http://www.mobocruiser.com/

Entrepreneurism runs in Melody Hsieh’s blood. Her parents operated an auto parts factory in Taiwan, where she once worked at the age of 8.

“I learned early in life that hard work and smart work are the essential ingredients to running a successful business,” she said.

So after college in 2000, Hsieh decided to start a company, with family money, that sold scooters. By 2003, sales at her ASA Products surged to $3 million.

But in the next three years, annual sales quickly plummeted to $300,000. “My mistake was that I had no long-term strategy to build my brand,” she said. “I was just pursuing a hot trend, and not paying attention to competition, customer service or marketing.”

In 2006, she took a hiatus from her company and went back to school for her MBA. In late 2006, she relaunched a new product — Mobo Cruisers — a line of three-wheeled cruisers for kids and adults. “This time I applied what I learned in school about marketing, operations and research before I launched the brand,” said Hsieh.

Today, Mobo Cruisers is sold through Target and Toys “R” Us and expanding into Canada. Hsieh, who’s a new mom to her three-month-old son, said she’s busier than ever now. “Women can do it. It’s hard but you don’t have to give up one role for the other,” she said. “Have a routine that works for you and stick to it.”

[Via - CNNMoney, HT - Easy Money]

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http://www.fame.me/

Imagine American Idol on Facebook. Yes, not on TV, but on Facebook. Further still, imagine American Idol without Jennifer Lopez, Randy Jackson and Steve Tyler, but just the American population spotting the next big singing sensation.

Impossible? Not quite.

Brett Marl of Fame.Me is looking to up the game by bringing a contest like American Idol to the Facebook generation, more like turning an interactive TV show into an even more interactive, accessible website. If that sounds a lot like YouTube to you, consider this: 60 hours of video is uploaded into YouTube every minute of the day so that getting spotted in a crowd like that is like finding a needle in a haystack – but probably not if you’re a kitten or an adorable baby with a toothless grin.

FameMe is structured like a contest. The judges are people at home, sitting in front of their computers, with three chances to vote for their favorite performers dai ly. FameMe makes full use of existing social media, Facebook and probably Twitter in the future, for both contestants and supporters to campaign for votes.

Fame.Me is only four months old, but Marl and his team are confident the site will be the next big thing.

[HT - Unusual Business]

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http://www.eworky.com/

If you’re normal as normal can be and you have an extra room or space in your company, chances are all you have in there are empty boxes or broken equipment. How about renting it out to rake in some extra cash?

In a different scenario, imagine yourself a small business owner needing to conduct a meeting in a place with special equipment and/or infrastructure beyond your budget, or a freelancer in need of a temporary workspace. How does booking a workspace on a daily, weekly, monthly basis when you need it, where you need it at a price you can afford sound?

This, basically, is the idea behind startup eWorky - to function as collaborative search platform for people on the lookout for workspace. eWorky has a big community of companies offering diverse types of workspace for various types of professions.

Finding available workspace with eWorky is less complicated than online car reservation. All you need to do is sign up, log into your account and search for the space you need in your area. If you’re looking to rent in another city, simply scroll to your city of choice and browse through available listings. As soon as you find what you need, book and pay for the workspace online.

If you’re a property manager wishing to provide workspace, eWorky allows you to advertise your place for free. Make sure to be descriptive of your property. And that should include its size, furniture available, amenities such as Wi-Fi, how to access the space, vacancies and promos for customers with multiple and/or long-term bookings. Once a customer agrees with your specified terms, payment is deposited directly to your account.

[Via - Online Business Ideas]

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http://scan.me/

Before Apple released the iPad 2, Garrett Gee made a lucky guess. “I knew it was going to have a camera, and because of that I just imagined that there would be a blog post or something similar on the top 10 new apps for the iPad 2,” he says.

Gee wasn’t just the average college student geeking out. A student at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, he is one of the founders of Scan (scan.me), which allows iPad, iPhone and Droid users to scan quick-response (QR) codes.

Gee’s push to get his hands on the iPad 2 and get it to his iOS developer was motivated by his desire for Scan to be the first QR-scanner app available specifically for the device–thereby earning a spot on those top 10 lists. Thanks to two sleepless nights, he succeeded.

Gee’s path from student to entrepreneur started in 2009, when he received a smartphone for Christmas. With that device, the then-freshman scanned his first QR code and realized there could be apps and software that were less clunky and easier to use. At a web-design conference, he met Twitter creative director Doug Bowman, who encouraged him to pursue his idea.

Gee recruited classmates Kirk Ouimet and Ben Turley to help launch Scan in February 2011. The idea was to use simple online and mobile tools to give users a better option for scanning QR codes, and to offer a polished option for businesses that wanted to create those codes.

“There are many, many sites where you can go and create your own QR code,” Gee concedes. “Remember when Facebook and Twitter were first getting popular, and businesses large and small all hopped on and started creating Twitter accounts and Facebook pages? They didn’t really know how or why; they were just doing it because they thought it was important. It’s been the same story with QR codes. People see them popping up all over the place, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, we should probably use QR codes for our marketing.’”

Gee, Ouimet and Turley took second place in BYU’s business plan competition in April 2011–a status they parlayed into funding. After 16 trips to pitch to investors such as Google Ventures, Menlo Ventures and the co-owner of the Boston Celtics, they had $1.5 million. Gee waded through the offers while balancing school and travel as a forward on BYU’s semiprofessional soccer team, often taking conference calls in airport bathrooms along the way.

The team used that capital to build a platform and user base that earned Scan 10 million downloads in the first year. The actual scans derived from those downloads grew from 12 million to 21 million between September and October 2011. The next move is to develop a monetization plan. Today the software to read or create codes is free of charge; future options will include premium content and mobile-commerce templates.

Gee, now 25, is working toward graduating from BYU. For now, the dual student-CEO role is serving him well. “People relate to the student world quite well,” he says. “You could say I play the ‘student card’ quite often when I’m meeting with big companies. It definitely scores me empathy points.”

[Via - YoungEntrepreneur.Com]

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http://compactimpact.com/

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, can be a killer condition. It can lead to a whole host of potentially fatal diseases like kidney failure, heart attack or stroke. Hypertension can be caused by obesity, heredity, a high-salt diet, a sedentary lifestyle, smoking, etc. While heredity is something a person doesn’t have control over, smoking, a sedentary lifestyle and a high-salt diet are some things a person can control.

More than home-prepared foods, restaurant and processed foods are unquestionably saltier. So for people, especially the ageing population with escalating health concerns, who need to lower their salt intake, the Salinity Monitor Spoon recently launched by Japanese Compact Impact measures the salinity of soups and sauces at temperatures between 140F (60C) and 176F (80C). The spoon is put into the soup or other liquid foods, and the gauge on the spoon indicates whether the food’s saltin ess is between 0.6% and 0.8%, 0.9% and 1.1% or 1.2% and above. This way, the user can decide how much of the food to consume. The Salinity Monitor Spoon is currently pegged at US $58.

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http://www.grafighters.com/

You’re bored, really bored. The meeting had been going on for hours and hours now, with no end in sight anytime soon. Unfortunately, you don’t have much of choice. Like it or not, you have to see through the ridiculously boring exchange or you won’t get a full day’s pay. And then you ask yourself, what else can you do to keep your sanity in place? You look at your notes, and there, in the margins of your notepad, you find yourself doodling an awesome eight-legged creature with sharp fangs, an evil-looking grin and scorching red balls for eyes. As the hours slip away, you wonder how different things would be if the creature came to life and scared everyone in the meeting room away.

Sounds familiar?

An up-and-coming gaming company called Grafighters intends to do just that - bring your creatures to life and play with them, in the virtual world, at least. Grafighters is a gaming platform where users can send doodles to fight against each other. First thing you need to do is draw the creature you have in mind on a piece of paper. Using the app provided on Grafighters, you go through an uploading process where you specify the drawing’s body parts. If the drawing has a really big head, you get points for intelligence. If it has muscly arms, you’re awarded points for strength. If the drawing is tiny and well-balanced, expect some points for speed. Your character’s category, like “toughness category” or “intelligence category,” will determine its fighting technique the moment it goes into battle.

As of this writing, there are a couple of different environment stages available. There’s the Deep Sea Ocean, Ghost Town, London Street, and there’s also the North Pole, a Christmas-themed level.

Eric Cleckner and Dave Chenell, the brains behind Grafighters, are looking to launch the app on the iPhone, too, so that your character can be with you wherever you go - Tamagotchi fashion - except that this character is your own creation.

So will your character be breathing fire, or sprouting spikes when mad like a porcupine?

[Via - Madconomist.com]

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http://www.safetytat.com/

If you have you ever lost your child, even for a moment, you know that it is every parent’s worst nightmare.

Here’s a product to make you feel better about that eventuality: SafetyTats are temporary child identification tattoos that when applied to a child’s arm provide an immediate and highly visible form of identification and contact should your child become lost. Unlike just writing your telephone number of your child’s arm, the temporary tattoo is waterproof.

Where’d the idea come from?

The idea for SafetyTat temporary child ID tattoos was born of necessity one weekend at an amusement park. On Labor Day Weekend, Baltimore Mom, Michele Welsh and her husband, there with their three small children, felt out-numbered. To stave her panic, she quickly wrote her mobile phone number on each of their arms with a ballpoint pen. As she did this, she thoughtfully explained to each of them the importance of staying close to Mommy and Daddy. She also told them that if they were separated that the number on their arm was a way to reconnect with them.

Throughout the day of fun, Michele had to rewrite the number several times as it smeared or washed off. Several parents in the park stopped her to ask if that was her number on the kids’ arms. Each time, they loved the idea.

The day was a success and the idea for SafetyTat temporary child id tattoos was born.

[Via - Dane Carson]

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http://www.paulsammut.com/ramos/

There may be a lucky few who never have trouble getting up in the morning, but for everyone else, engineer and designer Paul Sammut has a new solution. Now fully funded on Kickstarter, Sammut’s new Ramos alarm clock can’t be turned off by any ordinary means; rather, users must get up and walk to an accompanying defuse panel to punch in the clock’s preset deactivation code.

There’s no “snooze” button in easy reach on the Ramos clock, which has been in development for years, Sammut says. “Ramos is a clock I made after I got tired of constantly oversleeping,” he explains. “I needed something that would force me out of bed.” No surprise, then, that the Ramos can only be turned off when the user gets up and enters in a code on a separate wireless defuse panel, which Sammut suggests be placed in the kitchen or bathroom. “You’ll have to use your brain a bit more, which will help wake you up,” he notes. “Best of all, after you turn off the alarm you’ll find yourself in your bathroom or kitchen, away from the evil alluring bed and ready to start your day.” An optional snooze mode will be included, but users won’t be able to exceed the number of “snoozes” they preset in advance.

The Ramos can now be preordered on Kickstarter starting at USD 160, with options including either an LED or nixie tube display and a variety of hardwoods and finishes. Specialty retailers around the globe: one to get in on early?

[Via - Springwise]

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1. PickyDomains.Com – this crowd sourcing site specializes in naming things. Like names, domains, product lines, slogans, etc. The service is 100% risk free, meaning clients pay only if they decide to use one of the suggestions offered. Contributors get 40 to 60 percent of the amount paid by client.

2. 99Designs.Com – 99Designs is probably the best known logo crowdsourcing service out there (though it offers all kinds of web design services as well). It’s been growing by leaps and bounds and paid out over $25 million to designers since 2008.

3. oDesk.Com – dubbed ELance killer, oDesk may not kill its main competitor but having a chance to work with both, I can tell you that I like oDesk a whole lot better. It’s probably one of the best sources for crowdsourcing jobs for writers, programmers, designers, artists, marketers, virtual assistance and other freelancers.

4. IdeaBounty.Com – yes, you can even crowdsource ideas. (I wonder if anyone has used existing crowdsourcing service to generate ideas for a new crowdourcing service). As the name implies, IdeaBounty pays for ideas (most clients are corporations). And even though they say ‘ideas are a dime a dozen’, IdeaBounty pays thousands and the top reward so far stands at a cool $20,000.

5. AgentAnything.Com – Any Errand Any Time Any Where – that’s the slogan AgentAnything goes by and that’s pretty much a close description of the service. Unlike the four you just read about, this one leans toward offline tasks and is a lot like Craigslist.

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http://www.birdsbarbershop.com/

Michael Portman has heard his salon customers share information with their hairdressers that they wouldn’t confide in anyone else. As he says, it’s a business built on trust. After all, how many deals compel the service provider to wield a sharp pair of scissors to your scalp or neck?

Today, six years after he and childhood pal Jayson Rapaport opened the first of five Birds Barbershops in Austin, Texas, Portman is especially pleased when a customer comes in for a haircut in advance of a job interview. “That’s a pretty trusting moment there,” Portman says.

Like many entrepreneurs, Portman has found that savvy branding efforts go a long way toward cultivating that trust. And while there’s no single formula for branding your way into a client’s warm embrace, it’s generally agreed that it takes more than a clever slogan or a catchy jingle. At the very least, it takes strong job performance, effective marketing (often online) and favorable public opinion. Yet experts say building trust through branding also requires an ineffable something that leaves customers feeling good about the whole exchange.

“Branding now is trying to measure not just the affinity, but the trust a consumer has in you,” says Todd Copilevitz, a branding consultant in Atlanta.

To build trust through branding, says Karen Post, a Tampa, Fla.–based consultant and the author of Brand Turnaround, an entrepreneur must establish a distinct identity. Portman and Rapaport did this by offering standard haircuts at below-market prices–$19 for men, $39 for women–and keeping salons open seven days a week. (”Every salon in the world is closed on Mondays,” Portman says. “What’s with that?”) Tapping into Austin’s rich musical heritage, they installed old-fashioned jukeboxes, then turned up the volume. Because Austin is such a bicycle-crazy town, they offered men who rode to Birds a free hair wash. (Women get a shampoo with the standard cut.) And abiding by the company ethos of keeping things local, they formed myriad partnerships in support of hometown causes and events.

Their mission was simple, really: They wanted to make the haircut experience more fun. And that’s where the beer comes in. After noon each day, anyone who gets a haircut at Birds receives a free can of Shiner beer. Birds pays nothing for the beer but gives Shiner plenty of promotional punch, including a neon sign in every salon window. Shiner comes from the Lone Star State’s oldest independent brewery, so it holds a special place in the hearts and minds of Texans. For Portman, the arrangement has been invaluable in helping Birds establish its identity.

And that has led to success. Last year, Portman says, Birds took in nearly $3 million in revenue. Birds has relied heavily on social media to build its brand. Copilevitz says the online world, which gives consumers a robust and timely forum for expressing opinions, has forced businesses to revert to old-school customer service. “That is, dealing with people as people,” he says. “They’re using social media to talk to their customers in an open, honest way, and they do that on a stage where millions of eyeballs can focus on that discussion.” Using social media effectively, adds Portman, also means knowing when to lay low. “We’re part of the conversation, just like when you’re sitting around the table with friends,” he says. “You don’t say anything unless you have something to say.”

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[HT - Entrepreneur]

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