This website is not like all of the others. Since 2001, we've posted 15452 different business opportunities and ideas, so you're sure to find something here to inspire you!
With online businesses growing before our eyes, I feel it is important to provide these online business owners with as many tools to help them in their venture as possible. We all know that you can never have too many resources and helpful suggestions to fall back on. Below are some great tools that I recently saw posted on CrowdSpring that will come in handy for your online business.
Google Website Optimizer is a great free tool that is easy to use for anyone and allows you to test several different conversions on your site such as text and image conversions.
Gmail Apps. This is a wonderful tool that supplies you with several different applications such as state of the art email, calendars, and intranet solutions for small businesses. The best part about this program is that it comes at a low cost to you.
Campaign Monitor. This is probably one of the more important applications that you can find on the Internet at such a great price. This tool is great for online and email marketing campaigns, tracking your results and managing your subscribers. With marketing branching out in all sorts of different forms, this tool would be perfect for online small businesses.
Basecamp is a web-based project collaboration tool It allows a team to share files, assign tasks, centralize feedback and manage projects.
While most people see only bland depictions of mountains or umbrellas when perusing the seemingly endless varieties of bottled waters on grocery store racks, Ballard resident Marie Nicholas saw something else: Opportunity.
With Nicholas’ Model on a Bottle, instead of a mountain, thirsty customers get musclebound and shirtless “Pro Fitness Model Hitch.” Instead of an umbrella, “Model Jayla Murray” in a black bikini stares out from the bottle.
The new business, owned and operated by Nicholas, has replaced company logos with labels full of scantily-clad models, musicians, athletes and potential celebrities – all unheard-of, but hungry for publicity.
Filar developed a specialized digital eye camera that attaches to a scope doctors use to look into a patient’s eyes. It plugs into a computer and takes pictures or video, “and I can actually see the inside of the eye here.”
Filar says he had the idea for a portable device like this in his head for years, thinking it would be great for use in remote areas by the military, mission workers, even himself during visits to nursing homes.
Filar finally got serious about it last January. By April he had a working model ready to market.
But he never dreamt of receiving a call like the one earlier this month.
It was NASA on the phone and in less than 21 months, an invention by Wisconsin optometrist has gone from an idea in his head to being used by NASA on the space station.
Among the traditional brick and clapboard structures that line the streets of this sleepy East Texas town, 70 miles north of Houston, a few houses stand out: their roofs are made of license plates, and their windows of crystal platters.
They are the creations of Dan Phillips, 64, who has had an astonishingly varied life, working as an intelligence officer in the Army, a college dance instructor, an antiques dealer and a syndicated cryptogram puzzle maker. About 12 years ago, Mr. Phillips began his latest career: building low-income housing out of trash.
In 1997 Mr. Phillips mortgaged his house to start his construction company, Phoenix Commotion. “Look at kids playing with blocks,” he said. “I think it’s in everyone’s DNA to want to be a builder.” Moreover, he said, he was disturbed by the irony of landfills choked with building materials and yet a lack of affordable housing.
I’ve never been much of a manager myself. That’s no big deal, of course; lots of people aren’t managers. In my case, though, people expected me to be, because I’ve had a lifetime of successful entrepreneurship. But entrepreneurship and management are different things. Stated on BPlans.com.
I recently read over Tim Berry’s post on what makes a good manager and I found some of his points to be quite interesting. Everyone wonders what makes a good or great manager at some point, especially if they are the one’s in the managers position. Is it that the manager has respect? Is a good manager someone who has both enemies as well as allies?
Maybe a good manager is someone who is able to lead their co-workers through good times as well as bad times. Or a good manager may be someone who is great at getting things done as well as doing all of the bidding for the company.
In my opinion I think a good manager is made up of several different qualities. Someone who yes, can get thing’s done in a timely manner, delegate well to others, do the companies bidding, and someone who is well liked but also has enemies. Yes, a manager no matter how nice they are will have at least one enemy floating around somewhere, it’s impossible not to have an enemy. You will never be able to make EVERYONE happy in business or life even being in a managers role.
Billionaire Mark Cuban has written a very information post explaining how not to ask for money in email:
The first thing I do at this point is look at the senders email address. Is it an email with the company name in the URL ? If it isnt.. ding, ding, ding. They sender has come up with a name, but doesn’t have the focus or confidence to put up a website. This person was using a gmail account. Next my #FailDar was ringing louder than Larry Kudlow talking nonsense on CNBC about green shoots when I read the “designed for different industries and is dedicated to improve the quality of life of individuals throughout the world, one step at a time” Im sorry, but could anyone possibly invent and write anything that is more full of shit than this person ? That has to go down in business letter history as one of the all time worse lines. If you want to get someone interested in your company, DO NOT tell them you are going to save the world. You are not. No one will believe you will. Save that nonsense for your grandma when you are trying to make her proud of you.
When setting out to hire new talent for your company, the challenge of finding the absolute best there is can be very frustrating and time consuming. With so many people out of work today, you are bound to have hundreds of applications rolling in just for one position to fill! I have put together a suggestion list of ways to ensure you find your company the very best there is out there.
Background checks. Always, always, always do a background check on every person that you are seriously contemplating to fill your position. You may think by their resume, references and interview that they are just awesome, but you never know what they have been able to cleverly hide up to this point in life.
Give your serious candidates a personality test. People can “fake” their way through almost anything in order to get a great paying job. But if you perform a personality test, it will give you a good sense of the type of person they really are and if they will fit well in with all of your other employees.
Manage Smarter suggests performing a drug screening test. Yes this is become more of an issue today. Actually, a recent study showed that 75% of illegal drug users are already employed somewhere! Why take the chance of getting into that situation and jeopardizing your companies reputation.
Expose the candidate to the work and the work environment: Give the candidate a realistic understanding of what the day-to-day work will be like. Don’t just paint a pretty picture. It’s best to be honest with candidates about what the job entails, including the high points and the low points.
In today’s economy we are seeing so many people being put out of work only to find that the company still ends up going bankrupt. Why is this? A big reason is because often times no matter how many employees are let go, the costs that the company has still ends up being more than what their profits are. Here are some creative ways where you can start cutting costs rather than cutting your employees.
Enlist the help of everyone who work’s for you to come up with areas where you can cut costs to equal up to or at least close to the amount that you need to cut. In the end you may still end up having to let a few people go, but it will be a smaller number then it was before the brainstorming took place.
Think about firing some of your costly customers. American Express cut out 2.7 million accounts because they had no balance or were inactive, this means the company was spending money to keep up these accounts even though they weren’t making money off of them, as stated on Bnet.com.
Take a look at some of the resources and products that your company uses, are some of them extremely costly to your company? Is there another product that does the same job but costs less? If so, try cutting out the extravagant lifestyle of certain products and down size to a cheaper version.
Go for cheaper tech. If your shop needs a tech upgrade but you can’t afford it, consider the cloud. Increasingly, businesses are finding they can do almost all of their computing with free or cheap services that store your data on remote servers — that is, in the cloud. Moreover, there is so much good free software nowadays, including office suites with word processing and spreadsheet software, that this is often a no-brainer.
All business owners are constantly trying to find better, easier, and cost effective ways for obtaining more customers and thus increasing their profits greatly. I recently came across an article on Small Biz Bee that listed some ways to win more customers for free!
Charities.
Name Tags.
Freebies.
Better voicemails and voicemail options.
Great testimonials.
Your Email address and your companies website.
Word of mouth advertising or “tell a Friend”.
Open houses.
Use these first ideas as a starter pack, a launching pad to brainstorm more opportunities across your unique business to grow your customer base, and keep them coming back for more.
His 1942 firetruck is by no means a Ferrari, but it is equipped as a fully functioning chapel.
“I’ve had it up to 55 mph,” Best said. “It gets a lot of attention on the highway.”
Mechanics from the Country Music Television show “Trick My Truck” did the conversion after Best’s family wrote to the program last year. The chapel has stained-glass windows, a pipe organ, an altar and two wooden pews.
More photos of Rev. Best’s chapel are also available.
Everyone is jumping on the Facebook train including businesses, at least if they are smart they are. There are tens of thousands of users on Facebook, that is a lot of contacts that you could be targeting for your company and bringing yourself a ton of traffic. However, when setting up your Facebook page there are a few factors that you should keep in mind, as recently posted in an article on Virtually Ready.
All of your events can be posted to where the public can see them. So even the people who are not added to your Facebook list can still view your event when it comes up in their search.
There are all kinds of applications you can use to create several different boxes on your page to customize it to your specific taste and needs.
You have complete control over how much your fans can contribute as well as the content that is posted for the public to see.
You can incorporate an Facebook Ad Campaign via your Page with the option to target a specific market and send those who click on your ad to either your Fan Page, an Event created via your Page, or to your website.
On a visit to Portland, Ore., about three years ago, Bill Leikam watched curiously as his brother used an odd piece of plywood to pull a hot rack from of the oven. “I said: ‘What was that?’” recalls Leikam. It was the family’s “oven buddy” he was told.
Like every inventor, Leikam believed that he could design a much better version. For about six months, the retired chief of a Silicon Valley high-tech firm ruminated on the idea and then headed to a local lumberyard to try his hand as a toolmaker. After devising five different iterations and plowing $12,000 of his own savings into the new venture, Leikam launched the Oven Claw in Palo Alto, Calif. Last Christmas he began selling the hardwood utensil online and at seven specialty stores.
When you play golf, do you carry your own clubs or pay a caddy to do it for you? One golf course in Cedar Mountain, North Carolina has decided to differentiate itself from the other local course by offering a unique variety of caddy: llamas!
Llamas are available every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from 9am to 11am at our Golf Course. Come on out and play a round, or just come by to see the friendly, four legged helpers!
If you depend solely on one source for income, your business just as likely to take a nose dive when a situation arises as someone who depends on one sole income from an employer. To avoid such a circumstance, you need more than one revenue source to stay afloat. CurrentMom recently elaborated on revenue sources and how she’s able to diversify them.
Building on this advice, I always tell work at home moms to think about how you will achieve:
Cash flow — revenue that comes in regularly to keep the lights on and rent paid.
Equity — something of value that you’re building that will keep paying out income as your pace of work slows, or even stops.
If you build a business dependent on cash flow, every time you take a vacation or have a sick child, you stop making money. But when you devote some of your time to building medium or long-term equity, you have at least the potential of continuing to bring in revenue when you take a break from working. That break may come because of a holiday or family needs, or it may be a new line of business that you want to build.
In business it can become very difficult over the years to continuously manage your cash flow. Often times as business owners we get into a groove of letting things slide here and there, letting customers slide here and there, and before we know it our cash flow is much less than what we would like it to be. Look below for some great tips on how to manage your cash flow better.
Include payment due dates on all of your invoices.
Accept partial payments if the entire balance can not be made.
Make sure to get all of your invoices out on time.
When you receive the payments make sure you deposit them right away.
Include discounts as well as penalties.
Review your expenses at least every 6 months to see if you still need them all.
By keeping up on the above mentioned areas, you should be able to see better cash flow coming into your company within a few months provided you keep at it, recently stated on Capital Solutions Bancorp.
Huber Chevrolet told me about how they had a separate sales division that did nothing but answer phone calls and emails from internet leads and they valued each of those at XX (they asked me not to reveal the specifics).
I told them I would charge them $10 per internet lead (a small fraction of what they are currently paying) but with the condition I could publish a lot of the data on my case study (what your reading). I also told them I wanted to exclusively use MySpace for this test because in past ones we mainly focused on Facebook for driving social network traffic. I really like the super advanced targeting features of MySpace MyAds. They allowed us to target not only cities but specific zip codes. In addition to the geographic targeting we could also target people who were interested in cars or whatever else we thought would convert well.
They were pretty excited to get started. That night I registered hubercash4clunkers.info and had our designer make 4-5 different versions of the landing page rotating through Google’s Website Optimizer to see which one converted the best. Here was the winner converting at 74% (not to bad):
Given the equine subterfuge that precipitated the sack of Troy, Trojan condoms are curiously named—deception is not a quality one typically looks for in a prophylactic. Consumers, however, don’t seem to mind: Trojans reign supreme in America’s nightstand drawers and billfolds. The various types of Trojan—Ultra Ribbed, Magnum XL, Warm Sensations—account for 70.5 percent of condom sales in drugstores, giving the brand more than four times the market share of runner-up Durex.
The brand’s longevity is its chief strength, because when you’re selling condoms, name recognition is everything. Cheapskates may be content to buy CVS Allergy Relief Tablets in lieu of Claritin, but even the stingiest shoppers are reluctant to gamble on unfamiliar birth control. So, consumers stick with the same brands their parents used—and in the case of Trojan, which debuted in 1920, the one their grandparents used. Newer brands like Trustex and Hot Rod have their fans, but they’re minnows compared to mighty Trojan.
For many direct selling has offered them a viable source of income with all of the benefits of being their own boss. By offering the flexible hours that some people require, companies like Scent-sations have helped many launch their own home business.
Scent-sations is home to the well known Mia Bella brand. They offer a variety of Mia Bella candles, the Bella Bar, and an entire line of mineral makeup known as the Bella Beauty Line. They also offer an opportunity for their representatives to mold their business into one that fits with their own lifestyle.
We recently had the opportunity to ask Theresa Stacy of Newmoodscents, a Scent-sations representative, about their business opportunity and her own experiences with the company.
What is Scent-sations, Inc.
Scent-sations, Inc. is a company founded in September 2002 by top level network marketers Bob Scocozzo and Charles Umphred that teamed up with Carmen and Lynn Milazzo the masterminds and creators of the gourmet scented candles. Together they created an incredible home based business opportunity and brilliant compensation plan to make the Retail, Fundraising and Residual Income a very doable and duplicable business. Generating over $15 million in Sales last year they have continuously grown yearly. The industry, in scents and candles, does over $3 Billion yearly and with 87% of households burning some sort of scented candle or oil. This makes it an incredible opportunity for many who not only enjoy burning candles, but allowing them to make money in direct sales. The corporate offices are located in Wilkes-Barre, PA employing over 80 people to happily pour, pack and sometimes hand decorate their gourmet candles. Scent-sations, Inc. also contributes often to local charities and major charities on behalf of the distributors. They also recognize our military in “Home Town Heros” in an on-line newsletter located on our website.
John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world. John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it).
If you don’t live in Los Angeles, you can order any of Galco’s soda’s online at SodaPopStop.
Your invention could be sold in Bed Bath & Beyond®
Edison Nation is seeking new product ideas to acquire that could be sold in Bed Bath & Beyond stores!
Going away to college or university means squeezing your whole world into a room the size of a closet. Bed Bath & Beyond has teamed up with Edison Nation to host the “Students of Invention” Search to find solution based product ideas that will help students conquer the challenges of dorm room living: space, organization, storage, cleaning, lighting, comfort and decorating.
Click here to learn more about the Bed Bath & Beyond “Students of Invention” Live Product Search
Deadline: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 11:59PM – Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Editor’s Note: Everyday Edisons require a $25 submission fee.
Most people don’t know the right way to go about building credit for their business. They do several things that might actually hinder their chances of obtaining credit, or they simply don’t do the simple things that would ensure their business credit. To help in light of the current credit crunch, below is a suggestion list on mistakes to avoid when building your business credit.
Many businesses don’t realize just how important it is to select the correct entity for your business. This is not only the most important step in obtaining future credit, but it is also extremely important to your business come tax season.
If you have inconsistent information on your business paperwork and forms, this will greatly reduce your chance of getting any sort of business credit. Banks want to see consecutive information that is well put together and sorted, this tells them that the business is not only in good standing but that the owner truly does know how to run a business.
Some businesses have made the mistake of building credit with the wrong vendors. There are thousands of vendors out there to choose from, but only about 6,000 of them actually report to the credit bureaus. So you may be in good standing with your vendor, but if they don’t report it then it really doesn’t do you much good for your credit, as stated on ActiveRain.com.
Selecting the wrong SIC code. There are certain codes that the business credit bureaus and lenders tend to stay away from. These industries include real estate investing, car sales, adult entertainment, travel, lending, restaurants, and dry cleaners. When you classify your business be sure to stay away from these classifications.
With so many trials and tribulations in the world today with cancer, paralysis, kidney disease, poverty and more, everyone continues praying for big ideas to come on how to fix our many problems. Here is a list of some ideas I recently came across on AOL Small Business that are sure to change the world!
Lifestraw is a wondrous device that can turn the worlds dirteist water into clean drinking water. Imagine all the emergency situations where this would come in handy for someone.
Acuset provides a cheap and precise alternative to the $2,000 microprocessor-controlled syringe pumps that are used to ensure accurate and safe medicine and re-hydration fluid delivery by intravenous infusion in the first world. Because about 2.5 billion IV sets are used annually throughout the developing world — and when administering potent drugs even a 3mm mistake can be fatal — the $6 controller could save millions of lives.
Restoring sight to the blind. Imagine being born blind and in your 20’s or 30’s undergoing an operation where a camera is fitted to you and wires strung to the right parts of your brain in order to restore sight! Imagine seeing EVERYTHING for the first time ever.
Printing skin. Even the best plastic surgeons have a hard time repairing severely damaged disfigurements and burn victims. But the University of Manchester may be able to change that someday with their technology in printing skin. Using 3D images in order to create an exact replica of skin tissue in order to grow the skin cells perfectly.
Your invention could be sold through the World’s Largest Online Store!
Amazon Green has partnered with Edison Nation to find innovative home products that save time, money or energy.
Keep in mind the range of product categories available on Amazon Green:
• Landscaping equipment to power without air pollution
• Lighting and electrical solutions to save energy and energy bills
• Plumbing fixtures and toilets to save water
• Indoor and outdoor furniture utilizing bamboo fibers and sustainable materials
• Green storage and organization solutions
• Eco-friendly home and garden appliances
Click here to learn more about the Amazon Live Product Search
Deadline: Monday, September 14th, 2009 11:59PM – Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Editor’s Note: Everyday Edisons require a $25 submission fee.
So you have decided to take the step out of your 9-5 job and become an entrepreneur. First, congratulations on your new venture. Second, there are some things about being an entrepreneur that you should know and realize what you are about to get yourself into.
Being an entrepreneur means loving day in and day out what you have chosen to do whether times are going great for your business or if they are going horrible for your business. It is by no means an easy way out of your 9-5 job.
You have to know your customers inside and out. Know who to target, where they are, what they need, what they want and expect from your company and most importantly…how to sell them on it all.
If you have just started this new business of yours, you may not be in a position quite yet to start hiring a whole staff of people, but you still should have someone other than yourself to rely on, someone that you can pass little tasks over to or pass tasks that you are not quite an expert at to. This is where a VA (virtual assistant) would come in handy.
Work/Life Balance: Some entrepreneurs believe you can’t find success unless you’re working long hours each and every day. This burns you out. Don’t work longer, work smarter. Finding time to step away from the office helps keep your entrepreneurial mind focused and sharp, not to mention well rested.
For the complete guide to what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, visit Understanding Marketing.
Your invention could be sold through major retailers nationwide!
Do you have a great idea for the next big floor care product? Edison Nation is seeking new product ideas or patents to acquire and sell through household cleaning product giant O-Cedar.
For this search, your innovative floor care product concepts must:
• Be patentable
• Appeal to O-Cedar’s primary consumers (women age 25-54, especially young mothers and pet owners)
• Provide a low-to-mid-range priced solution which makes consumers’ lives better
• Appeal to the end user’s desire for time-saving convenience and effectiveness to get the job done.
• Offer alternatives to competing brands’ current product solutions
• Be intended for home use (not commercial)
Click here to learn more about the O-Cedar Live Product Search
Deadline: Monday, September 28th, 2009 11:59PM – Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Editor’s Note: Everyday Edisons require a $25 submission fee.
photo credit: Stabilo Boss
