<$Monday, March 10, 2008$>
Product Love: Dymo Labelers
I think now I can finally justify getting one. As I move deeper into home business territory, it makes sense to invest in certain pieces of home office equipment, especially since the new systems go way beyond simply printing labels. With the ability to buy online stamps and print my own postage, I could eliminate the need to spend my lunch hours standing in line at the post office to ship my eBay and Etsy orders. I could create my own address and shipping labels without having to fight with Word... and, yes, I could even label my cats. Oh, the fun we could have with a new Dymo labeler. Although I'm not sure the new models would give me quite the same sense of visceral satisfaction I used to get from squeezing out one letter at a time from those old fashioned embossing models, so I might have to keep one of those on hand for nostalgia's sake. Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, home office, tools |
<$Tuesday, January 15, 2008$>
Business Resources: Fastteks
| *Sponsored Post* Starting an online business is a popular way to earn extra income, but the logistics of setting up a home office aren't always easy, especially if you have a staff. Be they hired help or family members, chances are they'll need their own work stations, which means network installation might become a high priority on the to do list. There are DIY tools available for this; however, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust myself to get such a technical task done right the first--or second, or third, or etc.--time. I would much rather save my time for actually running my business, and hire professionals to do the job. Fastteks specializes in getting small businesses up and running on their own networks. If you have a need to share a high-speed internet connection with your employees and/or volunteers, they might be just the resource you're looking for. Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, extra income, PPP, tools |
<$Tuesday, September 25, 2007$>
Networking for the Fearful
If you read my post on being held back by fear, then you can probably guess how much I suck at things like networking and marketing. I'm never short on home-based business ideas, but they never seem to get off the ground because of that whole "too shy to go out and tell people about it" thing I've got going. I figure internet marketing is my best bet--I get to hide all safe behind my computer screen, and my writing skills are MUCH better than my verbal skills. So I'm thinking about signing up with Direct Matches. It's like LinkedIn for small business owners, a way to network with other business and get your name out there, safely, without having to deal with all the scary face-to-face or phone phobia. Their free membership looks like it has everything I need to help get the word out, and they even provide opportunities to get paid for advertising your own business--which means more cash in the debt-reduction kitty. I might as well go ahead and sign up my knitting shop--what have I got to lose? Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, marketing, PPP |
<$Thursday, September 6, 2007$>
Affordable Web Hosting For Your Small Business
| *Sponsored* A lot of people on the debt-reduction and financial improvement trail run small businesses on the side in order to bring in extra income. For a lot of people it's either that, or get a second job. I know for me, after putting in long, exhausting hours at my full-time job, the last thing I want to do is go stand on my feet for several more hours flipping burgers or hawking somebody else's merchandise, so I've found online business endeavors to be ideal for bringing home that extra that lets us get ahead. Of course, the thing about running an online business is that it can get expensive, which pretty much defeats the purpose. It can be a challenge to find small business web hosting at prices that don't cut into your profits; but it can be done. Concentric offers a basic web hosting plan that has everything I could possibly need if I decide to move my knitting shop off of Etsy, for an affordable monthly fee. They even offer a free domain name with every hosting account--AND they let you have up to ten domain aliases, which means you could feasibly run up to ten different business off of a single account. That's handy, especially if you're ADD like me and have about ten different business ideas a week. I'm bookmarking these guys for future reference. Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, extra income, PPP, tools |
<$Monday, August 20, 2007$>
How (Not) To Sell Gift Baskets
*Sponsored Post* A couple of years ago I started my own gift basket company. I had about $400 in savings—an amount which at the time felt huge to me—and I was working a temp job with only a few months left to go until the gig ended. I also had previous experience putting together gift baskets for charity, and everybody said I had a knack for it. I bought a book on how to start your own gift basket business, read it front to back, made a list of potential clients, another list of basket ideas, sunk the majority of my savings into supplies, and got to work. I sold not a single basket, and my "business" tanked inside a month. Completely sucktastic self-marketing skills aside, looking back I can see that my biggest mistake was spending all of my money on holiday baskets (I launched my business just in time for the Christmas season). At least when Christmas rolled around I had ready-made gifts for the folks on my Christmas shopping list; but if I had gone more generic with my baskets, I could have kept trying to sell them after the holidays were over, and my business would have stood a chance of survival. This was a pretty stupid mistake. The book even told me not to do this, but I did it anyway, believing my baskets would be so adorable that they couldn't NOT sell. I couldn't have been more wrong. Here's a company who got it right. The Fruit Company sells gift baskets that are appropriate for any occasion, and they've been doing it since 1942. Their baskets are elegant and festive without being tied to a specific occasion. They're also healthy and versatile. Even if a recipient hates fruit, any of these baskets can still work as a gorgeous centerpiece. This is how to supply a successful gift basket business. I wish I'd used these folks as a model back when I so obviously had no idea what I was doing. Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, PPP |