April 23, 2007

Link Love Army

There’s a new army being formed. It’s taking no prisoners, but here will be no bloodshed. The Linky Love Army is a collaborative blogging program that pays bloggers for their group efforts in promoting their sponsors. The bloggers work together in various campaigns and are paid for their sponsored posts. We all know how that works, right? But The Linky Love Army takes it a step further. All of the bloggers get a share in the revenue produced by each campaign. How nice is that! Work together as a team doing something you enjoy and make more money doing it. I like that. As a matter of fact, I like it so much that I’ve enlisted and this is my first sponsored post for the Linky Love Army!

Technorati Tags: blogging, paid blogging, Linky Love Army

April 14, 2007

Exploring the market

Several years ago two of my friends in the industry decided they wanted to start up a full-service pest control company here in the islands. I had been involved in other business with them over the years, both here and in their market areas on the mainland, so they checked with me for some basic information. What were the needs that our industry wasn’t meeting? What were the demographics for purchasers of each type of service? What service was most popular. Which specialty services hadn’t yet reached Hawaii? I reminded them that I offer a niche service, termite inspections for the real estate market, and had no direct familiarity with other services or needs. They were considering dedicating a considerable sum of investor funding to their start-up. What they needed was a professional market research firm that could not only collect the necessary data, but analyze it and help them form a clear picture of what the market was and how they could best enter it. I cut myself out of a substantial consulting fee, but I was the wrong professional for the job. After they hired the right experts they discovered that with it’s soft housing market and high unemployment, Hawaii should not be the focus of their interest at that time. They’re doing quite well in their new business on the mainland now, thanks to the expert advice from their market research specialists. It always pays to seek out the best experts when seeking business consulations.

This post is sponsored by Synovate, the global market research company driven by curiosity.

Technorati Tags: business, marketing, market research, pest control, business start-ups