For Lindsay Holt, starting a business two years ago with her new husband already has paid off in an end run around maternal guilt.
For years, as a single mom working for a catalog company in the San Francisco Bay area, she used to leave for work before her daughter Danni, then in middle school, was awake. Holt helped Danni get moving in the morning by phone from the ferry as she commuted.
"That was just gut-wrenching," Holt recalled.
It was on the sidelines of one of Danni's soccer games that Holt was inspired to start the business that now allows her to make breakfast for her daughter and drive her to school. At the matches, Lindsay and her husband Tate noticed mothers complaining about having to run back home to fetch jerseys, shin guards and other items the kids forgot to pack.
After six months of research and patent searches, they launched Nagtags, electronic checklists that kids can attach to sports bags and backpacks. They put in $50,000 of their own money, excluding salary sacrifices, and raised about $575,000 from investors since incorporating in mid-2005.
The Holts are doing what many parents long to pursue. Being your own boss with the ability to work from home is the holy grail for many families, though the financial risks can be great.
Parents often have to sacrifice the regular income, employer-sponsored health insurance and other tax-favored benefits that make covering bills, planning for contingencies and saving for retirement easier and automatic. But the upside can be lucrative for people who find a market for their product or service, small-business experts say.
Nagtags Inc.'s two employees diverge in their tolerance for risk. "I've been a steady paycheck kind of person for a long time, so it takes some getting used to," said Lindsay Holt.
Tate Holt said he's more comfortable with uncertainty. "Having been through peaks and valleys of consulting for 15 years, I'm used to periods where there's comfort and then periods where there's panic."
Their family is in good company. About half of all U.S. businesses are home-based. Two-thirds of new businesses with at least one employee survive at least two years, and 44% survive at least four years, according to the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy.
Strategies for success
Entrepreneur Tamara Monosoff interviewed 17 successful businesswomen for her new book, "Secrets of Millionaire Moms." Among them was Julie Clark, creator of Baby Einstein, the video series for infants now owned by Disney.
"She said she couldn't do it all," Monosoff said of Clark, who found it increasingly difficult to do housework and grocery shopping on top of running her business. "As her revenue started building up she did take some money out to get that type of support."
Another "millionaire mom," Lane Nemeth, founded and led Discovery Toys for 20 years. The business nearly ran out of money three times but eventually rang up $100 million in annual sales. Nemeth sold that company to Avon a decade ago and is now chief executive of Petlane, a home-based party-plan business that sells pet products, based in Concord, Calif.
Nemeth advises parent entrepreneurs not to expect a home-based enterprise to free up their schedules.
"If you're serious about building a business, you're going to marry that darned thing," she said. "You do have more flexibility, but you don't more have free time."
More at:http://www.startupjournal.com/howto/soundadvice/20070702-gerencher.html?refresh=on
Monday, July 23, 2007
PriceFad is a new site that lets you see the historical price trends of a particular product, to help you see if today’s price is really the bestprice
PriceFad is a new site that lets you see the historical price trends of a particular product, to help you see if today’s price is really the best price.
The service pulls data from all over the web to accumulate the price history of particular items. You just type in the name of a product that you’re looking for, and PriceFad will give you the historical price points for that item on a graph. View by month, week or day, and see the data for a range of 1 day to a year. Toggle between average and detailed reports. You can chart the price history of two additional products for comparison purposes, which are provided in drop down boxes that list items available for you to choose from. There is also the option of having email alerts sent to you when a price changes, or you can subscribe to a product via RSS.
This site has a large amount of data for electronic items, such as GPS trackers, monitors, memory cards and television screens. This is probably due to the exacting nature of the product names. It would be additionally helpful to be able to enter the URL or other identifying mark, such as the ISBN number, to help track more products in more ways. A service like PriceFad could be a great ingredient for all sorts of mashhttp.
More at://www.pricefad.com/
The service pulls data from all over the web to accumulate the price history of particular items. You just type in the name of a product that you’re looking for, and PriceFad will give you the historical price points for that item on a graph. View by month, week or day, and see the data for a range of 1 day to a year. Toggle between average and detailed reports. You can chart the price history of two additional products for comparison purposes, which are provided in drop down boxes that list items available for you to choose from. There is also the option of having email alerts sent to you when a price changes, or you can subscribe to a product via RSS.
This site has a large amount of data for electronic items, such as GPS trackers, monitors, memory cards and television screens. This is probably due to the exacting nature of the product names. It would be additionally helpful to be able to enter the URL or other identifying mark, such as the ISBN number, to help track more products in more ways. A service like PriceFad could be a great ingredient for all sorts of mashhttp.
More at://www.pricefad.com/
Frogpond Is Meeting Place For Consumers And Online Networks
BzzAgent, the word-of-mouth media network, will launch a new social network within its service on Monday, entitled the Frogpond.
This new section will create a meeting place for consumers and online networks, where users can discover, experience and review online properties in the same manner as they do with other products. Being able to test a new site, track activity and gain user feedback is increasingly important with online communities, and the Frogpond is looking to allow businesses to reach out to an existing database of consumer reviewers (agents) that are willing to test and share information about the services they’ve tried out. The Frogpond will provide tracking tools for the businesses as well as additional sharing tools for the users, as an effort to encourage the “buzz” to start spreading. These tools will include links and badges, and the ability to share via email and instant messengers.
This is another way in which aspects of the offline world are being moved even further into an online world, and having a hub with access to a large, potential user base is something every start-up is looking for. The model has worked so far for TripAdvisor, and about 20 companies will be anxiously awaiting reviewers upon launch, including iVillage, Sportsvite, OurStage, Kayak, Joopz, and more. Similar services include Spigit and TryBeta.
More at:http://www.bzzagent.com/frog/FrogPond.do
via-Mas
This new section will create a meeting place for consumers and online networks, where users can discover, experience and review online properties in the same manner as they do with other products. Being able to test a new site, track activity and gain user feedback is increasingly important with online communities, and the Frogpond is looking to allow businesses to reach out to an existing database of consumer reviewers (agents) that are willing to test and share information about the services they’ve tried out. The Frogpond will provide tracking tools for the businesses as well as additional sharing tools for the users, as an effort to encourage the “buzz” to start spreading. These tools will include links and badges, and the ability to share via email and instant messengers.
This is another way in which aspects of the offline world are being moved even further into an online world, and having a hub with access to a large, potential user base is something every start-up is looking for. The model has worked so far for TripAdvisor, and about 20 companies will be anxiously awaiting reviewers upon launch, including iVillage, Sportsvite, OurStage, Kayak, Joopz, and more. Similar services include Spigit and TryBeta.
More at:http://www.bzzagent.com/frog/FrogPond.do
via-Mas
AdGridWork is a free advertising network and text link exchange
AdGridWork is a free advertising network and text link exchange. It's 100% free. Thats right folks: Free Advertising. No payments. Ever. Increase your traffic. We have thousands of sites on our network all ready and waiting to freely advertise your website or product. Improve your search engine rankings. Our network of advertisers provides links to your sites which are vital to increasing your rankings. We have attractive advertisement blocks AND text links. Most people are blind to the traditional AdSense ads. Our free ads are fresh, simple and appealing to the eye. Promote to a targeted audience. You can define exactly what types of sites you want your free advertisement to appear on. Registration and setup is a snap. Our service is completely user-friendly. Free metrics and tracking tools for webmasters. We provide your with detailed information on the users viewing your advertiseme.
More at:http://www.adgridwork.com/
More at:http://www.adgridwork.com/
Tracking All Blogging Trends
A service designed for marketing and communications practitioners BuzzLogic's on-demand service is designed with the needs of marketing and communications practitioners foremost in mind. Getting going is as easy as entering a search query. All you need to use BuzzLogic is an active subscription, access to a browser and the Internet. And training is a snap. The BuzzLogic service is built around an intuitive, easy-to-use dashboard that quickly guides users to the conversations, influencers and content they need. Easy-to-set up alerts notify practitioners when the volume around a conversation suddenly increases or other variances are exceeded, or even when a specific blogger joins a conversation. Board and management-ready, customizable reports can be exported into popular formats including PDF.
The company shows when certain bloggers blog and when there is a buzz bigger than usual about a certain subject. BuzzLogic can zero in on the subjects that a relevant to you company and alert of of the frequency of certain keywords. The company will make in depth charts and graphs for you to research and can send them to you in PDF format. The service isn't cheap by any means, at $500 bucks a month it will set you back a bit, but the information you can gain from the service can prove to be invaluable.
More at:http://buzzlogic.com/
The company shows when certain bloggers blog and when there is a buzz bigger than usual about a certain subject. BuzzLogic can zero in on the subjects that a relevant to you company and alert of of the frequency of certain keywords. The company will make in depth charts and graphs for you to research and can send them to you in PDF format. The service isn't cheap by any means, at $500 bucks a month it will set you back a bit, but the information you can gain from the service can prove to be invaluable.
More at:http://buzzlogic.com/
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