A common question today is: “Why aren’t I making any money from my web site?” The main reason for this lack of success is that there are too many hobby sites rather than real business sites on the internet.

Your web site is a hobby business when:

• Your web page is full of sophisticated animation and graphics taking forever to load
• You do not have your own product - instead you have links to many affiliate or network marketing programs, you have never bought the products or services and have no knowledge of their quality or suitability
• You respond to email enquiries as and when you feel like it rather than promptly

  Click to continue reading Is Your Online Business A Hobby Or A Real Business?

  
  
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For mobile entrepreneurs who are always on the go, Office Depot has what looks to be a great service meant to give your small company the appearance of seeming larger than it is. As we all know, that can mean the difference between a new client or one that walks away. The Wireless Office service starts at about $65 per month, and includes all of the following services.

After Hours Answering Service
Need a way to manage calls after hours? Wireless office service works for a fraction of the cost of a live answering service and can actually connect the call rather than setting up a call back With Wireless office service, you avoid playing “phone tag” and connect to your callers after hours.

Virtual Receptionist
Don’t have an office? Don’t have a receptionist? Need to present callers with a main business number that routes calls to the right people or information? Wireless office service works as your virtual receptionist 24hrs/day for the fraction of the cost of a dedicated person.

Consolidating and Connecting Virtual Workers
Are a majority of people in your “office” not in the office at all? Most phone systems deliver calls only to office phones. If your company primarily uses home or cellular phones, then Wireless office service is for you.

Consolidating and Connecting Multiple Offices
Looking to consolidate multiple branch offices with one phone number and one phone system? Wireless office service lets you do that and much more.

Making Small Businesses Look and Sound Larger
Tired of your small business sounding like a small business to callers? Wireless office service makes any business sound like a large enterprise.

Retail Call Routing
Are your retail employees spending too much time answering the phone and too little time helping customers? Wireless office service allows retail store to focus on customers while providing automated information to callers and only connect the right callers to the store.

Not bad, eh? If anyone is using, or has used, this service, let us know how it is.

Read More | Wireless Office

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Toshiba is introducing a new business grade notebook computer. If you just want a portable, no frills system, this would be a great steal. The 14-inch WXGA unit includes the Intel Centrino chipset with optional NVIDIA GeForce Go 6200 video platform. The best part, it weighs right around five pounds, and will cost less than $1,000.

Read More | Network World

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As a businessman, CEO, or entrepreneur, one thing that people will tell you that you need to know is the art of being shrewd. Others will say it’s all about hustle. While these factors are important, I actually think that the art of getting people to buy into your ideas is huge. You may need to convince a vendor or business partner to buy into an idea that you know is a stretch, but will work. You may need to simply negotiate rates for a service you would like to use. No matter what it is, it is good to know how to get your point across in the greatest way possible. This article gives great insight into not only how to time your pitch right, but how you need to personally prepare for these moments and do the research.

Read More | How to Pitch An Idea

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Here’s a neat little website meant to keep you aware of the time you are spending on various projects. The ClockWork Timer let’s you fill in different tasks, and start and stop timers while you perform them to keep you on track. You can even run multiple timers at once if you are into multi-tasking. You can pause the timer if you get interrupted, and hit Done once complete. It will save a list of all tasks you have marked done. Check out the site for a demo.

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Here’s a neat little website meant to keep you aware of the time you are spending on various projects. The ClockWork Timer let’s you fill in different tasks, and start and stop timers while you perform them to keep you on track. You can even run multiple timers at once if you are into multi-tasking. You can pause the timer if you get interrupted, and hit Done once complete. It will save a list of all tasks you have marked done. Check out the site for a demo.

Read More | Clockwork Timer

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During my normal interweb travels for the day, I came across a service that many are calling a “must-have”. Backpack is an ingenious organizational tool that is very customizable. There is no download or installation required, as all data is housed on their servers. You can use it to keep track of inventory, plan a meeting or business trip, or even use it for brainstorming. Uploaded files can be integrated into your outline, keeping everything together. Even better, you can share these outlines with others. If there is an important date you need to be reminded of, Backpack will send you an email or text message (or both if you prefer) the day before. I will be taking a closer look at the service over the next few days, but until then check out their hefty example page.

Read More | BackPack

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One thing that I thoroughly enjoy about being an Internet entrepreneur is that fact that as long as I have an Internet connection and my laptop, I can consider myself to be “at work”. For example, I am currently in New York City on vacation (I live in Seattle) posting this from a Starbuck’s in Times Square which offers the T-Mobile Hotspot service. This allows me to take a break from sightseeing, grab a Tazo Chai, and check my email all at the same time. No need to worry about getting back to the office! Anyone else out there take advantage of the unique situation us Internet business owners get to enjoy?

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Nowadays, Internet access is as close as your nearest coffee shop. The trick is finding which one offers Wi-Fi service. The Wi-Fi Digital Hotspotter aims to help in your quest by proving information on signals up to 200 feet away. Using two AAA batteries, the Hotspotter lists signal strength, SSID, channel, and even security status. In other words, all the essentials needed to allow you to judge where you should head if you need quick Wi-Fi access on the go. You can pick one up for about $60.00.

Read More | ThinkGeek

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PalmOne has finally made the official announcement of their LifeDrive multimedia PDA. If you are a Palm user, this is the one to look for in the next week or two, which is when they are expected to hit retail. This thing has a 4GB mini hard drive with 16 MB of built-in ROM and a 416MHz XScale processor. Keeping with the times, the LifeDrive also supports 802.11b WiFi and BlueTooth on the Palm OS 5.4 (Garnet) software. A 320 x 480 pixel 65,000 color touch screen round thing thing out. You can expect to drop $500 on this bad boy, but from what reviewers are saying, it may be well worth the price of admission.

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