Start A Toy Business For The Weekend Woodworker

Filed Under (Household Biz, Sports,Toys Games) by admin on 01-10-2010

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Because of the almost daily recall of many cheap plastic foreign-made toys due to lead paint and other hazardous materials, parents are looking for suitable substitutes. Why not use your skills as a woodworker to make safe and superior alternatives? There are many parents who are desperately looking for exactly the type of toys you, the weekend woodworker, can provide. First we will look at some of the toys you can make and then offer some suggestions on how to market and sell them.

What type of toys should you make? To help answer this, you might start by considering your likely customers. What do they want and what do they need? Many parents try to select toys that are not only fun but educational as well. There are many types of toys you can make that fit both of these criteria. You will also want to take into consideration the fact you need to be able to make these quickly and easily if you want to make a profit.

Some toys you might decide to make could include letters and numbers. These never go out of style and it is often difficult to find safe, well made examples. You could offer them as a set of numbers 1 through 10, or the 26 letters of the alphabet. You might decide to make a bucket of letters and numbers together or a bucket of letters with enough duplicates of certain letters to spell common words like mom, dad, baby, etc.

You might also consider making puzzle type toys where uniquely shaped pieces fit into matching openings cut into a wooden board. You could paint these with stencils and non-toxic paint or just leave them plain. You are only limited by your imagination. All of the toys mentioned so far can be made with a band saw, various sanders and hand tools. You will want to experiment with different woods to find what you like best, and do not forget you will need to sand every piece smooth since tender little hands will use them.

One of the secrets to successfully marketing your toys will be how you intend to package them. The easiest way will probably be to prepare a small 8 ½” by 5 ½” card on your printer that you can insert in your shrink-wrapped package. You will want to include on the card the fact the item is made in the U.S. from quality, safe, non-toxic materials.

Instead of focusing on the features, all marketing should show the buyer what benefits they will enjoy from owning your product. List all the benefits you can think of and rate them from most important to least. Take the most important and use these to plan your sales pitch. Some places you should try to sell your products are toy stores, bookstores, department stores, gift shops, local specialty stores, and even online at E-Bay or your own website. You should also include a card your buyers can return to receive word of other products you offer or will offer in the future.

Making and selling wooden toys can be an enjoyable way to exercise your woodworking skills and make some money at the same time. With so many toys being recalled because of safety and toxicity concerns, this could be the perfect way to live your dream of earning money from your favorite hobby.

Source by Aldar Nagy

How to Start an Online Store – E-Commerce Tips For Self-Start Success

Filed Under (Electronics, e-Business) by admin on 01-10-2010

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Starting an online store is probably one of the greatest things that an aspiring online entrepreneur can do. The question is, how do we start? There are many tutorials out there that will give you step-by-step in full detail where you can go.

You can even consider the “site-build-it” option. Simply go to your favorite search engine and type in “sitebuildit” in the search engines to find out how you can start a website easily and efficiently.

This is a great way to start your first online business and to start making an online income. If you do not want to use that option then you can consider the following options:

o Starting your own E-commerce Store using a professional template

o Starting an EBay store – this is an exceptional option for online store beginners

o Start your own blog, write about your passion, and create products

We are going to go into fair detail about each of the topics listed above, starting with the ability of beginning your own “E-commerce Store”.

Starting your E-commerce Store

Now this is very general, but you can start today. You first want to start by writing down all your goals. What is your niche? How much do you want to earn? How many hours do you want to work? It is critical that you design a business plan and a goal to work towards.

Even if you only want a part-time store, it’s going to require tons of work in the start-up before it gets to the point where you barely even have to touch it. I personally know people who currently have no knowledge of how the internet works and making $xxxx amount of cash per month working 1-2 hours a day.

Half that work day time is spent making their website “more beautiful” – so do you see how great this can be?

You may want to start by doing the following:

1. Find a great web-host – do research and find one that suits your ecommerce needs
2. Get a generic template to start out, and move on to a professionally designed template
3. Buy your domain name, the web-host should give you instructions on how you can put the domain name on your web-host
4. Install the template and begin listing products you want to sell
5. Sign up with Google Check-Out for a transaction merchant service

That is the accelerated course on how you want to start an online store, of course you have the much simpler alternative – the EBay store.

Starting your own EBay store

Yes you can start your own EBay store. Simply sign up for EBay, meet their feedback score requirements, and start selling stuff on EBay. Millions of people use the marketplace everyday all around the world, so why not start today?

Starting a Blog and Selling Your Products

There are people are quickly realizing how great blogs are. Check out the best application, a Wordpress blog and start writing about your passion. If you like electronics, start a blog on electronics and start a “mini-store” that is connected to your blog.

This is an idea that people are just now catching on to. Why not start today!?

Source by Daniel Curry

Electronics Dropship – What Opportunities Await You?

Filed Under (Electronics) by admin on 01-10-2010

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Are you intimidated with the number of large Internet merchants present online?

If you are planning to set up your own online business and try to make it in the World Wide Web, don’t let intimidation get the better of you. Why?

You have all the right to set up your own online business, so go ahead and do so. There are a lot of opportunities that await you. Take advantage of electronics dropship. We are presently living in the electronics era and due to this, electronics are the bestsellers online. With dropshippers of gadgets like DVD and Blu players, MP3 players, cell phones, video games and others, you can start selling them without having to worry about keeping stock or inventory. The dropshipper is the one who worries about these matters, your task is only to retail.

How does dropshipping work?

This is still considered a new type of sourcing out products that allows retailers to collect payments from buyers even before the item is shipped out.

What are the benefits of this type of product sourcing?

Well, obvious benefits include:

- It saves retailers time convertible to money
- The process eliminates the need of acquiring storage
- No need for retailer to handle inventory
- No need to deal with the stress of warehousing and trying to keep ahead of demands
- No time is spent with boxing, labeling and shipping orders
- Less or no manpower demand

Financial risk is also minimized as you only order the item once your customer pays you. This way, you don’t have to pre-pay the item with your money and lose profit in case the customer changes his mind. You can even choose to sell the products or gadgets in your chosen brand.

Is dropshipping the solution to all online retailing problems?

Probably not, but is a good idea nonetheless. If you are starting out in this business electronics dropship, can give you a head start without much funds needed, sometimes you don’t even have to have a capital.

Aside from electronics, there are a lot of other products being dropshipped, like designer clothes and bags, shoes and even specialty items. Gadgets, especially the more recent ones are simply the fast sellers and the Internet is the best vessel there is to get the newly launched ones.

You will find that there are hundreds of drop shippers online and many others don’t have web presence yet. Be wary when looking for a suitable product shipper for your planned business as you might end up dealing with middlemen who pose as direct suppliers. Take time to make thorough research to ensure that you deal only with legit dropshippers.

Source by Clayton Marsden

Get Paid to Travel the World and Start Today

Filed Under (Tourism) by admin on 01-10-2010

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Do you want to get paid to travel the world?

For some, it can be quite hard to imagine but some already live this lifestyle.

Getting paid to travel is great for people who are passionate about traveling. Seeing other cities and experiencing other cultures can make life very meaningful.

This may seem like a dream for most but in reality, there are a lot of jobs that pay for your travels and accommodations. You won’t have to take money out of your pockets but you do need to be passionate about traveling.

Obviously, most travel jobs are in tourism industry. Travel is almost synonymous to tourism. Lots of tourists mean lots of travel job opportunities and tourism is an ever growing industry.

Cruise Ship Jobs

Cruise vacation tours are commonly favored by lots of rich vacationers. The trip is fun and the service is superb. This industry hires a lot of people from different fields to work on cruise ships as part of a synergistic organization. Jobs may vary from the very basic blue collar jobs to the most skill oriented type of jobs to highly professional jobs.

Bartenders, engineers, bellhops, accountants, musicians and teachers all have a place in Cruise ships. It is a floating, traveling city and it needs employees to make it run.

If you have these kinds of skills, you might try your luck with a cruise line job.

Tour Escort

If you know a lot of stuff about a particular location, you can escort groups of travelers there. You will meet lots of interesting people while giving them an exciting and worthwhile vacation experience. You lead and educate them while enjoying the trip yourself.

You can work with an agency or you can work as a contractor or freelancer. You can also get tips and referrals from satisfied customers. Organizational and people skills are vital in this line of work.

Flight Attendant

Flight Attendants travel the world as part of their jobs. They can have a few hours for visiting destination cities. Some may even stay for days depending on circumstances.

Though airlines have strict requirements including age, training and education, the job is fun and the pay is great.

Some jobs are not directly associated with tourism but rather to public interest and arts. Jobs such as travel writing and travel blogging are examples of these.

Travel Writing

Travel writers write about their experiences about their journey. They also write their opinions about different places and cultures. Publishing media outlets may take interest in their work and in some cases publishers may buy the articles or hire the travel writer to write regularly for them. Travel expenses are sometimes paid by these companies in this situation.

Travel writing can be quite difficult to break into but with great writing skills you can create interesting articles.

Travel Blogging

Travel Blogging is almost the same thing as travel writing but the medium is the Internet and the audience is reached online. The essence of the job is pretty much the same as travel writing, writing stuff about the journey.

Money is made via online advertisements or affiliate marketing. Also, you can always write for other writer’s websites as a hired guest blogger.

Source by T  Hale

How to Become a Professional Tour Guide?

Filed Under (Tourism) by admin on 01-10-2010

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Summer is coming and we are entering peak holiday season in Europe, Americas and Asia. There are big demands of professional guides. Big events like the Fifa World Cup in South Africa and Expo in Shanghai have brought more tour guide job opportunities and relevant jobs in tourism and travel.

If you are interested in a tourism career, becoming a local guide can be a good start. Ask youself – do you have the passion to show your city and is your personality fit? Although tour guide job requires various skills, it is a job to have face-to-face communication with travelers. When you don’t have the passion to show your city, people, customs and life in this city, you would easily get bored going the same routes again and again. If you prefer dealing with computer/numbers to real people, a guiding job will not fit you. Being passionate and fit for the job, you can go on the next step to get qualified as a tour guide.

How to become a licensed guide? The requirements vary with different cities and countries. The best way is to check with your local tourist guide association or tourism department. It usually requires passing the exams (written and/or oral), or certain training programs. WFTGA.org (World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations) has members of official tourist guide associations in many countries around the world.

In many countries, the qualified guides will acquire a license/certificate to go on daily guiding jobs. Practical experience is important to develop your career. You learn how to deal with different clients and needs, get mature on addressing to various questions, grow experienced to handle emergent situations… Day-to-day guiding work will distinguish excellent guides from poor-performing ones. Tour guide job requires as well continuous learning. The information is changing and the city is growing. A professional guide needs to be equipped with the latest information, so that you can show your travelers in an up-to-date way.

Think over your career prospect. Career prospect applies not only to tour guide, but to any one who is seeking personal development in his/her job. For a tour guide, what can be your career prospect? You can focus as a tour guide, and become expert in the field. For example, in China there are different guide qualification levels of junior, middle-level, senior and superior guides. Kenya safari guides are noted with bronze, silver and gold levels. Another development is mastering other languages to be a multi-lingual guide. If you want more adventures in this career, you can turn to a tour leader for overseas trips. With your first-hand experience as a tour guide, you can design unique sightseeing tours with your specialty. In this way, you are shifting to a tour manager or marketing person for your own tours.

There are many tour guiding jobs in tourism and travel. Start learning to be a licensed tour guide first, and practice to be a top excellent tour guide in your career.

Source by

How Can I Make Money Online Through Tourism?

Filed Under (Tourism, e-Business) by admin on 01-10-2010

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Many people dream of traveling to far and exotic lands. Unfortunately, for the majority of people, that is a wish that is often deferred until later on in life. Delayed gratification may be a source of frustration, especially for young people. They want to advance their aspirations, yet they don’t feel they have the knowledge or resources to do so. Again, the result can be bitter unhappiness. My advice to you is… just start doing something, no matter how small. Take small steps towards your goal until they become bigger steps, until they turn into full fledged strides towards your long cherished dreams.

So you want to travel. Use these desires to spur you on to creativity. Let’s say you live in an area favored by tourists. Perhaps you live near a popular beach resort that sun lovers flock to. Tourists come by the thousands every summer and bask under the sun. More likely than not, these tourists have friends and loved ones waiting back at home for them – people who would appreciate a souvenir from their friend.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea then to put up an online store where you could offer some of the things that make your town special to the tourists? T-shirts, beach towels, bathing wear, sea shells, crab key chains, whatever your town is famous for. Then those who come to your resort town and who don’t particularly want to leave their place in the sun to go shopping for souvenirs can simply shop in your online store and have the items delivered to their rooms or cottages.

It would be great if your online business was an adjunct of an actual store. Both stores – the actual one and the virtual one – could benefit each other and bring added business to one another. Visitors to your website, if they like what they see online, might be encouraged to drop by your actual store when they’re around the area or if they don’t want to wait for delivery. Meanwhile, those who shop at your actual store can be encouraged to make future purchases online, even when they go back home.

You don’t have to start out big. A few specialized items – even a bunch of t-shirts you designed yourself – could get you started. Those, a website, and a few fliers to make your presence known could be the first step to accomplishing your own dreams of travel.

How to Make Tourism Money – Join a Program

Filed Under (Tourism) by admin on 01-10-2010

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If you are wondering how to make tourism money, there are plenty of ways in which you can do that. One of those ways is to join a program.

There are programs out there that have been established for a while. What they do is the recruit people just like you wanting to make money in tourism. They set up the tourism packages for you and they simply require that you sell the packages for a commission. The commissions are usually pretty health and, of course, you know the more you sell means the more you make.

What is great about this is that they train you and they provide you with all of the tools that you need to sell their packages. You get your own information packets, your own website, and you are given all the tools you need to email market and so much more.

For those who are very good at selling these packages, they make quite a bit of cash. When they reach certain goals, they are able to take their own vacations to some of these destinations. What better way is there to tell customers about a particular destination than to actually go there? There isn’t a better way.

So if you want an awesome career in tourism, this is a great way to go. The program is already established for you, so you don’t have to worry about any kind of building. You don’t have to stop from the ground up and wonder when the profits start coming in. it is much easier than that. In fact, you can start becoming successful in about a week.

Source by Perry Webbing

Start SEO by Following Guidelines

Filed Under (Computer, SEO) by admin on 01-10-2010

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What constitutes good SEO practices? What do you need to do to make sure you are properly ranked and indexed by Google? What practices should you avoid to make sure you don’t incur the Wrath of the Search Engine? (Which could consist in penalties if not outright removal from the index.)

Often one can see a trend in which search engine optimization personnel develop tactics that are adversarial to the search engines, as if you have to struggle against them or trick them in order to achieve good rankings.

This is, in fact, untrue. The reason is because the livelihood of a search engine depends on its ability to deliver relevant content. If you have valid, useful, and relevant content on your site, the search engines actually want you to reach the top.

To this end, Google has posted a number of webmaster guidelines to help companies get their SEO processes on track. But despite the inclusion of these guidelines, many companies either miss them or gamble on the idea that trying to fool Google will be effective.

The guidelines laid out by Google are fairly simple to follow, and are divided into three sections. These are design/content, technical, and quality guidelines.

To begin with, you have to make sure your site is ready for your SEO measures. This means submitting it to Google (or other search engines). It’s a strange step to forget, and you can get crawled without it – as long as other sites link to you – but some people have been known to miss it. It is such a simple step, though, you just need to get it done. You should also submit a site map because this helps the search engine understand the structure and layout of your site. And this means you’ll have a better chance of making sure Google sees your whole site.

For design and content guidelines, the recommend that you create a site with a clear architecture or hierarchy that employs good text links. The content that you include should also be clear and informative. Always keep in mind the keywords your customers might use to find your product or service, and then be sure to include them in the content. If at all possible, you should use text instead of graphics of words, since Google still can’t read a picture.

Keep the mechanics well oiled. This means making sure there are no broken links, and the title tags or alt tags are useful and descriptive. There is also best practices in HTML, and you should follow them carefully.

The technical guidelines are, well, a little more technical. Make sure that you actually allow the bots to crawl your site, and allow them to do it without session IDs or arguments. You should also use the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This tells Google whether or not you’ve changed your content since the last time you were crawled. You should also make proper use of the robots.txt file, so you can keep the bots out of sections of your site that don’t really add much value.

The quality guidelines cover a lot more specific dos and don’ts. You should always build your pages for your customers first, and then employ SEO tactics for the search engines second. You should never, ever employ cloaking tricks, i.e. feeding the search engines something different than what you serve to a customer.

They go on to say that you should avoid using hidden text or hidden links, and you shouldn’t create reams of duplicate content. Don’t create pages that have malicious intent, and doorway pages that are auto generated and have no value to a visitor.

By following simple guidelines like this, and, above all, always providing valid and valuable content, your SEO practices can help you reach the top of the search engine ladder.

Source by Andy Eliason

Search Engine Optimisation: SEO Start Up, Landing your First Clients

Filed Under (Computer, SEO) by admin on 01-10-2010

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Starting a search engine optimisation business from scratch can be an extremely overwhelming and daunting task, especially if it is your first time. Establishing contacts and connections can also be extremely time consuming if you have no prior marketing and sales knowledge.

Below is a useful guide to help you get your first clients and to get your SEO / SEM business off the ground. Before I begin, please keep in mind that “word-of-mouth” is king, get the word out, talk and mention your business to whomever, whenever and wherever. Remember, the more exposure you offer your business, the more chances you will have landing that first deal.

Search engine optimisation marketing and offline selling tips:

1. Target your market and know your customers, i.e. do some background research. It helps to initially concentrate on one industry, e.g. travel websites, and know the terms, your clients, their line of work and their competition.

2. Localise yourself, concentrate on a local area. Try not to tackle too much at first, focus and concentrate on local businesses and gain their trust. Remember “you are a local” and share similarities.

3. Meet with them, form a partnership and more personal relationships.

4. Assess your advertising options (depending on your budget), consider using the following advertising tools:

a. Local newspapers – place a catchy add.

b. T-shirts – they create great advertising on the street or wherever you go. Also, choose an eye catching slogan.

c. Business cards – choose an appealing and aesthetically pleasing design, trust me professionalism and great design go a long way.

d. Billboard and brochure advertising for those that have the financial means.

e. Taxi advertising: Taxis can be seen all over town by motorists, many of who may happen to be company executives looking to increase their online sales.

f. Radio is also not a bad way of reaching out to people, however this can be costly.

5. Join your local chamber of commerce, meet business people and discuss your SEO business. Offer them a FREE brief website analysis / proposal on their website and show them how you can increase their online traffic and sales.

6. Referrals, referrals, referrals and partnerships. Speak to web design / web development and ISP companies, form partnerships, offer them commission if they refer companies to you.

7. Last but not least: There is nothing like cold calling. Go straight to your source, bypass the marketing manager, do not collect $200, and head straight for the decision maker. Again, as in tip #5, offer a FREE SEO website analysis.

Source by Ilan Touri

How to Start a Duct Tape Wallet Business – Producing a Wallet Pattern

Filed Under (Plastic) by admin on 01-10-2010

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Anyone contemplating producing more than one duct tape wallet should make their own pattern and in this article I am going to show you how easy it is to do so.

These are the ingredients we will need:

  • 9 x 12 heavy (1/8″ thick) plastic three ring binder. We will be using one of the plastic covers as material for our template. You should be able to find these binders at office supply stores or perhaps even discount stores. As long as the plastic is thick, that is all that matters.
  • tin snips
  • Box Cutter or blade
  • 12 ” Ruler
  • Marker
  • Med Grit Sandpaper

Step One – make a sheet of plastic

***Please be safe and wear gloves when cutting plastic as slivers and blade slips / breaks can cause serious cuts.

Binder and tin snips: Remove one of the plastic covers from the binder by cutting parallel to the spine. On a 9 inch wide binder you have only 1/2 inch leeway for width so cautiously remove the entire width of the cover if possible.

If the cover has a plastic pocket, it may be removed at this time using a box cutter or sharp blade.

Step Two – draw pattern

Plastic Cover, Ruler and Fine Marker: On the smoothest side of your plastic cover, measure out a rectangle 8 1/2 inches wide by 9 inches high. Next, draw two lines across the width (8 1/2 ” side) at the 3 ” and 6 ” points of the rectangle.

You should now have a rectangle that is divided into 3 equal sections, each 3 ” high by 8 1/2 ” wide.

Step Three – cut out pattern

Plastic Cover, tin Snips and Sand Paper: Using your tin snips, cut around the perimeter of the 8 1/2 x 9 inch rectangle you just drew. Lightly sand the edges of the plastic pattern to smooth out any burs or slivers that might exist.

Step Four – cut indentations

Plastic Cover and tin Snips: Using your tin snips, cut out a small triangular notch where the lines you drew earlier meet the edge of the rectangle. The depth of these “fold guides” triangular notches to be cut out will be no more than 1/4 ” and one will be cut at the ends on both lines. Four notches in all.

You should now have a sheet of plastic 8 1/2 inches wide by 9 inches high with two lines drawn across it. At the ends of those two lines there should be four small notches to allow for fold guides.

Step Six – Drawing the “legs”

Plastic Cover, Ruler and Marker: On one end of the rectangle and 3 3/4 ” from the 9″ side, draw a line 6 inches long. Do the same for the opposite side. One end of your rectangle now has two lines 6″ long and 1″ apart. Cap the open end of the two lines with a triangle which is 1/2″ high.

Step Seven – Cutting the gap

Plastic Cover, tin snips: This “candle” looking portion of the pattern now needs to be cut out using your tin Snips. When removing the last portion of plastic from the triangle “cap” area, you may need to use the box cutters. Sand all cut edges.

Assemble Your Wallet

Now its time to put your template into action.

  1. Rip 6 lengths of duct tape 10 inches long.
  2. With the sticky side up, overlap the strips no more than 1/2″, laying them one atop the other to form a swatch of duct tape fabric.
  3. Rip 6 more pieces of tape and lay them sticky side to sticky side on the first strips of tape.
  4. Place your template over the tape and mark around it, being sure to include the notches.
  5. Using your box cutters, cut out the duct tape fabric.
  6. Fold the fabric like an accordion at the notches. You should now have two flaps hanging in front. These are the “legs” we cut out earlier.
  7. Using your knife, cut 3 strips of tape 1 ” wide for edging. Two strips will be 3 inch long for side edging of the wallet and one 8 1/2 inch strip for along the bottom.
  8. Attach the edging and your wallet is complete!

Source by Barry L . Williams

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