Archive for September 2009
Jenga: The Remarkable Business of Creating a Game
New Jersey Business: Leslie Scott was fiddling with her kid brother’s wooden toy blocks one day when she began stacking one on top of another. With no purpose in mind, the 17-year-old, who was living in Ghana at the time, continued stacking. And stacking. Nearly four decades later, the game she invented that day — [...]
Journal Sentinel: As the last group of fans walked out of Lambeau Field on a Sunday afternoon, the iconic seating bowl looked more like a landfill than the home of the Green Bay Packers. It was quite a collection the 70,000 or more football fans left behind. Paper cups, plastic beer bottles, straws, plastic drink [...]
Start Your Own Company Using Iphone
Fast Company: Now would-be entrepreneurs have a new tool to make launching a business easier: the Start Your Own Company app for the iPhone. This .99 application offers a streamlined, step-by-step approach to becoming your own boss — and is the first iPhone app to actually walk users through that process. The Start Your Own [...]
The Boston Globe: The leaves may have barely begun to fall, and the still-strong sun banishes thoughts of December. But like it or not, the holiday shopping season, in all its gift-giving cheer and consumerist frenzy, is already underway. It began even earlier than usual this year, with a few stores displaying Christmas items in [...]
Tech For Disabled Going Mainstream
BusinessWeek: Apple is widely celebrated for making devices as easy to use as they are elegantly designed. What customers probably don’t know is that some of these features aren’t exactly new—they evolved from software Apple created to help disabled people use PCs. Among them: the new iPhone’s voice control option, which allows users to speak [...]
Product Placements Aren’t Just For Big Companies
The Wall Street Journal: Product appearances in TV shows and movies are no longer exclusively for big companies with marketing budgets to match. Publicists and other promoters are actively going after small businesses for product-placement opportunities. And from Facebook to Twitter to bloggers, more ways exist to chat up and spread the word about a [...]
Washington Post: What a profile they cut, slicing through the city: gorgeous, exotic, dangerous. You see them parked like emaciated steeds outside the coolest clubs. We are talking about a bicycle. A very special kind of road bicycle, called a fixed-gear bike, or fixie for short. A fixie has one speed, which makes it difficult [...]
Website Magazine: Finding users who will not only interact with your brand but actually help you promote it is one of the hardest jobs of any Internet marketer. Who are these users and where do you find them? According to a new study from media research firm Interpret, LLC, the answer just might lie with [...]
When did you last use Google search? 5 minutes ago 1 hour ago 1 day ago Never use it View Results Photo by Google.
Mom's Business Grew From Desire To Teach
Lansing State Journal: Cheryl Miller and Heather Lewis are moms who want their kids to learn something in every situation – even in the car on the way to after-school activities. But when they bought educational CDs to play on the way to skating and drum lessons, the women found them lacking. “They all sounded [...]
Efusjon Brings All-Natural Ingredients To Energy Drinks
The term “all-natural” is not one we commonly see in reference to an energy drink but a new network marketing company is here to change that, Efusjon. Although they are still a relatively young company, the growth they have seen has been promising. Currently offering 4 all-natural products, the company looks to take on the [...]
BallStars: Putting Photos and Logos on Balls
The BallStars heat transfer system offer entrepreneurs a full-color heat transfer process that can cost-effectively produce photo sports balls. Their business opportunity comes complete with everything you need to start selling sports balls. You will be able to print photos, graphics, text, logos, and anything you can imagine right onto authentic signature-style sports balls. With [...]
Groceries in Manhattan are so expensive that one guy with a truck has started a business delivering groceries. He will go to Costco and split the savings with you. Each Non-Perishable item for sale has a “Costco” price and the “Average New York City” price for the exact same item but with Costco-sized bulk packing. [...]
Somewhere between 7 and 10 percent of the worldwide adult population is left-handed. Is that a big enough market for your products? It might be. photo credit: 22280677@N07 Telegraph: While left-handed people have been catered to by a number of manufacturers, producing everything from left-handed video cameras, wallets, scissors and pencil sharpeners, this is the [...]
Not everyone is a fan of family-friendly workplaces. About 20% of employees surveyed by staffing firm Adedco, grumbled that they often pick up the slack for co-workers juggling children and career. Add some wit to that resentment and you get TheOfficeKid.com, which offers childless workers who want to duck out early a visible excuse of [...]
Brainstorm With The World’s Experts
ReadWriteWeb: GuruStorms, a new twist on the brainstorming concept which connects you with subject-matter experts instead of with the general public. The new site lets anyone post a question along with a monetary “reward” for answers. Then all you have to do is wait for the experts to weigh in. And don’t worry – unlike [...]
Associated Press: The New Jersey laboratory where Thomas Edison perfected some of his most famous inventions is reopening with a wealth of restored material. The Thomas Edison National Historical Park has undergone a six-year, $13 million overhaul. Edison built the lab and other buildings in West Orange in 1887 and worked there until his death [...]
Big fancy wedding cakes are the center of any wedding reception. Unfortunately, they’re expensive, difficult to transport and can be easily be damaged by heat and humidity at outdoor events. One company realized this and figured out a way to profit from it. FunCakes rents fake wedding cakes. Their cake is made of foam, but [...]
Sell Advertising on Their Back
Mark Cuban, billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks has a free t-shirt business idea: I was in NY for most of the week. Every time I walked past a newsstand or street vendor it disturbed me to no end that they wore their own clothing. In particularly, their own T-Shirts. Why? Because it made [...]
Kid Entrepreneur Is Making Bucks
Gig Harbor Life: Joe Hayes is something of a boy wonder. The 12-year-old, who’s just begun sixth grade at Goodman Middle School, makes body lotions, soaps and candles that he sells at the Gig Harbor Farmers Market and online under the business name Eau du Joe Bodyworks. He’s been doing it since he was 8. [...]
Fortune Small Business: Like many retailers, Jim Hobart knows the value of a good testimonial. The online store he co-founded, AlpacaDirect.com, always offered a page full of cherry-picked customer comments raving about the site’s alpaca sweaters, socks and yarn. But recently Hobart, 47, decided to take the idea a step further: He hired PowerReviews, whose [...]
Entrepreneurs Learning Tricks Of Trade
The Dallas Morning News: Ashley Roberts had the name set: Bridal Brilliance by Ashley. She’d filed her registration and ordered the business cards. She’d even found a way to advertise “Wedding Planner” on her car door. All she needed was to learn how to become one. Roberts attends a twice-weekly wedding planning class at Collin [...]
Banking By Mobile Phone Unleashes Third World Entrepreneurial Wave
photo credit: whiteafrican The Power of Mobile Money at the Economist website discusses how banking via mobile phone is unleashing entrepreneurship in the Third World. These phones compensate for inadequate infrastructure, such as bad roads and slow postal services, allowing information to move more freely, making markets more efficient and unleashing entrepreneurship…With such phones now [...]
Out-Of-Work Architect Resorts To Sandwich Board
KOMO News: On a tree-lined street in the city’s Madison Park neighborhood filled with fancy cars and million-dollar homes, Jeff Soule stands out. “I used to live here,” he said. Soule is no longer a neighborhood resident, but he returned to his old neck of the woods in search of work. And he came prepared [...]
Top Ten Tasks You Should Be Outsourcing
photo credit: jekert gwapo TargetStars blog: In order to be successful, you have to master the art of delegation. No one makes it to the top alone because success is the result of a team effort. Again, I am not trying to talk anyone out of attempting to tackle difficult tasks, but you have to [...]
Mom/Daughter Team Discover Beauty Of Change As They Launch Their Shop
Democrat and Chronicle: Pamela Hines was passing through the Rochester airport in April 2008 when she became fully aware of how fractured her life had become. As she was leaving on business, which she did on a weekly basis, a security employee told Hines that she was in the airport so often, he had come [...]
Mom Aims To Help Kids Relax Through Her Stories
Stress is a problem that everyone faces and it can have a very negative effect, especially on children. When her son was having a hard time going to sleep at night Lori Lite came up with a solution, a bedtime story that made use of proven relaxation techniques. That first story has since transformed into [...]
Do you clean houses for a living? Would you like to expand your business but are too busy actually cleaning to market your services? Do you even know where to start? Maid Services of America is a house cleaning business opportunity and can show you how to make the change from house cleaner to successful [...]
Learning From Martha: 10 Rules For Starting A Biz
WomenHomeBusiness: What does it take to really need to successfully start a business? Martha Stewart, one of the most successful women in business today, lists down the essential elements to start an entrepreneurial venture in her book “The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business.” The idea [...]
What Makes A Good Entrepreneur?
Gannett News Service: Most business books and experts assert that there’s just one kind of person who can be a successful entrepreneur. you have to be a risk taker, extroverted, a natural salesperson, a leader of others willing to work ’round the clock and a visionary. Look around: You may know someone who’s self-employed, making [...]
Charging Just A Little Can Be Smarter Than Charging Nothing At All
Fast Company: The strategy of giving everything away often creates as many hassles as it solves. Why charging just a little can be smarter than charging nothing at all. Why? Because free costs too much, weighed down with hassles that you’ll happily pay a little to do without. That’s why people buy bottled water and [...]
Used Books: A Great Business Opportunity
Used books don’t go away once they’ve been read once. They stick around for a long, long time and can make you lots of money.
photo credit: Torley Systematize the Best Solutions. Once you’ve chosen the BEST solutions, create a system that solves them forever, so they don’t come up again or that anyone is able to fix them. Create so many systems that it makes people cringe. That’s organization. I recently came across a great article on Sentiment Of [...]
Twitter Changing The Way Nonprofits Make The Ask
Fast Company: Can non-profits raise awareness, increase membership, and–most critically–“make the ask” successfully on Twitter? Can a 140-character message deliver the visceral wallop of, say, heart-wrenching footage of starving children covered in flies or the sad eyes of a neglected and abused animal? The answer is yes. According to Beth Kanter, author of Beth’s Blog: [...]
photo credit: ottonassar As a business owner we know that one of our most powerful tools to our company is our website. Through our website our clients can contact us, place orders, ask questions, read about us and how we got to where we are, leave helpful suggestions and requests, leave reviews regarding our service [...]
10 Tools Small Business Marketers Should Have
photo credit: Nikolay Bachiyski If you are like most of the business people out there, you are someone who works constantly, you try to squeeze 35 hours worth of work into a single 24 hour day, you find yourself feeling overwhelmed and always behind on your work. You know that efficiency is one of the [...]
Inventor Has A Lock On Unique Product
Orlando Sentinel: In the aftermath of the 2004 hurricane season, several clients of Michael Cennamo’s home-trim business complained of leaks from their front doors damaged from the storms. The 57-year-old Eustis resident wanted to come up with a solution to make entrance doors stronger during powerful storms. He invented a safety lock bolt to install [...]
Uncle Sam Can Help Home-Based Biz
AllBusiness.com: It’s quite a staggering fact that in the last few years home-based businesses have grown to represent 52% of all small businesses and 10 percent of the total receipts of the economy (approximately $314 billion), according to the Small Business Administration (SBA). At the root of this trending is the fact that of all [...]
Instead Of Competing, Find An Empty Niche
Businessweek: The lone entrepreneur, the business that decides to stay small on purpose, or the aspiring microcelebrity, the strategy of negating competition by owning your space may be right up your alley. Here’s how to do it. • First, become the name that comes up when people think of the space you want to own. [...]
Anti-Obama Entrepreneur Kicked Out of Mall
Dan Fuchs operates a small mall kiosk in Johnson City, Tennessee. His business, Graphic Edge, prints slogans and graphics on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and bumper stickers. Unfortunately for him, more than half of his business came from anti-Obama merchandise, sos the mall has decided to kick him out.. Johnson City Press: Friday afternoon, Fuchs was [...]
We Are The New Business Owners
More and more moms are looking for a way to bring some money into the household without having to physically leave it. For that reason, we are becoming the new business owners. As the mom in ‘mom and pop’ continues to expand into the world of business, some wonderful resources are sprouting up to offer [...]
Artisanal Cookies At Farmers Markets
The Dallas Morning News: Farmers markets are more than great places to find farm-fresh fruits, vegetables and meats. They’re also perfect spots to buy direct from artisan producers, little guys making everything from cheese to chocolates. It’s not too late in the season to discover three bakeries – Tough Cookie Bakery, Wackym’s Kitchen and Kessler [...]
Hula Hoops: From Child’s Play to Real Exercise
Time Magazine: To get in shape for her October wedding, Dawn-Samantha Cahill, 25, tried every exercise routine she could think of. Cahill was nearly ready to give up, until one day last spring, she discovered a video on YouTube about hula-hooping. “The woman in the video was so sexy, and the moves she was making [...]
Come Up With Innovative Ideas–By Sleeping
OPEN Forum: Have you ever solved a gnarly problem after sleeping on it? I know I have. In fact, I’ve been known to sit down before bedtime and review a particularly challenging problem, just to tee it up for my mind to “work” on overnight. An important part of developing creative ideas is to “incubate” [...]
Montreal Gazette: There’s really no need for it, but North Americans now are in the habit of replacing their pillows every two or three years. Which suits Nino Saad just fine. Saad is the head of Les Accessoires Sleep Comfort Inc., a small family business that has found a niche making and stuffing pillows. Its [...]
Pioneer Woman, Internet And Publishing Sensation
The Los Angeles Times: Ree Drummond likes to call herself an accidental country girl and she considers herself something of an accidental cook. But there’s nothing accidental about the success she’s built combining those two. Drummond writes the Pioneer Woman blog and gets about 13 million page views a month, enough to spin off a [...]
Consumers Say “No” to Paid News Content
Website Magazine: Times are tough in the publishing world. And the news doesn’t seem to be getting any better. A new survey from PaidContent:UK and Harris Interactive polled nearly 1,200 UK readers and found that a scant five percent would consider paying for their “favorite” news site if it began charging for access. Close to [...]
Small Bizs See U.S. Economy Improving
Reuters: Many U.S. small businesses are optimistic about growth and see the economy improving in three to six months, according to a survey released on Friday. Four out of five small businesses are pursuing a moderate or aggressive growth strategy, expanding into new markets and producing more revenue among existing customers, according to the survey [...]
Build A Better Bulb For $10 Million
The New York Times: The ubiquitous but highly inefficient 60-watt light bulb badly needs a makeover. And it could be worth millions in government prize money — and more in government contracts — to the first company that figures out how to do it. Right now, that company could be Philips, the Dutch electronics giant. [...]
Fast Company: Just how far away can one get from the convenience of McDonald’s at any given time? Turns out, not very. Stephen von Worley at Weather Sealed set out to chart the urban sprawl of America by mapping the 13,000+ locations of McDonald’s across the lower 48 states. With the aid of Agg Data, [...]
