Archive for January 2007
One More Day To Delay Doing Your Taxes
Because April 15th falls on a Saturday Sunday and April 16th is Emancipation Day, a legal holiday in Washington, DC, the IRS has extended the tax deadline until April 17 this year: By law, filing and payment deadlines that fall on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday are timely satisfied if met on the next [...]
This week’s Carnival of Marketing is up at Being Peter Kim
Lessons From Mastering Selling on eBay
Like most who sell on eBay, my initiation with the site was as a buyer. Once I had a feel for how things operated, I realized it was the ideal way to achieve my dream of making money without ever having to theoretically put on pants. Fast-forward five years and selling on eBay has become [...]
Yesterday Skype reached 9 million peak concurrent users. Read more about it at on the Skype Blog. But despite the new record, growth does seem to be slowing considerably. I have mentioned before that peak concurrent users is not the only criteria to asses growth but it is certainly the easiest metric to access. Blogger [...]
Five Signs You May Be a Workaholic
College Journal: In the age of the BlackBerry, laptop and cell phone, distinguishing between workaholics and people just doing what’s expected in their jobs can be difficult. When devotion to work becomes unhealthy side effects may include fatigue, sleep disorders, and stress-related ailments, such as heart attack and stroke, says Diane Fassel, author of Working [...]
Upstart Aims to Soup Up Ramen Noodles
The Wall Street Journal: Instant ramen noodles, long hawked as a cheap, quick food for college kids and others with lean budgets, are going gourmet. Last fall, Union Foods Newcorp. of Irvine, Calif., launched several ramen-noodle products, including Gourmet Snack Noodles Soup and Mamma Mia microwaveable noodles, that are low in sodium, have no monosodium [...]
Boy’s Bubble Wrap Invention Helps Amputees
The Associated Press: You can do a lot with Bubble Wrap. A Tennessee teenager has used it to fashion an inexpensive cosmetic covering for artificial limbs. Grayson Rosenberger said his inspiration was his mom, a double amputee who has a ministry that provides artificial limbs to Third World countries. The 15-year-old Nashville youngster said he [...]
Entrepreneur Magazine: Ever wish you had a cheat sheet for starting a great business? Brian Tracy’s 7 core principles are as close to it as you can get. 1. Clarity: You must be absolutely clear on who you are and what you want. 2. Competence: To be truly successful and happy, you must be very [...]
‘Get Your Head in the Game’ Maryland Sports Invention Challenge
PRWeb: By Kids For Kids Co. announced the official launch of its 2nd annual Maryland invention challenge, “Get Your Head in the Game.” This year’s competition will uncover the best new sports or sporting equipment ideas dreamt up by Maryland’s youth. Winners will partake in an exciting awards ceremony in front of a roaring crowd [...]
Entrepreneur Takes A Shine To Moonshine
The Wichita Eagle: Before he moved to North Carolina in the mid-`90s, Joseph Michalek’s New York buddies kidded him about coming to the land of moonshine and Mayberry. Within months of arriving in Winston-Salem, he began to notice a glass jar quietly being passed around at bluegrass festivals and race tracks. “I’d never seen nor [...]
Pension Law Can Benefit Small Businesses
Associated Press: Now is the time for small business owners to bone up on a new law that makes big changes in employee retirement plans. The Pension Protection Act of 2006, passed in August, rewrote many of the rules on pensions in an effort to aid owners and employees alike. While some changes won’t kick [...]
Found in Translation: Home Biz
BusinessWeek: According to 2000 U.S. Census data, nearly 47 million people who live in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home. That’s a huge group of potential customers, and myriad corporations seek to capture their consumer spending power, notes Nataly Kelly, a former court interpreter and the author of a book, Telephone [...]
ABC News Online: People who upload their own films to the video-sharing website YouTube will soon get a share of the advertising revenue. YouTube founder Chad Hurley has confirmed that his team is working on a revenue-sharing mechanism that would “reward creativity”. He said the system would be rolled out in a couple of months [...]
Firm Finds Niche Supporting Internet Radio Stations
Scripps Howard News Service: Liquid Compass “powers” more than 500 Internet radio stations in the United States, buying the bandwidth and operating and monitoring the streaming audio. It charges around $250 a month per station for providing that service. The 13-employee company also develops Web sites and customized Internet audio/media players, and provides software that [...]
Microsoft Vista: Now or Later?
Will you update your computer(s) with the new Microsoft Vista? Update now Wait and see pollcode.com free polls
MSNBC: As soon as the TTY operator told me the call was coming from Nigeria, while the woman had me on hold, I knew something was up,� notes Bruce Webber of Webber Floor Covering in Maple Heights, Ohio. Webber had received calls from TTY operators before, working on behalf of the hearing impaired. In this [...]
The Bodoin Orient: Chatting over sushi, seniors Robert Burns and Sarah Schoen seem like typical students—except for the fact that they just made more than $50,000 in profit with their recently founded computer resale business, which was founded just four months ago. The idea for the business first struck Burns last summer while he was [...]
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Long or Short Capital.
Associated Press: One of the most tempting but also terrifying small business tax deductions is for a home office — deducting the cost of operating out of your home can help you save on taxes, but complying with IRS regulations can be a little daunting. Accountants say the good news is that the deduction, which [...]
Dirty Public Restrooms Yield Invention
NBC5Dallas: Many people dread using public restrooms, but two North Texans have an invention that promises to keep people germ-free. According to Centers for Disease Control, 30 to 40 percent of people don’t wash their hands after using a public restroom. That gave Arlington’s Steve Arnold and Leighton Harvey an idea. They developed the Footpull. [...]
Small Biz Timesaver: Buying Postage Online
Work.com: For the small business owner, time at the post office is time away from your business, because odds are you don’t have the manpower to afford to send someone. Additionally, by integrating all of your postage expenses into 1 account, you don’t have to manage a shoe box of post office receipts, or worry [...]
Felicity Huffman: Mother of Invention
Celebrity Baby Blog: Felicity Huffman, actress and mother of two daughters, talked about her new invention, the Head’s Up Pillow. She created the product because her neck hurt when she rocked her daughters in her glider. She said, “pillows would always slide down, so out of frustration and sleep-deprivation, I pulled out my sewing machine [...]
Entrepreneurial Skills Conference For Women
Inc.: Small-business owners from across the country are being invited to take part in this year’s Entrepreneurial Skills Conference for women to be held at the Microsoft Conference Center in Mountain View, Calif., on Feb. 8 – 9, organizers said. The two-day event, sponsored in part by the Small Business Administration and the Forum for [...]
Not Your Mother’s Hunting Clothes
When Sheila Zmigrosky left Dallas for her first African safari, she searched far and wide, but was appalled at the “little boy” hunting attire she had to settle for. So she promptly created The Foxy Huntress, a line of safari chic and hunting apparel, a collection of curvy chic clothes sans bulky fabrics for serious [...]
DailyPress.com: Last weekend Nia Dotson hit the streets for about three hours. “I stopped,” she says softly, “when my feet started to hurt.” She’s a small girl with small feet. But she has a big goal and an impressive track record. Nia, a 9-year-old fourth-grader at Forrest Elementary School, sold more than 1,100 boxes of [...]
2007 Success Strategies for Businesswomen Conference
Office Depot is expanding the 2007 Success Strategies for Businesswomen Conference from one location to six cities, including Orlando, FL; Dallas, TX; Orange County, CA; Chicago, IL; Washington, DC; and Philadelphia, PA. The conference, recognized as one of the nation’s most prominent events for women business owners and corporate female professionals, has been restructured into [...]
eBay & Google Team Up Internationally
eBay and Google are beginning to work together as part of an online advertising agreement the two entered into last August. The multi-year agreement makes Google the exclusive text-based advertising service for eBay outside the United States that also involves “click-to-call” advertising functionality. Visitors to some non-US eBay sites, including in Canada and the UK, [...]
Virtual Item Auctions In Limbo on eBay
A new report from technology news site Slashdot has revealed that online auction house Ebay intends to remove listings for all virtual items, regardless of type or game title, clamping down on third-party sales of gold and accounts from many popular MMOs. Despite the Slashdot piece further explaining continued in-game item and currency sales through [...]
Modesto Bee: Add a little flair to your home-office organization with these ideas from Better Homes and Gardens’ January issue: Place a vintage muffin tin or a deeper popover pan in your desk’s top drawer to contain small supplies. Use self-adhesive hook-and-loop fastener dots to mount mismatched forks on the wall, tine end down. The [...]
Skype Growing Slower Than Expected
Internet auction giant Ebay has admitted that it’s disappointed by the revenue return generated by its voice-over IP company Skype, which it acquired in 2005. Despite Skype’s registered user numbers tripling to 171m by the end of 2006, Ebay’s CEO Meg Whitman told an investor conference that efforts to monetise the service had not lived [...]
NY Times: One of Bradley Ziegler’s favorite days is the day after Christmas, when the bargain bins at Toys “R� Us and Wal-Mart are filled with marked-down DVDs and GameCube games. As he has done for the past two years, Bradley will pick up an armful of $3.99 games and movies and then auction them [...]
5 Marketing Tools for Home-Based Businesses
AllBusiness: Because a home-based business doesn’t have a storefront for passers-by to notice and no opportunity to generate walk-in business, home-based businesses need marketing other types of businesses, not less. Not marketing your home-based business will almost certainly doom it to failure. 1. Direct mail. still a cost-effective way to advertise in many industries. 2. [...]
Six Reasons Why Most Home Based Businesses Fail
Union Sentinel: Every day thousands of people are looking to get out of the “rat race” to work at home. Most of those people want to get started on a home based business so badly that they do not always make wise decisions in choosing a home based business opportunity. As a result, many fail [...]
Home-Business Rules Get Tougher
Chicago Tribune: The Naperville (Illinois) City Council is cracking down on home-based business activities encroaching on residential neighborhoods. The council voted 7-2 to amend the home-based business ordinance so that it no longer restricts the number of employees working in the home, but limits activity outside the home. Complaints over the last year about home [...]
Practical Ecommerce: Abby Weaver is the marketing director for Fajita Grill, a small restaurant with locations in Oswego and Fulton, New York, that successfully uses email marketing and its website to boost sales. “Even before we opened the first restaurant, we had a website. It was just the basics with contact info, and was primarily [...]
Inventor’s Creation Tracks Mice
TheReddingPilot.com: David Curtis is holding a black light and following the tiny glowing footprints of maraudering field mice. “It’s CSI for field mice,� he said recently of his new mouse tracking system, RodoTrak. It offers what he calls a baited box with a car-wash effect dousing mice with florescent powder. As the warm temperatures dip [...]
Cheerios, An Invention That Almost Didn’t Happen
WCCO-TV: It’s a staple of the American breakfast table — Cheerios. The cereal was developed at General Mills by Lester Borchardt who was Vice President and Director of Research. Cheerios, originally called Cheerioats, were invented back in 1941, but almost didn’t happen. Borchardt and his team were working on the machine to puff cereal, like [...]
Hold The Coffee, Grab A Buzz Donut!
PRNewswire: If that cup o’ joe you drink each morning to get moving is getting old, just wait. You soon may be able to get the same jolt from a donut or bagel. A North Carolina scientist has developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods and is now pitching the concept to some [...]
Practical Ecommerce: Roman Kagan has built a successful niche business, AppliancePartsPros.com, selling hard-to-find appliance parts to do-it-yourself types around the country. The site was launched in 1999 featuring about 300 products and in seven years has grown to showcase more than 1 million parts for 170,000 appliance models. Along the way, the business has grown [...]
Low-Cost Ways To Keep Staff Motivated
Newsday: Money has always been a great workplace motivator. But as a small-business owner, you can’t afford to shower your staff with cash and bonuses. Not to worry. There are plenty of low-cost ways to motivate your staff without breaking the bank, experts say. Employees are more productive if they are happy with their jobs [...]
Niche Biz: Pool Climbing Walls
Springwise: Scramble to the top and drop down with a splash. Made from fiberglass finished with a non-slip surface, AquaClimb climbing walls are a novel addition to public and residential swimming pools. A modular system of 3′ x 3′ (1 x 1 m) fiberglass panels allows walls to be configured to fit any pool width [...]
Business Startup Rate Drops In U.S.
New Mexico Business Weekly: Slightly more than 10 percent of American adults are starting or running a new business, according to the 2006 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. That’s down from 12.4 percent a year ago, but within the statistical margin of error, according to GEM researchers. In every country except the Philippines, men are more likely [...]
PayPals New Tool To Fight Phishing
I’ve done a couple of posts lately about password cracking and online security, and in your emails and comments I can hear your frustration: What is being done about this online epidemic? Well, PayPal (one of the most heavily-targeted financial websites) is finally taking steps in the right direction, with a hardware security key that [...]
Google’s Promo Has Affected PayPal
Maybe it is a coincidence. Google recently started to offer a $10 credit to e-commerce customers who use its CheckOut product. For a few days Google (GOOG) even highlighted the offer for its PayPal competitor on its home page. At about the same time, traffic to Ebay’s (EBAY) PayPal site has dropped sharply. According to [...]
Analysts Watching eBay’s Core Auction Weakness
The world’s No. 1 auction Website, Ebay is showing weakness in its core auction revenue with no indication of improving conversion rates, despite lower listings, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy. “Investors should focus on user monetization and marketing efficiency metrics,” writes Rashtchy. The investment banking analyst noted that listings were down 8 to [...]
Skype Cleared By Judge in Antitrust Lawsuit
A federal judge has thrown out an antitrust lawsuit filed by the distributor of Morpheus file-sharing software against Internet phone service provider Skype Technologies SA, eBay Inc. and other defendants. StreamCast Networks Inc. had sought more than $4.1 billion in unspecified damages and a court order blocking eBay from selling Skype services. In her Jan. [...]
Is Google Slow Start Making an Impact on PayPal?
That’s what I call a good, but not massive, start. They also found that: * Google Checkout users are younger (57% under 35), more likely to be male (penetration rates 2x more for men) and more affluent (34% have incomes over $75,000) than PayPal. * Only 19% of Google Checkout users reported it as Good [...]
USA Today: President’s Bush’s State of the Union health care proposal couples an old idea, capping tax-free benefits for health care, with a new one: a standard deduction for all who buy health insurance. If approved, and the plan faces a chilly reception in the Democrat-controlled Congress, the administration says it would give people who [...]
The Passionate Entrepreneur: In the United States, microlending is often achieved through credit cards because formal microlending is too expensive administratively for traditional banks. But many of the neediest people don’t have credit histories, and credit cards have very high interest rates. The Clinton administration introduced a microloan program to be administered primarily by nonprofit [...]
Inc.: Greg Wittstock, who likes to be called the Pond Guy, built his first pond at the age of 12. Today, more than 20 years later, Wittstock runs a thriving empire that not only builds backyard ponds, but supplies and teaches thousands of contractors every year on the latest and greatest Aquascape techniques. “I moved [...]
