Starting a business of your own doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, there are several easy business ideas that anyone could use. These business ideas are the perfect design to aid make ends meet and provide a high enough income to be a full-time job. You no longer have to spend hours working for a boss you can’t stand. Instead you can spend that time working for yourself and building a business that you will love.
Business Ideas That Are Great for Anyone #1: Food Delivery
This business idea works extremely well in small towns that lack restaurants that will deliver. Many businesses will want to buy food for their employees, but have a hard time finding a restaurant that will bring the food to their location. This is where you business idea comes into play. You seize up the food for them and then bring it to their business. You could even take this business idea one step further by taking the time to setup the food and provide plates, cups, and utensils. If you live in a big city, this business idea will also work. There are mild several restaurants, in big cities, that will not pronounce making your business idea very popular. This is a business opinion that will require you to always have a cell phone with you and you may even have to hire additional employees as your business grows.
Business Ideas That Are Great for Anyone #2: Home Cooked Meals
People love home cooked meals but rarely have time to prepare them. With this business idea, you can either prepare meals at your home and freeze them for the customer’s convenience or you can choose to prepare fresh meals at their home. If you resolve to prepare meals at a customer’s home, be prepared to charge more because this will drastically cut the amount of customers that you can have. When you prepare the meals at home, you will be able to cook for several families at once. This business idea is perfect for anyone who loves to cook and loves trying new recipes. Many customers will welcome unique recipes, but you must also be prepared for customers to request certain dishes that you may not be familiar with.
Business Ideas That Are Great for Anyone #3: Catering
This is another great business idea if you delight in cooking. Catering is a business that is needed for other businesses, weddings, birthday parties, concerts, community events, and so much more. The key is to have great food that keeps people talking about your business for weeks after the event. If people delight in your food they will recommend your business to others. You will be surprised at how fast your business will grow. If you are looking for a laid back business conception then this may not be for you, but it is a money maker for sure.
Business Ideas That Are Astronomical for Anyone #4: Housecleaning
Just like people rarely have time to cook homemade meals, they also get behind on their cleaning. Starting a housecleaning business is really pretty simple. You just place an ad in your paper and specify what you are willing to clean. If you are worried about germs, it’s best to avoid doing people’s laundry and dishes. People will still hire you if you avoid this. Just being there to dust, mop, vacuum, and tidy things up will be enough for most customers. If you want this business idea to be really successful, offer your customers deals. For example, charge so distinguished money for your services and when your customers settle five or more, include a free service. Charging by the service will be more profitable than charging per hour, because many of these services will not take an hour to complete.
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Filed under Skype Business Solutions by on Dec 1st, 2010. Comment. 
- Review of the Magick Jack’s effectiveness for miniature business
- Fire your phone company and save tons of money
- Replace waste with a combination technology solutions
With a little forethought and a small time investment (hours not days), you can virtually eliminate the costly and confusing telephone system you have been struggling with or have been putting off purchasing due to SMB budget constraints.
If you’re paying Ma-Bell for a traditional phone line, or have your own confusing pbx switch on location, you’re not making the most of current phone technology. In fact, you may be wasting precious time and money for a system that does not meet your needs and actually takes away revenue.
Maybe you are paying a full-time employee to do nothing but manage the “phone system”, or worse, heaping the responsibility on a part-time additional duty basis to an employee who could otherwise focus on THEIR job.
You may have already joined the quarter million other home subscribers of the Magic jack community. Now it’s time to see how this can be applied to your small or medium business.
There are links to reviews of the magic jack included with this article, but in summary:
FEATURES:
- It’s cheap, costs include $40 for the device and 1st year of phone service, $19.95/yr after that
- Being a USB storage procedure(like a thumb drive), it carries it’s bear software and installs when inserted in the USB slot
- You can either make calls using a headset/mic or a traditional telephone (cordless phones & fax machines)
- It comes with “voicemail” forwarded to any email account you wish
- you get email notifications when new VMs arrive
- Although it’s not a weak phone ine with 911 they provide 911 where YOU control the address, so you can set the 911 for ANY space in the US (got a sick mother? )
- Nationwide toll-free is included and international can be had for a note or…
- Send a Magic Jack to anyone you want to call and who you want to call YOU and it’s free WORLDWIDE!
- You can migrate your current landline phone number, maybe your cell number not always, or get a unique phone number*
- ALL of this depends on a broadband connection (I recommend Always on like Cable, NOT DSL), and a computer/laptop.
UNFEATURES
- Call quality (QoS) resembles a cell phone, in both sound quality and dropped calls.
- Customer service is basically their FAQs online and that’s about it.
- The device is bigger than other USB devices, but has a dongle to get it out of the way of your other USB plugs
- One yank on the phone cord and “POP”! out comes the MJ
- limited local phone numbers means long distance numbers in some locations
- Ordering the service online or over the phone or using the MJ program can be confusing
* The “local” phone numbers are not always a local call for your city, for instance in Montana the ONLY number they have are local to Helena, great if you live in the capital not so broad for the rest of the state.
The savvy entrepreneur has already seen some openings with the above list for cutting costs. Let’s look at a few ways you can make the most of this new technology for your business.
We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg, but here are some cost effective uses:
HARDWARE
- Connect your Home & Work offices
- Virtual Office employee(s) and VAs
- Key Customer and teleconference training
- Anyone who travels for your company
IMPLEMENTATION
- Fax
- Small pbx-like features
- Integration with other tech i.e. Virtual PBX systems
First, HARDWARE solutions.
By simply purchasing the Magic Jack device at $40 ea. you can save tons on the recurring phone bill.
1 – Connect home & work offices, assume a MJ diagram for home and work, for anyone who commutes. After the initial $40 you get 1 year of uninterrupted calling from work to home etc. try out call forwarding thru a virtual pbx
2 – Virtual Office employees or VAs you contract with can now maintain voice contact with no cost to THEM if you simply win them a MJ device, it’s up to you if you ask for it back at the extinguish of the contract or give it to them for a job well done.
3 – Key customer care and Teleconferencing or training This encompasses many areas but essentially it’s a repeat of the above, for a nominal $40 charge you can ensure your key clients and business partners cease connected again at no fee for them. It’s so easy to use they really won’t have to wade through a tech manual to begin calling you. If you host training over the phone/online through .rdp connections etc. you can send one of the MJs to them ahead of training (perhaps with any manuals) and ask them to call on your $40 dime. Especially if you will have ongoing training with this client. Again, you can choose to just give it to them as a gift. $40 isn’t much when you consider the price of other training materials you spend.
4 – The Road Warriors friend Having spent half my life on the road, I can tell you if I were doing that kind of work now, I would buy the MJ without even thinking about it. Being able to call “Local” to my home or the US when overseas for a year for $20 you bet I’m on board. Just imagine, you get to the hotel (with broadband access of course) late at night, and just want to touch base with home or the office, now you paddle in MJ into your laptop and before you can unwrap the baby soap bar, you’re ready to make or receive calls from home FOR FREE minus $20 initial fee 
If you are already paying for cell phones for the travelers maybe you can cut down on some of the primetime minutes by simply buying the MJ, or better yet, give the MJ to them for personal calls and encourage strict business ONLY calls on the cell phone wiht no excuses for wasted minutes chatting with family etc.
Now that’s only what you can do by being nice enough to purchase MJ devices for everyone, now let’s explaore some of the frosty things that can be position up on the USAGE/Implementation side of the house:
1 – FAX Although officially not supported yet, key word being “YET”, faxing can be done from anywhere again as a local call with no special setup, just plug in and send. Again, you might consider integrating with a virtual pbx system for a smoother operation especially if you wish to offer fax back capability.
2 – Private Branch Exchange (private telephone switchboard) although it’s far from a PBX or virtual PBX system, the magic jack will allow 3-way calling and take voicemails. Once you have the MJ phone number you can marry it with a virtual pbx and come by full-featured use of a pbx with the orders or important calls coming to your MJ phone.
If you have set up your business to be on autopilot, send a MJ to your order takers and Cust Benefit VAs and let the calls come in with no per exiguous charges coming back to you.
3 – Integrate The most effective use of technology means marry-ing or integrating several solutions to create a full-featured robust solution.
If you aren’t familiar with virtual-PBXs study into using one like onebox, for service starting around $10/mo., prices go up depending on usage, you get 1-800 access and the same basic features that a geeky full-time phone switch programmer at your company can create, with less cost and hassle.
- Have calls routed within the PBX to various voicemails, but more importantly following the Tim Ferris way of doing things, you can have them follow YOU or any of your employees and VAs, no matter what phone or time of day they will be at that phone number, giving the illusion of 24/7 customer befriend.
Routing can also include having the really important calls directed to the MJ draw number/voice mail so you get ONLY the most pressing calls, again, from anywhere in the world (With broadband access).
Well, this is again just brushing the surface of what the world of VoIP and devices like the MagicJack can garner for the SMB world, for more info please visit http://squatchtech.ning.com and follow the articles relating to puny business technology use.
Your uncle BobSquatch
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There are many people looking for stay at home jobs. Some may have disabilities, be assisting an elderly relative, or have small children. There are many stay at home jobs available. However, the methods may be different than approaches customary to find employment in the past.
Move Your Current Job Home
It is possible, because of the dwindling economy, to get permission to take your current desk job out of the office and into your home. Discussing this with your boss is often at least a fun idea that they are willing to try. There may also be assistance through government agencies that can succor you to keep your employment and stay at home to supervise someone who is sick or disabled.
Freelance
There are a number of effective websites that offer freelance work to work from home. Your first step will be to focus on what kind of services that you want to offer. Do you have graphic design, secretarial, or writing services to offer? Then there is the put a question to of making your online portfolio, placing bids, and paying a puny fee of placing bids.
A quick search of free online work sites will expose you many authors offering you an eBook or other product for purchase. In this article, we will not review these authors for you, but instead take you in another direction. Working online can involve a number of well respected “freelance” sites.
Virtual Secretary Tools For Working Online
Let’s say, for example, you want to accept a job from a client. This client wants you to answer calls that are usually incoming to his/her cell phone. What virtual tools do you use?
Many people are unaware of the services that skype.com offers. Skype is a software/phone or softphone technology. It allows you to build a virtual call center from your home computer and it is extremely inexpensive. It allows you to buy a phone number in the district or country that you need to call from. It also allows you to have calls forwarded from one phone to another.
Transcription Services
A popular request is for online transcription services. In general, customers want to have audio interviews transcribed. A search for free transcription software will lead you to freeware for transcribing. Using voice recognition (voice to text) software can cut your workload even further. Windows Vista offers free voice recognition software included with the Vista package.
Document Creation
If you do not already have Microsoft Word, you can search the internet for free document creation shareware or free software. A celebrated option is OpenOffice. Document creation virtual tools are helpful for editing documents, compiling research and other topics that you may have bids for.
Freelance at Home Locally
While there are a number of effective websites that offer freelance work to work from home, often there is a lot of freelance work in your acquire community. Your first step will be to focus on the kind of businesses that you find in your city.
Ask employers if they ever outsource work. It might be something simple like food preparation for a catering business or envelope stuffing for semi-annual events. There may also be companies who needed to downsize and now realize that they need a person to fill some roles.
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Filed under Skype Business Solutions by on Nov 19th, 2010. Comment.
Everybody wants to know how to be a better writer. That is a question that’s asked over and over again, with many different answers and views. So instead of re-hashing all of those articles and suggestions, I’m going to look at four fundamental elements of writing for business. These four elements are great for business writing, but can also be applied to other writing.
Fundamental Writing Element One: Know Your Audience
This element is probably the most important thing to consider when doing any kind of writing, business or otherwise. You have to be able to effectively communicate with your audience, and speak their language. This may sound like an easy thing to do, and sometimes it can be, but that is not always the case. Take, for example, Tweak’s Rants, my MySpace blog:
The writing style I use in those entries is completely different than most of my writing I do for Associated Content. My writing style for Tweak’s Rants is a worthy more informal and personal approach, mixed with a little anger and frustration usually. I can get away with that there because I know my audience. They generally have the same attitudes and beliefs as me, or are open minded enough to enjoy differing opinions, which are not attitudes that are prevalent in business and professional surroundings.
There are questions you should always be asking yourself about your audience to glean out what your writing should really be:
Who is my audience? Who is going to be reading this? If you are writing a quick short memo, a proposal to a business executive, or a letter to a customer, your writing style will be different. If it is for somebody within your business, you need to make distinct you do not write above, or below, them. Look at what kind of experience your audience has with the subject of your writing, and what position they hold within the company. If you are writing for someone outside the company, a customer for example, you want to make sure you are not using too grand technical jargon or business speak. You want them to feel that you know who they are and have thing in common with them.
How many people will be reading my writing? This is a fairly straight-forward question and purpose. If you are just writing a note to a co-worker on the next shift, it will sound and look different than a letter, or even a memo, to a group of executives. The key here is to make sure you can relate to your whole audience, and that you do not just write to a fraction of the complete group.
How well can my audience understand English? This is a key question to ask if you are writing to customers. Just assuming that since your company conducts business within the United States, does not mean that your company’s whole customer base speaks English well, or at all. Even if you are writing for people within your company, you need to know who is going to read it. It is possible that executives from other countries or regions will have access to your writing, so you want to make sure they are able to read and understand everything in your writing.
What knowledge level do my readers have about my topic? This goes back to making determined you can relate to your audience and that they can understand what you are telling them. You just have to make distinct that you don’t talk over their head, or sound like you are talking down to them.
These are just some of the major questions every writer should be asking themselves before they write anything. Once you start writing for business more often, you will know exactly what questions you need to ask yourself, and it will become more of an automatic concept process.
Fundamental Writing Element Two: Know Why You are Writing
If you want to make writing an easier process, and many people do, you have to know what the message that you are trying to content is. If you are writing for business purposes, there is one key rule that I hear over and over again: Get to the point. In my blog, Tweak’s Rants, I know what I want to say, but I have the luxury to jump all over the place and insert jokes all I want. When you are writing professionally, you do not have that luxury. Most business executives and managers are too busy to be reading five pages of a proposal that could have been summed up in one page. If you don’t state your purpose quickly, yet clearly, then you have already lost your audience. The only way to do this is to invent sure you know exactly what you want to say.
Fundamental Writing Element Three: Building Your Message
So now that you know who you are writing to, and what you want to say, you have to effectively build your message. Remember that good writing is not something that always happens on the first shot. Most people have to build their message. They will start out with a rough draft, but add or change things after asking some questions about their audience. Business writing is a deeper process than other types of writing because your job may depend on this one thing you have written; be it a raise, promotion, or just the image your managers have of you. It takes awhile to build the right message, so take some time until it becomes a more automatic response for you.
Fundamental Writing Element Four: Style and Tone Selection
The style of writing is how something is written. This spans a lot more than business writing or non-business writing. Styles will have to be adapted to fir different messages and audiences, obviously, but knowing exactly what style to settle for your business writing is the tricky fragment. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot I can say here, since each writing task will be different, but I just wanted to create positive this element was something that everybody knew was an important step in the business writing process.
The tone in writing is similar to your actual speaking tone. If you are mad, it will expose through; similarly if you are happy or rushed. Word selection is key to setting the tone for your writing. Would you rather say that a customer was ‘being mean‘ or that they were ‘displeased‘? Since your writing in the business world is a direct reflection of your professional image, you need to make certain you are setting the right tone of each and every writing you do.
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VoIP, short for Voice Over Internet Protocol, is a steadily growing trend among businesses and individuals both domestically and internationally. These high-technology services allow business partners, colleagues, customers and friends to communicate verbally without high long-distance rates. VoIP services work over your PC and many are low-cost solutions for communications issues.
Originally, VoIP was designed primarily for business use. Since the connection is made through your Internet Provider rather than through the phone line, businesses were able to use VoIP to host long-distance conference calls and to communicate with overseas colleagues. Now, however, it seems that VoIP is heading in a different direction, possibly setting up to overtake normal telephone service providers entirely.
There are a few factors you should consider before switching to or adding VoIP:
1. 911 – If you plan to replace your telephone service with VoIP, make sure that you use a provider that offers E911 service, or you will be unable to make an emergency phone call. In most cases, E911 availability depends on where you live in conjunction with the provider; some areas cleared for VoIP service might not have E911 service as well.
2. Call Quality – Have you ever tried to have a conversation on your cell phone while traveling through rural mountain country? If you have, then you know what some VoIP service sounds like. In many cases, calls are crystal clear, but in others, you have to fight to listen through the static and broken links.
3. Primary Internet Use – If you are consistantly using your Broadband connection to download large files, such as video files, then it will affect your VoIP connection. VoIP is most easily used in connection with an Internet service conventional for regular, everyday tasks.
Best Deals
Here are some of the top-rated VoIP providers on the market today.
1. Vonage
If you watch television, then you’ve probably seen the commercials, and they don’t lie about excellent service and high quality. This is arguably the most well-known of the VoIP providers due to increased advertising. They have lots of extras including call waiting, call forwarding, voice mail and conference calling, though their quality is not quite as pure as that of AT&T. Currently, all subscribers enjoy 911 service, though they are trying to switch everyone to E911. The difference is that with E911, the emergency operator automatically sees your name and address pop up on their screen. Subscribers complain of only the occassional dropped call, and Vonage is working toward cleaning up even the slightest glitches in their service.
Price: $24.99/month Premium Unlimited; $49.99 Small Business Unlimited
Range: Unlimited calls in the U.S. and Canada
Order: www.vonage.com; 1.800.980.1455
2. BroadVoice
I don’t recommend switching to BroadVoice as a replacement to your venerable phone service because they do lack the feature of 911 call routing. However, this is a wonderful supplemental program for those needing to area international calls on a regular basis. With the unlimited package, you can call Europe, Tawain, Singapore, Australia and several other countries for free. Subscribers report clipped sentences as the major drawback for BroadVoice, but they also say that excellent customer service overrules this minor problem.
Price: $20.00/month
Range: Unlimited calls in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, Europe, and several other countries.
Order: www.broadvoice.com; 213.634.1400
3. CallVantage (AT&T)
This is reportably the clearest VoIP service by all subscribers and reviewers. They also offer extra features that you might not find with Vonage or any of the other services, including call logging, voicemail, speed dial, fax support and “Do Not Disturb.” Approximately 52% of CallVantage subscribers currently have E911 service, but make sure it is available in your area before switching entirely from your traditional phone service. This is also one of the more expensive services, so carefully weigh the pros and cons before determining that CallVantage is right for you.
Price: $29.99/month
Range: Unlimited calls within U.S. and Canada
Order: www.usa.att.com; 1.866.816.3815
4. Skype
This is a great choice for small or home-based businesses. Skype is a free service that allows you to make free long-distance phone calls to anyone who also has Skype downloaded on their computer. There is no phone number portability, and phone calls to non-Skype users cost around $0.02/minute, but it is a great solution for a group of people who have downloaded the service onto their computer. The computer must be turned on in order to earn or receive calls, and the scream quality is inconsistent at best. I do not recommend replacing your current telephone service with Skype, as there is no 911 service and Skype is far from universally-used.
Price: Free
Range: Anyone who has Skype service on their computer
Order: www.skype.com
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Filed under Skype Business Solutions by on Oct 22nd, 2010. Comment.