Archive for May 2010
Get a Job FAST using LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
The following is an excerpt from Wired for Work: Get a Job FAST using LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter by Steve Weber. If you haven’t looked for a job lately, you’re in for a surprise. Until recently, job searching was fairly simple. You scanned the classified pages of your local newspaper. You chatted with family, friends, [...]
Companies That Originally Sold Something Else
Some companies find their niche and stick to it. Others, though, have to adapt to changing markets in order to thrive. Mental Floss takes a look at some companies that switched industries at some point in their histories, usually for the better. 1. Avon David H. McConnell started Avon in 1886 without really meaning to. [...]
WalletPop reports that typos can do more than damage the credibility of a publication. Penguin books in Australia recently had to reprint 7,000 copies of a now-collectible book. Correcting that typo will empty the publisher’s pockets of nearly $19,000. But if you find a book with a similar mistake, it could fill yours. When typos [...]
According to the Daily Grommet, Ollie and Zoe Gilbertson, a husband-and-wife team from the UK wanted to put sneaker design in the hands of the people who wear them, so they created sneakart. Ollie is a footwear designer and Zoe is a fashion designer. When they combined their sneaker obsession and love for fashion, they [...]
The Blanket That Saves Marriages
First it was the blanket with sleeves but now the unique blanket craze has gotten even, well, crazier. With a playful name that hints at what it can do, the Better Marriage Blanket is made up of a special material that can absorb the odor of flatulence before anyone has to smell it. If gas [...]
Play Video Game, Win $1 Million
PC World says file this under “didn’t see that coming,” but the folks who make the Major League Baseball 2K games, 2K Sports, just awarded a 24-year-old Alabama gamer $1,000,000 for throwing a perfect game in MLB 2K10. That’s right mom and dad, playing video games does pay. And how. Wade McGilberry pitched a perfect [...]
Turn Your Passion Into Profits
Job satisfaction may be at a record low, but you’re probably not going to quit in this economy, right? Where would you go? What would you do? WalletPop says to tap into your passions. Find a way to make a living doing what you love to do. “If the recession’s taught us anything, it’s that [...]
New Bizop Classified Ads This Week
New listing this week on the Business Opportunities Weblog Classifieds. How To Buy And Sell Cars For Profit! How To Start A Home Solar Power Business How To Start A Hot Dog Cart Business Shoemoney System Secret Blog Weapon High School Dropout Banks $94k From Banner Ads! The Affiliate Code Start Your Own Business Curves [...]
The Battle Between Big Business Vs. The Inventor
We hear a lot about how big business tries to squelch the little guy, this is yet another one of those stories with a twist. The little guy wins. In a business-style David vs. Goliath legal battle, Home Depot is forced to pay Michael Powell for the invention they stole from him reports The Palm [...]
Patent Pending: The Fast Track
The United States Patent and Trademark Office struggles with a major backlog of patent applications. According to a story in The New York Times, inventors of green technology may have a leg up. Under a program that started in December, they can request that their patents be put through an accelerated queue. The purpose of [...]
Join i5 Takes On Targeted Advertising
If there is one thing we can agree on it is that not all pay per view ad programs are created equal. In the case of Join i5, they originally launched as a way to help non-profits find funding. The eventually evolved into something even bigger, for businesses and consumers alike. By offering a little [...]
Is Your Idea Based On Something Original?
Elaine Rogers at bloggertone asks which is more important, experience or new? We probably mostly agree that experience is based on the past, therefore when someone comes up with a new idea, if you strip it down, it will be based tightly or loosely on something already created. Like inventing a new type of vacuum [...]
According to PopJolly, sleeping on the job can get most of us in trouble, however in Phil Latam’s case, it gets him paid. Phil bagged himself the most wanted job in Britain – a sleeping bag tester. All the 27 year old has to do is test different sleeping bags and report back at bosses [...]
Teen Money Making Ideas brings you some pretty sweet ideas for your business. Read, be inspired, and get into action – there’s nothing like a craving to get you going. 1. Candy Store. Starting a business that retails candy is very straightforward and the biggest challenge to overcome is selecting the right operating location for [...]
mlive.com: As he puts it, Gary Szekely developed an app. Only it wasn’t for an iPhone, iPad or any other multimedia device — Szekely’s new technology instead applies to the unsung vending machine. The owner of Kalamazoo-based Advantage Vending has a patent pending on a device that attaches to a particular brand of refrigeration system [...]
5 Ways Small Bizs Can Leverage LinkedIn’s New Features
The way you’d use LinkedIn sharing for your small business is likely going to be a lot different from how you’d use your personal Facebook account. While most folks love to pass on relevant, interesting and valuable links, some content will be more appropriate than other content for sharing with your business contacts. Mashable.com lists [...]
World’s Most Expensive Car Sold
“Va-va-vroom!” says the New York Daily News. The world’s most expensive car was sold at auction for a price between $30 million and $40 million. The 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic, which the Daily News describes as “curve-alicious,” is one of three French deco models that debuted in Paris in 1935. Designer Ralph Lauren owns [...]
Emily Rose @ Home Reopens Bizop
Almost one year ago we interviewed Emily Rose @ Home mompreneur, Lisa-Marie Cabrelli, about her business and direct selling opportunity. Since then her opportunity has been relaunched, giving moms everywhere a chance to make a little money selling doll clothing. What could be better than joining in the recovering economy by starting a business that [...]
Melissa Ponce De Leon, a 19-year-old bartender from the Bronx, had just gone shopping. When she got home she sat in her tiny peach-colored room, leaned into her Web cam and held up her swag: a few MAC lipsticks, a glittery black V-neck top, a snake bracelet and a new pair of Ugg boots. According [...]
Entrepreneur Has Dual, Not Dueling, Roles
NorthJersey.com: Back in 1979, in a world still largely without computers, Robert Entin began building a company focused on computerizing the real estate industry. The company, Integrated Business Systems Inc. (IBS), became so crucial to its clients that in 2000 some major real estate companies, including Mack-Cali Realty Corp. and Vornado Realty Trust, became shareholders. [...]
Who Came Up With Mother’s Day And Why?
According to HowStuffWorks.com, some historians claim that Mother’s Day originates from ancient spring festivals dedicated to maternal goddesses. In the United States, Mother’s Day was first suggested in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe (famous for writing the words to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”). But it was a woman who was never a mother [...]
Here’s a selection of the many offers available on fiverr.com It’s a new web site that allows users to buy and sell services and products. Everything is $5. What would you do for $5? Here are some offers I thought were interesting. Photo by fiverr.com.
Playing Marketing Games On Twitter
Debby Icide had never used Twitter, but all it took was one tweet to boost sales at Gaia Essentials, her small boutique in Moss Beach, California, that sells homemade organic soaps and all-natural skin care products. The enticing missive, which increased traffic to Gaia Essentials’s website 400 percent in a matter of hours? It was [...]
The Online Store For The New Decade
From jewelry designers to musicians, from shop owners to authors, everyone is looking for a way to sell products or services online. How do you begin, and what do you need to know about setting up and managing an online store for your business? According to Jennifer Shaheen at Entrepreneur, your customers are looking for [...]
Almost Homeless To Company President
MLive.com: Jennifer Kayden’s life has transformed from dire just a few years ago to more than hopeful today. In 2007, Kayden was a single mom of three about to lose her home, not knowing where she and her kids would sleep next. Today, she’s president of an electrical contracting company. Kayden, 41, heads Mundy Township-based [...]
Could You Market Chocolate Filled With Air?
Inc.com asks are you ready to try air-filled chocolate? Paul Pruett sure hopes so. He is the co-founder and CEO of Bubble Chocolate, a Salem, Massachusetts–based company that makes aerated chocolate bars. The hundreds of tiny air bubbles in each bar create an unusual texture. Pruett got hooked on aerated chocolate about a decade ago, [...]
Invention Has Baby Boomers Recording Music From The Radio
The Detroit News: Jake Sigal isn’t old enough to remember the days of holding a microphone and cassette recorder next to a radio so he could take his latest favorite songs on the go. But that hasn’t stopped the 28-year-old Ferndale entrepreneur from inventing a 21st-century way to digitally do the same thing and try [...]
Awesome Companies Built by Teens: Anand Lal Shimpi
The entrepreneurial spirit starts early for many teenagers, but for most things like high school, college and social lives overpower the urge to start a business. But not every teenager. Wisebread takes a look at some incredibly successful young entrepreneurs, who all started their empires in their teens. Anand Lal Shimpi started AnandTech in 1997, [...]
Aspiring Entrepreneur Cleans Out Carseats
Chicago Business: Jennifer Beall, 27, entered Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management determined to be an entrepreneur. That goal had stuck with her for years. Growing up in Austin, Texas, she was initially inspired by Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell. “But I ditched the high-tech part,” she says (although she did earn an undergraduate degree [...]
Monday we started a poll asking readers, according to a new study, what percentage of Americans actually use Twitter? 28 percent of you said that only 7% used Twitter. 23 percent chose 37%, 21 percent went with 12% and rounding out the group was 25% usage getting 15 percent of the votes and 53% Twitter [...]
Rough Times For Small Businesses
photo credit: kevindooley It’s no surprise that small businesses around the country were really hurting due to the weak economy situation but it’s actually quite shocking just how bad the situation really was for them. A recent article posted on NY Times revealed that more than 400,000 business with employees numbers under 100 had to close [...]
Biggest Fears For Entrepreneurs
photo credit: h.koppdelaney Today while the dream of so many people is to become their own boss, create a great product, or simply open up their very own business of some sort and run their own company, so many of those dreamers are tied down by fear today, especially because of the economic situation we’re [...]
photo credit: extremeezine Most business owners are reporting changes for the better in business over the past 6 months or so. Most of them are reporting actual increases in their profits and are seeing more customers coming to their locations. However, we are all still wondering if the recession is actually in fact over and [...]
Psssst. Wanna Buy A TV Station?
According to Inc.com, Paul Engle and Barbara Ciric have run WPSJ, their low-power television station near Philadelphia, since 1986. Low-power television, or LPTV, stations tend not to be carried on cable or satellite networks but are available to viewers who choose to hook their TVs up to antennas or rabbit ears. These stations’ livelihood is [...]
Light Bulbs Make Us Better Thinkers
According to Fast Company, we have been trained so well to associate the light bulb with insight and creative thinking that simply sitting under one can inspire, well, insight and creative thinking. That’s the conclusion researchers at Tufts University came up with after putting students through a series of experiments under both a bare incandescent [...]
How much would you pay for a box of tea-bag-like pouches filled with dried cow manure? According to Inc.com, lots of people are forking over $21.95 for a packet of nine such bags, made by Authentic Haven Brand in San Juan Capistrano, California. The product is the idea of Annie Haven, who grew up on [...]
Inventor Turned Patent Entrepreneur
Charlotte Business Journal: Fred Wagner III has a nifty drilling apparatus he would like to sell to the highest bidder. Called Tool-Pusher, it’s similar to a portable drill press for accurately making holes in steel, concrete and other products on a job site. So he’s taking it to the Invention and New Product Exposition near [...]
Awesome Companies Built by Teens: Kristopher Tate
The entrepreneurial spirit starts early for many teenagers, but for most things like high school, college and social lives overpower the urge to start a business. But not every teenager. Wisebread takes a look at some incredibly successful young entrepreneurs, who all started their empires in their teens. Kristopher Tate is a kind of programming [...]
Wanted: Inventors For Charlotte Shark Tank
Life in a “Shark Tank” is quite scary. On the popular ABC TV show a variety of entrepreneurs take their chance with the sharks in hopes of receiving some funding to help build or grow their business, reports the Charlotte Observer. As it turns out, in the Queen City even Shark Tanks are decidedly genteel. [...]
According to trendspotter Springwise, the Life Box can be made to virtually any dimension and used by consumers and companies alike to package or ship goods. What sets the Life Box apart, however, is that within its corrugations are hundreds of tree seeds and thousands of spores of beneficial mycorrhizal fungi. How it works: Once [...]
Weddings Without The Tradition
Who do you call when you want a wedding that is ‘outside the box’? Celia Milton is the woman you’re looking for. She’s a wedding ceremony officiant and minister located in New Jersey. Simply put, she is the woman you call if you’re not religious, don’t belong to a church or simply would like to [...]
Students Build Centrifuge For $30
Futurity reports that a group of college students has turned a salad spinner into a rudimentary centrifuge that medical clinics in developing countries could use to manually separate blood without electricity. They built it for about $30—including the spinner—using plastic lids, cut-up combs, yogurt containers, and a hot-glue gun. The centrifuge was designed as a [...]
Rube Goldberg: Inventor and Cartoonist
Rube Goldberg was a brilliant cartoonist and inventor. He is best known for a series of popular cartoons he created depicting complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways – now known as Rube Goldberg machines, reports Puggal. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning [...]
According to The Arizona Republic, it’s difficult to put a dollar value on Cinco de Mayo, but sales of avocados, tequila and Mexican beer often jump during the holiday period, which can last for several days around the actual May 5 date. Cinco de Mayo celebrates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French [...]
The Power Of Wind… For Your Car
A preteen student in Pennsylvania is receiving praise for his innovative idea, an idea that could possibly revolutionize the auto industry reports WIS News 10. “There’s this new idea about solar panels they’re thinking about putting it on a car! And I thought if it doesn’t work at night how would you work it? So [...]
Niche: Survivalism Means Business
PROFIT Magazine: The previous decade saw its share of disasters and near misses: Y2K, 9/11, the South Asian tsunami, the Northeast Blackout of 2003, Hurricane Katrina. And if the forces of terrorists, tectonics and power grids weren’t enough, the global economic meltdown sealed 2000s’ fate as one of the most disaster-prone decades in recent memory. [...]
Pay Attention To What’s Behind The Curtain
Start-up Aardvark had an idea to develop a social search engine, in which people could ask a question via instant messenger and then Aardvark would automatically route the question to the user’s friends, and friends of friends, finally bringing the answer back to the user from the user’s own extended social network. But before Aardvark [...]
WAHMs Add Value By Launching Businesses
More and more moms are turning into work-at-home moms reports The Montreal Gazette. A survey done by Leger Marketing for eBay Canada ahead of Mother’s Day found that 33 per cent of Canadians know a mother who has either started her own business or would like to — though only 14 per cent have done [...]
Awesome Companies Built by Teens: Matt Mullenweg
The entrepreneurial spirit starts early for many teenagers, but for most things like high school, college and social lives overpower the urge to start a business. But not every teenager. Wisebread takes a look at some incredibly successful young entrepreneurs, who all started their empires in their teens. Matt Mullenweg is another software developer who [...]
The Traits Of A Successful Entrepreneur
Ever wonder what it takes to be successful in business? While you could easily say that the true answer to that question will vary from person to person there are a few key traits that really stick out among all entrepreneurs. The Montreal Gazette recently wrote about some of those defining traits. -Courage: Being a [...]
