Saturday, July 16, 2011

EZBloomers.com: Changing How We Send Flowers

Flowers have been the gift of choice for decades. No matter if it is for a friend on a birthday, an apology to the wife, a sympathetic funeral gesture, or a get well soon bouquet. The way we send flowers to others has changed drastically over the years as well. Before the flower stores we had to grow our own and deliver them ourselves. Now we can do it online, over the phone, or stop by a florist directly and have them deliver the "surprise".

EZBloomers is looking at changing the way we all get our flowers. EZBloomers.com custom floral arrangements are sent to you at the best price possible, and with the best service possible. Their mission is to make sure that you get more value than any other florist out there and to give you great service that the floral brokers only dream of. Floral brokers may have bigger buildings, but they end up being much less connected to their customers. EZBloomers.com is there to help you get what you need, and not throw a bunch of service charges on top of your bill to make sure that you, and those you send flowers get the best possible experience.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Get Bored Easy With Only One Business?

As entrepreneurs many of us have a lot of ideas. We may have a great idea and start a business, but we always have more ideas. We look at things a little differently I suppose. We see something that others see and don't look at it just as something useful, but we look at it and try to figure out how we can make money off of it. There is always something else we could jump into right?

While we work in whatever industries we are in we always run a crossed things that we think are either underrepresented, or at least represented so poorly that we think we could make some good money off of them if we do it better. While they are getting calls from collection agencies we are seeing dollar signs at their failure to take advantage. This kind of entrepreneur, or the "serial entrepreneur" is a bit of a different breed. Take a look at 11 Historic Serial Entrepreneurs and see what you might have in common.

STill Have Crappy Jobs to Hire for that the Desperate Don't Even Want?

You would think that hiring for ANY job right now would be a piece of cake wouldn't you? Even at bargain rates of pay there are so many unemployed around the country that it seems as if almost any job you post would get plenty of interest. Apparently, some jobs are so bad that employers actually are having a hard time filling them.

Well...this job might not be the most enticing:

Take entrepreneur Cassie Piasecki, 42, who had to hire preppers at her Southern California nail salon to carry heavy tubs of water, then clean them, along with tools and towels, of dead skin and nail clippings after pedicures.

"It was a gross job," says Piasecki, who has since closed her salon. "I did my hiring two ways. I used Craigslist to put a detailed description of the prepper job. I didn't want to surprise applicants by the job duties or the pay. I wanted them to know exactly what they were getting into. And, the other way was word of mouth. Either a client or a friend of an employee. They would usually relay the job duties to the friend."

I think I'd rather forgo my surge protectors and just stick a metal fork in a wall socket. If you have jobs like this that you can't hire for take a look at some tips on how to get someone to do the job for you.

Cashing in on the Phone App Markets

If you have a smart phone such as the iPhone, or the Android you know exactly what Apps are. You also know that the market is booming, and you also probably look at it like it would be so easy to cash in on. We've all had the thoughts of throwign together a stupid app and seeing it sell a million copies at $0.99 right? I know I have, but I just don't have the expertise, or the time to learn how to get going.

Lisa Bettany found the time to learn about it. You probably don't want to figure it out the same way, however. For her, an ex-Canadian figure skater, she learned after an ice skating injury and being laid up in recovery for a long, long time.

Bettany, 29, not only got back on her feet but took advantage of her seven-year recovery to master photography, start a blog, and, two years ago, partner with an international team of six developers to create Camera+, the top-ranked camera app in Apple's iTunes store. The app, which gives iPhone and iPod Touch users the ability to enhance, edit and share photos via Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter, has been downloaded more than 3 million times since it launched in June 2010. The 99-cent app, designed to turn iPhones into high-quality digital cameras, has generated close to $2 million for Bettany and her partners in less than a year ( I was really curious as to what the actual cut was so this is pretty helpful info.). That's after Apple's 30% cut. Read more

Not sure if I have the next big idea, or useful toy for the app store, but this makes me want to work on it again. I could probably make a hitch bike racks app or something real quick. Good old Apple and their ideas of gold.