Hire a Celebrity to Promote Your Brand as Cheaply as Possible

Everyone loves the random celebrity endorsement. Clearly we all believe everything they tell us since they are after all trustworthy. They are on TV and movies and play sports. CAn't get more trustworthy than that can you? If your saracsm detector hasn't gone off you need repairs.

That said it doesn't really matter does it? People like to hear about stuff form people they recognize. They clealry have never met a celebrity, but they can feel great when they see that guy on TV and say to themselves "Hey that's Tony Danza playing with that yoyo!".

Where was I? Oh yeah...Affordable Ways to Get Celebrity Endorsements

Raise Your Prices, Somewhat Painlessly

We all love and hate the time to raise prices. Trying to figure out what the line is that is too much, but what is also reaquired to stay profitable enough to make actually having a business wotrth having. Upping prices at say a restaurant is probably not a huge deal if ou nickle and dime it a bit so it is relatively painless, but what's the best way to do it for most businesses without forcing your customers into a need for medical help?

Take a look at 5 Painless Ways To Raise Your Prices This Year for some tips.

Time Management and the Serial Entrepreneur

These days it is more and more likely that entrepreneurs like yourself have their hands in more than one pot. Personally, I do a lot of things to make money now and finding a balance of getting them done on time, or spending time on my personal addictions like finishing the books in my ebook readers to be a bit overwhelming at times. I may not have to run 10 businesses, but I do spend an awful lot of time working for and with a number of different companies and do a lot of independent contractor work which must be organized to get it all done.

As an entrepreneur, or an independent contractor you are free to work on things at your own discretion most of the time. You may have deadlines, but typically your schedule can be resolved on your own and you must make sure you have the time to get every contract done, or every assignment in on time.

So...when you find some helpful tips on managing your time from other entrepreneurs it can only help you find more time for yourself probably right? Here are 5 serial entrepreneurs that are offering tips on managing your time and your life.

NEW YEARS EVE PARTY AT MY PLACE

The Author of this post is Solomon Dejesus

Before the holidays, we switched our television service because we got some great dish deals. My favorite thing about having satellite tv is the music channels. It is sort of like the Pandora stations, but I think that the music mixes are better. Every time that I have a party, I just switch on one of the stations. I think that my favorite is the eighties mix for the parties. I also turn on the country station when I’m cleaning the house alone. I hate to admit it because all of my friends tease me about it, but I love country music! This new years, I had a party at my house. We usually go out or go to concerts, but I wanted to keep it low key. We had four other couples come over, we all just cooked out, listened to music, and drank champagne. It was the first New Year’s Day that I woke up without a headache! We had a great time, I definitely wouldn’t mind keeping it low key again next year!

Mark Cuban: Don't Listen to Your Customers

Great title of an article I must say. If you don't know who Mark Cuban is, he's an entrepreneur that bought the Dallas Mavericks, and pro basketball franchise in the NBA. He's one of the most outspoken owners int he league and a HUGE fan of his team. He acts like most fanatical fans do and seems to be a a guy that goes against what an owner should be. He's entertaining to say the least and an owner any sports fan would love to have.

He's successful enough that when he says something you at least take a minute to read what he has to say. He's much like his NBA Champion Mavericks namesake in how he speaks out. Not John McCain Maverick, but an actual one. HE would jump over your swimming pool fence and into your pool if he felt the need.

Check out his thoughts on why customers ideas are usually the wrong ones.

2012 Franchise 500

Entrepreneur.com has done an annual top 500 for franchises for the past 33 years. Once again at the top of the list for 2012 is Hampton Hotels. Putting on your start up Hats may be in line with one of these top 500.

The franchise 500 list is compiled with this in mind:

"The most important factors include financial strength and stability, growth rate and size of the system. We also consider the number of years a company has been in business and the length of time it has been franchising, start up costs, litigation, percentage of terminations and whether the company provides financing." complete rankings explanation

Black Friday is Upon Us

Black Friday isn't just for Friday anymore. Retailers seem to be trending to earlier starts to the post-Thanksgiving sales and starting Black Friday Eve.

Among the major big box stores, Toys R Us will kick off its Black Friday sales at 9 p.m. Thursday night, followed by Wal-Mart at 10 p.m. Then, at the stroke of midnight, Target, Best Buy, Macy's and Kohl's all plan to open their doors.

Record numbers are expected this year for the Black Friday festivities, but are you really crazy enough to go out to these stores and forearm shiver old ladies?

The way I see it you can do it all from home now. Black Friday deals are all over the place online. I plan to buy a ton of video games at about half off. What about you? Maybe some buy diamonds online for your lady?

She Works Hard for Her Money

Thanks for the guest post by Esteban Vinson

Work, work, work. All work and no play. Sort of. I love my work so when I work it sort of feels like play. I just branched out and started my own company. Yep, cupcakes are my livelihood now. Who would have thought that some sugar and flour can bring home the bacon? Certainly not my dad when I told him my idea. Now he may not have been totally on board the cupcake train, so to speak, due to the fact that I dropped out of college to start it but he’s slowly coming around. So I’m officially an entrepreneur. A business woman. There has been a huge learning curve, but I’ve done well at making frugal decisions to keep my overhead low. I have kept most of my business through online orders, so I needed to get internet at my bakery. Luckily, my searching led me to satelliteinternetbroadband.com which was a perfect fit for my company. I can get online orders through our company email. I can send pictures of all the varieties of cupcakes that I offer and am thinking about setting up a company webpage.

5 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid For Startups

You know that if you have a public business that needs to connect with its customers to make more money you need to market in the social networking realm. You may not know how to do this though. You may just think that you need to throw up some info now and then and it is enough. To do it well you need to plan it out and understand it. You can't just "wing it" right off the go.

Not only do you need to know what you can do, it is important to know what you can't do. Maybe even much more important. After all, making yourself look bad when all it took was a little bit of research to prevent it is never a good sign. So don't take a yellowbox in the behind and follow along some of the Do's and Don'ts of social networking for your business. Start with some of the mistakes to avoid.

How Do People Still Not Understand? There is NO Privacy on Socail Media Sites

You may hear people rage on about how an employer saw something on their Facebook page and they got reprimanded for it. How about courts allowing those you sue to look at "private" wall postings and bring them into court if they are relevant?

You may say: "Hey that's private! They can't do that!". You may be right in some instances, but the real problem is that people still believe they have any sort of privacy whatsoever when they post things online. Getting upset over it seems more ignorant than it does justified. Before you had Myspace, or Facebook, would you announce on a billboard that your boss was a jerk? Would you talk about company secrets on a billboard? This is literally what you are doing when you post on blogs, Facebook, and anywhere else online that others can see. Just because you have your Facebook set to private means very little. People hear stories about being hacked all the time, but think nothing of bringing private info to a public website? Think idiots!

If you want to tell people you can only sleep on the grouhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnd in a sleeping bag, don't post pictures of yourself in deep sleep on a foam mattress. Lying online when you use your real name is never going to end well. If you have 100 friends I'll guarantee you that 1 of them isn't that stupid, and they aren't going to let you get away with it.

On to being an employee and trying to pull a fast one. Just because you are an attention whore and want people to think you are clever doesn't mean Facebook is the place you should go to prove you are screwing your company with a false injury claim. This doesn't make you clever. It makes you stupid. Take a look at some court rulings that people like you may have to deal with one day when you try to get away with faking injuries.