This website is not like all of the others. Since 2001, we've posted 12738 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!
Writing valuable content-rich articles for your target market and submitting them to article directories and other publishers is one of the best ways to market your business, become known as an expert in your field, and add subscribers to your list. As stated on Solo Entrepreneur this week.
One of the most important aspects of writing articles is to always protect your work. Do this by always adding your copyright to the article.
Write or maybe even revise one of your already written articles that is directed toward your niche in the market and that contain a lot of useful and valuable information for your readers.
If your small business has a hot story that you know would be appealing to a producer or reporter at a television station – local or national – you can call them up and pitch them. And you’ll quickly realize that if you haven’t done your homework on that particular reporter at that station or network, that pitch call will be a one-person conversation faster than you can say dejection.
The best PR professionals take the time to study each different reporter and television station/network so that they can target their story pitches with great precision. We spend hours and hours studying, and often times I feel like a football player walking out of the team headquarters with all kinds of knowledge. I get a great understanding of what my reporter covers, the type of stories the station likes to run, if there are special segments on any of the newscasts or shows, and on what day.
Once you’ve developed your story pitch (use the PR Toolkit to help with this), figure out which show you want to be on, whether it’s the local NBC news affiliate or the CBS Early Show. You must start with a target. Next, begin recording that show on your DVR. This will enable you to go home each night and take 15 or 20 minutes to zip through the day’s telecast. Study who the reporters are. Get to know their television persona a little bit. You’ll quickly realize that one reporter covers health stories while another one covers investigative or consumer stories. This is how you will know who you need to pitch your story to, which is key to understanding marketing opportunities.
When contemplating starting a new blog, you may not know what to write, how much to write, what to put on the site other than the posts and more. I recently came across an article on The Mogul Mom that had some tips for beginner blogger that i think can really come in handy for you.
Just when you think that there are no new ideas for a business here comes one.
Students (and, it should be noted, reporters) with a deadline hanging over their head have a deviously brilliant new delaying tactic.
Paying someone to write the paper for you would be clearly dishonorable, but Corrupted-files.com is offering a simpler solution that doesn’t involve plagiarism. The site sells a corrupted Microsoft Word file that can be emailed to the teacher after being renamed something appropriate like “Jones-Final-Paper-Rev-34.doc.”
As the file is corrupted, it will either not open at all or be filled with gibberish. But since files do get corrupted from time to time, it can be passed off as an unfortunate — and unavoidable — technical error.
The longer the grading takes, the longer it will take the professor to discover the mangled data and the more extra time the student (or reporter) gets to polish the real version. The Internet gets the blame.
Corrupted-files.com is also much cheaper than the paper mills that can demand hundreds of dollars for pages filled with legitimate exegesis of, say, the symbolism of that green light from The Great Gatsby. The corrupted file only costs $3.95 through the end of June. Added advantage over pre-written papers: Sending a corrupted file probably won’t get you expelled.
Every business owner knows that the more useful information on running your business the better, there is never such a thing as having too much useful information. It’s like the old saying “knowledge is power” and in business both knowledge and power are two very vital things to have. Below is a list of extremely useful books for small businesses recently posted on OpenForum.
Never Eat Alone – Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz
An excellent guide on how to build long-term mutually beneficial relationships with customers and other businesspeople.
Groundswell by Charlene Li is a complete guide that walks you through emerging social technologies (such as twitter and facebook) which in turn helps make your business better.
Buyology. Probably one of the most useful books for small businesses. This book by Martin Lindstrom talks about the best aspects that actually work in marketing and such suggestions like which colors to choose for your business.
Steven Forage, a software salesman who spends at least five hours a day in his car, juggles a lot on the road: finalizing deals over the phone, sipping coffee, checking e-mail. One thing he no longer worries about, though, is speed cameras.
“Fuzz alert,” an electronic voice called out from the console of his Cadillac recently as it approached a speed enforcement camera in Montgomery County.
The system, known as PhantomAlert, feeds the locations of speed cameras and red-light cameras into standard Global Positioning System devices and prompts the devices to warn drivers when they are near one. PhantomAlert has subscribers throughout the nation, including more than 2,000 in the Washington region, said the company’s owner Joseph Scott.
Scott and a handful of employees scour government and police Web sites for camera locations. But subscribers send in most of the locations, which are added to PhantomAlert’s database.
Scott said police should be thrilled by PhantomAlert, particularly because officials say speed cameras are designed not to generate money but to slow drivers.
You’ve made the decision to start your own business, you have your great idea, your awesome business plan and now your sitting there waiting for the investors to agree, waiting to be able to put all of your hard worked plans into motion. Starting a business can be tough especially in an economy where banks are not exactly champing at the bit to give out loans. Entrepreneur.com has a list of some organizations that can help you find funding. Here’s one:
Ultra Light Startups caters to “bootstrapping” entrepreneurs, says founder Graham Lawlor, who started Ultra Light by gathering a group of friends and fellow entrepreneurs in New York last year to brainstorm some business ideas.
Remember, though, that you don’t need funding to start a business. You just need to start.
When Melissa Garcia was frustrated by Old Navy’s scanty coupon offerings, she didn’t just complain to the store. She vented on a message board tied to her blog consumerqueen.com, which is read by at least 30,000 people each month and now, increasingly, by corporate America.
Within weeks, chatter in the so-called mommy blogosphere led Gap Inc.’s Old Navy to begin issuing coupons several times a week, instead of just once a week.
Moms have always had marketplace muscle, but a new frugality driven by rising joblessness, housing woes and other economic problems has them exercising it like never before with the help of the Internet. In this recession, their talk online encompasses everything from complaints to advice on coupon clipping, low-budget meals and family finance.
Retailers and consumer product makers are listening, too — and responding.
After picking up chatter on blogs that was advocating layaway purchase plans be restored at its namesake department stores, Sears Holdings Corp. brought them back over the holidays after a two-decade hiatus. And Sears’ Kmart chain now accepts online coupons and has launched a Web site called Kmart.com/coupons that makes it easier to find specific deals, in response to chatter on mother-oriented blogs.
Larry Moore was a homeless man who got it together and started a shoeshine business. From his profit, he saved enough money to rent an apartment and get off the street. And then, the city of San Francisco slapped with him a bill for sidewalk vendor permit. The shakedown cost Larry hundreds of dollars, because in San Francisco, as is most places, offering a product or service that people are will to pay for and pulling your self up by your bootstraps requires someone’s permission.
Along Market Street, Moore’s supporters are indignant. Nothing happens when mentally ill men wander the street talking to themselves and drunkards pee in the alleys. Yet Moore creates a little business out of thin air, builds up a client base, and the city takes nearly every penny he’s earned.
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Moore is nothing if not dutiful. He attempted to work his way through the byzantine city government channels, although he didn’t get much help.
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When Moore found the permit application, he got a money order and headed down to the appropriate department to pay. But because he didn’t have a valid ID card, they wouldn’t take his money.
In business we have all been there, you greet a person walking through your store door with a smile and right off the bat you just know they are going to be a pain in your side. Every little thing you do or say annoys them, they ask for your help and even then they are still annoyed by your suggestions. Below are a few tips found on Selling To Consumers on how to deal with your negative naysayers.
Be ridiculously positive with them. Meaning for every negative thing they have to say, find some sort of positive reaction to it even if it’s a small reaction.
Take notes throughout the conversation. These negative people may not even be aware of their behavior, some when realizing your taking notes on what they are saying will halt their negativity at the thought of you repeating their bad behavior to a superior.
As a last resort, disengage with your prospect. Saying something like “You know, I just don’t think I’m going to be able to help you today - Thank you for coming in today” will shock some naysayers back into reasonable conversation. Some even apologize! Others will go on naying their way into oblivion.
Office Depot has launched its “Small Business Self-Bailout Plan”. As part of the program, the office supplies and services provider created the Survival of the Smartest website for business owners who need support during “The Great Recession.”
The Office Depot Adopt a Small Business contest will recognize 500 of the “best and smartest small businesses in the country” and award the winners a total of $1 million. To enter, send in a two-minute video of what you are doing to be smart in this economy. Entries are accepted through July 31.
And even if you aren’t selected, the winning videos will be posted online, so you pick up some additional strategies that may work for you. Now that’s some stimulus.
I think that these gold vending machines might do really well in the United States, especially as more people figure out that paper money is basically worthless:
Long attracted to the safety of solid gold, Germans will soon be able to sate their appetite for the yellow metal as easily as buying a chocolate bar after plans were announced on Tuesday to install gold vending machines in airports and railway stations across the country.
The venture by the TG-Gold-Super-Markt company, based near Stuttgart, aims to build on soaring retail interest in gold purchases after a loss in confidence in a range of other investments as a result of the financial crisis.
More from the NY Times:
Within three months, Mr. Geissler’s company, TG-Gold-Super-Markt, plans to have “a substantial number” of machines up and running in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with hopes for 500 around the world. He is aiming for a franchise model in which clients buy the machines, which cost 20,000 euros, or about $28,000, and then pay to have them serviced by TG-Gold.
The Official Tooth Fairy Kit contains one letterpress Certificate of Record for filing with your local Tooth Fairy and one reusable silkscreened cloth deposit bag for your first and all subsequent transactions. The official certificate keeps record of name, age, tooth lost, method of extraction and compensation information.
Coupon queen Susan Samtur racked up another supermarket victory at Sendik’s Food Market: $135.69 worth of groceries for $15.98, including sales tax of $3.15 on the original total.
The New York-based coupon pro is on a U.S. tour, leaving a trail of good advice for shoppers and register tapes with as many minuses as pluses.
For Samtur and her husband, Stephen, both former teachers, coupons are a business, and the tour is a publicity effort to boost sales. Susan Samtur, 64, started writing about coupons in 1973. She has published several advice books and a bimonthly magazine Refundle Bundle.
How did she manage to buy a cartful of groceries for 90% off? By choosing carefully and using a lot of high-value refund coupons, in addition to ones clipped from newspapers and magazines. A lot of items were on sale, and they turned out to be free with the coupon.
The recession has presented the Samturs with an opportunity to drum up sales for their products, Stephen Samtur said. His wife’s new book, “How to Save in a Digital Age,” will be published soon.
They also hope that renewed consumer interest in coupons will help them to sell more of them on their Web site. The Samturs sell coupons to subscribers who pay $4.95 per month for $25 worth of coupons. They buy the coupons from people who clip them out and sell them for 5% of the face value.
Since Fathers’ Day is upon us this Sunday, here are a few gift ideas for entrepreneurial dad found on Inc.com. And remember, when buying some of these gifts for dad pay attention to the websites. You may discover something that could improve your’s.
Netbook. yes we have all seen the commercials on T.V. and read the reviews. While some may find it to be hard to store lots of information on these netbooks, given the right one it can be very useful for your traveling dad.
Solar Charger For Gadgets. Just imagine dad on a business trip somewhere, he’s been on the go with meetings all day, wants to call home to say hi to his family but his phone is dead due to not having anywhere to charge it. The solar charger is a great way to get your gadgets charged where there is no plug available to you.
For toymakers, the world changes on Aug. 14. That’s the day a new regulation takes effect that small manufacturers say could force them out of business.
“I hear gut-wrenching stories every day, like the soldier’s wife who doesn’t think she can continue her homemade doll business or the Native American women who are worried that they’d run afoul of the law if they continue to make handcrafted authentic clothing for Native American children,” says Rosario Palmieri, vice president of regulatory policy for the National Association of Manufacturers.
Last year, in the wake of several high-profile toy recalls, Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). Intended to ensure that children’s products are free of lead and toxic chemicals, the law has been taking effect in phases — and each new rule that kicks in brings with it a raft of unintended consequences.
Little Alouette in Columbus, Ohio, is just two months away from a deadline that could force the two-person shop to shutter. In mid-August, a new provision takes effect that requires children’s products to carry a permanent label or mark with manufacturing details. The label is intended to ease recalls, but many toymakers are frustrated by the new requirement’s rigidity and complexity. The Sharps don’t fully understand the convoluted regulation and aren’t sure they’ll be able to absorb the costs of compliance.
Too many questions about implementation remain unaddressed by the law’s overseer, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, critics say.
Parents of recent college grads are concerned about how recent their children will find a job in this economy. Pamela Slim on Escape From Cubicle Nation has some very interesting thoughts on graduating in this economy that I couldn’t agree with more.
The first thing to remember is that there is no such thing as a perfect job. It does not exist, there will always be some sort of disadvantage in any job you go into. So stop looking for the perfect job, you wont find it out there.
You are always self-employed, no matter your tax designation.
The job market today is radically different than that of your parent’s generation. No job is guaranteed, and no company can promise stability. So the best way to create long-term income security is to manage your career at all times as if you were self-employed.
Big Idea Group announced a new product line idea hunt. Arthur Blank is seeking innovative concepts for either their existing lines or new but complementary lines. Royalty potential for winning concepts is tremendous.
Innovation Criteria for New Product Lines
* Can be produced Dec.-July
* Fit ABCO’s manufacturing and distribution capabilities
* Innovative and unique
* Defensible and extendable
* Offer at least average gross margin
* Provide revenues of at least $5 million per year
* Be easy and inexpensive to roll out
ABCO’s Current Products
Loyalty and frequency cards, security cards, membership cards, T&E cards, phone cards, e-cards, signs, rulers, key tags, point of purchase displays, calendars, luggage tags, custom die-cut shapes.
Possible New Categories
Other products that might fit ABCO include home goods, kids’ products, labels, magnetic sheet products, mats, office supplies, outdoor/garden items (e.g., plant tags), packaging, posters, promotional items, school items, sheet plastic products. Other categories that fit our criteria are welcome.
Deadline is July 29, 2009. Click here for entry forms and complete guidelines.
Businesses are jumping on twitter right and left and that’s probably a good thing. But, businesses are also jumping on thinking that’s all you need to do. Create a twitter account, create a bunch of followers, and start tweeting out this week’s lunch special.
However, it is not that simple because you can’t just simply create all of your followers. You have to earn them, as explained on Open Forum. You will need to have a reputation for providing great content for your readers. People want to follow someone worth their time; someone who will provide them with some insights, ideas and resources.
Try giving on Twitter as much as you’re getting. Remember to help others. Provide them with some support, answer their questions and talk them through something they are concerned about.
With nearly $18 million in annual revenue and 31 employees, ShoppersChoice.com, a Baton Rouge company that operates a handful of e-commerce sites, is substantial — but it’s no Wal-Mart.
Yet for just $2,500 to $3,500 a week, commercials for BBQGuys.com, its online store for grills, run alongside ads for Wal-Mart on the Food Network and a few other channels.
Mike Hackley, founder and CEO of ShoppersChoice.com, launched his low-budget campaign using Google TV Ads, which lets businesses buy advertising time on national cable channels and the satellite service Dish Network. Google TV Ads essentially works like AdWords, except that instead of bidding on search terms, you bid on airtime.
After hiring a local production company to produce a 30-second spot for $2,500, Hackley began planning his TV strategy. Internal research had shown that most BBQGuys.com customers are 35 to 65 years old and make more than $80,000 a year.
Hackley entered that information on the Google TV Ads website, and, using data from Nielsen and other sources, the site suggested shows, times, and channels that matched the target audience — including programs on the Golf Channel, ESPN, and HGTV. Using a keyword search, Hackley also found shows about grilling.
For instance, a search for barbecue grill comes up with programs like Food Network’s Boy Meets Grill as well as an episode of Family Guy on TBS, in which the world’s dictators attend a barbecue.
I had an informative conversation with Rob Gainer and Patti Tucker from DECKStraordinaire this morning. They build custom decks in Michigan. Since the winters there are long, and it’s difficult to build a deck when you can’t use a when the ground is frozen, they used their winter months to document their system and package it all together into a business opportunity. I’ll profile their bizop more fully later, but take a look at some of their decks. Even if you’re not interested in building decks for a living, you have to marvel at some of their custom designs.
If you’ve been holding out for just one more reason to list your small business in Google’s Local Business Center, you’ve got it. Google is now offering a full dashboard of information to small businesses who are proactive enough to verify their company’s listing.
Most small businesses often have a problem trying to figure out who their followers are online, where they are located and how they found the business online. Now starting this month small businesses who register with Google will now have access to their new dashboard feature, as stated on SmallBizTrends.
Google will require that the business register their business as well as verify their listing information, this way the business information is more complete and therefore more accessible to the searchers online.
The dashboards offered by Google will offer a short lesson in Google analytics without stressing them out, providing understanding to the owners on what is going on in their site, where their followers are coming from and more.
The IPO market has all but disappeared, and lofty merger and acquisition deals are unthinkable. So entrepreneurs, as well as their employees and investors, are left with few opportunities for unloading their stock.
In April of this year SecondMarket launched a new site called Private Company Marketplace where businesses get to set their own terms on the stock that they own themselves and are trying to unload. Inc.com reported that this new site reaches over 3,000 investors and buyers to match up the sale.
Xavier talked about building the company that he founded in 2002 that has grown to become one of the world’s largest online used bookstores. The company’s HQ is in Atlanta, but the heart of the operation is in Mishawaka, Indiana, where the warehouse is located. They receive shipments of 200,000 books every week, and have an estimated 2M titles at any given moment.
Yunsuk Im is translating and posting some of our articles in Korean on her blog.
I asked him about her plans:
My name is Yunsuk Im. I have been a reader of your site for a while.
My blog introduces interesting articles, business ideas and success stories etc. Things that are related to making money and businesses. Things that can be inspirational to people who want to get out of 9-5 jobs and achieve financial independence like me. Since not many Koreans are exposed to the articles and stories from USA, I thought my blog could help people and myself.
photo credit: TheTruthAboutMortgage.com
