You have a custom domain, everyone seems to have a domain for themselves except me. I'm stumped. How do I find an available domain and buy it?

I'm an HR executive and I've very recently started using LinkedIn and found it very interesting and helpful but I'm having problems regarding how to use LinkedIn when it comes to searching for the right people, e.g. I'm particularly searching for managers, or asst.managers in IT industry. How do i locate them on LinkedIn?

I wonder if you can help me with a problem i am having regarding editing an excel spreadsheet, which is driving me mad: I use a Mac Powerbook that has the Microsoft Excel 2008 programme installed. My secretary has a PC upon which is stored all the work files. My Mac is networked to her computer, so I can access all the work files and edit them, print them etc. No worries.

The problem I have is this. My secretary types an excel spreadsheet with 5 columns. She can print it and all 5 columns appear on the page. I can access it and look at the page and all the 5 columns appear. However, if I go into the document and edit it, by say correcting an error, I notice that as soon as I go into the document, a dotted line appears down the right hand side of the page, between the 4th and 5th columns and then if I print it, only four columns appear on the first page and the fifth appears on its own on a separate page.
I have looked at the widths etc of the page set up and they appear the same.

Any ideas as to how I can get it to print all the text on the first page ? I am thinking it is a simple setting adjustment but for the life of me, I cannot work out what to do.

All of a sudden I'm hearing lots of people talking about "reputation management" and "online reputation management". What the heck are they talking about and how does it different from what we've all been doing, trying to put our best foot forward in the digital universe?

I am about to open a new business (hopefully) and was told that blogging can really help - not only with website rankings but for more interest. So, my question comes to this:

If you do a business blog, should you ever delete or edit a customers bad entry about the business? If so, under what circumstances? If no, what if you could tell he was from a competitor and just trashing your business?

Second question, when should you open a business blog? Immediately when your business opens or after some time? Any suggestions here?

I've been assigned to convert some of our documentation and marketing collatoral into French for entry into the European market and am thinking that we can save a lot of money by just using a computer-based translation system. They're supposed to be quite good. Before I do, can you explain exactly how machine language translation works and whether it's as good as hiring a native language translator?

I have been opening and closing Business Plan Pro 2007, I know what I need to get done, I have ideas in my head but a huge writers block. I know the financials needed but I do not know how to work them. What would you recommend for someone like me?

Dave, I heard a Statistic that Colorado has more entrepreneurs per capita then any other state. Is this true? Do you know where I can track this info down and verify it? I am writing an article for a major business magazine and need to be able to cite it.

I've just started to get involved with the world of Internet Marketing events and am a bit confused by something I hear all the time. What's a "JV", Dave, and how do they typically work?

How and what do you need to get into this business? I have two teenage sons who would love to own a dvd rental company. It would be a chance for them to learn and generate money. If you could contact me on how to invest into a machine -- I would appreciate your thoughts.

I have a problem: When I give talks, they're way too short, and I have no idea how to make them longer. I have a *lot* of experience and a *ton* of knowledge to share - but (perhaps from being a lawyer, or maybe the style and personality that begat the profession) I am *very* good at saying what I have to say briefly and to the point (and in a way people can understand) - give me an hour to speak, and I'll have 55 minutes left over. Short, succinct, and to the point. That's how I like *everything* - documents, speeches, explanations.

Sooo... what that means is that I'm *very* bad at padding talks to fill in time. Now, generally when I am speaking, my audiences appreciate short-to-the-point speeches. But sponsors and hosts do not. I typically make up for it by padding in lots of Q&A time, and taking lots of questions, and I'm very good at extemporaneously riffing off a question - and fortunately my areas of expertise make for lots of questions. So how do I make presentations that fill the available time slot, whether it be 45 minutes, 90 minutes, or even a half-day?

I am starting up a cleaning business and I have everything except the bidding estimate down. I don't where to start or how to figure out how much I need to charge my client. Can you please help me? Thanks!

I've been solicited by an organization called Hearts and Hands International, but I'm a bit skeptical that they really are a non-profit. Is there some independent way to check their status?

I keep getting offers in my email for "OEM" software at incredible discounted prices. According to the deals it's legit software from the manufacturers, just without all the usual packaging, and that's why it's so cheap. I am skeptical, though. Dave, what's the scoop?

I am looking to start my own business. I would like to use the name "Tree of Life Studio". I looked this up online, and someone is also using this name for their bus. I am doing a completely different type of bus., in a different state. Can I legally use this name and does a person have the right to this name exclusively? Is this name copyrighted or trademarked?

I have been using LinkedIn for a while now and am starting to get invitations from people who appear to be "networking sharks" or something: they just want to have tons of connections. But I don't know them and I don't want to be connected, but I also don't want to be rude. If I reject them, do they get any sort of notification?

I constantly get into fights with my suppliers because they'll tell me one thing on the phone when I'm placing an order and then bill me at a different rate, claiming that they have no memory of the deal they offered me. I am now thinking that if I just record those phone calls, I'll have a perfect recourse to ensure that they are true to their word, but I'm wondering, is it legal to record phone calls without telling the other party?

My piano instructor (who also happens to be a fairly well-known artist) is interested in selling small prints of one of his paintings in China. I wanted to ask you if it would be cheaper to reproduce the prints here and ship them to China, or send a sample (or several samples) to China to be reproduced there. Also, in regards to distribution, I wondered if you'd know how I could find a company in China that would be willing to buy the prints and sell them. Also, if it helps at all, the prints are about 4"X6", and are fully colored.

I'm looking to improve the close rate on my ecommerce site and have noticed that many successful online stores have various trust, security and hacker-proof seals and certifications. How do they work, which are worthwhile, and how much do they cost? Most importantly, will adding one of these actually improve my online sales?

I wish to start my own computer repair service, i don't have any certs in that field, but i know what each piece of hardware is called and where it goes etc, should i get any certifications before it think about starting my own business?

I've been putting together a store for a few months now, and finally got a source for my specific products (they're about $200-$300 per unit) so I can get started. Problem is, I'm rather aghast to realize that my wholesale source is charging me $25 more per product than my competitors are charging as their retail price. How the heck can I compete?

What happens to the price of a product when it is scarce but in demand?

Hi Dave. I am a former Respiratory Therapist trying to change career, photography is my passion. I would like to start a photo art gallery, landscape art is my calling. I would like to get a business up and running and what I need is good financial advise and help getting started. Any suggestions would be great.

At my job, I constantly hear the phrase "change is good." I don't believe that all change is good. My supervisor put on my evaluation that I did not accept change, which is untrue. How is it that change is good? The change Hitler made to Germany was not good. Productive change is good, but negative change is not. I am feeling insulted.

i am 14 and i absolutely love computers, and i'm always fixing a couple, you know, friends, family... doing stuff in school. I know a lot about computers, i've fixed this computer to a "like-new" state after being told it was impossible after being struck by a certain virus. I would love to set up a small business to bring in cash, a teenager my age needs cash! I feel i know enough about computers, to help people and fix them. The question is, what do you think the challenge would be, or how should i charge people?? Also, how could i advertise this and how would i stay organized without having computers piled up. I know, a silly little pointless question but i need cash, and this is the most fun way for me!!

Can the administrator of the business delete my emails, send emails from my account without me knowing ? This is a big company so the emailing system is professional

My wife doesn’t want to keep growing our business. She started this business three years ago and last year she brought me in to help because of my sales expertise. We have doubled in size in the last year and I thought things were going great. Now she wants to put the brakes on and I can’t figure out what to do about it. We argue constantly. I can’t get her to be rational about this. Do you have any ideas?

Dave, I sell shoes, toys and guitars on my affiliate sites. It seems that the more successful affiliates sell in pretty much one category. Will I be more successful doing this? What are the pros and cons?

I love selling things but am not that strong with numbers. Are there suggestions on ways to organize my SEO, cost per click and stuff, but is easy on my brain?

I've been doing some research on long-term stock pricing trends and need to find data on publicly traded companies. Any clues on where I can find this sort of information back for the last decade or so?

I need to have a weekly conference call with my sales team, scattered throughout the United States, and since not all of them can join us each time, I need to be able to record it and make that recording easily accessible for later download. Is this possible, and if so, how much would it cost for me to set things up for these conference calls?

I've been trying to figure out what people mean when they talk about the "market cap" of a company like Google. Can you explain it to me, please, along with any other useful or interesting tidbits about reading financial data for a publicly traded company?

Hi Dave. I'm the HR VP in a startup and I have a frustrating dilemma. Before my last retreat with our branch managers the executive committee agreed that I could keep everything that happened in the meeting confidential, and just present the finished report to them. We had a very successful retreat with a managers pinpointed several problem areas in the company. I reported the information back to the executive committee as agreed.

The executives weren't too happy with the results of the meeting, but I thought that was the end of it. Later I discovered that the two executives who were most unhappy have been pressuring the managers to tell them exactly what happened at the meeting. What the heck?

I complained at the next executive committee meeting but they just laughed at me and told me to "get over it." I feel like they've compromised my credibility with the managers as well as with the executive committee. I'm appalled by their ethics but I'm completely stymied about what to do next. Any suggestions?

What I was wondering is are their stats on what percentage of users use which search engines. Out of Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN, AOL, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and LookSmart what percentage does of the users does Google have and so on. Just trying to guage and advise customers on which pay per click medium offers the best bang for your buck. From your book Google is obviously the leader but the others have less viewers and also less advertisers I assume.

Thanks and again I really enjoyed your Google book and am having each of my employees read it.

Do you offer your photos from Colorado Portraits for sale on sites like iStockPhoto.com? Another nice way to make some k'ching! I am working on organizing my bizillion photos to sort out the good from the mediocre so I can start uploading. I have recently been approved as a photographer that can upload photos to sell! Yay!

I'm kinda stuck, Dave. I really want to learn how to really focus my blog efforts so I can gain more business advantage, but I haven't been inspired yet. Worse, I am stuck out in the boonies and don't have any Internet folk or bloggers in the area who can help me advance. So, help, what do I do?

What is the reason people buy stocks from a company. I know the obvious reason is to make money, but there is more. So just "why do people buy stocks"? thank you.

I am currently reading your book Growing Your Business with Google. I am finding it very useful. While I was reading it to prepare myself for something in the future, the future suddenly entered from stage left to center focus. This question is not technical, but I am hoping you might direct me elsewhere. An existing net business of 5 yrs with a growing gross and a positive net now is up for sale. It is a good niche market, a good looking website and definitely ways to expand it. My question is this: Whom can I talk to or where can I read or is there a formula for me to determine the value of this existing net business?

I don't know if this is a physical phishing attempt, a data mining project from Paypal or what, but I just got a letter in the mail from Paypal saying that because of the PATRIOT Act, they needed to confirm the identity of people who open up Paypal Money Market Fund accounts. What the heck? Is this legit and do I really need to do what they say?

I just released a new utility application and want to set up a rudimentary affiliate program that lets me offer a commission to people and sites that promote my app. Problem is, there's a free version and a paid version so I'm not sure how that would all work. In any case, is there some sort of low-cost introductory affiliate management system I could use?

I've been doing lots of online marketing and have recently started using a/b testing to figure out whether a particular picture or headline is going to help with my conversion. it's going well, but there are so many different variables to test. A PPC expert told me that I needed to use something called the Taguchi method to test more variables simultaneously? Can you tell me a bit about this Taguchi method stuff and why it'd be useful?

I've been a long-time affiliate at Amazon.com and was pretty psyched to learn about the oddly-named Omakase program that they recently rolled out (see What is Amazon Omakase?). Last time I logged in to my Associates account, I saw that they now also have an "aStore" program? What's Amazon aStores all about, Dave?

I just sat through a meeting knowing that I’m getting screwed. On the surface I’m being told that everyone must meet new standards and bear the responsibility for carrying them out. These standards were developed in conjunction with the large suppliers to a hospital I serve. I had no input at all. The large suppliers can easily meet the new standards. I’m a very small company—a mom and pop shop. We deliver the same product, but while the large suppliers can easily manage to meet the additional requirements, I can’t. I don’t know if the administrators are deliberately trying to squeeze out the little guys like us or whether they have no idea about the power squeeze tactics I see. How can I get the hospital administrators to listen to me?

I own a small web design and e-commerce development company and I am reading your Growing Your Business With Google book and I am completely convinced that for our business to prosper all of our employees have to become better experts of the type of information you discuss in your book. The only issue, as you have stated in your book, this business is always changing.

My question is what can myself and my staff do to ensure we are constantly aware of changes in the marketplace and always on top of this ever changing industry? What I am looking for is sites that we could review on a monthly basis, groups that we could join, industry magazines we should subscribe to etc etc. Give me as much information as you can as I know this is the key to our business and I want to ensure we are doing everything we can to increase our knowledge and advise our customers how they can increase their findability and increase their sales from their website.

Is a verbal offer to do business with someone for a cut of profits enforceable? What if someone verbally opts out and then changes their mind and still wants the cut? If you offer are you obligated to stick with them even if the relationship goes south or they bring little value to the business? I know you're not an attorney, so your opinion please.

eBay bought several country-specific auction sites like Baazee.com of India and a similar site in Netherlans. Full list can be found here: eBay Acquisitions. While eBay is a web based company, it could have had its own version in all of the countries like india.ebay.com instead of buying its clones for whopping amounts of money. I would be very thankful to u, if u can explain me this peculiar trend.

I'm interested in watching how the online world responds to the release of the brand-new Volvo c30 coupe, and am wondering what tools are out there to make it easy to accomplish. I know that I can use something like Google, but that seems pretty inefficient. Also, I'm imagining that this is probably a more general question.

Bit offbeat, but I'm wondering if there are any tools or Web sites or services online that can help me ascertain the value of my house? I'm renting a place and the owner has asked if I'd be interested in buying it, but I have no idea what it's worth. Any suggestions?

One of our suppliers has completed a job for us and shut down his business. My boss doesn’t want to pay bill for his services. My boss justifies this because if something goes wrong with the completed job, the supplier won’t be there to fix the problem. I think he just wants to avoid paying just because he can get away with it, and I think we owe the money and should pay it. I can’t go over my bosses head about this or I’ll risk my own job though. Can you give me ideas on how else to convince my boss to do the right thing? If I can’t, I may need to quit just to live with myself. This feels like a trap and whatever I do, I lose. Help!

I've been working for almost a year on building my online business and after having attended a couple of conferences and talking to a lot of different people, I'm pleased with the progress I've made. However, I'm a big believer in my Dad's adage that to be a winner you have to hang out with winners, so I'd like to ask you, Dave, what groups are you in? Where do you hang out online? Where would you recommend I connect to other successful entrepreneurs?

I don't get it, and frankly I'm a bit freaked out: I just got an email message from a company I'd never heard of that said it had matched a couple of possible jobs to my resume, but I never went to their site, never uploaded a resume, and have no idea how they get all that information about me? What's the scoop, DaveT?

I signed up for the elance.com site and submitted a job for which I sought assistance, but after getting all my responses - 17 bids! - I found out from my boss that we aren't going to be doing that project after all, due to what he calls a "strategic repositioning of the company". How do I cancel the project without getting in trouble with elance.com?

It's World Cup time and this year my mates and I want to use a spreadsheet to keep track of the games and our wagers (uh, all in fun, of course!) so I thought it'd be cool to use the new Google Spreadsheets program to do this. But I have no bloody idea how to get started. Can you help us out while we're busy rooting for our team in the games?

I’m in a pretty competitive business and I am noticing that many of my competitors have tons of great testimonials to build up their credibility. But I'm skeptical. How can they launch a site with 20 perfect testimonials and no sales? Right now I display a few authentic testimonials from satisfied customers. However, since I didn’t write them myself, they aren’t as punchy. Do you suggest I follow suit and make some up myself?

I'm just starting out with my own business, importing clothes and jewelry from Jamaica, and just had someone ask how I do "invoice aging". What the heck is invoice aging, Dave, and why would I want to do it?

I'm not talking about employees, I'm more curious about whether it'd be worth buying a few shares of tech companies to gain access to special shareholder discounts. Do companies do that sort of thing, or am I in the twilight zone?

I read your previous article about How to get quoted in the newspaper but I have to say that I really don't quite understand how this PRLEADS service works. Can you offer an example of how it all fits together?

I just got a warning from a colleague that I need to ensure that our weblog needs to be HIPAA complaint because I've ended up having a lot of ER nurses join our community and share stories about life in the emergency room. What the heck? What's HIPAA and why do I need to worry about it?

Dave, I feel like I've been pretty successful in my local market, but I really want to push my business to the next level, earn more and generate more profit. Rather than rely on word of mouth locally in my community here in Montana, I want to have clients throughout the United States and perhaps overseas. How would you recommend I proceed to grow into the future?