If you are looking to producing WordPress or Facebook landing pages, squeeze pages etc. then I would like to recommend a really good program that I just bought. It is call the All In One Viral Toolkit created by Nick Lapolla. I am not an affiliate or anything like that just a satisfied customer. Check it out, it is a good product at a good price. I have attached the offer page where I bought it. The URL is : http://www.warriorplus.com/wso/view/37255  the support desk can help you if this link doesn’t get you there:  http://support.rzminc.com .

Give it a try I am sure you will like it too. The support for the program was nothing short of excellent.

Small Business Saturday

The 2nd Annual Small Business Saturday is taking place Saturday, November 26th. American Express is bringing thousands of small business supporters together to focus on increasing small business sales. Avoid the crowds of Black Friday and come to Small Business Saturday instead– you’re helping local businesses and economy!

Pledge to “shop small” on the Small Business Saturday Facebook page and register your American Express card to receive a $25 credit when you spend at least $25 at a small business near you.

If you are a small business owner, American Express is providing free tools to help you promote your business and Small Business Saturday.

Small Business Saturday benefits our local merchants and our community, be sure to join us by “shopping small” on the Saturday, November 26!

……….. But I do know one thing for sure: it isn’t the big companies that create the jobs or the revolutionary technology innovations: it is startups. So if we need to pick sides, I vote for the startups.

Let’s start with the question of who creates the jobs. This is one of the issues that I recently took Intel co-founder Andy Grove to task for, in BusinessWeek. Grove wrote a profound essay lamenting the loss of American manufacturing jobs. I share his concerns about jobs. But Andy’s protectionist recommendations for restoring America’s competitiveness were largely based on his flawed premise that companies like Intel create all the jobs—not the startups. I also discussed the tradeoff between bailing out companies like General Motors, AIG, and Citibank and nurturing startups in this BusinessWeek piece. This question is more important than it may seem.

Kauffman Foundation has done extensive research on job creation. Kauffman Senior Fellow Tim Kane analyzed a new data set from the U.S. government, called Business Dynamics Statistics, which provides details about the age and employment of businesses started in the U.S. since 1977. What this showed was that startups aren’t just an important contributor to job growth: they’re the only thing. Without startups, there would be no net job growth in the U.S. economy. From 1977 to 2005, existing companies were net job destroyers, losing 1 million net jobs per year. In contrast, new businesses in their first year added an average of 3 million jobs annually.

When analyzed by company age, the data are even more startling. Gross job creation at startups averaged more than 3 million jobs per year during 1992–2005, four times as high as any other yearly age group. Existing firms in all year groups have gross job losses that are larger than gross job gains.

Half of the startups go out of business within five years; but overall they are still the ones that lead the charge in employment creation. Kauffman Foundation analyzed the average employment of all firms as they age from year zero (birth) to year five. When a given cohort of startups reaches age five, its employment level is 80 percent of what it was when it began. In 2000, for example, startups created 3,099,639 jobs. By 2005, the surviving firms had a total employment of 2,412,410, or about 78 percent of the number of jobs that existed when these firms were born.

So we can’t count on the Intels or Microsofts to create employment: we need the entrepreneurs. And there is an important lesson here for the states and cities that offer huge incentives to companies like Dell, Google, and Intel to locate their operations there. The regions should, instead, be focusing on creating more startups, not providing life support to technology behemoths.

Now let’s talk about innovation. Apple is the poster child for tech innovation; it releases one groundbreaking product after another. But let’s get beyond Apple. I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple—with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. Google certainly doesn’t fit the bill—after its original search engine and ad platform, it hasn’t invented anything earth shattering. Yes, Google did develop a nice email system and some mapping software, but these were incremental innovations. For that matter, what earth-shattering products have IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, or Cisco produced in recent times? These companies constantly acquire startups and take advantage of their own size and distribution channels to scale up the innovations they have purchased. They let the startups take the risk and prove the business models.

This raises an interesting question. Google and Microsoft have always prided themselves for hiring the cream of the crop of software developers. It is ridiculously hard to get a job at either company. But when technology’s top guns join these companies, they seem to make a smaller impact than those that don’t get hired. So would these companies be better served by releasing their most brilliant developers into the wild and arming them with seed financing to start companies? (They could negotiate partial ownership and right of first refusal on acquisition.) We would certainly get more innovation this way.

Simply put, if we are serious about lifting the economy out of its rut, we need to focus all of our energy on helping entrepreneurs. Provide them with the incentives (tax breaks and seed financing); education; and infrastructure. And gear public policy—like patent-protection laws—toward the startups. Let’s not bet on the companies that are too big to fail or too clumsy to innovate.

BY: Vivek Wadhwa: Academic, Researcher, Writer, and Entrepreneur

The other day Amy Porterfield presented some really great information, on her webinar regarding the new Facebook changes that have either just happened or will happen soon. I thought that if you have not already, and even if you have,  seen it yet Amy gave me permission to put it in this post.  http://www.amyporterfield.com/change-is-good-5-ways-to-use-the-new-facebook-updates-to-turn-fans-into-buyers/ . Don’t let the URL throw you; this webinar is FREE and good for everybody on Facebook not just business people. I hope you find it as informative as I did. Amy always has lots of excellent programs & updates about Facebook that you might be interested in as well; so check out her site if you get a chance. I am not an affiliate of hers just someone who enjoys getting good & honest information for a change.