This website is not like all of the others. Since 2001, we've posted 15326 different business opportunities and ideas, so you're sure to find something here to inspire you!
Sher-Lee’s kids were intrigued by the idea of receiving mail but, unfortunately, they almost never received any. Inspired by their interest, Sherri-Lee formulated a business that would deliver postcards to those kids who loved to receive mail.
Shoppers who have cut their spending — some drastically — during the downturn are now suffering from what some call “frugal fatigue” so reports The Washington Post.
Most ardent shoppers don’t seem to be giving in to their cravings yet: Consumer spending was sluggish last month, and credit card debt is waning. But with the Dow topping 10,000 just last week and the air filled with talk of recovery, it’s getting harder for some people to keep suppressing the urge.
“I want to shop!” cried a frustrated Gillian Joseph, 42, of McLean, leaving Marshalls in Pentagon City empty-handed last week.
Joseph, a widow and mother of a young son, quit shopping “cold turkey” a year ago when her investments lost half their value.
For someone who used to blow $100 every time she walked into Target, “it was a sad and scary time,” she said. “I’m a shopaholic. I love to shop.”
She finally broke her fast, walking into Nordstrom after a long absence and buying a pair of 4 1/2 -inch heels in bright floral colors. The experience was cathartic, she said.
Being a working mom – in or outside the home – can be a challenge, but for one Star mother of two young children, it’s a Peace of Cake!
For the past 2 1/2 years, Mindy Lin of Star has taken advantage of naps, bedtime and a supportive family to turn her creative passion into an at-home business.
“It’s all about balance. Nap times are great; bedtime is even better,” said Lin who owns and operates Peace of Cake! custom cake designs and bakery. “And I have an amazing support system – a grandma who loves time with the kids and an aunt who loves spending time with the kids.”
With a 2 1/2-year-old son, Carter, and a 9-month-old daughter, Chloe, Lin has to multitask and stay organized.
“When I’m in the zone, it’s hard to multitask with the kids,” she said. “The baking part is easy; it doesn’t take much focus. The decorating takes more focus. I try to be as efficient as possible, so nap time is when I get the most done and can really focus on my work.”
Lin creates about six to eight cakes a month, which allows her to embrace her creativity while still leaving plenty of time to be a mom.
“I don’t want to overcommit myself because I still want that quality time with my kids. But it’s my passion, and I really love to do it,” Lin said. “My husband is very supportive. He knows I get my creative fix doing this, so I’m not inclined to spend his money decorating the house.”
But when the cake-decorating money does come in, it’s a nice boost to the Lin family income, she said.
There are plenty of puns that I could use to introduce Julie Pickens & Mindee Doney. When you enter the type of business that they have, it’s hard to avoid them. Rather than pick on them, these women deserve to be applauded. If you’ve ever chased after a child with a runny nose and found that even the most common of tissues don’t make the job any easier, you’ll understand why.
Julie and Mindee are the inventors of Boogie Wipes, a saline infused nose wipe that makes the process of blowing little noses go much more smoothly. As further proof that their business was destined to stick around, they generated over $1 million in sales within the first year and look to potentially triple that number this year.
Tell us a little about your business, Little Busy Bodies, Inc. and your products.
Often referred to as The Boogie Moms, friends Mindee Doney and Julie Pickens developed the first ever saline nose wipe called Boogie Wipes® as a solution for their kids’ sore, red, runny noses. Using the idea, their business backgrounds and mompreneurial spirit they formed Little Busy Bodies, Inc in May, 2007. They took the concept through an intensive research and development process, hiring a chemist, surveying consumers and interviewing manufacturers. In December, 2007 they sold their first pack of Boogie Wipes. Sales went on to reach $1.1 million their first year of business. Little Busy Bodies now operates out of Beaverton, OR and employs 12 full-time employees (9 moms) including Julie as CEO and Mindee as CMO. The company will triple their revenue this year reaching just over $3million in sales. They now offer 7 saline nose wipe products to 40,000 retail stores across the US, Mexico and Canada including; Wal-Mart, Rite Aid, Nordstrom, Walgreens, Toys”R”Us and Kroger.
As mom business moguls, Mindee and Julie now share their entrepreneurial knowledge with other inventors and business owners through speaking engagements and media platforms. They encourage Moms to embrace their strengths in their Business of Being a Mom™ and bring them into their journey as an entrepreneur. They have appeared on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, NBC, ABC and FOX morning shows across the country and are the resident Mompreneur experts on Family Matters Radio. The Boogie Moms have stolen the spotlight on the front page of The Oregonian business section, front page of the Beaverton Valley Times, as key notes of the Oregon Inventors Conference and on blog talk radio shows like Classy Mommy, Chatterbox and Entrepreneur People. They were recently recognized in the as one of Top 50 Leading Moms in Business by Start Up Nation. They have been quoted as innovation experts in industry publications such as Entrepreneur Magazine, HAPPI and Chain Drug Review. The Boogie Moms are a finalist for 2009 Oregon Entrepreneur of the Year, the key-note speakers for the National Moms in Business Unite conference, in San Diego in September and MC’s of Moms ReInvented in Tampa this October. Their first book, The Business of Being a Mom ™ will release Holiday, 09.
The Associated Press has an article about British inventor James Dyson. He has unveiled a bladeless fan which he is touting as a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to air conditioning.
The 62-year-old designer, better known as the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner, said that his sci-fi-looking fans are safer and easier to clean than traditional desk fans.
Air is sucked into the base and fired out of a ring-like aperture at the top. Dyson says the airflow is far smoother than a regular fan.
The two-century-old technique of preserving food—or “putting up,” in canning-speak—is making a big comeback reports The Wall Street Journal.
The worst recession in decades and a trend toward healthier eating are inspiring many Americans to grow their own food. Now the harvest season is turning many of these gardeners into canners looking to stretch the bounty of the garden into the winter.
Canning statistics are hard to come by, but Elizabeth Andress, project director of the National Center for Home Food Preservation, a government-funded program that advises consumers on how to safely preserve food, says requests for canning classes are flooding in at a rate not seen in many years.
Canning has been around since the dawn of the 19th century, when, at Napoleon’s behest, a Frenchman developed a method of sealing food in bottles to prevent spoilage on long military campaigns. The process was later adapted to factory-sealed metal cans, but at home, “canning” is still practiced in thick glass jars.
In the weak economy, others are turning to it as a money saver. A few seeds planted in the spring can yield enough canned produce to last a year. But Andress warns that canning food isn’t always cheaper than buying it from the grocery store.
Kevin Morley and business partner Dean Eggers are busy trying to promote and raise capital for their invention, the Dish Trapper reports The Las Vegas Business Press.
The device is a stretchable nylon net that can be attached to a dishwasher rack to keep plastic containers in place, thus preventing water from splashing onto the user when the dishes are done.
The idea for the Dish Trapper came up a few years ago and was put on hold as the company developed other products, Eggers said. The timing now seems right for a practical, yet inexpensive, product.
“There are 80 million dishwashers in the United States,” Eggers notes.
“And they (dishes) fill up with crud, and you have to wash them again,” Morley says, finishing the sentence.
Eggers thought such an invention would be useful a long time ago, when he had to deal with his small children putting tiny plastic containers in his dishwasher.
“Years ago, when my kids were young, it happened to me,” he said. “I’d get splashed with dirty dish water.”
Fast Company has an interesting story on IdeaPaint, which is simply a paint that turns any paintable surface into a dry-erase board.
The benefit–besides being able to brainstorm on almost every inch of your office–is that the paint is half the cost of whiteboard and better-performing–you can leave marks up indefinitely, and they won’t stain the wall.
Of course, it takes a bit of time–you may have to sand the wall and prime it–but one other benefit is that you’re not incurring all the carbon involved in manufacturing and shipping a whiteboard.
AuctionBytes.com is reporting that Stamps.com has a new free program for eBay sellers who connect their account with Stamps.com to import data.
eBay sellers can print First Class Mail International and any other mail class as well as labels for all sizes of the Priority Mail Flat Rate boxes.
Standard features are included, such as cost codes, hidden postage, discounted rates on Priority and Express Mail, 10% off package insurance, and more, and there is no subscription fee.
The service helps the company compete with eBay’s option that allows sellers to use PayPal to print labels for free.
A company spokesperson said that while Stamps.com does not yet have a plan for Mac users, it hopes to launch a Mac version soon.
Hingham makeup artist Kelly O’Keefe is quick to admit that she is a “hopeless romantic.”
So it’s not surprising that after fine-tuning her artistry at Andrew Zona Studio in Hingham, O’Keefe, a licensed esthetician, decided to start her own wedding-oriented business, “Blush,” when her maternity leave ended earlier this year. O’Keefe is the mother of two small boys, Aiden and Jack.
“Other than the day your children are born, you wedding day is the most important day of your life,” she said with a dreamy look in her eyes.
O’Keefe, who has had a passion for makeup since she was a small child, specializes in on-site bridal and event makeup. She works her magic on clients in Hingham, Cohasset, Scituate, Duxbury, Marshfield, Weymouth, Braintree, and other South Shore communities and beyond, including Cape Cod and The Islands.
“I take the stress out by doing my work on-site,” said O’Keefe, who learned her art at the Blaine beauty school in Waltham. “The main thing I want brides to know is that I am there to make their dreams come true the day of their wedding. They should look every bit the elegant bride they dreamed of being. I feel really honored to be a part of such a big day in their lives, and I want each and every bride to have the most effortless, memorable day they can have and to feel absolutely beautiful!”
People are paying real money for digital goods in all sorts of online applications ranging from Facebook apps to massively multiplayer online games reports GamesBeat.
The No. 1 thing they buy is virtual money. Other top items include virtual weapons and gifts for social networking friends, according to a survey.
Free-to-play games, where you can start playing for free and then buy items in the game as you need them, now account for more than half of all virtual goods transactions, according to the July survey by market researcher VGMarket and virtual goods platform company PlaySpan.
About 58 percent of gamers made purchases in free-to-play games in the past year. About 34 percent made purchases in MMO games (or virtual worlds such as Eve Online), and 23 percent made purcahse in social networking games.
It isn’t just geeks buying these things. Virtual goods and micro transactions have become a favorite business model for game companies this year, particularly as ad-based models sink in the recession and gamers shy away from buying $60 games in stores.
Struggling with hearing loss since she was a baby, Karen Wildman (left) knew a lot about drying out hearing aids from sweat, rain and other moisture.
But when she realized she could apply her drying technique to other small electronics and started saving her children’s and friends’ gadgets, she knew she was on to a big idea reports the Mom Invented blog.
Partnering with her sister, Lisa Holmes, the two created Bheestie and Co. to sell their electronics-drying Bheestie Bags.
Starting small and funding the project themselves, Karen and Lisa took five years to develop their product, which is now being sold online and in retail stores — including at major outdoor supplier REI.
The two mom inventors are currently reveling in hearing about the countless iPods, cell phones, digital cameras and other gadgets their product has saved, and project their sales will double this year.
In business there comes a time when we all must do some sort of public speaking. For some this is no big deal but for others it’s scary, horrifying and down right the worst thing imaginable. Some don’t even really know how to give a public speech correctly. Oprah recently gave a speech at the Duke University and nailed it with flying colors. Below are some traits and tips of hers on speaking in public.
Tailor your examples to your audience. Always explain how your examples are relevant to your audience. Throughout her speech, Oprah clearly makes the connection between the experiences of the people she met on her show, and how the graduates can extrapolate those experiences and apply them to their own professional life.
Here are some more tips:
Confidence is by far the most important aspect to all of your public speaking. You may be terrified on the inside, but if your showing real confidence then no one will ever be the wiser.
Make it personal here and there by providing some personal tidbits that validate what you are speaking about. But keep it to a bear minimum so it doesn’t grow boring on your audience.
Always make sure to repeat yourself more than once to be sure that you are truly getting your main point and message across to your audience.
Be real in front of your audience. Don’t portray yourself to be something that you are not, this is always easily detected by your listeners.
When you switch over from working for a company to working for yourself, you begin to realize just how overwhelming and stressful it can be especially during down times for your business. That is why it is always highly recommended that entrepreneurs have more than one source of income.
I recently read an article on Meryl.net talking about this very issue. There are several different ways an entrepreneur can obtain multiple sources of income other than their main business concept. You may have some sort of expertise under your belt, maybe due to college or working for a prior company, this would be something that you may want to think about writing a book about for others to follow in your foot steps.
Another great way of coming up with additional sources of income is to go after your hobby or passion. For example, if you enjoy baking, gardening or some sort of crafting as a hobby, you may want to consider starting a second or third source of income revolved around it.
In general it is always a good idea to have some sort of a fall back plan, some sort of additional income that will continue to bring in revenue for you and your family during down times. All sources of your income will have dips, and maybe even at the same time, but when you have more then one or two incomes coming in, it wont be as dramatic for your finances.
The investors at The Shark Tank have some fun at the expense of this ‘entrepreneur’. The lesson to be learned here is how do you compete with the BIG dogs.
Reuters is reporting that Amazon.com is launching same-day delivery service in seven cities as the online retailer looks to win sales from last-minute shoppers this holiday season.
Amazon said “Local Express Delivery” will offer customers same-day delivery in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington, D.C. for $5.99.
That price applies only to Amazon Prime members, who pay a $79 yearly fee for free shipping from the online site. For a non-Prime customer, the price could be as high as $18.99 to ship a computer or a piece of luggage, for example.
The service will be extended to Chicago, Indianapolis and Phoenix in the coming months, Amazon said. It will be a permanent service from the retailer that will continue after the holidays.
“If a customer needs a last-minute present for a birthday or wants a copy of their book club book before the weekend starts, they can order from Amazon instead of the hassle of a last-minute trip to the mall,” Girish Lakshman, Amazon’s vice president of transportation, said in a statement.
The company will use the courier services Dynamex Inc and A1 for its same-day needs, Amazon said.
MakingTheMogul.com: “It is always a vital aspect of business to be respectful and appropriate even when sending out mass emails to your contacts.”
When in business there are several times throughout our work week that we have to send out mass business email’s for various reasons, but some of us don’t realize there is such a thing as email manners. I have listed below a few mannerism techniques for sending out your mass business emails that are sure to improve their acceptance.
Always put all of your email addresses in the BCC field. This protects the identity of all of your contacts, and your contacts will most definitely appreciate this one.
Some business contacts may have more than email address, for example, they may have one for press, one for submissions and so on. Always make sure your email is being sent to the appropriate and preferred email address.
Show don’t tell. While Ralph presented me with a three-page single-spaced handout about the Bee Skep after I purchased it, he knew the visual of watching an 89-year old man hand make a basket with a Diet Coke bottle would draw a crowd. From that experience of watching, he then just answered questions. When I was selling western wear I used to have an employee steaming hats at the front of the store to create interest. What can you show to create interest in your store?
When dealing with sales businesses especially in a down economy, sometimes you have to really pull out the big guns in order to hike up your sales numbers. I recently found some really cool and helpful sales tips at RetailDoc.com that I think are sure to help boost your sales numbers.
Use the law of scarcity towards your benefit. Try taking a popular item and only display one of them at a time, this will create the sense of you are almost out of this product and people will be grabbing it up while they can.
Make sure that every item or product you are selling has it’s own story other than the features that it has. People like to buy products that have great stories behind them as far as how long they have been around, how they were invented and so on.
Always take into consideration the items own worth and current economy prices when pricing all items in your store.
SCORE says to be able to convince a lender to make you a loan for a new business venture, you must demonstrate that you have done your homework and have prepared a business plan is what’s needed to apply for a small business loan.
In addition to the primary purpose of using the plan to educate the lender about your proposed project, a plan helps you focus on the project and keeps you on track as you proceed with developing your business.
The plan should state the amount of money you will need and how much of your own funds you will be investing.
It’s also very important to demonstrate how the loan will be repaid and how the funds will be used.
This can be done in the form of simple quarterly cash flow and profit and loss projections. The lender will want assurance that the loan will be repaid in a timely manner.
The plan also should contain a description of your personal business experience as well as that of the other involved individuals.
59.7 percent of respondents indicated they had at least one child when they launched their first business, and 43.5 percent had two or more children.
I recently came across a very interesting article located at OnStartUps.com where they discuss the traits and components that make up an entrepreneur. We all think of entrepreneurs as always being interested in business since they were young, being a “go getter”, someone who is financial savvy and more. Look below for the most common traits and components that make up an entrepreneur, some of which may shock you a little bit.
95.1% of entrepreneurs have a bachelors degree of some sort and an additional 47% have an even higher degree then that.
The average age of entrepreneurs when they opened up their first business is around 40 years of age.
15.2% of entrepreneurs have a brother or sister who have previously started their own business.
A large 69.9% of entrepreneurs reported that they were married when they first started their own business and another 5.2% were either divorced, separated or widowed.
Entrepreneurs have usually been more educated then their parents were.
A good portion of entrepreneurs have worked for some sort of other company for 6 years or more before they finally started up their own business.
I’ve noticed that I don’t use email as much as I used to. On Wednesday we started a poll asking readers now that Facebook and Twitter are available, do you use less email to communicate?
20 percent said less, 7 percent said they used it more and 73 percent said they didn’t notice a difference.
Well, The Wall Street Journal is declaring email dead! In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold—services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world.
And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate—in ways we can only begin to imagine.
We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts.
Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.
Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging? Thanks to Facebook, some questions can be answered without asking them. You don’t need to ask a friend whether she has left work, if she has updated her public “status” on the site telling the world so.
Email, stuck in the era of attachments, seems boring compared to services like Google Wave, currently in test phase, which allows users to share photos by dragging and dropping them from a desktop into a Wave, and to enter comments in near real time.
They call her the Mum Lady, but Veronica Lozano doesn’t mind. The full-time working mother of three girls has created a side business by making homecoming mums for students in the Kingwood-Humble area. The idea started with one request and soon blossomed into a makeshift mum factory in her home selling hundreds of mums every fall.
“What started out as a fun hobby has turned into a profitable business throughout the years,” Lozano explained.
Wendy Jones also uses her crafting skills to make what she calls her family fun money. The stay-at-home mom specializes in making diaper cakes, something that doesn’t take a whole lot of work, but is a hot seller. She also recently expanded her business to include homemade bows and blankets.
“I am a crafty person,” Jones said. “I have always done crafts and things for my kids, so I thought why not put it to use?”
“Honestly you have to put your heart in it,” Lozano said. “In everything I do I put my heart in it.”
What is stuck to your fridge? If you’re like most people, you probably have a few magnets, some photos, a couple notes, and, if you have kids, the pictures they colored for you.
Cluttered refrigerators are not uncommon. Some of the most organized homes have fridges that look cluttered with some useless papers and magnets. Paul Davis, the inventor of the FrigeMate refrigerator organizer, hopes to help people change that.
Tell us a little about your Frigemate.
Frigemates are modular units that are placed on the outside of your refrigerator to reduce clutter and organize information. These units come in 4 different colors, white, black, bisque and gray.
Om Malik over at GigaOm has put together a list of 10 commandments for a successful freemium app.
1. Make sure that the usefulness and engagement of the app are in perfect sync.
2. Make your user value proposition a simple one.
3. Focus deeply on one single domain.
4. Clearly define what is free and what is paid.
5. Build a subscription service into your application.
6. Encourage your customers to use your application often, for the more they use the application, more likely they are to establish a relationship with your company and that means you can sell them something new (or an upgrade) in the future.
7. Data is the ultimate lock in. The more data that is stored inside the application, more difficult it is for customer to switch, because of the extra effort involved.
8. Free is free marketing. Instead of advertising, the service should sell itself.
9. Make sure what you started offering for free, remains free.
10. Ensure your app works across all platforms, including devices (such as the iPhone) preferred by your likely customers.
