3 Presents and Tax Write Offs for the Internet Entrepreneur

Posted on November 18th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Deals, General Business.

So the Holiday Season is upon us. Time for thanks and cheer and presents… and your last chance for getting business expenses for the calendar year.

I thought I’d share three things I think are great expenses for this year.

1. Canon Digital Rebel XTi 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera - I purchased this just a few months ago to use for my freelance design work, my photography sites, and to use for product and model shots for use in my shops and blogs. I love it and wish I had gotten one sooner.

The picture above links to Amazon but it’s also available from NewEgg (one of my most trusted online electronic shops in terms of service, refunds, etc):
Canon Rebel XTI Black 10.1 MP Digital Camera - $669.99 at Newegg.com

If you can’t quite justify an SLR I offer you my second favorite camera
Canon PowerShot SD800 IS 7.1 Megapixel Digital ELPH Camera. Image stabilization is great and the Elph line is wonderful for its size and convenience.

2. Next on my list that I purchased this year (at a great rebate price) is my Palm 755p Dark Blue Smartphone (Sprint). I already owned a Treo 600 but upgraded to this when I discovered a much better phone plan which let me get this cheaply with a rebate. With the savings I made on switching plans I paid for this new phone in about two months.

My Treo has become a normal part of life for me now, the 755p was just a better upgrade from my 600 model: faster internet (faster than the iPhone) better camera, better screen resolution, more memory and processing speed.

One of the fabulous uses for my Treo is to be able to get internet access wherever I have a phone signal. I can get it on the phone itself or I can use bluetooth or the normal sync cord the Treo came with to get internet access for my laptop. No need to hunt for wifi. I’ve used it to work on my shops while out visiting family who don’t have broadband access (the Treo speed is faster than the dial up they got).

Palm(r) Treo(tm) 755p-Midnight Blue Palm(r) Treo(tm) 755p-Midnight Blue
With world-class Palm ease and broadband-like speed. The Palm(r) Treo(tm) 755p smart device delivers everything you need in one go-anywhere, Palm OS(r) device. It combines a smarter phone with wireless email 1 , a built-in browser 1 , and rich media capabilities — all at blazing, broadband-like speeds 2 .

3. And to finish this list I’m adding in something I did not purchase but would like to have… a fantastic, inexpensive, lightweight, mini laptop, the ASUS Eee PC 4G Notebook PC (7″, 512 MB RAM), Pearl White. If you own a desktop machine and would like a laptop for travel I highly recommend this machine. As a traveler myself, when I bought a laptop (a Dell Inspiron 600m which is still going strong) I partly chose it for weight. I have not regretted that decision. However at less than 2 pounds, the Eee PC has my old Dell beat by over 3 pounds and by a lot in size which makes a difference when you’re lugging around that laptop bag plus other items.

The con is that it does not have the computing power nor memory or storage capacity as a regular sized laptop so I’m pretty sure that means no using Photoshop CS3 while out traveling. But if you run a web based business like a CafePress store, there is plenty of work you can do via the web alone. The machine reportedly starts up very quickly and comes loaded with a custom Linux variant and 40+ applications and has Open Office so you can do documents and spreadsheets etc. It also has a webcam and microphone, built in card reader and usb ports (which mean easy memory expansion).

And one of the best parts is that all this is $400 including software. Yep, $400 folks.

One of these plus a Treo would make a super lightweight, less-worry-about-theft, travel team. Or you can use this as a supplement to your desktop machine at home: work on your desktop but surf on the laptop.

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My Top 3 Choices for Affordable Web Hosting

Posted on August 16th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Showcased Posts, Website Tips, General Business.

I’ve had a website of one sort or the other since the early 90’s. In the course of that time I’ve personally used both free and paid hosts as well as used others on behalf of clients.

So just a few weeks ago, my all time favorite web host was taken over by another company and things started going downhill fast. So fast that I had to authorize an emergency switch to a backup hosting site when they kept one of my shops down for nearly an entire day. I thought to myself, “Boy am I glad we had a back up to go to!”

So on that note, I’m making this post about not just my web host of choice, but 2 others as well, in case you want to have your own back up hosting service.

The criteria I have used to pick these hosts:

  1. Features. Good storage and bandwidth. MySQL database. Ability to run cgi scripts. Ruby on Rails a plus. “One click” installs of popular applications also a plus. All the basics included (webmail, ftp, etc).
  2. Price.
  3. Reputation and Reliability. Downtime, customer service, etc.

So on to the hosts:

3rd Place: 1&1

I hosted with them for awhile when they gave me free hosting for 2 years. No problems with downtime. Good features, not so intuitive interface but still nice. I nearly kept hosting with them since their plan was still priced nicely but though my programmer liked them well enough, I just couldn’t get used to their interface.

2nd Place: Lunar Pages

I have not personally used them but have friends who have been using them for years. They have a great price for the features they offer and though they have had some problems, they seem to have been minimal.

1st Place: Dream Host

This is my present primary host. Their services and prices are nearly identical to Lunar Pages, but they beat them out if you can find a promo code. Since I officially moved over to them I have had some network slowness with them and one hour of actual down time but my friends who have been with them for years say this is very unusual. I’m sticking it out partly because the price was so cheap but also because I like their interface, the control the web developer has, and their customer service. I have been thinking of opening an account with Lunar Pages to act as a back up host though.
So there you go. My top 3 choices.

If you’d like to sign up with Dream Host yourself, here are some promo codes:
“DOMAINAND20OFFYR” - Get one extra free domain name and $20 off of the L1 year plan.
“20OFFYR”- Get $20 off the Yearly L1 plan.

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Free Anonymous Phone Number Service

Posted on June 23rd, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Offline Promotion, General Business.

What a neat application. Initially invented for use on Craigslist, numbr provides a free number that will forward to the phone number of your choice. The additional options surprised me. For instance:

  • You can pick a number from a selection of US cities
  • If your number is unavailable you can enable voice mail messages to be emailed to you
  • You can set it to not disturb you between 9pm and 8am in the US time zone of your choice
  • You can enable Call Screening which requires the caller to leave a short message which you will hear before taking the call
  • Your number will automatically expire in set increments of your choice (1 day to 1 month) but if you need your number beyond 1 month you can renew your number for free or if you want to expire it early you can do that too.

There aren’t even all of the features.
Aside from just using for personal online security purposes, this could be handy for fun store promotions, or maybe a contest of sorts.

Photo from flickr user sophistikittenlin

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Online Sales Lose Steam - New York Times

Posted on June 17th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: General Business.

Online Sales Lose Steam - New York Times

Article about the decreased growth rate of internet sales. Brick and Mortar stores have responded to internet sales by making their stores more appealing.

Thanks to the tip off on the article by NormalBrains from the CP Forums.

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Countries My Shirts Have Visited

Posted on June 3rd, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: General Business.

This tool, which draws on the Google APi, is supposed to be used to show the countries you’ve visited. I decided to show some of my sales report data on it instead.

I only ran a few random Decembers worth of sales, it was too time consuming to look them all up and I couldn’t bring up the report for my entire history because the server complained. I looked up unknown codes (I had to look up MO — which is Macao for instance) by using the Country Code tool.

It was a pretty fun excercise seeing where else in the world someone was also into some of my obscure interests. Next time I’m feeling down I’ll come back and revisit the map to cheer me up (and maybe update it, but we’ll see).

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

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Quick Country Code Lookup Tool

Posted on June 1st, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, General Business.

Made the boyfriend code this country code tool for me (he also wanted to try out Ruby on Rails). I’ve got the most popular country codes memorized but when something new comes up it’s fun to find out what new country will have a citizen sporting one of my shirts :)

There are already lists of country codes out there but this tool lets you just plug in the 2 digit code and hit return (or the “Go!” button on the page ) to find your answer.

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The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business

Posted on April 25th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: General Business.

What entrepreneurs starting family businesses can learn from the demise of Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi

The world’s oldest continuously operating family business ended its impressive run last year. Japanese temple builder Kongo Gumi, in operation under the founders’ descendants since 578, succumbed to excess debt and an unfavorable business climate in 2006.

How do you make a family business last for 14 centuries? Kongo Gumi’s case suggests that it’s a good idea to operate in a stable industry. Few industries could be less flighty than Buddhist temple construction. The belief system has survived for thousands of years and has many millions of adherents. With this firm foundation, Kongo had survived some tumultuous times, notably the 19th century Meiji restoration when it lost government subsidies and began building commercial buildings for the first time. But temple construction had until recently been a reliable mainstay, contributing 80% of Kongo Gumi’s $67.6 million in 2004 revenues.

Can you imagine? The article continues on the website.
From BusinessWeek.

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Calculating Your Hourly Wage

Posted on April 13th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: General Business.

When I first started my shop I remember wondering how much I made per hour doing this crazy thing. For those who might wonder the same thing here’s a fast way to figure it out if you know what you made for a full year.

To find your hourly rate, divide by two and drop the thousand. So $50,000/year becomes approximately $25/hour.

This is based on a general 40-hour workweek and doesn’t include taxes, but it’s a good general back-of-the-napkin trick.

Of course you will have to adjust to reflect your own working hours.
Thanks to Ramit for the calculation!

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eComXpo Last Day

Posted on March 22nd, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, General Business.

Sorry for not posting earlier. This online conference is here: http://www.ecomxpo.com google around to see if you can get a free pass. They have presentations where you can ask live questions but they also have on demand presentations and show and booth prizes. This is my third or fourth time attending.

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