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Posts Tagged ‘start-ups’

Why The Internet Is A Good Place To Develop Small Business Ideas

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Starting up your own business is quite a lucrative prospect; however you need to have small business ideas to go about it correctly. The good thing about small businesses is that they require very little capital and at the same time can have a world wide market owing to the internet. However before you start putting into practice any small business ideas that you have, it is advisable to gain more knowledge about what you are planning to do.

You can start by searching the net. An online business system can be an extremely lucrative proposition. You can sell your own physical products. Auction sites such as Yahoo! Auctions and eBay are hotspots for millions of shoppers around the world. You can sell your products here.

If you do not have any products to sell, you might want to promote others’ products and earn commissions on this. Affiliate marketing is among the good small business ideas. In fact it will be even better if you choose to promote something that you are passionate about. This way you will be able to generate more content for your site. What basically happens in this kind of marketing is that if a customer is interested in the product that is being promoted by you, he or she will click on that link online. This link redirects them to the company’s sales pages. If this actually leads to sales the company will track the sales made by you and pay you commissions. This makes it one of the most lucrative small business ideas and the best part is that you do not have to invest your own money.

Copywriters are always in great demand online. Hence if you learn the tricks of the trade, you could start your own copywriting venture and work as a freelance copywriter for different companies.

Small business ideas need research on your market’s wants and needs. So you need to learn where to find the answers to the questions. You can start by looking up bulletin boards, forums, chat rooms and so on. You should participate in some of the discussion that takes place in order to gain more knowledge. You could even put up questions. However, do keep in mind that these sites themselves should not be used as selling grounds because that will not work.

A business plan makes for a successful business so do not forget to ignore this while you are drawing up your small business ideas. Do some goal and timeline setting and only then should you plan business strategies. It is a good idea to make a list of potential problems or draw backs that you might face once you are in the business. Knowing these problems before hand would mean that by the time they actually crop up, you will be well prepared to ward them off.

Translating small business ideas into a successful real venture does need a lot of hard work, patience and careful planning. But once it is up and running, you can reap the benefits.

FundingUniverse Fueling Entrepreneurism With Their CrowdPitch Events

Friday, December 18th, 2009

On December 16th Ethos 360 attended FundingUniverse’s CrowdPitch Event located at the NedSpace facility in Portland, Oregon.  CrowdPitch brings entrepreneurs, innovators, mentors, support providers, and investors together in an informal and energetic setting. Five local entrepreneurs had four minutes to pitch their company to both a panel of experts and a live audience, followed immediately by a three minute Question and Answer session with the panel. The panel was made up of investors and other area professionals who have deep roots in the local entrepreneurial community.

The attendees and the panel help the entrepreneurs refine their pitch or business model with real world feedback. Worksheets are provided to those in attendance to rate and critique each company that’s presenting along with “monopoly cash” to make an “investment” in the company or companies they feel are the strongest. After all of the presentations, two winning presenters will be announced based on the amount of “monopoly cash” that is “invested” (one by the panel of expert investors and the other by the audience).

Did I mention these events are FREE to attend and present at?

FundingUniverse (www.fundinguniverse.com) is a top-notch organization that connects entrepreneurs and investors along with providing entrepreneurs the tools and resources to become fundable.  They are leading the way with their very well organized effort to entrench their CrowdPitch events in major national markets and to help fuel entrepreneurial growth at a grassroots level. They are giving back in a BIG way.

Kudos to Alex Lawrence, partner at FundingUniverse, who we had the good fortune and pleasure to meet.  Alex brought an amazing level of energy, passion and levity to what can often times be a very stressful moment in an entrepreneur’s development.  Below is an excellent news story about CrowdPitch along with an interview with Alex.

In addition, Ethos 360 wants to thank the following sponsors involved with making FundingUniverse’s Portland CrowdPitch Event a resounding success.

Stoel Rives- www.stoel.com
NOWAdvisors- www.nowadvisors.com
SEO.com- www.seo.com
NewsWire- www.newswire.net
Jive- www.getjive.com
NedSpace- www.nedspace.com

Lonny Magazine: Merging Innovation And Tradition

Friday, November 20th, 2009

We know that the print industry is suffering these days. Advertisers are pulling out of print and even with a devoted reader base, long-standing magazines like Blueprint, Domino, House & Garden and Vogue Living have folded.

In the December edition of Vanity Fair, former Domino magazine exec Patrick Cline and Michelle Adams combined their vision for a web based magazine that integrated ads into editorial content for Lonny Magazine, a word made from the fusion of London and New York.  Here, the web magazine mimics the reader experience of hard print, even the ability to flip pages. How many times have you jumped pages in a magazine to get to the editorial content?  Readers can mouse over articles or pictures of interest and can connect with a click to the retailer. See an idea you’d like to try in the editorial? Click on it to find out where you can get it.

Financing a new magazine was no easy feat given the status of the many big names that have folded. Lonny Magazine raised their money through the most traditional methods: their team worked for free, borrowed money from family, kept their day jobs and because they had no money for marketing, relied on the internet buzz generated by bloggers, facebook and twitter to spread the word of their launch.  Their first edition cost $11,000 to produce, 10K of photography, processing, and equipment was donated by friends and companies; 1K for various out of pocket expenses; even the car was borrowed from Adam’s parents. Now that’s what I call bootstrapping.

No calls or pleas for hundreds of thousands of dollars,  they got their noses to the grind stone and just ‘did it’, making their product, proving that it was feasible and profitable,  believe in their product, and paid their dues. Now they’re in Vanity Fair and in a much better position to receive financing than if they did nothing at all but brainstorm on a piece of paper.

Lonny’s next issue comes out in December, check them out at www.lonnymag.com.