Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.sauceaholic.com
The barbecue sauces, salsas, mustards and rubs are on the shelves. Now the owners of Sauceaholics just have to hope for business.
They opened the small shop in Lakewood last week. It's a simple operation by most business standards - one employee and 900 square feet of jars and bottles for sale in a shopping center. But they still face the same obstacles every new business does.
The U.S. Small Business Administration reports that about 650,000 businesses opened and another 575,000 closed each year from 2004 to 2008, the most recent data available.
The biggest problem facing most new businesses is lack of access to capital, said Janice Donaldson, regional director of the Small Business Development Center at the University of North Florida.
"Some people have all the money they need and good for them," she said. "But most of the clients we deal with have to borrow money from conventional banks. But that's dried up."
The investment in Sauceaholics has been modest.
The three partners - Don Smith, Sandra Hazen and Jack Gibney - have invested $7,500 each so far. How much will that rise to down the road?
"I'd say $10,000," Smith said. Then he paused and added, "No, make that $12,000."
They didn't have to borrow any of it. But they signed a 16-month lease at $1,900 a month, so they're committed.
"We're flying by the seat of our pants," Smith said.
The idea started last Christmas when Smith went online to buy salsas for his partner in their CPA firm.
"The further I went, the more this exploded," he said. "There's a whole cult out there of people and their salsas."
He ordered a bunch, put together a couple of gift baskets, but it continued to stay in his mind.
"A $30 order might cost $15 in shipping," he said. "So wouldn't it be nice to have a store that had all that salsa? And then it grew into sauces, marmalades, hot sauces. And you talk about a cult, look at hot sauces."
He talked to his wife about it. She talked to Sandra Hazen, a longtime friend, about it. Smith talked to a neighbor, Jack Gibney, about it. And they decided to go for it.
The process was simple: Search the Internet for makers of the products, e-mail them and ask about wholesale prices.
They created a corporation, got a credit card and started ordering. They order mostly in cases of 12, with most costing them $80-$150.
"Our competition," he said, "is who we just bought it from."
Generally, he prices the items a little higher than the manufacturer's retail price and generally a little more than twice what they paid, but there's no shipping. Prices run $3-$10.
"We didn't want to be that sauce place that opened up but their prices are way too high," he said.
A bigger problem with specialty retail shops, Donaldson said, is the obvious one: They compete with the big stores.
"There's a lot of sauces in Publix," Donaldson said. "The same is true with wine shops or anything else you can get at the big boxes. Specialty shops may think they have an advantage, and maybe their sauces taste better than anything anywhere else. But how do you communicate that with the customers?"
Sauceaholics has about 200 different products, and Smith said if they find out a grocery store carries it, they probably won't.
"We can't compete with them," he said.
The trio didn't talk to any small business experts, didn't seek out any advice. And they don't have retail experience.
But Smith is a CPA who has seen the books for lots of small business. Both he and Gibney, an attorney, run their businesses and Hazen owns a bed and breakfast in Vermont.
So they know about rent and overhead.
"If you haven't worked retail," Donaldson said, "it's a grueling experience. Most people who start up don't have a lot of money. So they work it, and their relatives work it. That's why a lot of people quit, because it just isn't as fun as they thought it'd be."
The sauce partners brought in Hazen's son Stephen to run it. He didn't invest but will get a share of the business in return. He staffs it during the week, the owners work on weekends.
The trio don't have a complex business model. Smith figured out the basics of overhead and markups. He figures that they need to sell about $7,000 worth a month before they start making money.
But they haven't figured out a point where they might pull the plug on it if it doesn't go well.
"It depends on where we think we are in the evolution of the company," Smith said. "If we can't think of any new things to try, if we think we've got the best products we can have there, then it might be time.
"The upside is that this is successful and we could open more stores, and that's far, far greater than the downside. I didn't have to mortgage my house. I'd take a hit, but it won't change my lifestyle."
"The downside," Smith said, "is, yeah, we've lost some money. But we've got everyone's Christmas present for the next year or two."
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[Via - CNNMoney.Com]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
Kamis, 29 Juli 2010
Rabu, 28 Juli 2010
Just Us Hens - Meet The Chickensitters
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://justushens.com/
PORTLAND, Ore. (CNNMoney.com) -- You've heard of cat-sitters, dog-sitters and, of course, babysitters. But chicken-sitters?
In Portland, Ore., a city known for its deep do-it-yourself streak and poultry-permissive laws, two backyard farmers have stepped up to meet an unusual need: watching hens when their owners go on vacation.
In May, Rhonda Piasecki, 43, and Sharon Rowland, 35, launched Just Us Hens, which they believe is the nation's first chicken-sitting service. The business partners, who each boast a full roost of laying hens (four for Piasenki; eight for Rowland), met last year working at Portland's Urban Farm Store.
"At the store, you'd just talk people's ears off about chickens," says Piasecki, who is also a drummer for Klickitat, a local jazz-rock band.
But the seed the store sells started to aggravate Piasecki's asthma, right around the same time that Rowland decided she wanted to spend more time with her 3-year-old, chicken-loving son Sterling. A friend suggested that Piasecki become a "chicken consultant," while Rowland's husband floated the idea of seeking out hen-sitting gigs.
So the women teamed up to offer a slate of services: $15 per visit for hen sitting, $25 for hen health house calls and $50 an hour for consultations on urban agriculture. In late May, they launched a blog, followed by a full website in early July. They also publicized their services at Portland's online chicken chat group, PDXBackyardChix, which has more than 1,000 members.
The fledgling company has only a handful of customers. But as word passes through Portland's substantial population of urban hen keepers, they hope Just Us Hens will take off.
There's certainly an audience for it. Chickens are all the rage in Portland, where longstanding city regulations allow residents to keep up to three of them -- but no roosters -- without a permit. Even Mayor Sam Adams has a brood: three hens, all named Alma. (Adams let his chief of staff's daughter, Alma, pick the names.) Hundreds of chicken enthusiasts will turn out on Saturday for Portland's seventh annual Tour de Coops, a self-guided stroll through 25 backyard hen houses, including the mayor's own.
One of Just Us Hens' first customers was Renee Wrede, a nurse in Southwest Portland who worried about what would become of her new flock when she and her family took a beach vacation. Rowland signed on to watch "the girls": two barred Plymouth Rock hens, one Ameraucana, one Blue Laced Red Wyandotte and one Welsumer.
During daily visits, Rowland fussed over Poppy, Hyacinth and the other chickens, holding and petting each one. After she fed and watered them, she emailed Wrede to report on how the birds were faring in her absence.
Wrede was thrilled and says the service exceeded her expectations.
"We do have a house-sitter, but she has no idea about chickens," Wrede explains. Rowland, on the other hand, was hard-working expert: "She even scooped the poop!"
The proprietors of Just Us Hens pride themselves on creative problem-solving. "We welcome weird situations," Rowland says.
Piasecki has developed a homegrown solution for a common poultry problem: hens plucking their own feathers. She located a chicken-loving seamstress in Arkansas, who she claims is the nation's best source for chicken aprons. The aprons run $7.50 apiece and can be draped over the chickens' problem areas. "They fit perfectly!" she says.
Just Us Hens isn't the only chicken-related business to take flight in recent years. Katy Skinner, of Yacolt, Wash., runs The City Chicken, an online clearinghouse of chicken-keeping wisdom.
She's seen entrepreneurs make money selling prefabricated coops or coop blueprints, as well as giving classes and lectures. But hen-sitting? Even for a seasoned chicken guru, that's something new.
"This is the first I've heard of a hen-sitting service," she says. "I hope they get a lot of business!"
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[Via - CNNMoney.Com]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://justushens.com/
PORTLAND, Ore. (CNNMoney.com) -- You've heard of cat-sitters, dog-sitters and, of course, babysitters. But chicken-sitters?
In Portland, Ore., a city known for its deep do-it-yourself streak and poultry-permissive laws, two backyard farmers have stepped up to meet an unusual need: watching hens when their owners go on vacation.
In May, Rhonda Piasecki, 43, and Sharon Rowland, 35, launched Just Us Hens, which they believe is the nation's first chicken-sitting service. The business partners, who each boast a full roost of laying hens (four for Piasenki; eight for Rowland), met last year working at Portland's Urban Farm Store.
"At the store, you'd just talk people's ears off about chickens," says Piasecki, who is also a drummer for Klickitat, a local jazz-rock band.
But the seed the store sells started to aggravate Piasecki's asthma, right around the same time that Rowland decided she wanted to spend more time with her 3-year-old, chicken-loving son Sterling. A friend suggested that Piasecki become a "chicken consultant," while Rowland's husband floated the idea of seeking out hen-sitting gigs.
So the women teamed up to offer a slate of services: $15 per visit for hen sitting, $25 for hen health house calls and $50 an hour for consultations on urban agriculture. In late May, they launched a blog, followed by a full website in early July. They also publicized their services at Portland's online chicken chat group, PDXBackyardChix, which has more than 1,000 members.
The fledgling company has only a handful of customers. But as word passes through Portland's substantial population of urban hen keepers, they hope Just Us Hens will take off.
There's certainly an audience for it. Chickens are all the rage in Portland, where longstanding city regulations allow residents to keep up to three of them -- but no roosters -- without a permit. Even Mayor Sam Adams has a brood: three hens, all named Alma. (Adams let his chief of staff's daughter, Alma, pick the names.) Hundreds of chicken enthusiasts will turn out on Saturday for Portland's seventh annual Tour de Coops, a self-guided stroll through 25 backyard hen houses, including the mayor's own.
One of Just Us Hens' first customers was Renee Wrede, a nurse in Southwest Portland who worried about what would become of her new flock when she and her family took a beach vacation. Rowland signed on to watch "the girls": two barred Plymouth Rock hens, one Ameraucana, one Blue Laced Red Wyandotte and one Welsumer.
During daily visits, Rowland fussed over Poppy, Hyacinth and the other chickens, holding and petting each one. After she fed and watered them, she emailed Wrede to report on how the birds were faring in her absence.
Wrede was thrilled and says the service exceeded her expectations.
"We do have a house-sitter, but she has no idea about chickens," Wrede explains. Rowland, on the other hand, was hard-working expert: "She even scooped the poop!"
The proprietors of Just Us Hens pride themselves on creative problem-solving. "We welcome weird situations," Rowland says.
Piasecki has developed a homegrown solution for a common poultry problem: hens plucking their own feathers. She located a chicken-loving seamstress in Arkansas, who she claims is the nation's best source for chicken aprons. The aprons run $7.50 apiece and can be draped over the chickens' problem areas. "They fit perfectly!" she says.
Just Us Hens isn't the only chicken-related business to take flight in recent years. Katy Skinner, of Yacolt, Wash., runs The City Chicken, an online clearinghouse of chicken-keeping wisdom.
She's seen entrepreneurs make money selling prefabricated coops or coop blueprints, as well as giving classes and lectures. But hen-sitting? Even for a seasoned chicken guru, that's something new.
"This is the first I've heard of a hen-sitting service," she says. "I hope they get a lot of business!"
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[Via - CNNMoney.Com]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
Selasa, 27 Juli 2010
The Butch Bakery - Boozy, Manly, Camouflage-Frosted Cupcake
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.butchbakery.com/
Entrepreneur: David Arrick, laid-off commercial real estate attorney and former celebrity trainer, now founder of Butch Bakery, an online Manhattan cupcakery
Idea: Cupcakes for men. "We stay away from pastels and sprinkles," Arrick says. Hence the "Driller," a maple cupcake smothered with crumbled bacon and chocolate ganache; the "B-52," a Kahlua-soaked cupcake sporting a camouflage topping and the "Beer Run," a chocolate-beer cupcake with beer-infused buttercream and crushed pretzel sprinkles. Can't decide? The "Butch Box" holds all 12 flavors for $48, plus $8 delivery.
"Aha" Moment: Walking past the long line of people waiting for frilly cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery in Manhattan, the cupcake craze's ground zero. Two thoughts ran through Arrick's head: "I gotta get on that bandwagon" and "Where's the boy bakery?"
StartUp: Arrick cashed out his 401(k) and ran up credit cards to the tune of $25,000. He worked with bakers and consultants to create recipes and focused on building a strong online presence. "It's the biggest risk I've ever taken, but I've reached an age where the worst that could happen doesn't sound that scary."
Payoff: Original sales projection: $5,000 a month. By year's end, the bakery should net more than $10,000 a month. "I think it's OK to say that we're on the other side of the ‘Why didn't I think of that?' fence."
Customers: 90 percent women. "I've tapped into the ‘What do you get for a guy?' market."
Work philosophy: "It's just cupcakes. Relax."
Media Love: A cupcake cookbook deal with John Wiley & Sons, slated for release next year, with 50 "guy friendly" (read: easy) recipes for manly occasions (football season, barbecues, spring training…). On deck: A reality show pilot with MY-Tupelo Entertainment. The concept: "Guy reinvents himself through a bakery."
2011 and Beyond: Develop a masculine baking brand, start shipping nationwide, open Butch Bakeries in Chicago, Boston, L.A., San Francisco and Miami; ultimately, "I'll be a cross between Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri."
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[Via - Entrepreneur]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.butchbakery.com/
Entrepreneur: David Arrick, laid-off commercial real estate attorney and former celebrity trainer, now founder of Butch Bakery, an online Manhattan cupcakery
Idea: Cupcakes for men. "We stay away from pastels and sprinkles," Arrick says. Hence the "Driller," a maple cupcake smothered with crumbled bacon and chocolate ganache; the "B-52," a Kahlua-soaked cupcake sporting a camouflage topping and the "Beer Run," a chocolate-beer cupcake with beer-infused buttercream and crushed pretzel sprinkles. Can't decide? The "Butch Box" holds all 12 flavors for $48, plus $8 delivery.
"Aha" Moment: Walking past the long line of people waiting for frilly cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery in Manhattan, the cupcake craze's ground zero. Two thoughts ran through Arrick's head: "I gotta get on that bandwagon" and "Where's the boy bakery?"
StartUp: Arrick cashed out his 401(k) and ran up credit cards to the tune of $25,000. He worked with bakers and consultants to create recipes and focused on building a strong online presence. "It's the biggest risk I've ever taken, but I've reached an age where the worst that could happen doesn't sound that scary."
Payoff: Original sales projection: $5,000 a month. By year's end, the bakery should net more than $10,000 a month. "I think it's OK to say that we're on the other side of the ‘Why didn't I think of that?' fence."
Customers: 90 percent women. "I've tapped into the ‘What do you get for a guy?' market."
Work philosophy: "It's just cupcakes. Relax."
Media Love: A cupcake cookbook deal with John Wiley & Sons, slated for release next year, with 50 "guy friendly" (read: easy) recipes for manly occasions (football season, barbecues, spring training…). On deck: A reality show pilot with MY-Tupelo Entertainment. The concept: "Guy reinvents himself through a bakery."
2011 and Beyond: Develop a masculine baking brand, start shipping nationwide, open Butch Bakeries in Chicago, Boston, L.A., San Francisco and Miami; ultimately, "I'll be a cross between Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri."
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[Via - Entrepreneur]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
Senin, 26 Juli 2010
This is not a bike
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.elliptigo.com/
As fitness equipment goes, the world's first elliptical bicycle is pretty darned impressive. It's got the sleek curves of a high-end road bike, the clean lines of a Razor scooter, a pair of shiny carbon-fiber elliptical pedals, a smooth hub-and-crank stride mechanism and a steering column that collapses for easy storage. Plus, it's not awkward using it (think Smith machine): Just hop on and start stepping.
"We knew we were onto something when we showed a prototype and people were telling us to make that exact model," says Bryan Pate, one of the ElliptiGo inventors. It was Pate's bad knees that started the whole thing rolling: In 2005, he had to stop running and found that neither elliptical trainers nor cycling was a satisfying alternative. "I wanted something that would emulate the feel of running outdoors without beating up my knees," Pate says. It didn't exist, so he figured he'd have to create it himself.
He called his friend Brent Teal, a fellow Ironman athlete and mechanical engineer, who set up shop in the garage and cobbled together the first prototype out of chromoly steel, modified roller blade wheels, wooden boards and old triathlon bike parts.
Fast-forward to this past January--four prototypes, millions in investor funding later, Pate and Teal opened headquarters in Solana Beach, Calif., and so far have sold 250 bikes at $2,199 each, including two to a Napa Valley-area police department. They've had glowing testimonials from Ultramarathon Man Dean Karnazas (who rode the ElliptiGo from San Francisco to Los Angeles as a warm-up for the L.A. Marathon), Nike Project Oregon runner Adam Goucher and three-time Olympic pentathlete Michael Gostigian.
ElliptiGo's buzz is growing, thanks to regular test ride events and its "Epic Ride" campaign, where Pate and Teal enter the ElliptiGo in challenging biking events such as the California Sierras' 129-mile "Death Ride." This month, it's the 10,000-foot "Cycle to the Sun" climb in Maui.
They're hoping to deliver 2,000 bikes after the summer marketing push, which would make them a small profit by year's end. And in 2011, the goal is to move 11,000 and possibly introduce lower- and higher-end models. But their main objective is to kick off a new industry. "That's our business model," Teal says. "It's not about making a cool bike. It's about introducing a whole new way of getting around and, at the same time, getting a good workout."
He's not exaggerating that last bit: The eight-speed reaches speeds upward of 25 miles per hour. Perfect for when you want to blow past all the gawkers.
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[Via - Entrepreneur]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.elliptigo.com/
As fitness equipment goes, the world's first elliptical bicycle is pretty darned impressive. It's got the sleek curves of a high-end road bike, the clean lines of a Razor scooter, a pair of shiny carbon-fiber elliptical pedals, a smooth hub-and-crank stride mechanism and a steering column that collapses for easy storage. Plus, it's not awkward using it (think Smith machine): Just hop on and start stepping.
"We knew we were onto something when we showed a prototype and people were telling us to make that exact model," says Bryan Pate, one of the ElliptiGo inventors. It was Pate's bad knees that started the whole thing rolling: In 2005, he had to stop running and found that neither elliptical trainers nor cycling was a satisfying alternative. "I wanted something that would emulate the feel of running outdoors without beating up my knees," Pate says. It didn't exist, so he figured he'd have to create it himself.
He called his friend Brent Teal, a fellow Ironman athlete and mechanical engineer, who set up shop in the garage and cobbled together the first prototype out of chromoly steel, modified roller blade wheels, wooden boards and old triathlon bike parts.
Fast-forward to this past January--four prototypes, millions in investor funding later, Pate and Teal opened headquarters in Solana Beach, Calif., and so far have sold 250 bikes at $2,199 each, including two to a Napa Valley-area police department. They've had glowing testimonials from Ultramarathon Man Dean Karnazas (who rode the ElliptiGo from San Francisco to Los Angeles as a warm-up for the L.A. Marathon), Nike Project Oregon runner Adam Goucher and three-time Olympic pentathlete Michael Gostigian.
ElliptiGo's buzz is growing, thanks to regular test ride events and its "Epic Ride" campaign, where Pate and Teal enter the ElliptiGo in challenging biking events such as the California Sierras' 129-mile "Death Ride." This month, it's the 10,000-foot "Cycle to the Sun" climb in Maui.
They're hoping to deliver 2,000 bikes after the summer marketing push, which would make them a small profit by year's end. And in 2011, the goal is to move 11,000 and possibly introduce lower- and higher-end models. But their main objective is to kick off a new industry. "That's our business model," Teal says. "It's not about making a cool bike. It's about introducing a whole new way of getting around and, at the same time, getting a good workout."
He's not exaggerating that last bit: The eight-speed reaches speeds upward of 25 miles per hour. Perfect for when you want to blow past all the gawkers.
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[Via - Entrepreneur]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
Selasa, 20 Juli 2010
Making Money From Vynil Clocks
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://pavel-sidorenko.com/
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[Via - INewIdea.Com]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://pavel-sidorenko.com/
The invention and application of the digital players marks that the mankind have entered the Digital Age, during which period people seldom use vinyl records or CD players. But we never forget them, and designer Pavel Sidorenko has applied the clock idea to vinyl records, creating several clocks of various shapes. You see, here is a gun, a bird, a rabbit, a chair, a teapot, and all of them are laser-cut. Fantastic!
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[Via - INewIdea.Com]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
Selasa, 13 Juli 2010
Your own personal $129 cloud
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.pogoplug.com/
(CNNMoney.com) -- Daniel Putterman is a data junkie.
The San Francisco software entrepreneur knew he'd collected too many files -- videos, photos, songs, documents -- to keep on his personal computer. But for all his digital savvy, he couldn't figure out the best place to store his heaps of information.
He could, for starters, buy a one-terabyte external hard drive for under $100. The drawback? When Putterman was away from his desk, he'd have no way to access the data.
Another option: Upload his files to the cloud, paying to store his data on remote servers run by companies such as Sugarsync.com, ZumoDrive.com and DropBox.com. Those services, however, would only let him store about one-quarter of his data -- for $250 or more a year.
Putterman, 43, began to wonder: Why hasn't anyone created a gizmo that plugs into your personal hard drive and connects it to the Internet, allowing you to access your files directly, from your own hard drive, anywhere? You'd have no service fees or upload quotas. A password system could grant chosen friends and colleagues access to your data, too.
In short, Putterman wanted to take the best elements of affordable, secure desktop storage and merge them with the versatility of cloud computing. So he decided to turn that idea into a company, Cloud Engines, and came up with a name for his gizmo: the Pogoplug.
Putterman talked about his idea to people everywhere he could -- at his daughters' swim lessons, on the airplane, in online forums.
"We knew people wanted it," he says.
Having vision was one thing; being able to follow through and build an actual machine is much harder. A hardware startup can require deep pockets to develop a tangible product and get it to market. That's why the big guys -- Sony, Dell, Apple -- dominate the information hardware industry.
But when Putterman decided to take the risk, capital followed. He launched Cloud Engines in 2007 and quickly landed $2 million in seed funding from influential investors, including PeopleSoft executive Peggy Taylor, Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia and early Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) investor Ron Conway. When Pogoplug was ready to hit shelves in the summer of 2009, Cloud Engines landed another $7 million from Boulder venture capital firm Foundry Group and $1 million in bank financing.
That kind of money, however, is a drop in the bucket for a hardware company. So Putterman also called on connections he made running Mediabolic, a software provider that linked DVDs and TV set-top boxes to the Internet. Putterman convinced chipmakers and a manufacturer to give him bulk pricing, even though his initial production runs were small.
And instead of hiring an expensive, top-tier industrial design firm, Putterman turned to Jordan Nollmann, a friend and former colleague who had left a large firm to start his own business, Sprout Studios. Nollmann agreed to accept payment only if Pogoplug was a success. "He helped get our company off the ground, and we helped get his company off the ground," Putterman recalls.
The result is a $129 device the size of a large paperback book. Pogoplug can connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi or an Ethernet cable and has four USB ports to link up with external hard drives. Users log into the company's website, my.Pogoplug.com, to access their files. The transfer rates are fast enough to stream videos and music.
"The team really executed," says Ryan McIntyre, managing director of the Foundry Group, the firm behind Pogoplug's largest investment. "Doing this for under $10 million in capital is unprecedented." (Personally, McIntyre says he likes using Pogoplug to share videos of his 6-year-old son, rather than uploading them to YouTube for mass consumption.)
With the technical hurdles behind him, Putterman still faces the challenge of luring the kind of consumers who are easily overwhelmed by the prospect of new, unfamiliar computer equipment, says Terri McClure, a storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, a technology research firm in Milford, Mass.
"Hardware intimidates people," McClure says. "It's one more thing for them to plug in and maintain and use."
Putterman says his company's 20-person team focused on making Pogoplug as sleek and simple as possible. He claims that users can be up running in just two minutes, with no software to download and install.
In another cost-saving measure, Putterman scrapped the idea of paid advertising for Pogoplug. When the device hit stores last summer, he gave interviews to hundreds of bloggers, posted on Twitter and created a standalone Web site, Pogoplugged.com, where users could gather for uncensored discussion of the product.
"It was a risk," Putterman admits. If people hated the Pogoplug, his company could have died fast and publicly.
Instead, Pogoplug went viral. The device generated significant online chatter and worked its way into more than 500 news articles
Pogoplug's sales rose ten-fold at online stores such as Amazon.com (AMZN, Fortune 500) and Buy.com over the past year. That caught the attention of brick-and-mortar retail chains. This year, Pogoplug will be on shelves of 2,000 U.S. retail locations. About 50,000 units have sold since November, and Cloud Engines expects to hit $15 million in sales this year.
"It scratched the itch," says David Sparks, an Irvine, Calif., lawyer who reviewed and blogged about the Pogoplug on his site, MacSparky.com. "You think, 'Wow, how come nobody else thought of that?'"
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.pogoplug.com/
(CNNMoney.com) -- Daniel Putterman is a data junkie.
The San Francisco software entrepreneur knew he'd collected too many files -- videos, photos, songs, documents -- to keep on his personal computer. But for all his digital savvy, he couldn't figure out the best place to store his heaps of information.
He could, for starters, buy a one-terabyte external hard drive for under $100. The drawback? When Putterman was away from his desk, he'd have no way to access the data.
Another option: Upload his files to the cloud, paying to store his data on remote servers run by companies such as Sugarsync.com, ZumoDrive.com and DropBox.com. Those services, however, would only let him store about one-quarter of his data -- for $250 or more a year.
Putterman, 43, began to wonder: Why hasn't anyone created a gizmo that plugs into your personal hard drive and connects it to the Internet, allowing you to access your files directly, from your own hard drive, anywhere? You'd have no service fees or upload quotas. A password system could grant chosen friends and colleagues access to your data, too.
In short, Putterman wanted to take the best elements of affordable, secure desktop storage and merge them with the versatility of cloud computing. So he decided to turn that idea into a company, Cloud Engines, and came up with a name for his gizmo: the Pogoplug.
Putterman talked about his idea to people everywhere he could -- at his daughters' swim lessons, on the airplane, in online forums.
"We knew people wanted it," he says.
Having vision was one thing; being able to follow through and build an actual machine is much harder. A hardware startup can require deep pockets to develop a tangible product and get it to market. That's why the big guys -- Sony, Dell, Apple -- dominate the information hardware industry.
But when Putterman decided to take the risk, capital followed. He launched Cloud Engines in 2007 and quickly landed $2 million in seed funding from influential investors, including PeopleSoft executive Peggy Taylor, Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia and early Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) investor Ron Conway. When Pogoplug was ready to hit shelves in the summer of 2009, Cloud Engines landed another $7 million from Boulder venture capital firm Foundry Group and $1 million in bank financing.
That kind of money, however, is a drop in the bucket for a hardware company. So Putterman also called on connections he made running Mediabolic, a software provider that linked DVDs and TV set-top boxes to the Internet. Putterman convinced chipmakers and a manufacturer to give him bulk pricing, even though his initial production runs were small.
And instead of hiring an expensive, top-tier industrial design firm, Putterman turned to Jordan Nollmann, a friend and former colleague who had left a large firm to start his own business, Sprout Studios. Nollmann agreed to accept payment only if Pogoplug was a success. "He helped get our company off the ground, and we helped get his company off the ground," Putterman recalls.
The result is a $129 device the size of a large paperback book. Pogoplug can connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi or an Ethernet cable and has four USB ports to link up with external hard drives. Users log into the company's website, my.Pogoplug.com, to access their files. The transfer rates are fast enough to stream videos and music.
"The team really executed," says Ryan McIntyre, managing director of the Foundry Group, the firm behind Pogoplug's largest investment. "Doing this for under $10 million in capital is unprecedented." (Personally, McIntyre says he likes using Pogoplug to share videos of his 6-year-old son, rather than uploading them to YouTube for mass consumption.)
With the technical hurdles behind him, Putterman still faces the challenge of luring the kind of consumers who are easily overwhelmed by the prospect of new, unfamiliar computer equipment, says Terri McClure, a storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, a technology research firm in Milford, Mass.
"Hardware intimidates people," McClure says. "It's one more thing for them to plug in and maintain and use."
Putterman says his company's 20-person team focused on making Pogoplug as sleek and simple as possible. He claims that users can be up running in just two minutes, with no software to download and install.
In another cost-saving measure, Putterman scrapped the idea of paid advertising for Pogoplug. When the device hit stores last summer, he gave interviews to hundreds of bloggers, posted on Twitter and created a standalone Web site, Pogoplugged.com, where users could gather for uncensored discussion of the product.
"It was a risk," Putterman admits. If people hated the Pogoplug, his company could have died fast and publicly.
Instead, Pogoplug went viral. The device generated significant online chatter and worked its way into more than 500 news articles
Pogoplug's sales rose ten-fold at online stores such as Amazon.com (AMZN, Fortune 500) and Buy.com over the past year. That caught the attention of brick-and-mortar retail chains. This year, Pogoplug will be on shelves of 2,000 U.S. retail locations. About 50,000 units have sold since November, and Cloud Engines expects to hit $15 million in sales this year.
"It scratched the itch," says David Sparks, an Irvine, Calif., lawyer who reviewed and blogged about the Pogoplug on his site, MacSparky.com. "You think, 'Wow, how come nobody else thought of that?'"
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
Minggu, 11 Juli 2010
A Guy, Who Makes A Living, Designing Corn Mazes
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.cornmazesamerica.com/
JANESVILLE, Wis. — At 22, Scott Skelly already has a national reputation in his field - corn.
The recent college graduate has been creating corn mazes since he was an enterprising 9-year-old who persuaded his dad to let him cut a few paths with dead ends in a cornfield on the family's 200-acre farm. His first maze attracted 500 paying visitors. Subsequent mazes grew more elaborate, and eventually sprouted the Internet business Corn Mazes America while Skelly still was in high school.
Now in his 13th summer of the corn-maze business, Skelly drives around the country in a former ambulance with a bed for sleeping, and a contraption he rigged to cut designs - an old riding lawnmower with a wooden box bolted in front to hold a laptop computer and a GPS system. A satellite receiver attached to the mower pokes above the corn, helping Skelly follow coordinates on his laptop with amazing accuracy.
He can mow any picture imaginable in knee-high corn, from a Wild West scene to a replica of the Mayflower.
"There are three or four other people in the whole country who have the same job as me," said Skelly, who admits his clients are surprised by his age when they meet him.
Skelly spends four to 12 hours creating each maze, slightly hunched and squinting through the sun at his laptop as he bounces through a bumpy cornfield on a lawnmower that turns on a dime.
It's all part of a plan to market his family's Janesville-area farm - and other farms around the country - as destinations for city tourists seeking affordable family fun.
Skelly's family in the last decade has converted its dairy farm into a blueprint for agri-tourism. The family sold the dairy herd in 2000, and renovated the cow barn into Skelly's Farm Market to sell fruits and vegetables, which replaced corn and soybeans. They started with a few acres of sweet corn and pumpkins, and now have 100 acres in fruits and vegetables. The remaining 100 acres are rented to another farmer who plants conventional crops.
Skelly's Farm Market, which employs up to 50 people during the growing season, features pick-your-own strawberry and pumpkin patches, eight off-farm stand locations, and two corn mazes spanning a total of 17 acres. The mazes together will attract 5,000 to 10,000 visitors in the fall, each paying $6 just to get lost in a cornfield, and find a way out.
Skelly declined to say how much money the family clears from its corn mazes.
"It's gotta be more profitable than just growing corn in a field, or a farmer wouldn't cut down corn," he said. The corn surrounding the maze design still can be harvested.
Skelly's two corn mazes will be open from around Labor Day through Halloween. A family-friendly maze depicting three bears roasting marshmallows over a campfire is composed of two miles of paths. The Impossible Maze is 3.5 miles of paths, though most people only walk half the paths unless they get really lost, or refuse the map with checkpoints, Skelly said.
This will be the first year the Impossible Maze is open 13 nights in October. It won't be haunted, "but it's a lot harder at night with a flashlight," Skelly said.
Selling vegetables and corn mazes began as a college fund for Skelly and his two siblings. Now Skelly's Farm Market supports Scott, his parents and an older brother - though Skelly is quick to say they aren't getting rich because of labor costs and insurance.
The military-grade laptop that guides the maze-cutting is designed to withstand rain, dirt, and being dropped or bounced. The GPS system, similar to systems for farm tractors, is accurate to within six inches, Skelly said. He invested $15,000 to $20,000 in equipment.
Skelly designs mazes using Photoshop computer software. The mazes are cut when the corn is knee-high so the mower can get through it, he said.
He has 20 clients this summer in Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and Maryland. He's carving a replica of the Mayflower in a cornfield near Baltimore.
"We're putting mazes in some places where corn normally doesn't grow," Skelly said.
To cut a maze, Skelly keeps the crosshairs on his computer screen set on the path he's cutting in the design. "It's basically keeping your dot on the line, like playing a video game," he said.
Skelly first tested the GPS system on a maze in 2006.
Prior to that, he used "the grid method," mapping out designs on graph paper, and later, a computer. "I was really limited by the grid method," he said, "because I had to count everything manually."
Skelly launched Corn Mazes America on the Web in December 2003, during winter break of his sophomore year in high school. His website started as a listing of corn mazes around the country - at the time, 50 to 100.
Then he began receiving e-mails from farmers, asking how they could make their own corn mazes. He wrote and self-published the book: "Corn Mazes: Is There a Pot of Gold in Your Cornfield?" He later self-published a second book about agri-tourism. Both are available exclusively at his corn maze website.
Skelly started offering corn maze designing and cutting services in 2004. It costs a couple thousand dollars for him to design and cut a maze, he said, though cost depends on intricacy.
Skelly's first gig was to carve the faces of John Kerry and George W. Bush in a Lake Mills cornfield during the 2004 presidential campaign, the summer after his sophomore year in high school. He has since designed corn mazes from California to China, and estimates more than 1,000 corn mazes now span the United States.
A December graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville with a bachelor's degree in agribusiness, Skelly said he's not sure what the future holds.
He enjoys being part of his family's business, and cutting corn mazes in the summer. But corn mazes likely aren't a long-term career.
"Everything hurts at the end of the day," Skelly said. "It works for me now, but I can't imagine doing it for another 30 years. It's very physically demanding, concentrating on a computer while bouncing around a field in the sun and dust."
Corn for a maze is planted in a grid pattern instead of in rows.
[Via - Chicago Tribune]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.cornmazesamerica.com/
JANESVILLE, Wis. — At 22, Scott Skelly already has a national reputation in his field - corn.
The recent college graduate has been creating corn mazes since he was an enterprising 9-year-old who persuaded his dad to let him cut a few paths with dead ends in a cornfield on the family's 200-acre farm. His first maze attracted 500 paying visitors. Subsequent mazes grew more elaborate, and eventually sprouted the Internet business Corn Mazes America while Skelly still was in high school.
Now in his 13th summer of the corn-maze business, Skelly drives around the country in a former ambulance with a bed for sleeping, and a contraption he rigged to cut designs - an old riding lawnmower with a wooden box bolted in front to hold a laptop computer and a GPS system. A satellite receiver attached to the mower pokes above the corn, helping Skelly follow coordinates on his laptop with amazing accuracy.
He can mow any picture imaginable in knee-high corn, from a Wild West scene to a replica of the Mayflower.
"There are three or four other people in the whole country who have the same job as me," said Skelly, who admits his clients are surprised by his age when they meet him.
Skelly spends four to 12 hours creating each maze, slightly hunched and squinting through the sun at his laptop as he bounces through a bumpy cornfield on a lawnmower that turns on a dime.
It's all part of a plan to market his family's Janesville-area farm - and other farms around the country - as destinations for city tourists seeking affordable family fun.
Skelly's family in the last decade has converted its dairy farm into a blueprint for agri-tourism. The family sold the dairy herd in 2000, and renovated the cow barn into Skelly's Farm Market to sell fruits and vegetables, which replaced corn and soybeans. They started with a few acres of sweet corn and pumpkins, and now have 100 acres in fruits and vegetables. The remaining 100 acres are rented to another farmer who plants conventional crops.
Skelly's Farm Market, which employs up to 50 people during the growing season, features pick-your-own strawberry and pumpkin patches, eight off-farm stand locations, and two corn mazes spanning a total of 17 acres. The mazes together will attract 5,000 to 10,000 visitors in the fall, each paying $6 just to get lost in a cornfield, and find a way out.
Skelly declined to say how much money the family clears from its corn mazes.
"It's gotta be more profitable than just growing corn in a field, or a farmer wouldn't cut down corn," he said. The corn surrounding the maze design still can be harvested.
Skelly's two corn mazes will be open from around Labor Day through Halloween. A family-friendly maze depicting three bears roasting marshmallows over a campfire is composed of two miles of paths. The Impossible Maze is 3.5 miles of paths, though most people only walk half the paths unless they get really lost, or refuse the map with checkpoints, Skelly said.
This will be the first year the Impossible Maze is open 13 nights in October. It won't be haunted, "but it's a lot harder at night with a flashlight," Skelly said.
Selling vegetables and corn mazes began as a college fund for Skelly and his two siblings. Now Skelly's Farm Market supports Scott, his parents and an older brother - though Skelly is quick to say they aren't getting rich because of labor costs and insurance.
The military-grade laptop that guides the maze-cutting is designed to withstand rain, dirt, and being dropped or bounced. The GPS system, similar to systems for farm tractors, is accurate to within six inches, Skelly said. He invested $15,000 to $20,000 in equipment.
Skelly designs mazes using Photoshop computer software. The mazes are cut when the corn is knee-high so the mower can get through it, he said.
He has 20 clients this summer in Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and Maryland. He's carving a replica of the Mayflower in a cornfield near Baltimore.
"We're putting mazes in some places where corn normally doesn't grow," Skelly said.
To cut a maze, Skelly keeps the crosshairs on his computer screen set on the path he's cutting in the design. "It's basically keeping your dot on the line, like playing a video game," he said.
Skelly first tested the GPS system on a maze in 2006.
Prior to that, he used "the grid method," mapping out designs on graph paper, and later, a computer. "I was really limited by the grid method," he said, "because I had to count everything manually."
Skelly launched Corn Mazes America on the Web in December 2003, during winter break of his sophomore year in high school. His website started as a listing of corn mazes around the country - at the time, 50 to 100.
Then he began receiving e-mails from farmers, asking how they could make their own corn mazes. He wrote and self-published the book: "Corn Mazes: Is There a Pot of Gold in Your Cornfield?" He later self-published a second book about agri-tourism. Both are available exclusively at his corn maze website.
Skelly started offering corn maze designing and cutting services in 2004. It costs a couple thousand dollars for him to design and cut a maze, he said, though cost depends on intricacy.
Skelly's first gig was to carve the faces of John Kerry and George W. Bush in a Lake Mills cornfield during the 2004 presidential campaign, the summer after his sophomore year in high school. He has since designed corn mazes from California to China, and estimates more than 1,000 corn mazes now span the United States.
A December graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville with a bachelor's degree in agribusiness, Skelly said he's not sure what the future holds.
He enjoys being part of his family's business, and cutting corn mazes in the summer. But corn mazes likely aren't a long-term career.
"Everything hurts at the end of the day," Skelly said. "It works for me now, but I can't imagine doing it for another 30 years. It's very physically demanding, concentrating on a computer while bouncing around a field in the sun and dust."
Corn for a maze is planted in a grid pattern instead of in rows.
[Via - Chicago Tribune]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy
101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads
Make Your Ideas Mean Business
Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
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