Obvioulsy you can’t be some gum snapping doofus to make $100,000 per year doing call center work. But if you have or can develop the right set of skills, this may be for you! The company profiled is IQor and here are their job descriptions.

From what I can tell, there are NO home based call center jobs, but their offices are located throughout the country and who knows what you may be able to work out? Best of all – they’re ADDING JOBS in this economy and have a much lower turnover rate than many call center firms.

In addition to top pay, they have excellent benefits as well. One such benefit is that if you pass the company’s rigorous screening and then refer another person they hire – they pay you instead of a headhunting firm.

Pretty cool.

As of today, ShopWiki links to 223,963,832 products. And this is not paid advertising either. As stated in the ShopWiki.com Overview the goal of the site ultimately is to index everything that’s available for sale online. They don’t sell anything – they help you find people with the products you want for sale. So, like a search engine, they crawl the web to index the stores they find.

In the Web 2.0 world, purely indexing items just won’t cut it so as a “Wiki” the site is also a “community”. Have a bad experience? A great experience? You can edit the Wiki yourself and put in your 2 cents. Obviously a site of this sort with so much product could be very difficult to navigate. Thankfully there are “Shopwiki.com Shopping Guides” to assist in the shopping process.

Our readers who operate online stores will recognize ShopWiki.com as a potential boon to their marketing. A site like this can’t help but get plenty of attention from major search engines. Because it’s not PAID advertising, having ShopWiki.com index your store could be a great way to get exposure that lets you “play with the big boys”. Got an online store? Check out ShopWiki.com today and help yourself out!

It warns you – through your GPS system- when to slow down for heavy traffic enforcement and quick speed limit reductions by incorporating them into a unique database only available subscribers for this service.

Speeding tickets can cost hundreds of dollars – not just the FINE but in increased auto insurance costs.

So why not upgrade your GPS for the “lead foot” you don’t know what to get for Christmas ANYWAY?

Personally, I don’t drive fast as a rule. But there have been times when I was driving in unfamiliar territory where speeds changed from 55 t0 35 unknown to most drivers and the local constables were more than ready to rack up a big ticket for out of town drivers.

This turns your Garmin Nuvi into a warning device for Traffic Cameras, and speed traps.

What’s this cost you? You don’t even have to buy a “new” or different Garmin. This just costs $9.99 to update your Garmin’s database!

Oh well, back to work at home stuff!

Wired:

Arthur Fry
Researcher at 3M
Choir loft, North Presbyterian Church
St. Paul, Minnesota

“I was singing in the church choir, and I would often put little pieces of paper into the music on Wednesday night to mark where we were singing. Sometimes, before Sunday morning, that little paper would fall out. It was during the sermon that Sunday morning that I thought, ‘What I really need is a little bookmark that will stick to the paper but will not tear the paper when I remove it.’ I thought about a colleague in 3M’s central research department who had been looking at these acrylated adhesives that we used in things like Magic Tape. He had come up with a batch of little sticky spheres. I got samples of those and set about trying to make a bookmark. I thought it was going to be a little niche market. I discovered they weren’t just a bookmark but were wonderfully useful for notes and labels — because it’s a paper world out there and we need to stick things to paper.”

Photo by NatsPhotos.

But in markets in other cities, where there are hints of stabilization, foreclosed properties might be a good investment.

You’ll find such spots in the Sunbelt, home to Charlotte, N.C., Raleigh, N.C., Oklahoma City, San Antonio, and Albuquerque, N.M. These five cities topped our list of Best Places To Buy Foreclosed Homes.

If there’s only a “hint” of stabilization… the prices may still go down significantly. One very pessimistic acquaintance of mine expects the true bottom not to be hit for quite some time – at least a year or two.

Personally I don’t know what to tell you… the places mentioned are places that didn’t hit the astronomic heights of other real estate markets that are still in free fall.  Their bubble didn’t swell as much and so that downside can’t possibly be as bad. In other words, the housing prices had much less fat to cut out from them than, say, in Los Angeles.

There is – Angie’s List.

There you can find reputable local professionals in these “in demand” fields: plumbing, electricians, remodeling, roofing, carpeting, landscaping, painting and more. Angie’s List also rates services such as auto repair, pet groomers and pool services.

Angie’s List is where thousands of consumers share their ratings and reviews on the local contractors and service companies they hire. Founded by Angie Hicks in Columbus, OH, in 1995, Angie’s List takes the “ask your neighbor” approach to a higher level, putting reliable, unbiased information on local companies at the fingertips of consumers in major cities across the country.

Not only can members find out which companies were rated highest by other consumers, they also get detailed comments and reviews.

Angie’s List membership comes with unlimited access to the List and a subscription to our magazine, which includes stories, tips and information on home and consumer topics. Members also have access to the Angie’s List complaint resolution service.

There is – Why not join Angie’s List now?

“I have long bemoaned the lack of “consumer reports” for contractors – single referrals do not always work out, so it is nice to read several reviews.” – Arpan R., Royal Oak, MI

“I can now choose contractors with confidence, even when the service in question is dauntingly unfamiliar.” – Kathleen S., Chicago

“With Angie’s List, it’s like I have thousands of friends and neighbors to talk to for information.” – Mark A., Woodbury, MN

What’s the best way YOU have found to make money online?

I’ve included some options, but you can also include your favorote if it’s not on the list already.

I set up a few sales pages for this stuff a year or so ago and I still get a check monthly. Not big, but hey, a check is a check. I’ll probably focus more on building this as time allows just because I love the product myself.

The 20% autoship discount really sealed the deal for people.

By the end of December the company will have all the products on one site. The transition is because they were working with a “fish oil” celebrity who shall remain nameless who is selling through his own channels now.

So here’s some good news about how hundreds of workers avoided a layoff and didn’t lose the jobs to downsizing.

Please note though that this type of turn around can only happen when MANAGEMENT actually manages people instead of just crunching numbers.

You can read this for yourself at the Gallup Organization

An International Paper mill near Texarkana, Texas faced serious problems due to razor thin profit margins. While many companies choose to address margins by continually cutting the work force, International Paper chose to actually manage the workforce and bring them “onto the team” so that the workers would take “ownership” of the problems facing the plant not just feel themselves to be pawns to be sacrificed on the chess board of industry.

When margins become razor thin, as they have in many industries, often the profit variable that companies can best influence is employees’ enthusiasm and commitment. Engaged employees can save businesses a lot of money because they are more productive, more profitable, safer, and less likely to quit. Actively disengaged employees, however, cost a fortune to employ — Gallup estimates that actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. economy $300 billion a year in lost productivity alone.

When businesses get serious about employee engagement, often they’ll focus on trouble areas with laser-like intensity. If the Q¹² results show that too few people feel they have the “materials and equipment” they need to “do their work right” or that their “opinions seem to count,” the business will buckle down and fix those problems individually, energetically, and thoroughly. And it works. Employees know that the company takes engagement seriously, and they understand that they are each responsible for communicating their needs and improving their job experience. This is what the Texarkana mill did for a while — that is, until they got a better idea: integration.

In many organizations, the issues that prevent engagement are associated with systemic problems — for example, company-wide lack of communication or a serious disconnect between workers and managers regarding expectations. It’s rare, in fact, for problems that undermine engagement to exist openly and discretely — they’re often combined with other problems and embedded deep in the culture of a company, department, or workgroup. Bringing them into the open and tackling them at a workgroup level can make a huge difference in the engagement and performance of employees in the workgroup, but it takes time for solutions to trickle up and then out. What Texarkana found was that it could institute programs to solve big systemic issues — and simultaneously solve singular, isolated engagement problems.

The 12 Elements of Great Managing

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

_{Copyright © 1992-1999 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All rights reserved.}

Read it all…

Perhaps that would mean finding a distinctive name for your business that promotes curiosity, let’s you tell some of the community’s past and opens the door you to tell more about you and your products and services?

Any link to a community’s roots is usually good for some free publicity in print or TV if it’s interesting and sincere.

So how do you find those interesting tidbits?

Try the Library of Congress. Their website dedicated to “Local Legacies: Celebrating Community Roots” could provide just the insight you need.

For instance, if you’re from Columbus, OH, did you know you are working in the original home of Annie Oakley?

What if you taught a firearms class for women in the greater Columbus area? Do you think you could sell that to the local reporters?

“The spirit of Columbus native Annie Oakley lives on at the Sally Smith’s Gun and Shooting Range ‘Annie Oakley’ Armed Defense class for women!”

I’m sure you can come up with many of your own fresh ideas… just learn your community’s roots.

Photo courtesy Annie Oakley Foundation.