19 Years Old, and Taking on Google

Well...let's jsut say that he is working on a project that will expand the use of search on the internet, but he isn't exactly taking on Google. Daniel Gross, as he has almost $5 million in funding backing his search engine, Greplin. It is designed to search for things that Google doesn't look for. The social slice of the Web, plus everything that an individual has password-protected hovering in the cloud, has been largely off-limits to traditional search engines.

You aren't going to find honda generators for sale, but you might find a blueprint for them with Greplin. Daniel Gross, along with co-founder Robby Walker, 27, created Greplin, a user-authorized search that can access Facebook, Twitter, Google Documents, Salesforce, and more. The site launched in late February. Here is an interview with him and how it all came about.

Inc.com Looks Up Some of Their Past College Startup Alums

Inc.com and some of the other large business owner websites have some pretty neat contests every year. Entrepreneur has the "Build the Best Lemonade Stand" for kids that is always a fun contest to watch. Inc.com has the College Start-up feature that they do quite a bit that has some pretty cool ideas in it as well.

Now they are looking back at a few past alums that were featured to see "Where are they now?". Nope, they aren't all living in the Outer Banks on a permanent vacation yet. They actually plan to keep working, and some have made it a living.

9 of the past alums are featured in this article. Pretty fun read. From SAT prep website makers ready to sell out for a nice paycheck to the founder of CollegeFitness.com who has upped his annual sales to a healthy $3.5 million with just 15 employees

BAsic Employee Benefits, and What You Should Look at as an Owner

Employee benefits are a tricky business. On one side they help draw in better and more experienced employees on various health care job site, or specialized sites for certain positions. That is if that is the kind of employee you need. It also helps you KEEP your most trustworthy and valuable employees by serving as a reward that acts almost as a raise without them seeing it in their paycheck, but many times more beneficial On the other hand they can become quite expensive, and a severe headache for all the red tape involved.

Deciding to offer employee benefits is a start to a long process of deciding what kind of benefits to offer, as well as exactly how much you are willing to foot the bill as the owner. Here is a good primer to get you started in thinking about what is needed, what is good policy, and what is required to get rolling.

Getting Your Products In Movies?

Ever wonder how small business products end up in the movies? Then all of a sudden they are huge, and everyone knows about them? Wine, fat burner, or cool toys find their way in all the time.

Kathy Joseph, the owner of Fiddlehead Cellars, a 100-acre vineyard and winery nestled in California's Santa Rita Hills, in Santa Barbara County found a way to get in and take advantage.

Her wine has been featured in not one, but two major films over the last decade. I bet you thought to yourself immediately that one was the film Sideways right from a few years back? You would be right, and I thought exactly the same when I saw the story, but they hid it from me at first. Her wine was in the Oscar-nominated film The Kids Are Alright starring Annette Benning and Juliane Moore just this past year as well.

It made its movie debut in the 2004 Academy Award winner Sideways. The film's director, Alexander Payne, had visited her vineyard and decided to write her sauvignon blanc into the script, Joseph says.

The placement in The Kids Are Alright, which has been nominated for four Oscars this year, came about when the same property manager who worked on Sideways was hired to work on The Kids Are All Right and, according to Joseph, wanted to bring Fiddlehead back to the big screen.

So how do they do it? Take a look at this article that explains the most common methods to get yourself onto the silver screen.

10 LAws Of Social Network Marketing

Facebook is by far the easiest, and maybe the best way to build an online presence for a small business. Most small businesses now don't even need a website to take advantage of the internet, and give themselves presence due to the massive amount of social networking sites and all the tools the search engines offer. Of course many still do try to throw a website together and it is literally a waste of their time for most small businesses.

Unless you are actively selling products online, and this is your business such as weight loss supplements like adapexin-p, you are an online retailer, etc. most brick and mortar businesses have no need to pay someone for a website. Facebook is considered by the search engines as literally about the same value as your own website. Your website would rank just above it, but the social network pages would still rank higher than everything else when it came to your business. Some people find that their social pages show up higher since they are better equipped with keywords that customers search than their actual websites.

Take for instance if you are a doctor. Doctors most of them time know little to nothing about making a website. They know even less about internet marketing. They have a nice sized marketing budget, and they also have a big bullseye on their backs for web designers. They get taken for thousands to build websites, and the internet marketing that goes along with it. Local doctors have it easy with their keywords. Their competition is so low on the search engines that they have nobody to beat most of the time unless you are in a big city. Paying someone a ton of money for this presence is absurd for the majority of mid-sized to smaller city businesses.

If you get the time read a bit about search engine optimization, and really think about what your customers are going to be searching for to find you. "Traverse City foot doctor"? Yes this is the kind of thing they would search for if you ran out of that city and are a foot doctor. You can blow your competition away if you have even remedial understanding of what search engines use to place your sites and the terms that point to them.

Here's an article to help yo understand it a bit more after you get some basics down.

Too Many "Unlikes" and "Unsubscribes" Lately? Find Out Why

Even typing out those words seems ludicrous, but it is part of the marketplace now. Facebook "Likes", and "Subscribers" to Twitter, blogs, and any other form of contact with customers are important aspects of many businesses to keep them hooked on your products be it new pre workout supplements, beauty products, or new gadgets.

As you may have guessed, people actually analyze why this happens. What you might be able to do about it in the future, or how to avoid it altogether. ExactTarget, an Indianapolis-based interactive marketing services provider, has released "The Social Break-up," a report exploring why consumers terminate their relationship with businesses and brands through these three major social media channels: Facebook, Twitter and email marketing.

Feeling the blues of a breakup? Check out their report and move on to your next one.

Mobile Coupons For Your Business?

Coupons are a proven strategy to get customers into the door. Many times getting them to come back for more, but most importantly, they tend to make you a little bit of profit regardless of whether you are giving the customer a discount. They will likely purchase something else since they are there anyways.

What about the new, and increasing popularity of paperless coupons? Is your business set up to accept such a coupon? Many customers now are able to use coupons straight from a mobile device at the point of purchase, and if you aren't able to accept them, you obviously aren't getting part of this market. Anyone at a mall checking out hgh reviews and then seeing more than one shop that sells health supplies may see a coupon for one place, but not yours. Figure out some easy steps to set your store up for mobile coupons.

Keeping Your Day Job While You Start a Business

Starting a business leaves you pretty broke when you come out of the gate usually. Very few circumstances will have you financially healthy early on in the dream. You might have some cash tossed your way to work with, but most of us don't have that luxury. So...we may be forced to work our day job while we build our own business up enough to survive on.

What are some ways that you can do both and still function without having to sleep for 10 minutes at a time while you are driving? Technology like the apple iphone, laptops, and many others are a great start, but how else can you do it? Here are some tips.

Building Business With Facebook Deals and Facebook Ad Benchmarking

Facebook is now a necessary part of almost every business out there. Not only does most of the internet world use Facebook, but it is designed in such a way that allows you to promote your business easily, update your customers efficiently, and communicate directly with your customers in a more laid back setting. Good for any kind of business from ecommerce web hosting which can actually get a lot of clients from their pages, or restaurants that can show new food items and specials to their loyal customers for almost no cost.

Traditional advertising on Facebook, however is an option that many have used successfully, but it seems that not many know what the value is of that advertising. That is why I found this article interesting in that it discusses the cost of advertising on Facebook, as well as how much it is increasing year to year. It suggests getting into it now rather than waiting for the price to go up even more and it links to some stats on who the most likely conversions are.

Facebook Deals is another form of business building with the platform. Facebook Deals is a simple concept that enables businesses like yours a means of offering bargains and discounts that can potentially bring traffic to your business, create buzz, and foster customer loyalty. Like the theater punch card, Facebook Deals entices loyalty from your customers by offering them a tangible discount -- and you don't have to deface a raggedy ticket to make it work. See more

Annual Super Bowl Ads LEssons

The Super Bowl. The championship game of the National Football League is one of the biggest events of the year, if not the biggest in all of sports (Apologies to the World Cup. Not in America.). Not only is the game huge, everything surrounding it is a circus as well.

Obviously, one of the most talked about things the Monday morning after the game besides the game itself are the Super Bowl ads. Many people actually watch the game for these ads alone. They certainly area huge platform for any business and can make a company a household name overnight. You want people to know about your brake rotors? The Super Bowl is probably the biggest stage of any.

What is there to learn from this whole fiasco? What is it that these commercials do so well, or so poorly that you should take notice? Whether it's a new jingle, laugh-out-loud humor or shock value, some of the most powerful brands invest millions of dollars each winter to get their marketing messages in front of consumers during the most important NFL game of the year -- the Super Bowl. Hands down, the big football championship is by far the most-watched single-telecast in the U.S. each year. more