http://giftbusinessowners.com Strategies for Creative Gift Entrepreneurs Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:43:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en We all want to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake. Regretfully, the scam artists are are attempting to collect donations by posing as charities. One reliable source of information - including a list of legitimate charities - is the following link:                    http://www.weather.com http://giftbusinessowners.com/beware-of-help-haiti-scams-legitimate-charities.html I'd like to thank Mike Neese of Imperial Foods for the following: I am pleased to announce that I have signed on as a staff writer for this new, exciting venture. With the expertise of Joyce and the rest of the leadership group she has assembled this has a great chance of ... http://giftbusinessowners.com/new-gift-magazine-comment.html It's a New Year and a great time for all of us to move forward with fresh starts, new ideas and something new on the horizon. We're excited to announce "Gift Entrepreneurs", your new online magazine for the gift and gift basket market.  Gift Entrepreneurs believes in the success of gift retailers ... http://giftbusinessowners.com/new-gift-basket-online-magazine-announced.html Sometimes we stumble upon marketing ideas in unexpected places.  Even if they are in no way involved in our own industry, they can be molded and used within our business.  I get lots of marketing emails from lots of people trying to sell me something, but my email yesterday contained ... http://giftbusinessowners.com/expression-web-giveaway-a-marketing-idea-to-copy.html As gift basket company owners, we have to be aware of product safety.  Most of us are aware of the requirement for testing and certifying some children's products.  Here is the latest news. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted unanimously this week to extend the stay of enforcement for testing ... http://giftbusinessowners.com/new-decision-on-testing-and-certification-of-childrens-products.html One of my favorite blogs is written by New Zealand blogger Sean D'Souza and this particular blog entry is a  perfect reminder for all of us at this time of year.  By the way, his blog and website is a wealth of marketing information. You'll find a link to it at the ... http://giftbusinessowners.com/is-your-marketing-as-effective-as-santas.html Ken Auletta, in his new book  Googled: The End of the World as We Know it, gives us ten basic business lessons that we should learn from Google.  CNN Money.com recently featured an article written by Auletta which should be read in its entirety at http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/22/technology/auletta_maxims.fortune/index.htm Here are the ten lessons discussed ... http://giftbusinessowners.com/learning-business-101-from-google.html A question to ask yourself each night is:  What have you done to promote your business today? Other valuable questions are:  What did you learn today? What new promotion did you hear about this week that you could adopt or adapt for your business? What technique did you read about that could make your business ... http://giftbusinessowners.com/marketing-and-promotion-do-you-have-an-idea-file.html When we first start our business, we are told to research, to find out what works for others and to determine how we are different.  But many of us are afraid to take that step that would keep us from being  just "more of the same."  We copy what works for ... http://giftbusinessowners.com/dare-to-be-different.html Enjoy another great article from our guest blogger, Susan Placek, owner of "Popcorn Greetings".  Make Your Customers Work for You As an entrepreneur I know about the headaches and hassles small business owners have to deal with every day. We invest a lot of time and money on marketing our products and ... http://giftbusinessowners.com/make-your-customers-work-for-you.html