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You are here: Home / Archives for Money Making Ideas

Money Making Ideas

Freelance Jobs On Top 10 Websites

July 13, 2016 By Twila VanLeer

Freelance jobs on the top 10 websites online
Freelance jobs posted online are becoming easier to find.
Freelance jobs can solve income problems for many people who work at home. In 2015, some 15.5 million Americans were self-employed, according to Bureau of Labor statistics. By 2020, the number is expected to rise to about 60 million – more than 40 percent of the total workforce.

Freelance Jobs Online

Freelancers are doing their work at home, in coffee shops and co-working spaces everywhere. Many or the best and brightest are leaving traditional jobs to take advantage of the flexibility and autonomy in jobs of their own creation. Whether the objective is just making a side job of a hobby or making freelance the way to a living, there are resources that can be helpful.

Toptal

Toptal is a freelance network of elite software engineers and digital designers from more than a hundred countries around the world. It has a screening process that weeds out everyone except the top 3 percent of talent in a number of categories. If you are selected, you know you are in company with the elite. You are allowed to decide if you want full or part-time work, how many hours and set your own rates. Toptal works with such companies as AirBnB, IDEO and JP Morgan and has a consistent lineup of interesting clients and projects.

Upwork

Upwork, a union of the two leading freelance networks, Elance and lDesk, is now the largest website to find freelancers. It has more than 10 million registered users, four million clients and listings for three million jobs every year. It is a source for writers, architects, legal aides, photographers and others. Users can enroll for short-term or long-term projects, work by the hour or by the project. A chat feature, time-tracker and payment protection are part of the program.

99 Designs

99 Designs has its own twist. The platform is for designers and every job comes in the form of a contest. Instead of browsing through a catalog of portfolios and resumes, clients are asked to crowd source projects, set a budget and give instructions and then let designers submit work based on the project brief. At the end of a week, the client chooses the best design and pays its originator. This is a good site for designers who want to test their talents and shake up their workflow.

PeoplePerHour

PeoplePerHour offers a source for all skills related to web projects, including software engineers, digital designers, SEO specialists and marketers. A tool called WorkStream simplifies the business side of the work by organizing payment, communications and management all in one place. You can browse jobs, be notified of new openings via your inbox and send up to 15 proposals without charge before you sign up for the premium plan.

LinkedIn Profinder

This freelance source has more than 420 million members in more than 200 countries and is a leading place for learning about job-related information. It recently launched LinkedIn Profinder as a means to help freelance professionals to find jobs. Based on its enormous amount of user data, it is able to connect freelancers with strong leads based on keyword searches and companies followed.

SimplyHired

SimplyHired has the largest variety of freelance jobs of any on this list, with information on jobs ranging from construction to concierge work. It offers help for those seeking extra work and has information on jobs in more than 24 countries, offering opportunities in 12 languages.

Freelance Writing Gigs

Freelance Writing Gigs is a job board that is updated daily with freelance writing and blogging jobs. Topics vary from technical writing to writing about such things as recipes, photography and healthcare. There are great opportunities whether you are looking to supplement your income or make freelancing you full-time work.

If you are among the millions of freelancers looking for new opportunities, check into these sites to see what’s in them for you.

Filed Under: Careers, Internet, Job Search, Money Making Ideas Tagged With: Employment, internet business, job search, Money Making Ideas

3D Food Printers? Move Over Microwaves

June 19, 2014 By Twila VanLeer

Make room in your kitchen for a gizmo that prints food. Mind-boggling but true. The 3D printing technology is already developed and there are advance-guard food preparation models on the market, selling for $99 to $5,000.

This ravioli mold was printed with a 3D printer.
This ravioli mold was printed with a 3D printer.

Here’s how it works: Suppose you have ravioli in mind. Assemble the ingredients — the first step you always take in preparing meals. Then the machine takes over, “printing” a thin layer of pasta from one of its capsules. Next comes a layer of your tomato-based filling from another capsule, followed by another layer of pasta filling for the standard ravioli design.

The 3D printers do NOT make something from nothing, stresses Lynette Kucsma, co-founder of Natural Machines in Barcelona, Spain. The company calls its food printer the Foodini, of course. It is scheduled for release in October and will sell for about $1,300 initially. Kucsma predicts that the device will be as common as the kitchen microwave and that it will take less time to catch on with the current tech-savvy public. She feels it will offer a more healthful approach to food preparation, edging out some of the fast foods that are standard American fare these days.

“The point is to get people away from eating processed foods and start cooking again,” she said, but cooking in a Space Age mode. In a time-pressed society, having a mini food manufacturing device in the kitchen will be a more healthful approach, as well as saving time, she predicted.

3D Printed Sugar Seen On 3dsystems.com
3D Printed Sugar

For instance, in the above example, each ravioli takes under a minute. That means 10 in 10 minutes. The food printer is an assembly device that does the tedious work of putting things in order and doing the tedious chores, such as rolling pasta dough. You still must add necessary ingredients and cook the assembled food. Natural Machines and other hopeful competitors in the emerging market are already working on companion pieces that will take care of the cooking.

Cornell Creative Machines Lab, which also is creating a 3D food printer, joins in making futuristic claims for the technology, predicting that dining out as well as cooking in will be significantly affected. The company cites USDA figures that show the average American spends 33 minutes a day on food preparation. Food printing could become a set-and-forget process that could cut the time by 150 hours per year.

Before such devices become standard household equipment, they are likely to enhance fancy items such as pastries for restaurant chefs. But standard microwaves are already shuddering in their shoes as they see the shape of the future in 3D food printing.

Making a sandwich with 3D printer as seen on 3ders.org
Making a sandwich with 3D printer as seen on 3ders.org

Filed Under: 3D Printing Tagged With: 3D Printers, 3D Printing, Money Making Ideas

Entrepreneurs On The Rise

February 18, 2012 By Twila VanLeer

It is a survey finding that surprised even the experts. Since 1996, entrepreneurs in the 55-64-year-old age group have initiated more new businesses every year than those in the 20-34 age range.

Dane Stangler, senior analyst for the Marion Kauffman Foundation located in Kansas City, Mo., which conducted the survey, said its results were surprising even to him. They shatter the stereotype of the young college graduate (or dropout: Bill Gates of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook) as the expected founder of a new business. The involvement of baby boomers who should logically be considering retirement instead of new ventures is a growing trend, Stangler said. The number of Baby-Boomer entrepreneurs continues to rise over the younger age groups each year. The foundation’s research was reported in an AARP publication.

The reasons for the phenomenon are, of course, multiple and complex. For one thing, Americans are living longer and more healthfully. Full retirement at the usual age isn’t appealing to many who have spent their normal career years cultivating skills that can be transferred to a business they control themselves.

The AARP article points to Doug Wolf, a man in his 50’s who had spent his career years in the medical field, working at hospitals as an MRI or CT technologist. When he tired of the job, he determined, despite a bad economy, to strike out on his own. He started, wisely, by researching franchises he felt would work for him. He paused for awhile over the possibility of opening a bird feed store, but ultimately opted for a carpet cleaning business. Among the reasons: carpet cleaning is a useful service; it is year-round and indoors. So despite discouragement by some of his family, he stepped out and joined the ranks of middle-aged first-time business owners.

The franchise of choice for the 21st Century seems to be a home-based, computer-supported business. Multi millionaires such as Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki and Warren Buffet, all are involved to some degree with businesses like this.

From the entrepreneur’s standpoint, the advantages are obvious. What other business offers — for an initial investment in the neighborhood of $500 — the lure of low overhead (you probably have no additional housing expenses for the business beyond your own home) no need for expensive advertising and the prospects of unlimited growth, which translates into unlimited wealth.

Those who have already succeeded are proof-positive that age doesn’t need to be a factor if you have the desire.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs Tagged With: making money, Money Making Ideas, successful entrepreneurs

Life Is Crap? Entrepreneur Capitalizes On The Fact

December 30, 2011 By Twila VanLeer

Everyone who is actually inhaling and exhaling on a regular basis knows it. Life is crap. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we end up in the soup. Anyone over two has already learned to expect the unexpected. (Actually, it starts long before you reach two, but Mom takes care of it. It’s part of her crappy life.)

So, what’s a person to do? Paul Wheeler believes the only answer is laughter. The whole focus of his company — predictably named Life is Crap — is to take the inevitable, put it up front and visible and laugh it off. “It’s our mission,” says Wheeler of his Manchester, Vt., company. Together with his partner, Ken Lefevre, they have successful brought the company to the marketplace.

“Everything we do revolves around the idea that crap happens and that laughter is the cure.”

That means the message shows up on T-shirts, caps —anywhere an individual can make a statement on the way things are in this troubled world. The company is now expanding into cheap checks that give folks a frequent opportunity to reflect on the vagaries of life and apply their sense of humor. “We’ve seen what works, now we’re scaling up. We’re always looking for ways to expand.” Always within the boundaries of the basic concept, he adds. That careful attention to sticking to initial principles has turned Life is Crap into a $10 million dollar enterprise.

If you ended up with a bad split in the bowling alley, there it is—a shirt showing the ball rolling easily between the two widely separated pins. Out of wine? Lament the fact with a public display of the empty glass. The bicycle depicted crashing into the pile of dirt at the bottom of the hill? It has happened to all of us. Wheeler and crew simply take the universal hazards of everyday living and put them out there where everyone can laugh along. The company customizes such items as magnets, books, calendars, shirt, caps, towels, hoodies, key rings, shot glasses, beer steins, decals, greeting cards, page a day calendars items— any desired surface that will accommodate an image.

Looking at the irritations of life might seem like a negative approach, but those who retail his products don’t seem to mind, Wheeler has found. No one has ever complained. Of course, that means finding the best outlets for Life is Crap merchandise. Someone lacking the sense of humor to appreciate the products, obviously, isn’t the one to present them to his purchasing public, Wheeler has found. The bah-humbuggers who refuse to find humor in life are to be avoided. And there are, believe it or not, some “crap” areas that don’t translate well to the buying public.

There have been some bombs along the learning curve. The company thought that politics was a logical target for its kind of humor and found that, in fact, no serious person of any political persuasion wanted anyone publicly poking fun at their well-known areas of crap. That venture was a failed effort that cost time and money, he said.

Another spot too sensitive to subject it to humor, the company found, is the current economy. No merchant wanted his customers reminded that times are tough. The popular idea of what’s funny changes with time and events, Life is Crap has found, but there is always plenty of grist for its mill in just the ongoing, everlasting irritations that humans endure. The company expects to continue to thrive on items that make the enduring easier.

The whole road to success, Wheeler said, has been a process of trial and error. When the group started, they were up against the same basic questions each new small business faces. How to put their ideas into concrete products. How to find the best business model to meet their goals. How to allocate the existing resources most effectively. Where to find the most effective market outlets. They spent a year in development.

To date, the company has developed some 500 images, licensed them and marketed through over 1100 stores. As the small business got a toe hold in the market, the next logical step was putting the goods online, he said. “We buy back product from the manufacturer and sell it online. We’ve done well and have seen it grow. Now we are focused on getting traffic to our site.”

The basic concept for Life is Crap requires employees who are in tune, he said. The group is small—just five employees—but they comprise the gamut of artistic and business savvy that is making Life is Crap a growing concern. Being constantly alert to possibilities has contributed to the growing of the company’s product lines. Pure serendipity, in fact, had a hand in bringing designer checks into the fold. Wheeler, et al, met the owner of Carousel Checks during a trade show. There was an exchange of ideas and voila! Another licensing arrangement was born.

Life Is Crap T-Shirts
Fun T-Shirts By Life Is Crap

In 2012, the company will be focused in building and expanding our direct to consumer internet business. New products to be launched include several other related sub-brands: Life is Poop — for infants, Life is Ruff for dog lovers, Old Life is Crap for Senior Citizens, College Life is Crap for College Students and Life is Beer — for BEER LOVERS.

The fact that life is crappy is not likely to end soon. There is always the bird overhead looking for a place to unload. That bodes well for Wheeler and Life is Crap as they look for new targets for their brand of humor.

Filed Under: Entrepreneur Interviews, Entrepreneurs Tagged With: entrepreneur, Money Making Ideas, successful entrepreneurs

The Future Of Apple Without Steve Jobs

October 31, 2011 By Sherry Tingley

Apple Stock Prices from 1984 - 2011
The Rise Of Apple Stock Prices

What does the future of Apple look like without Steve Jobs? Analysts are predicting a very bright future.

Today, Apple is worth $377.83 billion dollars. Share prices are fluctuating between $401 – $409.  It is the largest company in the world and new products are in development.  The iTV, which is currently in the prototype stage, could revolutionize the television industry and it could add billions of dollars to the worth of Apple.

Gene Munster, analyst for Piper Jaffray, a $400 million dollar investment company, says “We believe that of the estimated 220 million flat panel TVs sold in 2012, 48% or 106 million units will be internet-connected, of which Apple could sell 1.4 million units,” Munster wrote. “We believe an Apple Television could add $2.5 billion or 2% to revenue in 2012, $4.0 billion or 3% in 2013 and $6.0 billion in 2014.”

Will that make investing in Apple now a good investment? David Zeiler writes an interesting article: Why Apple Stock Is Headed for $500 – And Beyond. The momentum behind Apple seems to be growing past the loss of it’s founder, Steve Jobs.

A recent book called “Steve Jobs,” by Walter Isaacson, clearly reveals the thinking that has been driving the success of the company for years. Steve’s out of the box, creative thinking has gotten the masses to use computers in a new way. From the launch of the MacIntosh in 1984, to the recent launch of the Ipad2, his products provided us with the next generation of technology.

Designing products with ease of use has been Steve Job’s philosophy. Thank goodness, because the masses are not tech geeks. His artistic sense of design, minimalistic lifestyle and obsessive attention to detail are the fuel behind the products we have come to love and use daily.

From his high school part-time job working at Hewlett-Packard, Steve Jobs found one mentor after the next to teach him about technology, product creating, business structure and relationships. Although not always the best at relationships, his demand for perfection and his drive for great product creation triumphed.

There is a future for Apple because of Steve Jobs. His vision and creative thinking will truly be missed, but his contributions to the world will benefit generation after generation.


 

Related Company Valuations – October 31, 2011

 

Apple Inc. 377.68B
Microsoft Corporation 225.50B
IBM 218.78B
Google Inc. 193.01B
Oracle Corporation 166.52B
Intel Corporation 129.99B
Verizon Communications… 105.09B
Amazon.com, Inc. 97.32B
Hewlett-Packard Company 53.35B
Dell Inc. 29.15B

 

1984 Launch of the Macintosh

 
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Filed Under: Business Development, Investing Tagged With: Money Making Ideas, Steve Jobs

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