Your business can grow very easy

What is the first rule of the marketing ? I know that rule. Just find out what people want to buy. If you've got something that people want to buy, marketing is a snap - you can be as lazy about marketing as you like, you'll still be a success. Is lazy marketing for you? Your success may take a little longer if you choose to go the totally lazy marketing route. Sometimes you don´t have a choice; you may have a fulltime job and want to start your own business. That's the message of lazy marketing: it's the scenic route to success. Enjoy the view.

Here are some ways to market your business.

Build up a Web site - Put up a Web site, or get someone to do it for you. Then forget about it. You won´t hear much for around six months, but once you get listed on the search engines, you'll start getting business.You can help the process along, by promoting your site, and by updating it regularly, but once it's up, and you're listed on the search engines, you can be as lazy as you like.

Make three phone calls a day - How long does it take to make three phone calls? You could probably make them in ten minutes.Who will you call? Potential clients, suppliers, people who are in the same business you're in. The idea is that you're shaking the trees. Once you start communicating, you'll move your business along.

Get in contact with two or three clients a day - Call, email or fax one client a day. You're not touting for business, you're just touching base. If you're a writer, this means send out one letter, query or proposal a day, every week day to your previous clients: that is, editors who've bought from you in the past.

Do what you enjoy - This is the ultimate lazy way to work, as well as to market. If you love what you do, it's not work. Make a list of marketing-related activities that are fun for you. Again, be creative about this. Maybe you like to interact with others. So why not start a business breakfast club in your area?

There you have it. Some ways to market your business. Take the scenic route to success today!

A new online tool for learning a new foreign language

LiveMocha is a new online tool for learning a new foreign language, within a helpful network that addresses the issue of remote learning on two ends.

Centering around a social network, LiveMocha lets people help other users for the purpose of learning a new language. By providing this network alongside a set of tools that have proven useful for teaching new languages, Livemocha gives you multiple ways in which to learn whatever language you’d like. LiveMocha also has in-house tutors that will help you along the way. The lack of immersion is probably among the biggest reasons why many language-learning programs (including high school and college classes) don’t work.

So LiveMocha enables users to help each other with video chat tools and structured conversation exercises, and incentivizes them with competitions and a language buddy system for encouragement. You’re probably thinking that letting users earn money for a tutoring system would be a good way to incentivize users, too. Well, so does LiveMocha. The tutoring section of this network is in the works. LiveMocha’s approach of offering a new level of immersion, combined with its structured lesson tools is its point of differentiation. A similar tool is XLingo, which also combines networking with structured lessons for teaching foreign languages.

http://www.livemocha.com

Selling Diamonds For 99 Cents can help you to make a lot of money

David Wirtenberg, 28
Outrageous Auctions (eBay User ID: outrageousauctions)
New York City
Projected 2006 Sales: $8 million to $10 million
Description: Engagement rings, wedding bands and other jewelry

Turning Talk Into Sales: David Wirtenberg loves to talk. "I could talk your ear off," he says. "I love what I do. I'm a very passionate person." His ability to make sales, and his prior experience in sales for Bear Stearns and Auto Data Processing, helped him build his business from scratch in 2003. His father-in-law became his inspiration and behind-the-scenes mentor. "He said, 'Let's see if we can sell jewelry on the internet,'" Wirtenberg recalls. "I went to 47th Street in Manhattan. I knocked on every door. I didn't know anything about diamonds at the time. I was looking for suppliers, for an education, anything." He ended up buying a couple of diamond rings, and he immediately sold them for a profit on eBay. "I thought, 'This could be something.'"

Many Facets to His Business: Today, Wirtenberg sells through his websites (www.outrageousauctions.com and www.outrageousdiamonds.com) and through eBay. "I use eBay to get new customers and new traffic," he says. "Most of my diamond auctions start at 99 cents. Sometimes I lose money; sometimes I make money. Whatever makes the customer happy, I do. Our packaging is second to none. Sometimes we pack our diamonds in Faberge eggs [for free]. Once you have customers, you have those customers for good."

Personal Touch: Wirtenberg speaks fondly of the personal connections he has made and recalls the time he and his wife, Danielle, personally delivered a $14,000 ring to a customer in California. "The fringe benefits touch you deep inside," he says. "You play a huge role in people's lives. I have provided advice on people's engagements. I feel I am blessed every single day with the direction this business has taken."

http://www.outrageousdiamonds.com/

From online language translation to hardware language translation

Photocopier translates Japanese to English

Time use to be that you needed to carry a thick book in your back pocket when traveling if you wanted to find the nearest bus station, restroom or brothel hotel.

But these days the quickest way to translate something from Japanese to English and back again is by typing it into an online service There are dozens of online translators out there, letting you read complete websites or translate snippets of text.

But once your tools move online, they're not limited to a certain type of device. You can translate items with pretty much any web browser or operating system. Heck, it turns out you don't even need a computer. Fuji Xerox is showing off a prototype copy machine that can translate documents as it copies.

Insert a Japanese document and the copier will access an internet service to translate the text into Chinese, English or Korean. The printer access a dedicated server, which we expect is about as good as any other machine-based translator out there. In other words, expect the copier to spit out a few nonsense sentences.

It's a neat idea, but at least when you try to translate a web page online you're not wasting any paper when you wind up with a completely garbled machine translation.

Free online file conversion service

YouconvertIt lets you upload audio, video, image, or document files and convert from one format to another. Just select the file from your computer to upload, select your target format, and the web service will send you an e-mail when your new file is ready to download.
YouconvertIt doesn't appear to have a file size limit (although that may change), and currently has no advertising (which will definitely change). Oh yeah, and you can convert units like miles, kilometers, inches, and feet.

The service is definitely fast and convenient. But you get a lot more control over your file conversions if you're using desktop software. If you're converting a document from HTML to text, this might not matter so much. But if you're converting a WAV to MP3 or MPEG-2 to MP4, there's no telling what kind of file size/quality you're going to get with these web-based services. If you need to convert a file and you don't happen to have a good desktop program handy, YouconvertIt will do in a pinch. But we wouldn't recomment it if you regularly need to convert/compress multimedia files.

http://www.youconvertit.com

Some very interesting pictures

How to make money from termites

Lawyer Pete Cardillo can still remember the horror of lying in bed one night while termites gnawed his house out from under him. "They were eating into the floorboards and eating toward me," he says. Thankfully, that was just a nightmare. But such scenarios have now entered Cardillo's daily life. Sixteen months ago Cardillo, 47, left his post as a managing partner in the Tampa office of Pittsburgh-based Buchanan Ingersoll, one of the country's largest law firms, and opened his own practice exclusively dedicated to termite litigation. In 2004, Tampa-based Cardillo Law brought in revenues of about $550,000, with profits of an estimated $400,000. Cardillo goes after large extermination companies that he believes fail to detect or remove termites, and insurers that refuse to pay for damage. He is busy; subterranean termites cause more than $2 billion in property damage each year in the U.S., and that number is expected to rise, in part because of the growth of an especially aggressive termite species.

A lawyer for 22 years, Cardillo began his "termite odyssey" in 1996 when, on behalf of a real estate developer, he brought a claim against extermination giant Orkin, charging that the company did not deliver on its promises and was unresponsive to his client. Orkin settled. Cardillo currently has 25 active cases--most are multimillion-dollar suits on behalf of developers and condominium associations. One lawsuit, expected to go to jury trial in July, charges that Orkin falsely advertised a guarantee to prevent and stop termites. (In fact, the bugs in question ate through the outer walls of a condo complex until the stucco fell off in chunks, according to Cardillo.) Another action accuses Orkin of forgery and racketeering and seeks $60 million in damages. (The balconies were so eaten away that residents had to vacate for emergency repair work--and, evoking images from Cardillo's nightmare, the bugs also built a mound under one apartment dweller's bed.) Orkin spokesperson Martha Craft declined to comment on any of the specific cases. But she emphasized that "less than 1% of Orkin's termite customers file claims. Of those claims, well over 98% are resolved to the customer's satisfaction without setting foot in a courtroom." Cardillo is also taking on insurance companies for not giving their customers the right coverage on properties that have been ravaged by wood-eating insects.

Cardillo charges $400 an hour, but most often he works on contingency, earning 50% of the final settlement. His niche demands some pricey--and unusual--expenses. An entomologist (who provides expert advice and testimony on insects) costs him $13,000 a year. He pays $35,000 to a structural engineer, who helps "prove the state of collapse" and offers repair estimates. Then there is the $36,000 bill from a contractor who cuts holes in termite-infested buildings to expose the damage. Such expenses will probably be reimbursed by his client.

While most of Cardillo's cases are in Florida--where extermination ranks among the largest industries--he plans to expand farther into the "termite belt," which snakes south from Virginia to Texas. Cardillo pledges to fight the steely-jawed pests--and those who falsely vow to eliminate them--wherever they are. "When you find out how evil and powerful termites are," he says, "they creep into your subconscious."

http://www.cardillolaw.com/

Pregnant Woman had a great business idea to make money online

When Holly was pregnant a few years back in 1999, she looked for a unique way to tell her friends and family of her pregnancy. Making phone call after phone call to every cousin, aunt and uncle was a daunting task, but she still wanted to share her news with everyone. She hunted through stores and on the Internet and all she could find were birth announcements. Thus, Holly's idea for Fetal Greetings was born. She wanted to create cards where a little embryo baby could make the announcement of the upcoming birth for her.

She began by asking a friend from high school, who had a talent for drawing, to draw some pictures of fetal babies in different settings (i.e. sonogram, mother's belly).

She was most pleased with the results and the drawings came out exactly as Holly had wanted.

Holly proceeded to create the sayings for all the different cards. In June of 2000, Holly took her business online with http://www.fetalgreetings.com

Holly's business is run completely online and she takes orders via a secure website or by phone.

Holly designed her own website but worked with a webmaster until recently. She is pleased to now have complete control of her site now and to have the ability to make changes anytime, which she does almost everyday.

Holly attributes her online success to networking, gathering current online business information and analyzing the competition.

"Networking is vital," says Holly. She belongs to several online groups, including MyWoman2Woman and Creative Enterprises. She also praises InternetBasedMoms.com for having a great collection of resources and message boards for networking (we promise, we didn't tell her say that!). "It's invaluable to interact with others who are in your same boat of running a home-based business," Holly says emphatically, "You learn from each other's mistakes and successes and get to form a real bond with people you otherwise wouldn't have when running a home business by yourself."

Finally, Holly stresses the need to check in to see what your competition is up to. Always know who is ranking higher on the search engines than you and why. Submit to search engines regularly and test out new keywords and phrases.

Running a business from home with two small children at home all day does have it's challenges. Holly mainly works during her children's naps and when they go to bed at night.

http://www.fetalgreetings.com

5 reasons to not use Linux

Here are 5 reasons to not use Linux on your computer:

1. You have to learn to use it. Some Linux distributions are not difficult to use it, but you have to learn it. Linux is different than Windows.

2. You have to learn to use new programs. Yes, is true, some of Windows programs has a Linux version. But many of them don't. Or even if they have is possible that Linux version to be old and outdated.

3. You will have problems with games. There are some games for Linux. But there are very few. Many of the new games are not working on Linux. Some times you can use emulators but you slow down the computer.

4. You will have problems with your documents. Microsoft Office is not working on Linux. You can use Open Office, which is good but not fully compatible with Microsoft Office.

5. You will still have to buy software. The Linux myth is that everything is free. But is not. There are Linux distributions which are not free. If you want good software or games you have to pay for it.