Wednesday, December 20th, 2006...2:00 am
The Hundred Dollar Business Blog Carnival!
What? The Hundred Dollar Business Is Having A Blog Carnival?!
Since we’re selling at a kiosk in the mall all day, and feeling a little like carnies– we might as well make it official. You are all hereby invited to join The Hundred Dollar Business Blog Carnival. J
What’s A Blog Carnival?
A blog carnival is how bloggers & blog readers meet up on a topic. The blogger hosting the carnival comes up with a question or topic, invites everyone to respond by blogging about the topic and sending a permalink of the post, which are all collected by the host and posted on the day of the Blog Carnival.
When? Who? Topic? Etc.?
When: We’d love to give you a week or two to put together your snazzy ideas. However, we’ll be done with the experiment by then! So if you can, send the permalink to your post to hundreddollarbusiness@gmail.com by Friday, December 22nd at 12 p.m. MST.
Who: Everyone. If you’re interested in business, entrepreneurship, startups, marketing, blogging, retail, and whatnot, great. But feel free to write even if you’re an underwater basket weaver, and pass the invite to anyone else who may have something awesome to say. The more, the merrier.
Topic: (Drumroll)… We couldn’t settle on one, so choose from these– or in the spirit of entrepreneurship, make up your own:
1. What is a vexing business problem you could solve using The Hundred Dollar Business model? (Kiosk optional, by the way.) For a great example, check out this post.
2. Blog your questions/doubts about The Hundred Dollar Business model and tell us why you’re curious to know. We’ll answer these at the carnival!
3. Tell us what you think we should do next when we‘re done with the experiment! (After my vacation, of course.)
Some of the things we are looking into are:
1. Keeping the kiosk running year round (I will definitely be hiring if that’s the case)
2. Running the kiosk only during holiday months– Christmas, Valentine’s, Graduation/etc.
3. Continuing The Hundred Dollar Business with a new project for $100 in January
4. Continuing The Hundred Dollar Business as a concept or program that trains entrepreneurs to manage startups in a practical application, low-risk, quick turnaround environment.
Or…?
Etc.:
Last time I was in a blog carnival with a topic about job-hunting, my friend Janet and I both lost our jobs within 2 weeks.
So I guess there’s karma associated with being in a blog carnival… some possible results of being in this blog carnival might include either wanting to start a business… or to get rid of your existing business. Don’t say we didn’t warn ya! 
3 Comments
December 20th, 2006 at 10:26 am
I think for your next round, you should pitch this idea to FundingUniverse as a contest that they could run on a monthly basis. Here’s how I would imagine it:
1. Contestant puts in $110 in an acount.
2. $10 is put into a kitty for the winner. If 1,000 people participate, the winner makes $10,000. If you had 10,000 contestants, the winner takes $100,000; if 100,000 contestants …
3. They use the other $100 to start and run the business. It is managed through some kind of account like PayPal and there needs to be guidelines to make the contest fair and legal.
4. After 30-days the contestant with the most money in the account wins the kitty. Everyone else keeps what they’ve got.
5. Make it visible using web 2.0 tools. Contestants could blog about what they are doing and solicit help from anyone. Also use audio, video (interviews, etc.)–and make it social networky.
6. FundingUniverse gets buzz from the events and bring in more entrepreneurs and and Angel Investors.
7. Top few businesses could win business plan help and be invited the pitch to FundingUniverse Angels.
8. I could see this very big on college campuses. You could even do College Bowl-like face offs.
I think you have an interesting idea and the makings for something that could be big.
December 20th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
David,
Thanks for your ideas, I like them. It would be fun to be encouraging entrepreneurs to start businesses without the lag time that is so common.
A contest like what you’ve mentioned would certainly be challenging to organize (that’s a lot of details!), but it has some great possibilities.
Funding Universe is a fantastic resource. We actually wrote up a quick business plan based on one of their suggested templates, and also keep an eye out on the articles they send via their e-mail newsletter. There’s a lot of good information there for entrepreneurs to apply.
Thanks for your visit!
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:39 am
[…] So… Carolynn D., over at that Hundred Dollar thingy emailed me the following business blog carnival question: “How is resourcefulness vital to a new business?” […]
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