Friday, August 21, 2009

Reloadable prepaid debit cards

For many years I could not operate on so many levels as a small business owner because I did not have any kind of debit cards that I could use for my business. I wish that there had been a service such as NetSpend and their Prepaid Visa Card when I was starting up. NetSpend provides reloadable prepaid debit cards that can be used for a wide range of services (online shopping, bill payments, etc) without the need for having a bank account or credit history check.

Prepaid Visa cards are great for travel or to pay your kids when they are working for you, reload their prepaid card and they can use it to help them learn about banking and using credit cards and such.

There are over 30,000 locations to purchase a NetSpend reloadable debit card and over 90,000 places where you can reload a card from. To find out more visit the NetSpend website link above.

Post Office shipping supplies

I got the boxes I ordered from the USPS, so now I can start back into trying to get things sold online.

I want to make up some things for my Skyfire Quilting site and get started trying to sell stuff over that site to make the business start working out right.

The USPS will send people that need to ship a lot of things priority mail and other kinds of shipping materials for free, so even if your local post office does not carry packaging stuff or does not have the size of boxes you use, you can get them from the post office website and they'll mail them right to you - no cost (not even shipping) on certain supplies.

Health care bill and the small business owner

I'm sitting here listening to even more debates about the health care bills that are before congress. There was a gal earlier I saw that had the printed bill sitting beside her on the news desk, the thing was at least a foot thick, just paper - no binder stuff. There is so much going back and forth about the health care bill that I want to know what you all think about it. Is it a good thing or a bad thing from your perspective as a small business owner? What do you think works and does not work about it?

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Wedge Pillow at Allegro Medical

The last thing you want to do after a long hard day of working is have a bad night's sleep. For many the simple addition of a wedge pillow can make all the difference between getting a decent night's sleep and waking up exhausted. The long wedge shaped foam pillow is placed on the bed to elevate your chest and head anywhere from a few inches to a 26 degree angle - a full 12 inches.

If you think that you might sleep better with a wedge pillow, or you find yourself placing two or more pillows under your head at night, then you might want to check out the wide range of wedge pillows that Allegro Medical carries. Allegro Medical also has an assortment of body positioning pillows and pillows that are specifically designed to reduce snoring.

Allegro Medical has over 50,000 products in over 50 categories of items, subdivided into hundreds of subcategories that let you search by condition, product brands, even specific parts of the body. And now, for items that you use often, you can enjoy easy auto reordering by selecting a frequency you would like items shipped to you.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Cell Phone Technology



The next time you talk on the small bluetooth headset you bought for your cell phone, pause for a moment and think about how tiny that device is. Then think about how large the first such device was... no not the first bluetooth headphone, I mean the first phone you could carry down the street with you and talk to someone.

Known as The Brick, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was introduced in 1984 with a cost of $3,995.00 and offered half an hour of talk time for each charge, at a cost of about a dollar a minute. The Brick weighed in at 2 pounds and was not exactly the kind of phone you just slipped into your pocket.

I remember my mom had one, in fact, even up to a month before she passed away in 2008 she was commenting that if the phone company would have let her she would have reactivated the Brick rather than get one of those new tiny phones. I still have it around here somewhere, packed away in a box.

Technology has come a very long way in the last 25 years... where is it going to be in another 25 years? Another 50? What will our great grandchildren be seeing when our great grandparents rode in wagons and tapped out messages on the latest technology - the telegraph line.

(Michael Douglas in the 1987 movie Wall Street with The Brick cellular phone)

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Found Money Can Make You Money

Every year people lose money without even realizing it. They move away and leave unclaimed capitol credits with a utility company, or they do not know they are due money from an insurance company, perhaps they have a HUD refund due that they do not know about. Whatever the reason, there is a lot of unclaimed money floating around out there and the At Home Business USA site wants to help you find out how you can help people regain lost money. What's in it for you? The At Home Business USA website says that you can get $3 for every $10 of found money, leaving those you locate money for with $7 out of every $10 that was owed to them, and many are more than happy to pay this finder's fee.

There is a video on the website that can show you more about what I am talking about. The video details information on several people that were covered by the news and Florida and Alabama's unclaimed money at the State Treasury offices. It is well worth watching the video to find out more about this, because according to the site, Oprah says that 9 out of 10 people have free money waiting for them. To see Oprah's New Free Money Video Click Here And while you are looking for money for others, don't forget to check for yourself and those you know. I had heard about this kind of thing a while back and did some looking and found where someone I know was owed some money. You never know what you'll find out there on the Internet, and sometimes it can mean up to 30% of the found money being paid to you - imagine it - you could make $200 or more working part time, and help others find money they never knew they had at the same time.

Some coffee shops in New York say no laptops please

The next time you go to plug your laptop in at your favorite coffee shop you might want to double check that there is not a "no laptops" sign on the outlet.

Some coffee shops in New York have unplugged the laptops because of the lack of revenue from the computer users, who can sit for hours while purchasing little more than a cup of coffee. At least one coffee shop has even placed signs on the outlets requesting customers not plug in their laptops in an effort to conserve a bit on electricity use.

You can find out more about the limited laptop use in Thursday's Wall Street Journal article on the coffee shops pulling the plug.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Small Businesses and Government Contracts

On Monday the Wall Street Journal published an article on small businesses and the government's stimulus contracts that caught my attention. It is about the owner of a small publishing-services company that is pursuing government contracts. Titled Small Businesses Chase Big Stimulus Money the article explains what is to be expected when pursuing government contracts and what the outlook is for small businesses looking for those contracts.

Something that caught my eye, as a woman who owns a small business, is that the federal government has a goal each year to award 23% of its procurement dollars to small businesses. And one of their targets is for women-owned businesses. To find out more about this check out the article at the Wall Street Journal linked to above.

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Saturday, August 08, 2009

Web Hosting Rating

I can tell you that as a home based business owner, I know how vital it is to have a website for your business. When you are thinking about building a home based business, one of the first steps you will want to take in getting your business out there and recognized is to build a website for it. The website is also often the first impression of you many customers are going to have, so make sure that it is a good impression.

Web Hosting Rating can help you select a website hosting provider for your business, and their best web hosting awards can help you select the best of their picks for your needed uses. Do you need a good site for a forum or blog? Maybe you need to have multiple domains hosted or an ecommerce site? Their awards can help you determine which sites they feel are the best in a variety of areas that are of interest to small and home based businesses.

Don't let your business falter because of a lack of a good hosting company that is suited for your site and businesses particular needs. Check out Web Hosting Rating and find out more about the services they have rated and how they can help you pick the perfect hosting site for your business website.

Speaker Case for iPod and other MP3 players

The radio in my dad's car has not worked since my sister had the car for a little while. I think the speaker wires might have come loose or something, not sure, I just know that my dad likes to sit in the car and listen to the radio when I am in stores and such, but with the radio no longer working he can't do that. I think the trouble might be related to the windows, since they stopped working during that time as well.

Anyway, the point of it is, without my dad being able to listen to the radio like he likes to do, I have had to think of an alternative for him. I came up with one when I was in town earlier. I went in and picked up his medications at the pharmacy and while I was there I found this really cool deal in the electronics department that lets me play my iPod Nano on speakers.

Yes, I know, those are not new, but this one is worth my mention because it is a cool little case with built in speakers. Made by HMDX Audio, the Speaker-On-The-Go portable speaker case is a nice looking little case with two speakers on the front. The thing is designed for use with iPod and other MP3 players, and my little iPod Nano easily slides inside tucked into a protective net deal to prevent it sliding about. An audio jack can be plugged into the top of the iPod to connect it to the speakers on the front of the case - which has a clam close styling with full wrap-around zipper.

Two AA batteries power the speakers, so there is no added drain on the battery of the iPod. And the speakers are so nice. Very amazing sound quality from them. I turned on my copy of the Torchwood audio novel "Lost Souls". The sound of the audio book was very clear through the speakers, which played the sound at an easy to hear level even at only half volume, the player on the console and the sun roof open on the car.




Thursday, August 06, 2009

Stress and working at home

There is a lot of stress to be found in any work, but I am starting to think there is a particular kind of stress that plagues those who work from home. A stress in getting a balance between work accomplished during the day and things that need to be done around the house while one is home to do them.

For some reason, with me, it too often works out that the things that has to be done around the house are more necessary than the work. Which is awful since the work is important to get done if I am going to pay bills.
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