Home buyers may have been stupid (or dishonest) and banks may have been stupid (or dishonest), but either way (or both) the mortgage crisis has spilled over in to other banking areas making the threat of a credit crunch likely.

According to CFO Magazine “Recent studies and reports from lenders show that small businesses are either having a harder time getting credit or struggling to pay off their debt.” To some large extent, that is because banks simply don’t want to take the risk of lending. In fact, over the last year, SBA loans to small businesses are also down 18%, a sign that even the government is reluctant to invest in a market which it thinks may end up with high default rates.

If you’re a business owner with an outstanding business or home equity loan, here are some action steps you should take:

• 1. Stay informed about the health and stability of your bank. If they get into trouble, it may roll downhill.
• 2. Understand that if slowing economy weighs on this year’s performance, your financial statements for year-end 2008 may worry your banker. If your 2007 performance was good, now may be the time to set up a line of credit—just in case.
• 3.Understand and obey all the terms and conditions of your borrowing agreement. If your bank has routinely allowed you to violate loan terms in the past, such as failing topay down your line of credit annually or borrowing from another financial institution without permission, don’t assume it will fly in the future.
• 4. Understand how and why lenders make their lending decisions. Understand how they value your collateral and what financial targets they expect you to hit.
• 5. If your financial situation is weak, especially if you’ve had two years of losses, Be CAREFUL. During the last credit crunch many banks overreacted and started calling in loans without listening to reason.
• 6. Establish and maintain a strong relationship with your banker. Make sure your banker, and a at least a couple of his or her associates, knows you by name. A knee-jerk reaction on their part is far less likely if they know you.
• 7. If you’re uncomfortable or unfamiliar with issues in items 1-6, seek professional help. Someone who really understands what’s going on can help before things get critical.

When all else fails, many are forced to credit cards for financing. If you are forced to leverage your credit cards, be sure read the fine print. One late payment and you could find yourself with an interest rate that’s almost guaranteed to cause a default.

Insufficient capital is one of the greatest risks to a company.

Falling home values could mean trouble for home owners too. And that’s true of individuals too. We recently received a notice in the mail that our home equity line of credit has been reduced by $120,000. If we’d been fully borrowed on the line, we’d have had to come up with the difference between the old value and the new value in a hurry. We hadn’t used it at all, but if we had we could have been in a world of hurt.

With a little advance planning you can weather the trough of credit availability that the next year or two may bring.

For some reason medical billing has attracted more than it’s fair share of scams. If you’re interested in working at home doing medical billing be particularly wary of pitches that promise easy money with little or no effort. In fact, if you’re interested in working from doing anything be particularly wary of pitches that promise easy money with little or no effort. The world just doesn’t work that way.

If you’re looking to start your own medical billing business, learn about the challenges involved in medical billing, including the complex laws which apply before you fork over $200 or $500 or $3500. And understand that up to a year of training may be necessary in order to even begin to market your medical billing services to healthcare providers.

A few years ago, the FTC surfed the Internet and newspaper classifieds looking for ads promising consumers they could make fast, easy money running medical billing businesses from home. Hundreds of ads from dozens of companies were identified, and the Feds discovered that many of them were just rackets offering bogus credit cards or easy loans for a ridiculous fee to whoever called. Those that actually pitched medical billing products included:

• Electronic Processing Services, Inc., et al. Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, marketed a $480 medical billing work-at-home opportunity, misrepresenting that the doctors whose names were supplied were likely to hire consumers to process their billing claims, and that consumers could expect to make a certain amount of money as medical billers.
• International Trader, d/b/a Premier Business Solutions, et al. A Nevada corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, marketed work-at-home medical billing opportunities through classified advertisements for $189. Through their telemarketing pitch, they misrepresented: 1) that they would provide consumers with the names of doctors likely to use them to process billing claims from home; 2) that consumers buying their materials could expect to earn a specific level of income (between $15 and $45 per hour); and 3) that consumers could readily obtain a refund upon request.
• Medical-Billing.Com, Inc., d/b/a Professional Management Consultants, et al. A Texas corporation based in Carrollton, Texas, sold their medical billing package for between $3,500 and $9,500. In telemarketing their program, they allegedly made numerous misrepresentations, including promises that: 1) they would help recruit doctors who would use the consumers to process their billing; 2) customers would earn substantial income providing billing services for health care professionals; and 3) they would give customers a full refund if the program did not meet their performance expectations.
• Electronic Medical Billing, Inc., et al. A Nevada corporation operating in Mission Viejo, California, sold a medical billing work-at-home business opportunity to consumers for $325. They misrepresented: 1) that the doctors whose names they provided to consumers were likely to hire them to do their billing; and 2) that consumers could expect to make a certain level of income through medical billing (between $25,000 and $50,000 a year, according to their classified ads).
• Physicians Healthcare Development (PHD Billing), Inc., et al. Based in Burbank, California, pitched a work-at-home medical billing opportunity for $319 to $425, telling consumers that they could make between $3 and $15 for each claim processed. They misrepresented that the system they sell will instantly enable consumers to launch a home-based billing business, that consumers can earn substantial income for this work, and that the doctors whose names they provided were prepared to hire the consumers to process their claims.

If you get a pitch that sounds like one of these you can be sure you’re being scammed.

For programmer Ivan Bowman a trip to the boss’s office would be an 800 mile jaunt from his home office in Nova Scotia to Ontario. So he sends an avatar instead.

His virtual self is tall and lanky, sometimes compared to a coat rack. But it gives him a presence at the office, and keeps communication flowing–a crucial consideration when you work from home, out of sight and potentially out of mind.

There are a growing number of online employment services that either specialize in telecommuting or have a special telecommuting section. But watch out, some of them are nothing more than scams.

Everything may seem like it’s on the up and up–reasonable salaries, professional website, even a warning to watch out for scams–but when we looked closely we spied something fishy going on.

Our first clue was that the website required you to pay to register. Now what sense does that make? If the site is in the business of finding good employees they can rent to employers, why would the block the road to success with a toll booth?

Other sites don’t charge to join or register, but they do charge a fee to cover their ‘administrative costs’. That’s total bull. All businesses have administrative costs, and those are paid by customers (employers) not employees. Remember, a temp agency charges employers for your work, say $25/hour, and they pay you, say $20/hr. That $5 an hour difference is supposed to cover their costs and also a bit more–that’s called profit.

Our second clue something wasn’t right with some sites was that they charge you before they even look at your resume. If they were serious about getting you work doncha think they’d might be interested in what you can do, even to the extent of testing you on things you claim you can do? ‘Real’ temp agencies certainly do. Temp agencies are very interested in qualified folks because their income depends on an on-going relationship with their clients, your potential employers. If they hire incompetent people their customers will be unhappy and look elsewhere.

The smoking gun clue, though, was the fact that these sites charge employers, their customers, a fee to register. Why would an employer pay a penny before they knew the company had qualified candidates for their job openings?

But don’t get the wrong idea, just because a site doesn’t charge a fee to join doesn’t mean it’s not a scam. The safest bet is to be sure you don’t pay a penny to get a job. Honest employers are happy to pay recruiting and training costs.

If you’re a computer guru and really know what makes a computer tick, if you have good communication skills and enjoy helping people, there may be a full- or part-time work at home job waiting for you at SupportSpace.com.

People who telecommute have no way to earn a living if their computer is on the blink, and company tech support often can’t (or won’t) help. For many baby-boomers and seniors, computer technology just isn’t easy to deal with. SupportSpace responded to that need with a unique approach: all their techs work from home. And you can too if you have what it takes. If you’re an exceptional techie, and can make a disappointed customer with a fried hard-drive thrilled they called you, read on. A college degree isn’t required, but you do have to be at least 18.

You’ll have to go through an initial interview and a thorough check on your background. Then you’ll take a technical skills test. What they’re looking for are competent, experienced techs, so don’t expect them to provide technical training. They will, however, provide training for their online tools so you know how to let the world know you’re open for business, how to take calls, how to download remote desktop software, and how to use proprietary and commercially available tools to solve problems. They also provide webinars and encourage interaction among their techs, which offers the opportunity to learn from others.

Perhaps the most attractive aspect of working as a remote tech is that your schedule can be whatever you want it to be. Need some extra money? Then work some extra hours. Are you a college student and need to study for finals? Work fewer hours–or even not at all if you want to go out with the gang afterwards and blow off some steam. This kind of work makes a great second job, too, because you can schedule around the demands of your primary job.

When you’re ready to work you simply log into the SupportSpace online workbench, and when customers call you’re shown as available. Log off, and you’ve effectively put out the cat, pulled down the shade, and locked the door on your shop.

Tech support problems cover the range of issues, systems, and equipment that people use; but you don’t have to be an expert in everything. You can promote your special talents to deal with Windows XP and Vista, system tune-ups, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, e-mail, backups, networking issues, security, printers and other hardware, virus prevention or removal, digital cameras, MP3 players, video and webcams, and malware/spyware removal.

SupportSpace gets 25% of what you bill, but you set your own rates. Full time, hard charging techs with plenty of experience and good repeat customer ratio can average $30-$40 an hour take-home, although $18-$20 per hour is more typical. (Keep in mind these are clock hours, not billable hours. You might be logged in and available, but not working with a customer. You might advertise a $75 per hour rate, but only work an average of 20 minutes an hour.)

Another nice aspect of remote tech support work is that you don’t need any special equipment or tools. SupportSpace provides online diagnostic tools, and if you’re a geek, you already have everything else you’ll need.

Keep in mind this kind of work depends on electricity and online access. That’s good news, and that’s bad news. The good news is you can do it from anywhere. If you decide to go to beach for the summer, you can take your laptop and work there. But the bad news is, if your ISP goes down or a hurricane puts out the lights you’re out of business.

Also remember that as a freelancer you won’t be paid for sick days, you won’t have a 401K, and you won’t have your taxes deducted. On the other hand you also won’t have an increasingly expensive and aggravating commute, or an ogre for a boss (unless you’re really hard to work with).

SupportSpace is the standout employer for work at home techs, from our research. Their business model has attracted the venture capital community, and their online approach is unique. Best Buy’s GeekSquad is the largest in the business, but theirs is a bricks and mortar, office-based culture. PlumChoice is an online competitor that “served 2.5 million transactions in 2007″ but they seem a bit embarrassed by their at-home workforce and asked not to be included in our upcoming book because of its title: Undress For Success.

To summarize then, working from home as a remote tech support specialist has the advantages of flexible scheduling and decent pay, but you’d better know your stuff and be prepared to watch out for yourself.

If you want the inside scoop visit TechComedy.com for a look at the funny, and sometimes aggravating, side of the business.