Archive for the 'Entrepreneurial' Category
Although many of us have thought about starting a small business, significantly less actually take the plunge. So when I read on Dennis’ Young Money Blog back in July that he had opened up his own custom Greek Apparel store, I was intrigued and have been following his adventures on and off since. Fast forward to today, and he’s attending trade shows and just spent over $20,000 on new equipment.
I wanted to learn more about his story, so I asked him for an interview. Here it is, condensed from an instant messenger chat we had:
Can you please give me a quick mini-bio of yourself?
I’m a 23-year old student at the University of Florida studying Marketing and Political Science.
So, when did you feel like you first started getting the entrepreneurial bug?
Actually, I was reading your blog a lot, as well as NevBlog.com. That got me started. I didn’t find any blogs that talked about students who didn’t have an income, so I figured I should start something. But along the way… my blog became an entrepreneurial blog too!
So no newspaper route when you were five or anything like that? 
Nope, my family was poor, so that stuff wasn’t even on our minds.
So how did you come up with the Greek store idea?
I’m in an Asian American fraternity, and I recognized that this portion of the Greek community, along with Hispanic/Latino and multicultural organizations, were growing. When you do a general search for “Greek store”, “Greek apparel”, etc. on Google, most of the sites focused on the National Interfraternity Conference (white fraternities) and Panhellenic Conference (white sororities). So I wanted to target a niche.
Did you have any experience in the clothing area beforehand?
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Posted in Entrepreneurial | 10 Comments »
Vistaprint always gives out 250 “free” business cards, but they have a little “made by Vistaprint” watermark stamped on the back, and you have to use one of their templates. Right now, they are offering 250 business cards with a customized logo and no watermark for “free” plus shipping. Here are the rates:
Not a bad deal for those that want to project a professional image for their small business.
Added: You can upload your own logo, but at an additional cost.
Posted in Deals & Offers, Entrepreneurial | 21 Comments »
FON is a company with an interesting idea: What if everyone shared their WiFi with each other? We could all get internet coverage in much of the world for free. But what about the bad people? FON has developed routers that have both public and private channels to allow people to share without worrying about their own privacy. There are still other worries, but considering how many people already have wide-open access points, I don’t think it’s too horrible. Sometimes they charge a one-time $30 fee for the special routers, and sometimes it’s free.
In addition to allowing the “sharers to share”, you can also pay for access to their network. Finally, there is the entrepreneurial option - get a kickback for selling your own internet access. They’ll even give you a free router to start. This is intended (on the honor system) for people who live near a Starbucks or other busy gathering space.
By installing your FON router, you let others share your broadband for a daily fee. A fee that goes straight into your pocket. A savvy patron of your Starbucks need only pay $2 a day for your WiFi. They’d have to be a grande drip to pay the [regular T-Mobile fee of] $10 Starbucks charges. Each customer who chooses you puts $1 into your latte fund. Cha-ching.
I think their new software even lets you decide how much bandwidth you want to “rent” out, so you won’t be stuck with molasses. Pretty slick! Thanks to Torger for the tip.
Posted in Deals & Offers, Entrepreneurial | 15 Comments »
Here’s something to talk about while you’re out and about tonight - What would be a clever and new T-shirt idea?
CafePress lets people sell their own art and design work without any of the hassle. They handle the printing, shipping, webhosting, payment processing, customer service, and even returns.
It’s free to sign up and start your own store. Then all you have to do is:
1. Make your own unique design or slogan.
2. Upload it as a digital image.
3. Pick the products you want them to be on.
4. Set your own price.
5. Publicize your store and sell them!
They’ve got all kind of stuff - every size and style of shirt, hats, dog clothes, baby clothes, buttons, boxers, thongs, frames, mugs, pillows, bags, coasters, bumper stickers, clocks, steins…
For fun, I whipped up the MyMoneyBlog Gear store in about an hour. Here are some samples:
It definitely helps to be familiar with an image-editing program, but you can still make basic designs easily using free software like GIMP or PhotoPlus. Here are some more image creation tips. Remember, using copyrighted materials is a no-no.
The main drawback to all this is that the products can be a little pricey and your profit margin can be pretty slim. For example, a basic T-shirt has a base price of $8.99, and that includes zero profit to the seller. To get $1 profit, you’d have to sell it at $9.99. I basically just added a $2 profit margin to everything in my store. So if you buy something (ha!), I get two bucks.
If there is enough interest, perhaps I could run a T-shirt designing contest? Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of two categories: Financially-related and Anything Goes. So get those creative juices flowing! Start your own business in 1 hour with nothing but an idea 
Added: I found out if you sign up as a seller and use my shop ID as your referral, I will earn 5% of the base price of every sale you make for a year at no cost to you. My shop ID is “mymoneyblog”. Also, another option is Zazzle.
Posted in Entrepreneurial | 22 Comments »
There’s always a lot of interest for home-based businesses with flexible hours. (Why wouldn’t there be?) Here’s one unique example that I drove past today on a busy local street:
In case you can’t make out the sign, it says “Valentine’s Baskets - Sale”. Sorry for the blurriness, it was taken with a cell phone. I circled around for a second look, but I didn’t stop so I don’t know how much they were. The gift baskets seemed nice, with teddy bears and balloons and such. I wonder if they were from last year’s After-Valentine’s clearance sales, or if they were handmade. There’s a business idea - take advantage of after-Christmas/ Thanksgiving/Easter/Valentine’s day sales, bunch up the cheap knickknacks, and make them into gift baskets for next year. I would probably look into a better venue than selling from your driveway (eBay? local craft markets?).
Although I am skeptical that they will be very successful, I might stop by tomorrow to chat with the entrepreneurial homeowners to see what their motivation was (and maybe suggest they make a more legible sign).
Posted in Entrepreneurial | 11 Comments »
It’s failure time! I’ve talked a little bit about an online business idea that my wife and I had about a year ago. I’ve even showed a few prototypes. But we’ve finally laid all hope or desire to pursue this business to rest. Here’s the story:
The Idea Forms
It all began when we got a dog. We discovered that not only do people love their pets, but they are willing to spend a lot of their disposable income on them. Dog bakeries. Dog clothes (the bane of my existence!). Dog birthday parties. After buying a few $4 squeaky toys, and having our dog completely obliterate them in 46.6 seconds, we started thinking about making our own dog toys. You can actually buy “squeakers” for about 20 cents each on eBay. Add fabric and stuffing, and you’ve got yourself a cheap squeaky toy! But it still lasted less than a day.
My wife is great at crafts and sewing things. After several prototypes and using our dog and our friend’s dogs as beta-testers, we finally came up with a very durable double-layered squeaky toy. The outer fabric is soft and fleecy, but the inner is super-tough. It lasted almost indefinitely without puncture for most dogs that tried it. To add a personal touch we even have an embroidery machine to add the dog’s name to each toy. Here’s a late prototype, complete with label and packaging:
The Problems - Profit? What Profit?
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Posted in Entrepreneurial | 27 Comments »
Google has extended their free credit card processing until December 31st, 2007. Not only is Google’s normal commission of 2.0% + $0.20 already better than PayPal’s base level of 2.9% + $0.30, but now you can get a whole year fee-free. If you accept any non-eBay payment via PayPal now, this is a great incentive to switch. I’ve already accepted a few payments through the service, and it has been very smooth. You simply send your clients an invoice, much like you would through PayPal, and they can pay with any major credit card. Most still pay me with checks, but now I don’t have to think twice about losing 3% to fees.
As you might expect, some people are trying to use this promotion to gain free frequent flier miles and whatnot, but I’m staying clear of that. My taxes are already messy enough, without thousands of dollars running around in circles. Still, now you can pay your friends back and also earn some credit card rewards at the same time.
Posted in Credit Cards, Entrepreneurial | 2 Comments »
If you haven’t heard of Seth Godin, he is a popular speaker and author about marketing, entrepreneurship, and business on the internet. He also occasionally gives away some of his great and popular books to help promote them. Previously, I snagged one on web design and also Unleashing the Ideavirus, which were both pretty good. Right now, you can get a copy of the The Bootstrapper’s Bible for free. Download it quick before it’s gone. It is very short and “designed to give you the confidence and insight you need to pursue the American dream–starting your own business with little or no money.”
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Posted in Entrepreneurial | 1 Comment »
I’m looking at a few online hire-a-freelancer sites, including eLance and Guru.com, and comparing the project descriptions and the winning bids. Most of the bidders are from foreign countries and the prices are amazingly low. Some of the finished projects are pretty awful, but many coders are obviously very skilled. With the proper manager mentality, a U.S.-based freelancer could probably arbitrage themselves quite easily. You’d have to coordinate things like taxes and confidential client information, but hey, don’t corporations do this every day?
Most of these sites have a mutual ratings system, much like the eBay seller feedback ratings. I get the feeling that some of the newcomers are so desperate to get a few reviews under their belt that they are willing to work for nothing. This is why I only take local jobs, where I can get personal referrals and offer better service in order to justify a higher price. Has anyone used one of these sites?
Posted in Entrepreneurial | 14 Comments »
Got some projects that you do for extra cash? SideJobTrack is an online program that’s designed specifically to help you manage such things. With it, you can send out estimates, track your costs, and invoice clients. I’m currently doing this stuff with Excel, and then making PDFs. I’ve tried out BlinkSale for online invoices before, but I wasn’t really impressed. Now, I haven’t actually done much besides sign up, so I have no idea if this will be better, but it does seem to offer more features, and the price is right (free).
Posted in Entrepreneurial | 9 Comments »
Even though any individual can apply for business credit cards, I’ve been looking for one for my actual active business, as I have some upcoming big purchases to make. I don’t buy gas or groceries for my business, mostly software, online services, and computer equipment. Most biz cards only get 1% back on those things, so applied for the AmEx Business Gold Rewards Card which I wrote about previously, mainly for the $100 and 5,000 miles upfront bonus. I doubt I can get to the 90,000 bonus point level, but I’m going to try to reach the 10,000 point bonus.
This should give me a nice bonus and greater than 1% overall back since I’ll also get 1 Membership Rewads point per dollar spent. I also get 5% off FedEx too. I saw “for now” because the annual fee is only waived for the first year, but sometimes they waive it for the 2nd year too.
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Posted in Credit Cards, Entrepreneurial | 20 Comments »
Ever since starting my own small business, I’ve been on the look out for ways of holding cash in a business account but still earning a competitive interest rates. Now, if you are a sole proprietor, you can just use consumer savings accounts at places like ING Direct. But the choices narrow quickly for LLCs or Corporations. By law, checking accounts for these entities aren’t even allowed to pay interest.
Now, there are some banks out there that offer decent rates on business savings accounts, but I didn’t really find any that offered everything I wanted - a historically competitive interest rate, ability to link and transfer money online to other accounts, and good customer service. HeritageDirect came the closest with a good rate and linked accounts, but in the end I decided on opening up a Fidelity Business account.
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Posted in Entrepreneurial | 6 Comments »
As I’ve mentioned in my SEP IRA versus Solo 401(k) comparison, the problem with the additional paperwork involved with a 401(k) is that you have to find an administrator that is willing to do it for you at minimal cost. Compare that with the SEP-IRA, you can usually walk up to many brokers, open up an account, and start trading anything with no annual fees and just commissions.
For example, I opened up my SEP-IRA last year with Vanguard, but I can’t open up a Self-Employed 401(k) with them directly as they won’t be my administrator. The only option I found was to go through a third-party administrator like 401kBrokers, which charges an annual maintenance fee of 0.25% of the account balance. I think the fees are pretty fair considering there is no setup fee or other annual fees, but I still don’t want to pay them if I don’t have to.
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Posted in Entrepreneurial, Retirement | 38 Comments »
If you have self-employment income, there are a variety of ways to save some taxes and put some away for retirement. As I have no employees, right now my top two choices are the SEP-IRA (Simplified Employee Pension), which I used for 2005, and the Self-Employed/Solo 401k. After a bunch of reading, here’s what it boils down to:
SEP-IRA: Allows tax-deductible contributions and tax-deferred growth. Easy to set up at basically any broker. Very minimal paperwork involved.
Self-Employed 401k: Similar tax advantages as SEP-IRA, but with more paperwork, a more limited number of administrators, and higher contribution limits.
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Posted in Entrepreneurial, Retirement | 28 Comments »
If you’re starting a side business, you probably don’t have the budget for a secretary, commercial office space, or all the usual business amenities. But you can still project a professional image by using these cheap and even free services to create what I call a Virtual Office:
Telephone Service
Obviously, one option is to just use your current phone. Calling out is fine, but you’ll have to change your answering machine recording and also warn the other people in your household not to answer the phone with the usual “Yo wassup!”. For cell phones, you may be concerned with call quality or running out of minutes.
Another solution is to sign up for a free voicemail-only phone number (206 area code) from K7.net. You can customize the voicemail recording, and it even accepts incoming faxes. All messages and faxes are sent directly to your e-mail instantly.
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Posted in Entrepreneurial | 35 Comments »
