One of the best ways to make money online is by having your very own store. It’s true that services such as Amazon astore give you the chance to start selling other people’s products, but when you are dealing with commissions, you usually end up getting a fraction of what you could be making if you had your very own store. Many newbies are scared of spending money to develop their own e-commerce store. In reality, you don’t have to spend that much of a money to get your store going. WordPress is your best friend here.

There are plenty of premium WordPress themes and plugins that one can use to build a killer e-commerce website. Once you have become more established, you can always spend more money adding more features to your website. At the same time, these themes allow you to reduce your initial risk and test some things out.

To start your e-commerce website without spending too much money up front, you should give these 5 cool e-commerce themes for WordPress a look:

E-commerce: a very powerful and flexible WordPress theme for anyone who is serious about starting an online store. It makes it easy to manage coupons, customers, orders, and even start an affiliate program for your store.

Kidz Store: it’s almost as powerful as the first theme on this list. However, it’s more colorful and designed for niche stores. So if you are planning to sell clothes, toys, or other niche items, this Wordpress theme has you covered.

The Furniture Store: an attractive, dark WordPress theme designed for those of you who are interested in selling furniture and products of that nature. Pretty versatile for niche stores. Continue reading 5 Killer E-commerce Wordpress Themes

The iPhone platform is one exciting journey to be a part of. Apple may be a controlling company, and you may not agree with the company’s policies. But it’s not tough to admit that the company has a gem of a phone on its hands. Add iPad to the mix, and you’ve got millions of people who use Apple products on an everyday basis to get things done. That’s why building an iPhone app for your business makes sense. You never know how many of your prospects use an iPhone to get things done, so it never hurts to give your prospects the tools they need to stay in touch with your business.

Developing an iPhone app is not too easy if you do not know any programming. But you don’t need to know programming to get your business app on iPhone. All you need is a partner to help you with the technical side of things. Thanks to these 5 iPhone app builders, you won’t have to worry about the technical side of things:

BlogApper: a very easy to use and quick way to get your app submitted and displayed on iTunes. If you own a business blog and want to give people an easy way to stay in touch, BlogApper is quite a useful service.

MyAppBuilder: a handy service for anyone who is interested in target the iPhone community. Whether you own a blog that you want to bring on iPhone or start selling your products on the platform, MyAppBuilder enables you to get a fast start for as low as $29 a month.

uBuildApp: uBuildApp is another easy to use iPhone application development service that makes it easy to bring your ideas to life. It costs as little as $99 to get your app live. Continue reading 5 Ways To Build an iPhone App for Your Business

The iPad is a very powerful device for business. While many may use the device as an entertainment tool, business owners can certainly use it to manage aspects of their business on the go and stay on track at all times. If you own an online business, you are familiar with all the things that you will have to address everyday to make your business work. So you certainly don’t want to waste your time on the road. Thankfully, there are lots of iPad apps that you can take advantage of to run your business like a pro. In fact, here are 5 business apps for iPad that are a must have for entrepreneurs:

Analytics HD: let’s face it. You can’t get enough of Google Analytics and neither can I. Analytics HD lets you watch your data wherever you are. It’s never too late to make changes and start optimizing your websites.

TweetDeck: you can’t afford not to be on Twitter if you are a business owner. It’s really as simple as that. With TweetDeck, you can manage your followers and Twitter accounts more effectively.

Things for iPad: your iPad wouldn’t be as much handy without a decent to-do list application. Things for iPad helps you manage your projects and stay on the top of your daily tasks.

Continue reading 5 Best iPad Apps for Online Businesses

Not all entrepreneurs are great at writing code. In fact, many argue that you shouldn’t even write code if you want to be a great entrepreneur. I personally believe that if you are trying to start a technology startup, and you know the technologies you want to deal with inside and out, you have a better chance of understanding those fundamental issues with each of those technologies. You can certainly use that knowledge to guide your team to create better products and provide more value to your users.

There are plenty of technologies that you can take advantage of to build a Web 2.0 business. Some are more popular than others, but as long as you have a real business plan and know exactly how you are going to execute it, there is no reason you can’t build a successful online startup. If you just happen to crave more knowledge about some of those top technologies around, here are 6 books that you should read:

Professional WordPress: if you want to go beyond what other books have to teach about Wordpress and learn more advanced topics such as code manipulation, this book has you covered.

Building Social Web Applications: one of the best books to read if you want to get started with app development in the world of social media. The book is designed to give you an overview of what it takes to build a successful social web app. Think of it as social media development 101. Great way to learn how to build and expand your business.

Essential Facebook Development: Facebook is a gold mine for those who want to develop innovative apps for it. There are plenty of people who are making a whole lot of their revenue off of their Facebook apps. This book teaches you how to get started with the process and what you need to know to understand the technology better.

Twitter API – Up and Running: the one and only book you need to read to get a solid understanding for the Twitter platform. Twitter API is going to expand even further in the future, and the community is not going to slow down anytime soon. So you may as well take advantage of it while you can.

Cocoa Touch for iPhone OS 3: a complete iPhone development book that gets you familiar with what you need to know to develop an iPhone app. The future is mobile, and the iPhone platform is one exciting platform to be a part of.

Hello, Android: Android is yet another one of those exciting platforms to be a part of. If you have been paying attention to some of those commercials on TV, you have probably heard about the rise of the Droid. More killer Android phones are on the way, which means there are more opportunities for you to build business.

The above 6 books work for both entrepreneurs and developers. They certainly give you enough knowledge to be dangerous.

If you are running your business online or just happen to have an online division, you have probably taken the time to build a presence for your business on Facebook, Twitter, and other top social media sites. But there is more to social media than just opening an account on Twitter or Facebook. You are going to need to be involved and active on these sites. That’s where content tools come in. They make it easy to share and discover new content and track your own content’s progress. If you are taking time to share your work on these top social networking websites, you may as well track it all as well.

If you are looking for powerful social media tools to share and discover content online, here are 5 content tools you should try:

Thoora: a very easy way to discover the top content online. It keeps track of tweets, blogs, and everything in between. It also shows you the number of articles and posts about each entry and the frequency of mentions as well.

Cadmus: Cadmus is a real-time service that manages your stream (Twitter, FriendFeed and RSS) by displaying the most relevant content for you. A great tool to keep track of stories about your brand and staying on the top of your content.

Continue reading 5 Fresh Social Media Content Tools For Business