Barbara Corcoran
Founder, the Corcoran Group, one of Manhattan’s leading real estate firms
Bad times are the best times to move your business forward, especially if you are a small business. The big guys are back on their haunches, waiting things out. If you are willing to stick your neck out, this is when your energy and creativity can outmaneuver the big companies. This is your opportunity.

Robert Shiller
Yale economist who correctly called the bubbles in real estate and tech stocks
People in America invest mostly in America, but if you were on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you wouldn’t have all your investments here. You would think, “Maybe there are other opportunities on the other side of the world.”

Joline Godfrey
CEO of Independent Means, which teaches financial literacy to families and children
Raise your children to make a job, not just take a job. If they don’t know how to create a plan, they’ll always be beholden to someone else.

Burton Malkiel
Author of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street,” which showed the folly of trying to beat the market
Best advice I can give: The first section of my new book with Charlie Ellis, “The Elements of Investing,” is titled “It All Starts With Saving.” If you don’t put money aside now, you won’t have money later on.

Lynn Truong
Co-founder, Wise Bread personal-finance blog
Good money management is a lifestyle. If you surround yourself with people who share the same values, you’re more likely to stay on track.

Jack Bogle
Vanguard Group founder, who popularized investing through index funds
Best advice I can give: There is much that is worrisome in our economy. That’s why your bond position should be commensurate with your age. In my case that means I have more than 80% in bonds. Someone in their fifties should consider 50%.

The value of the bond position is not just that it provides you some protection in a down market — it does, of course. But its value is that it keeps you from making behavioral errors such as selling stocks during a panic.

Liz Ann Sonders
Chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab; chairs the firm’s investment strategy council
One thing I see with our clients and individual investors is an aversion to risk, and a favoring of fixed-income funds and Treasuries. In the past 20 years, we’ve been in an environment that’s been good to bonds relative to stocks. But it’s rare for that to happen over an extended period — and the last two times it happened, the subsequent five-year period favored stocks.

Barry Ritholtz
CEO of FusionIQ and author of “Bailout Nation,” which lays out the roots of the credit crisis
Best advice I can give: Always remember that price is the most important aspect of an investment. Today we keep hearing people talk about “toxic paper” on bank balance sheets. Well, it’s toxic to the banks because they paid 100¢ on the dollar for it. To somebody who gets to buy it at 30¢ or 40¢ on the dollar, it’s not toxic at all. So there is no such thing as a toxic asset. There’s no such thing as a damaged property. There is only a bad price.

Bill Gross
Managing director of Pimco and the world’s most influential bond fund manager
Best advice I can give: Most of Wall Street is focused on next month’s numbers, but by taking a long-term view on economic statistics and investment fundamentals, you stand a better chance of not getting whipsawed by the volatile economy.

Maria Bartiromo
Anchor of CNBC’s Closing Bell and author of “The 10 Laws of Enduring Success”
Best advice I can give: Darwin said it: You need to be adaptable. As it relates to your portfolio, if you regularly put money into your 401(k) or invest in mutual funds, you might have to change your strategy as the economic times change around you.

Mark Cuban
Owner of the Dallas Mavericks; sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo just before the tech bust
Best advice I can give: Unless you think you’ve done more research and have better insight on a stock than a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, why are you trading?

Liz Claman
Fox Business Network anchor and author of “The Best Investment Advice I Ever Received”
Best advice I can give: We all have to learn from our mistakes of overleveraging ourselves and acting like 5-year-olds — “I want four cookies.” You don’t need four cookies; you only need one. It’s not about what you want, it’s about what you need.

Best Money Tips Ever is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

by www.reliable-web-hostings.com

Anyone looking for work knows the job market is tough and likely to stay that way for a long time. To help retirement-age job seekers, RetirementJobs.com has put together what it says is a carefully developed list of attractive positions outside the home and for those seeking at-home jobs.

Here are the 15 best job opportunities for older people, plus the amounts of training or education required, names of leading senior-friendly employers, and pay ranges.

1. Nursing
2. Healthcare technician
3. Healthcare administration (nonmedical)
4. Tutor, teaching assistant and aide
5. Contract and temporary professional
6. Merchandise and grocery retailing
7. Specialty retail sales
8. Accounting and finance and tax preparers
9. Banking and lending
10. Driver (car, van, light truck, bus)
11. Customer service and call center
12. Medical services
13. Virtual assistant and concierge services
14. Personal care assistance
15. Writers and editors

usnews.com

15 Top Office and Home-Based Jobs for Seniors is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Taylor is a rare winner in a world of inventors bedeviled by losers. She recently earned a much-sought-after chance to strike it rich, thanks to a demonstration she gave for the right set of eyes.

During a long day at TeleBrands‘ headquarters in this suburban office park, the competition is intense. Each inventor has but a few moments in front of Khubani to land the sale of a lifetime. On the line: the potential to leap from inventor wannabe to serious player in the $170 billion direct-response industry. A nod from TeleBrands means a negotiated share of sales through royalties that can make an inventor wealthy.

Taylor coolly demonstrates — on an assistant and on several other women, including Khubani’s wife, Poonam, — how her Clever Clip works on hair of any length or thickness. As she drove back to Baltimore, several hours after her pitch, her cellphone rang with Khubani’s thumbs-up call.

TeleBrands has a knack for finding quirky $9.99 products you never knew you needed, selling them on TV, then getting them into retail outlets, where sales can really rocket. The company is one of the biggest players in an industry that spent $2.6 billion in advertising last year. TeleBrands spent $300 million of that, the most in the industry, to air its hard-sell 30-second- to two-minute ads, estimates direct-response tracker Infomercial Monitoring Service. While most direct-response companies are privately held and don’t report earnings, TeleBrands has one of the most consistent records of hits.

usatoday.com

Inventors seek pot of gold through TeleBrands is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Original Belly Works was born out of a desire to make my own contribution to the family budget while being a stay-at-home mom. I also wanted to create something tangible that would forever keep me connected to that special time in my life.

Tisha DeShields of Atlanta is one of 200 working mothers who have built successful businesses that topped the voting in StartupNation’s 2009 “Top 200 Leading Moms in Business” competition. “Original Belly Works” is one of 16 mom-owned ventures from the Carolinas (four in the Triangle) and Georgia that cracked the list. Belly Works came in at 126, but it’s the favorite of The Skinny.

localtechwire.com

Mom entrepreneurs conceive, give birth to some fascinating businesses is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

When Patty Burrows started her cleaning business about 11 years ago, she had no idea she’d be relying on clove oil and Vick’s VapoRub to mask the odors she encounters on her job. She began simply cleaning offices and homes.

But after finally convincing her sister, Bev Paquet, a paramedic from Michigan, to move to Montana, the two combined their interests to start White Glove Bio-Haz – a licensed cleaning service that specializes in mopping up buildings and vehicles after the unthinkable has occurred.

“And we both have strong stomachs, so we just decided to combine our talents,” Burrows said.

The two started the niche business this past fall.

In addition to crime and trauma scene cleanup, the sisters specialize in sanitizing “gross filth” – places where landlords find rental properties left in such nasty disarray that they don’t want to touch anything themselves, for example.

So clean up can cost a property owner from $1,000 to tens of thousands, they said.

Ben and Gail Yanker, owners of Buffalo Restoration Inc., have been cleaning up trauma scenes since about 1990, Ben Yanker said. Their business actually started as Buffalo Painting in the mid-1970s and evolved to include architectural restoration. The trauma-cleaning business “just kind of flowed” into the mix in 1990, after a few employees were trained in hazardous cleanup. Now, four of the Yankers’ 14 employees have the skills and knowledge to tackle such tasks.

billingsgazette.net

Sisters start crime scene clean-up business is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

“I call it Rip Club, because you just rip it,” McLeod said. “In times of economic hardship, people don’t want to buy new clothes. It’s cheaper to repair what they have.”

McLeod and others in the sewing business are finding that altering and restoring old clothes is a profitable business in the recession that began in November.

Ruby Hageman, a tailor at The Alteration Shop in Fort Collins, has seen that in the recession, more people want their clothes to last longer.

“Clothes are really expensive, so if you can make a pair of pants last another year or two, you don’t have to buy new ones,” Hageman said.

Linda Clason, a Loveland resident who does alterations and custom sewing, has seen an increase in business every time there is an economic downturn.

“People can’t afford to buy new clothes, so they are going to fix up what they have in the closet,” said Clason, also a Sewing Professionals member. “They’re repairing or having repaired things they have in the closet that still fit.”

In most cases, fixing clothes is less expensive than buying new, said Linda Wrenn, owner of Sew Country in Berthoud, where she does alterations and custom sewing.

“The general consensus of our group is that it’s doing much better than normal times. People are getting their clothes fixed and altered instead of buying new ones,” Wrenn said.

reporterherald.com

Sewing businesses finding niche in midst of recession is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

with four unemployed workers for every job opening, moms like Kim Perez of Pembroke Pines are moving into action. A few months ago, recession reality forced Perez, mother of a toddler, to look for new money-making possibilities when her hours as a retail sales associate were cut in half. Her husband, a builder, has been out of work for almost a year.

Perez considers herself in transition. She has set up a makeshift office in her bedroom and sells glass jewelry. “I’m hoping I can turn this into a full-time arrangement and make good money.”

The numbers are jarring: 800,000 women have lost full-time positions in the past 12 months, and those on payrolls part time grew by nearly 900,000. For the women who work part time, first-quarter median earnings were $269 a week. But men are increasingly seeing their schedules reduced, too. As of March, the number of men working part-time positions increased 14 percent from a year earlier.

theledger.com

Many Moms Scrambling to Make Some Extra Money is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Jorge Lopes, a Brazilian designer, uses 3-D printing technology to create the plaster models that go on show at an exhibition at the Royal College of Art in London.

Dr Lopes, 42, first came across the 3-D printing method, known as rapid prototyping, when he was working on the reconstruction of archaeological finds such as dinosaurs and Egyptian mummies for museums. He is working at the RCA, on secondment from the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology.

Dr Lopes is now focusing on developing simple software that doctors would be able to use independently and on the spot.

timesonline.co.uk

Invention allows pregnant women to hold models of their unborn babies is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Baskin said she got the idea five years ago while flying to Texas to give a speech on how to be your own boss. En route, she scribbled on index cards the steps she’d learned while building her own business. Then she described the steps in her talk.

“The audience went crazy and afterwards they wanted to know where they could buy the cards,” Baskin recalled.

Baskin, owner of Tribe Inc., a seven-year-old agency, is selling sets on Amazon.com for $24.95, alongside various start-your-own business books.

Atlanta executive coach Mariette Edwards, owner of Star Maker Enterprises, suggested not relying on the cards 100 percent, but said, “This could be a tool to help you think through all the aspects of having a business. I see so many people who are lost and completely overwhelmed.”

The cards are colorful, the tips snappily written. They come in four sections: vision, launch, follow-through and milestones.

ajc.com

Entrepreneur puts start-up wisdom on cards is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

“My aunt’s mother-in-law used to make them for the family,” Alayna said. “She had passed away, and I wanted to do it for the family to give one to everybody for Christmas.”

So she and her mother, Shannon Kennedy, went to the knitting and crocheting circle that meets twice a month at the Alliance YWCA.

“We began showing her the basics, casting on, basic stitches,” said knitter Jodene Hardy. “She was a natural — she caught on so quickly. We would only show her something once, maybe twice, and she had it. She had very good control of the needles and the tension of the yarn.”

“My grandma told me that other people would need them, and I wanted to get an iPod Touch, so I started selling them,” Alayna said.

Thanks to some sales help from mom and grandma, she had no trouble finding customers and is now the proud owner of an iPod Touch.

cantonrep.com

Young entrepreneur stitches together her own business is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Laura Hunter and Jennifer Walker never thought of themselves as entrepreneurs until about five years ago, after a little advice from country crooner Kenny Rogers. Today they are published authors, Web site operators and sought-after consultants in a big niche market.

The two moms – they have eight kids between them – run Moms on Call LLC, which offers real-world advice and counseling to newly minted parents.

Their consultation business has exploded – it grew 600 percent in three years. Their book, “Guide to Basic Baby Care,” has sold more than 20,000 copies and been translated into three languages. They recently started online courses in child care on their Web site that take parents from infancy through age 5.

Walker and Hunter believe a good part of their success is due to the fact that modern moms often live hundreds of miles from their natural support network – the mothers, sisters and aunts in traditional extended families who aided in child care.

The two pediatric nurses admit that a lot of people have stepped up to help make their business a success. One of the first was singer Rogers.

About five years ago, he called Hunter to consult with him and his wife, Wanda. The couple had twins when Rogers was 65. At the time, Hunter was doing consultations using a few photocopied sheets of instructions.

“I was getting ready to leave, and Kenny was flipping through [my] folder and he said: ‘It’s not copyrighted.’ He said: ‘You’ve got something here. You have to copyright this.’ His attorney … called the next morning.”

Getting children to sleep through the night is the most common question they get. Sometimes, the calls and e-mails are just strange.

“I had one e-mail that just said ‘hit on head by chicken,’ ” Hunter said. “I called and the kid was screaming and the dad was panicked. He was standing by the freezer and dropped a frozen chicken on his child. It all turned out fine, but that was what was worrying that dad at that moment.”

Moms on Call LLC
An in-home consultation is $300 for two hours. Includes a book, DVD, swaddling blanket and six months of follow-up assistance. Phone version is $250. Online courses are $29.95 each. Their book can be ordered online for less than $20. On the web: www.momsoncall.com

ajc.com

Moms’ niche is babies’ care is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Julie Trade became her own boss after her husband was laid off in 2007. With a background in marketing, the former stay-at-home mom, 40, launched her own marketing communications business from a spare bedroom in Scottsdale, Ariz., drafting advertising and press materials for her clients.

Since her husband struggled for nearly a year to find another full-time job and they had a young baby, “I figured the best solution was to work from home.”

“I thought I’d get a couple of clients to make ends meet while he was looking for work,” she said. “But what happened was my business kind of went crazy.”

Trade got up to speed on email and IM and learned about new marketing techniques, such as search engine optimization.

“I started to think about ways I could offer a variety of services, learn new technologies,” she said. “I found ways to make myself appear larger than just a stay-at-home mom in a back bedroom.”

Soon she was writing press releases and ads for established companies including British Telecom and Argent Software. “Companies that I never thought in a million years would need my services suddenly did. I was a cost effective source,” she explained.

Trade estimates that she now makes twice what she did when she was working full-time before having children.

cnn.com

Stay-at-home mom, six-figure salary is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Worse, how often do you see someone take an idea similar to yours, start a business and create their fortune? Well, the time has come for you to stop kicking yourself and to turn that million-dollar idea into a reality.

Most entrepreneurs follow similar paths to success. Sara Blakely, entrepreneur and founder of the multi-million dollar company Spanx, shared her keys to success in an interview with SUCCESS, a top magazine for budding entrepreneurs and established professionals. How can you turn your next idea into a million-dollar business? Follow Blakely’s advice:

Differentiate yourself from the crowd. “Whether it’s in the marketplace or in those first few seconds you meet somebody — whatever it is — if you don’t know how it has been done before, you’re almost guaranteed to do it differently,” says Blakely.

First impressions mean everything. “If you make someone laugh or smile in the first five to 10 seconds, you might get another 10 seconds,” she says.

Be persistent. Work hard to win over manufacturers and prospective buyers who may be unsure about your idea or product. If you display enthusiasm and desire for your idea, they will begin to believe, too.

Visualize your goals. “Take a mental snapshot of what success looks like for you,” she says. Keeping that vision of success in mind will help you through the tough times.

Pay attention to opportunities. “There are a million ways to improve everything around us,” says Blakely. Making just one improvement could result in your million-dollar idea.

Hire your weakness. Focus on your strengths, and hire well-qualified people to handle the rest.

For more on Blakely’s interview with SUCCESS magazine, pick up a copy at newsstands, or subscribe by visiting their Web site at www.SUCCESS.com.

fosterfollynews.com

Make Your Next Million-Dollar Idea a Reality is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Successful entrepreneurs incorporate philanthropy into their business. But some businesses are philanthropic by their very nature. They are founded to provide jobs for the economically disadvantaged–while producing a product people are happy to pay for.

1. Arzu Rugs: Hope by Design
2. BeadforLife: Eradicating Poverty One Bead at a Time
3. Khaya Cookie Co.: Cookies with a Cause
4. HairZing: Social Responsibility in Action
5. Up from the Dust: Supporting Women Microenterprises

This is the new breed of social entrepreneur. They’re making a difference among disadvantage communities and earning a living at the same time. They produce everything from hair accessories and cookies to designer rugs, all while helping women worldwide pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Meet the New Breed of Entrepreneur is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Fox’s Steve Noviello has the story of this young Internet entrepreneur (video, left).

“Carlita27” started on the road to hre unlikely living with a homework assignment.

“I had the option of writing a paper or making a movie and I didn’t want to write a paper so I made a movie. I made a YouTube channel and I put it on there. All of a sudden one of my videos went viral and YouTube featured it on their front page. from then people started picking up and they saw my other videos and it got caught up and everything started falling into place,” she said.

Now her movies are making big money because she is cashing in on thousands of clicks each months. That’s a significant step — even in cyberspace.

Carlita27 told Fox, “YouTube sent me an e-mail saying, ‘Hey you want to join our partner program?’ “

Some months, those thousands of clicks on her video can add up to thousands of dollars.

myfoxny.com

Make Money From YouTube is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Experts warn many work at home jobs are scams, but some are legit and could work for you in a down economy.

“I love working at home,” said Treena Scism who works from home for VIPDesk.com

Scism works as a virtual concierge of sorts. She makes dinner reservations and books travel packages for her clients. However, unlike the concierge you might find at a hotel, Scism does her job from the comfort of home.

“Its excellent to be able to be there in my comfort zone, in my home office with my own computer, I know how it works,” said Scism.

VIPDesk.com routes calls to employees like Scism who can do everything from finding the nearest Starbucks for someone to tracking down a phone number for an old high school classmate.

Arise Virtual Solutions serves as a virtual contact center, handling incoming calls and online customer service for such clients as AAA, Home Depot and Carnival Cruise Lines.

“I’m actually ahead,” claims LaFlesch. “When you factor in what I’m not paying for: gas, food, trips to the vending machine, all those things add up. I’ve got more money in my pocket now than I did before.”

Jackie Mygrant works as a scheduling manager for KSS International, coordinating mystery shoppers around the world.

“I like being able to work from home,” said Mygrant. “I have a lot of flexibility as to when I work. I work 60 hours but I get to choose what 60.”

KSS international hires so-called mystery shoppers, people who go in to business like Circle K or Dunkin Donuts and report back to them about everything from the quality of their products to the cleanliness of their stores.

“We wear pajamas, loungewear, I work in my sweats,” admitted Mygrant. “(I) don’t have to put on make-up. I don’t have any dry cleaning bills, automotive expenses.”

abc15.com

‘Work at home’ jobs that really work is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Linda started her online business, the Prairie Tumbleweed Farm, as a joke. It was 1994 and she wanted to teach herself how to design a website. Since she lived on the prairie in southwest Kansas, where rolling tumbleweeds are sometimes the only dynamic feature of an endless flat horizon, she invented a farm that sold tumbleweeds, listing prices at $15 for a small one, $20 for a medium and $25 for large.

Lucky for her, some people didn’t get the joke. People emailed the site wanting to buy them. But even then Linda doubted she would be able to spin this straw into gold. “When I got an order I was just amazed,” she says, sitting on the porch of her home in Garden City, Kansas. “And each order I got, I thought it would probably be the last order. I remember thinking they would probably get them and send them back immediately as soon as they find out what they are.”

But that didn’t happen. In fact, the orders just kept coming — an average of 15 per week. Though she’s coy about her annual income from tumbleweed wrangling, she says it is over $40,000 a year. Not bad for a bunch of dead, dried-up weeds. Who buys them? Well, says Katz, rocket scientists, for one. NASA purchased tumbleweeds when they were designing their Mars Tumbleweed rover. “And if you go to their site on the NASA site to the tumbleweed rover, and you go to their links, they say that they only buy their tumbleweeds from Prairie Tumbleweed Farm,” Katz says proudly.

Hollywood has also come calling. Katz’s tumbleweeds have appeared in films like Johnny Depp’s “Neverland.” And she has supplied tumbleweeds to the big purple dinosaur kid’s show, “Barney.”

Katz says people usually use her tumbleweeds to recreate the look and feel of the old west for theme parties. But some customers tell her they buy tumbleweeds to remind them of the home on the prairie they left long ago.

Yahoo! News

Rolling in cash is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

1. Coaching and Teaching
2. Communications/Information
3. Direct Sales
4. E-tailing
5. Event Planning
6. Parenting Services/Products
7. Personal Services
8. Virtual Assistant
9. Website Consultant
10. Work-at-Home Support

Mompreneurs Online

10 Businesses For Work At Home Moms is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

According to Donna, a company called Global Healthcare Inc.,out of London, sent her a contract asking her to cash checks and wire them the money. It was supposedly quicker than doing it overseas. Donna was promised 10-percent of the money cashed, “It looked legitimate I mean I went to paralegal school and I knew some contractual law and so the contract looked legitimate, but it wasn’t evidentially.”

After Donna cashed a check from a “so called” customer and wired the company more than 25-hundred dollars, she later found out the check was fake and she was the one who was stuck paying, “I was so devastated I cried so hard.”

Sgt. Kevin Smith of the St. Petersburg Police Department says, he gets calls like this one at least two times a week, “It’s heartbreaking because you really hate to see people out there trying to work, trying to sell something to be taken advantage of.”

Sgt. Kevin Smith says websites like Career Builder.Com are safe, but people need to be more aware of who they’re dealing with, “Unfortunately anybody has a right to log in and look at those resumes so you really don’t know who’s actually offering you a job.”

He says thieves are also targeting victims through the mail and even fax machines. . Sgt. Smith says it’s difficult to catch the thieves because of trying to coordinate with other countries. He says banks don’t take responsibility for these incidents, because it’s the account holder who’s cashing the checks, even though they’re not aware they’re fake.

Donna now believes if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, “I’m really afraid to go on line anymore and even answer emails from companies.” While she paid an expensive price, she hopes others learn from her experience

First Coast News

Stay at Home Moms Targeted by Online Thieves is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Customized Evlove Intimates lingerie is sold primarily through private home parties. Invited guests sip wine while they select from a wide array of designs, samples, fabric swatches and decorative touches including ribbons, appliqués, rosettes and bows. Dombroski hooks up her laptop to a TV screen where guests view and revise their choices courtesy of her online design studio. Prices for a lingerie set run around USD 100, with prices for individual pieces USD 35 and up. Purchases are delivered in about three weeks. Dombroski recently launched a website to enable customers to design and place orders online. But most of her business is through home parties, with the number of bookings increasing each month, mostly through word of mouth.

Dombroski’s ‘customerization parties’ are an inspired idea that could work just about anywhere for all sorts of products, including t-shirts, home fashions, fragrances and cosmetics. The founder’s advice for other fledgling entrepreneurs? “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. If you love the product, ask questions and network—a lot. And above all, be persistent.”

Springwise

Customized Lingerie is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

I posed that question to the grown-ups I encountered recently while exploring Whateverlife.com. The teen-girl site and company was started by Ashley Qualls, an entrepreneur from a working-class neighborhood outside Detroit, who happens to be 17 herself. At that age, LeeAnn Prescott, the research director at Hitwise, was working at an amusement park, fashioning faux Civil War shots of people. Robb Lippitt, the former COO of ePrize who consults for Qualls, had worked his way up from dishwasher to prep cook to manager of Buddy’s BBQ. Ceca Mijatovic, the founder of the girls portal dayZloop, didn’t have a job yet; she was a foreign-exchange student from Yugoslavia. Me? I was delivering pizza for Domino’s.

“Of course, this,” says Ian Moray of ValueClick Media, referring to Whateverlife, “is something we all wish we’d done when we were 17.”

If only the Internet had been around then. One of the many fascinating things about Whateverlife is that Ashley didn’t set out to start a business. The Internet practically did it for her. Web design was a hobby, something she’d been learning online since she was 9. As a high-school sophomore, she figured out how to create layouts for MySpace pages, and her friends at Lincoln Park High School were keen to customize theirs, much like school lockers. As word spread throughout the MySpace universe, the 15-year-old couldn’t afford the servers to support her exploding online audience. A friend suggested using Google AdSense, which generates ad revenue based on a site’s traffic. Ka-ching. Whateverlife was off and running. Ashley has created nearly 3,000 layouts, her monthly audience is around 7 million, and revenue has grown from a couple of thousand bucks a month to as much as $70,000 – more than $1 million in less than two years.

Fast Company

Whatever Life Dot Coom is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Their book examines how recent generational shifts have impacted the buying behaviors of today’s mothers and moms-to-be.

1. Focus on networks
2. Embrace technology
3. Offer education
4. Save them time
5. Get to the point
6. Market to the individual

Want more information on marketing to moms? There’s a Marketing2Moms course offered by Moms in Business. It’s a 16-week e-mail course that’ll help you understand and market to today’s mom.

Entrepreneur

Marketing to Moms is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Seven years later, the first Hey Buddy pet vending machine was established in Bark Park Central, an off-leash dog park in Dallas. Lennox, 36, stocked the machine with dog treats, tennis balls, dog shirts, dog glasses–basically everything a dog might need for a walk in the park. And with its shingled roof and slated facade, the doghouse-inspired vending machine was hard to miss–which meant pets and their owners weren’t the only ones begging Lennox for more.

I see my machines at the Plaza in New York City, maybe gold-plated, carrying Louis Vuitton dog collars and Chanel pearls and everything else a celebrity would want for their dog,” says Lennox. She also lists apartment complexes, RV parks and veterinary offices as just a few more places she hopes to have Hey Buddy Machines in the future. “That’s really what we’re all about,” she says. “We just want to make it convenient for the customers who are out there with their dogs.”

Unusual Business Ideas That Work

Dog Vending Machine is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The company, based in Silver Spring, Md.,makes and sells Remodulin, a drug that treats pulmonary hypertension (PPH), abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries that supply the lungs. The rare, incurable, and often fatal ailment causes shortness of breath, fainting spells and fatigue. Most treatment options, ranging from daily pills to intravenous medicines, are fully reimbursable by insurance companies.

Rothblatt describes watching her daughter, Jenesis, battle PPH when she was diagnosed as a little girl. Jenesis survived on a mix of pills, but doctors warned that if her condition worsened, she would have to take Flolan, a GlaxoSmithKline (Charts) drug that stays in the bloodstream for only three minutes. It must be continually administered via a catheter threaded directly into the groin or neck. Unstable at room temperature, Flolan requires patients to carry an ice pack 24 hours a day to ensure that it stays cool.

“The treatment seemed worse than the disease,” recalls Rothblatt, stroking one of the three mohawked Labradoodles that roam her offices. “My vision became an inhaled version of the medicine.” Her first step was to develop a drug that lasted longer than Flolan.

FSB Magazine

A mother’s race for a cure is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Salespeople who ignore the woman when a man and woman are looking for a car came up last month when Times-Dispatch readers voiced their customer-service pet peeves. So what’s a male-dominated industry like the car business to do?

Enter AskPatty.com, started by a couple of entrepreneurs who thought they could make money straightening out the problem. The site educates women about all things automotive, with female experts who write articles and answer questions on repair, maintenance and car buying.

AskPatty.com certifies dealerships as female-friendly after they have passed a course on how to communicate with women. A check of the Web site found no dealerships in the Richmond area that are certified. To be certified, members of a dealership’s sales team must read a book on how to communicate with women, “How to Get Rich Selling Cars and Trucks to Women,” and take a training course. Then they must pass a 134-question test, which takes about an hour to complete.

The Web site gets about 20,000 visitors each month. About 50 dealerships have signed on for certification services. Dealerships pay $225 per person for 12 months of training and $795 a month for the dealership certification.

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Web Site Aims To Help Women Seal Deal is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Switchpod is a podcasting hosting service that provides both free and premium accounts. You can create a podcast with their technology, upload it to Switchpod and be podcasting to the world in a matter of minutes.

Switchpod’s product soon generated 800,000 downloads and was bought out by Wizzard Software in an all-stock transaction worth $200,000. The sale also provides the partners with annual salaries of $40,000 for a 20-hour workweek.

startupjournal.com

America’s Next Business Tycoons is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

“My first job I took after college was as a financial analyst. I was living at home in New Rochelle, N.Y., at the time, and it was actually kind of boring. Then one day I heard my mom talking to some of her friends about how hard it was to get things done around the house without a man around, like hanging picture, fixing a leaky faucet, and tightening a doorknob. That’s when a lightbulb went on for me.

“I realized that women are tired of having to rely on men to help with home improvements. I thought women might like to deal with another woman instead. So I went to a local printer to have some business cards and fliers made up. Then I went to the mall and started talking to women about how I had just started a home-improvement business and asked whether there was anything I could help them with.

“After I lined up a job, like putting up Sheetrock, I would go to the phonebook, find the contractors that could do the work, and check out their references. I would then drive the contractor to the job and talk with the customer as he did the work. I made my money by charging the homeowner more than the contractor was charging me. My first year, I made $25,000.

Yahoo! Finance

Meet Ms. Fix-It is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The gifts were the brainchild of entrepreneur Lisa Honig Buksbaum. In 2001, Buksbaum closed her marketing firm, Boxtree Communications (Buksbaum means “boxtree” in Yiddish), which boasted a roster of brands such as Colgate and Lipton, to launch Soaringwords, a New York City nonprofit that helps sick children and their families.

Buksbaum, 46, understands from experience the need for this type of support: Within a span of ten months in 1998, her 35-year-old brother died suddenly of an asthma-induced heart attack, her father had a recurrence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (he defied the odds and survived) and her 9-year-old son became gravely ill with rheumatic fever, which left him bedridden for four months. “Everyone wants to do something positive, but they don’t know what to do to help,” she says.

Since its founding in 2001, Soaringwords has boosted the spirits of more than 150,000 pediatric patients in the U.S. and, through its Web site, reached children as far away as China, Israel, Mexico and Russia.

CNN Money

An entrepreneur’s nonprofit helps sick kids is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Dellamura searched stores and websites for a product to protect her children, but came up empty-handed. That’s when Dellamura invented Gotta Go Mitts.

Her survey of more than 100 mothers — friends, family, even strangers in bathrooms — showed two out of three said they would buy disposable mittens for their children. The information she collected helped guide the development of Gotta Go Mitts, such as making a small package to fit in a purse or pocket.

A bookstore clerk suggested Tara Monosoff’s “The Mom Inventors Handbook.” It gives readers advice for conducting market research, developing a prototype, manufacturing and marketing a product. Dellamura found the guide practical and inspiring. She followed every step and enjoyed reading about several mom inventors who turned inspiration into action.

Dellamura made the first prototype on her kitchen table. Her mother-in-law and a friend helped cut and sew plastic sandwich bags into child-sized mittens.

Now the finished products, 2.5 million mitts in 125,000 packages, sit in her basement. Dellamura invested more than $17,000 to bring her idea to market, but she expects to start making a profit in fewer than two years — $5 at a time.

Frederick News Post

Necessity The Mother Of Invention is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

While feeding a baby, Debbie Stauffer and Kathleen Whitehurst came up with an invention that landed them a spot on “Oprah,” an article in Good Housekeeping and a hit new product. It’s a counter. A simple, cute digital counter in bright colors.

If you’ve mined moldy leftovers out of the refrigerator, over-fed your fish or killed plants by under-watering, you may need it.

MediaNews.com

Mothers Hit The Market With Invention is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Quite coincidentally, she had read in a book that Native Americans used balsam trees as herb for many different home remedies. With her long-standing interests in herbs “that got me excited into thinking about balsams in a different way,” said Wendy. She became a supplier to the incense factory, which used her balsam fir boughs to stuff souvenir pillows.

Through the years Wendy has experimented with trade shows, catalogue sales, the QVC home shopping network, and many other avenues to showcase her products.

She recently set-up a web site, to widen her market reach and take a dip on Internet retailing. Her worldwide outlets now exceed 4,400 stores and her employees have increased to 12. Sales of Maine Balsam Fir Products have reached well over $500,000 per year.

Unusual Business Ideas That Work

Balsam Fir is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

When a new baby arrives, mom and dad’s brains seem to turn to mush; lack of sleep makes it challenging to remember the simplest things. Greg Sheldon learned this two years ago when he and his wife Kris became parents for the first time. He found that they were asking each other the same questions over and over: “How long has it been since his diaper was changed?”, or “How long ago did you feed him?” Sheldon, an engineer turned stay-at-home-dad, decided there had to be something more effective than scribbling on a notepad at 2:30 in the morning, so he invented the ITZBEEN Baby Care Timerâ„¢.

When Sheldon’s son was three months old, he decided to put his engineering career on hold to be more involved with his new baby. However, it wasn’t long before his inventive nature had him looking for ways to make the job of parenting a little easier. Sheldon created a simple, cell phone size device with four timers that allowed he and his wife to recall how long ago they changed a diaper, fed the baby, put the baby down to sleep, or gave the baby medication. Whenever they performed a task, like changing a diaper, they simply pressed the correct [diaper button; that timer would reset to zero and start counting up again. At anytime, day or night, they could look at the display and always know how long ago something was done. His timer proved to be so useful, that he filed for a patent and turned it into a real product.

Sheldon’s new company, Coast Innovations, introduced the ITZBEENâ„¢ to the juvenile products industry last September at tradeshow in Las Vegas, NV. “We were very happy with the industry response,” says Sheldon. “We were told by more than one retailer that the ITZBEENâ„¢ was the best new product at the show.” The ITZBEENâ„¢ hit the shelves in January, and it is now available in over 65 stores and websites across the US, Canada, Australia, and Panama. Suggested retail price for the ITZBEENâ„¢ is $24.99.

eMediaWire

Dad-Inventor Creates New Baby Care Product is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Sander DeVries, and his brothers Shane Pfannes and Tim Pfannes, launched an online business to help people remove their names from direct mailing lists.

Tim came up with the idea because he was tired of his kitchen counter overflowing with junk mail, DeVries said.

With help from Shane and Sander, he spent a year researching organizations that take people off mailing lists. He passed along the information to family and friends but soon found no one had time to make phone calls or send e-mails.

Then he turned his brainstorm into a business, charging clients for help and donating some of the proceeds to nonprofit groups.

They launched their web site 41pounds last July. The service’s name refers to the 41 pounds of junk mail a person receives each year.

The Oakland Press

Web Business Fights Junk Mail is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Blog-ad firm Blogads reported that the average consumer on mommy blogs is a 29-year-old female with an average income of $70,000 a year, who spends four hours a week tapping into these blogs–basically, she’s a marketer’s dream consumer.

The media is taking notice of the products moms are chatting about. In fact, one blog, Cool Mom Picks, says at least four rather obscure companies they’ve written about have gotten spreads in Real Simple.

Entrepreneur Daily

Blogging Moms Spread the Word is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The young mother is conquering the business world without sacrificing her home life. Manriquez started her language education company Bilingual Fun out of her living room 3 years ago. Now, her thriving program has grown to offering classes from as young as 18 months- age 10, in addition to creating and producing award winning Spanish for Children instructional DVDs. As a mom and educator with 2 young children of her own, Manriquez uses her personal and professional experience to educate others on the importance of early language instruction.

Manriquez was chosen from thousands of women around the country to be highlighted on the national morning show for her unique and successful business plan. Sticking with the theme of the GMA segment “How to Start a Business for Under $200″, Manriquez exemplifies how you can use your skills and passion to create a viable business opportunity for hardly anything.

ClickPress.com

How to Start a Business for Under $200 is a post from: Top Business Opportunities