New Offers.com Small Business Savings Center

A new year brings new opportunities for small businesses to grow and be successful. Offers.com, a leading coupon and deal website, announced the Small Business Savings Center – a focused marketplace where entrepreneurial and established business professionals can quickly find the right tools and resources they’ll need to save time and money. Small business owners can save on everything from office supplies, computers and software, to financial and marketing services.

To help small businesses reach their goals in 2012, the Offers.com Small Business Savings Center features a Small Business Survival Guide with tips on how to manage priorities, simplify bookkeeping, and administer tasks and purchases. There are even more ideas on ways to stretch a company’s budget in the Offers.com Deals and Savings section. Small businesses can find the latest online sales, deals and promotions, and all are verified on a daily basis by the Offers.com editorial team to ensure their quality.

“Offers.com Small Business Savings Center is an excellent resource for small businesses to save both time and money,” said Sunil Kaki, Marketing Leader, Intuit Small Business. “We’re very happy to be a part of the Small Business Savings Center, supporting Offers.com’s valuable initiative in this important sector of U.S. business.”

The Offers.com Small Business Savings Center is divided into three areas:

Office: Supplies & Furniture – Find everything from office desks, chairs and staplers – from popular stores like Staples.com, OfficeDepot.com, and OfficeMax.com. Small businesses can find savings on items that will keep their company operating at maximum efficiency.

Computers: Hardware & Software and Services – Getting the right laptop or desktop, printers, software, and other electronic equipment can make or break a small business. Offers.com not only highlights the best products available, but features great deals on the technology required to take a company to the next level in this competitive market.

Services: Financial, Legal & Marketing – Save on resources that keep operations running smoothly including payroll, legal services, bookkeeping, and tax preparation. Get affordable help from experts, and let them take care of background operations, while businesses can focus on new projects, new clients, and ground-breaking innovations. Small business owners can also find the Best Small Business Credit Cards for their company by comparing rewards, APR rates, and cash-back opportunities.

To find resources on ways small businesses can grow, save and be successful in 2012, visit:

www.offers.com/small-business

About Offers.com
Offers.com is published by Vertive LLC and saves consumers time and money by helping them find the best coupons, deals and offers from more than 4,000 online stores and companies. Since its launch in February 2009, Offers.com has grown to over 200 categories, including travel, software, clothing and shoes and more. The site has more than 35,000 of the best offers, including promotions, coupons and coupon codes, deals, free trials, and free offers. Offers are verified, rated and updated daily by the Offers.com editorial team. Vertive publishes other Websites that help consumers save money when they shop online including DailyDeals.com, CouponCodes.com, and Subscription.com. Information on these sites is supported by original content such as savings tips and buying guides, and the sites are organized in a way that helps consumers quickly find the best offer to address their immediate shopping needs.

Starting a web business trials and successes

You can try this idea.............

There are many stages to starting your own business, especially a web business. Some people say the first challenge is to define a vision of where you want the business to go. That doesn't necessarily mean your end game is a yacht in Monte Carlo - although it doesn't hurt to dream. It does mean working hard to imagine the words and pictures that really define what you will do and how you will do it.

You need to consider who your clients will be and then distill your business proposition into just one sentence or two. It sets you on your course so it must be easy to grasp in a few words showing your purpose and direction.

Be clear in your description. Use words that make the description easy to understand. I was recently offered some great advice - find words that can explain the idea to your mother or someone not involved in business, or a person from another country who's language is not your own.

Often when we begin to define what we intend to do in our business our excitement creates many ideas and also tangents, and we lose focus. Fix your focus on the very specifics of what you intend to deliver to your customers and how you intend to do it. Then you are on your way. You can in fact use this description to develop your name, your logo and your business plan. We labored some over our logo, foisting surveys with many options to unsuspecting friends. Their feedback was useful and did indeed help us achieve our final logo.

Our story - Chapter 1

At the end of last year, a friend and I decided to start a web business, she had been house sitting after returning home to live in Australia. She owns properties there but they were all rented out. Instead of renting and expending funds, she decided to offer her services for house sitting.

She had found a placement through an Australian agency and after a few months housesitting decided the format of the house sitting agency could be improved.

Very excited about the concept and feeling it was one she could easily promote because of her good experience she pulled me in. Despite my being located on the other side of the world in the UK, we were both excited and could see the potential for such a business.

I began to build on her concept and propose ways we could automate the agency processes using a social network on the web as a platform to create new links and connections and so accelerating our reach to potential house sitters and home owners. I also suggested that we build a database to help us automatically match people's requirements for sitters and sitting placements. And so the idea took shape.

Our business idea is:

A social network to match and introduce house sitters and home owners.

We also provide police and background checks for both, and offer use of our legally approved contracts and document templates to enable them to make their own arrangements.

Our website name is: www.housesitmatch.com

We operate in the UK and Australia.

Start-up story

Around this time last year I began work on a project that has radically changed my life. Whereas in the past I worked regularly on hubpages and affiliate marketing both with some level of success, on the 1^st of January last year I changed direction and become a co-founder of group hotel booking website. I have learned a lot in the meantime, both with regards to business and myself.

Dingadeal started with the question: How can we simplify group bookings? Both myself and my two co-founders have experienced difficulties in organising group trips. We have organised numerous stags(bachelor parties in the US) and sports trips. Organising these is time consuming and stressful. Having spoken to hotels we saw that there is also difficulties for them when accommodating groups, this includes getting rooming lists from the group organiser.

We were lucky enough to get backing from Enterprise Ireland and the Endeavour Programme. Enterprise Ireland are an Irish state agency that offer an assistance to start-up business and have been very helpful to us throughout our journey. The Endeavour Programme is one of the most highly regarded incubator programmes in Ireland. It is based in Tralee, Co Kerry and it has the support of Jerry Kennelly of stockbyte and tweak.com fame.

As part of the Endeavour programme we regularly had to pitch to panels of investors about our business. These stress panels helped us refine our business model and thought us about how to manage money and grow our business.

There were downsides to working on this project, my work on Dingadeal has meant that I haven’t had the chance to continue writing as many hubs as I used to in the past. This combined with the Google algorithm change has meant my hubpages account has suffered and income resulting from hubpages has taken a nose dive. Similarly, the affiliate websites I own and maintain have lost a bit traction, this is due to me focusing on Dingadeal and not on these sites. I suppose my time like everyone else is limited and it is impossible to do everything.

Source: http://www.dingadeal.com

How hubpages has prepared me for the business world

1. I spent a lot of time while working on hubpages learning about SEO and Social media. I didn’t realise how much I knew about both topics until I started talking to other people about it. This has given me a marketable skill and a place in a very talented team.
2. Similarly, articles from the founder of hubpages.com Paul Edmondson have acted as inspiration. This hub in particular is one I have been reading over every now and then when I am in need of a kick in the backside.
3. I also learned how to write for the web. Writing for the internet is definitely different from writing for a newspaper and magazine; it requires a different style and different formatting. I learned how to write for the web and have kept a blog about our experiences as a start up that has turned out to be quite popular.

Freshwater Pearl Cultivation – A profitable venture

Success in pearl cultivation

This story is not about the oysters that are found in sea water. But a story of the achievements of pearl producer, Ravikiran Bhat, a man from Karnataka State who has become an expertise in the art of pearl production.

He became successful in growing pearls indoor and inside the fresh water tanks.

Ravikiran Bhat, a young man from North Karnataka, India, has ventured into pearl cultivation, a rare adventure.

Ravikiran had an interest to learn astrology and the related planets. In the vedic astrology, pearl is the gem that belongs to Moon. He became more interested in knowing the details of pearl. And later he thought of cultivating the same, at his place.

This young fellow born on June 24, 1987, got his degree of MFSc in pearl farming, from the Freshwater fisheries Research Center CAFS(FFRC), Wuxi, Jiangsu, which is located in China. He collected lot of information through internet and learnt the pearl cultivation methods. He also came to know about the places where training is given for the same.

He visited the Central Institution of Fresh water Aquarium (SIFA) at Bhubaneshwar(Orissa state) and also the Kochin Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) in Kerala state. He got the necessary training from experts there and learnt the techniques. He invested Rs.4 lakh initially before he entered the indoor fresh water pearl cultivation job.

Inside the oyster

Inside the fresh water troughs...

Today, Ravikiran Bhat has achieved the rare feat of becoming a successful pearl cultivator in India. After achieving this feat, he has become the only pearl cultivator in the whole of Karnataka. His interest to be a corporate leader is widely appreciated by the people of the state.

Within his house yard he has four fresh water ponds of 60 feet wide and 15 feet long, for the oyster cultivation. The age of the oyster is decided by the lines formed over them. Small oyster shells are useless. Therefore it is necessary to be careful while selecting them. Oxygen is supplied through pipes to maintain the cool of the river environment, within the water tanks. Sand and small lime shells are mixed into the pond water.

Three types of pearls are available in the market. Natural , artificial and the ones that get cultivated within the shells. Ravikiran has accepted the third one, the fresh water pearl cultivation.

Oyster operation

Oysters operated

River water has in it 52 types of oysters. Lamellidens marginalis, Lamellidens corrianus, Parreysia corrugata types are of great importance in pearl cultivation.

After 10 days time, the selected oysters are placed in glass troughs and the good quality oysters will be ready to get operated.

Just before the operation, the oysters are given an anesthetic. For this, a tub is filled with water first and then anesthesia powder is added to it. Oysters are left in a condition of artificial respiration for about half an hour. Slowly they reach the subconscious state . During this stage, the oysters will be ready to get operated. So, this is an important part of pearl cultivation.

Ravikiran becomes a real doctor to these oysters, at this stage. Wearing a glouse, with tongs and plucker in hand, he operates 25 oysters per day.

Pearl oysters

At the Intensive Care Unit...

Oysters are taken out from the water when they are in a state of unconsciousness and operated. Through operation nucleus is inserted into the organ called Gonad(a small bead shaped thing which is imported from Japan).

Once again, the oysters are placed in troughs for artificial respiration. They will be tested again to see whether they have come back to consciousness. It is totally like a Intensive Care Unit. They will then be placed in the same position for 10 days. More cautiousness is required at this stage, because there will be every possibility of oysters losing their lives.

Month of January is considered to be best for operating the oysters. Oysters that undergo operation are placed separately in small meshes and will be hung down to a wooden ladder laid flat, over the tank. Thus the oysters that have got adjusted to the outer environment will be kept under a close watch. Finally, they are placed back into the oyster collection tank. Later, they will be there in collection for the next 1-1/2 years. As the nucleus is added causing trouble to the oyster, it gives out a sticky liquid called Nacre. This liquid is given out so as to escape from the trouble caused due to addition of the nucleus. Later, it gets transformed into a pearl.

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Ravi kiran busy with pearl cultivation

To reduce pearl cultivation costs...

Better quality pearl can be obtained anyway. But the much needed color of the pearl is impossible to attain. So, it wears the same color that is present within the inner layer of the oyster. Pearl also gets cultivated in the similar fashion.

Nucleus will be imported for the sake of cultivation. The Geomentron sheets that are used in pearl collection tank are not available in India. Therefore they will be imported. Lakhs of rupees will be needed to invest into pearl cultivation.

These pearls are checked and tested in the international market when they get ready for the trading purpose, after cultivation. Only the expert consultants buy these pearls. There is a lot of demand for such pearls in the foreign countries.

Mr, Ravikiran says, As the farmers get more and more involved into the purchase of raw materials needed for pearl cultivation, easy methods may be found for the product marketing. Many a young unemployed people get the employment. Research as well as starting of good training centres will help farmers to get a systematic direction in this field.

These are his confident words.

Ravikran Bhat, the pearl culture expert

The honors he recieved for his achievement

The State level award for Kannada Kuvara 2008, and State level award for young achiever 2008.


Ravikiran is now, the chairman at his Fresh Water Pearl Culture Research Center and actively involved in training the pearl cultivators who are interested in the pearl farming. He has started the Ravikiran's Pearl Foundation. He is training those people in 3-5 places of Chattisgarh and Andhrapradesh state. He also has plans to start the consultation centres in Karnataka state, this year.

Entrepreneur Ideas|Best Start up Business Ideas for 2012

From my experience these are the top three ways to make money with your computer from home;

1. Niche Websites

Find a niche and build a website based around the interests of that niche and you can enjoy long term income and success online. Examples of a good niche would be Golf, Horseriding, Cooking, Painting, Dog Training, Health and Fitness or indeed any other area of interest that attracts a group of people who are enthusiastic and willing to spend within that niche on information or real world products that will either increase their knowledge, improve their life or take them one step closer to fulfilling their dreams. A word of warning though; a lot of people make the mistake of going for a small niche and there is a lot of advice out there on finding an untapped niche and tapping into it to make money. This is a mistake in my opinion for a couple of reason;

• First, because an untapped niche is untapped for a reason - at least these days it is. It may not have been five or ten years ago but today, if it hasn't been touched by the top internet marketers, it hasn't been touched for good reason; there is no money in it!

• Second, if you want to build an ongoing income, you need to find a niche big enough to sustain an ongoing conversation over time. Your intention should be to build a list of subscribers to whom you will be able to market to and sell products to while maintaining and improving your relationship with them. The reason you need a big niche to do this is simply down to numbers and percentages; the bigger your list of subscribers the more likely you are to hit your income targets when promoting products or services to your subscriber list. It is generally accepted that each subscriber is worth around $1 per month to you as a webmaster and this is in terms of income generated mainly from sales made by email as a recommendation from a trusted source (You). If the market or niche is too small, the potential to grow your subscriber list is also limited.
  
• THINK BIG and you will succeed!

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great way to start out making money online. Put simply, affiliate marketing is selling products on behalf of someone else. These can be information products or real world, tangible products and the maker or owner of the product will pay you a commission for every sale made by you.

• It's free to sign up as an affiliate and there are literally products and services to sell to every sector in the market from health to sustainable energy; whatever your interest there are products to sell as an affiliate.

• To make real money from other people's products though you either want to sell high priced items for which you will receive a large commission or recurring income affiliate products (this means you sell a product or service which has an ongoing payment plan or monthly membership and you then receive ongoing payments back in return. There are numerous sites that offer you the opportunity to sign up as an affiliate and start making money.

The best known site is;

• ClickBank (www.clickbank.com)

This is the number one affiliate marketers resource. To select recurring payment products using your selected keywords run an "advanced search" and CB will return a selection of results for you to work through. Below is a list of 5 additional affiliate marketing sites to provide you with more information and resources on affiliate marketing.

1. PayDotCom (www.paydotcom.com)

Not quite as powerful as Clickbank in terms of finding recurring income products to market as an affiliate but still very useful and highly regarded by affiliates out there.

2. Lifetime Commissions (www.lifetimecommissions.com)

This is a great "one stop shop" where you can find recurring income affiliate offers to promote. There are also some strict guidelines in terms of what can and cannot be promoted, so no gambling or porn for example (Hey, my father would have been proud of these guys! ;-))

3. AffiliateSeeking.com (www.affiliateseeking.com)

Affiliate Seeking is not a payment provider, as are Clickbank and PaydotCom, but offers a simple and easy to use directory to research affiliate offers in multiple niches and areas of interest. They also have an area for recurring income affiliate opportunities.

4. ResidualIncomeFinder (www.residualincomefinder.com)

This directory is dedicated to residual income products that relate to your niche. This is all these guys offer so if long term regular income online is what you want from your affiliate empire this is a good place to start.

5. JVNotifyPro.com (www.jvnotifypro.com)

This site will allow you to be kept in the know when new product launches are about to arrive, which lets you offer your list of subscribers the next best thing when it arrives or to establish your online marketing plan based around the products keywords ahead of the competition should you decide to sign up as an affiliate.


Affiliate marketing is a great way to make extra money from home and with little to no risk but remember, like all good things, success comes with a price so expect to invest time and energy into learning how to market other peoples products and take what you learn and apply it consistently over time to increase sales and generate the income you want.

What To Do If You Want to Make Money Online Without Spending Money

If you have been dreaming about making a living from your home so you can stay home with your children, quit a daytime job you hate, or to eliminate the expensive drive to and from an office, it is time to stop dreaming and start doing. If you are willing to put out some time and energy toward making that dream come true, you can in fact learn how to make money online without any start-up expenses.

Almost all business models have expenditures that require that the business spend money to make money. Working online to earn money changes this, because all you need is the computer and the connection. If you have both, then you’ve probably got what you need to get started.

Some of the easiest ways to make money online starting right this second are writing for a freelance outsourcing site, blogging, affiliate marketing, and freelance web design.

If you have practiced a certain skill set (graphic design or writing, for some examples) then you can make money just hiring yourself out. You won’t have to spend money for obvious reasons.

You can use sites such as Associated Content to put up some high quality writings and use those links as your samples if you are worried about your work being used without your knowing.

Blogging has a potential to earn with Google’s ad programs and the newer pay per post sites, but it takes time to get a good blog going and attract loyal readers. You will have to blog consistently for 3 months before you can get paid per post.

If you want to try your hand at affiliate marketing, you’ll have to have some level of understanding of marketing tactics and skills. It won’t take much, but you’ll have to know how to convert people into sales and write compelling copy.

Earning an online income won’t come fast, but will require that you actually have a game plan and a direction. It won’t be easy, and it will take a lot of work.

4 Best Ways To Earn An Extra Income

There is a lot going on when it comes to finances in the world today. People have lost their jobs and are desperately looking for ways to make a little money. In this article I will tell you the 4 best ways on how to earn an extra income and still have time to do other things!

How do I make more money?

The first and simplest thing you can do is get a second job. You can get a part time job delivering pizzas or working at a gas station. You could even get a job as a game tester or anything like that. It may not be ingenuous but it definitely is guaranteed to break in some extra cash if you need it!

The second way you can make some extra income is to sell something! You can sell a rocking chair that sits on your porch that you no longer use. You can sell just about anything that isn’t garbage. There are even certain types of garbage you could sell for a few bucks (recycling)!

You could also make a product. If you have a certain skill carving or any other trade then you could start your own little business! If you bake great cookies, sell them! Figure out the amount of money you would need to charge for each cookie to break even, then sell them for slightly more than that. I guarantee if they are good, then a whole bunch of them will be bought!

Another way you can earn extra income is to do surveys or mystery shop. There are thousands of businesses that need opinions on their products and their employees. Let them know how great their customer service is or how something could be changed. You many come out with a free pizza or a little extra dough.

The last way is to do small side jobs. These jobs include mowing the lawn or trimming the hedges.

That is the gist of how to make some money doing side jobs.

Croak.it! ; IIT Kharagpur grads bring ‘voice’ to an online platform, literally!

So if you have watched the Oscar nominated movie King’s Speech, you’d know how the whole movie came down to this one scene when King George VI screams “Because I have a voice!” and realizing that in his heat and anger he has forgotten his stammer, the proud teacher Lionel Logue pauses, smiles and says softly “Yes, you do.”

Yes, we do. We all have a voice. We all have a say. We all have our two cents to give, but what we don’t have is a platform to voice it on. So just like Lionel Logue does in the movie, two young IIT Kharagpur graduates, Srinivasa Teja and Protik Roychowdhury, decided to give us our voice. They decided to make communication online much more personal. Creating a platform for bathroom singers of their campus kicked it off. This platform allowed students to put up their songs and others would rate it, all anonymously. That’s where the idea found its seed and from there it snowballed into Croak.it (which they have recently launched). It is an online platform where one can express oneself using their voice instead of text, which is quite boring. Every unique voice stamp is called a croak on the platform.

So why croak? You may ask. Because croaks have a wide variety of uses, depending on the user! From personal messages to picture tagging to holiday wishes, a croak can allow you to make it that much more personal than a text box and 26 alphabets. The most awesome feature being you can croak anywhere on the internet!

“When you give something to people over the internet, you can’t imagine what all awesome things they do with it. It’s like they’ve gone all the way to show you the capacity of your product”, croaks Srinivasa himself. In just the three day testing that they did with a “Try it here” croak feature on the website, they got more than 10000 unique pageviews, and more than 1000 croaks tried and many thousands through their extensions. The feedback that they got was quite encouraging in the sense that people liked the fact that they could use their voice to berate, say hello to, and comment at friends, among others. One of the users had this to say, “Something much better than email!” The best reaction was “You’re doing something that is actually useful” Aah! Satisfaction! But what made their day was when they actually received a croak from a very elderly person wishing someone a happy birthday in Hindi!

When you factor in that there was no publicity and advertising involved, but just the two of them croaking on websites like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. the numbers exceeded everyone’s expectations, including theirs. A two member team at present working full time, looking after the technical and business issues, both Protik and Srinivasa are still working towards making the product as smooth and easy to use as possible. Monetization is the next logical step after they have the perfect product. They have concrete plans for the monetization stage; however, right now they are focused on building a great product. It’s been 4 months since they became operational, though they’ve been working on it for about 6 months and are to launch a few novel and innovative features after www.Croak.it/ is public.

The market size is huge when you consider what Croak.it! has to offer. Obviously the major users will be in the range of 15-35 years, but considering that croaking allows you to express yourself in your own language (which is what text CANNOT do), the potential is huge. You can croak in Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi et cetera. Also, the product aims at making online communication much easier for people who don’t know English well, handicapped individuals and kids as well! Croaking is easier than typing, that you won’t deny!

But obviously, to make thing easy for the others, one has to make things difficult for oneself. Needless to say, Srinivasa and Protik too had their share of challenges in this entrepreneurial space. For starters, they bootstrapped and put in all the savings that they had to get this kick-started, although now they’re being incubated at iAccelerator, in IIM Ahmedabad.

They are now looking at funding opportunities as they feel they are at a stage where funding could help them reach the next level. However, one of the main challenges that they face now is finding good investment deals. Deals have to be good for both parties concerned, for them and the investors!

The investment scene in Technology startups is a bit different inIndiaas compared to US. The market is still nascent and developing. But then that is to be expected in a country such as ours.

“However, a shout out to iAccelerator for providing the platform and wherewithal to tech startups such as us!” croaks Protik. “iA is definitely the best available inIndia(in our opinion). More important than the incubation money are the things that you learn here & your experiences here. We can’t stress this enough. You often don’t realize it, but it is the people you have the opportunity to meet and interact with and the environment where you are working that is most valuable.”

So let’s add to the croaks and all be heard!

money on Votodo, an action network

A pidgin play on the words, “What to do”, Votodo is an action network that helps people share, discover and do what they want to do. Vacations or weekends many a time induce loathing wails proclaiming that there’s nothing interesting to do or sometimes in cases, there’s an urge to do what one loves to but it remains at that; things one would want to do.

Filling this very void, Votodo tries to include a new dimension to social networking, the “todo’s”. People can discover things to do and connect with like-minded people based on their location and interests. Votodo is deeply integrated with Facebook and Twitter to make it easy for Votodo users to share their todos and connect with people they already know.

All this seems pretty hunky dory but what does one do with these todos? “Well, todos help people keep track of the things they’d want to do” replies co-founder, Nirav, with a chuckle. He further adds, “If status updates, check-ins or tweets tell you what’s happening, todos on Votodo give a fair idea of what’s going to happen. Votodo community also inspires, help and join each other to do interesting things and make stuff actually happen” and this is what Votodo is at heart.