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.

Categories
Business Ideas

Book A Table Online

resevations.JPG
Entrepreneur: If your restaurant isn’t accepting online reservations, you may want to rethink your web presence. About 7,000 high-end restaurants around the world use OpenTable, a San Francisco-based company that allows eager eaters to book online reservations.
The company, which started in 1999, wasn’t accepted by the restaurant community right away, but has slowly gained momentum, especially over the last couple of years. Another perk of the software: You can use it to keep track of idiosyncrasies of hundreds or even thousands of your guests.
Restaurants pay OpenTable a dollar per diner who books through their service. But according to industry insiders, it’s worth it. “It’s not a cheap solution, but it’s a good one,” says Laurence Kretchmer, co-owner of three restaurants with Bobby Flay.
Online Reservations Get Popular [Entrepreneur.com]

Categories
Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneur Profile: Linda Byerline

entrepreneur%20profile%20-%20Linda%20Byerline-01.jpg
sdbj.com: Linda Byerline hates to admit that her business experience is self-taught. She was a stay-at-home mom with a nursing background when she posted an image of an extra cloth diaper she had made for her daughter on eBay.
Four years later, Byerline runs Happy Heiny’s, which provides cloth diapers online and in retail stores across the world.
“It completely caught us off guard,” she said of the immediate success of the company.
Byerline is planning to open her first “brick-and-mortar” store in El Cajon later this summer after moving the business out of her home this year.
Entrepreneur Profile [sdbj.com]

Categories
Online Business

Threadless Tees

threadless.JPG
CNNmoney: Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart were fresh out of high school seven years ago when they had the idea that would make them millionaires. After entering an Internet T-shirt design competition, the two Chicagoans thought maybe that was the way all T-shirts should be made.
Most stores print a bunch of shirts and lose money on the ones people don’t like. Instead, they figured, why not let customers rank designs ahead of time and then print only the winners?
The idea grew into an online store called Threadless that struck a chord with Web-savvy designers in Chicago and beyond; last year Nickell and DeHart sold $16 million worth of T-shirts.
The key to their success? High profit margins — the shirts cost as little as $4 each to make and sell for $15 and up — and a business model built on the care and feeding of an online community.
‘Project Runway’ for the t-shirt crowd [CNNmoney]

Categories
How-To Guides

How To Buy Text Link Ads

textlinkads.gifBlogtrepreneur: So, how do you go about choosing and investing wisely in Text Link Ads? Here are a few guidelines:
1) Checkout the “New Text Link Ads” page over at the TLA site. This is a list of all the recently added sites to the main database. Often these sites will be new blogs which have recently passed the PR4 expectations limit that the company set on new publishers.
2) Hover your mouse over the “Reveal” text to read up more about the specific blog. URL’s aren’t given, as otherwise advertisers could jump the middle man (aka. TextLinkAds the company). Check on the Alexa Rank, Number of pages, Link Popularity and Number of Links Sold. The main idea is to find a new site with a low Alexa Rank (if possible under 100,000), a high number of pages, a high link popularity (as this will give your link more weight in Search Engines), and a low Number of Links Sold in order to make your link stand out at the top of the list.
3) Using the Title and Description given on the page, open up Google and search for the Title and/or keywords mentioned. You should be able to find the site easily unless the description is vague and open-ended. By taking a look at the site itself, you can see where your link will be placed. You can also get a feel for the author (if it’s a blog), and to judge potential.
4) Then finally, purchase your link for as long as you want to risk. The longer you can afford to do so, the better. But another vital thing here is to keep reviewing the blog that your advert is on. If you can see things starting to go dry, then stop and move on. It’s better to cut your losses rather than to keep on throwing money at a dead cause.
How To Invest In Text Link Ads [Blogtrepreneur]

Categories
Entrepreneurship

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

kyle_aaron_campos.jpg
YoungEntrepreneur: How is that for a title to get your attention? CNNMoney recently put out a series of 8 profiles that look at successful entrepreneurs who have built up their companies despite not having access to major financial backing.
It goes to show you that you do not need a lot of money to get started – you just need to invest the capital you do have and your energy in the right places.
The profiles are a quick read and also include 8 lessons for success including:
Lesson: If you must borrow from your friends and family, keep it formal
Lesson: Prep as much as you can while you’re on someone else’s payroll
Lesson: Do what makes you happy – because at first, happiness is likely to be your main reward
Lesson: It’s not who you know – it’s how well you keep in touch with them
Lesson: You’ll amaze yourself at how cheaply you can run a business when it’s yours
Lesson: That great idea you had for your boss? Maybe it’s the business you’re looking for.
Lesson: Help investors see that taking a chance on you is not that big a risk after all
Lesson: Picking the right partner can be as important as picking a product
How To Get Rich [YoungEntrepreneur]