We’re in the process of applying for a merchant account so we can take online payments for EasyCal. While doing so, we’ve learned a few interesting things about the kinds of charges you might face and we thought we’d share (of course, you can also take payments in person without a merchant account :) ). …

The internet is a leveling influence on business. It means that potential customers can learn about your small business just as easily as they can learn about bigger competitors. And if you market yourself smartly, you can attract more customers than larger competitors. In this article, I’ll show you how. The world has changed, and …

Since we’re just starting EasyCal, we needed a logo. Neither of us are graphic designers, so we investigated our options: we could get a known quantity in an expensive graphic designer, go cheaper but probably less awesome, or use a creative services marketplace like 99Designs or CrowdSpring. These marketplaces let you post a contest for …

There are two ways that we’ve found to take credit cards without having to jump through the hoops of setting up a merchant account. Paypal The first and simplest is using Paypal. The challenge with Paypal is that you either need payment integration built-in your booking calendar (which is technically complex), or you need to …

One day, Kareem and his girlfriend Daniela, an esthetician, were driving around town. Daniela was explaining to Kareem why she was fed up with booking calendars, which let her clients book appointments with her over the web. She had just had a terribly frustrating experience with her latest booking calendar. Every booking calendar she tried …