Archive for February 2010
New in the Directory This Week
One of the often overlooked sections of this website is our directory. Over 2300 different bizops, franchises, dealerships and online opportunities are listed there. Here are the new companies from this week: Business Opportunities Nichols Bronze Supply Franchises 1-800 Pack-Rat 1-800 Water Damage 1-800-DryCarpet 1800Flowers.com 1st Propane Applebee’s Bagel Factory Bubba Gump Shrimp Co Cardsmart [...]
Dust Cover For Dog Patent 3,150,641 Pneumatic Shoe Lacing Apparatus Patent No. 5,205,055 Apparatus For Facilitating Birth Of Child By Centrifugal Force Patent No. 3,216,423 Cheese-Filter Cigarette Patent 3,234,948 Photos by USPTO.
Mother & Son Keep Their Business Cooking
We’ve bought products from mom and pop stores. We’ve even purchased services from father and son businesses. But, The Augusta Chronicle wonders, when was the last time you ate at at a mother and son restaurant? Jackie McCalla and her son Clinton McCalla Jr. hope the number will be many as word of mouth spreads [...]
Business Advice From Van Halen
What if you could identify the early-warning signs of a business problem? What if, in fact, the red flags are there right now, waving at you unheeded from information you’ve already collected asks Fast Company. Your source of data doesn’t need to be high tech. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be numerical. Consider [...]
Florist Confirms Each Bouquet With e-Photo
Trendspotter Springwise reports that one of the keys to e-commerce success is to ensure that customers know exactly what they’re ordering. That has been an elusive goal for florists, thanks to fluctuations in flowers’ appearance and availability; the result is that customers must typically take it on faith that they’ll get something similar to what [...]
Trends via TrendHunter.com.
Those of you who still use the penny as currency may soon notice America’s 1-cent coin has gotten a facelift, according to a story at MSN Money. The U.S. Mint has changed the design for the reverse — or “tails” — side of the 2010 Lincoln Cent, which entered circulation on Feb. 11 (everywhere but [...]
Before I moved to the mountains, I never thought much about propane. Sure, I occasionally had to go to Walmart to swap my barbecue’s empty propane tank for full one, but otherwise all of the gas we used in our home was natural gas and was delivered via pipes under the streets. Now that I [...]
Lizard Inspires New Adhesive Tape
Keep your eye on the shelves of your local hardware store, where you may be able to find new tape from an unlikely source: the gecko, reports The New York Times. Geckos have millions of microscopic hairs on their toes, each with hundreds of tips that adhere to surfaces, with no residue left behind,” said [...]
A reader wrote: What exactly is a franchise? In its most simple definition, a franchise is a business opportunity that allows the franchisee (possibly you) to start your business by legally using someone else’s (the franchisor’s) expertise, ideas, and processes. In some cases, this means also having the right to use the franchisor’s established name [...]
Local Food Delivery: Dine-in Delivery
Dine-in Delivery is a meal delivery service business opportunity. They deliver food from restaurants that don’t have their own delivery service. The delivery business is a big business. Dominos, who only delivers pizza did $5.1 billion in 2007. Dine-in Delivery can deliver food from from every imaginable type of restaurant. Local Dine-in Delivery operations sign [...]
Large corporations have been testing a new device that can generate power on the spot, without being connected to the electric grid. Will we have one in every home someday? 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl reports. What do you think about the Bloom Box? Will the oil companies bury the technology? Does it sound too good [...]
Call it “YouTube U.” The Philadelphia Inquirer says more and more people are turning to YouTube for demonstrations of skills they’d like to learn. But increasingly, the video-sharing Web site is also the place to go when you want to learn something. Be it how to do the moonwalk, fix a dripping kitchen sink, perfect [...]
Steeped Tea is a home-based party business from Canada that brings the tea room into the hostess’ home. Attendees talk about the health benefits of loose leaf tea and the different kinds of tea while being served three different teas. They have a pretty extensive catalog of loose leaf tea, too. If you enjoy tea, [...]
Pandora’s Founder Out Of The Box
Tim Westergren talks about Pandora’s place in the evolving worlds of music and technology in this report from CNNMoney.
Niche Biz: “Passengers of Size”
Mike Stuben is 6 feet 1 and weighs 370 pounds. He is also a frequent flier. The Florida man has become a travel guru for “passengers of size” says the St. Petersburg Times. Stuben offers overweight readers tips on how to make traveling more comfortable for themselves and their seatmates on his website, Traveling Sense. [...]
Advantage Products Group Has It All For Brides & Beyond
It takes a very determined business owner to keep their business growing at a time when so many have gone under and Sandy Keller is one such owner. Sandy is the founder of Advantage Products Group LLC, which is the umbrella company over a series of 7 different online shops. From products for brides to [...]
Intrapreneur’s 10 Commandments
If you find yourself in a big company, you can still be “intrapreneurial” — a term that refers to entrepreneurial activities in an otherwise non-entrepreneurial environment. In his blog, Ben Casnocha talks about the 10 Commandments for Intrapreneurs. 1. Come to work each day willing to be fired. 2. Circumvent any orders aimed at stopping [...]
Starting from Scrap: My Favorite Business Book of 2010 (So Far)
If you enjoy the kinds of businesses we profile here on Business Opportunities Weblog, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that you’ll enjoy the book Starting from Scrap by Stephen Greer. In 1993 at the age of 24, American Stephen Greer gave up his steady back office job in Germany and moved to [...]
Niche Biz Idea: Online Kit Kat Store
photo credit: friedtoast If you’ve only ever eaten a Kit Kat in the United States, you’d have no idea that an entire world of candy goodness awaits you beyond our shores. Kit Kats in the USA do not taste like those in the rest of the world, because they are produced under license by The [...]
When Vanessa Troyer and Chris Farentinos first hit on the idea that would change their lives, they were thinking big — a little too big, actually, according to a story in The New York Times. It was a mail receptacle/guest house,” Farentinos jokes, describing an oversize, locking mailbox nicknamed the Elephant Trunk. His wife agrees. [...]
Mom Inventor Cleans Up Sippy Straw Grime
It all started last year when Jennifer Reyes was trying to clean the gunk out of a sippy cup straw, reports kvue.com. “I had pulled out a moldy, icky cup from in the car that had been there for probably 2-3 days that I didn’t know had rolled underneath the seat,” she said. She tried [...]
For those who spend all day at screens, how to protect your eyes, by Celine Roque at Web Worker Daily. One of the more common risks of extensive computer use is eye strain. You know you’re experiencing this when your eyes feel sore or tired, sometimes to the point of causing pain. Sometimes your eyes [...]
Can Your Business Be Successful Without a Website?
A reader wrote: Dear Dane, Does my small business need a website, or can I just a Facebook Fan Page to promote my services? If recent big television commercials are any indication, some very large companies think that they can do business online without a website. During Super Bowl 44, for example, many of the [...]
Invention Saving Food for Those in Need
ABC News 4 reports finding a way to save food that’s still good for those in need. “It’s a chamber that we designed to do a non-destructive test on a can that was potentially suspected of having a leak or a seem violation,” said Rich Dabruzzi, a five year volunteer with the Lowcountry Food Bank [...]
(Re)Discover Bizops and Ideas You’ve Missed
I’m excited to announce a a new site feature designed to help readers discover some of the content we’ve posted over the years. Called Random, this single link is a gateway to the thousand of posts on Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog. We’ve been posting business opportunities and ideas since 2001, over 16,000 of them [...]
CNNMoney reports that a 30 year GM veteran is applying his auto industry knowledge to a company that makes vehicles for the disabled.
According to an article in Mental Floss, “An hour’s nap in the afternoon can boost a person’s brain power and improve their memory … showing that short periods of sleep during the day can make it easier to function mentally.” It all happens in the hippocampus, which is a part of our brain which temporarily [...]
Inventors Eye: New Publication from USPTO
Inventors Eye is a new publication by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Inventors Eye is targeted at the independent and small entity inventor community. Inventors Eye will appear every other month. Each issue will feature information you can use, tips on working with the USPTO; events, organizations and meetings of interest to the [...]
New Bizop Classified Ads This Week
New listing this week on the Business Opportunities Weblog Classifieds. Reo Agents- Get Reo Listings Fast & Become An Reo Listing Agent For The Banks Property Preservation Vendor Jobs & Work-foreclosure Cleaning Contracts Bpo Companies-list Of Broker Price Opinion Companies-bpo Bank List Start A Referral Club- Grow Your Business! Your Home Business Income Solution The [...]
Stimulus Funding for SBA Loans Runs Out—Again
Photo by SBA. In a case of legislative déjà vu, the Small Business Administration has announced that funding for two popular lending programs is on the verge of running out – again, Emily Maltby reports in the WSJ. The government agency has encouraged lenders to make more loans to Main Street businesses by reducing the [...]
Excitement about the approach of the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan, due March 17, is inspiring ever more dramatic calls for greater high-speed Internet connectivity in the United States, reports arstechnica.com. This month, FCC Chair Julius Genachowski declared that the agency wants 260 million Americans hooked up to 100 Mbps broadband by 2020. Not [...]
Last Chance for My Free Twitter Ebook
Have you picked up a copy of my free ebook How I Create Traffic and Revenue from Twitter? If not, you should immediately go download a copy, because on March 2nd it won’t be free anymore. The price will be going up to seven dollars at noon on Tuesday, March 2nd. Here’s that link again: [...]
Mom Makes Sense Of Your Unorganized Mess
Look around your home office. What do you see? If you’re anything like Pamela Meyer than what you see is probably in need of a little organization, reports 9News.com. Then Meyer stumbled upon Angela Cody-Rouget, a professional organizer who runs a business called Major Mom. Cody-Rouget started the company in 2006, after serving 14 years [...]
Heck with a better mousetrap. Jason Lucash, 26, is busy inventing compact products that help people listen to music. The Danville Express News reports that Rock-It, developed by Lucash, is a gadget that allows music fans to use any household object as a speaker – it’s the “first ever portable vibration speaker system,” explains Lucash. [...]
Mailbox Forwarding: Manage Your Mail Online
Mailbox Forwarding is a service that allows you to have your paper mail available to you at any time from any where in the world. They provide you with a unique street address and box number that you can have all of your mail sent to. When a piece of mail arrives, their staff will [...]
Baby Planning Bizs Grow Despite Recession
It’s a niche still in its infancy. According to the National Baby Planner Association, about 60 businesses in the U.S. and abroad now identify themselves as baby planning companies, reports AOL Small Business. Within the last several years, the growth of baby planning seems to have followed the niche started by the explosion of the [...]
Freelancers: America’s New Workforce
Founder of the Freelancers Union Sara Horowitz explains why the self-employed are a bigger factor in today’s economy in this report from CNNMoney.
Twitter Hits 50 Million Tweets Per Day
According to a story on Mashable, new stats released by Twitter reveal that users now send out more than 50 million tweets per day. That means every second, 600 tweets fly through Twitter’s network. As reported two weeks ago, Twitter saw more than 1.2 billion tweets in January, or around 39 million tweets per day. [...]
The British & International Franchise Exhibition
Are you a European looking for a franchise? A number of franchisors and franchising experts from Hungary, Norway and Spain to India, the USA and Mexico will be exhibiting at The British & International Franchise Exhibition in London on Friday 19th and Saturday the 20th of March 2010. As the only London exhibition endorsed by [...]
The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) will host its annual March Madness for the Mind showcase of student innovation in San Francisco on March 27, 2010 from 10:00 to 2 p.m. PST at the Exploratorium® in the Palace of Fine Arts. PitchEngine reports the event is an opportunity for the nation’s top Excellence [...]
Dealers Wanted for Beautiful Aquariums
Fish are beautiful, but conventional fish tanks are very ugly. Aquavista owner Scott Yen set out to build an aquarium that looked more like a painting. What he came up with was the Aquavista 500, a 6.6-gallon tank that is roughly 4 inches thick and hangs on a wall, secured by a steel bracket. “The [...]
How-To Make Money With How-To Products
If there is one thing that Manuel Rose has learned from his business, MMR Productions, it is that there is plenty of money to be made from how-to products. Of course, how-to isn’t all they know how to do. They can serve you whether you need one of your family videos converted to DVD or [...]
A vanity barcode is a product UPC (or similar) barcode that’s been turned into a decorative design, yet still scans like a regular barcode. According to the company that makes them, Vanity Barcodes, they’re a powerful marketing tool that can transform a boring, spacing-hogging barcode into a terrific brand asset. They offer an ever-growing library [...]
How To Dominate Niche Markets with Software as a Service
If you’ve got an idea for a hot new niche service, or a new way to improve an existing online service, don’t bother starting from scratch.
aden + anais Top Mommy Must-Have List
When Christine DeHaven’s son was only 2 months old, she decided to make a list of baby must-haves, reports the LA Times. On that list Christine put down the names of products that she felt were essential, including the blankets from aden + anais. She then passed that list on to her friends. “As a [...]
Kevin Rose’s Tips For Entrepreneurs
Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder, spoke at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand and covered 10 amazing tips for entrepreneurs, reports ReadWriteWeb. 1: Just Build It: You don’t need anyone’s approval and in fact, you probably won’t get it, so don’t even try. 2: Iterate: Build, release and iterate. Make a list of the features you want [...]
Toy Makers: High-Tech On The Cheap
The American International Toy Fair was held recently in New York, according to a story at Associated Press. This is the annual event where toy makers show off new offerings that will make their way into next year’s stockings. Previews from toymakers and interviews with analysts make clear that the focus is on innovation and [...]
@wreichard: An idea for @flyingstarcafe : business ideas/ventures etc. that were created in a flying star. Featured on social media sites. @YCID: @experiencethis I shall be at Confex too! I shall be looking out for some good business ideas and checking out stand designs. #confex @verybigideas: The best business ideas come from pain points and [...]
CNNMoney reports that it may not be a gold medal, but don’t underestimate the importance of this little piece of neckwear at the Olympic Games. Every athlete and visitor at the Olympics will be hanging tight to their lanyard and the credentials it carries. Chums, a lanyard-maker based in Hurricane, Utah, sold about 10,000 lanyards [...]
