I’ve been writing a few small business idea profiles for Suite 101. If you are interested in starting a home art studio business or working with pets, you may want to give those articles a read.

Is there any business you’d like to start that you would like to see a profile of? Let me know.

My sister took two bags of gently used name brand children’s clothing to her favorite consignment shop the other day. They told her they’ve decided to discontinue the consignment section of the shop and just sell new clothes. She was pretty upset, because she usually got a large percentage of the purchase price of the clothes back and could buy the kids’ wardrobe for the next season from the consignment sales.

When she told me about the loss of her consignment outlet, I suggested she try selling them on eBay. I got her all the For Dummies guides and showed her a few of my favorite blogs and sites about selling on eBay. Well, it takes time to photograph the clothing, upload the pictures and write good auction listings, so she asked me to do it instead. It is something I’ve been thinking about getting back into anyway, because I really used to do well with eBay.

If you want to sell on eBay and you don’t have a whole backlog of stuff to list like I do, you may want to look into another option - using a dropshipping company like Doba.com. They have a free trial option so you can decide if dropshipping is right for you.

Recommended Resource:

Need products to sell online? Access over 1 Million products with hundreds of suppliers. You Sell. We Ship. You Profit. Doba.com is the prime wholesale product source for online auctions, web stores, or proprietary online stores. Start your Free Trial Today!

If you have hobbies you want to share information on, you want to drive traffic to a blog, or you just want to write about some obscure topic and don’t want to buy a domain name and hosting for it, you are a strong candidate for my new addiction - Squidoo. I love how easy it is to use Squidoo and I have gotten some traffic from it.

However, if you are in it for the money, be warned. It is slow going. Earnings build slowly as you make and promote more and more of your lenses. If you are making lenses on topics that aren’t popular, you may never see earnings from Squidoo.  Some people with popular lenses say they’ve made hundreds, mostly from their own affiliate sales.

By the way, if you do get into Squidoo and want to learn more, Tiffany Dow has an excellent e-book on using Squidoo that is well worth the low price. I read the whole thing twice the day I got it and I “blame” her for my addiction!

Every once in awhile, I just feel the need to give a “gentle reminder” to everyone I meet on or offline: please back up. Losing all those files, family photos, etc. hurts sooo bad. This is the easiest option I’ve found and you can have free storage up to 2 gigabytes - Mozy.

You see them everywhere - paid to surf and paid to read email programs that turn out to be pyramid scams or earn only pennies a year. Are any of these programs worthwhile? Well, I already mentioned My Points, which is a fantastic program I use to get a bunch of gift cards for stocking stuffers each year. You can earn enough points just by reading emails and completing a few free offers, but I try to shop through My Points when it is a business I am buying from anyway and that is how the points really add up.

Another program that is pretty successful for many people is Cash Crate. I’ve just signed up with this program recently. Frankly, if you are short on time, you may want to skip it. Getting 80 cents for a survey or two dollars to complete a free offer isn’t awful, but it isn’t great, either. I’ve heard of people earning several hundred dollars a month through Cash Crate, but they probably put in some serious time.

I keep hearing about moms paying for survey opportunities. That is not a good thing. You should never pay for the chance to take surveys. There are many legitimate survey opportunities out there and they have one thing in common - free sign ups. Please don’t spend your money on survey sites.

Here are a few survey companies with free sign ups that pay you for your time:

Focus Forward - pays cash if you qualify. I just joined recently.

Greenfield Online - pays cash if you qualify. Otherwise, you are entered in a sweepstakes as a thank you for your time answering a few preliminary questions. I rarely get past the preliminary round.

My Points - This program actually is a rewards program, but there are a lot of surveys worth 5 points. Cash out at around 800 points for a $5 gift certificate. I’ve been doing MyPoints for years. (Since 2001, to be exact.) It is the only rewards program that is really worth doing, as far as I’m concerned.

The biggest hurdle for internet marketing is probably getting good, targeted traffic. BlogRush is a brand new way to syndicate your blog content across many related sites, with the potential to drive substantial traffic. Now, I know everyone and her mom has a widget for you to stick on your sidebar, but this is one you’ll want to use. Here’s why:

• John Reese - If you have been around the internet at all, you’ll probably have heard this name. Mr. Reese is a very talented internet marketer and extremely ethical. I really respect him, so I am willing to try things he is part of.
• No money - This is a free widget, so all you lose is a month or two of some sidebar space if it doesn’t bring you a big increase in traffic.
• Potential for major traffic - You could end up with a lot of extra traffic without a ton of effort. Free traffic is always good. Even better, it will be targetted traffic, since your headlines will only be showing up on related blogs.
• It’s easier than a gold rush - Just sign up your blog, add the widget and you’re done. No toiling with picks and shovels for years on end.

Photo from NARA Archives

It’s funny how you forget that a term you use all the time isn’t self explanatory to someone new in your field. I had a new writer ask me what a query letter is today and thought I’d share my answer with other new writers:

A query is a letter you send to an editor outlining an article or story idea. It usually isn’t written yet because the editor may have a different slant on the article. Query writing is almost harder than writing the actual article because you have to catch the editor’s attention.
Here is a really good article on writing query letters:
http://www.writing-world.com/basics/query.shtml
Katelyn

I know it seems insane, but summertime is the perfect time to get ready for the winter holidays. People begin to shop for supplies to make Christmas or Hanukkah gifts as early as July. Also, getting your site ready for the big shopping season now means that search engines have plenty of time to pick up all that fresh content you’ve added.

One great thing about starting to work on the holidays early is that you don’t have to feel rushed or stressed. Just pick one little thing to do each day and by the time everyone else is just realizing that Christmas is around the corner and beginning frantic updates, you’ll be ready to sit back and enjoy the shopping season.

Things to try:

1. Write quick shopping guides for your niche. For example, I wrote a post about gifts to give dads for Father’s Day that are under $10. It was simply a list I searched out on Amazon and a few other affiliate sites, but the convenience of seeing a specific guide to gifts in their price limit prompted people to click and buy.
2. Write in depth reviews of specific products and create a page that links ones with a similar theme together as a top ten review list of gifts for boys, girls, or car lovers. These lists are even more likely to result in sales, because they have such unique content and offer pros and cons of things you’ve actually used.
3. Create a blog if you don’t have one and post regularly to it. One of the best blogs I’ve seen for driving sales to an online store is the one on inspireco.com. People love that they feel like a member of the family and want to buy products that the talented Amy has created or that she thought were worthy of being in her shop. The key here - it you can’t be genuine, don’t try to fake it. This type of blog is really hard to do if you keep thinking about making money when you post. She very obviously likes to share her life with her online friends and it shows.

Remember, you don’t have to do all of these things at once. Break a task into sections and work on a bit every day. If you do one review every day for a month and then create themed buying guides that link to the reviews the next month, you’ll still have plenty of time to get that content indexed in the search engines by Black Friday.

Recommended Resource:

Thinking about drop shipping? Need products to sell online? Access over 1 Million products with hundreds of suppliers. You Sell. We Ship. You Profit. Doba.com is the prime wholesale product source for online auctions, web stores, or proprietary online stores. Start your Free Trial Today!

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A large range of credit card types is easily available all over the world. Because, to accept credit cards in any shopping mall is not a problem. There are different credit card companies which are offering different consumer and businesses packages to get cheap loans. Many credit cards return money to their consumers in shape of reward points and due to this cash back credit card is very common. Many businessmen preferring business credit cards because business credit card offers a wide range of benefits especially for business users.

There are plenty of reasons to work from home and one of them is to escape a truly horrible job. I’ve had my share of doozies, but Randa wants me to pick the worst job I’ve ever had, so I have to go with one of my first jobs, which was customer service related.

I absolutely loved the customers, but my boss came from an ethnic background that believed women were virtually worthless and he had diabetes that he didn’t control very well. I usually was able to head him off with a question or joke him out of a bad mood. I stayed for over a year and a half because I just was so attached to many of our clients. However, one day, he actually kicked me (jokingly, my aching ankle!)  and I went right home and sent off my resume to a half dozen places. I was out of there three weeks later.

Image by Lusi