By John Chappell •
August 21, 2009
How great would it be if there were want ads in your local newspaper or on Craigslist for organic fruits and vegetables, grown in your town, by your neighbors? A new website - Veggie Trader has sprung up that offers exactly such a service, a purchasing and bartering clearinghouse for locally grown fruits and vegetables.
Veggie Trader describes itself as the “place to trade, buy or sell local homegrown produce”. The idea is simple, you register on the website and then offer to purchase, to sell, or trade any manner of surplus fruits or vegetables. If you have too many tomatoes and want to see if anyone nearby has a surplus of peaches or peppers, you can log on, run a search, and find out who in the neighborhood may be willing to exchange with you.
By Jamie Ervin •
January 5, 2009
I’m all about a bargain. With a large family, we really focus on getting the longest life possible out of items and sourcing new to us items whenever possible.
So, I’ve become a HUGE fan of:
Freecycle. Seriously, folks. You sign up, get email updates with freebies being given away in your area and you offer up the extras in your closets. I gave away a sewing machine that was in need of TLC and an old wooden play structure. I’ve found clothes for the kids and baby equipment. The only money involved is the cost of driving to pick the items up. Awesome.
Craigslist. While this isn’t a great place to find freebies (though they do have a free section), it is a wonderful resource for new to you furniture, auto needs, tools, and kids items. I’ve sold bags of clothes for $20 a pop and purchased a couch for $150. Yay.
By Olga Orda •
January 3, 2009
The verdict is in from the top social media honchos: social media isn’t just a fringe benefit to add as a complementary side dish to your regular, marketing plan - it is your main marketing plan for 2009.
Case in point. Etsy.com, branded by the New York Times as a cross between Amazon.com, eBay and “your grandmother’s basement” has over 100,000 sellers worldwide and had online buyers spend $4.3 million purchasing 300,000 items in November 2007.
What is interesting is that Etsy, an online marketplace for quality, handmade goods, has intentionally avoided big glossy ads in magazines in favour of seller-created street teams and video content to pull off the best, tried-and-true marketing strategy of all: word of mouth (WOM).
By Robin Shreeves •
September 30, 2008
Please forgive my rudeness. If I heard my children speak to someone that way, there’d be some serious lecturing going on. But you’ll understand when I relay the conversation I heard between two young moms the other day at a restaurant.
Mom #1 “My garage was so jam packed with boxes of things. I didn’t even know what was in half of them. I finally go so tired of it all I just took them all out to the curb.”
Mom #2 “Isn’t it such a great feeling when the trash men just make it all disappear?”
Mom#1 “Yes, ‘poof’ and it’s all gone.”
To which I wanted to scream over to their table “Your trash just doesn’t disappear, stupid!” But I didn’t because I was raised better than that. And my son was with me. And I’m fairly gutless in situations like that. But I was screaming it in my head.
What an absolute waste. What still perfectly useful items were in those boxes that the trash men hauled away to be burried in a landfill. There’s no way of knowing, but I do know this one thing. There were many ways she could have easily found new homes for the still useful things in those boxes.
As I see it, when you’ve got something that is still useful but you aren’t using it anymore, there are three responsible ways to get rid of it. None of them involve putting it out at the curb for the fairy trash men to waive their wands and make it disappear.
By Elizabeth Redmond •
October 12, 2007
For those of you who travel to foreign cities for conferences, get all fired up throughout the day listening to inspiring talks, and seeing innovative ideas in action, yet then dread the retreat to the seclusion of your double-bed hotel room, don’t fear: an alternative is here. Not only is renting a hotel a pain in the rear, but I frequently experience buyers remorse due to how excessive a whole room to myself
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By Kelli Best-Oliver •
September 4, 2007
The college years are an exciting transitional time for young people. Many are off on their own for the first time, and they’re faced with responsibility for their own actions and their own well-being. For some teens, college is the first time they experience autonomy, and the variety of choices they’re faced with can be overwhelming, and the pressure of making green choices might just be too much to handle. There
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Photo Credit: Kansas City StarA bookstore in Kansas City has a huge glut of books in its warehouse. There are books that have gone unsold for more than a decade. Copies of books that had huge print runs, but now no one wants. Books that are decades old. Books that are in foreign languages. And, unfortunately for the store's owner, books that are not selling.
The owner has
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