Archive for July 2006
For Kid Entrepreneurs: Camp Invention
Chuck Huckaby: If you’d like your kids to have a head start as an inventor or entrepreneur, or just in life, here’s a summer activity that may just be the thing you’re looking for: a camp that uses an invention motif to help younger children improve their overall literacy and “numeracy� (the new buzz word [...]
Consumers Are Ganging up on Their Retailers
Economist: On an otherwise quiet Friday afternoon in Guangzhou, a city in southern China, 500 shoppers gather outside a Gome electrical superstore in the downtown district. They arrive en masse at the designated time—June 16th at 4pm—that they had previously agreed online. Several hours later, they emerge clutching boxes, having secured 10-30% discounts on cameras, [...]
Announcing the Carnival of Wal-Mart
Starling Hunter of The Business of America is Business has started a Carnival of Wal-Mart. Full press release after the jump.
Adjectives Can Kill Your Business
Ty Tribble: Do you repeatedly use the same adjective as an exclamatory remark, such as “excellentâ€? or “greatâ€? or “awesomeâ€?, when responding to potential partners, especially when you’re calling leads? Consider, if you will, what this habitual overuse of the same adjective may do to your conversation… Photo by Kevin Day.
Glenn Fleishman: Now an unrelated idea about identity theft: Diaper insertion. Here’s the idea. Child care centers make extra money by having piles of chopped-up credit cards and bills that they place in dirty diapers after changing a kid. The volume would be high enough to handle a lot of identity-laden materials. And I have [...]
Recently in the Business Opportunities Weblog Network
The Business Opportunities Weblog Network is made up of eleven niche business blogs. Here’s a selection of popular posts from around the network: The Great Domain Name Search Wholesale Buying Tips For eBay Chipotle, Quiznos Score high In National Rankings A Day in The Life of Herbalife Choosing a Network Marketing Company Right for You. [...]
Recently in the Business Opportunities Weblog Network
The Business Opportunities Weblog Network is made up of eleven niche business blogs. Here’s a selection of popular posts from around the network: The Great Domain Name Search Wholesale Buying Tips For eBay Chipotle, Quiznos Score high In National Rankings A Day in The Life of Herbalife Choosing a Network Marketing Company Right for You. [...]
Recently in the Business Opportunities Weblog Network
The Business Opportunities Weblog Network is made up of eleven niche business blogs. Here’s a selection of popular posts from around the network: The Great Domain Name Search Wholesale Buying Tips For eBay Chipotle, Quiznos Score high In National Rankings A Day in The Life of Herbalife Choosing a Network Marketing Company Right for You. [...]
 REUTERS EBay Inc. said on Thursday the head of its PayPal unit will leave the Web auctioneer in a surprise shake-up that closely follows Google Inc.’s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) unveiling of a rival payment service. Shares in eBay (EBAY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) fell more than 5 percent to their lowest since 2003 on the [...]
eBay Not Permitting Google Checkout
 eBay Strategies eBay has updated it’s “Safe Payments Policy” to specifically NOT allow Google Checkout. I suspect sellers (especially multichannel) will be pretty upset about this. It will be interesting to see what lame excuse eBay uses to justify this. For example, they will probably say it’s new so prone to fraud. Well, in reality [...]
Business Week: At about eight in the morning on June 16, a young man named Remi Frazier from Fort Collins, Colo., sat down on a bench in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle, glued a cell phone to his ear, and spread a New York City map across his lap. By early afternoon he had launched an unlikely [...]
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Small Business
Jeff Cornwall: Commit [the SBA Office of Advocacy's Frequently Asked Questions] to memory so that the next time one of your “corporate type” friends scoffs at your “cute little business” you can let her know that businesses like yours have generated 60-80% of new jobs annually in th US over the last decade. You can [...]
Idea: Sell CafePress Shirts on eBay
Here’s an interesting idea: sell shirts that you make at a CafePress store on eBay. CafePress, if you don’t know, allows you to create and sells a variety of unique merchandise, from t-shirts to coffee mugs, that you design. What interesting about the idea, is that you don’t need to actually manufacture the item before [...]
 CultureBy Some say blogging is still an answer looking for a question. Not bloggers, of course. We know it’s a chance to shoot our mouths off. But the rest of the world wonders. What is blogging good for? Today, notice of that eBay may have found a way to make us useful. Ebay wants to [...]
Springwise: The idea behind an all dessert restaurant was something that we’d been thinking of for quite a while. Here in New York City, if you want a really fine dessert that’s taken seriously, you have to go to one of those fine restaurants. We wanted to create a place that would allow you to [...]
Skype Technology Makes Calls Easier
Global Sources Zero One Technology Co. Ltd has released the EzSKY-200, a VoIP adapter that can be used with basic corded or cordless phones for making regular or Skype phone calls. The EzSKY-200 enables PSTN-to-Skype call forwarding and vice-versa. It features PSTN voice mail and realtime recording. It also supports 3-way conference calls. The EzSKY-200 [...]
Jeffery Strain in his Personal Finance Advice blog relates a great story about a ‘found’ opportunity: I was at a gathering today when I struck up a conversation with a man who described his job as a “commute helper.â€? “OK, what exactly is a commute helper?â€? I asked “I help people have a smooth and [...]
The American Enterprise: Is it reasonable to vilify major American companies in this way? In any given week, 140 million people shop in a Wal-Mart store. Wal-Mart is our nation’s leading employer. (There are 30 percent more people working under its roof than are serving in our Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, and Coast Guard [...]
Gab Goldberg did a site SEO review of the Business Opportunities Weblog: B+: Dane’s obviously got a lock on his top keyphrase, but he could do much better and move to dominate other phrases. Look up ‘Small Business Opportunities’ on Google, and B-O.biz isn’t even top 10! Home business opportunities: Neither, though he is #12 [...]
Free Downloadable Business Forms from Office Depot
Office Depot is now offering free downloadable business forms. Here’s a sampling from the Starting Your Business category: Business Selection Checklist Cash Flow Sensitivity Analysis Cost Assessment Checklist Equipment Lease Checklist Family Monthly Budget Form Franchise Agreement Checklist Projected Staffing Schedule Real Property Lease Checklist Start-up Checklist Strengths/Weaknesses Assessment Checklist via LifeHacker, who adds: The [...]
Seth Godin: And at work, where does your list come from? Do you answer emails by date received, by urgency, by sender? Who decides that? Which blogs do you read, which tasks do you do It’s fascinating to watch someone who has made a shift from a big company to solo work, or the other [...]
Marginal Revolution: These homes in El Campo, Tex., stand on land once used to grow rice. Because of that, their back yards qualify for direct payments under federal agricultural programs as long as the owner does not develop the acreage. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so repulsive.
PayPal Providing Virtual Debit Cards
Digital Transactions PayPal Inc. will start rolling out its so-called virtual debit card to “hundreds of thousandsâ€? of users some time this month in a process it expects to complete by the end of August, a spokesperson for the San Jose, Calif.-based unit of online auctioneer eBay Inc. tells Digital Transactions News. The product, which [...]
eBay Seller Watch your Account
 NWAnews Hey, wanna buy a “SCAG SWZ 52 A WALK BEHIND ZEROTURN MOWER / 18 HP KOHLER / NEWâ€? ? Or maybe a “NEW IN BOX Cisco WS-X 6724-SFP for Catalyst 6500 Seriesâ€? ? How about a “NEW D-LINK DI-524 WIRELESS ROUTER 802. 11 BG XBOX CMPTBLâ€? ? Because as of just a few days [...]
Even with Google PayPals Not Going Anywhere
 MSN NBC Google checks in with Checkout It’s about time, Google(Nasdaq: GOOG). The country’s leading search engine finally rolled out its online financial payment service. Google Checkout — not the Gbuy name that had been bandied about, or the Google Purchases subdomain that was uncovered last year — is the real deal now, as Google [...]
eBay Seeks Profits From Bloggers
 MarketWatch.com EBay Inc. (EBAY) wants to develop new software tools that will allow it to cash in on the increasing popularity of blogging, a senior executive told the Financial Times, according to a report on the newspaper’s Web site Tuesday. “Our approach would be to develop new tools that we can turn over to bloggers, [...]
On Independence and Entrepreneurship
Michael Cage: Many entrepreneurs started their first businesses in a fit of independence-seeking … they wanted to be free of petty bosses, financial worries, earnings ceiling or structured hours. Surely, a business is a way to get away from those things and have something different. But the entrepreneurs who move from “success” to greatness … [...]
This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Raising4Boys.com.
Manage, Don’t Try to Escape from Risk
Gladys Edmunds in USA Today: If we are to address the concept of risk in total then we must admit that any way we choose to make a living is risky business. However, as a writer, speaker and entrepreneur I will always encourage the entry into what has been, is, and always will be the [...]
Instant Domain Search is what it sounds like: As you type in the entry field, it shows you in real time whether the .com, .net, and .org domain names are available. If the domain is available it presents you with a number of registrar options along with prices, and if it’s not available it gives [...]
Accidental Tech Entrepreneurs Turn Their Hobbies Into Livelihoods
Mitch Wagner at InformationWeek: Most people who pull down a paycheck dream of making a living at their hobby. For IT managers, the dream is more within reach than it is for most professionals, as their technical skills can give them a head start in building businesses on the Web. A supertalented few have even [...]
eBay Could Ban Google’s Checkout as Payment Method
AuctionBytes: Last October, eBay introduced a new “Safe Payments Policy” that prohibits sellers from requesting payment through online-payment services not specifically approved by eBay. With Google launching its long-awaited payment service Checkout, it seems unlikely eBay will allow merchants to advertise the service in listings, at least in the short term.
Newsfactor Magazine  In its nearly 11 years of existence, the auction site eBay has come a long way from its early days as a souped-up online flea market. Thanks to its anyone-can-sell business model, and a prevailing philosophy that there’s a buyer out there for anything, eBay has become the granddaddy of all auction sites. [...]
Google Moving Towards Anti-Trust Territory
 Marketing Shift Google’s Checkout online payment system could prompt millions of users to start using a Google ID as their standard identity across the web and tap into a vast reserve of marketing data. If it’s enough of a success, it may eventually put the company into Microsoftian anti-trust territory. If Google can combine data [...]
Community College Has eBay Basics Class
Dayton Daily Sandra Hill of Dayton saw the woman mailing loads of parcels at the post office. “When I asked her about all the packages she had, she said she had sold all of it on eBay and was sending it off to her customers,” Hills said. “When she started raving about the class and [...]
World Cup Fan eBays Best Man Role
 Edinburgh News A FOOTBALL fan tried selling his role as best man on eBay so he can watch today’s England World Cup match against Portugal. James Circus offered his seat at the top table at his friend’s wedding in Essex. Bidding on the online auction website started at £2 for the role, which includes speech [...]
Rapid Growth Expected to Sinagpore eBay
 Peoples Daily Online eBay, a world renowned online marketplace for the sale of goods and services, expects rapid growth in its business in Singapore, according to a report in Friday’s Today, an English daily newspaper published in the city state. It quoted a recent research by ACNielsen as showing that nearly 4,400 Singaporeans are depending [...]
This week’s Carnival of Marketing is up at Influential Interactive Marketing.
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at My Money Forest.
Learn To Avoid eBays Dark Side of Buying
 Washington Post Stephanie Marhefka bought several dresses and a laptop computer over the years on eBay without problem. But the psychologist says her last purchase was a disaster: She paid $700 for what an eBay seller said was a solid wood desk, plus an additional $40 for the Brooklyn merchant to deliver it to her [...]
Understanding eBays Feedback System
Informit What Do All Those Stars and Numbers Mean? Reading Feedback Comments—And Contacting Other Users How to Leave Feedback Figuring Out What Kind of Feedback to Leave Dealing with Negative Feedback How do you know if the buyer or seller you’re dealing with is legitimate—and will pay on time or ship in a timely fashion? [...]
eBay Women Sells Her In Her Ferrari
Auto Blog   Yahoo! News is reporting that a woman in Germany is auctioning off her Ferrari Enzo on eBay with a little added-value bonus – herself. The 26-year-old who claims she worked as a singer in Syria has put the starting price at $1.6 million, and while we have yet to find the [...]
Time Is Money & Warren Buffet is Expensive
Forbes  It may not be as critically acclaimed as My Dinner with Andre. But it probably won’t be as pretentious, either. We speak of a charity luncheon with Warren Buffett, the plain-spoken prairie billionaire. The chance to chat and chew with the Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRK.A – news – people ) chairman was auctioned [...]
Google Just wants to Help Us Shop
 The Financial Express In its quest to “organise the world’s information,” Google now wants to keep track of your credit card number and where you live. The company last week introduced Google Checkout, a service that will allow users to make purchases from online stores using payment and shipping information they keep on file with [...]
The first Carnival of Home Business is up at Start a Side Business.
Amazon Grocery: Death of Retail Stores?
Today, we’re excited to present a review of Amazon Grocery, by guest poster Angie Carlson. What ever happened to good old fashioned retail therapy? With today’s incredible lack of customer service, identification checks, long lines, and hurried customers, it’s no wonder why so many people are turning away from brick and mortar stores. Add a [...]
David Lorenzo: I hate the idea of asking friends and family for money to use in a business. I hate it for three reasons: It changes the dynamics of the relationship. People always feel uncomfortable talking about money. People relate money to power and pride. Both of those things wreak havoc on friendships. The person who [...]
