Archive for March 2009
WebWorkerDaily: One of the dangers of web working is that of getting stuck in a rut. Not that people working in traditional settings aren’t also affected by this professional pitfall. In fact, web workers are probably better off than most because more decisions about how and where we work are generally left up to us. [...]
Advisory Board Big Asset To Small Biz
The Houston Chronicle: Advisory boards work for any size business but can be particularly helpful for a small business. After all, most small businesses don’t have a large management team, but their owners still need to be able to brainstorm ideas and strategies with others who have more than a passing knowledge of their business [...]
Sweetsation Therapy Brings Pregnant Women Beauty Products Without The Guilt
As we’ve all seen through out this recession, tough times can breed new business. That is no different for Natalja Millsap, who found herself unemployed and looking for something different. Natalja was pregnant with her first child and unable to find the products she wanted, when inspiration struck her. As a woman who loved her [...]
Valley's 'Mompreneurs' Work The Home Front
azcentral.com: It’s a familiar scenario throughout much of the Valley: “mompreneurs,” women with children, opting to work from home. And it’s a scenario that could take off in the dour economy as more mothers aim to go into business for themselves to shave child-care expenses while spending more quality time with their kids. But leaving [...]
Make-Up Mom A YouTube Sensation
CBS news: Lauren Luke may not be a household name yet, but to 34 million YouTube viewers she is much more. CBS News correspondent Richard Roth took a closer look at the British Internet sensation. In the 18 months she’s been doing this — talking to the camera as if it’s a girlfriend and sharing [...]
Entrepreneurs Tell Of ‘Lightbulb’ Moments
The Witchita Eagle: Beth Tully had a lucrative 10-year career as an account rep for Coca-Cola when her 50th birthday delivered a “total lightbulb experience.” “My birthday was approaching, and I was wholly dissatisfied with any career path I’d been on,” Tully said. “I’d excelled at anything I’d put my mind to, but I felt [...]
CNNMoney.com: Erik Tivin describes himself as the Fred Sanford of surplus medical equipment, surrounded by all the cast-offs he can scrounge. Each month, Centurion Service Group buys more than 5,000 pieces of used equipment from hospitals and resells the inventory through live, online auctions to healthcare facilities worldwide. “Hospitals aren’t purchasing lots of capital equipment [...]
The Jewish Week: If Eric Forkosh has his way, the days of waiting on a street corner for the school bus to arrive will become a relic of the past. Forkosh, a junior at Rambam Mesivta High School, created Bus Alert!, a handheld unit that uses radio signals to alert students and parents when the [...]
Top Three Difficulties Of Working From Home
GreatDad.com: While working from home brings benefits like family time, sometimes these very benefits can turn into difficulties. Here is a list of the top three difficulties faced by home entrepreneurs: 1. Work-Life Balance While your work-from-home idea stemmed from your desire to balance your work and family life, working from home can tilt the [...]
Make Extra Money Selling Your Extra Stuff
USA TODAY: The economy’s tanking, cash is tight at home, and there are seemingly few ways to quickly make a little extra money. But selling household goods — dare we say, junk — is a proven way, and spring cleaning can provide the perfect impetus. Options abound, from hawking items at pawn shops (where business [...]
WALLTAT Breaks Out Of The Artistic Box With Wall Decals
Almost every home, big or small, has something up to help make each room look a little brighter and welcoming. For those that want to think outside the frame, there is WALLTAT. While the abstract art-like decals might fit well in a living room, children are bound to enjoy something playful and fun for their [...]
Massachusetts Mompreneur Nominated for Two National Competitions
PR Web: Entrepreneur and Mom, Beth Costanzo, has come a long way since opening her home to 10 preschoolers nearly 14 years ago. She has successfully expanded her preschool to accommodate and educate children from over 80 families in and around Gloucester, Massachusetts. Costanzo has taken the curriculum that she and fellow educators created, and [...]
Americans Embrace Cyber Moms’ Blog Bargains
Financial Times: After all the anger directed at bonus-seeking bankers and hapless car executives, the average US consumer has a new heroine: the “frugal cyber mom”, who blogs from home about coupons, free samples and hunting down bargains at her local stores. Jenny Martin, a mother of three pre-school girls who launched her Southern Savers [...]
Lacey writes: What to do to reduce business tax? Would you consider giving me a hand or at least some advice based on your experience?” Editor’s note: This information is based on the tax system for the United States of America. Business owners should seek professional advice regarding their tax liability. Tiare Rath over at [...]
Top 9 Confusing Business Deductions
The following guest post is from Outright.com. It’s tax time, which means almost 21 million self-employed people are preparing to fill out their tax returns, including Schedule C: Profit or Loss from Business. Should be pretty easy – just enter how much money came in and went out of your business last year. Right? Well, [...]
Man Creates Niche Biz Cleaning Up Chewing Gum
The Charleston Post and Courier: Armed with a wand of superheated steam, Charleston’s self-proclaimed goo-buster sets out to eradicate the rainbow of petrified chewing gum that has become a sticky form of folk art in the city’s Market area. Entrepreneur David Samios calls himself The Charleston Gum Guy, and he’s looking to build a niche [...]
Starting A Side Biz In A Down Economy
Trent At TheSimpleDollar.com: Spend less than you earn doesn’t just mean cut back on your spending. It also means striving to earn more income when you can, because the real goal is to maximize the gap between your income and your spending and then use that for a greater purpose (saving for your goals). In [...]
People Flocking To Dating Services Amid Recession
The Boston Globe: Millions of singles are suddenly jumping on the online dating bandwagon, despite the fact they may not be able to afford to go on as many actual dates these days – or expensive ones, anyway. Online matchmaking services – even those requiring fees to join – have seen an unprecedented increase in [...]
Save On Your Franchise Startup
Entrepreneur.com: Most franchise owners will tell you that they could have easily saved quite a bit of money from the costs incurred opening their first units. This begs the question: If this is such a universal truth, then why didn’t the franchise companies show them how to save this money as part of their training? [...]
Men’s Clothing Is Turning Back The Clock With Papa Soul
While this isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned clothing that was vintage, or vintage inspired, Papa Soul is the first business I’ve interviewed in this category that caters to men. By creating a balance of truly vintage pieces and the brands of today, they are able to offer men a sense of fashion that is [...]
Presidential Help For Small Businesses
6abc.com: It’s just really scary right now for all kinds of businesses. I mean I see em come, I see em go.” Angie Brown knows how hard it is to see them go a year before she opened “Soul” restaurant in Chestnut Hill, she owned and operated a restaurant in Mt. Airy, it closed in [...]
Mompreneurs: Balancing Baby And Business
The Hindu Business Line: When Alex Tutwiler, 32, a mechanical engineer, gave birth to her first child she cut down on her work hours from full time to part time so that she could spend more time with her baby. Two years later, when pregnant with her second child, Alex realised how complicated her life [...]
How Do URL Shorteners Make Money?
Have you ever wondered how URL shortening websites like TinyURL, bit.ly and is.gd make money? Me too. There’s an enlightening conversation taking place on Hacker News about just that subject. The short is, they don’t make any money. They don’t. To be honest the majority of url shorteners don’t make any money at all. I [...]
(Not Quite) Earning A Living On Twitter
The Wall Street Journal: When 25-year-old Justin Rockwell was laid off from his job as a Web developer last fall, he began scrounging for freelance gigs. He also found himself spending a lot of time on Twitter, answering Web development problems for fellow Twitterers. Eventually, Rockwell realized there was a market for his services on [...]
photo credit: Olof S Consumers’ conversations have changed. What’s important to them has changed. The stories of their lives have changed and it seems like no one is paying attention. For example: If consumers are talking about eating out less often, then having “fun” at Applebee’s doesn’t seem like it fits (especially if mom or [...]
photo credit: antwerpenR Once people believe others are coming in to sell them, they recoil, put up defenses and begin to rehearse reasons they don’t need whatever it is you’re selling. They may disguise this or do it under the surface, but it’s there. Chalk it up to a basic human emotion: We don’t want [...]
Vending Machine Dispenses Free Samples
Springwise: Created by Belgian marketing and design agency Fosfor, the Boobox is a prototype for a stand-alone machine that distributes product samples. Consumers interested in getting one simply send a free SMS, in exchange for which they are given an activation code. That, in turn, gives them access to the sample. Unlike most vending machines, [...]
25,000 iPhone Apps – Pricing And Popularity Trends
Paid Content: In January, Apple announced it had launched over 15,000 applications on its iPhone. In two months, that number has already jumped to 25,000. VentureBeat used public information and findings from 148Apps to analyze pricing and popularity trends. • The most popular pricepoint is $0.99, not free. (Interesting!) Some 10,274 applications cost $0.99 versus [...]
Glimmer of Hope for Job Creation?
NFIB: William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s leading small business organization, issued the following statement on February job numbers based on NFIB’s monthly economic survey. “There was a decline in average employment per firm of 1.0 workers reported for the past three months by small business owners [...]
Like Customers, HSN Call Center Employees Stay Home
St. Petersburg Times: For 20 hours a week Julie Sardelli fields HSN sales calls in her Pinellas Park home office with two big dogs curled around her feet and two smaller ones parked on the desk, flanking her home computer. “There’s no commute, I can work in my PJs, and when my shift ends, I [...]
SkipMcgrath.com: eBay announced they will be killing the Dutch Auction format effective in May. Since eBay expanded and reduced fees on Fixed Price Listings, the Dutch auction format has been used less and less by sellers where it was once the favored format for listing multiple items. Sellers have until May to change their Dutch [...]
From Mompreneur To Mompreneur: MaryPat Kavanagh Makes It Her Business To Help
LA Working Mom’s Examiner: MaryPat Kavanagh could be considered a Mompreneur Extraordinaire. She’s a mother of 4 girls, runs several businesses, and is an advocate for home-based business moms. She does admit that it hasn’t always been easy. Kavanagh, who has extensive experience in marketing and small business, has owned retail companies, restaurants and consulting [...]
KSFY.com: The downtown construction planned for March coupled with our new economy has businesses downtown Sioux Falls wondering what they can do to keep afloat. When Buffaloberries opened up 10 months ago, the economy looked quite different. Nate West lives and work in D.C. His mom Karen Johnson opened up the business. Now she’s asked [...]
Pharmacist Launches Homegrown Economic Stimulus With $2 Bills
Press-Register: A small-town Alabama pharmacist intrigued by the government’s economic stimulus plan decided to launch his own version with $16,000 in $2 bills, and area stores have already felt the impact. Danny Cottrell gave each of his full-time employees $700 and part-timers $300. He asked them to donate 15 percent to charity and spend the [...]
Sketchy Brain Booster: Doodling
Wired: Good news, doodlers: What your colleagues consider a distracting, time-wasting habit may actually give you a leg up on them by helping you pay attention. Asked to remember names they’d heard on a recording, people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn’t. This suggests that a slightly distracting secondary task [...]
Digital Journal: The recession hasn’t negatively impacted chocolate sales. Folks will celebrate that. If we continue to act in our best interest, and eat more chocolate, its sales won’t slide; and we’ll be better off because of it. Consumer patterns of spending predict that chocolate confectioners will continue to do well, according to reports. It [...]
What’s A Hulu? The Origins Of High-Tech Names
Mental Floss: Can you imagine if, instead of “TiVo-ing” the latest episode of Lost, you were “Bongo-ing” it? “Bongo” and “Lasso” are just two of the 800 possible names the marketing folks kicked around before settling on TiVo. The final name was cobbled together from “TV” and the engineering acronym “I/O,” which stands for “input/output.” [...]
Older Soldiers Find Niche In New Army
The Miami Herald: As the South Florida real estate market disintegrated and the number of jobless rose, 40-year-old Jorge Gil Muela made a young man’s decision. The five-foot-seven, 235-pound property appraiser walked into a recruiting center in a Kendall strip mall to join the Army. He was told to shed 50 pounds. It’s a small [...]
photo credit: Joshua Rappeneker More and more people are offering their skills online by providing expert advice or performing specific tasks for a fee. The WSJ has more about this interesting new idea and trend: Teresa Estes, a licensed mental-health counselor, watched as business at her private practice dwindled last year. Then the single mother [...]
Controlling Business Travel Costs
photo credit: la_cola_de_mi_perro Some businesses find it necessary to go out of town for business wether it be for a meeting, obtaining new clients, making sales pitches, etc. And all of them know how expensive traveling out of town or state can be with the airplane tickets or train, hotel, food, gas if traveling by [...]
photo credit: Marcus Vegas How can you tell if your employees are truly happy at work? Obviously most would answer this with “ask them”, however, any employee with half a brain and a strong desire to have a job the next day will most definitely always answer “yes I am” whether they are or not. [...]
photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography Evaluating a business idea’s “3 M’s” is a good way to quickly separate the good ideas from the bad. Ask yourself these three questions about each of your ideas: 1. Is there a market? The first step is to determine if there are enough customers willing to buy your product [...]
Parenthood Has Never Been This Fashionable
How many people can say they’ve encountered a diaper bag that was gorgeous enough to be a handbag too? Apparently anyone who has purchased one of the bags sold through Maelee Baby. Lindsay has given her line of diaper bags a look on the outside which would fool any untrained eye. However, the real treat [...]
Lack Entrepreneurial Talent? Take A Pill!
If you believe that every successful entrepreneur is wired for business, you might be right. Based on the entrepreneurial ability to tolerate risk and their cognitive flexibility, scientists at Cambridge University believe it might be possible to create a pill that will stimulate entrepreneurial qualities in the average person. So you want to be an [...]
Sherri Morris Is The CrAzY CeO
PRLog: Mom Business Owner and product creator of the My Pregnancy Digi Time Capsule has been labeled as the CrAzY CeO and welcomes her new title. Not the normal reaction when one is labeled as crazy, but Sherri Morris says “if the shoe fits, then why not wear it – a girl can never have [...]
Mom Opens Eatery Among Tough Times
MSNBC: A metro Detroit mother of six said she’s hoping that opening a new restaurant will be enough to support her family. Scrubbing, determination and hope are the first ingredients Suzanne Zoellner has used to get her new cooking business, LuLu White’s Chicken And Dumplings, started. Zoellner said she has not been able to find [...]
Telling Customers Not to Purchase Your Product
photo credit: Russ Neumeier When you think about telling your customers not to purchase your key product of success, you think that’s out of this world crazy. However, for Xerox it worked like a charm, it actually boosted their growth. Rather then working on selling their clients products, they are now selling them solutions such [...]
Three Things to Get More Customers
photo credit: peasap In business we all want as many customers as we can get our hands on, it’s natural, after all our customers is our lively hood, they help our business stay a float and grow. Below are three things that a business must poses in order to obtain a large customer base. A [...]
photo credit: andydr From TechCrunch comes word of a new semester-based startup camp for very, very early-stage entrepreneurs and students who have basic ideas for potential startups but have not yet founded a company: What this economy needs to get out of its rut is more startups. Adeo Ressi, the founder of VC-rating site TheFunded, [...]
Mall Space For Startups And Minipreneurs
Springwise: Last fall Urban Retail’s Oakland Mall in Troy, Mich., began offering small startups and minipreneurs special leasing rates that make it easier for them to test the waters among shoppers at the mall without entering into a long-term contract. Specifically, 12 kiosks have been placed throughout the mall and can be leased for as [...]
