Hello and Welcome! This website is not like all of the others. Since 2001, we've posted 19,220 different business opportunities and ideas, so you're sure to find something here to inspire you!
When Terri Urbash left her job as a court reporter to start a family, she never expected to become a full-time entrepreneur. However, that is exactly what happened, reports CNN Money.
“Instead of having more children, I kept getting more clients,” Urbash says, explaining how she stumbled into being the founder of the no. 16 company on this year’s Inner City 100 list of the fastest growing inner city businesses in the U.S.
Between 2002 and 2005, as Urbash’s client list continued to expand, she handed off assignments to other freelance court reporters in Pittsburgh. Then, a large insurance company was looking to hire a deposition service. Urbash assumed it would go to a national competitor, but she applied for the contract anyway, and she got it. Network Deposition Services has soared since landing the client, expanding throughout Pennsylvania and now moving across the country.
“Literally overnight, I realized I was going to have more depositions than I could handle,” Urbash says. “I knew I was going to have to get serious about it, and we’ve been growing since then.”
Many homes may decorate with a painting or a small statue. However, how many people can say they own a piece of metal art?
Vladimir Gendelman is aware his product reaches a niche group of people. However, it seems his niche is growing. Although he once feared people would not purchase the cute scrap metal statues due their slightly high price, he soon discovered his market, reports The Detroit News.
Some sales are to individuals, but a significant chunk of the business involves corporate sales.
Because many of the H&K sculptures are suitable as office or desk art, and many pieces are functional — like wine bottle holders and business card racks — they’re popular as business gifts, the 36-year-old entrepreneur said.
Many designs feature caricatures of various professions and occupations, and Metal Imagination will work with clients to develop custom sculptures on request.
“A dental specialist might order little dentist sculptures as thank-you gifts for dentists who make referrals,” Gendelman explained. “Or a company might make them presents to employees, or sales people give them to their clients. One company bought 75 reindeer wine bottle holders as holiday gifts for employees.”
Being noticed in a large market is not easy. Many good products are ignored in favor of those that managed to find the right strategy.
Peter Kielland was an entrepreneur who had trouble getting people to notice his unique multi-bit drill attachment called the Scruzol. Then he caught the attention of Canadian Tire and it all changed, reports The Globe and Mail.
It all started with a phone call to a reporter at Mr. Kielland’s hometown newspaper. The Scruzol was featured, and the story was quickly syndicated across Canada. That coverage resulted in a call and an interview two days later from a local CBC-TV station, which was also picked up by NBC in the United States.
“The Scruzol was definitely a unique product that included a lot of innovation; but the real reason I was able to pique the interest of the reporter was the deal with Canadian Tire,” says Mr. Kielland, president and founder of Visionary Technology Inc. “Without the endorsement of a huge retailer, I’d be just one more inventor wannabe dreaming of getting on Dragon’s Den.”
As a small-business owner, never underestimate the power of third party endorsements. You could have the most innovative product in your industry, but without customers or partners to validate your story, no one will take notice.
Erica Diamond is a busy woman. She’s a mom, blogger, and speaker. Sometimes, the three roles combined can be a lot to handle.
According to Global Saskatoon, her journey began in 1999. That is when she was 24 and started her own business.
But then, in 2009, she was inspired to launch a blog, called “Women on the Fence”.
The Montrealer wanted to motivate women to make changes in their lives – changes that would help them find happiness.
The hobby quickly took off – and became her full-time job.
What she loves most is that blogging gives her the flexibility to spend more time with her kids.
“When Andrew walks through the door at 4:30, I like to be there and unplug and be there for them,” she said.
But like many other moms, each day, is a constant juggle – driving the kids to school, picking them up from hockey, and managing professional obligations.
“The toughest hours of my day are usually 4-7,” she said. “That, for me, is the bewitching hour. It’s trying to get homework done, dinner ready, and get everyone organized.”
Diamond insists her secret to success is her strong support system – which includes great friends, family and a full-time nanny.
“I couldn’t have done it all these years without her,” she said.
Sydney Pedersen recently came up with a simple idea that could help make chemotherapy less traumatic for young patients. Her idea was inspired by her own sister, reports South Washington County Bulletin.
She remembers wondering one night if there was a way to make the treatment process easier for her sister, who had a “port” implanted in her chest. Doctors stuck needles through Paige’s skin and into the port to test her blood and give her chemotherapy drugs. To do so, Paige always had to remove her shirt, which made the scary, painful process more upsetting
So Sydney developed “The Port Shirt,” which has a removable patch on the left side of the front of the shirt. The idea is to remove just the patch to access the port in the chest, “instead of taking off her shirt all the time,” Sydney said.
The invention caught people’s attention. It was a top pick at her school and one of only 100 projects statewide to be featured at a Youth Invention Fair at the Mall of America.
SnowMagic is a company that makes snow… in any season, even in the dog days of summer. They use a patented system called Infinite Crystals Snowmaking. The technology can make snow to your specifications – for recreation, special effects, or decoration. According to the company, even indoor snowmaking is possible, allowing venues to add snow attractions where one might least expect them.
Since the dawn of time, people have found nifty ways to clean up after the bathroom act. The most common solution was simply to grab what was at hand: coconuts, shells, snow, moss, hay, leaves, grass, corncobs, sheep’s wool—and, later, thanks to the printing press—newspapers, magazines, and pages of books. The ancient Greeks used clay and stone. The Romans, sponges and salt water. But the idea of a commercial product designed solely to wipe one’s bum? That started about 150 years ago, right here in the U.S.A. In less than a century, Uncle Sam’s marketing genius turned something disposable into something indispensable.
Amazon has announced that it now sells more Kindle ebooks than all print books – that’s hardcover and paperback combined – through the Amazon.com site. Introduced less than four years ago, the Kindle has quickly become Amazon’s top selling product, and now digitised books for the reader have become more popular with its customers than their paper and ink fore-runners.
Wow. Not that I’m surprised. I don’t own a Kindle, but I buy nearly all of my books for the Kindle. (I have an iPad.) 99% of the books that I get the mail these days are review copies sent from publishers. I wonder when that will cease.
Long before the internet, The Boston Globe had a free, real-time, ad-supported product: headlines written on chalkboards inside the windows of their storefront on Boston’s Newspaper Row.
From at least the turn of the century until the 1950s, Globe staff shuttled back and forth throughout the day from the newsroom to the street. There they wrote breaking news headlines and sports scores on four blackboards and two enormous sheets of newsprint. Behind the Globe’s windows? Ads.
Breaking news – a bank holdup, a bus accident, the death of FDR – was quickly featured on the storefront (NB: usually in 140 characters or less). The storefront even offered streaming multimedia of a kind: telegraph dispatches of boxing matches and baseball games were shouted out play by play through a pair of loudspeakers.
Different “layouts” were used. During World War II an outsized map of Europe loomed over the storefront. For Red Sox World Series appearances, a scaffold was built. Sports desk hacks stood on it to chalk up the scores for bowler-hatted crowds numbering in the hundreds.
If you haven’t noticed, gas prices are pretty high, and since my family lives about 60 miles from most retail stores we do most of our shopping online. One of the biggest determinants of whether we’ll buy a particular product online is we can get free shipping. It turns out we’re not alone:
According to a ComScore report released today, nearly half of those orders included free shipping, at 47% versus 53% for Q’1 ’11, 49% versus 51% in Q’4 10 (the holiday season) and 41% versus 59% in Q3 ’10.
“A lot of consumers are taking free shipping for granted,” said ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. Indeed the report also came to the conclusion that 61% consumers are “at least somewhat likely” to cancel their entire purchase if free shipping isn’t involved. So have we come to expect free delivery on our gadgets, Christmas sweaters and cookbooks?
As eCommerce hits the highest share percentage its ever seen versus retail ( 8.6% ), the perk of free shipping is a major incentive to buy more, as orders with free shipping average around 30% higher in value those that tack on a couple of bucks for transport.
Now I’m not so dense as to not understand that when a business says that they offer free shipping what they’ve in-fact done is to include the price of shipping in the retail price of the product. I get that, but for some reason that $3.99 shipping charge your company tacks onto the end of my order is a real turn off. It’s psychological, I’m sure.
Facebook’s success, on a business level, owes something to Pincus, although most people don’t realize it. The dirty little secret of Facebook is that there isn’t really much to do there once you’ve finished looking at pictures of your friends’ babies and your crush, and signed up for a few pages run by political causes. “Is Facebook a success because of Zynga, or is Zynga a success because of Facebook?” asks Michael Pachter, a video-game analyst at Wedbush Securities. “The answer is both. But the truth is that it’s a delicate eco-system.” Zynga’s games are expected to claim at least $850 million in earnings this year. David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, says, “Zynga could account for as much as 10 percent of Facebook’s revenues this year, a lower percentage than last year but still very significant.” “We’re going to have billions of people on social networks, so if a third of the people on Facebook love games, about a third don’t, and a third are indifferent, you’re still talking about hundreds and hundreds of millions of people playing Zynga games,” says famed venture capitalist John Doerr, of Kleiner Perkins, which has invested heavily in Zynga. “These games are not for everyone, it’s true, but it’s for more of everyone than anything else I know.”
Feel like changing your look around? There is a unique product that can help you do that.
Late last year we mentioned the first care bag, a unique bag which helps protect jewelry and electronics from moisture. The founder, Darrian, has come up with another unique product that people will love, Changeable Logo glasses.
The logos and frames fall under 10 different categories: Country, good luck, expression, luxury, love, green, flower, funny, Christmas, and Easter. Whether you’re in love or feel like telling the world you are a part of the eco-movement, there is something for everyone.
Anyone who has surfed the Internet at any given time has probably seen the various “free trial” ads that plague the web. Many of those people have also signed up for the free trial, and found themselves charged high rates for a product they do not have or want. According to PC World, the FTC has taken notice and has filed a lawsuit against a Canadian entrepreneur behind 10 of these web companies.
Customers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand were lured in by the free trial offers, the FTC said.
Willms and his companies obtained consumers’ credit or debit card account numbers through the promise of free or risk-free trial offers, the FTC said. Customers had “no reason to believe” they would be charged for the trial product or extra bonus products, but they were often charged for the supposedly free trial, plus a monthly recurring fee, typically $79.95, the FTC said.
“The defendants used the lure of a ‘free’ offer to open an illegal pipeline to consumers’ credit card and bank accounts,” David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. “‘Free’ must really mean ‘free’ no matter where the offer is made.”
Willms and other defendants in the case allegedly contracted with affiliate marketers that used banner ads, pop-ups, sponsored search terms and unsolicited e-mail to lead consumers to the defendants’ websites. The defendants “buried” important terms and conditions in fine print, the FTC alleged.
It seems the younger the traveler, the more gear they require. Any parent knows this is true if they have ever tried to travel with a baby.
Besides the basic necessities, a trip is not complete without toys and a portable crib. According to the Clinton Patch, three moms were considering this issue over breakfast when they decided to start a business. Could you use a service like this in your town?
During the summer of 2010, my mother, Janine Burt, was having a breakfast get-together with her friends. That morning, Darcy suggested they start a business because she has been recently laid-off from her job, Janine works part-time, and Cathy is a single mother caring for two children, desperately needing money to support her family.
Then, Cathy suggested that they make traveling easier for families by starting a company to rent baby equipment such as strollers, cribs, monitors, beach toys, play pens, and more.
One month later, their business was a huge hit! They received at least a dozen orders from people in Clinton and out of town.
Spoiled Rotten Rentals is located in the heart of downtown Clinton. If you would like to pick up the equipment yourself, you pick it up there. But if you don’t want to pick it up, a Spoiled Rotten Rental representative is always available to deliver it right to your door. But, if you live outside of Clinton you must pay a small delivery fee.
Bicycle taxi’s are not a new form of transportation, but the shift toward green living has brought this trend back.
Unlike a regular cab that may charge by the mile, the Eau Claire Bike Cab works on tips alone, reports WEAU.com.
“Just as quick as driving, a little more fun and a lot more safe too,” said Barker. “We’ll go anywhere in the Barstow area to Water Street and in between.”
It’s an idea other big cities have started and Eau Claire is now adopting.
“If you’re downtown here and you just want to go from Music in the Park to Water Street or just out to a restaurant, it’s a lot easier than finding parking downtown,” said Barker.
And the response from the public?
“We’ve had people smiling and waving and we had people honking but not in a bad way. Just in the little beeps, just to say they really enjoy what we’re doing,” Morfitt said.
You can even make reservations ahead of time through Facebook, Twitter or just by calling.
Create an office separate from the main living areas of the house and declare it off limits during working hours.
Help your child make a child readable sign for the office door so that he will know when it is and isn’t acceptable to burst into the office.
Invest in some quality headphones for quiet, heads down, work.
I can’t count the number of times my wife has apologized to me because the everyone was running around screaming, and I responded “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Maintain a good work schedule, and stick to it.
Something that really helps in our home is that I have set working hours during the day. At 4 PM, I emerge from my office like someone returning home from work, and I’ll take the children to the park, help with chores around the house, or run errands with the family.
Train the children to go silent when Dad’s cellphone rings, but make sure your cellphone ringer is turned on.
In our house, we have a game. When our eldest son hears my phone ring, he runs and asks his mother for a sticker for his “Daddy’s Phone Log” on the refrigerator. It’s made him become more aware of when I’m on the telephone and has the added benefit of sending him running away when the phone rings. Make sure, though, that you turn your ringer on. If you forget, and answer your phone after it vibrates, no one else will know that you’re talking to someone else and will pester you with “Huh?” and “What?” when they think you’re talking to them.
Take a long lunch and enjoy your opportunity to work from home.
Enjoy the fact you’re working from home and take a time out in the middle of the day to enjoy a long and leisurely lunch.
Ask your spouse to communicate with you via IM or email.
Nothing makes it more obvious that you’re working from home more than having your spouse constantly talking to you. Ask her to email or instant message you so you can ignore them like you would your coworkers’ messages if you were at the office.
What are your tips and tricks for working at home with the kids?
“‘Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.’ Parker said Jobs paused and Parker filled the quiet with a chuckle. But Jobs didn’t laugh. He was serious. ‘He was absolutely right,’ said Parker. ’We had to edit.’”
Take that advice to heart and apply it to your business. I know I’m going to.
MtEverClimb is a continuous rope-climbing exercise machine.
MtEverClimb is a revolutionary, continuous rope-climbing machine that simulates actual rope climbing, one of the oldest forms of successful physical training. This one piece of equipment enables users to achieve a full-body strength and cardio workout. Some of the benefits of this type of combined anaerobic and aerobic training include increased strength, lean body mass, improved posture and muscle balance, and increased bone density.
What is an entreprenette? It describes the founder of a company with the same name, Sarah Shaw. As a successful woman in business, she helps fellow entrepreneurs get their own products to market. Before becoming an entreprenette, she created her own handbag line, reports Forbes.
Sum up what the Entreprenette does in a brief summary and then sum up what Entreprenette can offer customers that no other service can in one sentence.
Entreprenette is a full service consulting firm that specializes in helping our clients launch tangible products; accessories, clothing, cosmetics, home and lifestyle products. We offer an exclusive service as we specialize in building a business by setting a solid foundation of boutiques and specialty stores from which can be used as a lunching pad into larger retailers.
What do your future business plans include for Entreprenette? Do you think that now that you’ve mastered handbags you might want to ask take a stab at the garment industry or making even trying a completely new service, like a muffin shop?
Entreprenette is going to expand and develop national mastermind groups this year and we are developing a bigger model for our Instantly Famous Products service which helps young designers place their products in movies and on TV.
As for launching my next business? I am so excited about my clients businesses right now that I don’t have the “next great idea” just yet. I currently have two other companies that I run as well; Simply Sarah that sells my patented closet organizer for handbags, and Rack And Roll Rentals that owns three wardrobe trailers and rents them to movies and TV shows…….so my hands are FULL. And if that is not enough, I am a single mom to 3 yr old identical twin girls!
Nasopure sells a bottle of saline water that you squirt up your nose to wash away mucus. How do you sell an outrageous product like this? Would you believe that cute and funny videos seem to be working for Nasopure? The Wall Street Journal has more on their marketing:
A consultant warned, “Don’t ever show the actual nose washing, because it’s gross.” But her gut told her otherwise. To sell this kind of product, “you need to be a little outrageous,” Dr. Solomon says.
Indeed, products that are fundamentally icky require a special approach to marketing. “It’s going to be a bit more challenging to market a gross product,” says Bruce I. Newman, a professor of marketing at DePaul University. He suggests hammering home the benefits and attaching a visual image that “makes it attractive to all kinds of people, even though it’s unglamorous.”
Dr. Solomon did just that. She rounded up some of her cutest patients—think two-year-olds with long blond curls—and got them to demonstrate Nasopure, complete with water running out of their noses. She persuaded a handsome young man to take off his shirt, stand in a shower and strike a “Zoolander” pose while squirting saline up his nose.
Are you just beginning the filing process for an idea? Now is the time to consider how quickly you want your application processed. According to Inventors Digest, the patent office offers a three track system for inventors moving at different paces.
Accelerated Examination. For an additional fee, applicants may request expedited examination for an application. The goal is to grant a patent or reject it within 12 months. To qualify the application must be an original utility or plant non-provisional application; be filed electronically (EFS-Web); have no more than four independent claims and a maximum of 30 total claims.
Normal Examination. Normal examination is the process used by the USPTO today. Applications are examined in the order in which they are filed. Existing fees apply.
Delayed Examination. Delayed examination gives an applicant up to 30 months to defer the start of the examination process. At any point during the 30 months the inventor can trigger entry into one of the other tracks by paying the initial examination fee. Payment of fees is delayed until examination begins. There are circumstances where delayed examination is desirable and it can save inventors money by delaying payment of fees.
Jennifer Branham had just had a baby when she began to take notice of the chemicals found in baby products. When she didn’t like what she saw, she began to seek out alternatives. When she couldn’t find what she wanted, she launched a business instead. When her baby was just a year old, she launched her own business, Natural Luxe, reports The Charlotte Observer.
Q. How do you juggle being a mom and owning a business?
I work a lot during nap time and school time, but I’ve made an effort this year to leave the laptop in my office and focus on my daughter (same with my Blackberry!).
Q. What is your daily routine?
I get my daughter up and going for the day and then I tackle orders, find new products, connect with customers on Facebook and Twitter. I love finding local events to participate in. I really believe you need to be engaged in your local community.
Q. What advice do you wish you had been given before you began Natural Luxe?
I wish someone had told me that you can’t be everywhere at all times, start slowly and focus on a few goals each month.
There are many reasons why a loved one may not be nearby to read a bedtime story to a child, but one company is making it easier for them to reconnect in a special way.
Be There Bedtime Stories was founded by Alison Sansone, a dedicated aunt. She wanted a fun way to keep in contact with her nieces, so she did a little digging and came up with a fun bedtime story business that would allow anyone with a webcam and Internet access say goodnight to the kids they love.
According to The Orange County Register, they have partnered with Blue Star Families to bring bedtime stories from moms and dads serving in the military to their children back home.
She originally thought about putting recording kiosks in big stores like Costco and Target and creating DVDs that could be mailed. But technology such as Skype and Videochat have become so widespread that Sansone adjusted her business model to allow people to record their stories using their own webcams, the Internet and a easy-to-use website.
The site has more than 200 children’s e-books from six publishers and a recording starts at $9.99.
“We’re giving free stories to Blue Star Families (a military support organization), and we’ve donated a supply of web cams to them to give to families here so the kids can read stories for their soldier parent to watch,” Sansone.
Sansone said, “Soldiers are moms, dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles first. They are also our friends and neighbors. A webcam recorded bedtime story can connect them with their family in a powerful way, boosting their morale by letting them take off their helmet and put on their family hat for a while.”
Steve Case has dipped his hand into many projects. He got his start as the founder of AOL. Today he is the chairman for Startup America Partnership, reports gigaom.
Startup America is generally focused on “celebrating and accelerating” entrepreneurs across all sectors and geographic regions of the U.S. by providing tools to help them grow, Case told me. “We particularly help people in the speed-up phase, when you really see one of these companies on a growth trajectory,” he said. “What can be done in terms of giving them access to services, or access to customers, or access to talent, to increase the odds that they’ll make that transition to be a successful company.”
Meanwhile, with the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, he advocates for specific governmental policies that would make it easier for people to start and build companies. “That’s really more trying to get people in [Washington] D.C., the White House working with Congress, to put policies in place that are more entrepreneur-friendly.” He said the council is currently targeting policies on immigration, FDA regulations, and regulations around initial public offerings, to name a few.
In both roles, he’s hoping to create Silicon Valley-like ecosystems across the country and in sectors beyond technology. ”There is something magical about Silicon Valley,” Case said. “It’s hard to get a healthy, vibrant, entrepreneurial ecosystem working… and Silicon Valley does have that.”
Case also offered advice for what entrepreneurs themselves can do to position their companies for success: Don’t start a company just because you think it will be a quick flip. “A lot of people are starting businesses because they think it’s an opportunity to make some money,” Case said. “You occasionally get lucky, but that doesn’t really work. You have to be passionate about it.”
