Make a lot of money with a website

Ashley Qualls is a 17 year old entrepreneur behind Whateverlife.com. She runs the website from her basement in her Southgate, Michigan home and is closing in on 2.5 million visitors per month.

Last year, her business generated $1 million in revenues.

Earlier this month she had to petition to be declared an adult so she could legally sign the contracts she has with her advertisers and be able to manager her own money.

“I’m stubborn and I’m independent. I like the feeling that it’s my company, and I want to have the say-so in everything.”

She has hired her mother to be her business manager and has also employed three of her high school friends to work for her after school.

“I love it. You can create so many things. The possibilities are endless.”

The website was started in December 2004 when Ashley borrowed $8 from her mother to buy the Whateverlife.com domain listing. The initial intent was to showcase her graphics design skills and share her MySpace designs with her friends.

Without spending any money on advertising the site quickly took off as many MySpacers enjoyed her designs and used them to improve their own MySpace profiles.

The website, which gets more hits that Oprah.com, had an offer to buy for $5 million but Ashley turned it down.

http://www.whateverlife.com/

Make money with Jam

Here is a great story about a young entrepreneur out of Scotland named Fraser Doherty. Fraser is an 18 year old student at Strathclyde University and his company, SuperJams, is already a million dollar business. With his recent success, Fraser is looking to make his studies a part time endeavor while he focuses on building his company. “It’s done a lot better than I expected. It’s growing really fast. The difficult thing is producing enough.”

Fraser sells jams and preserves that target a new, younger audience. They stay true to his grandmother’s original recipe but attract more health-conscious consumers. For example, instead of using sweetener like the other, big name jams, Fraser uses grape juice. He also focuses on the “superfoods” like blackcurrants, blueberries and ginger which are attracting buyers looking for a healthier diet. “I think people are looking for something a bit healthier, and it’s more fun and modern. It appeals to people who might not normally buy jam.”

Despite the growing revenues, Fraser has not taken any money out of the company, preferring to pump it back into the business. “For me, it’s not really about making lots of money. You have to create something you enjoy and have a passion for. I genuinely do love jam. When I read that sales had been falling for a couple of decades, I was horrified by the idea of it becoming extinct.”

Fraser started the company four years ago at the age of 14, selling his jam door to door as a way to earn extra spending money. He expanded by setting up shop at a local farmer’s market and soon found that he could not keep up with the demand for his jams. “I think I’ve still got a lot to learn. It’s not easy to set up a business and you have to really believe in it. There were points when I thought it would never be ready to go on the shelves.”

With his recent success, Fraser is about to release a book that discusses his story called “How to be a Teenage Millionaire.” It just goes to show that if you have enough passion for your business and a product that is in genuine demand, you can create a real business no matter how old you are.

http://superjams.co.uk/

You can make money selling frozen water

In the late 1970s, Rupp, a Salt Lake City teenager at the time, launched a wildly successful snow cone business, only to lose it all 15 years later to drug addiction. After a bitter divorce, a year in prison, and buried in debt, Rupp cleaned up and began rebuilding his life. Last year, Snowie, a second snow cone business he and his brother started from scratch, grossed over $2 million.

"There are a lot of things that will knock the wind out of your sails," Rupp says. "But you just have to keep plugging away."

Like many great ideas, Sno Shack, Rupp's initial venture, started with a simple question. On a hot summer day back in 1979 in St. Louis, Mo., Rupp, a young Mormon missionary who was the fourth oldest of seven brothers and a younger sister, came across a crowd lined up at an outdoor snow cone stand. "Why would anyone line up for a snow cone?" he asked dismissively. After hours of pounding the hot pavement all day, he tried one and soon had his answer. Rupp immediately went back to Salt Lake City and built his first shack out of old cedar boards.

For the first few years, Rupp not only built the shacks and ice shaver machines himself, he often manned them, too. But business, as they say, was snowballing. By the time he'd setup 13 outlets around town and hired a crew of local teens as attendants, things were getting unmanageable, he says. Luckily, by then, others were approaching him with offers to buy a single shack and shaver to run it themselves.

"It went from me thinking I was going to own and operated a ton of shacks, to me setting folks up to run their own business," Rupp recalls.

At its peak, Rupp had rolled out some 150 shacks, all with his custom-built shavers and stacks of containers with several dozen home-made flavors--from blue raspberry and cotton candy to a sweet red concoction called Tiger's Blood, all developed in his own experimental kitchen. At about the same time, Rupp--a born tinkerer--developed carpal tunnel syndrome building a new house for his wife and kids. Eventually, he got hooked on the pain killers prescribed by his doctor. When those ran out, he turned to heroin. "I started playing with it and played with it too much," he now says.

After failing to complete a court-appointed stint in rehab, Rupp was sentenced to a year in prison. There, he says, he had plenty of time to reflect on everything he'd lost: "I woke up one morning and thought 'hey, I remember Carl, I liked him and want him back.'"

In 1996, with his time served, Rupp tried working for his now ex-wife back at Sno Shack. When that didn't work out, he started rebuilding his own business with help from his little brother Gordon--this time calling it Snowie.

Concentrating on special events, like the local weekly farmers' market and nearby college football games, Rupp and his brother have sold almost 500 shacks--many outfitted with air-conditioning, hot and cold running water, and a retractable roof to load supplies.

Rupp also includes "Tips and Tricks," a 40-page booklet that walks operators through everything from scouting out locations to getting a business license. "These are the baby steps," says Rupp. "We do as much as we can to help make it work."

Today, Rupp's entrepreneurial advice, which might otherwise sound trite coming from anyone else, resonates with a kind of hard-earned wisdom: "You gotta hang in there and be persistent," he says. "Don't get knocked down by a mistake."

http://www.snowie.com

A TV Show fan makes money from this

Linda O'Brien and her 16-year-old daughter, Tess, are devoted fans of Sex and the City. They watched it religiously during its initial TV run, and now relive all the Cosmo-fueled moments on DVD. So it should come as no surprise that on their first trip to New York, the Australian duo have forgone some of the usual hotspots for a different type of sightseeing experience: The Sex and the City Tour.

Creator Georgette Blau introduced the tour a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, hoping to give a boost to businesses in the same neighborhoods where much of the show was shot. Since then, the three-hour tour, which runs twice a day, has been a sellout.


Visitors from all over the world, most of whom learn about the tour online, eagerly shell out $37 a ticket for a chance to photograph themselves on the stoop of the building where Carrie, the series' central character, lived and to buy the girls' favorite cup cakes from the Magnolia Bakery.


You would think that the business of showing homes, parks, restaurants, and other real-life locations from TV shows and movies would be a given. Glance at a newsstand today, and it's clear that the fascination with celebrity culture only continues to grow. But when Blau moved to New York in 1998, a 24-year-old Skidmore College graduate and newly minted editor at Prentice Hall, she was star-struck and keen to indulge her passion.


What she couldn't find, however, was a tour that could show her famous New York movie and TV landmarks. Often walking past the apartment building featured in The Jeffersons, she came up with an idea. "Imagine my surprise when I couldn't find a single tour," Blau says.


So, in 1999, with $3,000 from her savings, she started what initially was a weekend hobby -- the Scene on TV Tour, starring Blau as tour guide. Soon after, she renamed it the Manhattan TV & Movie Show, with tourists paying $15 to see sites from hit TV shows and movies.


Like many entrepreneurs, Blau identified a way to turn her passion into a business capitalizing on the passions of others who share her enthusiasm for the big and small screens. The pool of potential customers is deep. In 2005, New York welcomed 17.2 million tourists, each spending an average of $190 per day, according to NYC & Company, the city's official marketing and tourism organization.


Blau realized early on that she had stumbled upon a potentially great business idea. New York is one of the most-filmed cities in the world, where many of prime-time hits are based. Of course, it would almost seem like a no-brainer, considering that Hollywood has had tours of movie stars' homes for years, and Hawaii has its own movie tour featuring locations in Kauai from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and other blockbusters. Even California's Monterrey has a own movie tour that includes a scene featured in Marilyn Monroe's Clash By Night.


Blau's company, On Location Tours, now runs four tours -- the Manhattan TV and Movie Tour, the Central Park Movie Tour, The Sex and the City Tour, and The Sopranos Tour.


But it was tough going initially for Blau, who barely made $400 during the weekends showing visitors places such as the building from The Nanny on the Upper East Side, the Lower East Side police precinct from NYPD Blue, the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, and the Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis High School on 46th Street from Fame. She continued her day job as an editor.


But as the popularity of the bus tour increased, Blau began stepping up her marketing and PR efforts -- handing out brochures at the Museum of Television & Radio and other tourist-stomping grounds, establishing a Web site, generating as much word-of-mouth buzz as possible.


Real success came to Blau when she quit her job as an editor and started a tour based on The Sopranos in March, 2001. The HBO mobster sensation was in its third season, and media interest was at its peak. When Blau started the tour, which features various spots filmed in New Jersey, it generated a major buzz, including a spot on the Today show. The tourists went crazy, and Blau was easily filling up the two buses' 100 seats, even though the tour ran on Sundays.


She later launched The Sex in the City Tour, which has also been a tremendous success. Now 31, with five full-time employees and 18 part-timers, Blau brings in more than $1 million in revenue each year. With a full-fledged operation on her hands, she eventually decided to hang up her tour-guide hat and hire others.


In March, 2005, she advertised on Craigslist to hire guides for The Sopranos and Sex in the City tours. The response was stunning -- 300 people showed up for the interviews, which lasted two weeks. "We're in New York, so we had to pick from beautiful struggling actresses to standup comedians," Blau says.


For the comedians or actresses, the tour is a great forum to practice their craft. Lisa Perlman, a tour guide on the Sex and the City bus, is a standup comic at The Gotham Comedy Club. And it shows. She keeps the tourists entertained and well-humored during the three-hour tour.


"The bus is just like the club -- you're never quite sure how the audience reacts to my jokes, and it's great practice," says Lisa, who peppers her banter with knowledgeable tidbits about New York architecture and questions like: "Are there any shoppers in this bus, or alcoholics, or virgins, anyone?"


The O'Briens can barely contain their squeals of delight as tour guide Perlman fields the question -- "which one among you is a Carrie, a Charlotte, a Samantha, a Miranda?" -- the show's four main characters. Daughter Tess admits that her friends from Down Under have often referred to her as a Charlotte, the well-bred, eternally optimistic brunette.


The tour's fanatical fans are nearly all women. Once, Blau recalls, actor Kyle MacLachlan, who played the role of Trey McDougal, was buying cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery -- one of the tour hot spots -- and was surprised to see a horde of women rushing toward him. "I thought they'd get his autograph," Blau says. But to her surprise, the women all went up to him wagging their fingers and shaking their heads at how poorly his character treated wife Charlotte in the show.


The success of The Sopranos Tour taught Blau the need to constantly update her tours to attract young tourists. So, while You've Got Mail, the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy filmed on the Upper West Side, was part of the tour until just two months ago, it has now been replaced with a stop at Rice to Riches, the rice-pudding store that makes an appearance in the Will Smith's Hitch. Of course, the classics like Breakfast at Tiffany's and the house from Wait Until Dark are always shown, as is the Empire Diner from Woody Allen's Manhattan.


Next up, Blau plans to start a tour in Washington, D.C., within the next few months that will show the sites from movies and TV shows filmed there. Fans of The West Wing and Commander in Chief needn't wait too long before their own "on-location" experiences.

http://www.sceneontv.com

Make Money With Inflatable Chairs

During the 2002 World Series in San Francisco, Lori Elder was watching her hometown Giants battle the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and was amazed at the number of people floating in the bay just outside AT&T Park. "I looked at my friend and said, 'The thing to sit on would bу a big inflatable baseball glove,'" says Elder, 43.

Elder called Major League Baseball a few days after the series to see if she could find such a product with the Giants logo on it, but no such prod-uct existed. So with almost $50,000 that she gathered from friends and her own savings, Elder started searching for a manufacturer who could help her with a design. "I was basically sketching my own baseball glove," says Elder, who has a background in art. She also applied for a license from the League in hopes of offering an official product with team logos.

Eight months later, in 2003, she had the license along with her final proto-type. The result was an inflatable chair in the shape of a baseball glove, constructed of heavy PVC, with three separate air chambers and, of course, cup holders. The chairs come in two sizes and are suitable for indoor use as well as on water.

Manufacturing problems set her back a year, but Elder was finally able to begin offering her product in January 2005. The chairs are available on www.leftfieldenterprises.com and www.mlb.com, and with the recent addition of baseball-shaped chairs, Elder expects 2006 sales of $500,000.

http://www.leftfieldenterprises.com

Your chair can help you to make money

While remodeling a friend's home office, one-time construction company owner Pierre Klee had to choose flooring that was both attractive and practical.

Klee, 42, found his solution in a wood-finished laminate. After installing the floor, Klee gave his friend and future partner, Jeff Baudin, 42, an extra pack of the material. Baudin took a piece of the laminate to his regular office and slid it under his chair on the commercial-grade carpeting. Instantly, the two knew they had a great idea.

In January 2004, they started developing an alternative to the unattractive plastic chair mats common in offices. More than $150,000 and six prototypes later, they launched SnapMat Inc. in June 2004. The sectional chair mats snap together and create a more polished complement to office furniture.

"We started selling them online, and people just loved them," Klee says. "Besides thinking the mats were attractive, [customers were] just so tired of the plastic ones."

There were still kinks, though. The sectional mats were only recommended for use on commercial-grade carpet, and Klee's customers wanted something for their home offices. After sliding through 2004 with $30,000 in sales, Klee began 2005 by buying out Baudin and creating a one-piece mat better suited for high-pile carpeting.

With both mats available online in a variety of finishes and sizes, including custom orders, at www.snapmat.com, the company increased sales to $125,000 in 2005.

Klee says the mat also has some unconventional uses, including in music studios--the mats make it easier to slide heavy equipment over carpet--and as dance floors. Klee jokes that the company could have a special web-site dedicated solely to tap dancers.

With arrangements finalized with Brookstone.com and deals with other retail outlets underway, Klee expects SnapMat Inc. to garner $500,000 in 2006 sales. He hopes to spur even more growth for the company by automating the production process to increase output from 20 mats to 150 mats per day, which would allow Klee to lower the price.

"I like inventing, so it's been fun for me to figure out all the problems," Klee says. "I've always been a good trouble-shooter."

http://www.snapmat.com

10 ways to save money when you have kids

1. Take them to parks instead of shopping malls. If they don't see the temptations, they don't want them. If they don't want them, no temper tantrums to deal with, no fighting with yourself over whether or not to spend the money to keep them quiet etc. Just avoid getting into potential trouble in the first place.
2. Watch DVDs instead of turning on the TV. You get to control what they watch. You don't have to worry about adult advertisements coming on at the wrong time. You don't have to worry about commercials telling them what they really need to get you to buy for them.
3. Borrow books from the library instead of buying them. How many times do you really want to read Piggywiggy goes to Space anyway ? Also saves you having to move to a bigger house because you have run out of storage space for the books.
4. Return you DVDs and library books on time !! Don't waste money on fines !!
5. Kids don't really have to be in branded clothes. The in-house brands are perfectly acceptable. They outgrow them so quickly anyway.
6. For that matter, kids don't need new clothes all the time. Go to garage sales, learn to shop on e-bay, heck, accept hand-me-downs and be grateful. who knows, you can get some really good branded stuff for less than what you would pay for a new no-brand suit !
7. Get toys with multiple functions. I find blocks, legos or those things that allow kids to link things are great. That way, when they go through a train phase, a gun phase, a car phase, a castle phase, a sea creature phase, or whatever, they just build the toys they want !
8. Be creative ! Kids usually prefer the boxes that their presents came in anyway. Use old boxes, paper, egg cartons, whatever. Make toys with them. They play just as long with them as the train set you spent $100 on.
9. Don't use toys as bribes or rewards. Think of other things they like. Offer a trip to the zoo, bake a cake with them or something.
10. Put them to work. Mine aren't old enough to realise the difference between play and work so getting to mop the floor with a real wet mop is a real treat ! They've spent hours just with a little bucket and their own cloths wiping up things.

http://whymoneymatters.blogspot.com

Make A Lot Of Money Selling Artwork In Hotels

In the winter of 2003, two globetrotters met on a flight from New York to Los Angeles and started chatting about their travels. One of the fliers, a fine-art dealer, wondered why the art selection at many top-notch hotels was so poor.

"The 'poster art' on the walls degraded the entire experience of staying in a five-star hotel," says the art dealer, Vincent Vallarino.

The other traveler, a hotel-management veteran, agreed -- and the seeds of a small business were planted. The following year, they set up shop as Metropolitan Art Group LLC and approached upscale hotels with an original pitch. Metropolitan, or MAG as it calls itself, supplies the hotels with fine-art prints to gussy up their rooms and common areas. The hotels can then sell copies of the prints to guests who want a memento of their stay.

Show Me the Monet

So far, MAG has teamed up with hotels such as the Plaza in New York and the Savoy in London, providing them with a range of artwork -- from household names like Monet to hot contemporary artists like Peter Brown and Guy A. Wiggins. Guests can get their hands on prints for $150 to $1,500.

MAG says the arrangement offers the hotels two main benefits. For one, the hotels get a cut of the print sales. Then there's prestige. Each print comes with a museum-style plaque identifying the piece as part of the hotel's signature art collection -- which makes travelers associate the hotel with the high-toned artwork.

Pam Carter, director of public relations at the Savoy, says the hotel liked MAG's pitch because it presented the hotel "with a steady revenue stream while enabling [us] to bridge [our] cultural past to [our] present." Claude Monet spent the winters of 1899 to 1901 as an artist-in-residence at the Savoy, where he began work on more than 70 canvases.

A Dallas couple, Leon and Susan Holman, gush over the $1,015 print they purchased at the Savoy in January. "Our copy of 'Houses of Parliament' reminded us of the view at dusk from our room at the Savoy during our 30th wedding anniversary," says Mrs. Holman. "It's the most meaningful work of art we've ever owned."

Of course, hotel merchandising isn't entirely new. Many hotels have long sold branded items such as bathrobes. And in the late 1990s, the practice kicked into high gear, with hotels offering whole catalogs of tony goodies -- everything from simple knickknacks to designer beds. Some estimates peg the hotel-merchandising market at $60 million and see it topping $100 million within the next few years.

MAG, a closely held firm, won't disclose its revenue. But Sidney W. Davidson III, chief executive officer and managing partner of MAG, says that year-over-year sales growth was 15% in 2006 and is expected to reach 20% to 25% for 2007.

For an idea of the company's take, consider this: During a four-month trial in 2005, the Plaza Hotel sold 170 limited-edition prints from MAG, generating $150,000 for MAG and $20,000 for the hotel, according to a company memo. The hotels usually pocket 10% to 20% of the revenue for print sales; the artists get 10%. If it's a classic piece, like a Monet, then MAG and the hotel divide the revenue.

Art of the Deal

Part of MAG's success has been its mix of talents. Its officials boast a wide variety of backgrounds, including art dealers and former investment bankers. Mr. Vallarino, for one, has been active as a dealer and gallery owner for over 30 years.

That combination of backgrounds helps MAG significantly when it comes to marketing. Most small businesses have to hustle to make a name for themselves among customers. But MAG's members have deep contacts in the hotel and art worlds, which helps them get in the door and land deals.

Moreover, say some enterprise experts, the company has positioned itself well to piggyback on the cachet of the posh hotels. "Travelers choosing to stay at high-end hotels often prefer to associate themselves with a very specific brand, much like wearing designer clothing," says Chekitan S. Dev, associate professor of marketing and brand management at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration in Ithaca, N.Y. And that can translate into big sales for companies like MAG that supply the hotels with branded goods.

When MAG teams up with a hotel, it studies the look and feel of the property and recommends artists who complement the décor and setting. MAG reviews the artists and their work with the hotel management and they jointly select a best fit. The two also work together to figure out where to place the artwork in the hotel. The pieces are then marketed to guests in a variety of ways, from wall plaques to catalogs in the guest rooms and gift shop.

Blue Period

Not all of MAG's projects have been successful. In its latest venture, a trial partnership with the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, MAG has seen slow sales.

Mr. Davidson says a number of factors are at work. For one thing, the Waldorf-Astoria project represents MAG's first entirely commissioned line of artwork, so the pieces don't have the same built-in recognition among guests.

In addition, MAG is still trying to get the hotel to put the artwork in higher-traffic areas, such as the main lobby. For now, the prints are mostly showcased in an arcade that connects the Park Avenue entrance with the garage, an area that's home to a high-end flower shop.

James W. Blauvelt, executive director of catering and special events at the Waldorf-Astoria, believes print sales will pick up with the fall ball and winter holiday season.

"MAG offered an original product for us to attach our brand to that was both interesting and authentic," Mr. Blauvelt says. "Not having engaged in a project like this before, we are eager to see how things develop from a guest-interest standpoint."

Currently, MAG is considering expanding its concept into a new venue: cruise liners. Guest artists may offer classes on board, while they produce artwork that might be displayed on future excursions.

http://www.metropolitanartgroup.com/