If you are looking to pick a name for your startup, these 5 simple tools can help:

Web 2.0 Name Generator: one of my favorite tools. It can come up with some crazy good names, but you have to be patient with it. You can use their dotomator service to get domain name suggestions.

Behind The Name: a cool random name generator for your startup that can create English and foreign startup names with a click of a button.

NOEMATA Name Generator: creates one word names for your startup in a flash. It also gives you access to a list of random names that you may want to take advantage of.

Fantasy Name Generator: another easy to use name picker that can create all kinds of names (people, location, …). Worth playing with if you still have not found a name after using the above tools.

Company Names: does not give you too many options other than a list of randomly generated names for your start-up. All you have to do is go through the list.

The above name pickers can help you find a more decent name for your startup. But don’t go for some fancy name. You just want a name that is short, memorable, and brandable. You also want to own your domain too. The above tools can save you some time. The rest is up to you.

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.

WP Store: has your classic e-commerce look and feel to it. It’s clean and easy to customize as well. Allows you to manage your customers, orders, and other aspects of your business more conveniently.

Ecommerce Theme: a theme made for those who want to start a small shop online. It’s optimized for search engines and is image friendly as well.

Bonus (for Magneto users):

Universal Shop: if you happen to be a Magneto user or just don’t want to use WordPress to run your store, Universal Shop for Magneto could give you yet another option.

The above WordPress themes won’t run your store for you, but they give you a chance to go live with your e-commerce store without spending a fortune. The rest is up to you.

The social media world is expanding fast. Just a few months ago, there were a lot of people who were skeptical about Twitter and Facebook. Now you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn’t heard of these services. There are plenty of ways to start a business on these sites. If you take time to get yourself familiar with the API offered by Twitter and Facebook, you can create real solutions that people want to use. You obviously have to identify a need and provide value with your service, but these APIs can be easily utilized to create killer products for social media sites such as Twitter.

Twitter is growing really fast, which is why starting a Twitter-based business makes sense these days. If you know someone who knows the API or can hire someone to write code for you, the sky’s the limit on what products you can make for Twitter. Here are 10 Twitter business ideas to get you started:

• Local Services: creating geo-based Twitter solutions is nothing new. But the market is still not saturated. No matter where you are around the world, you can create a Twitter-based service and attract Twitter users in your area. Or you can go for it all and create a craigslist-like service for Twitter.
• Status Update: creating a software solution that makes it easy to update multiple social media accounts in one shot is still one of the best ways to gain some traction in this business (e.g. Pinging service).
• Desktop Clients: we have over a dozen of desktop clients that let tweeters tweet from their PC more effectively. At the same time, there is always room for innovation in this area (TweetDeck).
• Analytics Tools: social media analytics is gaining traction slowly and more people will use SM analytics solutions to measure ROI for their social media campaigns. The sky’s the limit in this area. You can go for simple, freemium services or create premium analytics solution (with the proper investment).
• Automation Tools: there are a lot of businesses and individuals that prefer automating parts of their social media campaigns. Targeting them could be lucrative (TweetAdder).
• Account Management Tools: letting people manage their account more efficiently on Twitter is yet another way to make money on Twitter. Though make sure you figure out your business model before going online (Hootsuite).
• Mobile Apps: offering a mobile solution for iPhone, Android, and other top mobile platforms is yet another way to build business on Twitter. It’s not as hard as it looks as long as you have the right developers.
• International Twitter Solutions: have you seen tweeters who talk in foreign languages on Twitter? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could develop a solution for them to help them tweet and connect with others more effectively (e.g. a Twitter translation service)?
• Twitter Training: what if you don’t want to write code? You can still make money on Twitter by letting others know how to get started on Twitter. You can also offer backgrounds, buttons, and all kinds of little solutions and monetize on the side.
• Twitter Portals: if you are into building content portals, why not use Twitter to build more dynamic ones? Lots of content to take advantage of.

As you can seen, building a business on Twitter is not that hard. You obviously do want to pay attention to business 101 concepts, but as long as you identify a need that is not being addressed in your niche, there are plenty of opportunities to make money on Twitter.

Your take: please share your Twitter ideas here.

One of the best ways to make money online is by taking advantage of the hottest trends in the tech market and get a jump start over your competitors. iPhone development is one of the hottest avenues for entrepreneurs to make money online. And with the latest decision by Apple to allow in-app purchases for free apps, there are more ways to adopt a freemium business model and start making a living off of those so-called “free apps.” Starting an iPhone business is very similar to any other business. You will need to have a plan, an idea that works (though you could use simple apps to start a business as well), and execute your plan in a manner that would give you business the best chance to succeed.

There are many developers who start writing their apps without testing their market and conducting a comprehensive business analysis. You can be the best developer in the world, but if you don’t approach your development venture as a business, it’s going to stay your hobby. Every-time you want to develop a product, you need to do your research, identify your audience, their potential need, and ways to market your product. You also need to be prepared to offer after-sale support to keep your credibility with your customers.

If you are planning to start your iPhone business, here are a few things you need to pay attention to:

• Market Analysis: before starting your application business, make sure you know your market. Study the best cases, identify the best tools for your app development, and do research on your market to find out who your competitors may be in your niche. Even if you don’t have a clear idea what you want to develop, as long as you know your niche, you should have no trouble identify a list of your potential competitors.
• Idea: there are a lot of people who have developed simple apps that have gone viral. Your idea doesn’t need to be earth shattering. Applications such as iFart went viral, but they were not too complicated in concept. Keep it simple.
• Prospects: closely tied to the above steps. You want to make sure you know who your ideal audience is. Not everyone’s going to like your app. But as long as you can figure out who may be interested in your app, you can pin down her needs and offer more value.
• Business Model: there are many different business models you can adopt for your app business. Some people make money from free apps (with advertising). You can also offer a freemium app (asking people to upgrade for premium features). Either way, make sure you decide on your business model and avoid confusing your customers.
• Product Development: if you are planning to develop your app by yourself, you want to make sure you stay on the top of the latest technologies and best cases out there. The SDK is changing all the time, and you need to keep up if you want to develop an app that people want to download and share with others.
• Team Building: closely tied to the previous step, if you just want to run the business, you want to do your due diligence to hire people who can get the job done.
• Strategy: there are a lot of people who would pay for bundles if you can offer them more value. If you can bundle up your app with a complementary product, you can provide more value to your customers.
• Promotion: there are plenty of free ways to promote your app. Whether it’s creating mini-sites for your app and optimizing it for search engines, using Google Adwords and other advertising services to push your apps, or just creating YouTube videos to help others decide whether your app is worth it, there are plenty of ways to push your app. I have to admit, offering a freemium app is the best way to promote your app. At least offer a lite version of your app.
• Branding: business 101 really. If you plan to stay in this business for long, you need to brand your business, and you need to work on building credibility with your customers. That would also mean you won’t get away with sub-par apps.
• Business 101: recruiting, idea protection, business management, and planning are all the basics that everyone needs to master to run a real business more effectively. Running an iPhone app business is not that different from any other business.

The business of iPhone development is going to get even hotter in the upcoming months. Starting an iPhone application business is not too difficult, but it does take a bit of work. There are a lot of people who can write apps, but not too many who can go viral and make real money from their apps. Paying attention to the above items should give you a better chance of making it in this industry. Of course, you want to stay tuned for the second part of this series for more details.

I have talked about in the past how important it is for any business to choose the right web host. If you are just starting up or just gaining momentum in your business, you can’t afford not to give your business the best chance to succeed. Many small business owners have the temptation to go with the cheapest web host possible. Some don’t mind paying a few more dollars for those unlimited plans. In reality, you can’t have a free lunch and eat it too. World class web hosts offer very reliable services to their customers, but they will need to charge higher to keep offering high quality service. Those who pay $10 a month for their web hosting service and expect to get the best service in the world are dreaming.

If you are a start-up owner and have big plans for your business, you want to invest in a service that keeps your web services up 24/7. The last thing you want to do is leave things to chances and prayer. Besides, it would leave a very bad impression on your new customers if your service is down frequently.

There is more to web hosting than just comparing numbers. Take the below hosts for example. They are great for small businesses that are starting but don’t plan to get too big too soon. They are great for bloggers and those who don’t intend to offer a web service (e.g. Twitter). But you can’t just compare the numbers and choose one of these services for the next YouTube.

If you have a big idea, you may want to invest in a private hosting service. A private server does allow you to customize your resources and software packages that are used on your server. If you want more scalability, you can always go with cloud computing. Amazon Web Services provide you with a host of services that you can use to host your websites and get your resources increased on demand when you have more traffic coming to your website. RackspaceCloud is another cloud hosting service that lets you build scalable services and reduce your downtime with your killer startup.

These services all cost you more than just $10 a month, but they provide you with scalable web hosting that let you decrease your downtime and leave the best impression on your customers. You won’t find these services on any of those web hosting comparison services. Just because these services are more expensive, it doesn’t mean you should ignore them. Not if you have big plans for your business.

Search Engine Optimization. One of the most underrated and overrated tactics used by webmasters. Before I address why SEO is underrated for businesses, let me tell you why SEO is overrated. A lot of small businesses fall too much in love with their SEO practices and forget about other marketing channels to get the word out about their business. SEO is very attractive as it is considered to generate free leads for your business. But search engine optimization takes time and there are no guarantees. There is simply no way to guarantee #1 ranking on Google and Bing, and anyone who does guarantee it is being deceptive.

SEO underrated among many companies across many industries. I have seen many large companies that simply don’t get it when it comes to SEO. Many think of SEO as a magic trick that can open the traffic floodgates. Some small businesses don’t even bother with SEO, thinking that it’s too hard and simply not beneficial. In reality, none of these approaches are true. SEO can be a powerful channel for your small business, but you shouldn’t over-rely on it and expect miracles. At the end of the day, how much success you get from your SEO efforts depends on your landing page and your product offerings.

Getting started with SEO is not as difficult as most people think. It does take a bit of work, and at some point you may be better off outsourcing your efforts. At the same time, there are a lot of things you can do by yourself. If you are stuck and have no idea where to start, here are a few areas you should focus on:

• Details: knowing how search engines work goes a long way towards helping you figure out strategies and tactics that can give you the best bang for your buck. You don’t want to implement tactics without knowing what the effects could be.
• Keywords: your keywords are very important in determining what kind of traffic you get to your website. Not all keywords are created equal, so make sure you do your homework here.
• Content: having the right kind of content on your website goes along way towards determining your success. Content will always be king, so don’t cut corners here.
• On page factor: on page factors are in general not as important as they used to be, but you can still get some value out of making your your META tags, alt tags, and so on are done right.
• Links: building links to your pages is very important. You want to get links from blogs, forums, and authority sites (very important). Education, government, and other top sites can help you climb the rankings fast.
• Social Media: social media optimization should be a big part of your plans. You should take time to create a Facebook and Twitter account and keep driving traffic to your website.
• Web 2.0: using sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed goes a long way towards bringing you more traffic. But don’t forget to add podcasts, video-casts, and so on to your web pages to draw more people in and spread the word around your business.

This is just a simple overview of what you need to do to climb the rankings and get more traffic to your website. There are tons of books that you should read to take your SEO game to the next level. Your focus should really not be on search engines but rather providing value to your users. Content and value are still king, so don’t let your eyes off the ball.

Twitter API and iPhone SDK provide every entrepreneur with a great opportunity to develop innovative applications and start building up your web business. Unlike what most people assume, getting a handle of these technologies is not that difficult. As long as you have some technical knowledge, you can get started with your own Facebook or Twitter app fast. Besides, you can always outsource the process.

If you are technical enough to tackle Twitter API or iPhone SDK, here are 5 great books you should read to help you get started with your own app:

Twitter API – Up and Running: the best Twitter API book hands down. It teaches you how to develop innovative solutions for Twitter and build a Twitter business fast. If you know PHP, you are going to enjoy reading this book, and by the time you are done, who knows what you can come up with.

Facebook Cookbook: Twitter may be very popular these days, but so is Facebook. Many small businesses have taken their business to the next level by developing cool Facebook apps. A great way to brainstorm, develop products, sell yours or other people’s products.

Beginning iPhone Development: if you are completely new to iPhone SDK, you should read this book. It gets you started with everything you need to know to develop a basic iPhone app.

iPhone Games Projects: I can’t tell you how many people have made a lot of money by developing killer games on iPhone. You can make money from ads or just charge for your iPhone app. If you are app makes it to the top seller list, the sky’s the limit for your business. Many developers have quit their day jobs and gotten started with their own app company. You can always hire a few programmers and do the same.

Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: a killer book on Web 2.0 mashups. Teaches you what you need to know to work with various APIs and start building your innovative apps fast. Shows you how to create different types of mashup, such as search, calendars, RSS/Atom feeds, and social bookmarking.
You don’t necessarily have to be on the cutting edge to make money online, but iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook are great technologies to be involved with. These technologies have a large following, and as long as you address a unique need, there is no reason you can’t build a startup around these technologies. The times may be tough but innovative business models survive and thrive under most difficult conditions.

If you are new to the whole green “thing” and interested in starting your own green business, there are plenty of good books to get you started. You do want to know as much as possible about this industry to develop and implement your idea in a more effective fashion. But fear not as there are plenty of books that can help you do just that (aside from blogs and forums). Here are 8 good ones you should read:

Start Your Own Green Business: this is one of my favorite book. It’s concise and to the point. It’s not written to make you a master in this industry but is a great crash course. It does help you graduate to more comprehensive books more easily.

Harvard Business Review on Green Business Strategy: needs no introduction. It’s the one green book everyone should read before jumping into this industry.

75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make A Difference: this is one of the best books to read if you are looking to develop a unique idea for this industry. You may not be interested in any of these ideas, but you can easily come up with your own after reviewing some of these.

Green Business Practices For Dummies: is a great book for small business owners that want to help save the environment while conducting their business. It should also give you great ideas on how to help other businesses go green.

Build a Green Small Business: another good read on how to become a successful Ecopreneur. Marketing, advertising, and networking techniques are just a few topics included in this book.

2008 Global Conference – Green Is Green: a very informative DVD on the state of green economy that will open your eyes to new opportunities and challenges in this industry. It’s always great to be able to watch a DVD and learn so much about the state of an industry.

Green Your Home for Dummies: is one of the most comprehensive books on this topic. Green Home remodeling is one of the hottest fields these days, and you are going to learn all about it in this book.

Strategies for the Green Economy: this book is a more advanced book about the green economy and the challenges and opportunities involved with going green in your business and starting new green businesses. It gives you the know-how and perspective you need to think long-term in your green business.

There you have it. You can always go to conferences and try to cut corners when it comes to jumping into an industry. But I still recommend you review some of these books to get a good sense about what this industry is all about. Green is the future whether you like or not, so you may as well take advantage.

So you have taken a chance and started your business. You put your time and funds to it to expand your business. But do you know that your logo or even your domain name could be subject to infringement. Protecting your brand should be your highest priority. And the last thing you want to see is some copycat companies stealing your logo, your name, and even domains similar to yours. Registering a trademark provides you with the insurance you need to protect your brand and reserve the rights to your brand, domain name, logo, and … Once you register your business trademark, others can see its existence through the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
So nobody can claim that they didn’t know you had a trademark on a name after infringing your trademark.

There are three steps that you need to take to manage your trademark effectively. As a business owner, you owe it to your business to register your trademarks and protect them against violations. It’s not just your brand or logo, but everything that makes your brand valuable. You don’t want other companies to take advantage of your name and even create confusion in the market. So you want to make sure that you register your trademarks and watch those who are out there to infringe them.

Here are the steps you need to take to register your trademark:

• Registration: the registration process is going to cost you some money but it’s not that difficult. A trademark is an important business asset that increases in value as your business and brand grow. It can be a name, a design, or a logo. You do want to make sure that you register a name that is not already trademarked by another company. You can always use trademark search services to find out whether the name you are trying to register is trademarked. You can also use a third party company such as MyCorporation to help you fill out your application and do your trademark research.
• Trademark Search: going back to the previous point, you want to pay extra attention here to make sure your trademark doesn’t conflict with an existing one owned by another entity. The last thing you want to do is step on another company’s toes here. You can always use TESS to find out whether your name is already trademarked.
• Trademark Watch: so you register your trademark, and you pay your fees. That doesn’t mean others won’t try to infringe it. That’s why you should watch out for companies that try to step on your toes. The best way to track the developments around your trademark is by signing up for a trademark tracking service that lets you know when somebody’s trying to borrow your name. A trademark watch looks for marks similar those owned by your business that are either filed with or published by the USPTO. You may think that once you have registered your mark, you are going to be protected, but that’s not really the case. Trademark infringement is a reality in the business world, and you need to be alert.

Registering your business trademarks is not something you should take lightly. You can always register your trademarks yourself and try to track them all by yourself. But my rule is if an activity is not core to your business, you should outsource it. What you can’t afford to do is ignore your assets and let others claim the rights to your name! It’s not worth the headache.