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As gift cards have risen in popularity over the years (a whopping $87 billion of them were bought last year, according to research firm TowerGroup), you could be forgiven for assuming that they’re the perfect, one-size-fits-all holiday gift.
Apparently some of the people you gave those ultra-convenient cards to didn’t see it that way, reports WalletPop.
Plastic Jungle, a clearinghouse where people can buy and sell their unwanted gift cards, says its Web site traffic has gone up by an astronomical 250% since Christmas.
The bump is due to people unloading their gift cards for cash. Plastic Jungle lets people sell their cards at a discount and then sells those cards at a slightly less-steep discount, pocketing the difference.
According to Plastic Jungle’s stats, the top-swapped gift card is Macy’s, followed by Walmart and then Lowe’s. California was the top state for both gift card buyers and sellers. New Yorkers were the second-highest purchasers of gift cards, while Floridians were the second-highest sellers.
Why is the gift-card trade so hot? For buyers, it might be a chance to get a gift that they really wanted for themselves. For the sellers, it’s obvious: They get a quick hit of cash in their pocket, even if they take a loss on the value of the card. Plastic Jungle’s press release says as much, noting that some sellers liquidate their gift cards to pay off holiday debts. After all, you can’t pay a MasterCard bill with a Starbucks card.
Reuters is reporting that blogging by teenagers and young adults has dropped by half over the past three years as they turn instead to texting and social networking sites such as Facebook, a new study shows.
The study by the Pew Internet and American Life project also found that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter, a surprising finding given overall popularity of the micro-blogging site.
According to the report, only 14 percent of teenagers who use the Internet say they kept an online journal or blog, compared with a peak of 28 percent in 2006 — and only 8 percent were using Twitter.
“It was a little bit surprising, although there are definitely explanations given the state of the technological landscape,” Pew researcher Aaron Smith told Reuters.
Smith said the report’s authors attributed the decline in blogging to the explosion of social networking sites such as Facebook, which emphasize short status updates over personal journals.
According to the study, 73 percent of teens who were online used social networking sites.
He also cited the ubiquity of cell phones. Much of the communication between young people now takes place on mobile devices, which don’t lend themselves to long-form writing.
After Paul Sadowski’s wife died and he remarried, he and his new bride realized that they both had boxes and boxes of family photos. They agonized over how to display them, but every conventional method of storing and displaying photographs they tried left them with too many memories stored away in boxes.
They decided that they to come up with a better way, and Picture Pages was born.
Picture Pages is a photo album in a frame that you hang on the wall. The framed album is 15″ X 31″ and can hold hundreds of photos in its durable plastic sheets. It easily attaches to any wall and works in both the home or the office.
When Allison Fleming got married and decided that she was ready to have kids she knew her life would have to change, reports the Tallahassee Democrat. It was after son was born that she decided the time was right to leave her job and start on a new path, mompreneurship.
That’s when she agreed to open a group fitness gym, Good Friends Group Fitness, with her friend of 35 years, Chelsea Garfield.
“This has given me the sense of peace that I need,” Fleming said. “When I was at work I felt like I should’ve been at home, and when I was at home I felt like I should’ve been at work.”
Fleming said she realized life was too short to spend it behind a desk and not enjoy what she was doing. At the end of a nice day, she wanted to be able to take her son to the park if she wanted.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, only 5 percent of American firms were owned by women in 1970. That share today is 30 percent, or about 7 million businesses.
Still, opinions differ on whether the startups by mompreneurs today constitute a new trend. Christy Crump, president of Administrative Professional Services & Solutions, said it’s not something that she often sees.
“I know of one woman who recently found herself divorced and needing to work, so she started her own business,” said Crump, president of the group Business & Professional Women/Tallahassee. “Otherwise, all of the small business owners/entrepreneurs I know have started their business out of choice, not necessity, and a good number of those are not wives/mothers.”
A recent report on Inc.com stated that home businesses continue to grow and will continue to sky rocket through the upcoming year or two. It seems that working from your home is the new trend. Not only to start your own business from home but many companies are finding it cheaper to allow their employees to work from home as well. Look below for the top businesses that can be done in your pajamas from home.
Online advice business. There are thousands of sites today located online that offer up advice, tips and help in all matters dealing with business, if you are business savvy, especially in one certain field, this may be the business for you.
Insurance. With insurance prices going through the roof, there are several companies offering lower rates and many of these companies are also offering jobs as an insurance sales representative that can easily be done from the comfort of your own home.
Personal fitness. One of the most common New Years resolutions is that people want to lose weight, thousands of people every year make this promise to themselves. So if you are a fit person who is savvy in the fitness field, this could be the perfect at home business for you to start.
Children’s wholesale. With so many little ones running around this country, a great way to make money from home is by tapping into the children’s wholesale market. Parents are always looking for new stores, new product lines and great deals on all children’s products.
Innovation is truly the mother of invention for Kim Olenicoff. From stick-on disposable pockets to sticky garment guards that stop underarm sweat from staining your clothing, it is possible that Kim has a solution for nearly any situation you can think of.
The problem started with underarm stains on her white shirts. There wasn’t a way to stop the stains before they happened. When she couldn’t find a product that fit her needs she did what many inventors before have done, she created a solution. As a matter of fact her business is called Solutions That Stick, a fitting name for a company that provides as many ’sticky’ solutions as hers does.
Tell us a little about Solutions That Stick and what inspired it.
Actually, Solutions That Stick started as just one product, Garment Guard, the original disposable underarm shield. I was in law school at the time and sick of my new expensive white t-shirts getting those awful yellow “taco stains” in the armpits after just a few wearings. When I could not find anything on the market that I could just stick onto the garment to protect against that, I used my research skills to find a company to make them for my use. I also sent samples to a bunch of department stores, and thankfully, Nordstrom decided to begin stocking them. Over the next 10 years, I thought of other solutions to common problems, and here we are today.
MakeMySummer.com launched last year as a way for students from the UK to find jobs in American summer camps. I recently had the opportunity to ask the founded Jacqueline Cole some questions about her business.
MakeMySummer.com is a website where students can gain information and inspiration about how they can spend their summer months proactively through meaningful work and travel. I like to think of it as a Virtual Recruitment Fair where employers can showcase their opportunities and students can browse their options.
There is increasing pressure on students to gain work experience and involve themselves in additional activities outside of their degree because academic achievement is no longer enough in the quest for graduate employment. The summer months provide an ideal time for proactive students to really make a difference to their chances of getting a job upon graduation.
I started MakeMySummer.com last year and have so far focussed entirely on summer camp opportunities which was the obvious starting point since I have worked in that industry for 10years including time as a freelance recruiter for the industry. In the last year I have received overwhelming support for my ideas from students and businesses within the summer work industry and I have developed a number of partnerships and opportunities. The challenge now is to convert these ideas into a profitable business.
Where’d the idea come from?
I was working as a freelance recruiter for summer camps and every day I came into contact with students saying the same things – how they knew they had to do something with the summer but didn’t know what to do or where to go for advice. Additionally within the summer camp industry there was a big shift towards social media for promotion and yet no one was seeing how social media could also benefit recruitment and training. MakeMySummer.com was therefore designed to meet the immediate needs of the summer camp industry but with the capacity to grow to encompass other opportunities such as travel, volunteer work etc.
I didn’t realize that February was National Start a Business Month, but LegalZoom.com did. To celebrate they surveyed 1001 Americans at random to learn about their dreams of financial freedom. The results are interesting:
The Perfect Business
When asked what their perfect business would be, the most popular response (20% of the survey) was to own a restaurant or bar.
The self-employed professional consultant, such as an architect or accountant, is the next most desired business start-up option (getting 12% of the vote).
Great Idea!
Nearly one in ten people surveyed still dream of marketing their own invention.
All in the Family
As for ownership, nearly all, 88%, of the survey respondents plan on keeping their business in the family; as a sole-proprietorship,
husband and wife team, or with grown children.
I love made up holidays. There’s something uniquely American about celebrating holidays that were created purely to sell products.
Although ever man finds an occasion to wear an undershirt, most men will continue to have their wives purchase them white t-shirts in plastic bags at the discount store.
It takes a special kind of man to spend $36 on a white undershirt. For those men, Tommy John makes the crew neck and v-neck stay tucked white undershirts. Once you pull this shirt on, it will stay down against your waist by tightly gripping your lower body. It will never ride up, bunch up or come untucked.
Tommy John’s patent pending Tailored Stretch Technology combines a unique stretch fabric, longer length, and tailored cut design that conforms to your torso.
From fighting forest fires to laying carpet in day care centers, CNNMoney.com takes a look at what 5 small businesses that got stimulus-funded contracts are doing with taxpayers’ dollars.
This Oregon fire-prevention company won stimulus-funded contracts totaling more than $700,000 to “lop and scatter” the branches in two densely populated forests. Thinning a forest slows the burning when a forest fire starts, giving rescue teams more time to contain the fire before it spreads to residential areas.
The contracts PatRick Environmental won allowed the family-run business to hire two new full-time employees and bring 20 “call when needed” employees on for six months of paid work that they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.
Paul Solarz, the operations manager for the company, also appreciates the training benefits the additional work brought.
“We hired a few new people, but the people that we had might have been just a little experienced in the use of a chain saw — and now they are very experienced,” Solarz says.
DaLuca Straps is a manufacturer of high end watch straps. They create one-of-a-kind custom straps for expensive watches like Panerai, Bell&Ross, Patek, IWC, and JLC. Each strap is uniquely handmade, so you’ll never run into someone else with the same strap. Dan also creates vintage watch straps that are truly stunning and made out of WWII leathers and custom straps that are made to the customer’s exact specifications.
I don’t know why, but I just assumed that all watch straps were made on an assembly line in China somewhere, but DaLuca has videos on their website of their young owner, Dan, demonstrating how he makes the straps from premium leather.
Trendspotter Springwise reports that there’ s a new kid on the flat-pack furniture block, offering a portable high chair solution.
Made from recycled cardboard, the Feedaway from Melbourne-based Belkiz is an easy-to-assemble, lightweight version of the traditional feeding chair. It’s designed to be used away from home, wherever baby or toddler feeding chairs aren’t available, and otherwise folded away.
Designed for infants aged up to 20 months or weighing up to 20 kilograms, the Feedaway comes with a three-point safety harness. Its non-toxic food-grade coating can be cleaned with a wet cloth. It weighs approximately one kilogram (2.2 lbs), and Belkiz claims it will last for around 30 assemblies. After that, it’s 100% recyclable.
Retailing for AUD 39.95, the Feedaway is a convenient piece of ‘take away’ toddler furniture and should fold nicely into the increasingly mobile lifestyles of parents with an eye for eco-iconic design. Belkiz is currently seeking stockists for the Feedaway in Australia, and distributors in the US and EU.
Paul King was headed to the airport in Pittsburgh in 2006 when he suffered an ill-timed communications blackout. His cell phone died and he realized he still had his roommate’s house key in his pocket, according to a story at CNNMoney.com.
If he didn’t call her to arrange a return, she would be locked out all weekend. But without access to his electronic phonebook, he didn’t know her number.
On his return trek, King drove past a number of ATMs and convenience stores. That’s when the idea struck him: You get cash anywhere. Why can’t you charge your phone anywhere?
Two years later, King decided he’d try to invent an automated charging machine — ACM for short. Then he learned that someone had beaten him to the punch. A Chinese company called TCN had already developed a public machine for charging cell phones and sold thousands of them in China.
King didn’t give up. Instead, he approached the company and asked to be its exclusive distributor in the United States, Mexico and Canada. They ended up cutting a deal: King’s New York-based business, Hercules Networks, raised $1.5 million from investors, including Miami real estate developer Michael Gold and a group led by serial entrepreneur David Walke. TCN agreed to add a screen to its machine, which would display advertising messages while users — paying $2 to $5 apiece — waited for their phones to charge.
Gina Roberts-Grey over WalletPop says if you couldn’t resist buying a box or two of Thin Mints or Samoas from a Girl Scout recently, don’t feel bad.
These pint-sized dynamos have honed sales skills that rival those of some of the most savvy adult professionals. If fact, some Scouts sell thousands of boxes per year.
Want to know how they do it? Here’s a look inside the minds of some of the most successful cookie sellers in the country.
Network, network, network
Erica Kendrick was the first black girl in the Chicago area to wear the crown of top-seller. At age nine, Kendrick built her cookie empire on a basic principle: “I made a pyramid with my grandma at the top, and her marketing/distribution arm was something fierce,” she explains. Kendrick says using all your network contacts, whether they’re from church, the drill team, your school, the local beauty shop or your carpool is essential.
Perfect your sales pitch
“Practice the elevator speech in the mirror until you can recite it in your sleep,” says Kendrick. “I stood in front of mine and used my teddy bears as prospective customers.”
Forgo friends
Shannon Leary, 15, the top-seller last year in Quincy, Mass. with a grand total of 2,254 boxes sold, drops off the social radar during cookie season. “Cookies are my life from early January through mid-March,” Leary admits, “but it’s worth it.”
Plant the seed
“If someone seems unsure about buying cookies, engage them by asking what their favorite cookie is,” advises Leary. “Once they start thinking about the cookies, they often buy them.”
Be professional
Donna Ceravolo, the CEO of Girl Scouts of Nassau County, New York, suggests girls create business cards. “They can use resources from the CEO Tools web page at LittleBrownieBakers.com to create business cards with their first name,” she says. Ceravolo cautions that to be safe, girls shouldn’t include a personal address, phone number or their last name.
Making the leap from The Brady Bunch to entrepreneurship, Florence Henderson has started the FloH Club, a membership-based telephone tech support service for seniors, AOL Small Business reports.
Henderson is definitely on to something big. The senior market is over 37 million strong in the U.S. alone and is still “a vastly under tapped market. It’s a huge opportunity and a perfectly wide open field,” says David Lindeman, director of the nonprofit Center for Technology and Aging. For tech entrepreneurs, having a senior moment can be a good thing.
Seniors are looking for technologies that are simple to use but not dumbed down. It has to work right out of the box and not require extensive setup procedures. That goes for everything from Web sites to digital cameras. Tech support is another major point. “People really benefit from concierge services. They gravitate to technologies that have support and have very accessible help on the technical side,” says Lindeman.
Max Drucker is putting a spin on technical support as a partner with the FloH Club. The idea for FloH Club started when Henderson was trying to learn her way around her cell phone and turned to Drucker, who helped her figure out how to use email on her phone. “She felt empowered. She said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if people like me had people like you who they could call all the time?’” says Drucker. The FloH Club took that idea and launched in October 2009.
Google is preparing an online store in which it will sell third-party business software to Google Apps customers, according to a report.
The Wall Street Journal says that Google’s store could arrive as early as March with the works of third-party developers available as enhancements to Google’s office productivity software suite.
It appears the store would allow Gmail and Google Docs users to purchase add-ons for niche features too specialized for the mainstream Google Apps product.
Offering incentives such as this type of store could also help attract more developers to the Google Apps platform, which could be a boost to Google’s hopes of taking a piece of Microsoft’s lucrative hold on the office productivity software market.
Large enterprise customers might be reluctant to switch to Google Apps unless they are able to find a solution to a specific need, such as an inventory management system set up to work with spreadsheets or e-mail.
Third-party developers could fill that hole without Google having to anticipate every such need.
If you’ve been thinking about starting your own business then you are not alone, reports the Evanston Review. More and more moms are clawing their way to the top of the entrepreneurial ladder than ever before.
Until she became a mother, BabbaCo’s founder, Jessica Kim, never imagined she would start a baby product line.
Dissatisfied with the infant car seat covers that were on the market, Kim set out to create a cozy, warm, and functional car set cover that would keep infants warm and safe.
As Kim’s daughter grew, so did BabbaCo’s product line as the busy mother soon discovered new needs in the marketplace that fulfilled her desire to have innovative products that are simple, charming, and functional.
A new study out from Germany indicates that bacteria-killing jets of plasma could soon replace the dental drills currently used to remove the cavities in our teeth making visits to the dentist’s office less painful.
Plasma is the fourth state of matter, after solids, liquids and gases. It is formed when gases are energized to the point where electrons fly off some or all of their atoms.
Researchers recently demonstrated that a small, blowtorch-like device emitting a relatively cool beam of purple plasma can eliminate oral bacteria in cavities, leaving more tooth structure intact than a drill does.
Get ready for this. The first dentist to market himself as a mad scientist wins.
Can you make a dollar a day online? Sure. Anyone can build a website that’ll generate a dollar a day in Google Adsense revenue. It’s almost as easy to make a product that you sells once a month for $30.
$1 is great, but realistically, it’s nothing, right?
But, what if you made 400 of these websites and products? Is $11,000 a month something? Definitely. There’s the trick.
Don’t try to make something online that’ll make you a rich — just try to make something simple that’ll generate $1 per day. Then make something else. Repeat. Do this every day. After a year, you’ll be making nearly $11,000 per month.
Redefine your plan and you’ll make a fortune.
How do you begin? You just do. Pick a topic and go. Basket weaving? Sure. Paint by numbers? Of course. Cheese? Anything, it doesn’t matter. You just need to start.
If you need more help starting a blog, check out BecomeABlogger.com. Their premium course is just $1 until February 10, 2010.
According to a story at trendspotter Springwise, Rentcycle is an online platform for rental businesses.
The brainchild of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tim Hyer, this startup offers web-based hosting and software utilities to help rental companies streamline their business process and improve customer conversion. In addition, the site aims to become a portal for consumers wishing to rent goods or services.
Once registered, companies get a branded online storefront to present their wares, along with reservation systems, inventory management and analytics. Customers can search both by product or provider in their area, and can order and pay for items through Rentcycle. There is also a messaging service delivering reservation reminders and SMS updates on customer inquiries.
While small businesses in many sectors are squeezed out by the economies of scale of their web-based competitors, the market for equipment rentals relies on local outlets. Rentcycle has recognised this, and developed a solution to help those outlets become more efficient and accessible. With sustainability an increasing factor in consumer decisions, the rental market should be on every entrepreneur’s watchlist.
The ketchup packet has been around for more than 40 years, and complaints about it for nearly as long: too messy, too small, too hard to open. Now, ketchup giant H.J. Heinz Co. is unveiling the first major packaging change to the to-go condiment, reports The Associated Press.
The new design has a base that’s more like a cup for dipping, a tear-off end for squeezing, and holds three times the ketchup in a traditional packet.
The new packet is in test markets in the Midwest and Southeast and will roll out at select fast-food restaurants in the fall. Heinz is still working out prices with customers but said packets will cost a little more than regular packets.
The Shark Tank was full of blood last night as the Sharks ripped apart, would be entrepreneurs who were looking for the sharks to fund their businesses.
First into the tank was Michele Kapustka and Melisa Moroko two sisters who teamed up to start their business, Send a Ball. The sisters were looking for $86,000 for 20% of their business. Send a Ball, creates custom made inflatable play balls with fun messages that can be sent in the mail, like greeting cards. They can be personalized for the recipient, and are a fun and unique greeting card. Currently they have sales of $100,000 a year, and can’t fill orders fast enough, they’re shipping between 50 and 70 balls a day and only expected that to increase.
The sisters are running the business out of their garage, with the help of their kids, they hope to use the sharks money to move to a permanent location and buy equipment that will give them, greater control over their product. They predicted they could break even by selling 100 balls a day. The sharks pointed out that anyone can copy their business, they have nothing proprietary, which makes it hard for them to invest. In the end the sharks said to go get a bank loan, they didn’t need the sharks investment.
Next into the tank was Mark Burginger with his construction toy Qubits. Qubits is a toy that can curve into many different shapes, like no other toy out on the market. Mark has patented the toy, and has spent $60,000 to bring it to market, but is only sold $8000 worth of product since 2007. Mark is looking for $90,000 for 51% of the business, he wanted the sharks experience, and felt he could get it if he give up control of his company.
The sharks wanted to know why he hadn’t just gone to a large toy company and try to license the product to them. They pointed out that all he would’ve had to do is develop a prototype and patented, shopped it around to the major toy companies, and saved himself a lot of money in manufacturing. Daymon excepted Marks offer with the contingency that they get a deal with a big toy company. Mark accepted the deal.
Third into the tank was Nicole Jones with her business the Pillars of Slippers. Nicole is incredibly confident and a energetic presenter, her business definitely benefits from her. Pillars of Slippers is similar to Tupperware parties but instead of Tupperware she sells shoes. Nicole was looking for $150,000 for 15% of her business.
Although she operates a retail store, she realized there was more money to be made from online sales, and these parties. Her goal was to franchise her business, for $100,000 each which would include a Hummer and all the equipment and inventory they would need. Her average party generated $725 in sales, with costs around $300. Without paying for new inventory, wages or any other costs a franchise would have to host 236 parties in order to break even just on the franchising cost. The sharks suggested that she try to bootstrap (lower cost) the franchise, eliminate the Hummer and make it more reasonable for franchising. She walked away without a deal.
Phil and Aida Lough were next to test their skills against the hungry Sharks. Llama Brew is a liquid fertilizer made from liquidized llama droppings, it’s a natural fertilizer where most fertilizers use chemicals. The business is relatively new, but they had generated $4000 worth of sales. Phil and Aida were asking for $125,000 for 10% equity in the business. The couple had a provisional patent on the process of converting the excrement to fertilizer.
The biggest stumbling point for Phil and Adia is a large cost of educating the public that llama fertilizer is superior to other forms of fertilizer. Their evaluation of their business was crazy, a single llama costs about $1000, the sharks could buy 125 llamas and open up their own fertilizer business for that investment. All sharks were out.
Last into the Shark Tank was Alan Kaufman and his business Nubrella. Nubrella is a new type of umbrella that won’t invert, will keep the user warmer, can be used hands-free, and can even be used while riding a bike. He was looking for $200,000 for 25% of his business. It is currently selling for $49 at a cost of $14 apiece. He had sold 3000 already and had invested $900,000 into the business. It goes without saying with such a large investment he had the product patented.
Kevin Harrington offered $200,000 for 65% of the business, Alan rejected the offer. Daymon and Kevin H. joined together to make an offer of 200,000 for 60% of the business. Daymon said as long as there was orders he would fund production for the lifetime of the business. After some more negotiations they settled on $20,000 for 51% of the business, giving control to the sharks. Alan took the deal.
One day in 2001, Yuval Brisker was stuck at home, expecting a cable TV technician to arrive for a service call.
First he waited.
Then he waited some more.
Brisker reflected that people all over the world were stuck in the same position, wasting hours without knowing when — or even if — a service person would show up, reports CNNMoney.com.
I thought, ‘How come people have to sit around waiting in a world where we’re connected by cell phone and where we can track a package online? Why has this problem never been solved?’” recalls Brisker.
With that question in mind, Brisker launched TOA Technologies two years later in Cleveland. TOA provides field services management software that allows companies to track and schedule their technicians more efficiently. Customers can go online to get updates on a technician’s arrival time, much like they can track a FedEx package. Or they can receive the information as a text message, an automated phone call or an e-mail.
TOA’s software has attracted such customers as Cox Communications, Bright House Networks and ONO, Spain’s largest cable TV provider. So why, after five years, are most consumers still waiting for the cable guy to show up?
Because telecom companies are slow-moving behemoths. It’s daunting to change how they operate and manage thousands of people in the field. “These companies have to go through a pretty serious transformation, both operationally and culturally,” says Brisker. That’s not an easy sell — especially in the cable TV industry.
