Glad you asked.

First, to answer why, consider this: one out of four small businesses have been sued or threatened with a lawsuit in last 5 years. My former employer, a small business, was sued three times in six months.

You are almost three times more likely to end up in court than in hospital, according to figures from National Center for State Courts and American Hospital Association.

You need a legal protection plan to protect your business from people circling over your neighborhood like buzzards over a dying man. They're looking for someone to sue.

Want proof? A new civil lawsuit is filed every two seconds, according to National Center for State Courts.

A legal protection plan is a way to reduce likelihood of your business being sued, or if sued, to reduce damage to your business.

Part of a legal protection plan is periodically checking to make sure you are not breaking law in your dealings with employees, suppliers and customers.

Does your business form protect you or expose you? Consider form of business ownership you used when setting up your business. That is also part of a legal protection plan.

No matter if you are selling a product or a service, Internet is a means of reaching markets that had otherwise been unreachable in past. And, it also provides ease of purchasing and selling almost anything online…also known as E-Commerce.

But, for many businesses, especially start up and small to mid size businesses, having a website that includes usual E-commerce capabilities is just not in their budgets. Setting up merchant accounts and secure servers can get quite costly.

So, if you are really wanting or needing to have e-commerce capabilities on your website to sell your products, but your budget just won’t allow it, there are a variety of alternatives to expensive online route that you can consider.

Your first choice allows you to accept credit card payments but without a secure server. Some financial institutions, which offer credit cards, also offer Traditional Merchant Accounts. This allows you to manually verify credit card information from those that want to purchase from you. But, you should be aware, if you ask for credit card information from your website without guarantee of a secure server, you may run into hesitation from potential customers.