This website is not like all of the others. Since 2001, we've posted 12736 different business opportunities and ideas, so you're sure to find something here to inspire you!
SchoolOfMusic.com recruits music teachers and then provides music lessons in students’ homes, teachers’ home studios, and after school programs. Their bizop is a must see!
Small businesses increasingly are tapping a new talent pool: the world.
A new generation of online service marketplaces is giving small companies more opportunities than ever to find specialized expertise and affordable labor.
Main Street businesses can shop a virtual international bazaar of freelancers to recruit computer programmers in Russia, graphic designers in San Francisco or data analysts in India.
These online marketplaces are fueled by several trends. The recession and recent wave of downsizing have forced many corporations to eliminate in-house services and use independent contractors instead. Buyouts and layoffs have pushed many skilled professionals into the freelance marketplace.
Meanwhile, technological advances make remote work and virtual teams more feasible. Business processes are allowing companies to mix and match services with more ease than ever. An array of freelance marketplaces are making services tradable online, much as eBay and Craigslist made goods tradable a decade ago.
These sites include general freelance marketplaces (Guru, Elance, oDesk) and others offering specialties like software (Rent A Coder), personal assistants (virtualassistants.com), graphics (99designs), or creative services (CrowdSpring).
I can’t tell you how often I’ve uncovered the seed of an idea from something totally unrelated to marketing that I could twist to apply it in a totally new and relevant way.
Duct Tape Marketing recently did an article on several different and some what unusual places where you can go to find your inspiration that you need for content on your site. These are several places that are great sources that many I’m sure have never even thought to go to.
Sign up for a few different magazines such as business week, entrepreneur, and maybe even Good House Keeping for the women entrepreneurs. Go through this pile and see what you can find to write about. Customer feedback is another great source for content. You can always use their questions and discussions as a blog.
SmartBriefs is one of several sites related to many different business related topics, use these sites to see what a lot of highly talented editors are discussing. Use your Twitter account to set up a small group of very interesting Twitter followers that will alert you every week of all the interesting and new topics they are talking about.
French tourism company Bocages has created a pop-up cabin for four that features a transparent dome in the roof, a telescope and a sky observation kit.
Carré d’étoiles are portable and reversible cube-shaped structures crafted with recyclable wood. Included in each parquet-floored cabin are a double cabin bed, a sofa bed for two, a kitchenette with refrigerator and hot plates, shower, toilet, wardrobe, electric heating, a bio-ethanol fireplace and cast-iron garden furniture for outside.
In addition to modern conveniences like flat-screen TV and connections for MP3, phone and internet, Carré d’étoiles cabins also come equipped with bedding and towels, and extra services such as cleaning and breakfast can be added. Black-out blinds, meanwhile, facilitate use of the telescope and stargazing kit.
Just launched this year, Carré d’étoiles have now been installed in several holiday spots in France. Pricing is EUR 25,000 per unit, according to a report on Forum Eco; structures are delivered fully equipped and ready to use, with an ROI ranging from at least 10 percent in the first year of operation to 30 percent or more in following years, Bocages says.
If you’re running a small business today and aren’t thinking about how to tighten your belt, you are surely in rarefied company. But if you’re like the rest of us, you’re scrambling to cover expenses, pay bills and make payroll.
Take a look at all of your expenses going out in such things as insurance and yearly contracts. Instead of just simply renewing these contracts assuming they are still valid, take a look and see where there can be a change made that will save you some money.
You may have several service contracts that you don’t really need anymore. Your insurance policy may not reflect the current years prices and should be changed accordingly. Invite your insurance agent to visit your business once a year to re-evaluate your policy.
OpenForum suggests reviewing your current medical insurance plan and see where a few changes could be made that will definitely save you some money. There may be some medical add ins that you can trim off.
You’ve probably never heard of Rachel Taylor. But it won’t be long before you can turn on the TV and hear hard-sell pitches — again and again — to buy the one-size-fits-all hair clip she invented.
Taylor is a rare winner in a world of inventors bedeviled by losers. She recently earned a much sought after chance to strike it rich, thanks to a demonstration she gave for the right set of eyes.
At a recent Friday for direct-response kingpin TeleBrands’ monthly inventor’s casting call, Taylor was one of some 50 inventors who sweated, squirmed and stuttered their way through product pitches they hoped would dazzle CEO A.J. Khubani.
During a long day at TeleBrands’ headquarters in this suburban office park, the competition is intense. Each inventor has but a few moments in front of Khubani to land the sale of a lifetime. On the line: the potential to leap from inventor wannabe to serious player in the $170 billion direct-response industry. A nod from TeleBrands means a negotiated share of sales through royalties that can make an inventor wealthy.
Taylor, dressed in bright pink, coolly demonstrates — on an assistant and on several other women, including Khubani’s wife, Poonam, — how her Clever Clip works on hair of any length or thickness. As she drove back to Baltimore, several hours after her pitch, her cellphone rang with Khubani’s thumbs-up call.
I recently ran across what I think are some very wise and helpful tips for restaurant owners on Inc.com, because lets face it in today’s economy we could all use a little help no matter what our business is.
Make sure you buy wisely.
As chefs discovered savings, they began to add more supplies to the group-buying bucket. “Saving 2 percent here and 3 percent there adds up to a lot, especially in a business with razor-thin margins,” Meyer says. “And it has preserved our culture of bottom-up leadership.”
Stay close to all of your staff. Have you ever heard that expression “only one woman per kitchen” ? It’s basically the same rule of thumb, if there is more than one “chef” toes could get stepped on from time to time. So stay close and know when there is a problem arising so that you can allow them to hash it out and move on.
Make sure there is room for expanding within your business. You may increase your customer volume and find yourself needing to expand the kitchen, the stock purchases, employees, insurance and so on, so always make sure you save room for growth.
In my humble opinion, I want four (types of) things to happen:
1. SEARCH RESULTS. First and foremost. The instant barometer of your brand. Because if you don’t exist on Google, you don’t exist.
2. SILENT DIALOGUES. This comes second. This is the stuff people think when they see your name.
3. IMMEDIATE ACTION. That’s what you want to happen next. People impelled to click and explore you and your business further.
4. CONTACT. Here’s the final step. After people have Googled you, reacted and taken initial action, this is the crucial component. It’s when you compound attraction with outreach. Because ideally, you’d like people to email, call or reach out to you in SOME way.
A recent study was posted on Small Business Labs pertaining to the fact that Entrepreneurship may be decreasing. However, I would have to disagree with this study given the fact that there have been so many reports recently on new franchises, now being the best time to start a business, many people being laid off and deciding to become entrepreneurs and so on.
While self-employment as a percentage of the U.S. workforce has been relatively stable, we believe over the next decade the percentage of self-employed Americans will increase.
There are several different ways that these studies are conducted, and many variables on what they consider to be self-employment and what they don’t. So where we very well may consider our selves to be self-employed, the person conducting these studies may not, which would make the study inconclusive.
When Joe Bennett bought a six-pack of underwear in his local supermarket for five dollars, he wondered who on earth could be making any money, let alone profit, from the exchange.
How many processes and middlemen are involved? Where and how is the underwear made? And who decides on the absorbent qualities of the gusset?
Joe embarks on an odyssey to the new factory of the world, China, to trace his underwear back to their source. Along the way he discovers the extraordinarily balanced and intricate web of contacts and exchanges that makes global trade possible-and is rapidly elevating China to the status of world economic superpower.
He also grapples with chopsticks, challenges his own prejudices, and marvels at the contrasts in one of the world’s oldest but fastest changing societies.
Funny, wise, and insightful, “Where Underpants Come From” is a wonderful and timely picture of the developed world’s dependence on China to make all the bits and pieces of our lives-everything from toothbrushes to overhead projectors and artificial kidneys.
We spend a lot of time going over all of the correct decisions and moves that entrepreneurs should make, but I think we should spend a little time on the things that entrepreneurs shouldn’t do, I believe those are just as important.
OpenForum recently suggested that you shouldn’t worry about your product being perfect. This is never going to happen as perfectionism does not exist. When you feel your product is “good” but maybe not perfect, ship it anyway and see what results you get from it.
Don’t ask people to do something you wouldn’t do. This is the Golden Rule of business. If you wouldn’t fill out ten fields of information and provide a credit card number for a free password, don’t expect your customers too.
Don’t ever hire a family member expecting it to be the best choice you ever made. The likelihood of that situation working out for either of your benefits is around 0%. Stop worrying about the valuation. Your company will either flop or it will make you money. No matter if you have 10% or 40%, it doesn’t really matter either way, because if you’ve made 0$ than 10% of that is still 0$, so in the end take whatever money you have brought in and try to turn it into more.
How well do you listen to what your customers have to say? Richard Branson points out in this short interview segment with Seth Godin, listening to all customer feedback should be part of your business strategy.
Many people look at the high achievers in their company and think to themselves “how does he do that?” We wonder what drives them, is it a high level of energy, a person in the background coaching them on or do they drink way too much coffee? Finally here are some answers, some suggestions on how to become one of those high achievers.
Paradox alert! Work through the tedium. Much of what you need to do to become a superstar is repetitive–it will be boring. But there are those things you have to do in order to do what you want to do.
You have to be able to say when enough is enough, admit when you can’t take on anymore. Some people are known for overloading their plates beyond their means, but a high achiever is one who can recognize when they have taken on all they can handle.
Stay after hours a little longer. When the clock strikes 5 for closing time, rather than packing up and saving your unfinished work for the morning, stay even just 15 minute’s longer to finish up. This will also give you a sense of completion and save you time first thing the next morning from completing your unfinished work, as suggested on Entrepreneur.com.
According to new data released by the U.S. Census, the number of personal businesses - whicy are single person businesses with no employees - increased by close to 1 million in 2007 reaching 21.7 million. This is an increase of 4.5% over 20.8 million personal businesses recorded in 2006.
This increases the total number of U.S. small businesses (defined as less than 500 employees) to roughly 28 million.
The personal business category includes freelancers, independent contractors and other forms of self-employment. The Census derives this data from tax returns. This number includes full time and part-time personal businesses. The Census calls this group “nonemployer businessess.”
Personal business total receipts (roughly equivalent to revenue) grew 2.2% to $992 billion. This means personal businesses generated about 7.5% of America’s economic activity in 2007. The average personal business had about $46,000 in receipts in 2007.
When making the decision to take on a partner for your start-up, one needs to remember to choose wisely. This person should be considered as your right hand man, someone that you will be involved with for the long hall. I recently read an article on Entrepreneur.com that gives some examples of the people to stay away from when choosing your partner that i couldn’t agree with more.
Mr. College buddy is never a good choice for several reasons. Remember his behavior in college? Unless he’s made a drastic transformation i wouldn’t suggest choosing him. He also is the one who is most likely going to forward you his new expensive address so you can mail his 50% to him every month.
Mr. Spender can’t possibly survive without a six-figure salary, lavish office and an in-house cigar roller. Price is no object when it comes to entertaining a client or flying first class.
Mr. Vacation is another one pretty similar to Mr. College buddy, they are NEVER around especially when you need them the most. Mr. Personal issues, this is the guy who has a personal reason and or excuse for everything in the book. He has a built in way out of everything that you need him to do for the company.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of hanging out your own shingle or making that consulting business full-time is the independence that comes with being your own boss. But higher expenses and other costs come along with your newfound liberty. You may not be able to sock away as much pretax for retirement, and you may have trouble refinancing your mortgage. Your higher tax bills may shock you, too.
All in all, if you go out on your own, you may need to bring in up to 20% more than before just to break even, especially if you can’t piggyback on your spouse’s health insurance, says David Strege, a financial planner in West Des Moines, Iowa.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. There are few more gratifying accomplishments than making it on your own. But here’s what you should keep in mind as you figure out what to charge for your work and how to budget for your future.
As an employee, you will pay 6.2% of your earnings (up to $106,800 this year) for Social Security and 1.45% of your income (with no limits) for Medicare, while your employer will pay an equal amount. But when you say goodbye to the Man, you will pay the whole 15.3%.
The good news is that the taxes apply only after you deduct your expenses, and your “employer” half is deductible from your federal taxes. But if your expenses aren’t especially high, your total tax costs will go up.
In the day and age where people are constantly on the go, it’s no wonder that technology is making it possible for people to do so many things from a cell phone, as that is generally the device people are using most often. Is your site mobile friendly though? Look below for some ways to ensure your site is mobile friendly for your clients, recently published on SmallBizTechnology.
Review your competition. Take a look at what your competitor’s sites look like on various devices. This may be an opportunity for you to create a competitive edge!
When setting your site up for mobile users, think about how they will be using their device to look around your site, this should help you design it in such a way that it makes things easier for them. Test your site before completing the final steps. There are many sites that allow you to see exactly what it will look like from a mobile device.
Most mobile devices will not see flashes very well, so when designing your website make sure you do not include a lot of these flash programs.
For most kids, wearing eyeglasses for the first time can be a traumatic and unpleasant experience.
Further adding to their anxiety is the limited selection of frames available for today’s youngsters in the marketplace; the frames are basic, standard, uninteresting, bland and lack personality, and leave very little to the imagination.
As any stylish mom knows, plain and ordinary is just not an option, and for kids and ‘tweens, the “cool” factor is a must in any accessory.
Introducing Ficklets. No more boring, cookie cutter frames. Ficklets offers a more customized, versatile and unique look, fusing function and fashion.
More importantly, Ficklets can help make the transition for the novice eyeglass wearer a more positive and enjoyable experience.
Ficklets are interchangeable eyewear charms, easy to attach and remove, giving you “eye-popping” options to mix-and-match depending on your interest, outfit or mood.
Ficklets was founded and created by Ros Guerrero, a mother and an entrepenuer. Ros is the mother of a 13-year old beautiful “special needs” little girl and decided to start Ficklets as a way to add color, fun, and personality to her daughter’s eyewear. She also wanted to find an inexpensive way to update the look of her daughter’s glasses without having to change the actual eyeglass frames often.
In business one of the things that needs some attention often is that of customer reviews. While this may not be every one’s favorite part of their job, it is a part of their job that will always be there. I recently found some helpful tips on managing your companies reviews located on Small Business Trends.
First things first, you have to know where the customers are leaving their reviews about your company. Try looking for the reviews in search engines such as Yelp, Google, City search and Yahoo local search. Write a few thank yous to the people leaving you exceptional reviews, this will encourage more feedback for you in the future.
If you happen to receive a bad review, take a step back, breathe deep and calm down. Every company is going to get a bad review once in a while, it is not avoidable, you can’t please EVERYONE.
Address the complaint. Calmly: Apologize for their bad experience, invite them back for another go and restate your commitment to making things right. It will very often appease the angry reviewer, but more than that, it shows anyone else who stumbles upon that review that you care.
In the end, always make sure that you take the high road when dealing with a bad review. Never respond in a negative manner, this only worsens the situation and potentially makes it a bigger deal than it needs to be.
As millions of people join services like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Gmail… etc, good account names are becoming a rare commodity, and it certainly true that the right name on account can attract more followers and add value to online presence.
Some people are already buying and selling their online accounts just like domain names, and Assetize helps them with that. It acts as online marketplace where users can buy and sell online accounts.
The site currently allows to buy and sell online accounts of following services: Blogger, Facebook, Friendfeed, Gmail, Google Groups, Ning, Twitter, Wordpress and Yahoo.
The process is similar to many other online auctions, users register and then list to sell items or browse listings of others to buy them. Buying and listing online accounts is free, the seller pays a certain fee only when the account is sold.
Throughout our adult life many of us wonder why we do certain things that we do whether it be in our personal lives or our business life. We rack our brains trying to figure out our own behavior and decisions we make. I read an article this morning on OpenForum giving some hints on why we do what we do that i found to make a lot of sense.
It starts at an early age when we are kids. From the first day of school we begin training for life’s situations. Look at the times you studied for week’s for a test knowing that a week later you would receive a grade for those efforts you made. It’s the same principal in work, you work for three week’s knowing you will receive your salary check on the fourth week.
All that we do appears to be governed by reward systems, and the most powerful reward systems are short-term. Short-term rewards are meant to sustain, to preserve the status quo.
Lets face it, it all boils down to the reward we will receive for the job that we did. The only problem with this is that many of us do a task or job expecting to get our reward in the near future, when we may need to wait it out for a while before seeing the rewards.
Good news for homebodies: A Cisco survey of 2,000 people worldwide has revealed that employees who telecommute experience higher rates of productivity, work-life flexibility, and overall satisfaction. As if that isn’t enough, the survey also showed that telecommuting saves the company money and drastically reduces carbon dioxide emissions.
According to Rob Rolfsen, Cisco’s director of process, governance and sustainability, the survey was inspired by a British study that claimed working from home was worse from an environmental perspective than going into the office. “They made the untrue assumption that you turn everything off in the house when you leave,” Rolfson said. So Cisco decided to find out the truth about teleworking.
Cisco’s workforce telecommutes an average of two dates a week, but many workers surveyed said they would prefer to work from home three days a week. That’s not surprising when you look at other results from the survey–75% of respondents said their work was more timely when telecommuting, 83% said their ability to communicate with co-workers was the same or better than in the office, and 67% claimed that the overall quality of their work improved. The vast majority of respondents (91%) said telecommuting was important to their overall job satisfaction.
But telecommuting doesn’t just help employees. It also helps the company’s bottom line, saving Cisco approximately $277 million each year in time and productivity costs. And then, of course, are the obvious environmental benefits of not driving or taking public transportation to work. In 2007 alone, Cisco employees stopped 47,320 metric tons of greenhouse gases from being released. Workers also saved $10.3 million in fuel costs each year from telecommuting.
Many managers and business owners today find hiring new people to be more of a hassle than they have time for. With so many out of work people at the moment, one ad in the paper brings in a ton of people wanting that ONE job for themselves. So to help out the managers and owners, below are a few tips on hiring new people that i read about recently on Entrepreneur.com.
Always make sure to define your requirements as carefully and clear as you can. If your too broad and general than you could end up having to interview several non qualified people. Weed through the applicants and find the ones who have a long standing track record within whatever company or companies they worked for.
It’s still about the passive seekers. I personally recently hired a VP of Marketing for my company, but when I first came across him, he was already installed at another company. I courted him for months, persuaded him and eventually he came to work for me.
In the end always make sure that you are not settling in order to have the hassle be over with. It may be a challenging task in hiring someone new, but stick it out and make sure you find your company the absolute best out of everyone that applies for the job.
At age 26, Angela Trilli doesn’t think she’s one of those so-called materialistic Millennials she has heard about — young people who are absorbed with themselves and their consumption.
She says she’s a saver, not a spender, but unlike many of her peers who didn’t have much to lose in this struggling economy, she says she lost $15,000 — about half of the savings she built up since childhood.
“It’s a very insecure world out there,” says Trilli, of Kendall Park, N.J., who works in marketing for a non-profit. “It was a little shocking to the system. You think things are going in a certain way, but you can’t expect that things are always going to be the same.”
The Millennial generation, or Gen Y, ranges from people in their 20s to those still in grade school. But what they all have in common is the knowledge that the recession has in some way shattered the world they thought they knew.
And, depending upon how long the downturn lasts, historians, economists and psychologists say it could shape Millennials’ values and attitudes in much the same way the Depression shaped the attitudes of those growing up in the 1930s.
“I call it the end of Disney World,” says Michael Bradley, an adolescent psychologist in suburban Philadelphia. But now, young people are reordering their values.
When consumers get cold feet, what’s an entrepreneur to do? Sell them footed pajamas: a grown-up version of Dr. Denton’s kiddie sleepwear.
Four years ago Valerie Johnson started Big Feet Pajama Co. from the basement of her Las Vegas home. The former stockbroker, who says she can’t even sew a straight seam, sold $360,000 worth of pajamas in 2005; revenues hit $2 million in 2008. Despite the recession, she expects to top $2.5 million this year, thanks to strong advance orders for next winter’s holiday season.
“Fleece and flannel mean comfort and security,” she says. “My pajamas are a small, practical indulgence when all the fun has been squeezed out of the family budget.”
For those seeking coverage, blogs have developed into an ecosystem where there are hundreds of thousands of specialized media outlets, creating unprecedented opportunity to get your business’ story in front of the right people.
In order to obtain coverage from blogs on your business, first things first is you will have to establish yourself in that community. Introduce yourself, say hello, maybe make a few comments on blogs already posted and possibly give some good advice.
There are thousands and thousands of blogs out there to choose from, so don’t just go with the first one you see, shop around online a little and read a few before making your final decision, recently suggested on OpenForum.
Make sure you don’t beat around the bush when your pitching your business to a blog to cover. Tell them flat out why your business is worth them writing a post about, add some information in attachments that helps support the statement that your business is worth the post.
