Land of Opportunity

Dr. Jeffrey R. Cornwall at The Entrepreneurial Mind points out an article on professional organizers. The article by Mark Hendricks in the Wall Street Journal’s StartUp Journal describes the opportunity to start a small business as professional organizers for homes, businesses or both.

Mark writes, ” Entrepreneurs who start businesses as professional organizers report unusually high levels of satisfaction, and many say they earn more than they did as corporate employees.”

Mark quotes Barry Izsak, president of Arranging It All in Austin, Texas, as saying, “My life is so good. I never dreamed I’d be doing something that is so easy for me, and making so much money.”

Sure they make good money. The article states that most organizers charge between $45 to $55 an hour. One organizer charges between $85 to $100 per hour simply for organizing data on a hard disk drive! (more…)

Two Arkansas small businesses enjoyed remarkable success in competition for NASA Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase I research grants, winning three grants. All three grants are targeted at development of high temperature electronics. The Phase I grants, ranging from $70,000 to $100,000, fund exploratory work with the opportunity to compete for a follow-on Phase II grant for as much as $750,000. (more…)

E-mail marketing campaigns are in trouble, if recent reports are any indication. Rob McGann at Clickz points out several recent surveys of e-mail marketing campaigns. All showed downward trends.

Return Path issued a 5-page white paper that summarizes a survey of 723 consumers aged 18-54. Briefly:

98.6 % of consumers felt they received a noticeable increase in email.

60.% (3 in 5) deleted email without opening them
(Guilty as charged. I deleted 16 of 20 emails today — all unopened. I also teach my teens to do the same.) (more…)

I use Xenu Link Sleuth for checking the links on my employers website. Xenu Link Sleuth is a free small Windows program that crawls entire sites looking solely for broken links. I’ve been using it for many years and thought some of you might would like to know about this handy utility program. Did I mention that its free? (more…)

Nick Infusino at Law & Entrepreneurship News pointed us to this column by Gladys Edmunds at USA Today - Money on stopping employee theft within the small business. Gladys, the author of There’s No Business Like Your Own Business, recommends the establishment of a theft prevention system. (more…)

Jim Hopkins in a recent USA Today article reports that American senior citizens over 50 are the new entrepreneurs.

“Call them grandma-and-grandpop businesses. New research shows 5.6 million workers age 50 and older are now self-employed, a 23% jump from 1990. The numbers are expected to rise further as baby boomers seek more job security, Americans get older and cheaper technology drives down start-up costs.” (more…)

Patrick O’Rourke, a CPA in Washington DC, has posted a list of Safest & Riskiest Small Businesses on his BizStats.com website. Patrick compares relative percentages of profitable and loss for businesses in a given industry. A high percentage of profitability is defined as “safe.”

“Surveyors (# 1) came out on top for the second year in a row … while hunters & trappers came in dead (no pun intended) last. (more…)

Several hundred Arkansans took their first steps in starting their own small business in Arkansas this past Thursday, January 20, 2005. The Arkansas Small Business Development Center sent the business consultants from their seven statewide centers out to fourteen Arkansas cities. This year’s attendance broke attendance records in several cities. (more…)

eBay has released a beta version of their new eBay Accounting Assistant . (Beta means eBay is gathering input from the community about their experiences with eBay Accounting Assistant. Accounting Assistant works as a fully functioning application.)

eBay Accounting Assistant is a new tool which enables you to easily export eBay and PayPal transaction data as well as information about eBay fees to QuickBooks. (more…)

Bill Gray of Miss Brooke Company who makes and sells medical ID bracelets, necklaces, charms, and jewelry treated me to a peek behind the scenes of his pay-per-click (PPC) marketing program.

Bill has been bidding on phrases like “Medical ID Bracelets” and “Children’s Medical ID Bracelets” for quite a while. Bill markets his line of Miss Brooke Company medical ID bracelets, necklaces, and medi-charms on Yahoo. (more…)

Wesley Brown at the Arkansas News Bureau wrote an interesting article on a trend that has been taking place this past decade. It seems the Arkansas delta is losing workers. (more…)

John Conde has an excellent article, The Chargeback Challenge, on the challenge of credit card charge backs. If you are selling or planning on selling online via credit cards, then this article is a must read.

John explains in very clear words what a charge back is, why charge backs are a problem, how to deal with the five categories of chargebacks, and most importantly, specific tips to prevent chargebacks. (more…)

Arkansas Business, which sponsors the annual Arkansas Business of the Year competition, recently announced the finalists for the 2004 Arkansas Business of the Year awards competition: (more…)

This weeks Carnival of the Capitalists is being hosted by Small Business Trends. Anita arranged the posts in alpahbetical order by blog name and laid everything out in a very nice and easy to follow format.

Articles of note include:

Wayne Hurlbert’s post on viral marketing of email newsletters. I plan to implement that idea this week at work qith the two ASBDC newsletters. (more…)

The January 2005 Expansion Management, a monthly business magazine for executives of companies actively looking for a place to expand or relocate their facilities within the next one to three years, lists our beloved Little Rock as “America’s 48th Hottest City”. (more…)