Business Generation

Every real estate agent knows the value “curb appeal” brings to showing and selling a home. That first impression the buyer gets when he/she steps out of the car and looks at the property you want to sell often determines whether the buyer wants to proceed – and how seriously he/she will take the rest of the tour.

The same is true for your e-mail marketing campaigns – no matter what business you are in. The placement of elements on the page, the font choice, even the colors you use all create an impression before your prospect reads a single word of text. So you want to be sure the impression you’re creating is a good one.

Still, you don’t have to be a professional artist or designer to create an e-mail marketing campaign with plenty of curb appeal. These easy-

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There are a lot of online personal finance tools out there that will help make your personal finance life a little more efficient. You have, of course, the headliner in Mint.com, now owned by Intuit, to help track all of your spending. You have a litany of budgeting tools, like You Need a Budget, and they’ve all been popular because the idea of online privacy has been flipped on its head with the popularity of Facebook.

I have been asked, on occasion, which tools I use. I don’t use any of them.

I trust all the services to do the right thing and to protect my information and privacy, but I know that sometimes mistakes are made and things can happen. Maybe I’m a little too old school, I’m about the age where I am comfortable telling people where I am via Twitter but not comfortable telling a third party my banking credentials. Mint an

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“When you’re the business owner, there’s no one behind you. You’re the back-stop.” (Warren Brown, Washington, D.C. Small Business Person of the Year 2006).

How many days and nights has this reality kept you on your toes? From making sure your business stays on track to cheerleading your employees, day-to-day business ownership is about what you make it.

But what happens when you need help? Back-stop or not, you can’t go it alone forever. Help is at hand, if you know where to find it.

The government, in particular, offers a great deal of resources that support small business owners, both online and locally. Take a look at this Small Business Assistance and Training guide on Business.gov and you’ll find a variety of options – local SBA offices, Small Business Development Centers, SCORE, and more.

But just what does each of these provide? And where

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I’ve recently started work on a new book: The Big Book of Business Ideas. I’d like to include a number of case studies in the book and some ‘from the trenches’ advice.

In order to compile the case studies and advice, I need around 400 small business owners to answer a simple questionnaire.

What’s in it for the business owners?

It’s an opportunity to get a bit of free publicity, both in the book and on the book’s website.

So how can you help?

If you have started a business in the last five years please help me by completing the questionnaire.

If yo

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The inventor behind a revolutionary idea has won thousands of pounds to bring it into the shops.

Stephen Britt, a technician at the University of Brighton, has designed a system which uses pedal power to transformcycles into electric bikes.

It enables riders to move quicker and easier up hills.

He built a prototype and entered it into Barclays’ Take One Small Step competition.

He has been handed £50,000 to develop his idea after winning a public vote.

The 40-year-old, who works at the School of Education at Falmer, has set up a company called Fast Forward and hopes to bring the product to the market by this time next year.

Mr Britt, who has an HND in electrical engineering and a degree in computer science, said: “It is a fairly basic prototype at the moment, which shows promise and proves that it works. But

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My family and I used to drive across Canada every other year. We had family out in Ontario, and we lived in BC, so every second year we would pack up the car, or the van, or the trailer, and head up over the mountains and into the plains. I have both fond and traumatizing memories from those road trips, and those memories are ones I would like to someday instill in my children. However, with the cost of gas steadily rising and the price of flights dropping, going on a road trip hardly seems like the bargain it used to. Here are six ways you can save money on a road trip.

Bring a Cooler

One of the easiest ways to save money on a road trip, big or small, is to bring a cooler. If you are doing a day trip to the beach, then you can easily bring along some sandwiches, snacks, and drinks. Even if you are on a longer road trip, a cooler can help you save a lot of money. Read more…