows. The platform automates routine tasks such as data entry and reconciliation, ensuring accurate financial records. Furthermore, Botkeeper provides monthly accounting team support, with pricing ranging from $999 to $2,499 depending on your needs. With a solid rating of 4.5, Botkeeper stands out as a top choice for firms enthusiastic to leverage technology in their accounting practices. Integration With Accounting Software Many small businesses find that integrating automated bookkeeping solutions with their existing accounting software can greatly improve their financial management capabilities. Botkeeper offers innovative solutions that seamlessly sync with various platforms, enabling real-time data access for informed decision-making. This integration considerably reduces manual data entry by up to 80%, saving you time and minimizing errors in financial reporting. With pricing starting at $69 per license for a minimum of 10 licenses, Botkeeper provides scalable solutions that can grow as your business needs evolve. Furthermore, you’ll gain access to a dedicated accounting team, ensuring you have the support and expertise necessary to manage client accounts effectively, without overwhelming your in-house resources. Ignite Spot Accounting: Certified Bookkeepers at Your Service Ignite Spot Accounting provides certified bookkeepers who specialize in customized bookkeeping solutions designed to meet your small business needs. With flexible pricing options starting at $625 per month, their services can adapt as your business grows, ensuring you receive the right support at the right time. From financial reporting to cash flow management, Ignite Spot is committed to helping you maintain accurate financial records crucial for your business’s success. Certified Bookkeeper Expertise In regard to managing the financial aspects of a small business, having a certified bookkeeper can make a significant difference. Ignite Spot Accounting provides certified bookkeepers who are not just trained but also experienced in handling the intricacies of small business finances. Their hands-on approach allows you to focus on growth as they manage daily financial operations. Here’s a quick overview of Ignite Spot’s offerings: Service Description Personalized Bookkeeping Customized financial management suited to your needs Strategic Financial Guidance Expert advice for better decision-making Cash Flow Forecasting Projections to help maintain financial stability With pricing starting at $625 per month, you can access top-tier expertise as your business grows. Personalized Bookkeeping Solutions When you’re running a small business, having personalized bookkeeping solutions can be crucial to your financial success. Ignite Spot Accounting offers customized services to meet your unique needs, ensuring high-quality financial management through certified bookkeepers. Here’s what you can expect: Customized Strategies: Receive cash flow forecasting and strategic financial guidance designed for your business model. Compliance Assurance: Professionals maintain accurate records, helping you stay compliant with regulations and facilitating smooth operations. Scalability: As your business grows, Ignite Spot adapts its services, offering flexibility and all-encompassing support when you need it most. Flexible Pricing Options Finding the right bookkeeping service for your small business often hinges on flexible pricing options that align with your financial capacity. Ignite Spot Accounting understands this need, offering pricing based on a percentage of your annual revenue. This model allows you to scale your bookkeeping services as your business grows, avoiding high upfront costs. Starting at $625 per month, their personalized services are provided by certified bookkeepers who tailor solutions to your specific needs. With a dedicated bookkeeper, you’ll benefit from expert financial management that understands your unique circumstances. In addition, Ignite Spot’s pricing structure adapts as your business evolves, ensuring you can modify service levels according to changing requirements without being tied to fixed fees. 1-800Accountant: Tailored Solutions for Small Businesses For small businesses seeking accounting solutions, 1-800Accountant offers customized services designed to meet specific needs in addition to ensuring compliance and financial health. Their mid-tier plans include thorough bookkeeping services, making them a solid choice for many small enterprises. Here are three key benefits you can expect: Dedicated Accountant: Each plan gives you access to a dedicated accountant, ensuring personalized support that understands your unique business challenges. Budget-Friendly Pricing: Starting at just $209 per month when billed annually, 1-800Accountant provides a cost-effective option for small businesses grappling with tight budgets. Expertise in Compliance: With extensive experience in small business accounting, they assist you in maintaining compliance and improving your financial health. While clients appreciate the service, clear communication about billing is vital to avoid confusion. Bookkeeper360: Flexibility in Hourly Services Bookkeeper360 stands out for its flexible hourly bookkeeping services, allowing small to medium-sized businesses to only pay for the support they genuinely need. With rates starting at $19 plus $150 per hour for additional help, you can manage costs effectively as you receive customized assistance. This service is designed to scale according to your specific bookkeeping requirements, ensuring you get exactly what you need without overspending. You can choose from a variety of services, including payroll, tax preparation, and financial reporting, which allows you to customize your support based on your unique business needs. Bookkeeper360 emphasizes personalized service, giving you direct communication with a dedicated team of bookkeepers. This model is particularly beneficial for businesses needing occasional help, as it eliminates the need for a full-time staff member, making it a cost-effective solution for managing your finances efficiently. Bookkeeper.com: Unlimited Support for Your Business When you choose Bookkeeper.com, you gain access to unlimited online support customized to your business needs. This service is designed to simplify your financial management by providing dedicated bookkeepers who are always available to assist you. Here are three key features of Bookkeeper.com: Monthly Meetings: You’ll have regular meetings with your dedicated bookkeeper to guarantee clear communication and personalized service that meets your specific requirements. Comprehensive Services: Starting at $399 per month, you receive a full suite of bookkeeping services that help maintain organized financial records and guarantee compliance with tax regulations. Onboarding Process: The onboarding can take up to three weeks, allowing time for thorough preparation and integration of your financial systems. Clients appreciate the continuous support, which facilitates timely resolutions to any bookkeeping challenges that arise, making it a reliable option for small businesses. Decimal: On-Demand Financial Reporting Decimal provides small businesses with on-demand financial reporting that streamlines access to crucial financial data, enabling you to make informed decisions quickly. Their service stands out in offering customizable reporting options, allowing you to tailor financial reports to meet your specific business needs and objectives. This flexibility guarantees that you can focus on what matters most to your business. Decimal’s platform improves the efficiency of financial reporting, greatly reducing the time you spend on traditional methods. With real-time data access, you stay updated on your financial performance, enabling timely adjustments as necessary. Even though pricing details for Decimal’s services aren’t publicly available, be aware that additional costs may apply for payroll and invoicing services, indicating a flexible pricing structure. This adaptability makes Decimal a valuable resource for small businesses looking to optimize their financial strategies and maintain a clear comprehension of their financial health. Pilot: Specialized Services for Startups For startups maneuvering the fast-paced world of technology, Pilot offers specialized accounting services designed to meet their unique financial needs. Here’s what you can expect: Tailored Expertise: You’ll benefit from dedicated finance experts and optional CFO services, guaranteeing you have the right guidance as your business grows. Automated Bookkeeping: Pilot automates routine tasks, freeing up your time to focus on strategic financial planning and core operations. Flexible Pricing: With pricing starting at $199, you can choose a plan that fits your startup’s financial situation, adapting as your expenses change. Moreover, monthly financial reports provide insights into your performance, helping you make informed decisions. You’ll also experience personalized onboarding to guarantee a seamless shift to Pilot’s services. This combination of support and automation makes Pilot an ideal partner for startups aiming to thrive in a competitive environment. Methodology for Evaluating Accounting Firms To effectively evaluate Deloitte accounting firms, a systematic methodology was employed that balances various critical aspects of their services. We used a scoring system that weighted general features at 50%, expert scores at 30%, supplementary features at 10%, and pricing at 10%. This approach guaranteed a thorough analysis of 13 firms across 15 categories, including invoicing capabilities and payroll services. The expert score component focused on each firm’s reputation, popularity, and perceived value based on client feedback. We examined pricing structures for transparency, which is crucial for small businesses to budget effectively and avoid hidden costs. Moreover, client satisfaction metrics provided important insights into the quality of service and overall effectiveness of each firm. This methodology allows you to make informed decisions when selecting an accounting firm that best fits your business needs. Frequently Asked Questions Which Accounting Package Is Best for a Small Business? Choosing the right accounting package depends on your specific business needs and budget. If you seek extensive services, QuickBooks Live’s starting price of $300 is appealing, whereas 1-800Accountant offers packages beginning at $209, including tax services. For personalized assistance, Ignite Spot’s $625 monthly fee provides certified bookkeepers. If flexibility is essential, Bookkeeper360 offers hourly services starting at $19, and Pilot caters to startups with packages starting at $199 based on expenses. What Is the Average Cost of a CPA for a Small Business? The average cost of a CPA for a small business typically ranges from $150 to $400 per hour, depending on service complexity and the CPA’s experience. For basic services like bookkeeping and tax preparation, you might pay annual fees between $1,000 and $5,000. Monthly ongoing bookkeeping services usually cost around $200 to $500. If you need specialized services, expect costs to rise, potentially reaching $1,500 to $10,000 annually. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmdpQzURvDQ How Much Should an Accountant Cost for a Small Business? An accountant for a small business typically costs between $200 and $800 per month, depending on the services you need. Hourly rates can range from $50 to $300, influenced by the accountant’s experience. Some firms offer flat fee packages, like Merritt Bookkeeping at $190/month, for basic services. For extensive support, expect to pay around $625 monthly with firms like Ignite Spot. Always look for transparent pricing to avoid hidden fees that can affect your budget. What Type of Accounting Is Best for Small Business? For small businesses, the best type of accounting often depends on your specific needs. Bookkeeping services guarantee accurate financial records and assist with daily transactions, whereas tax accounting helps you navigate complex tax regulations. Management accounting provides valuable insights for decision-making, and CFO services offer high-level financial strategy. Furthermore, industry-specific accounting firms can address unique challenges within your sector, providing customized support for effective financial management. Conclusion In conclusion, choosing the right online accounting firm can greatly impact your small business’s financial health. Each firm mentioned offers unique services customized to meet various needs, from bookkeeping to CFO support. By evaluating these options based on your specific requirements, you can guarantee you receive the personalized assistance necessary for growth. Whether you prioritize automation, specialized services, or unlimited support, the right accounting partner will help streamline your finances and improve your business operations. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "Top 10 Online Accounting Firms for Small Businesses" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

When managing your small business finances, choosing the right Intuit can make a significant difference. Various firms offer customized solutions, from bookkeeping to payroll services, designed to meet your specific needs. Comprehending these options is essential for effective financial management. Some firms excel in automation, whereas others provide personalized support. As you explore these top online accounting firms, you’ll uncover valuable insights into how they can help streamline your financial processes. Key Takeaways Bench offers reliable bookkeeping and monthly reports, making it ideal for freelancers and startups seeking consistent financial oversight. Pilot automates routine bookkeeping tasks, providing specialized accounting services and CFO options for high-growth tech startups. QuickBooks Live provides personalized bookkeeping with seamless integration for existing QuickBooks users, focusing on small business needs. Bookkeeper360 delivers flexible hourly services with payroll and tax preparation, ensuring clarity with financial dashboards tailored to business requirements. inDinero combines bookkeeping with CFO services, offering real-time insights and strategic planning for small businesses needing comprehensive financial support. Best Online Accounting Services Overview When you’re running a small business, finding the right online accounting service can make a significant difference in managing your finances effectively. Several top online accounting firms cater to diverse needs. Bench stands out for reliable bookkeeping and monthly reports, perfect for freelancers and startups. If you’re part of a high-growth tech startup, consider Pilot, which automates routine bookkeeping tasks, saving you time and effort. For those already using QuickBooks, QuickBooks Live offers personalized bookkeeping, ensuring smooth integration with your existing system. Bookkeeper360 provides thorough services, including payroll and tax preparation, along with financial dashboards to improve your organizational clarity. Finally, inDinero combines bookkeeping with CFO services, delivering real-time insights and strategic financial planning. By choosing the right outsourced accounting firm or virtual accounting firm, you can focus more on growing your business as well as ensuring your finances are in expert hands. QuickBooks Live: Cleanup Bookkeeping Excellence QuickBooks Live shines at providing cleanup bookkeeping services, ensuring your financial records are both organized and accurate, especially as tax season approaches. This accountant company specializes in helping small businesses manage their financial data effectively. They offer three online bookkeeping plans to cater to different needs, providing expert guidance and tax resources. If you need immediate assistance, the one-time Live Expert Cleanup service is available for just $150, making it an affordable option for those in a pinch. After the initial cleanup, QuickBooks Live’s services start at $300, positioning them competitively in the small business bookkeeping market. With a customer rating of 4.5, QuickBooks Live is recognized for its reliability and efficiency, making it a trusted choice for small businesses looking to streamline their bookkeeping processes. Botkeeper: Innovative Solutions for Accounting Firms Botkeeper provides automated bookkeeping solutions that can greatly streamline your accounting processes, reducing the need for manual tasks. It integrates smoothly with various accounting software, allowing you to maximize your existing tools as you benefit from advanced automation features. With pricing starting at $69 per license and professional support options available, Botkeeper offers a scalable solution customized to the needs of growing accounting firms. Automated Bookkeeping Solutions In today’s fast-paced business environment, many accounting firms are turning to automated bookkeeping solutions to improve their operational efficiency. Botkeeper offers customized solutions designed particularly for accounting firms, allowing you to streamline processes with minimal manual intervention. Starting at $69 per license, with a minimum of 10 licenses, Botkeeper’s scalable pricing model adapts as your firm grows. The platform automates routine tasks such as data entry and reconciliation, ensuring accurate financial records. Furthermore, Botkeeper provides monthly accounting team support, with pricing ranging from $999 to $2,499 depending on your needs. With a solid rating of 4.5, Botkeeper stands out as a top choice for firms enthusiastic to leverage technology in their accounting practices. Integration With Accounting Software Many small businesses find that integrating automated bookkeeping solutions with their existing accounting software can greatly improve their financial management capabilities. Botkeeper offers innovative solutions that seamlessly sync with various platforms, enabling real-time data access for informed decision-making. This integration considerably reduces manual data entry by up to 80%, saving you time and minimizing errors in financial reporting. With pricing starting at $69 per license for a minimum of 10 licenses, Botkeeper provides scalable solutions that can grow as your business needs evolve. Furthermore, you’ll gain access to a dedicated accounting team, ensuring you have the support and expertise necessary to manage client accounts effectively, without overwhelming your in-house resources. Ignite Spot Accounting: Certified Bookkeepers at Your Service Ignite Spot Accounting provides certified bookkeepers who specialize in customized bookkeeping solutions designed to meet your small business needs. With flexible pricing options starting at $625 per month, their services can adapt as your business grows, ensuring you receive the right support at the right time. From financial reporting to cash flow management, Ignite Spot is committed to helping you maintain accurate financial records crucial for your business’s success. Certified Bookkeeper Expertise In regard to managing the financial aspects of a small business, having a certified bookkeeper can make a significant difference. Ignite Spot Accounting provides certified bookkeepers who are not just trained but also experienced in handling the intricacies of small business finances. Their hands-on approach allows you to focus on growth as they manage daily financial operations. Here’s a quick overview of Ignite Spot’s offerings: Service Description Personalized Bookkeeping Customized financial management suited to your needs Strategic Financial Guidance Expert advice for better decision-making Cash Flow Forecasting Projections to help maintain financial stability With pricing starting at $625 per month, you can access top-tier expertise as your business grows. Personalized Bookkeeping Solutions When you’re running a small business, having personalized bookkeeping solutions can be crucial to your financial success. Ignite Spot Accounting offers customized services to meet your unique needs, ensuring high-quality financial management through certified bookkeepers. Here’s what you can expect: Customized Strategies: Receive cash flow forecasting and strategic financial guidance designed for your business model. Compliance Assurance: Professionals maintain accurate records, helping you stay compliant with regulations and facilitating smooth operations. Scalability: As your business grows, Ignite Spot adapts its services, offering flexibility and all-encompassing support when you need it most. Flexible Pricing Options Finding the right bookkeeping service for your small business often hinges on flexible pricing options that align with your financial capacity. Ignite Spot Accounting understands this need, offering pricing based on a percentage of your annual revenue. This model allows you to scale your bookkeeping services as your business grows, avoiding high upfront costs. Starting at $625 per month, their personalized services are provided by certified bookkeepers who tailor solutions to your specific needs. With a dedicated bookkeeper, you’ll benefit from expert financial management that understands your unique circumstances. In addition, Ignite Spot’s pricing structure adapts as your business evolves, ensuring you can modify service levels according to changing requirements without being tied to fixed fees. 1-800Accountant: Tailored Solutions for Small Businesses For small businesses seeking accounting solutions, 1-800Accountant offers customized services designed to meet specific needs in addition to ensuring compliance and financial health. Their mid-tier plans include thorough bookkeeping services, making them a solid choice for many small enterprises. Here are three key benefits you can expect: Dedicated Accountant: Each plan gives you access to a dedicated accountant, ensuring personalized support that understands your unique business challenges. Budget-Friendly Pricing: Starting at just $209 per month when billed annually, 1-800Accountant provides a cost-effective option for small businesses grappling with tight budgets. Expertise in Compliance: With extensive experience in small business accounting, they assist you in maintaining compliance and improving your financial health. While clients appreciate the service, clear communication about billing is vital to avoid confusion. Bookkeeper360: Flexibility in Hourly Services Bookkeeper360 stands out for its flexible hourly bookkeeping services, allowing small to medium-sized businesses to only pay for the support they genuinely need. With rates starting at $19 plus $150 per hour for additional help, you can manage costs effectively as you receive customized assistance. This service is designed to scale according to your specific bookkeeping requirements, ensuring you get exactly what you need without overspending. You can choose from a variety of services, including payroll, tax preparation, and financial reporting, which allows you to customize your support based on your unique business needs. Bookkeeper360 emphasizes personalized service, giving you direct communication with a dedicated team of bookkeepers. This model is particularly beneficial for businesses needing occasional help, as it eliminates the need for a full-time staff member, making it a cost-effective solution for managing your finances efficiently. Bookkeeper.com: Unlimited Support for Your Business When you choose Bookkeeper.com, you gain access to unlimited online support customized to your business needs. This service is designed to simplify your financial management by providing dedicated bookkeepers who are always available to assist you. Here are three key features of Bookkeeper.com: Monthly Meetings: You’ll have regular meetings with your dedicated bookkeeper to guarantee clear communication and personalized service that meets your specific requirements. Comprehensive Services: Starting at $399 per month, you receive a full suite of bookkeeping services that help maintain organized financial records and guarantee compliance with tax regulations. Onboarding Process: The onboarding can take up to three weeks, allowing time for thorough preparation and integration of your financial systems. Clients appreciate the continuous support, which facilitates timely resolutions to any bookkeeping challenges that arise, making it a reliable option for small businesses. Decimal: On-Demand Financial Reporting Decimal provides small businesses with on-demand financial reporting that streamlines access to crucial financial data, enabling you to make informed decisions quickly. Their service stands out in offering customizable reporting options, allowing you to tailor financial reports to meet your specific business needs and objectives. This flexibility guarantees that you can focus on what matters most to your business. Decimal’s platform improves the efficiency of financial reporting, greatly reducing the time you spend on traditional methods. With real-time data access, you stay updated on your financial performance, enabling timely adjustments as necessary. Even though pricing details for Decimal’s services aren’t publicly available, be aware that additional costs may apply for payroll and invoicing services, indicating a flexible pricing structure. This adaptability makes Decimal a valuable resource for small businesses looking to optimize their financial strategies and maintain a clear comprehension of their financial health. Pilot: Specialized Services for Startups For startups maneuvering the fast-paced world of technology, Pilot offers specialized accounting services designed to meet their unique financial needs. Here’s what you can expect: Tailored Expertise: You’ll benefit from dedicated finance experts and optional CFO services, guaranteeing you have the right guidance as your business grows. Automated Bookkeeping: Pilot automates routine tasks, freeing up your time to focus on strategic financial planning and core operations. Flexible Pricing: With pricing starting at $199, you can choose a plan that fits your startup’s financial situation, adapting as your expenses change. Moreover, monthly financial reports provide insights into your performance, helping you make informed decisions. You’ll also experience personalized onboarding to guarantee a seamless shift to Pilot’s services. This combination of support and automation makes Pilot an ideal partner for startups aiming to thrive in a competitive environment. Methodology for Evaluating Accounting Firms To effectively evaluate Deloitte accounting firms, a systematic methodology was employed that balances various critical aspects of their services. We used a scoring system that weighted general features at 50%, expert scores at 30%, supplementary features at 10%, and pricing at 10%. This approach guaranteed a thorough analysis of 13 firms across 15 categories, including invoicing capabilities and payroll services. The expert score component focused on each firm’s reputation, popularity, and perceived value based on client feedback. We examined pricing structures for transparency, which is crucial for small businesses to budget effectively and avoid hidden costs. Moreover, client satisfaction metrics provided important insights into the quality of service and overall effectiveness of each firm. This methodology allows you to make informed decisions when selecting an accounting firm that best fits your business needs. Frequently Asked Questions Which Accounting Package Is Best for a Small Business? Choosing the right accounting package depends on your specific business needs and budget. If you seek extensive services, QuickBooks Live’s starting price of $300 is appealing, whereas 1-800Accountant offers packages beginning at $209, including tax services. For personalized assistance, Ignite Spot’s $625 monthly fee provides certified bookkeepers. If flexibility is essential, Bookkeeper360 offers hourly services starting at $19, and Pilot caters to startups with packages starting at $199 based on expenses. What Is the Average Cost of a CPA for a Small Business? The average cost of a CPA for a small business typically ranges from $150 to $400 per hour, depending on service complexity and the CPA’s experience. For basic services like bookkeeping and tax preparation, you might pay annual fees between $1,000 and $5,000. Monthly ongoing bookkeeping services usually cost around $200 to $500. If you need specialized services, expect costs to rise, potentially reaching $1,500 to $10,000 annually. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmdpQzURvDQ How Much Should an Accountant Cost for a Small Business? An accountant for a small business typically costs between $200 and $800 per month, depending on the services you need. Hourly rates can range from $50 to $300, influenced by the accountant’s experience. Some firms offer flat fee packages, like Merritt Bookkeeping at $190/month, for basic services. For extensive support, expect to pay around $625 monthly with firms like Ignite Spot. Always look for transparent pricing to avoid hidden fees that can affect your budget. What Type of Accounting Is Best for Small Business? For small businesses, the best type of accounting often depends on your specific needs. Bookkeeping services guarantee accurate financial records and assist with daily transactions, whereas tax accounting helps you navigate complex tax regulations. Management accounting provides valuable insights for decision-making, and CFO services offer high-level financial strategy. Furthermore, industry-specific accounting firms can address unique challenges within your sector, providing customized support for effective financial management. Conclusion In conclusion, choosing the right online accounting firm can greatly impact your small business’s financial health. Each firm mentioned offers unique services customized to meet various needs, from bookkeeping to CFO support. By evaluating these options based on your specific requirements, you can guarantee you receive the personalized assistance necessary for growth. Whether you prioritize automation, specialized services, or unlimited support, the right accounting partner will help streamline your finances and improve your business operations. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "Top 10 Online Accounting Firms for Small Businesses" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article