How An Artist Drew A Bunny... That Made Over $200 Million.

http://www.jimbenton.com/

It's Happy Bunny, in true rabbit fashion, has multiplied quickly.

Thousands of products feature the rude cartoon. His quips have slipped onto socks ("I just realized I don't care"), wafted onto air fresheners ("Let's focus on me"), and slid onto key rings ("It's cute how stupid you are"). The bunny -- and his creator -- have hippity-hopped into licensing lore.

Jim Benton, a 46-year-old writer and artist, created the It's Happy Bunny franchise more than 10 years ago as one of many designs he hoped would get him a licensing contract. It took a few years for the bunny to catch on, but once it did, he started racking up sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. Benton's intellectual properties, including the rabbit and a cluster of other characters, have made him stand out in an industry dominated by big entertainment companies. It's Happy Bunny alone is licensed to more than 100 companies world-wide. Last year, retail sales for the rabbit reached nearly $200 million. This fall, Kohl's Corp. discount stores will display It's Happy Bunny apparel, such as underwear for teen girls, alongside merchandise featuring the likes of licensing heavyweight Walt Disney Co.'s "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "High School Musical." Thanks to licensing, Mr. Benton says, "a twerp like me can go shoulder to shoulder with a company like Disney."

But it's not that easy. The licensing industry is a massively profitable tangled web of artists, agents and merchandisers. It's a dance helping products sell and characters get noticed. If it works, both sides win.

In 2006, manufacturers paid more than $6 billion in royalties in the U.S. to people who hold copyrights to a character or brand, according to the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association. Entertainment properties and characters are by far the leaders, accounting for nearly a third of those royalty payments.

Many of the deals -- or contacts for future deals -- are consummated at the Licensing International, a speed-dating event of sorts for people with characters to license, manufacturers with products to sell and retailers looking for the next big thing. The three-day get-together in New York, which begins today, draws more than 25,000 people to see the 500 exhibitors and their over-the-top displays.

"Everyone wants to have the next It's Happy Bunny," says Cindy Levitt, a former vice president of licensing at teen retailer Hot Topic Inc., based in City of Industry, Calif.

Mr. Benton, who lives in Bloomfield, Mich., first attended the licensing show in 1989 with "The Misters," a series of individual drawings that pokes fun at the habits of men. His 10-by-10-foot booth had only a card table. "With my dumb little suit and my alert little brief case," he says, "I masqueraded as an intellectual-property owner."

While the licensing of intellectual property has been around for decades, sophisticated marketing and merchandising plans are a fairly recent development. Rather than licensing a T-shirt here and a lunch box there, entertainment companies now plan their merchandising strategy with as much care as the entertainment vehicle behind it, says Charles Riotto, president of the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association, a New York-based trade group.

The first modern merchandising effort came after the release of "Star Wars" in 1977. The creators responded to heavy demand from fans. "We just started cranking it out," said Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing. It remains a hot property. It has hit $13.5 billion in retail sales, according to Lucasfilm Ltd.

Through licensing, creators can make money without the financial risk and hassle of manufacturing, storing or shipping products. The vast majority of licensing contracts, some 90%, pay royalties of between 6% and 12% of the wholesale price out of which middlemen, such as licensing agents, are often paid, says Mr. Riotto. High-profile properties can bring in significantly more. Mr. Benton averages around 10%.

Entertainment companies -- with heavily marketed properties, such as movies or TV shows -- are the major force behind licensing. Retail sales of licensed Disney merchandise (think Hannah Montana and Disney Princess) reached $23 billion in 2006, according to License Magazine. Warner Bros. Consumer Products, which licenses Harry Potter goods, had $6 billion and Nickelodeon-Viacom Consumer Products, which lays claim to Dora the Explorer, had $5.3 billion.

But there's a healthy slice of independent licensors like Mr. Benton who have built a following in what's called the art category. Several artists, such as Thomas Kinkade and Mary Engelbreit, have found success licensing their work to home décor manufacturers. Art licensing saw the biggest increase in royalty revenues, rising to $182 million in 2006 from $175 million in 2005.

It's Happy Bunny and other art that is aimed at teens and so-called 'tweens on the cusp of adolescence are a much tougher sell. The consumer has to like what he or she sees almost immediately in an unknown property, because there's no automatic affiliation. "Without a buzz behind it or groundswell coming up ahead of it, it's hard to throw a new character out there," says Ms. Levitt, the former Hot Topic executive.

And timing is everything. Mr. Benton paired his drawings with snarky sayings before so-called attitude art started appearing en masse. Nobody got the joke when he first created It's Happy Bunny, says Mr. Benton, so he tucked the character away in his portfolio.

He dabbled with licensing it but didn't get serious interest until 2001, when he hired licensing agent Carole Postal, president of New York-based CopCorp Licensing. She knew executives at Hot Topic and introduced them to both Mr. Benton and his bunny. They loved the attitude of both (Mr. Benton is as animated as his character), and Ms. Postal brokered a licensing deal between Mr. Benton and some manufacturers who supplied T-shirts, buttons, magnets and key chains to Hot Topic. By September 2001, It's Happy Bunny was in several hundred stores. Hot Topic had the character exclusively for nearly two years.

"You have to be real careful about how you manage a property," says Mr. Benton. "The temptation is to sell it to anyone as fast as you can."

The disciplined strategy worked, says Marty Brochstein, executive editor of the Licensing Letter, a trade publication. Customers sought out the merchandise at Hot Topic stores, displayed in a boutique-type setting. "We treated it like it was our property," says Ms. Levitt. At one time, Hot Topic sold around 150 different It's Happy Bunny products.

It's Happy Bunny has since expanded to the mass market. Mr. Riotto says the product has done well because it lends itself to so many categories. Target carries greeting cards, Claire's accessory stores sell purses, Wal-Mart has posters. Globally, the brand is just as widespread: Customers can buy It's Happy Bunny pajamas in Peru, stickers in Canada, toothbrushes in Japan.

Within the industry, a property's success is judged typically by retail sales. It's Happy Bunny will reach about $225 million in retail sales this year, according to projections from CopCorp. In 2006, It's Happy Bunny sales brought in about $5.25 million in licensing revenue. This year, CopCorp projects a 27% increase to about $6.65 million.

That's not to say it's easy to turn a drawing into a million-dollar brand -- although that's the perception. In January 2005, the New York Post compiled a list of "10 Ways to Make it to the Top." Mr. Benton and It's Happy Bunny got mentioned at No. 6, under the headline "Make a Pile of Money for Doing Very Little." Ms. Postal still bristles: "If it were that easy, everyone would do it." Keeping track of the character -- especially the quality of production -- is a huge undertaking, says Ms. Postal. It's not slapping the bunny wherever it fits.

Every product is closely developed and produced. For example, when Mr. Benton and Ms. Postal were working with a beverage manufacturer on an energy drink, Mr. Benton suggested calling it "Spaz Juice."

Of course, franchises like It's Happy Bunny don't come along very often. Jay Foreman, who runs Play Along, a toy-making division of the consumer-products company JAKKS Pacific Inc., says the likelihood that an artist can create and capitalize on several different characters is slim. "Many of these guys will never ever have another property like the one they created," says Mr. Foreman.

Mr. Benton believes he has a few more rabbits in his hat. It's Happy Bunny remains his top-licensed property, but other characters continue to make their mark. Meany Doodles, a cartoon of a little girl in a bad mood, has several licensed products, including a T-shirt that says "Obey me, you'll be happier."

His line called Just Jimmy, of cartoon animals, runs the gamut of properties from buttons to hooded sweatshirts. Mr. Benton has also licensed merchandise off of a series of "Franny K. Stein" books he wrote for 'tweens, about a little girl who is a mad scientist. And he has ventured into the entertainment industry, with a movie in the works for Franny.

Aware of the fickle nature of his target audience, Mr. Benton continues to revise his work, striving to make it age-appropriate and funny at the same time. As one of his ubiquitous bunny's slogan's points out on a T-shirt: "I'm not saying I'm cool. That's your job."

How To Make Money Online Giving Away Diet Advice

WEIRD - Teen Sits In All 5,200 Seats At Baseball Stadium

A Way To Make Money With Movie Theater Ads.

http://www.armslength-promotions.com/

The next time you go to a movie, you may be entertained before the show even starts. The latest trend in direct advertising is Arms-Length Promotions' product, the Stand-In, and it's grasping the attention of entire audiences, one cup holder at a time.

After arriving early to a movie with his son, ArmsLength founder and CEO Matt Faulkner, 48, noticed the untapped potential of stadium seating cup holders as a medium for advertising. By 2002, Faulkner secured a patent for the Stand-In and set the stage for a new wave of advertising in entertainment venues across the nation. Using only friction and postcard-weight card stock, the Stand-In fits securely into and stands upright in almost any cup holder without blocking it.

ArmsLength's clients, including McDonald's and Major League Baseball, have the opportunity to customize their Stand-Ins beyond strict advertisements. Not only does the perforated base double as a detachable coupon, but the attention-grabbing vertical advertisement can put promotional items such as schedules, collectibles or even DVDs within easy reach of each person in the audience. "The intimacy of [the Stand-In]," says Faulkner, "demands [that consumers] interact with it because it is so close." In addition, ArmsLength's ability to adapt to the predicted interests of a target demographic based on the type of event they are attending ensures the message will be received.

After patenting the Stand-In for roughly $40,000, ArmsLength Promotions has continued to expand the use of its product to new and innovative venues. No longer limited to theaters and stadiums, the Stand-In is now found in airports, hotels, gyms, hospitals and even rental cars--basically anywhere and everywhere there's a cup holder. Clients are praising the Stand-In's unique ability to get into the personal space of consumers, and ArmsLength Promotions is expected to grab sales of more than $500,000 in 2007.

What One Pissed Off Stripper Can Teach You About Online Marketing

Billionaires Who Went Broke

Using "Shocker Sites" As Traffic Generators.

http://stripperrant.com/

StripperRant.Com is a perfect example of a "shocker site" that is used as traffic satellite for another site (in this instance, PickyDomains.com). If fact, you can see how good or bad this site is doing its job on Reddit, just press the up arrow and see the number change (got to be a registered Reddit user first).

A "shocker site" is usually a one page website that has provocative content that has a very high pontential for "self-distribution" (that's when site gets on Reddit, Digg, blogs, people talk to each other about it, etc. all on it's own)

So, what's the point?

The point is very simple, quite frankly, to get a lot of traffic for almost zero money (the cost of a one-page shocker is basicaly the price of a domain name - $8.95). Most shockers never manage to get enough traffic for domain registration, but ones that do, easily recoup the cost for all sites.

You can easily create 10 shocker sites in one hour, provided you know where to get some copyright-free "rauchy" content (Wikipedia is great for that).

StipperRant.com is based on a rather funny rant of one San Francisco stripper, sick and tired of her redneck clients and less then perfect co-workers ("Girls--what's with the pole smell? Can we do a little hygiene check? Nothing than worse than twirling around the pole and getting a whiff of stale pussy.").

If you are a young male, you are likely to enjoy the rant a lot (especially since it's totally safe for work). If you are a woman, you are probably wondering - what's so funny?

At the end of the rant, you'll see three links. The first one leads to the primary
site (the reason why the shocker was created in the first place), the other two lead to other resources on similar topic (More on the subject - Paying for It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients and The Stripper Diaries).

All three links are used to monetize the site in order to make money on one page shockers.

While one page websites are nothing new, one page shocker is a new technique, used by not too many online marketers. You are welcome to try it out and share your success stories with the readers of this blog.

10 Dumb But Very Profitable Internet Business Ideas

The $67 Million Pants: Washington, D.C., Lawyer Sues Dry Cleaners for Lost Trousers

Making A Living As A Family Archivist

http://www.okpicturethis.com/

Christmas 2004 was quiet at Tabitha Geary's house. She and her kids spent the morning looking through memory albums her mother had made from photos she found stored under the kids' beds and on the hard drive of Geary's computer.

The next day, Geary wondered if there were others like her: moms who loved the idea of memory books but didn't have the time or desire to make the albums themselves. It was with this in mind that Geary, now 37, started OK, Picture This as a means of helping families archive photos which would otherwise collect dust in boxes or drawers.

Geary combined her personal savings and 10 years of experience as president and founder of a marketing agency to start the business. In the beginning, she depended on word-of-mouth advertising and local press coverage to attract attention. Listening to customers also helped her grow and develop her core products. This was the case with Geary's school books product, for example, which places children's art and other schoolwork in an album. "Our products are really based on customer needs," Geary says, "and being a small company allows me to do that."

Starting from the company's May 2006 launch date, sales last year were $60,000--a figure Geary hopes to quadruple in 2007. She now has six employees and has partnered with a print lab to help handle volume. That kind of quick growth hasn't been easy, but Geary has learned to go with the flow. "You don't necessarily have to control every single part of the process if you can trust someone else to do it," she says. "When I finally let a little bit go and had faith it would get done, it helped the process tremendously."

Though Geary doesn't compete with larger companies like Kodak, which offers tools for scrapbookers, she says in the beginning she would find herself trying to do just that. "You can't help but forget some days that you're not competing with [larger companies]," Geary says, "and so you're almost chasing them, but you can't be everything to everybody."

As for the future of the business, Geary wants her customers to start picturing lots of possibilities, because she already has. Imagine OK, Picture This . . . services offered through indirect locations such as grocery stores. Picture expansion of the company's name through licensing deals. And picture what Geary hopes to one day be: the Martha Stewart of organizing memories.

Quite Possibly, The Smartest Way To Advertise On The Web
How you can make $25 every time you get an idea about a great domain name
Nebraska Inmate Demands $11.25 Refund For Nondelivery Of Milkshake

How To Make Money From Pissed Off Airline Passengers

http://www.euclaim.com/

According to European Union legislation that came into effect in 2005, airline passengers are entitled to financial compensation for delayed or cancelled flights, or if they're bumped from an overbooked flight. However, passengers aren't always aware of what they're entitled to, or don't have time to claim compensation. Which is where EUclaim comes in. A Dutch agency that launched in January, EUclaim processes claims on behalf of passengers, charging a contingent fee of 27% of successfully claimed compensation. In the five months since they got started, the company has netted its clients over EUR 100,000, averaging EUR 400-500 per passenger.

Besides an easy online form that evaluates whether a claim is likely to result in compensation, EUclaim operates a desk at Schiphol Airport's departure terminal, and plans to open additional desks at London and Frankfurt airports. The agency also offers multinationals bulk discounts for processing claims on behalf of employees.

While compensation isn't regulated by law in the US or most other non-EU countries, carriers do offer various degrees of compensation. Airline-specific policies may include reimbursement for meals, hotel rooms or phone calls. One to start up regionally? In a broader perspective, keeping track of new laws and regulations can often uncover potentially lucrative business opportunities. Hey—how's that for a new business: plough through all locally applicable regulation changes, specifically on the lookout for entrepreneurial opportunities. Post them online, for free, and you could grow a high-traffic website, generating revenue from related (premium) services or advertising.

Attention! I'm giving away FREE LINKS! Just like the ones you see below!

Portable Gadgets
Jewelry Online Blog
Make Money Online
Entertaining the masses on the house
Madly enthusiastic freelance writing &
photography by cehwiedel

The Pee Hole Locator

http://www.mizpee.com

Now when nature calls you won't have to leave it hanging. MizPee finds the closest, publicly accessible toilets in the city and rates them by cleanliness for your emergency duck-ins and dashes. Simply access your cell phone's web browser, navigate to mizpee.com or send a text to (415) 350-2290 to receive an SMS link. Then type in your street address or intersection and a list of pleasant potties near you will pop up. Each toilet is rated by cleanliness, so that those who have time to spare can find the most sparkling of the toilets.

Other useful add-ons: MizPee informs parents of bathrooms with diaper-changing stations. The service also checks business hours to make sure the locations are open at the time of your inquiry. A number of businesses are offering promotions through MizPee for when users in the locality have fulfilled bodily demands.

Attention! I'm giving away FREE LINKS! Just like the ones you see below!

Everything about starting a business, made simple
SmartyBlog.com - Blogging tips, SEO, web 2.0
Make an impression--whip your business cards out of this case
SweetSpot
Here's a funky new blog about Music, Writing, Meditation, Zen, and Marketing

How To Profit From The Coming iPhone Boom.

http://corecases.com/

St. Petersburg, Fla.
2 employees
2006 Revenues: $450,000

Core Cases has been developing and selling metal cases for consumer electronics since 1999. Now the tiny company is designing at least six products for the iPhone, including what it calls the "fusion case," which uses a combination of metal and other materials to protect the phone. It expects to sell about 25,000 of these cases, helping double revenues this year.

http://www.istyles.com/

Singapore
8 employees
2006 Revenues: under $300,000

IStyles has been making and marketing iPod fashion accessories for the last three years and just launched a new collection of sleeves to hold the iPhone. The company, which relies mostly on wholesale and e-commerce sales of fashion accessories for various gadgets, also intends to launch patterned skins for the iPhone once the device is released. "We can't estimate the success of the device, but if the iPod is any indication, Apple will soon be a dominant player in the mobile-phone market by the second or third revision of the iPhone, and we want to be in on the bandwagon starting from revision one," says Ming Keong Kuan, the business's director.

Get A Free Link Promotion (Here's How You Get One, Err, Two!)

Tax Rebate
BlogReviewBlog
IdiotAffiliate.Com
Custom magnets, promotional magnets, and unique advertising mood magnets to promote your business

How To Get Two Free Links From Uncommon Business Blog And NicheGeek.Com

After following a successful John Chow link promotion, I've decided to run a similiar one on my blogs.

OK, this is how it's going to work. All you need to do is to write a short review of either Uncommon Business Blog or NicheGeek.Com

All you have to do in your review is to link to three posts you liked the most. Somthing like

"... You'll get a kick out of 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich, will be surprised by what 10 Books You ABSOLUTELY MUST READ If You Are Tired Of Being Broke and learn How Not To Be One-Man Charity System For Webmasters, Designers And Programmers, When You Launch Your Startup On The Web."

You can use any anchor text you'd like and pick any posts. After you are done, shoot me an e-mail to David AT Deprice DOT Com with a link to your post, a link for your site and anchor text. I don't care what your site is about (as long as it's real) or your anchor text (unless it's something like "california malpractise lawyer", "cheap cialis" or "penis enlarger").

You'll get these links on BOTH Uncommon Business Blog and NicheGeek. It's going to look like this:

post starts
post ends

Dirty Little Secret AdSense Doesn't What You To Know About
Help Me Find A Good Domain Name And I'll Pay You $25
The Funniest Personal Ad I Ever Saw

This is going to be a short promotion, so make sure you send your e-mails this week. In case you are new to my blogs, one is PR4, another one is PR5 and combined readership of both blogs exceeds 3000 daily uniques.

How To Become A Millionaire "Artopreneur"

http://www.silversteinphotography.com/

After launching a successful natural-gas and electricity brokerage firm on Wall Street in the 1990s, Bruce Silverstein was making a seven-figure income by his mid-20s. But while he enjoyed building the business, the trading world left him miserable. "I couldn't convert any of the money into happiness," he says.

Though not yet financially secure enough to retire, Mr. Silverstein amassed enough of a cushion to take a risk with a business that tapped into his real passion in life: photography. He quit trading and, in April 2001, opened a small gallery in a 500-square-foot studio on the first floor of a townhouse on West 22nd Street in New York; today, Silverstein Photography is in a space 10 times that size a few blocks away, on the hottest block in the sizzling Chelsea art district, selling works from iconographic photographers like the late Hungarian-born André Kertész alongside edgy emerging artists.

Ditching the corporate life to pursue a personal passion is a dream for many executives and entrepreneurs, whether they make a windfall on Wall Street, take a golden parachute or sell their start-up. And if that passion can translate into more financial success, all the better. Of all the passions to cash in on, the art market seems a potent place to make a second fortune these days: A flood of new collectors and a weak U.S. dollar have driven prices to new highs. Photography prices, though not in the same stratosphere as paintings, are setting records, especially for the vintage prints in which Mr. Silverstein specializes. Some fine-art photographs that sold for a few thousand dollars in the 1980s can now fetch $1 million or more.

But as Mr. Silverstein and others who have jumped into the art business can attest, it takes deep pockets, patience and plenty of determination to break into the famously clubby art world -- and higher prices are translating into more competitive scrambles for salable works. Finding and nurturing new artists whose work can sell at prices high enough to justify mounting their shows is tough. And outside major cities, luring buyers is a challenge.

Just ask Ben Gall, who left a career heading smaller high-technology companies and, at age 54, started Holland Art House in 2002 in West Chester, Pa., a historic city 25 miles southwest of Philadelphia. Born in the Netherlands, he wanted to sell works of the contemporary Dutch artists he collected, including abstract landscape painter Luc Leestemaker. But it was a tough slog in a competitive market, where 12 galleries that started in recent years have been whittled to three.

Mr. Gall closed his gallery in 2005, and is now trying his luck with a venue called The Arts Scene, which he opened a few miles out of town. It includes lower-priced emerging artists, a frame shop, a café and musical events. Says Mr. Gall: "If you want to do something for artists and promote more progressive art outside big cities, don't ever expect to make money or do more than break even."

Laura Grenning, a former Wall Street analyst, has had better luck with the gallery she opened a decade ago at age 32 in Sag Harbor, N.Y., close to the fashionable Hamptons. She specializes in contemporary artists including Paul Rafferty, Walter Us and Nelson H. White, who paint in a classic style, with prices ranging from $1,000 to $45,000. She lost money the first three years, and has had good and bad years since. But she is now able to contemplate buying a larger building and diversifying into sculpture. "The last two years have been great," she says, allowing her to work on her own paintings, some of which she has sold.

Mr. Silverstein, who turns 40 Monday, had an early influence: His father, Larry Silver, was a commercial photographer whose award-winning artistic and documentary works appear in museums. Mr. Silverstein started collecting in 1993 when he began earning money from brokering natural-gas contracts, spending his spare time exploring the history of photography. His timing was perfect; vintage prints by famous photographers such as Walker Evans, who documented the Depression, and Harry Callahan's intimate portraits and streetscapes could be had for as little as $3,000.

He couldn't afford a big inventory at first, so he started his gallery with works on consignment from other dealers, including the lesser known early works of Aaron Siskind, a documentary photographer who made the transition to abstract expressionism. And he struck a deal to represent the estate of Mr. Kertész, whose still-lifes, portraits and street scenes of Budapest, Paris and New York from about 1915 until his death in 1985 are in leading museums. He was the sole employee, designing his Web site, doing framing, sending out invitations, hanging his own shows -- and mopping the floors. "I worked as hard as I could and immediately saw the benefits and mistakes," he says. "It was great." (He now has four other employees.)

Mr. Silverstein also made some astute purchases, paying $145,000 at auction for a work by eccentric Boston photographer F. Holland Day in which he depicts himself as the dying Christ in seven portraits. Though he was a bit nervous -- no one was bidding against him -- he got his validation when the Whitney Museum of American Art borrowed the series as the centerpiece of a show last March titled "Photography and the Self: the Legacy of F. Holland Day." Though Mr. Silverstein won't estimate what he thinks he could sell the picture for now, he smiles and says, "It could be worth considerably more."

Collectors who buy regularly from Mr. Silverstein say the business skills he honed on Wall Street have served him well. Gary Sokol, an avid San Francisco collector who sold his investment firm to a German bank, met Mr. Silverstein when both were haunting photography auctions. Mr. Silverstein worked the relationship, sending him champagne and chocolates and studying his interests. "Bruce does know his clients and he really goes out and finds things for you," Mr. Sokol says. "The art market approaches a new buyer as just another sales prospect rather than someone they can cultivate as a long-term collector, which is what Bruce does."

Mr. Silverstein says he hasn't made a fortune yet, but he is making a living and looks forward to opening the gallery doors every morning. He recently had a successful show of his father's works and currently is mounting an exhibit by a new photographer, Zoe Strauss, whose depictions of downtrodden city dwellers and remnants of urban decay offer an interesting contrast to the vintage Kertész prints in the back room. "There's still so much for me to learn," he says. "But I'm so happy I took the leap."

$1 Parking Ticket Paid After 26 Years

US Servers Consume As Much Electricity As 4 Million Houselolds

How To Make Money With ... Cheese School

http://www.cheeseschoolsf.com/

Residents and visitors in the Bay Area who want to expand their culinary expertise and sharpen their palates can brush up on their cheddars and bleus at the Cheese School of San Francisco. The school’s curriculum ranges from Cheese 101 courses—Basic Cheese Primer; Cheese Selection, Storage and Service and Cheese and Wine Pairing—to core studies by region and specialized classes in Fondue, Pub Tasting: Cheese and Beer, Farmstead Cheesemaking, Ga-Ga for Goat, Raw vs. Pasteurized: Fact and Fiction and Extreme Cheese.

Taught by a faculty of esteemed cheese connoisseurs, individual classes are USD 60 per person, with a discount for taking a series, such as Cheese 101. The school also hosts special seasonal events, such as the St. Patrick's Day special on cheese and beer, and drop-in nights, which offer a sampling of cheeses and cheese knowledge for a reduced rate and without the need for reservations. In addition, the Cheese School is available for private and corporate events, and courses can even be brought to other venues. Gift certificates are also available.

Like other status skills, a culinary knowledge of cheese is hardly an essential life skill, but rather a sophisticated and leisurely pursuit. The Cheese School is based in San Francisco and is (obviously) limited to cheese, but there's no reason this concept couldn't take off in other areas where consumers with a lust for knowledge are looking for expertise to wow their friends and associates with.

Napoleon's Sword Sold For $6.4 Million

Airline Fined $5,800 For Serving Chicken To Vegetarian

How To Profit From Single People (No, It's Not About Dating)

http://www.socialdiva.com/

Singles are into anything that can make their lives easier, says Peg Samuel, founder of Social Diva, a New York City-based event marketing company. Samuel, 36, reports on the hottest trends for single women in Atlanta, Miami and New York City via her website, www.socialdiva.com, building her business to $550,000 in annual revenue. "I'm great at finding what the demographic likes because I am the demographic," says Samuel. "The challenge with so many opportunities is making sure you're catching them all."

More than 89 million unmarried adults in the U.S. are single and loving it. Most, according to experts, are not spending every minute looking for a mate, but enjoying life in the now. Census figures reveal that for the first time in history, more than half of women are single, says Thomas F. Coleman, director of Unmarried America, an informational resource for unmarried people. "You hear the word single and you think partygoers," says Coleman. "Most single people have a lot more on their minds than that."

Singles are thinking about work, family, home, leisure time, retirement--everything married folks do. Coleman cites market opportunities for homebuilders to cater to single home-buyers. Home improvement products could be a niche as well. Financial services and insurance products are also important to singles, notes Jennifer Ganshirt, senior vice president and director of strategic planning for Frank About Women, a marketing firm specializing in female consumers. "Older single women in particular have the means, so give them the opportunity to invest in luxury-type purchases," says Ganshirt. Industries such as travel and food hold other possible niches.

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, send your story in. Or do you need a link from this blog.

How to let your customers pay you to promote your business ? . . . IF you operate a restaurant, day spa, shoe store, flower shop, bookstore, amusement park, ski resort, sports bar, skating rink, tanning salon, tea shop, coffee shop, travel agency, car wash, community theatre, video store, deli, pet shop, oil change facility . . . or ANY retail business. See www.flatfeecard.com (What was this all about?)

Reflective Clothing As A Business Niche

What does it take to be a truly independent music artist? If you are looking for DIY PR ideas, new music to check out, or you're just curious about whether I'll really be able to quit my day job, check out my blog today! www.jeffcaylor.com (wow, dude, what was that all about?)

http://www.goodmood.ee/

It's a good thing Karoli Hindriks makes hats: She wears a lot of them. She's the country manager for MTV in Estonia, a student at the Estonian Business School, an elected city council member in her hometown of Pärnu—and she's been an entrepreneur for more than five years. While still in high school, Hindriks invented a soft reflector to be worn by pedestrians for safety at night. By the age of 19, she had expanded into making fashionable knitted hats and gloves out of reflective material. She initially sold them through a company that her father owns, but in 2002 went into business for herself.

Hindriks has patented her designs and even picked up an endorsement from the Estonian Road Administration, which encourages pedestrians to wear reflective clothing. Besides selling her accessories through retail outlets, she sells wholesale to companies and labor unions. Goodmood's revenues are still modest, less than $150,000 a year, but with growth averaging 35% annually, it may not stay small for long.

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one

How To Make Six-Figure Income With Domain Names

How To Get Rich With Ultraviolet-Protective Clothing

http://cabanalife.com/

Cabana Life LLC, a maker of ultraviolet-protective clothing, is less than two years old, posted revenue of just $250,000 last year and is barely a blip on the New York fashion scene.

Yet the start-up has scored a notable partnership with a $13 billion chemical giant, Huntsman Corp., whose products are included in apparel made by the likes of Polo Ralph Lauren and Patagonia.

While the partnership is relatively informal, both companies are already receiving what they say is valuable aid from the other.

In addition to selling Cabana Life the additives to make its clothing sun-repellant, Huntsman is giving the tiny company help manufacturing in China and beginning in December will give Cabana Life exclusive one-year rights to sell clothes using a new brand of its technology for kids' apparel. Cabana Life expects sales to double to $500,000 this year and again in 2008, helped, in part, by the Huntsman alliance. And the firm says it expects being first to market with the new High IQ kids brand will give it an important edge in the marketplace.

The roots of Cabana Life's deal began in 2005 with the company's now 32-year-old founder, Melissa Papock, who battled skin cancer at age 26. In her quest to make a fashionable line of lightweight UV-protective clothing, Ms. Papock, a former merchandising editor for fashion, entertainment and lifestyle magazines including Vanity Fair, Self and Allure, scoured the Internet for companies that specialized in sun-repellant technology. "I didn't even know what the terminology was at that point," she says.

Ms. Papock eventually stumbled upon Ciba Specialty Chemicals Inc., a giant Swiss manufacturer of chemical effects for everything from color to moisture-control strength used in things like paper, automobiles and clothing. Several telephone calls to the company got her through to the company's textile effects division in High Point, N.C., where a representative explained how Ciba's "Tinofast Cel" additive could boost Ms. Papock's apparel to the 50+UV protection she wanted. (Ciba's textile effects business was acquired by Huntsman in July of 2006.)

What Ms. Papock didn't know is that Ciba was in the process of trying to rebrand its technology to make it more consumer-friendly. What she did know was that a big chemical company would have a hard time getting the time of day from a Vogue or Glamour magazine.

"These fashion editors aren't going to be talking about this 'textile effect,' because there's nothing very sexy about it," she says. "But when you add it to a stylish tunic, suddenly it has more legs."

Figuring she might have something to offer, Ms. Papock asked for a face-to-face meeting with Craig White, Ciba's marketing head of apparel. There she proposed a broader marketing partnership where Cabana Life would help drive awareness of Ciba's technology among consumers. In return, she hoped for help from the bigger player, be it with discounts on additives or other aid.

Says Mr. White, now with Huntsman: "Obviously your first reaction is that she has a lot of gumption. But quite honestly, we are not the best at advertising and media. What I saw in Melissa was an opportunity to give us exposure through what she was trying to do."

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What website helps you research over 700 ways you could be your own boss?This free online tool will help you zero in on the best choice for you. And while you're there,read this article on the pros and cons of buying this type of business.

(You are probably wandering what was that all about?)

Sun Protection For Life: Your Guide To A Lifetime Of Healthy & Beautiful Skin

Quite Possibly, The Smartest Way To Advertise On The Web

Read read this ad and see if you can resist a temptation of clicking it

Ad Starts Here

Why did 1,683 Guitarists play 'Smoke on Water'? How did these 10 idiots became millionaires doing stupid things online? Would you like to know why it's cheaper to buy tomatoes in a supermarket than grow your own? Read MadConomist.Com.

Ad Ends

Now, if you clicked any of the links or typed in Madconomist in your browser, let me tell you a little secret. You can write an ad just like the one I just showed you for your site and have it displayed on NicheGeek.Com and Uncommon Business Blog at the bottom of the latest post. It's going to cost you 35 bucks and you can pay with PayPal, credit card, bank wire, check, etc.

Let me give you some numbers. Uncommon Business gets 800-1200 daily readers (weekends being the slowest), plus about 1000 RSS readers (I don't know the exact numbers, as I am too lazy to get a FeedBurner account). As of today, the Alexa rank is 64489, Google's Page Rank is 5 (used to be 6 before the latest Google dance). Uncommon Business is being automatically syndicated by about 200 other blogs and splogs and about once a month somebody "rich and famous" links to one of the post. Last month Seth Godin did.

NicheGeek has more visitors (1300-2000 daily uniques, depending on how good or bad my latest post is), but lower Page Rank (4). The Alexa rank is 34430. NicheGeek makes it to the top of Reddit and Digg two to three times a month (because I have a nifty Drupal plugin that adds vote buttons at the end of each post, I guess). When this happens traffic surges to 20,000-30,000 uniques for about a day or two. Then it gets back to normal. So, don't count on it (unless you are an active Digger).

If you were to order a review on NicheGeek or Uncommon Business through ReviewMe it would cost you 100 dollars and 80 dollars (a combined price of $180). That's because I hate writing. But if you write a short ad yourself (350 characters max), I have no problem charging you only 35 bucks, because all I have to do is to copy it and paste the ad at the end of the post on both blogs (I usually add one post a day to Uncommon Business and one to three posts a day to NicheGeek, the posts are usually different).

So basically I get $35 without doing any hard labor, you get your ad displayed on two popular sites, plus links and SEO benefits, plus clicks, plus eyeballs of other bloggers, plus your ads will get automatically reprinted by sploggers who take RSS feeds and republish content on their sites automatically, without reading it.

Send your ad text (350 characters max, five lines or less) to david AT deprice DOT com AFTER you paid $35 (because sometimes ShareIt takes extra time to verify personal information in order to avoid credit card fraud and can be very picky if you use free e-mail accounts, like Hotmail or Yahoo!Mail).

You can also use contact form on NicheGeek or contact me through my Blogger profile on Uncommon Business Blog.

The first person to take advantage of this offer will get to display their ad three times (or three different ads, if that's desirable).

Quite Possibly The Strangest Business Idea To Ever Make It To This Blog

http://www.flat-d.com/

Brian Conant stood alongside his fellow National Guardsmen during a training session about eight years ago in Hawaii. He was wearing a heavy chemical warfare suit lined with charcoal.

"Any time I expelled gas in the suit, I realized nobody could smell it," Conant, 48, says. "It was amazing."

According to the American College of Gastroenterology, 58 million Americans suffer from one or more medical disorders that cause excessive gas. To treat it, doctors usually recommend a change in diet. Sometimes they recommend medication, such as Gas-X or Bean-O, which alters the bacteria that may be causing the foul odor. But with Conant's invention, the Flatulence Deodorizer, also known as Flat-D, there is an alternative way to limit the embarrassment.

The long, narrow washable pad, lined thinly with charcoal, absorbs chemicals, including hydrogen sulfide, a byproduct of the bacteria that causes odorous gas. The pad, at $12.95, curves with the contour of the body, and one size fits most.

For those who fall outside the "most" category, Conant has developed the "overpad," partly due to the increasing number of phone calls from those who have just undergone gastric bypass surgery. "Can you guess our best month?" asks marketing director Frank Morosky. "January, because people have made New Year's resolutions to eat healthier. And, it turns out, healthy foods like broccoli, beans and whole grains cause gas."

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one

More Weird Stuff

1,683 Guitarists Play 'Smoke on Water'

One really, REALLY weird PPC Ad

Tanning Salon Multimillionaire Success Story

http://www.thetanco.com/

Successful companies have an almost Zen-like quest for perfection. Motorola pioneered Six Sygma, the quality improvement process that strives for producing error-free products 99.9997 percent of the time. The Ritz-Carlton hotel chain is legendary for providing 120 hours of training per employee, per year, helping ensure its guests enjoy the experience of a lifetime.

Entrepreneur Todd Beckman is no different. He insists customers be greeted within three seconds of arrival. Employees are empowered to “own” customer concerns and see them through until resolution. Every customer experience is expected to exceed expectations, says the founder.

But Beckman is in an industry where you normally wouldn’t expect to find such an extraordinary commitment to excellence. That’s all right, because Beckman’s formula for combining world-class facilities, state-of-the-art equipment and outstanding training and customer service with a passion for perfection has positioned The Tan Company as one of the fastest-growing tanning salon franchises in the nation. Business is booming.

With 72 locations in 12 states, The Tan Company expects to grow to 100 locations by the end of 2007 and reach 500 salons within five years. Beckman is considered one of the industry’s pioneers since opening what was formerly called The St. Louis Tan Company in 1994. He is a visionary.

Beckman was one of the first to combine the superstore concept—dozens of tanning beds providing multiple levels of tanning—with an economical membership program that provided unlimited tanning to customers instead of paying per visit.

Along the way, Beckman has fostered The Tan Company brand—recognized for its “Five-Star” facilities, world-class skin-care products and cleanest tanning environment in the country—making it a premier investment opportunity for single- and multi-unit ownership and area development.

“I saw the unprofessionalism in the tanning industry,” Beckman said. “There was not a dominant brand with first-rate facilities and service. Most were run like mom-and-pop businesses. I felt we had a unique idea.”

Beckman got his first job bussing tables when he was 13. His parents, Ed and Gay Beckman, owned several hair salons in the St. Louis area. Todd opened his franchised hair salon in 1984 when he was only 18.

Two years later, Beckman put four tanning beds in the back of his salon. They were immensely popular. It convinced Beckman to buy a small tanning salon in suburban St. Louis in 1994 that had sales of $65,000 in its first year under previous ownership. Beckman’s St. Louis Tan Company—with its innovative membershipprogram—had sales of $57,000 in its first month alone.

Even with two locations, customers were sometimes waiting 90 minutes for a tanning bed. Nine months later, Beckman opened his first superstore in Maryland Heights, Mo., with 30 tanning beds providing multiple levels oftanning. “We’ve been building off it ever since,” Beckman said.

The St. Louis Tan Company grew to 15 locations by 2000. With growing demand for the superstore concept and ever-increasing customer traffic, Beckman decided to franchise his business model and expand outside the St. Louis area in 2001 as The Tan Company. Today, superstores with 20-plus beds and five levels of tanning account for 90 percent of The Tan Co. locations.

“It took someone with an entrepreneur’s attitude like Todd to see the potential in building a brand when there were so many others entering the industry who only wanted to open a small salon,” said Todd Layton, vice president of franchise operations. “Unless you were willing to make a commitment to be the best, as Todd did, it wasn’t going to work.”

Beckman’s business prowess has caught the attention of others, namely Dave “Lags” Lageschulte, who became the first franchisee of the popular Hooters restaurant chain in 1983. Along with his partners, Lageschulte developed Hooters restaurants throughout South Florida and became one of the chain’s most successful franchisees. He is co-owner of the world’s first Hooters Casino Hotel that opened in Las Vegas in February 2006.

In January 2006, Lageschulte purchased a 50 percent ownership stake in The Tan Co., as well as area development rights to Georgia, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. His first location opened in Athens, Ga.

Lageschulte’s involvement not only gives The Tan Co. the financial backing that makes it one of the strongest companies in its industry, but also an expertise in franchising and branding that is invaluable to the company’sfuture growth.

The Tan Co.’s corporate team is literally hands-on when it imparts the importance of brand building to its franchisees. Four members of the corporate staff are involved as owners of 30 of The Tan Co.’s 72 locations.

The Tan Co. offers two salon models: a small store with 12 beds and the superstore featuring 20-plus beds. Both concepts offer five levels of tanning and Mystic Tan sunless tanning.

The initial investment is between $250,000 and $500,000 depending on the model. Small salons average 1,400 square feet in size while the superstores can reach 2,800 square feet. Beckman has commitments from area developers for more than 60 locations.

“In many ways, the tanning industry is still in the mom-and-pop stage,” Beckman said. “Becoming a Tan Co. franchisee means getting involved with a company that is going to be nationally known in the next five years. It’s similar to becoming a McDonald’s franchisee when it had only 70 restaurants.”

With more than two decades of industry experience, Beckman says it is fitting that The Tan Co. is on the fastest growth pace in the company’s history.

“Franchisees are investing in our system,” Beckman said. “Anybody can buy a tanning bed and put it in a store. But we have been perfecting this system for 20 years. It’s an impeccable system that works if you follow it. Now we want to take the best system in the industry and turn it into a nationally known brand.”

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one

10,000 Dollar Fine For Bra-Stripping Contest

Beyond Beauty: Cosmetology Business Information and Resources

Free iPod For eBay Users

Just a quick post for those not aware of the latest promotion. Apparently, eBay is giving away iPods for their new clients. As far as I know the offer is exclusively available to US, Canada and UK. So if you are planning to buy anything on eBay any time soon, you'll appreciate this 'heads up'.

How A Student Made Three Million Dollars With A Free CliffNotes Website.

http://www.sparknotes.com/

Sam Yagan's first successful business idea came to him in the middle of an all-nighter during his senior year at Harvard. His paper on Hamlet was due the next day, and he was kicking himself for not buying the CliffsNotes version of the play before the bookstore closed. "Why can't a student get a study guide at midnight?" he asked himself, and SparkNotes was born.

The series of free online study guides acquired by Barnes & Noble in 2001 for $3.55 million. At Stanford Business School, a different question, "Why can't online dating be free?" led him to his latest project, OkCupid.

His advice for would-be entrepreneurs: Instead of spending a lot of time waiting for a great business idea to suddenly materialize, get out in the world and ask questions. "If you look at things with a quizzical approach, you're going to uncover a lot of opportunities. A lot of times the answers you come up with are going to be wrong, but if you keep asking questions, eventually you'll hit on the little thing that's not quite right, and go from there."

Man Scarfs More Than 59 Hot Dogs In 12 Minutes

Why You Should Get In Touch With Your "Inner Lazy Ass"

How To Make A Million Dollars From Accidental Invention

http://www.toddlercoddler.com/

ToddlerCoddler is a specially designed cushion that keeps toddlers' heads from slumping in their car seats. Initially developed for her own kids by Susan Dunk, a friend prodded her to develop the product for market. She and her husband left their first trade show in 2003 with orders for 119 units.

"My mother and I sewed," Susan recalls. "My father, father-in-law and husband stuffed them. My 3-year-old put the labels on. My son knew how to run a tape gun at 4 years old."

They were long days, but manageable. However, when independent retailers started showing interest, she realized she needed help and began looking for a manufacturer to take over production. Her company has now developed several different products and had close to $1 million in sales in 2006. If orders come in from retail giants such as Costco and Target, as expected, that number should jump considerably in 2007.

Duley knew he needed help from the start and sent out 35 bid proposals--15 in the U.S. and 20 overseas to facilities he found online in China, India and South America. While he initially wanted to work with a U.S. manufacturer, that proved to be more difficult than he anticipated. "Every single American company either didn't respond or backed out on the due date," Duley says. "Every international company provided quotes in a timely fashion and suggested ideas to make the manufacturing process more efficient."

Artist Unveils $98M Diamond Skull

How Midlife Crisis Helped Spark A New Business

How To Make A Living Picking Glass On Beaches

http://www.surroundings-rogersgallery.com/

It's Sunday morning, and Louise Rogers is in her usual weekend pose: eyes downcast, strolling meditatively along the beach. She paws at a ribbon of gravel near the low-tide mark and picks up a milky aqua-colored lump the size of a matchbook. She brushes off the sand and issues her verdict: "Coca-Cola bottle. Before 1970."

Rogers, 53, has been collecting sea glass since the age of 6. She logs several miles each Sunday beachcombing New England's coastline with her husband and business partner, Ben. They founded Rogers Gallery, a custom framing and fine art store in Mattapoisett, Mass., in 1978. Seven years ago they added Surroundings, an adjacent home-furnishings and interior-design center. The two (surroundings-rogersgallery.com) generated a combined $3 million in sales last year.

When Rogers spies a new shard on a beach, she guesses its age and origin by looking at surface wear and crack patterns. She often finds glass on beaches where town dumps existed centuries ago. Also fruitful are locations hit by violent storms, such as coastal areas flattened by the hurricane of 1938, which leveled Rogers's grandmother's Mattapoisett house. Any Depression glass or patterned china she finds in these areas were probably blown into the sea by that legendary storm.

Even after tossing back any chipped glass that isn't fully weathered, Rogers has amassed a collection of more than a million fragments, sorted by color and housed in dozens of bureau drawers throughout her living and dining rooms. She removes one drawer from a mahogany chest and sets it on the dining room table. It is home to her most prized oddities. In one corner are matching bits of worn Canton china (1785 to 1895), hand-decorated with a blue and white scene. (China and pottery from the sea are also desirable to collectors.) Next to them is one cobalt-blue sea glass swizzle stick, probably from a restaurant in New Bedford, Mass., the city where she found it. (She located a similar one intact at an antique store.)

Rogers picks up her oldest specimens, two intact bottlenecks made of black glass. One, a bottle collector has told her, is from a snout-nosed gin bottle dating to the late 1700s. "People walk past black glass. They think it's just a rock, but it's extremely rare," she says. Next, she rotates a cat's-eye marble between her fingertips. It's from the 1950s, judging by its surface, which is lopsided and etched from exposure to sand and saltwater.

Uncommon colors such as orange and red are her Holy Grail. She also favors glass embossed with identifiable patterns or labels, such as the word "Hood" from the Charlestown, Mass., dairy's milk bottles. All sea glass is becoming less common as more glass is recycled and plastic bottles become the norm.

While sea glass is widely available for purchase - a turquoise piece fetched more than $250 on eBay - Rogers prefers finding her own. Vacations to shoreline destinations feed her collection. Last year she traveled to Peaks Island in Maine's Casco Bay, where she found a china doll's arm. "My first body part!" she says.

She may have countless pounds of glass, but it's clear Rogers enjoys most the thrill of the hunt. "I love beach-combing for the same reason that I love finding new items for the stores," she says. "I love the surprise."

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one

How To Make Six-Figure Income With Domain Names

LegalMatch.Com - How To Make Money Bringing Laywers And Clients Together

http://www.legalmatch.com

When Michael Gutman was tired of paying 25 thousand dollars each year for a full page Yellow Pages ad, he thought that there must be an easier way to generate clients.

However, the traditional lead-generation techniques didn't seem to work. People just did not want to call a 1 800 number and leave their contact information.

So he created a LegalMatch system. Anyone can present a case (by answering some simple questions about their legal situation) for free on the LegalMatch Web site without revealing their identity.

Immediately after you present your case, instant e-mail notifications are sent to lawyers in the specific practice area and geographic location you selected. Lawyers then review your case information and where you need legal help, but are not shown your identity until you select an attorney and agree to provide this information. When a match is made, LegalMatch charges an attorney, but the service is ablolutely free to clients.

The best part of LegalMatch system is its feedback mechanism. When presented with a list of available lawyers in the area, one can see how good or bad a particular lawyer is (or rather how happy or unhappy lawyer's past clients were with the service).

LegalMatch has grown into a multimillion dollar business just on this simple idea. And that's an excellent result, no matter how critical of a judge you are.

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one

Man Arrested On His 28th DWI Charge ... Pleads NOT GUILTY.

Why You Should Get In Touch With Your "Inner Lazy Ass"

Lisa Saunders Story

http://www.shadeclothing.com/

Lisa Saunders had been a fan of Shade Clothing for about a year when she moved from Southern California to Calgary, Alberta. But in her new home, she had a difficult time finding Shade's line of shirts, which is designed to be both modest and stylish. In her search, however, she discovered a way to fill her own clothing needs and those of other women in Canada--by becoming a Shade Clothing personal shopper. "You need to feel strongly and passionately about what you're selling," she says. "I knew I loved Shade."

Shade Clothing began its personal shopper program in March 2006, but the program wasn't available in Canada. Saunders knew it could be successful there, so she contacted the corporate office and worked with them to get the program up and running, eventually becoming the first Canadian personal shopper in June 2006. She's also a hiring manager, in charge of recruiting and training new personal shoppers in her area.

For Saunders, 32, Shade Clothing provides the double benefit of giving her access to clothes she likes and letting her earn money while raising her two children at home. But her biggest challenge, she says, has been getting the word out about Shade. To target her main audience--women and girls--she posts fliers at preschools, elementary schools and women's gyms.

She also relies, of course, on word-of-mouth generated by her in-home parties, where women try on samples and ask her advice. These parties, called home showcases, are Saunders' main source of sales. Saunders can even host parties over the phone, allowing her to have customers in other locations and run her business while she travels. "You can sell to anyone, anywhere," she says. Though the parties are her main focus, Saunders can also make sales through open houses, internet sales and personal shopping appointments.

Saunders recognizes that her business is about more than just making a sale; getting repeat business and good word-of-mouth are vital to direct-selling success. "I want all customers to feel appreciated, whether they're placing a $30 order or a $300 order," she says. With that goal always in mind, Saunders projects 2007 sales will reach at least $60,000.

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one.

Errant Computer Keystroke Leads To A Wrong Person Getting A $2.5 Million Dollar Check.

Dr Ken Evoy, A Physician Who's Dream Was To Become An Internet Marketer

Ken Evoy is a doctor and inventor who also became an Internet marketer in the late 90s. Both he and a number of his partners have written free ebooks on topics that range from affiliate marketing to web copywriting. I have found that his ebooks are very informative, and some of them are actually much better than information products I routinely pay money for.

Ken Evoy's company also provides a number of marketing and web development tools, the most notable one being Site Build It (SBI). SBI is a robust web management tool that assists the developer in all aspects of creating and marketing a site.

If you are just getting started out in a web business, and are not very familiar with how to put up a site, how to submit to search engines, and how to market your site, then a tool like SBI will get you off the ground quickly and efficiently. I only wish there was a tool like this available when I first started out. Unfortunately, there wasn't, so I ended up learning web design, programming, and web marketing all on my own. Over the years, I have used numerous Webmastering tools, and I must say that for the price, SBI offers an incredible number of features and functionalities.

SBI has helped many entrepreneurs develop their own profitable businesses. Amazingly, over half of the people who use SBI end up having sites that are in the top 6% in terms of popularity on the Internet.

Making A Profit With Supersized Sports Books

www.krakenopus.com

Karl Fowler isn't a traditional publisher. His books, which chronicle major sporting events and teams, can weigh more than 90 pounds and go for as much as $4,000. His latest bestseller - a Manchester United book.

Mr Fowler is a bright and determined man who has done his homework. Manchester United is an international brand, currently under American ownership, but with truly worldwide appeal. The audience of potential purchasers is not thus restricted to British fat cats but to high net worth individuals the world over.

A sister volume on the Super Bowl will have limited appeal outside the United States, but there are surely enough American millionaire gridiron fans for that to show a profit.

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one.

How Not To Be One-Man Charity System For Webmasters, Designers And Programmers, When You Launch Your Startup On The Web.

How To Make 80K With Patriotic T-Shirts

http://www.takepride.com

Patrick Gray and John Betz, both 32, have designed a line of shirts that give a voice to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sold online at www.takepride.com, the shirts feature words and images that tell service members' stories without making political statements. They're also fashioned by up-and-coming designers, so they're nothing like typical military garb.

"Everything in the military tends not to be stylish, so this is different," says Gray, who started New York City-based TakePride in June 2006 with Betz, a third-generation Marine.

By February, they'd earned roughly $88,000, and they expect that number to grow as they expand into department stores this summer. They also donate 20 percent of their profits to military-related charities.

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one.

Funeral Home Invests $100,000 In A Three-Wheeled Harley And Carriage-Style Hearse

10 Books You Should Read If You Want To Make A Crapload Of Money, Part II

6. Bootstrap: Lessons Learned Building a Successful Company from Scratch

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, for a multitude of reasons. Ken details the entrepreneur's issues when bootstrapping a company quite well (we bootstrapped our company also, and ran into many of the same problems). I enjoyed reading more about how Ken FELT while the company was growing. As an employee, you don't often know how the CEO feels about anything (Ken is good at controlling his emotions). Turns out he had similar feelings most entrepreneur's do when starting a company.

7. Little Red Book of Selling

If you’ve been a regular fan like I have of frenetic sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer’s columns in the Business Journal, you’ll want to grab his infamous power book on selling, The Little Red Book of Selling. Like all of his stuff, it’s a straight ahead, well traveled, often brilliant collection of practices on getting the advantage in selling, both over yourself and your competition. Like most of what Jeffrey writes, it holds application for both the individual sales pro and the entrepreneur. Let me briefly show you how this little book is big on take away value.

8. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

I've read a lot of great books, but this one is the one is truly unique. The ideas found in this book are immeasurably valuable. In this book you will find the secrets you need to live the life you dream of living. Tim is a gift to this world because he has been so generous in writing a book that candidly explains in great detail how to work less and make more. I've never seen any other book with more practical wisdom on the art of success. I've dog-eared most of this books since it's so full of great ideas. If you're an entrepreneur or want your life back, you must buy this book.

9. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Eker's claim to fame is that he took a $2,000 credit card loan, opened "one of the first fitness stores in North America," turned it into a chain of 10 within two and a half years and sold it in 1987 for a cool (but now somewhat modest-seeming) $1.6 million.As you read through Eker's book, you realize that intuitively you might have "felt" some of these things all along but DIDn't follow through. I very much enjoyed this book. It's certainly one of the better books about building wealth and I think that everyone can benefit from it regardless of their current level of income.

10. Street Smart Internet Marketing

Justin Michie is a successful business entrepreneur who made the life-changing decision to become a full time internet marketer, after he found himself frustrated with the long hours, excessive stress and constant employee management of his offline businesses. So he sold his businesses, left the employees, long hours and stress behind, for the freedom afforded by online marketing. He now makes more money in fewer hours and enjoys much more free time with his family. But the book is really valuable because of street smart internet marketing techniques thata Justin shares in his book.

Detroitonomics

World's 10 Best Paid Bloggers

How To Become A Full-Time Salsa Enterpreneur

http://hairoftheferret.com/

Ferret hair may not sound like it's meant for dipping. But it sure makes for some good salsa.

Ten years ago, Dan and Sally Homner created Hair of the Ferret Gourmet Salsa in their Crown Point basement, after 10 year of making batches of the condiment for friends and family.

No ferrets are harmed in the making of the salsa, and thankfully ferret hair isn't really one of the ingredients. It's just a catchy name for a product that's catching on with those who love a little heat. "I didn't even know what a ferret looked like," Dan Homner admits.

Now Homner's a full-time salsa entrepreneur, doing business with about 100 stores in Indiana and Illinois, and with online customers from as far away as California and New Jersey.

His first paying customers were at the Crown Point Farmers Market. A few small stores started carrying it. After the season ended, Homner received 200 calls from people wanting to buy his salsa.

"That's when my wife and I both looked at each other and said, 'Hey, maybe we've got something here,'" he said.

Over the next few years, Hair of the Ferret expanded into other stores and other farmers markets. Homner spent several 16 hour days a week making the stuff, struggling to keep up with the demand.

In 2000, Homner quit his job at a Griffith mill-supply company, and started making salsa full-time. In 2001, he outsourced production to a facility near Rockford, Ill.T he four main varieties, which range from Mild to Flaming Hot, feature roma tomatoes, white onions, and up to 12 types of peppers, which include the exotic japones and scotch bonnet peppers in the spiciest batches. Homner also started making a fruit salsa this year, Pineapple Mango Peach.

While Homner's not personally making the salsa anymore, his job keeps him busy. He is still the company's only full-time employee, and makes almost all of the deliveries.

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one.

The Great Salsa Book

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10 Books You Should Read, If You Want To Make A Crapload Of Money, Part I

1. Buffettology: The Proven Techniques for Investing Successfully in Changing Markets That Have Made Warren Buffett the World's Most Famous Investor

I NEVER buy books on stock market. And neither should you. It's a waste of time. The only person you should listen to is Warren Buffett. After all, he is the riches investor in the world and the second richest man after Bill Gates. Warren Buffett once said that he doesn't care about the price. He cares about value. If you never read Buffetology before, it'll be a real eye opener for you.

2. Words that Sell

Words That Sell lists the words and phrases that stimulate sales, grouping them in a logical, easy-to-find manner. The three basic sections of a sales presentation are the grabber, the description, and the clincher, and these sections comprise the core of Words That Sell. Once you find out that you can REALLY make a ton of money merely from an ability to put words down on paper, you'll want to know WHAT to say and HOW to do it. This book does an awesome job teaching that.

3. The Art of the Start

Guy Kawasaki wrote the best book on startups. This book is about starting a business, or a new branch of business within an existing one. And about what it takes to get the funding and momentum you need to be successful. It's about putting aside the ridiculous corporate culture of "mission statements", vision statements, binders and all the rest. Guy Kawasaki helps you to think about the most important aspects of your business and your personal motivation for starting it. In short it's about why the world needs your product or service, why you need to sell it, and how to get there. Much of the content is focused on the mechanics (and pitfalls to avoid) of making formal pitches to venture capitalists, banks and the like. There is also some content dedicated to advertising, marketing and PR, and how *not* to do those things as well. If you're not smart about it, advertising and marketing your new business will financially sink you, with no real profit to show for it, so pay attention to the advice given here!

4. On Bullshit

This book is a fascinating journey into the meaning of truth, lies and BS. It was surprisingly thoughtful and like anything thoughtful it fertilized more thought. At least for me it did. I think it was worth the investment in money and time.

5. The Millionaire Next Door

The title might sound cheesy, but the book really does share insights on what affluent, and successful really mean. It gives a great lesson on status symbols, and the proper attitudes towards work, and money to build wealth. What appealed to me the most, is that this is by no means a "get rich quick" book, or even a "get rich" book. It does however outline character traits of those among us that have become successful, and shows the many traps that most people, including high earners commonly fall into.

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PetLane.Com - How To Make Money With Pet Parties

http://www.petlane.com/

Linda Franzblau began the party as she always did: by introducing herself to the guests; telling them about Petlane and its products for dogs, cats and birds; and talking about her own dog, Rocket, and her cats, Dot and Dash. Then she came to the point where every party differs--meeting the guests and learning about their needs. She asked each of them to introduce themselves and talk about their pets. A woman named Katy mentioned she had an older dog that she used to walk at night, but she couldn't anymore because the dog's eyesight was failing. Franzblau instantly knew how to help. As she handed out catalogs and order forms to customers, Franzblau took a moment to point Katy toward one of Petlane's newer products, the Pet Lamp, which attaches around a dog's neck and acts as a headlight. Katy's reaction? "She said, ‘It sounds wonderful; it looks wonderful. Sign me up,'" says Franzblau.

Her passion for helping pets like Katy's dog is the reason Franzblau, 53, decided to become a Petlane pet advisor in February 2006. She tries to help customers by not only finding products to fill each pet's needs, but also educating their owners on better pet care through the discussions and games at her parties. And Franzblau may be making money as the expert at her parties, but she's also receiving a valuable education. "Every day, I'm learning different things to make my pets' lives healthier," she says.

Meanwhile, Franzblau has discovered that Petlane allows her to help more than just pets. "I can give back to my community in so many ways," she says. The business makes it easy for her to help people in and around her Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, home by setting up fundraisers for local charities. She creates a website for each charity, and the charity earns a percentage of the sales made on the Petlane products sold through that website.

The Petlane business also allows Franzblau to mentor other entrepreneurs as she adds new pet advisors across the country to her sales team. She encourages and educates her team by having a group phone call each week and holding monthly training sessions online. Franzblau and her team also educate themselves through Petlane's annual conventions and its book clubs, in which they read a new book each month that's pertinent to their business.

While her Petlane business fulfills many of her passions, Franzblau also had practical motivations for getting started. She had just been laid off from her job in marketing and product development and needed a way to support herself and her daughter. Luckily, she has found that her passion and her pocketbook can go hand in hand, especially when that passion is part of a $38 billion pet industry in the U.S. She expects to easily make six figures in the next two years, all while doing what she loves.

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one.

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UglyDolls.Com - How To Make Millions Selling Unattractive Toys.

http://www.uglydolls.com/


2006 sales $2.5 million

Uglydolls may not be the most attractive plush toys in the world--one has three eyes, another sports buckteeth--but they were born from two people's passion. David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim had both dreamed of making toys since childhood, and when they met at school in New York City 10 years ago, they found a kinship as unique as the dolls they imagined. "We both loved illustrating our own characters and coming up with stories," says Horvath. "Things sort of formed. There was this master plan--we just didn't know how or when."

In September 2001, Kim's student visa expired and she had to return to Korea. Horvath kept their vision alive through letters, always signing his with a drawing of Wage, a character they had created together. The following December, Kim brought Wage to life for the very first time with needle and thread and mailed it to Horvath as a surprise. When e-tailer and fellow entrepreneur Eric Nakamura saw the doll, he immediately ordered 20 to sell in his store, Giant Robot. They sold out in a day, and over the next 18 months, Kim hand-sewed 1,500 more.

Targeted to people of all ages, Uglydolls are sold globally in 2,500 retail stores such as FAO Schwarz and Newbury Comics, and distribution continues to grow--sales are expected to at least double in 2007. A line of journals, stationery and postcards launched in March, and guidebooks to the Uglydolls Universe will be released in spring 2008. Meanwhile, Uglydolls have attracted a cult following of fans drawn to the one-of-a-kind characters. Some think they do their name justice, but Horvath believes there's no such thing as ugly. "Those funny little bumps and twists and turns that kind of make us who we are--I think those are good," he says. "Who wants to look the same?"

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one.


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Copeac.Com – How To Make Money With CPA Networks

This month, I’m going to break $3000 benchmark with Copeac.com (which I really started playing around with only two months ago), so I figured I’d share a few tips on making money on the internet with CPA networks, like Copeac.com. As you see, I’m linking to Copeac with my reflink. I’m going this for two reasons – first, any person who registers using this link will be able to get help from me (all you need to do is mention your Copeac ID) and I’ll tell you which campaigns make most money for me. Second (more important reason), you’ll get a 14% higher payouts right away, rather then having to make $1000 in commissions first.

OK, what’s a CPA network? CPA stands for “cost per action”. While most affiliate networks pay only for purchases and AdSense pays per clicks, CPA networks pay per “action”. An action may be a filled out form, an e-mail registration, a request for a brochure, a phone number, etc. My average pay out is anywhere between $1.45-$8.00 per such an action.

Here is a real example how Copeac works. Click this link http://affiliates.copeac.com/sw/9248/3291/
and you'll be taken to Shawn's Casey website. You probably remember me profiling him recently. Shawn is giving away free internet marketing software. All he wants in exchange is your name and e-mail. Every time a person fills out an e-mail from, I get $1.30. As simple as that.

It's important to not that you can not (under any conditions) artificially inflate the number of opt-ins, but it's not necessary. Every time I run an article about Shawn I get about 50 dollars. People are all too happy to exchange their e-mail addresses for free software. Especially since my blog caters to the right crowd.

Some offers pay as high as $20 per lead. For exmaple this one. The high-paying offers are usually very specific (this one deals with military personnel only) and geotargeted to US only (some offers are exclusive to UK or Canada). All international traffic in this instance is re-routed.

But the best thing about CPA networks is that you can make MUCH MORE money not from your webiste, but from AdWords ads. My current ROI on Copeac ads that I run on Google is anywhere between 300% and 800% (it means for every dollar I spend on AdWords I get 3-8 bucks from Copeac). If you are interested in knowing more about that side of the business, make sure you drop me a line after your register with Copeac - there are a lot of little tips and tricks I'd like to share.

Swarovski On A T-Shirt

http://www.sparkle-plenty.com/

If it's free, there's sure to be hype--but even the promotional products industry could use some pizzazz lately. Enter Andrew and Lee Sequeira, 41 and 44, respectively. Owners of an online spa and beauty boutique, this husband-and-wife team couldn't resist acquiring Sparkle Plenty Designs Inc., which specializes in Swarovski crystal-embellished T-shirts, in January 2006. Adding just enough "bling" helped them give an upscale look to the promotional tee industry.

By showing off their customized crystal designs at trade shows nationwide and launching a website, the Sequeiras' Philadelphia business has attracted a wide variety of clients, including the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, NASA and The Ritz-Carlton. "An image in crystal is stunning," says Andrew, who sizes up 2007 sales at about $525,000. "It's allowing us to go to a higher plane with the things we're doing." Whatever the design, this company is sure to make any business sparkle.

If you have a "weird business" or "weird website" you want profiled here and on other blogs, do let us know. If you need a link from this blog, here is how you get one.

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