Work at Home Business Ideas

Paid Content:
In January, Apple announced it had launched over 15,000 applications on its iPhone. In two months, that number has already jumped to 25,000.
VentureBeat used public information and findings from 148Apps to analyze pricing and popularity trends.
• The most popular pricepoint is $0.99, not free. (Interesting!) Some 10,274 applications cost $0.99 versus 6,044 that are gratis. (Most developers would have to sell a ton of applications to make any real money; it’s definitely a labor of love for most developers.)
• Unlike the BlackBerry applications, which cost a minimum of $2.99, 80 percent of iPhone apps are $1.99 or less.
• Apparently there is a market for expensive applications: Apps priced at $9.99 are the sixth-most popular on the iPhone (there are now 700 of them).
• Games are the most popular type of app (5,263), followed by entertainment (3,497), and books (2,405). The least popular? Weather.
How much would it [...]

Original post by Rich Whittle and software by Elliott Back

NFIB:
William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s leading small business organization, issued the following statement on February job numbers based on NFIB’s monthly economic survey.
“There was a decline in average employment per firm of 1.0 workers reported for the past three months by small business owners in February, the largest decline in survey history.
“However, 11 percent reported unfilled job openings, unchanged from February and a positive sign going forward. Job openings are a significant predictor of the unemployment rate. Over the next three months, 13 percent plan to create new jobs (up four points), and 10 percent plan workforce reductions (down four points), yielding a seasonally adjusted net-negative 3 percent of owners planning to create new jobs, three points better than January but still historically very low.
“Not seasonally adjusted, job-creation plans were positive in all industry groups except manufacturing. It looks like [...]

Original post by Rich Whittle and software by Elliott Back

SkipMcgrath.com:
eBay announced they will be killing the Dutch Auction format effective in May.
Since eBay expanded and reduced fees on Fixed Price Listings, the Dutch auction format has been used less and less by sellers where it was once the favored format for listing multiple items.
Sellers have until May to change their Dutch auction listings over to auction style or fixed price.
There may be something bigger about to happen. It is no secret that many small and occasional sellers have been unhappy with eBay moves that promote large sellers.
eBay has been concerned about small sellers leaving for quite a while but has yet to really address the issue. Well, it may be now. eBay often tests out ideas overseas before bringing them to the US.
eBay UK has announced a new fee schedule for Private Sellers (non full-time business sellers) effective March [...]

Original post by Rich Whittle and software by Elliott Back

St. Petersburg Times:
For 20 hours a week Julie Sardelli fields HSN sales calls in her Pinellas Park home office with two big dogs curled around her feet and two smaller ones parked on the desk, flanking her home computer.
“There’s no commute, I can work in my PJs, and when my shift ends, I can go right to bed,” said the 50-year-old mother of two grown kids. “It’s perfect. I’d quit if they try to send me back to work in the call center.”
Not likely. A growing contingent of headphoned workers armed with their own personal computers linked to HSN’s St. Petersburg headquarters miles away helped lift the network’s once-dismal customer satisfaction ratings.
About 900 of the 1,400 part- and full-time workers who handle orders now work from home in three states. The TV shopping network is experimenting with sending some of the 300 employees who handle customer complaints home, too.
“We [...]

Original post by Rich Whittle and software by Elliott Back

Press-Register:
A small-town Alabama pharmacist intrigued by the government’s economic stimulus plan decided to launch his own version with $16,000 in $2 bills, and area stores have already felt the impact.
Danny Cottrell gave each of his full-time employees $700 and part-timers $300. He asked them to donate 15 percent to charity and spend the rest locally, particularly downtown, where store owners say that business has been lean.
“I wanted to do something for my employees, let them know our business is not in jeopardy, and for the local merchants,” said Danny Cottrell, “This seemed like a good way to do it.”
The $2 bills make it easy to see where it’s going, see how it turns over and generates tax revenue that helps the town and schools. Some of the $2 bills have even circulated back to the pharmacy.
“It’s not a huge amount of money,” Cottrell said of his hometown stimulus package. [...]

Original post by Rich Whittle and software by Elliott Back

Wired:
Good news, doodlers: What your colleagues consider a distracting, time-wasting habit may actually give you a leg up on them by helping you pay attention.
Asked to remember names they’d heard on a recording, people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn’t. This suggests that a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander.
“People may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate,” said study co-author Jackie Andrade, a University of Plymouth psychologist. “We might not be aware that we’re doing it, but it could be a trick that people develop because it helps them from wandering off into a daydream.”
“The exciting thing is that people actually got better while doing two things at once,” said Andrade. “Doodling is not as bad a thing as we might think.”
Photo by adamci/weirdvis.

From Business Opportunities [...]

Original post by Rich Whittle and software by Elliott Back

Digital Journal:
The recession hasn’t negatively impacted chocolate sales. Folks will celebrate that.
If we continue to act in our best interest, and eat more chocolate, its sales won’t slide; and we’ll be better off because of it.
Consumer patterns of spending predict that chocolate confectioners will continue to do well, according to reports.
It seems the high brow chocolate, the type elegantly made and styled in candy stores scores high with consumers, because the middle products, it’s said, could be squeezed.
The average American eats 11.7 pounds per year. It wouldn’t be hard to get people to eat even more perhaps to boost the economy.
Photo by Thoursie.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

Original post by Rich Whittle and software by Elliott Back

Mental Floss:

Can you imagine if, instead of “TiVo-ing” the latest episode of Lost, you were “Bongo-ing” it? “Bongo” and “Lasso” are just two of the 800 possible names the marketing folks kicked around before settling on TiVo. The final name was cobbled together from “TV” and the engineering acronym “I/O,” which stands for “input/output.” Little did they know their noun would become a verb and their oddly-named invention would forever change the way people watch television.

Would President Obama have fought so hard to keep his “LeapFrog” phone? Because the phone was leaps and bounds over everything else on the market, this was one of the names considered for the BlackBerry. Another possibility was “Strawberry,” because the tiny keys resembled seeds. But when someone felt the word “straw” sounded too slow, another berry was suggested as a placeholder until something more official was developed. Over time, the temporary berry became so [...]

Original post by Rich Whittle and software by Elliott Back

The Miami Herald:
As the South Florida real estate market disintegrated and the number of jobless rose, 40-year-old Jorge Gil Muela made a young man’s decision.
The five-foot-seven, 235-pound property appraiser walked into a recruiting center in a Kendall strip mall to join the Army. He was told to shed 50 pounds. It’s a small price, he said, for the job security and pay, family health insurance and new career as a cargo handler.
Muela’s tale shows how the financial crisis may be subtly aiding the Army, which struggled to meet its recruitment goals in 2004 and 2005.
Muela was able to become ”GI Jorge” because Congress in 2006 raised the Army’s age cap from 35 to 42.
Analysts anticipate that these hard times may help build a more mature, discerning Army less reliant on bonuses and waivers for would-be soldiers with health issues or criminal records.
”Since the economy has gone into the tanks, the [...]

Original post by Rich Whittle and software by Elliott Back

photo credit: Joshua Rappeneker
More and more people are offering their skills online by providing expert advice or performing specific tasks for a fee. The WSJ has more about this interesting new idea and trend:
Teresa Estes, a licensed mental-health counselor, watched as business at her private practice dwindled last year. Then the single mother turned to her keyboard to boost her income.
Ms. Estes applied to become an “expert” on (this language is not supported, see … for more info), a Web site where clients pay for online chat time with professionals and advisers of all stripes. For $1.89 a minute — a rate she set — the 39-year-old from Marianna, Fla., dispenses advice to clients around the globe. She spends about four hours a day logged on to the service, often at night, when her daughter has gone to bed.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

Original post by Dane Carlson and software by Elliott Back