MKW-Ind.com:
Believe it or not, it is entirely possible for savvy individuals to earn their living through Craigslist. More and more individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit are realizing there are a host of opportunities for those who are willing to work hard to earn a living through hard work, learning about online communities such as Craigslist and effectively marketing themselves and their skills or products to those who might be in the market to invest in services or products the individual has to offer. Unlike conventional jobs where there is a set salary for services rendered and an unofficial cap on the earning potential those who offer their services online as an independent contractor have no such cap on their earning potential. However, there are also no guarantees on the amount which will be earned.

In general there are two ways to make a living with Craigslist. This may include offering services as an independent contractor on a contract basis or offering products or services as a small business owner. Alternately, individuals can utilize Craigslist to secure a permanent full time job through the job posting section on Craigslist. However, for the purposes of this article we will discuss the possibilities open to independent contractors and small business owners on Craigslist.

Craigslist for Independent Contractors… read on.

Voice of America:
The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship www.nfte.com/ helps youngsters from low-income communities to build skills and unlock their entrepreneurial talent. In San Francisco, VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan spoke with aspiring entrepreneurs who took part in a competition to prepare a business plan.

High school student Vivian Chau, like most Asian American youngsters, loves a drink called boba, a sweet milk tea with jellied tapioca balls. Boba can be found in cafes around San Francisco, but Vivian says it is not sold in supermarkets. So she came up with the idea of a company called Jelly It! to make a ready-to drink bottled tea mixed with jelly. She admits the idea is a gamble.

“Because I have talked to a lot of cultures, different people from different cultures, and they said they do not know what this jelly is, and they are kind of scared and hesitant to taste it. So hopefully, people will be willing to try something new, and once they try it, hopefully they will like it,” she said.

Chau was a finalist in a recent competition in which students prepared plans for actual businesses. Full article.

New Era:
Chinese businesses have been at the receiving end, especially from local retailers and the construction industry who blame Chinese firms for, among others, killing the local markets with inferior quality products, as well as disregarding the laws in tendering for construction contracts.

Perceptions aside, nevertheless, the presence of Chinese products presents a window of many opportunities to consumers and those with an entrepreneurial spirit, says the consumer watchdog, Consumer News.

In an economy under pressure from rising inflation and high prices, the Oriental Plaza shopping centre and the China Town in the Northern Industrial Area of Windhoek are shopping malls that provide affordable prices to consumers. For entrepreneurs, they represent moneymaking opportunities.

“It provides an alternative and affordable choice to consumers. How many of us are able to buy clothes on hire purchase or to afford a N$100 pair of shoes?” said Henry Pote, of Consumer News.

The two shopping centres are overflowing with anything imaginable from blankets, clothes and shoes to furniture, solar panels and 220-volt diesel generators, with a mere N$2 000 price tag.

An equivalent generator would cost not less than N$6 000 from a conventional shop.

Consumers fill to the brim the 30-something odd shops in China Town, each consumer in a quest to find bargains. In the Home Textile Factory stall, which stocks bedding and curtains, a young Angolan entrepreneur was placing orders for boxes of curtains. His plan is to resell the merchandise bought at a premium.

Two gentlemen from Hakahana settlement, on the other hand, came to China Town to purchase suits… read full article.

Washington Post:
With gas prices rising and the stock market diving, we could all use ideas for saving a little money. Here’s one we thought was worth passing along:

If you’re carpooling in someone else’s car or using mass transit instead of driving to work, call your car insurance company to see if you’re eligible for a cheaper premium. Insurance companies typically assign rates based on how far you drive to work, whether it’s less than three miles one way, three to nine miles, or 10 or more miles. Driving less could mean a 5 percent rate decrease, says Mario Morales, an underwriter at MetLife Auto and Home. Many car insurance discounts are available only when you buy a new car, he added, but the commuting discount applies at any time.

Wall Street Journal Blogs:
Anyone who’s started a business knows it can strain the best relationship. Even working together can be tricky. The New York Times wrote a story yesterday about the challenges of men working for their wives in entrepreneurial ventures. To smooth egos on the home front, many women made conscious efforts to give their hubbies ample recognition, sometimes switching who got the higher salary.

To keep peace, here are a few tips business owners and their spouses recommend:

1. Set timelines: The person starting a business needs a cushion before they’re expected to make money. But nonentrepreneurs needs a reasonable expectation of when that’s going to happen — or if it doesn’t happen, when their partner will pull the plug. Having a plan with financial and nonfinancial milestones (number of new customers signed, licenses obtained) will ease this transition period.

2. Have financial limitations: “Just another $5,000 and we’ll turn the corner…” Setting financial-investment limits is crucial if the start-up money is coming from your collective savings. That counts for credit-card debt and the number of times you return to family and friends for investment. You don’t want to get so far in the hole that if things don’t work, you’ll have no one left to lend you a hand.

3. Vacation: Take one. Starting a new business can be like cheating on your spouse, at least when it comes to time. Put aside a small amount of money each month just for this purpose. And carve out a week or even a weekend away and stick to it like it was a meeting with a buyer at Wal-Mart.

4. Don’t bring a spouse on board at the first sign of growth: As a firm gets bigger, it can be tempting to pull everyone in the household into the fold to help. But that means paying for health care when significant others quit their day job, or child care if they’ve been a stay-at-home parent. Run the numbers to make sure this move is cost-effective.

5. Know your ego: If you both do play a role in the company, try to spell out defined roles where you don’t compete. Deal with the salary issue up front: Do you both always need to make the same amount so no one feels threatened? Can you switch it up?

6. Starting a business isn’t the only dream that counts: Everybody lives once. An entrepreneur’s mission can be all-consuming; that’s often what helps it succeed. But your husband or wife’s dream of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro or taking a three-month sabbatical on the Amalfi Coast should carry equal weight, too. Plus, technology means you can often work from anywhere in the world. Use it.

Real Business:
First, a definition. Business format franchising is ‘a commercial relationship whereby one party allows another to operate clones of a proven business system, and provides initial and ongoing training and support in doing so, in return for initial and ongoing fees’. So, if you have a business, which can be operated as a branch network that you want to expand, you should certainly consider franchising as one of the options.

Here are your first three big tips from Duckett, whose firm advises prospective and current franchise operations on how to get big and get rich, fast.

1. Become a local, regional or national brand
Provided your business meets certain criteria, such as being successful, profitable, easily duplicated and easily learned, then the chances are you can franchise it. You will need expert practical and, eventually, legal advice to set things up properly, ensuring that the opportunity will be profitable for both parties, but you could then find yourself opening more outlets, more quickly, than you ever could have afforded by growing organically. Franchisees provide the finance to open new outlets, and the energy along with enthusiasm to operate them.

2. Become an international brand
Many businesses that are reaching capacity in their home markets, whether or not they operate under a franchised system, take their operation into international markets by appointing master franchisees, or area developers, to operate branch networks in their respective countries. Profiling and choosing the right partner in another country is a critical function of the process but it has resulted in significant international growth for businesses in all sorts of sectors.

3. Regional or area development
Regional or area development is a franchising method, which can be used domestically or internationally. Rather than having one franchisee per outlet, you take on a person or existing business, which has the wherewithal to open and operate a number of outlets within a specified geographical area. The number of outlets will vary from system to system, it could be five, it could be fifty, there is no generic ‘right answer’ but expert advice can point you in the right direction.

Business Opportunities:
Scott Amron came up with a clever idea using magnets and money.

He created some awesome Cash Money Clips that are made from real money. You can even use the money clip as currency when you are low on cash!

Amron offers his cool Cash Money Clip design in 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and $100 denominations. He even offers it in Euro banknotes, if you don’t want the plummeting dollar.

And if you wanna have a retro style, you can order an Obsolete Currency Money Clip that reuses out-of-circulation money.

In addition to the banknote, the design uses two steel plates and a strong thin neodymium disc magnet.

Amron has set up a web site where he sells the ready-to-use money clips or do-it-yourself kits. ]]> http://brazilbusiness.biz/2008/07/03/making-money-with-money/feed/ http://brazilbusiness.biz/2008/07/03/how-to-start-a-property-management-business/ http://brazilbusiness.biz/2008/07/03/how-to-start-a-property-management-business/#comments Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:00:01 +0000 Master Money http://brazilbusiness.biz/2008/07/03/how-to-start-a-property-management-business/

Fresh New Small Business Ideas:
Property management is a business that is regulated and requires a real estate license in many states. This first step requirement means that the potential buyer of an existing business would need to be qualified to run the business. They would also need to meet the same requirements to start one from the ground up.

One way to get experience in the business is go to work for a large management company and learn the ropes. At the same time you could be completing any educational requirements and prepare for taking the license required to professionally manage properties. Starting a company of your own will take some strong detective work to find a property that is looking for management or looking to replace the current management firm. This will entail a great deal of cold calling and phone work to come up with possible clients.

At the same time you could get a web site built so you will have something to point people to when you are speaking with them on the phone. You would also mention the website in all communications or advertisements. All of this would come after you have decided on a company name and have a phone number and address for your business.

Knowledge and preparation are requirements for success. Whether you buy an existing business or start one up, you will need to gain experience and first hand knowledge of the business from some source. The best way to gain real experience is to work in the business for a year or so for a management company. The requirements in your state should be checked also to see what licenses are needed. There could also be educational requirements that you would have to obtain. A smart person would make sure they have all of these ducks out of the way while working for someone else. The real estate department of your state will be able to give you the information you need to know. There also could be an association of property managers in your area. Both of these sources are a place to start to find the information you need.

Read more here.

Xconomy:
The University of Washington has hired someone with business chops to run the office that transfers university inventions into the business world.

Linden Rhoads, a serial entrepreneur at Seattle-based technology companies, will take over as Vice Provost for Technology Transfer on August 14, the university said in a statement. Rhoads has been involved in a number of successful startup companies, including ChiliSoft, SingingFish.com, and AdRelevance, according to a UW statement.

Rhoads, 41, who replaces Jim Severson, has an undergraduate degree in geophysics from Smith College and a law degree from the UW. The university points out in its statement that it has helped create more than 235 companies since 1982, and that it collected $38 million for the university through intellectual property licenses in 2007. Yet the business community has long complained about how difficult the office is to work with, and how it doesn’t spawn nearly the number of startups of MIT or Stanford. Even so, the early reviews from business people we talked to about Rhoads are optimistic.

New York Sun:
Cedric Bernard and his wife, Sandrine, were two months from the end of the lease on their two-bedroom apartment at 63rd Street and West End, and with a toddler in the house and another child on the way, they needed more space badly.

The condos they’d seen in Manhattan were too expensive, and they dreaded the idea of commuting from a house in Westchester. Then the Bernards came across a three-bedroom apartment at 55 W. 95th St. At $876,000, the unit was cheaper than most of the condos they had been looking at, and, because it was a sponsor unit, it lacked the restrictions of most co-ops: Board approval was not required and the Bernards were able to finance up to 90% of the purchase.

“It was kind of like getting a condo, but at a decent price,” Mr. Bernard said.

A co-op unit is different from a condo in that it is owned by the entire building, with individual homeowners owning a set number of “shares” in the corporation. Co-op shares that have not yet been sold are known as sponsor units, or apartments the landlord has retained as a rentals.

As the price of co-ops slides lower in comparison to condos, sponsor units are becoming more sought after than ever by apartment hunters and investors, brokers said. Previously an under-the-radar niche market, the selling of co-op shares is gaining more visibility, with new companies such as Shares of New York, from which the Bernards bought their apartment, coming into the marketplace, and bargain hunters seeking deals in a time of economic slowdown.

Carry on reading the story.

Photo: Heuichul Kim.