Believe it or not, the holidays are right around the corner — and if you want to make money this holiday season, you’d better act now. Since gas prices seem to have settled in at or above the $3.50 gallon mark (well more than that here in California, where I live), it’s a good bet that more and more people will be doing their holiday shopping online. The key is to get them to do their buying at your...

If you’re like many people who use Microsoft Office Live Small Business, you’ve appreciated how easy it has been to jump over to Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta . It’s been a simple matter of clicking on the Office Live Workspace link toward the bottom of the left navigation bar on the Member Center home page in Office Live Small Business. But now that link is gone. Well, here’s the good news...

It’s challenging enough to grow a business, but how do you grow a business when your product is brand new and something most people have never heard of? Just ask Mike Kern. The owner of Sport Technology Inc. has built a business that projects $5 million in sales this year with the Flowboard, which is a cross between a skateboard, snowboard, and surfboard (if you can’t picture it, check out this Los...

As an entrepreneur, you may think that stress comes with the territory and that there’s nothing you can do about it. But constantly living with what executive coach Annie McKee calls “power stress” can put you at risk, as this article from Harvard Business Publishing reveals. I can hear you saying, “I know that stress isn’t good for me. What else is new?” But it’s not only your mental and physical...

Lisa Christian knew she wanted a Web site for the yoga studio she was opening in Kirkland, Wash. About the same time she was contacting Web design companies, a friend sent her a link to Office Live Small Business. She checked it out. “Before I knew it, I had kind of built a little sample Web page,” Lisa says. She was hooked — and continued to build out her Yoga at Studio Be site. In hindsight, she...

If you use Office Live Small Business for e-mail, you will notice some changes. Based on feedback from our customers, we made changes today to make it easier for you to get to each of the features within your Office Live Small Business e-mail account. Previously, when you logged into your Office Live Small Business account, you would see the first five e-mails from your inbox populated in the “E-mail...

Did you know this is Unmarried and Single Americans Week? First started as “National Singles Week” in the 1980s, this is the week that honors the unmarried in America. The Census Bureau gives us a closer look at unmarried Americans, who account for 42 percent of all Americans age 18 and up (or a total of 92 million people). Of this group, 60 percent have never been married, 25 percent are divorced...

I was recently reminded that it might be time to call out a very cool feature of the Office Live Small Business service that may not immediately jump out at you — adding a blog to your Web site. Earlier this week, Rich Menga at PCMech wrote an article comparing Office Live Small Business to Google Apps. While I thought the article was very fair, it did state that neither service offers the ability...