Amazon has launched a new cateogry called Amazon Green a few weeks ago. Amazon has always been good with following high demand trends in online shopping world. In most cases Amazon is the first to implement those.

The behavior of both offline and online shoppers in the US are changing, and going more towards Green Shopping. This is great news for the environment, and for our future.

Many small businesses are following the green shopping trend for a while but the big shots in online shopping game are jumping onto the board recently, one by one.

Amazon Green is a category/section within main Amazon site. You can pick 3 products from Amazon’s catalog which you believe are green, then they get rated higher in the Amazon Green Section.

eBay has launched WorldOfGood.com for green shoppers. With the new site, I believe, eBay’s ultimate goal is to target increasing Etsy.com customers.

Amazon’s Green Model within their main site, or eBay’s Green Model with a seperate site. Time will show which business model will be more successful.

Is Your Small Business Still NOT Green?

Amazon, eBay or other big online stores will make their share of $$$ from the green shopping trend. But how can you increase your sales or bring new customers to your small business by going green?

Every niche is different. Some niches are more suitable to offer environmental friendly products than others. You don’t have to offer a large selection of green products. You can do little things to let your customers know that you care about the environment.

Tips to Go Green For Small Businesses:

• Try to use as much recyclable supplies as possible.
• Run campaigns to support environmental friendly non-profit organizations.
• Try to find new green products which would fit into your product line.
• Let your customers know that you care about the environment.

I have been hearing more and more success stories of small businesses which go green. So, don’t miss the “Go Green” trend, and both increase your sales & help the environment.

Is it possible to create a stable passive income stream with affiliate marketing?

Yes, absolutely.

Is it true that we can create an affiliate site within minutes and become a millionaire overnight, just like it says in $99.00 “Get Rich Overnight” ebooks?

Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Every penny, a real online marketer makes online, is the result of very hard work and many sleepless hours spent on the computer.

I have found a way to create a stable passive income stream with much less work than any online or affiliate marketing techniques.

I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I will share my biggest secret today which I have never shared before, not even with my close friends. I am a guy who believes in KARMA, so here it goes.

My true story of making over $5000/month passive income within 3 months as an ebay affiliate:

It was around August of 2007 when I have read a few forum posts about a software/script called BANS (Build a Niche Store). A few people were talking about how much they make with this script as an ebay affiliate.

The stories sounded to good to be true, and I didn’t even check the script’s website.

I was already making good amount of money with my ecommerce business, affiliate sites, blogs, and consultancy business. But I was always searching for that secret recipe; Passive Income, like many other online marketers.

Every penny I made online was the result of hard work and many sleepless nights spent on the computer. I was amazed with the stories of online marketers making unbelievable numbers as passive income. I always thought it was too good to be true. It was a prejudgment on my side, I admit it now.

It was around November of 2007, three months after I’ve heard about this script BANS, now more and more people started talking about it online. I have decided to give it a shot and purchased the script.

I have paid $97.00 for BANS which comes with unlimited website license, and totally forgot about it due to my busy schedule.

About 6 months later, during May 2008, I have decided to spend a few hours and setup a site. I have setup my first BANS ebay affiliate site that weekend, and within exactly 3 months (June, July, August 2008), I have 10 BANS sites with over $5000/month income. (August sales numbers are not finalized yet, but we are at $5,125.24 exactly as of august 29th).

Here’s the interesting part. The first site I’ve built with BANS, after doing the initial promotion, is making around $1000/month as of august, and had a steady income increase of 100% every single month. I have setup the site, promoted it, and left it there untouched. This is pure increasing passive income.

I have seen one thing, if built right, an eBay affiliate store can make more money than you can ever imagine.

Many affiliate marketers will tell you, eBay affiliate sites are too SATURATED, stay away from them. Of course, they will tell you that. Because they don’t want you to be competition. Ok, too much talk doesn’t take us anywhere. I have told you the story of my journey as an ebay affiliate, now it is time to show you how I have succeeded within 3 months, step by step:
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Uncle Sam’s Money is one of the most popular government grant application programs on the market. I have received several pm’s and emails about Uncle Sam’s Money Programs. I’ve decided to purchase the program and write a review about it.

If you are reading this review, it means you are interested in applying for a government grant. If you haven’t read already, I’d recommend reading a post I’ve written about How to Get Government Grants also.

If you like, visit Uncle Sam’s Money before reading my review.

Uncle Sam’s Money Review

There are so many government grant application information products on the market, most of them are CD’s that you get in the mail. The trick is you pay only shipping, get the CD in the mail with the information but they start charging your credit card monthly until you cancel it. Uncle Sam’s Money is a one time fee program.

Here’s what you will get if you decide to purchase Uncle Sam’s Money:

• Instant access to all the resources (membership site)
• Free Consultation from a grant specialist. As far as I know, only Uncle Sams Money offers this option.
• Grant Writing Tutorial and a Grant Writing Software. This is very useful if you haven’t applied for grants before. Writing a great grant application is one of the most important part.
• Up-to-date Federal Government Grant Programs Directory.
• Up-to-date State Government Grant Programs Directory. (most programs do not offer the state government grant directory)
• Unlimited email support by Uncle Sams Money staff. If you have any questions about your grant application, there will be support to answer your questions. This is very valuable when you need guidance.
• Seperate directory for education grant resources.
• Contact details of grant specialists (including phone numbers) in your area. This is worth getting the Uncle Sams Money.
• Resources and wealth of information for all types of grants such as small business grants, education grants, women’s grants, research grants, personal needs grants, housing grants, healthcare grants, etc. Not focused on on specific field of grants.
• They offer so many free bonuses (ebooks, information, tutorials, etc.) that I won’t even have time to list here. Here’s the full list, go check them out.

Visit Uncle Sam’s Money to view the full list of features.

How much does Uncle Sam’s Money Cost? Is there a money back guarantee?

Uncle Sam’s money is normally $79.95 (one time fee), but they are running a limited time special for $39.95 (one time fee, no recurring charges). Everything is upfront, no hidden or recurring charges, that’s what I like about Uncle Sam’s Money Program.

They also offer 90 days, 100% money back guarantee, this shows their confidence in their program’s success. You will also get a FULL refund unconditionally if your grant application is not approved. Nothing can get better than this.

If you are in the process of preparing a government grant application and trying to decide a program to purchase, I’d highly recommend Uncle Sam’s Money, one of the most respected programs on the market.

I wish you the best luck getting the much needed grant you deserve.

You have decided to buy or sell a business, now what will you do? It is always good to know your options before buying or selling a business. Here are some of the routes you might take:

Market Research Before Selling or Buying a Business

When there are thousands of businesses for sale on the market, market research might be time consuming. If you haven’t done so, check out these articles from SBA (Small Business Administration) about buying a business, and these articles about selling a business.

Buy or Sell a Business via a Local Business Broker

There are advantages and disadvantages of hiring a local broker to buy or sell a business. Many brokers will only charge if they sell your business. Some brokers offer a list of businesses for sale and it is always great to see what is available in the market and get an idea of the price range for related businesses. Here’s a list of local business brokers in the US and Canada by state. When you are ready to buy or sell a business, start with an extensive market research, then I’d recommend to get a consultation from a local broker first.

Buy or Sell a Franchise Business

If you have the cash to invest and if you are not experienced in business, I’d highly recommend starting with a franchise. Most of the franchise businesses comes with a great business plan and forecasting. When you need help, the company does everything to help you succeed. Owning a franchise comes with many advantages.

If you are planning to buy a franchise, here’s a great site about franchise opportunities. They have bunch of information about franchises and a great directory of franchise business listings. Also take a close look at Top 500 Franchises by year at entrepreneur.com . More listings and information about franchises.

Best Places to Advertise your Business for Sale:

• Sell a business at BusinessMart.com
• List your business at local classifieds sites such as Craigslist.
• If it’s an online business, you might also try SitePoint Marketplace.

It is always good to get a word out there when you decide to sell your business. Your competitors might be interested in buying it, and it might be an indirect way to let them know. Business brokers also may contact your competitors to let them know about your business.

BusinessMart.com has become the fastest growing business for sale search engine, helping buyers and sellers of small businesses and franchises. BusinessMart.com has many resources to help you on your journey to start your own business, sell your existing business or open a franchise. I’d recommend spending some serious time on BusinessMart.com if youare buying or selling a business.

US Government offers hundreds of billions of dollars cash every year as grants. Many think these grants are for only small businesses, but government offers grants for a wide range of purposes including small business grants. So the government offers this free cash, and the question is “How to get government grants“?

If you have a business consultant working for you, and if you haven’t discussed this topic, you should do it now, because government offers these grants to any type of small businesses. It doesn’t matter how profitable your company is, you might use some free extra cash to buy your own facility, right?

But if you don’t have a small business consultant, or can’t afford one, don’t worry. Applying for government grants is not that hard. Here’s a step by step guide:

How To Get Government Grants Guide

• 1) Visit Grants.gov and read all the information available.
• 2) Visit Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Government Grants Search Page and visit all the categories until you find the most appropriate category for your needs. You can also visit Grants.gov search page and search grants by keyword.
• 3) Preparing the government grant application is the most important part. You can get great information at Grants.gov or on other sites, but remember many applicants fail due to the mistakes on their application. There are many affordable informational products out there to guide you on the application process step by step (some of them include live chat and/or phone assistance from experienced grant writers). I’d highly recommend getting one of these products. Beware of the scams out there, there are also many scam products on the net. Here’s a great guide which compares government grant programs, they have tested over 50 products, and they recommend 5 of the best ones. If you ask my best pick, it is the Government Research Guide, I have personally used it and it was extremely helpful. You can also read Uncle Sams Money Review I’ve written which is a great progra.
• 4) Keep track of the New Opportunities Page at Grants.gov. It is updated daily, some fascinating grants become available, and if you visit this page, you will be one of the first people to learn about it.
• 5) When filling out the application, be very honest, explain your goals in detail, and do not exaggerate your situation, ’cause many people do. Here’s the online application system for applying to government grants.

That’s basically the steps you need to take for the answer of “how to get government grants” question. Now, sit back and relax, and hopefully you’ll have the next government funded success story. Good luck.

Local businesses usually don’t have large advertising budgets. Large franchising chains, and brand names usually use their national advertising channels to compete with local businesses.

Internet advertising is becoming more popular for both online businesses and local small offline businesses. There are some quality local business directories online. One of them I’ve found recently is Kudzu.

Kudzu.com is an Internet venture owned and operated by Cox Search Inc., a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, one of the nation’s leading media companies and providers of automotive services. So, it’s backed up with a well known brand.

Kudzu is running a special for a limited time. They are offering FREE Premium listing through 2008. I have registered my businesses last week, and already started receiving some quality traffic. I wanted to share this information with my readers since it’s a great value (normally it’d cost you around $750.00).

Click to visit to register your business for FREE (No credit card required, nothing to lose).

Here’s how your premium listing will look like at Kudzu.

Take advantage of this limited time offer and register your business for free. Every visitor helps for your business.

* Important Tip: You don’t have to own a local business to be able to register. One of my websites receives the most traffic from a niche local business directory site.

According to a recent Forrester Research report, online holiday retail sales in the U.S. are expected to hit $33 billion in 2007, a 21% increase over last year’s sales. Personally speaking, our online sales have already doubled this holiday season. Even though we have run a big discount through an email campaign, black friday was not our best sales day. For the holiday season our best day was yesterday (Cyber Monday).

Our prediction shows that our ecommerce business sales will increase around 50% for the month of december (compared to november), and we will try to keep the increase until June with different promotion techniques.

Included in Forrester’s report were the following findings:

Apparel and Accessories: This category will top holiday shopping lists.
(80% of respondents said that they will purchase something in this category online.)

Free Shipping: A majority of consumers still have interest in free shipping promotions.
(61% of respondents said they are more likely to shop online from a retailer offering free shipping.)

Less Flare: Fewer consumers are willing to pay for extras such as gift wrapping, or overnight delivery.
(26% of respondents said they would pay for expedited delivery prior to the holiday season, down from 45% who said they would do so in 2006.)

*Forrester defines the holiday shopping season as the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

ComScore, Inc. also released recent information and predictions regarding the 2007 holiday season. ComsScore, a global leader in measuring the digital world, projects that the months of November and December will see approximately $29.5 billion in online consumer spending.

2006 versus 2007

Non-Travel (Retail) Spending (Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases)

2006: Jan-Oct: $77.5 Billion
2007: Jan-Oct: $93.6 Billion
(21% Increase)

2006: Nov-Dec (Holiday Season): $24.6 Billion
2007: Nov-Dec (Holiday Season): $29.5 Billion
(Projected 20% Increase)

Their reports also show that the first eighteen days of the holiday season saw more than $7 billion in online retail spending.
Holiday Season to Date, 2006 versus 2007

Non-Travel (Retail) Spending (Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases)
2006: November 1-18, $6.01 Billion
2007: November 1-18, $7.04 Billion
(17% Increase)

“The online holiday shopping season got off to a slow start in the first week of November, but it has since picked up sharply,” notes comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Sales in the first ten days of November were up modestly versus year ago, but surged to levels in excess of 20 percent by mid-November. It’s likely that warmer than average weather at the beginning of November kept people outdoors and away from their computers, weighing down early holiday season sales, especially for key online categories like apparel. The growth rates during the second and third weeks of November are likely to be better indicators of how the remainder of the season will play out.”

Many will sale most of the ecommerce niches are already saturated. DO NOT Believe them. There are so many ecommerce niches that needs new online stores desperately. Even some big names still don’t do a good job in online marketing. For me, an ecommerce business is like a long term investment. People will shop online more, and your ecommerce site will keep growing if you work hard on it.

Happy Holiday Sales!

The Point is a social and consumer activism site found by Chicago based Andrew Mason that just launched this week. I like the concept, and tested it myself by starting a campaign.

The concept is simple; A member creates a campaign, and participants pledge to take action only when enough other people have pledged to do the same thing. If the tipping point is reached, members agree to boycott a product, donate money to the cause, or take some form of civil action. You can review all the campaigns, and decide to participate or not.

If the site becomes popular, one of the main concerns might be the cencorship. I couldn’t find any information if ThePoint.com will use any cencorship towards any campaigns in the future or not. This part from the Terms & Conditions Page may give us some idea:

The Point may remove any Content and The Point accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all. To report Terms of Service abuse, please email: abuse@thepoint.com

TechCrunch points that ThePoint.com has already raised $2.5 million from angel investors, and will soon try to raise more in a VC round. I’m very curious about the monetization techniques they will use. I will definitely write a followup.

Andrew Mason, the founder of ThePoint.com, has posted this comment at TechCrunch after a question raised by a reader about the similarity of ThePoint.com to PledgeBank.com ;

Pledgebank is a great site and shares the same basic “I’ll do something, but only if others cooperate” model, but beyond that, there are more differences than similarities. First, The Point is largely focused on “do this, or else” campaigns — ultimatums targeted at a third party that are designed to, once they tip, quickly force a change by creating an unendurable financial stress. For many campaigns on The Point, the tipping point is something that can be quantified — it’s the point where the cost to a target of the group action becomes greater than the benefits of not changing. The tipping point of a campaign on The Point shouldn’t be determined by a prediction of how many people are likely to join, rather, a calculation of how many people are needed to force change. On The Point, it’s less important that a campaign tip than it is for people to have the sense that they will only be asked to take action when the conditions exist for a combined action to solve their shared problem. We also have an awesome feature called conditional anonymity — your identity isn’t revealed until the campaign tips — that makes The Point a singularly powerful tool for forming issue-specific workplace unions.

Overall, I like the idea and the site (usability, design, and concept is pretty good). I will definitely be checking the campaigns, and will participate.

True entreprenurs love to take risk. Some do their homework better than others before taking risk. Taking risk might lead you to success, but at the other side, it might lead you to failure. When you read the success stories of entrepreneurs, you also find out their previous failures.

Why am I writing about taking risk, and learning from failures?

I have recently had some conversations with a few friends about starting a business. These friends of mine work corporate jobs, and always searching for opportunities to start their businesses. I have observed a particular difference in business perspective between them and myself. When they talk about a business opportunity or make a business plan, they are looking for absolute ZERO risk. They always mention, oh of course you have to take risk, but when it comes to reality, they are scared to take risk. They know it, but they don’t accept it. One thing I have learnt as an entrepreneur is “Failing is a part of entrepreneurship”. If you take risk to achieve big goals, you will not be 100% successful. You will fail along the way.

I took a risk, Failed, then what?

Always re-evaluate your business along the way. You will make many small mistakes, it is normal. If you can find out what you are doing wrong, correct it, and learn from your mistake, you are doing the right thing. Even if you fail, the key is trying to learn from your failure.

Never get discouraged

Keep your motivation at the maximum level. I set goals with daily sales for instance. If I can’t reach that level, I work harder. If I reach the level, then I set a higher goal. Setup your daily, weekly, monthly (short term) goals, even write them on a post-it and put it on your desk, wall, monitor. Never get discouraged if you can’t reach your goals, work even harder.

According to Komisar, what distinguishes the Silicon Valley is not its successes, but the way in which it deals with failures. The Valley is about experimentation, innovation, and taking new risks. Only a small business that can deal with failure and still make money can exist in this environment. It is a model based on many, many failures and a few extraordinary successes.

If you don’t like the idea of taking risk and failing, here’s a short but useful formula:

NO RISK = NO FAILURE