Business Opportunities Weblog

If you run an online business, you need your traffic to convert into customers. If the traffic to customer ratio is too low, you won’t have a business for long.

The struggle to bring in traffic and convert those visitors into the customers you need is one that many businesses have to face. It’s not always easy and it’s not always cheap. Polar Design took notice of the struggle some businesses went through and decided to create a solution: VisitorCamp.com. For the business on a budget, their services are priced just right.

What will someone find when they visit VisitorCamp?

We created VisitorCamp.com to help small businesses relax a bit in 2009 and take a vacation from stressing about how they will generate sales as they face the dual challenges of the recession and the credit crunch, which is preventing a lot of perfectly healthy businesses from investing in their future. Everything on the site, from the design, to the types of packages we offer is meant to convey this philosophy. When you choose a VisitorCamp.com solution, you don’t simply buy a set of templates with hosting that doesn’t take your business very far – at VistorCamp.com you find complete solution to attracting visitors and converting them to customers that can fit into a modest budget and are aligned with your goals due to our marketing guarantees.

What separates your service from the competition?

There are a lot of companies offering web site packages, with hosting, web design, and so forth. What makes our packages unique is that we also combine ongoing search engine marketing as part of the price, which is shown to drive customers to a site at the lowest cost. We also provide a rather expensive custom design in the package instead making clients choose from a library of canned templates. Finally, we offer a guarantee of results – clients who don’t see the results promised can use our package at no cost until they get those results. These three features combined with a content management solution, optional shopping carts, and lots of other tools make VisitorCamp.com packages a different kind of solution that is more closely aligned with our clients success while still affordable.

Continue reading VisitorCamp.com Offers Search Engine Marketing For The Modest Budget

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Mashable:

What’s the best selling office product on Amazon.com this New Year? Perhaps printer ink and paper for all those holiday pics? Cases for all the new laptops received this Christmas?

Try: none of the above.

Currently leading Amazon’s Office Products and Supplies bestseller list is the Sarah Palin 2009 Calendar.

According to the ad copy for the calendar , it’s “a personal look at the Republican Vice Presidential candidate.” Never before seen photos! Includes over 50 photographs of Sarah Palin and her family.

Photo by Judy Patrick.

intellectual properties:

Columnist David Brooks, commenting in the Dec. 16th New York Times about Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book called “Outliers,” made a statement as profound as it was accurate: “Control of attention is the ultimate individual power,” he wrote. “People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them.”

But why is that truer now than ten or twenty years ago? Why will it be truer still ten or twenty years from now? As I wrote in May, Internet distractions evolve to become ever more “distracting” all the time — like a virus. Distractions now “seek you out.”

Distractions mask the toll they take on productivity. Everyone finishes up their work days exhausted, but how much of that exhaustion is from real work, how much from the mental effort of fighting off distractions and how much from the indulgence of distractions?

Photo by stevekrh19.

Website Magazine:

2008 has drawn to a close, and many Web professionals are wondering what next year will bring. It may seem arbitrary to make predictions, but the Web business is not a static industry and forecasting often shines the light on our practical hopes for the future.

1. A Major Social Media Shift

2. E-Commerce and Internet Retailers Get Smart

3. Internet Advertising Will Rebound - Big Time

4. Affiliate Marketers Will Reap What They Sow

5. Video Will Become Truly Viable for Marketers

Photo by djayo.

Mashable:

With the recent explosion and expansion of online video, the biggest question is how to best drive viewer action and monetize this new medium.

Even with these strong benefits, most agree that the video opportunity has yet to be fully realized. Companies struggle to best make use of this new medium, and have found that porting television-style advertising to the Web is regularly rejected by the online audience.

Here are six steps to creating online video that works:

1) Make it Authentic

2) Make it Relevant

3) Make it Engaging

4) Make it Google-Friendly

5) Make an Action Path

6) Make it Shareable

All in All: Make it Happen

Photo by Travis Gray.

Making It Legal:

The home office deduction sounds like it would be a great thing for small business owners. After all, many of us work at home, and it’s not as though the IRS is always so generous when it comes to deductions for the “little guys.” Deducting a portion of rent/mortgage interest, utilities, insurance, repairs, etc., is a very delicious prospect.

However, there’s a catch (you knew there would be, didn’t you?).

• The part you are deducting must be used exclusively for a trade or business. Not occasionally, or even often, but exclusively. That’s why it’s such a red flag for auditing the tax returns for small business owners.

• The home office must be the principal place of business for your company. Not the place where you bring your paperwork after a busy day in the office because you won’t be interrupted by annoying phone calls. If there’s no other location where you can handle the administration or management of your company, your home office may very well qualify.

• [And this is the new morsel I learned] If you deduct home office expenses, you may not get the full benefits of the tax exclusions when you sell your residence. Carving out a portion of your home for the business deductions in effect disqualifies it from the deductions you get from considering it part of your residential property.

Speak to your accountant to see whether it really will be worth your while to claim a home office deduction.

Photo by sean dreilinger.

When you open your garage door, what do you see? Like most people, I would bet that you hope to see everything organized for an optimum amount of space. However, that’s probably not what you see.

Jared Newman of Gorgeous Garage knows exactly how you feel. He started by organizing his own garage. Once he’d done that, the people around him wanted his help. It was while helping his friends organize their own garages that he started to think of a different bracket, one that could handle more weight. It went from idea to project and grew to become a fledgling business.

No longer a fledgling, Gorgeous Garage now has 32 dealers nationwide.

What was the inspiration for Gorgeous Garage?

I always have a need for order. It bothered me that I had so many things up against the wall in my garage taking up floor space, especially since most of the items or containerized items were hardly ever used. I looked all the way around the top of my garage and noticed nothing but empty, unused space. I then built in wood shelving around my own garage. I had neighbors and friends who saw it and wanted help with their garage as well. After putting up wall mounted shelves made of wood in several garages, I thought of finding a heavy duty steel bracket to use instead. In my search I found nothing that would support the volume or weight that I wanted to put on shelves. I decided to design and make a triangular bracket. In addition to having mostly long term storage, I had a few things that I used more often, such as yard tools and bicycles, I wanted to store more accessible. When I looked at my bracket drawing and the 45 degree brace supporting the shelf it came rather quickly to my mind of how to integrate the use of bars and hooks to hang items under the shelf. Soon after the design, I built and installed the first prototype on my back porch. I was amazed at how efficient, strong and versatile it turned out. After dedicating nineteen years with a company I decided, along with encouragement of an inspired wife, to start our own new business. I looked at my wife one day and thought of the name Gorgeous Garages.

How long did it take for you to build from idea to business?

Once we (my wife and I) made the decision to go ahead, it took us about 5 months to begin selling our product idea. I made a few design changes after the initial prototype. I built and bought a few machines to enable faster and better manufacturing of the product. We made up marketing materials, and determined the best ways to sell our system. It took some trial and error, but after a year and a half from the first prototype, we were able to break even and the business developed wings.

Continue reading How Gorgeous Is Your Garage?

Funny Patents and Inventions:

Is there anyone out there who isn’t familiar with the high five celebratory gesture made by two people, each raising one hand to slap the raised hand of the other?

It dates back to 1944 when in the movie, Cover Girl (1944), Phil Silvers’ character, Genius, tears up a telegram and attempts to “high five” co-star, Gene Kelly.

US # 5356330 is a patent for an American apparatus simulating a “high five.” It consists of a lower arm portion with an attached simulated hand, an upper arm portion, an elbow joint, which pivotally secures them both and a spring element, which directs them both nowhere near Nirvana but closely towards a pre-determined alignment.

It is not known why inventor Albert Cohen from Troy, New York, believed this would be an item every self-respecting household should have at least one of, nor why any market (self-respecting or otherwise) would stock such an item. Still, anything goes today.

Photo by USPTO.

The New York Times:

A New York couple is betting on the idea that at least one thing is recession-proof: demand for a convenient and clean public toilet.

SitOrSquat, an ad-supported Web site and mobile application created by Danika Landers and Jonathan Glanz, delivers a handy listing of public bathrooms, from the ones at Starbucks to Saks Fifth Avenue, in various cities.

The mobile version uses an iPhone or BlackBerry’s location detection capabilities to find nearby bathrooms. “Think of it as a restaurant review site, but for toilets,” Mr. Glanz said. The site’s database is generated by users, and people can add short descriptions and photos and indicate whether cleanliness levels make it advisable to “sit” or “squat.”

Landers, a 28-year-old graphic designer, came up with the idea for SitOrSquat after discovering the dilapidated condition of the ladies’ room at her Manhattan office. The Web site started out as an inside joke among her friends until she and Mr. Glanz found themselves stranded at a party without a bathroom and realized they had a product with potential.

Photo by SitOrSquat, Inc..

Trendhunter:

Christoph Brown is the Etch-A-Sketch Man and he’s amazing! He makes highly detailed drawings using an Etch-A-Sketch.

You remember the Etch-A-Sketch, don’t you? It’s that red box with something inside that lets you make pictures.

If you think this ingenious system is complicated, try drawing with the thing! Few people get past creating the basic crude letter or block shapes. It’s not an easy drawing system to master.

Christoph Brown is an exception. Not only that, he hires out for events. For about $175 he’ll sketch you from a photo, and yes, he can fix the image so it won’t disappear if you happen to shake your masterpiece.

Photo by Christoph Brown.

Wired:

In 2003, Burnie Burns got together with three friends and created Red vs. Blue—an animated comedy series set in the world of first-person shooter Halo.

Nerds loved it, and within months nearly a million people were downloading each week’s free show.

Burns & Co. decided they wanted to quit their jobs and work on the series full-time. So they figured out a way to do it: T-shirts.

Burns appropriated the comedy’s wittiest one-liners and set up an online store to sell shirts and caps.

Within months, he was filling hundreds of orders a week, generating enough revenue to pay everyone a salary. “The shirts,” he says, “turned us from a hobby into a business.”

Burns is not alone. Increasingly, creative types are harnessing what I’ve begun to call “the T-shirt economy”—paying for bits by selling atoms.

Charging for content online is hard, often impossible. Even 10 cents for a download of something like Red vs. Blue might drive away the fans. So instead of fighting this dynamic, today’s smart artists are simply adapting to it.

Their algorithm is simple: First, don’t limit your audience by insisting they pay to see your work. Instead, let your content roam freely online, so it generates as large an audience as possible.

Then cash in on your fans’ desire to sport merchandise that declares their allegiance to you.

We’re talking about a surprisingly big market. According to Impressions, a clothing industry trade publication, Americans spend around $40 billion a year on decorated apparel.

At CafePress, a Web site that lets anyone customize and sell merchandise, users sold more than $100 million in goods in 2007—pocketing $20 million in profits—and overall sales are growing an average of 60 percent a year.

Photo by Threadless.com.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

David Lovich visits a library near his home several days a week to look for a job. On Monday, his favorite spot in a busy east Cobb County branch was taken.

At public libraries across the metro area, business is booming, and patrons are visiting the libraries for more than recreational reading. More and more, they’re using the library databases to research business opportunities and find educational scholarships and financial aid, Cobb library director Tamara George said. They often bring their own computers.

“Libraries are a good value during a bad economy,” said George. “People go where things are free.”

In Gwinnett, the county’s libraries are filled every day, said Liz Forster, a spokeswoman for the library system. During November alone, patrons logged on to 90,000, 30-minute computer sessions. In that same period, 4,000 people used the wireless access. Circulation increased by 9 percent this year.

The same is true elsewhere.

Circulation increased 13 percent in 2008 at Atlanta-Fulton County public libraries and 6 percent at DeKalb’s 22 libraries.

While circulation of books, DVDs and CDs is up 4.3 percent this year at Cobb’s central library and 16 branches, computer use has increased 7.5 percent compared with a year ago.

The increase is part of a national trend, said John Szabo, director of the Atlanta-Fulton County public library system: When the going gets tough, people head to the library.

Photo by a_glitch.

For every product, there is a niche to reach. Those who love to fish are more likely to reach out to a business that specializes in what they want over something much more generic. For those interesting in buying or selling watches, Watch Choice has given them the ultimate luxury watch marketplace. With a free membership, people are able to buy within the marketplace and even sell a watch if they’d like. Those interested in becoming merchants can also do so. Merchant accounts allow bulk listings and currently offer the first three months selling, free.

When looking at the big picture, sometimes people forget to see those smaller opportunities just waiting to be used. Glenn Palmer saw that potential within the watch market and he was able to turn that into a running business.

What inspired you to launch Watch Choice?

My own online search for a specific make and model of luxury watch inspired me to launch Watch Choice. I discovered it took a lot of time to search many different watch dealer sites to first locate the brand I was interested in and then even more sites to find just one example of the particular model I wanted. Once I had found the watch I was after, I wanted to make sure that the price was reasonable so I had to keep looking further to try to find other examples of the same watch. This gave me the rather grand idea to put all luxury watches for sale in the world in one place so that buyers and watch enthusiasts can easily browse and compare.

How long did it take for you to go from idea to business?

18 months from idea, research and feasibility, website designer selection, website development and testing, securing foundation clients (dealers) then launch.

Why watches? Did you consider specializing in any other products before making your decision?

I have a passion for luxury watches so watches were a logical product choice for me. During my feasibility work however I did consider other products but believed that the luxury watch market was a growing market and that my product idea had merit. I have also been struck by what I have read and heard many successful business people say that starting a business in an area that they have a personal interest in helped them to maintain their enthusiasm and drive, particularly in the difficult early years of the business.

Continue reading Watch Choice Takes On The Luxury Watch Market

Springwise:

The best new life hack business ideas spotted in the last 12 months—smart concepts that will continue to provide entrepreneurs with plenty of opportunities in 2009.

1. ModerNash — Niche delivery biz brings IKEA to Nashville
2. Ticket to Mind — Gift-giving simplified through a prepaid plan
3. Babyplays — Toy rental service
4. Insinger de Beaufort — Private banking by shoebox
5. Wigadoo — Event planning site helps friends split the costs
6. Laundry Locker — Laundry service by the locker
7. TrackMyShipments — Helping consumers track shipped packages
8. Rypple — Professional feedback, instant and peer-to-peer
9. WeightNags — Nagging service for dieters
10. Figuring Out — Career sampling service

Photo by ba1969.

Springwise:

The best new fashion & beauty ideas spotted in the last 12 months—smart concepts that will continue to provide entrepreneurs with plenty of opportunities in 2009.

1. Yakkay — Stylish helmets for urban cyclists
2. Transitional Sizes — Clothing rental for size-changing dieters
3. Catwalk Genius — Adopt-a-designer program for crowdfunded fashion
4. Sneakart — Customizing sneakers with removable stickers
5. Stitsh — Click to buy: fashion blog is a street version of shopping mags
6. Keds & Zazzle — Design your own Keds & sell them on Zazzle
7. Tomboy Trades — Steel-toes and tool belts for women
8. colorOn and Eye Majic — Press-on eye shadow kits
9. Diesel & Roskilde — Limited-edition festival jeans
10. Dondup — Bringing a dye back from the dead: luxury jeans tinted a long dormant blue

Photo by ba1969.

Springwise:

The best new retail ideas spotted in the last 12 months—smart concepts that will continue to provide entrepreneurs with plenty of opportunities in 2009.

1. Filippa K — Swedish fashion brand launches its own secondhand store
2. Gerbola Vin — Wine selling & storytelling
3. Fashionology LA — Retailer helps tweens make their own clothes
4. Chocri — Custom-made chocolate bars
5. HOJO — Health and wellness shop focuses on seniors
6. Foodzie — An Etsy for artisanal food
7. Lush — Lush brings back discontinued products on demand
8. Naked Wines — Online farmers’ market for small wine producers
9. BLANKbottle — Winery lets customers set prices
10. Myfab — Furniture shopping with the crowds

Photo by ba1969.

Springwise:

The best new lifestyle & leisure ideas spotted in the last 12 months—smart concepts that will continue to provide entrepreneurs with plenty of opportunities in 2009.

1. vibrantBrains — Brain gyms for baby boomers
2. Tikitag — Connecting online & off with RFID for the masses
3. Hello Health — Platform for healthcare 2.0
4. Drop Shots Tennis — Miniature tennis for pint-sized players
5. checkyourimage.com — Your very own focus group: personal image appraisals
6. SavvyAuntie — Parenting site aimed at non-parents
7. After Work Parties, Granny Boots — Weeknight clubbing for the 9—5 crowd
8. Sarah’s Smash Shack — Paying to break stuff at the smash shack
9. SNIF Tag — RFID collar tag helps dog owners meet new friends
10. Maggie & Rose, Cupcake — Members’ clubs for moms

Photo by ba1969.

Springwise:

The best new food & beverage ideas spotted in the last 12 months—smart concepts that will continue to provide entrepreneurs with plenty of opportunities in 2009.

1. Graze — Healthy snacks, delivered by mail in serving sizes
2. Geschmackslabor — Taste lab restaurant lets customers add flavour to their meals
3. Honibe — Honey without the mess
4. Catch a Piece of Maine — Adopt a Maine lobster trap
5. Bin Ends — Wine tastings via Twitter
6. Tcho — Next-gen chocolate makers
7. Pink Flamingo Pizza — Balloon-enabled pizza picnic delivery
8. WineSide — Wine by the trial-sized tube
9. Morsels — Bakery focuses on bite-size treats
10. Sonntagmorgen — A customized cup of joe

Photo by ba1969.

St. Petersburg Times:

Zingo has a simple plan: turn a profit by keeping people from getting arrested for drunken driving.

So far it’s working, despite the trying economy.

The Atlanta company is a designated-driver business chain that gives tipsy customers a drive home in their own cars. It has grown from six franchises a year ago to 20, including ones in Hills­borough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk counties.

Zingo employees use foldup scooters to get to clients who have called a central dispatcher. The employee then drives the client’s car home with the scooter in the trunk. He then hops on a scooter for the next assignment.

“The cost of DUIs just got to be $10,000, and cab rides are getting more expensive, too, 35 to 40 bucks,” Price said. “Why not go home in your own car?”

Photo by Zingo Transportation.

Entrepreneur:

Here are 10 New Year’s resolutions and discussion topics-suggestions you can offer your staff to guide them toward a higher level of productivity:

1. I will work smarter.

2. I will increase my working network in and out of my immediate area and inside and outside my company.

3. I will find three things that I can do to make myself irreplaceable.

4. I will find ways to get along better with my boss and colleagues.

5. I will join at least one company-wide task force or committee.

6. I will join a professional organization in my area.

7. I will take a job-related self-improvement seminar.

8. I will develop four goals to help me grow and develop as a more achievement-oriented employee.

9. I will evaluate my personal contribution to this organization.

10. I will try to improve my relationship with at least one person with whom I do not get along.

Photo by djayo.

USA TODAY:

No one likes to encourage people to start their own business more than me, but retirees — actual and would-be alike — need to take more precautions when making this determination.

Entrepreneurship is generally thought of as a younger person’s game for many reasons, but a main one is that it typically takes a lot of time and energy to start a successful business, and those are things someone over, say, 55 might not want to give to a business.

Assuming that you really do want to start a business, here are five things I think you need to keep in mind:

1. Time is your most prized asset.

2. Be careful not to invest too much.

3. Use your transferable skills.

4. Consider buying some sort of established business.

5. Have fun.

Photo by hortongrou.

Loveland Connection:

Author and entrepreneur Joel Comm has added a hint of hilarity to this holiday season and likely ensured many iPhone owners will no longer endure Silent Nights, thanks to his newest iPhone application.

Comm announced via Twitter that his iPhone application — iFart Mobile — is the No. 1 paid application at the iPhone store. It sells for 99 cents.

“Yep. We’re No. 1,” Comm said during a telephone interview with LovelandConnection.com.

Created after members of the executive team at Comm’s Infomedia Inc. brainstormed new and different applications for the popular iPhone, iFart Mobile features a variety of digital sounds sure to bring smiles to the faces of teenage boys and uncertain girls around the world.

With names like Jack the Ripper, The Wipe out, and Howard the Duck, the application offers a true symphony of sounds. Already there are plans for upgrades to the application to include the Sneak Attack or Fart a Friend options.

Developers only receive 70 percent of revenues, so at $0.99 iFart Mobile earns about $9,198 a day.

Photo by Comm’s Infomedia Inc..

Trendwatching.com:

Yup, it’s that time of the year again: time for endless predictions, most of which are rather dark and gloomy with economies around the world going downhill. Fortunately, there are still plenty of trends out there that are begging to be applied profitably, both now and long-term.

1. Nichetributes - Low cost practical tributes to the zeitgeist

2. Luxyoury - you define what constitutes luxury

3. Feedback 3.0 - think we’ve reached full transparency

4. Econcierge - savings are the new green

5. Mapmania - why maps are the new interface

6. Happy Ending - the silver lining of each downturn

Photo by nookiez.

Many individuals have been able to earn, at minimum, a part-time income by selling their handmade creations through websites like Etsy. It has given both men and women the opportunity to take something they enjoy and turn it into a small business. It also gives some parents the opportunity to stay home with their children.

That would include Diana Gonzalez, the owner of Sweet Buddha Designs.

Diana’s talents are not limited to her business, she also blogs at Confessions Of A Craftaholic and regularly hosts classes, as well as craft workshops, through the NYC Craft Circle. To say she is a busy woman would be an understatement. However, she was kind enough to find the time to answer a few questions about her business and her life as a work-at-home mom.

What was the inspiration behind Sweet Buddha Designs?

I’m really inspired by nature, and the world around me. I’m inspired by spirituality, and the art behind religions like catholicism and Buddhism.

How long have you been knitting? What other crafty things do you enjoy?

I’ve been knitting and crocheting for about 5 years now. I also make cards, which I sell on my shop. Cardmaking is something I’ve been doing for about 3 years now. I love working with paper. I also make soap and candles, sew and do some batiking.

Continue reading One Mom Uses Her Love For Crafts To Launch A Business

Athens Banner-Herald:

When former Jefferson resident Vivian Hoard was working “24/7″ as a tax litigator for a large Atlanta law firm, she often came home at night to a sleeping family, but she always could rely on the family cat, Ludwig, to sit in her lap and purr contentedly.

“When I’d come home at all hours of the night, the cat would snuggle in my lap and purr very, very softly,” says Hoard. “He would help me unwind after a long day.”

Unfortunately, Ludwig is gone now, but Hoard’s memories of how her favorite feline helped her to relax never went away. Realizing that many people who could benefit from a cat’s soothing influence can’t be pet owners due to allergies or other issues, Hoard launched a four-year journey to create the next best thing to the real kitty.

After extensive research into the bond between humans and animals, the trials and travails of having an idea patented and large-scale manufacturing, Hoard created Catnap Kitties, a battery-operated “comfort toy” that offers the sensation of holding a real cat (minus realities of food and kitty litter).

Photo by Catnap Kitties.