Archive for February 2010
My Free eBook: How I Create Traffic and Revenue from Twitter
My first free ebook of 2010 is live. It’s entitled How I Create Traffic and Revenue from Twitter. Download it now.
Small Business or Potential Business?
A reader wrote: Dear Dane: A proposal: let’s change the name from “Small Business” to “Potential Business”. Let’s redefine it as the seed of an enterprise that will become a business no matter its size. By business understanding a unit which produces profits by delivering a product. An enterprise could be or not a business, [...]
Looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift for the mechanic in your life? Japanese online-retailer Rakuten is selling the V3 Car Mania set of chocolates from Frantz Kobe Sweets. Via Inventors Spot who ads: “Inside each Italian Red gift box you’ll find faithfully cast in high-quality chocolate a monkey wrench, 2 spanners, pliers, a nut [...]
What do you get when you take away the alcohol and violence associated with pirates? You have The Pleasant Pirate, a whole new take on beachwear. You won’t find any skulls or rum here, what you will find is a happy pirate that enjoys the beaches. There is no pillaging, just spending time with good [...]
White Goat: A Paper Shredder That Makes Toilet Paper
The White Goat is a device larger than two refrigerators, will shred you business documents and convert them into toilet paper. Let’s just hope it gets out all of the staples…
New Bizop Classified Ads This Week
New listing this week on the Business Opportunities Weblog Classifieds. Free Electricity How To Start A Battery Reconditioning Business How To Make Money With Iphone Apps How To Start A Catering Business How To Start A Daycare How To Buy And Sell Cars For Profit! How To Start A Home Staging Business How To Build [...]
How to Make Money From Distracted Driving
Driving while texting is a growing menace. As the incidents of texting-related fender benders and worse mount, 19 states have outlawed the practice. But road texting is a tough habit to break. Seeing a big opportunity, a bevy of start-ups is rolling out services that disable and divert text and e-mail while recipients are on [...]
Excel in One Area: Let the Rest Come
photo credit: themacinator The following is a guest post by Aditya Mahesh. I think one problem area that a lot of small business owners run into is that they try to do a little bit of everything and in turn end up doing nothing exceptionally well. They have a general lack of focus and thus [...]
How Much Is Your Twitter Account Worth?
It turns out that your Twitter followers are actually worth money. Not much, mind you, but something. Techcrunch estimates that each follower is worth about 0.9 cents (9/10ths of a cent). I’ve created a little applet to compute the value of your Twitter followers. Just enter your twitter name in the box provided. After you [...]
Wrist Device Rewards Kids For Exercising
New Jersey-based Switch2Health now offers the S2H REPLAY, a fun and innovative wrist-worn device aimed at tweens and teens that allows them to quantify their level of physical activity, according to trendspotter Springwise. In addition to displaying the date and time, the device also tracks and registers continuous, moderate-intensity activity, subdividing each hour into 20 [...]
ABC7News: Satisfying taste and nutrition can be a tough job for many new moms. Add to that a desire to keep food choices pure and organic and it can pose an even greater challenge. One Chicago-area mom is now turning this balancing act into a thriving ‘green’ business. The St. Francis Church Moms and Tots [...]
Ideas For Sale, But Free Is Still Enticing
Aaron Crowe over at WalletPop has an interesting look at a company selling ideas. Many things are for sale on the Internet — books, movies, car batteries and food, among millions of other things. GenApple wants to sell ideas. Are they worth it? It depends on your interests and how much you’re willing to spend [...]
Tackling State Of Small Biz: Community Banks
President Obama knows he has to help small business if the economy is going to recover. He made four major proposals directed at small business in his State of the Union speech. Rhonda Abrams at USA TODAY takes a closer look and sees what needs to be done to make them really work. $30 billion [...]
Originally published on February 6, 1963
ABC’s hit television series Lost has returned for its sixth and final season. This is the last season of Lost and a perfect time to profit from their enormous fan base.
An Unlikely Haven For Rock ’n’ Roll Entrepreneurs
This small town in Pennsylvania Dutch country, in the midst of cornfields and dairy farms, would seem an unlikely home for a warehouse filled with the detritus of rock concerts past and future — a large section of the stage for the next Black Eyed Peas tour, the sets for an Elton John concert and [...]
Got A Decision To Make? Get Some Sugar In Your System
Researchers at the University of South Dakota asked 65 students to answer a series of questions in which they had to choose between getting a smaller sum of money “tomorrow” or a larger sum in the future, according to a story at Physorg.com. The study participants responded to half the questions on an empty stomach [...]
Captain Ice Cream Now Franchising
Captain Ice Cream from ABC’s The Shark Tank is now offering franchises. More info from their press release is after the jump.
Here are a couple of great posts from this day in 2009. Is College A Good Investment? Sell Boring Stuff that People Actually Need This blog has been updated almost every weekday since November 2001 — check out the archives, or use the search box on the top right. You’re sure to find something to [...]
Meet Matt Prager, a 42-year-old, Princeton-trained therapist who works as an “online dating facilitator” on the side. Think of him as the modern-day cyber-Cyrano: Just as the famous French poet took to his quill and parchment to woo Roxane on behalf of another, Prager hides behind the anonymity of his computer screen, seducing unsuspecting online [...]
10 Bizs You Can Start With Little Capital
A recent study by the SBA found that when unemployment is high, the number of sole proprietorships goes up. Some people who are laid off from their jobs decide to start small businesses. If you find yourself in such circumstances — out of a job and thinking about starting a business — chances are you [...]
Mompreneurs And Maternity Leave
When you’re an entrepreneur, there is no set time for maternity leave. It is up to you to make the tough decisions. Will you inform your clients that you’re pregnant? How much time should you take off from your business? If that is something you’ve been thinking about, CurrentMom has a few suggestions that might [...]
Tackling State Of Small Biz: Tax Credit
President Obama knows he has to help small business if the economy is going to recover. He made four major proposals directed at small business in his State of the Union speech. Rhonda Abrams at USA TODAY takes a closer look and sees what needs to be done to make them really work. Tax credit [...]
Frames That Your Pictures Will Be Proud To Wear
It is often said that a picture can say a thousand words, so what about the frame holding it? With the right picture frame, that photo could say a lot more. When someone goes shopping for a picture frame a lot of factors come in to play. Everything from design to color must be considered [...]
Which level of government has the biggest impact on your business? Local State Federal View Results We’ll publish the results of the poll on Friday. Photo by US Treasury.
The phrase “necessity is the mother of invention” is especially true in the case of Rose Marie Iskowitz. A one-time marketing and sales representative, Iskowitz had just given birth to her second child when the idea for a specially designed diaper changing station dubbed the Dipe N’ Go began to take shape, reports MyCentralJersey.com. Since [...]
For This Entrepreneur, It’s A Batty Biz
Marvin Maberry has spent 20 years accommodating the bats that flit and flutter through his ranch in Daingerfield, according to a story in The News Journal. He reckons his latest project is one for the record books. Maberry has converted a 9-1/2-foot-by-10-foot storage tank behind his workshop into a test house that he calls “Big [...]
Man Puts Invention On The Block
Tom Wiegand is building a business — out of blocks. The 41-year-old Marysville man is the inventor and owner of Paint-A-Block: plastic blocks about 3 inches long and an inch wide that stack together to create everything from benches to 5½-foot towers, reports The Times Herald. They are kind of like a Lego,” Wiegand said. [...]
Biz Psych: Door In The Face Phenomenon
Business Pundit says that business is all about people. That being the case, perhaps we should stop reading management books for advice and start looking at social psychology. Smart marketers and executives have been using the findings of this growing field for decades to close sales, hold effective meetings and get their way in negotiations. [...]
Technology Sets Entrepreneurial Moms Free
The Globe and Mail: Christie Schultz operates the mother of all small businesses. The 34-year-old is a “mompreneur,” a stay-at-home mother who uses technology to broaden the reach of her Calgary business into the national and international markets. “The term mompreneur was coined almost two decades ago so it’s not a brand new idea, but [...]
We’re adding a new weekly video to the web site today. It’s called the Biz Op Minute and it will cover stories about new businesses, entrepreneurs and inventors. Give us your comments, suggestions and story ideas in the comments section.
