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e_Marketing Blog SmartyPig Social Saving Here's an interesting idea. SmartyPig.com is like an online piggy bank with a social twist. You create an account where you set a specific savings goal. Say you want to save for a new computer. You need $1,000. You create an account and then let your friends and family know what you're saving for. They can make contributions (or not). You can contribute to their accounts too. SmartyPig also has partnered with "top retailers" to offer you deals and cash incentives. It's free and you can even earn interest on your deposits. Upgrading to Wordpress 2.7 Just finished upgrading one of my many Wordpress blogs to v 2.7 - the newest upgrade which was released on Dec. 10 makes several attractive improvements to the interface. This upgrade is not so concerned with functionality as it is with improving the user interface. I was able to upgrade my Article Marketing blog in about 15 minutes when all was said and done. There were no suprises and no hitches along the way. I'm sure subsequent upgrades on other sites will go faster. Communicating With Your Real Estate Agent In an article called The Future of Real Estate Communication Phoenix area real estate specialist and blogger Jay Thompson suggests that agents who want to be in the loop with the next generation of home buyers had better understand the communication media they use. Text messaging is something that has become second nature to young people as young as 9 or 10 years old, and it has basically made email obsolete as a way for teenagers to communicate with one another. Thompson reports that in December his two teenagers sent and received about 10,000 text messages - that's about 83 messages each per day - while his 17 year old son claims to have sent maybe 10 emails in the whole month. On the other hand Thompson himself - a technology savvy parent and real estate agent - has more than 5,000 email messages in his inbox, and most of his own text messages have been back and forth with his children. So there is clearly a "generation gap" when it comes to the use of electronic messaging. As he says, "The point is, the way we communicate is changing. According to some researchers there will be 2.3 trillion text messages sent this year. Wikipedia says that 80% of 13 – 24 year olds use text messaging (compared to 18% of 40 – 49 year olds). That’s a whole lot of texting by a whole lot of soon to be first-time home buyers." The other change that has already taken place over the last couple of years is the way an increasing number of people use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. People who would not think of using a stuffy email message to talk to each other find themselves commenting to each other back and forth through Facebook and Twitter. Not only are these becoming mature communication channels between people, but companies and entrepreneurs are finding innovative ways to interact with customers and prospects through these massively popular media. The bottom line is that real estate agents will have to accommodate themselves to the communication media used by their clients. That means if they want to reach young people who are plugged into these non-traditional modes of communication, they themselves will have to become plugged in. |
Cottage-Sales.com - Looking for a cottage or summer home in Canada? You've come to the right place. We have valuable background information on cottage sales and what to look for in a summer home. If you've done any searching for cottages or summer homes, you know this market changes daily. Cottage-Sales.com is a member of the Linknet network of websites. Choosing a Business Opportunity - Making Money in Your own Business by Rick Hendershot, Small Business Advice Millions of people are desperate to escape the 9 to 5 grind. One popular alternative is to look for a business opportunity that turns you from an employee into a self-employed entrepreneur running your own business. There are many good reasons why this can be a wise move. Being your own boss means you can set your own hours. This can be very important if you have small children who need to be looked after, or simply want to spend more time at home. Working from home can also save valuable time, if the alternative is spending two or three hours every day commuting back and forth to your work place. And of course, working for yourself also gives you the opportunity to make more money -- a whole lot more money. In other words, being your own boss gives you that valuable commodity called freedom. It sets you free from the limitations of being someone else's paid employee, and in return makes you responsible for your own future. As a self-employed entrepreneur you are free to set your own hours, establish your own work habits, choose what work you will do or will not do, create your own products, drum up your own customers, and do what you have to do to make those customers happy. And perhaps most important, when you are self-employed you are free to set your own prices and make as much or as little income as you are able. You will not have to answer to anyone other than yourself, your suppliers, and of course, the ever-present taxman, after you become successful. How to get started -- Two Alternatives There are two obvious ways you can go about starting your own business. The first way is to quit your day job and launch full bore into your new business. We'll call this the "all or nothing approach". The second way is to continue on with your current employment and develop a business on the side, in your spare time. We'll call this the "spare time approach" to starting your own business. Depending on your point of view, taking the All or Nothing Approach can be either "ballsy" or just plain reckless. Unless you are independently wealthy, planning and timing are very important with this approach. That's because once you leave your previous employment your source of income will be gone and you will have a limited amount of time to make your business work. It is "sink or swim". And you can sink pretty quickly without a source of income. So that means you should plan the changeover to self-employment very carefully. Every situation will be different. An acquantance of mine was able to step from his quasi-government job into a private consulting business because he spent the last few months of his employment developing leads and contacts within his industry. When he went on his own he had customers waiting in the wings and was able to more than double his income in his very first year. But most of us are not so lucky. We do not have the quality leads, the specialized skills, nor the opportunity to use our present employment to build a launching pad of potential customers before we take off into the wild blue yonder of self-employment. Most of us are starting from scratch with a few vague ideas, a questionable set of yet-to-be-defined skills, and severly limited income. So our venture into self-employment had better take off within a few months or we're likely to crash and burn. That is why the Spare Time Approach is best for most new self-employed entrepreneurs. The spare time approach lets you test your ideas, develop your skills, and build your business slowly. If you are unsure about the products or services you intend to sell, the spare time approach lets you try out different product lines and see how well they fit in with your overall objectives. Often new entrepreneurs find their first ideas are not realistic, or there is no market for the services they want to provide. Or they find they cannot charge enough to make any money providing the products or services they have chosen. Choose your product carefully Like all new entrepreneurs, whether you take the "all or nothing approach" or the "spare time approach" you should be very tight-fisted with your limited resources. That means do not invest any serious money in a product or business idea until you have checked it out thoroughly. The best way to "check it out" is to
This applies whether you are looking at an "online" product such as an MLM or affiliate scheme, or a more traditional product or service aimed only at local customers. For example, an associate of mine produces Business Card Displays. The idea behind this product is that it provides new entrepreneurs the opportunity to set up an advertising service for local businesses. The entrepreneur creates a network of displays placed in high traffic retail outlets like grocery stores, hair salons, and bowling alleys. Then local advertisers can place their business cards in one of the sixteen slots in the displays across the network. If someone browsing one of the displays sees a service they are interested in, they just take a card for future reference. The manufacturer can show you examples of successful advertising networks where his displays are used. He will also provide testimonials and contact information from real people who you can ask how well the product is working for them. And to top it off, he uses the product himself in a network of over 40 displays, and can provide hands-on information about how it actually works in a real-life situation. For advice and "mentoring" he can be contacted by toll free telephone, email, Skype, or MS Messenger. This is pretty rare in the world of "business opportunities". Many are run by "take the money and run" types who make wildly exaggerated claims about how successful you can be. But in many cases they have never actually made the idea work for themselves. As any successful entrepreneur will tell you, your choice of products is crucial to your success or failure. Many products are simply bogus ideas with no hope of working. And many others are designed to produce maximum profits for their creators, and minimum profits for people like you and me who sell them. So no matter how hard you work, or how committed you are to being successful, if you choose the wrong product you will be operating with a millstone around your neck. Get more information about the business opportunity mentioned in this article, and read more about how to start making money. Rick Hendershot is a writer and online publisher. For online promotional ideas see Online Promotional Ideas. |
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