StartupJournal: For a young business, it can be alluring: Find an “angel” investor to swoop in and help fund your growing company. With millions of small businesses and only a few hundred organized angel groups, where do you begin?
WSJ.com spoke with Knox Massey, a longtime angel investor, about getting started. Mr. Massey, a former senior salesman at AOL, is executive director of Atlanta Technology Angels, a private angel group that invests up to $4 million each year in young technology-focused companies.
Here is Mr. Massey’s advice on what a small-business owner should – and shouldn’t – do when searching for angel funding.
* Research the investors
* Don’t expect to get funding right away
* Network
* Treat your initial interactions as the first step in a long-term relationship
* Don’t forget about your long-term plan
* Look at your investors as potential mentors.
Wooing Angel Investors: Some Do’s and Don’ts [StartupJournal]
Author: Ethan Theo
Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.
Are You Witty Enough?
Inc: Most working professionals think it’s important to have a sense of humor around the office, a recent survey found.
Among nearly 500 full and part-time office workers surveyed, 97 percent said they preferred workplace managers who could make them laugh, while 87 percent said their bosses were pretty funny, according to Robert Half International, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based staffing services firm.
“Managers who can laugh at themselves or difficult situations are often seen as more approachable and in touch with the challenges their teams face,” Max Messmer, chairman and CEO of Robert Half International. He said a good sense of humor helped build rapport among staff and eased otherwise stressful situations.
Workers Prefer Funny Bosses [Inc]
Build a Virtual Store
Inc.com: Small retailers who want to take their companies online can now build a store on the Web for free with a new service from FastCommerce.com. Business owners follow a simple step-by-step process to create a store template, and can have their online businesses up and running in a short amount of time.
FastCommerce.com provides business owners with a fully integrated package on the Web that allows them to run their entire operations — from order processing to sales to inventory control — without purchasing additional computer software. Online businesses can also customize their storefront with other applications available on FastCommerce.com, including order management and customer management, shipping rate calculator for UPS and FedEx shipments, and automatic e-mails for order confirmations.
The service is free for the first 250 products posted.
A One-Stop Shop for Setting Up Your Own Online Shop [Inc.com]
Tips To Promote Your Blog
CashBulge: 1. Comment on other blogs in your niche.
Probably one of the most powerful ways to get noticed early on and to establish ties & contacts with people that have similar interests. Make sure you post relevant comments.
2. Join forums & communities.
Same as before, join forums and communities that are in your niche. Some useful forums I always reference (for SEO and Marketing) are DigitalPoint and EarnersForum.
3. List your blog in directories and top sites.
BlogFlux is a great blog directory and free to submit to. Start out with this and then expand.
4. Promotion & SEO Blog Plugins.
Depending on which blogging platform you are using you should have an array of tools at your disposal. Get the plug-ins that you need and scrap the ones you don’t.
5. RSS Feed conversion.
Use FeedBurner, its the best in the RSS industry right now and used by all the top bloggers such as ProBlogger and others.
6. Use Technorati.
Technorati is a powerful resource for bloggers. You can see who has linked your story and how powerful your blog is compared to others.
7. Social Bookmarking – your powerhouse.
Getting to that front-page of Digg or Reddit is a gold-mine and will create a tsunami of visitors. A great social bookmarking plug-in is AddThis.
8. Traffic Exchange websites.
Sites like BlogExplosion are a powerful way to drive some new traffic. Basically you browse other bloggers blogs and earn ‘credits’ which you can then redeem for traffic or review posts. It’s good stuff.
9. Linkrolling.
BlogRolling is a link manager service that helps you organize and evolve your list of links. It also makes it easier for people browsing your site to add you with a quick button :).
10. Using Flickr to host your images. Save space.
Well that tag-line basically did it. By using Flickr to host your photos, you can save web space and bandwidth each month and even get a few incoming links depending on how good your photo is.
And many more…
33 Useful Ways to Promote & Improve Your Blog [CashBulge]
Teenage Moguls’ Startups
Teentrepreneur: Typical teenage entrepreneurs are not hard to come by. Indeed you may have inadvertently been one in your life already. In fact when you were between 13 and 18 there’s a 99% chance that you tried to make money in one form or another. I’ll give a run-down of the typical types of businesses that teenage moguls start up to make their first bit of cash, so maybe you can replicate the successes of the many!
1. Lemonade Stall – Its true, everyone loves lemonade, especially in the summer when you’ve been on a run or out at a stressful day at work, a nice cool lemonade increases the blood sugar and puts you in a feel-good mood!
2. Lawn-mowing – Again another highly popular business for young people with a love for nature (or for money for that matter). Here in the UK in the summer, the grass grows like crazy and I myself have to cut the grass once per fortnight.
3. Gaming Cards – When you were a young teenager, I bet you played with gaming cards at some point of your life. For me, just as I was approaching 12/13, Pokemon cards were in fashion. Some of the holographic cards could be found in normal packs and sold online for as much as £10 a card!
4. Sell Food At School – Unfortunately I never got a chance to try this one out as the schools I’ve been to have charged lunch meals to the end of term bill. But, if your school lunches are payable with cash, try going into class with some fizzy drinks or sweets.
5. Newspaper Delivery – This one is another teenager’s bread and butter of pocket money and income. Head down to your local Post Office or Depot and ask if they have any Newspaper or Magazine Delivery positions.
5 Businesses For A Typical Teenage Entrepreneur [Teentrepreneur]