EdwardKhoo.com

Image via Paladin 27

It’s a tough economy. Lay-offs, plant closings, higher taxes, higher costs for everything from food to fuel, and in most homes, two incomes are the norm. In fact, two incomes is almost a requirement these days.

However, not all couples have the time to work full-time jobs. Let’s face it, a lot of us want to stay home and raise our kids. NP. There’s plenty of web-based work if you’re willing to hustle for it and you’ve got some skills.

Typing, data entry, simple bookkeeping, concierge services, proof-reading – these are the kinds of things home-based business owners do in this outsourced world – and they can do it from anywhere for any company. And still keep an eye on the kids.

Here are some “must haves” for the budding, home-based business owner. Work at home, earn some cash and raise a family. In the age of outsourcing, you can build a profitable business in a matter of weeks without shelling out a lot for tools, or even job leads.

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Business owners, whether web-based or operating in the 3-D world, are always talking about branding. “We need to build a brand.” “We need a brand name.” “We need a brand label.” These astute businesspeople appreciate the need for recognition – and easy recognition in the hyperbole-laced business realm.

One key factor in building a brand (it doesn’t happen overnight) is to have an easily recognizable logo – a visual cue that immediately identifies your company with nothing but a picture.

Is there anyone on the planet who DOESN’T recognize this logo?

Business owners often pay thousands of dollars for a graphic design company to create the perfect image to represent a company. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t even have to be colorful. But it does have to be memorable. And that can set you back a lot of cash – and there’s no certainty that the design company gets it right.

The fact is, you know your business, your products or services and, most importantly, your target market, better than anyone. So doesn’t it make sense that YOU create your own logo. Not only do you save cash, you nail the right look and feel, the right motif, the right color – the right everything to hit the sweet spot of your market, even if you have zero experience in design.

Fortunately, the web is loaded with lots of free logo makers – all offering free tools that’ll help you create the right logo to brand your company and hit that demographic bulls’ eye.

Save yourself some money (critical if you’re just starting out) and design your own company brand with these free logo making tools.

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Image via Reinvented

Your site’s headline may be the most important text on your entire site. In marketing, there’s an old expression: The headline is half the job.

It may be a bit of an overstatement, but a good headline captures the attention of site visitors. In fact, improve your headline and, guaranteed, you’ll see your bounce rate drop.

So, here are 10 tips for crafting the perfect headline – what to do and what not to do.

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Image via bre pettis

Used to be that each of us had our own little digital real estate – or own little blogs – so content management wasn’t a problem. Put up a post or don’t. Simple.

Today, multi-contributor blogs are extremely popular in schools and universities, across corporate campuses, with special interest groups, news and gossip blogs – multi-user blogs have become an important segment in the segmented blogosphere.

So, if you’re the blogmaster, you could be managing hundreds of submissions a day, in a variety of categories, and find yourself overloaded with content. Too many words; not enough time.

Fortunately, there are a number of tools for today’s blogmaster to help in the planning and posting of content in a timely and appropriate manner.

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Image via Mike Licht

There are dozens of desktop blogging clients from which to choose from, but which one does the best job for you? Cut down on your content creation and posting chores with the right desktop blogging apps, and get serious about your blogs with these 5 cool blogging applications.

1. Ecto

Ecto is deep in features. This desktop blog editor is designed for the Mac OSX operating system and enables you to publish to a broad range of blog systems including Blogger, Blojsom, TypePad, WordPress, Drupal and other popular blogging platforms. Its user-friendly interface makes quick work of managing multiple blogs.

Ecto offers both an RTF and HTML editor with a strong spell-checker, a very useful search and replace feature and syntax-color coding within the HTML editor – a real time saver when creating customized scripts.

Ecto also supports remote management options provided by MoveableType’s API, adapting to a variety of data structures, object classes and OS protocols, greatly simplifying application building.

Advanced features include broad-based documentation, easy thumbnail creation, customized post settings and publishing ease in a variety of languages so you can go global with your blog on launch day.

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