StartupNation Blogs

During my recent appearance on ABC News Now, I was lucky enough to be asked to provide some advice to fellow entrepreneurs who are growing businesses built around their passions.
Click here or on the image below to view that advice.

Let me know if you have a cool story you’d like to share with ABC News Now or [...]

Weird that I’d write a blog post about paying for content in a free content world, isn’t it?! Weirder yet that StartupNation has for years on end been a STRICTLY free content site and hosts many tens of thousands of pages of free content and features.

So why have we recently launched a paid content offering [...]

As a business owner, I love being my company’s “evangelist.” I get huge kicks from educating and exciting people about becoming a customer. But frankly, there’s an even more important—though arguably less exhilarating—aspect to closing new business. We call it, the art of follow up.
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My feelings about this were confirmed and further fueled at [...]

As the “royalty” status of Hollywood stars has risen, so has their effectiveness as key influencers in consumer purchasing behaviors. Celebrity product placement is considered an “influencer-marketing” approach for helping brands increase their competiveness in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Marketers and small business owners can harness that power through strategic product placement opportunities that have [...]

Tory Johnson, frequent reporter on ABC’s Good Morning America show and anchor of the ABC NewsNow series focusing on careers asked for a little StartupNation love recently. One of her faithful fans, Natalie, of ChicSweets, asked for ideas about how to move her business forward on a variety of levels, especially in the transition from part-time [...]

With over 70% of the economic experts expecting a last quarter uptick in the economy, now is the perfect time to start preparing for the extra business.  I am a big fan of using virtual assistants to help build out my team during peak seasons.  This is an especially useful business strategy in today’s [...]

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has now added a 100% interest free SBA backed loan with no fees attached. With so many businesses (big and small) crumbling in the current economic climate, the new loan program is an attempt by the SBA to reach [...]

We spend a lot of time, appropriately, sharing as much as we can at StartupNation about how to get new customers. But once you get customers onboard, what can you do to make sure you keep them?
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Our advice is to ask four key questions:

Who is my customer? This helps you understand your target market. Familiarize [...]

Referencing my prior post on Creative Capitalism, here is another business with a 1 for 1 model.
A new project by California eco-urban design firm LJ Urban aims to make giving more concrete—quite literally—by matching its sales of homes domestically with funds to build homes in the impoverished African nation of Burkina Faso.

Urban has designed a [...]

While start-up businesses may feel overshadowed by larger companies, submitting your product or service for review or in a competition is a great way to get new coverage and highlight your success. Find out if local media, analysts, industry magazines or bloggers have any scheduled product reviews or competitions in the coming months to get more coverage.