CotC – Carnival of the Capitalists for August 6, 2007

I’ve long been a fan of blog carnivals, and while I have to readily admit to being a little less consistent about participating in them than I’d like to be, I can attest to the fact that doing so is one of the very best ways to reach new readers and build links to your site (one of the key strategies as to how I made the blog A-list on one of my other blogs).

Carnival of the Capitalists is the original business blog carnival, dating back to October 13, 2003, if you can imagine! I’ve hosted it a couple of time in the past and am happy to be hosting it again.

<bullypulpit>
I’m pleased that COTC has stuck to the original blog carnival concept of moving to a new host every week. One of the disturbing trends that is happening with blog carnivals is that a lot of carnivals are only being hosted on one site — the site of the carnival creator. While I won’t say that’s necessarily a bad thing, it’s certainly not a good one. Moving from host to host every week is, I believe, part of what makes blog carnivals great… exposing the host blogs to new readers, inbound links, and so on. So to those of you who are hosting carnivals on your own site, I strongly encourage you to open it up to new hosts… you really will continue to benefit — I believe even more so than keeping it all on your own site.
</bullypulpit>

Now that I got that off my chest, here’s this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists:

Most entertaining post of the week:

Alvaro Fernandez presents Top Ten Tips for Women Who Lead Men posted at Brain Fitness Blog. He forgot #11: don’t try to “out-man” us by acting like a drill sergeant (I worked for one of those).

Honorable mention:

Jack presents Why I Am Not Getting Much Done posted at Random thoughts- Do they have meaning?. Some people say that when you work from home you have to set aside a space and time to be uninterrupted by kids. Others of us relish it (in reasonable doses).

Silicon Valley Blogger presents The Cost of Living with Pampered Pets in Luxury and Some Really Weird Pet Products posted at The Digerati Life. I have three pugs, and admittedly they’re pretty spoiled, but some of this stuff is just ridiculous. Wow.

Here are the rest, by category:

Capital Markets & Investing
Wayne Hurlbert presents Conquer The Crash by Robert Prechter – Book review posted at Blog Business World. Is a major crash in the charts headed our way? Prechter thinks so and has advice on how to get through it unscathed.

George Courtney jr presents Despite Volatility, Stocks Are a Good Deal posted at The Authentic Bartender Blog. Compare and contrast this to the Prechter book above and then you decide.

Babak presents Can We Bounce Off The Moving Averages Again? posted at Trader’s Narrative. A bull market tends to bounce off its moving average the way a smooth pebble ricochets off water. The most recent market swoon has brought us into contact with “water” and we’re about to bounce off higher.

Kurt Brouwer presents Is the Market’s Mood Ring Purple or Black? posted at Fundmastery Blog. Is the stock market a giant mood ring? If so, is it purple or black now?

Dax Desai presents Fundamental Rule of Day Trading: Preservation of Capital posted at Dax Desai. This is the first in what looks to be a promising series on the “Rules of Day Trading”.

Economic Policy

Adam Gurri presents An Economic Perspective on Minimum Wage posted at Sophistpundit. And Americans wonder why more and more work seems to be moving offshore…

Ian Welsh at The Agonist explains How We Create Our Own Crimes: The US prison industry supports rural economies by redistributing federal tax dollars to pay rural whites to incarcerate urban blacks.

Wall Street took this as a weak jobs report, but James Hamilton of Econbrowser argues that it may be worse than people think in Weak Employment Reports.

Entrepreneurship

Raj Dash presents Bootstrapper » New Media Ways To Raise Capital posted at Bootstrapper. I’m a huge believer that bootstrapping entrepreneurs need to set up other sources of cash flow besides their business to carry them through those inevitable crunch times. I’ve actually been planning to write this post — Raj beat me to it!

Have you ever come up with a great idea and pitched it to customers and/or investors, only to have your financial justification picked apart like a carcass on the savanna? Mike DeWitt at Spooky Action explains How You Get Them to Believe Your Projections.

Tom Stanley presents Finding The Right Information About Franchise Opportunities posted at Tom’s Franchise Information Blog. If you are looking to buy a franchise business don’t just jump right in. There are things you need to research, and this article will help you know what to look for.

Edith Yeung presents 13 Things a Successful Entrepreneur Must Know & Take Action On posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act.. A good simple framework for taking balanced action to improve your business.

Ethics

Leon Gettler presents Ethics checklist for boards posted at Sox First. If company directors want to create an ethical culture in their organization, they need to ask 10 key questions.

Henry Stern at InsureBlog presents American Airlines Ethically Challenged Corporation. It’s generally good policy for companies to be truthful with their customers, especially when it comes to safety. This is a first-person account of a company that really fell down.

Management & Leadership

Alvaro Fernandez presents Top Ten Tips for Women Who Lead Men posted at Brain Fitness Blog. See comments above.

Wally Bock at Three-Star Leadership Blog presents Sales Managers: Invest in the Best. Sales managers have a huge impact on both the top line and the bottom line. To get the best sales management, you need to invest in smart selection, management training, and on-the-job support.

Michelle Cramer presents The Balance of a Leader posted at GreatFX Business Cards. Being a good, strong, dependable leader is all about balance. Being a leader is not a one-sided position. You cannot be rough on your employees and never show them any tenderness. And you can’t be easy on everyone and never show them any discipline. You have to have a balance of both.

Personal Finance

Silicon Valley Blogger presents The Cost of Living with Pampered Pets in Luxury and Some Really Weird Pet Products posted at The Digerati Life. See comments above.

Amy L. Fontinelle presents 10 Ways Working Can Cost You posted at Saving Advice Blog. Amy says that “taking a full-time job instead of a part-time job, or taking a higher paying full-time job instead of a lower paying one, can often be more expensive than you realize, even if you’re single and childless.” Having experienced 6 of these 10 first-hand, I appreciate even more that I’m writing this post at 2:00am in my underwear.

Matthew Paulson presents Making Money With Your Credit Card: How It’s Done and What the Risks are posted at Getting Green. Who said “It takes money to make money?” Not necessarily. If you know what you’re doing and are careful about it, it may just take good credit. Ingenious.

Matt Hanson presents Advertising Jingles and Commercials – Radio & TV posted at Matt’s Creative Advertising Blog. Matt offers some great tips to prevent you from getting ripped off by advertising companies.

Millionaire Mommy Next Door presents Frugal Millionaires? The Key To Wealth Accumulation posted at . She writes: “Before we reached our million dollar milestone, I thought millionaires lived an extraordinary lifestyle replete with fancy sports cars, mansions, and plenty of bling. I thought one could name a millionaire just by looking at her. I was wrong.” While I’ve heard this particular message before, there’s some other great stuff on this blog – I’m bookmarking it for future reading.

Professional Development & Productivity

Jack presents Why I Am Not Getting Much Done posted at Random thoughts- Do they have meaning?. See comments above.

FMF presents Boost Your Career with Professional Classes posted at Free Money Finance. I know that we entrepreneurs often scrimp on professional development. It’s hard to justify the time, as well as the money. But choosing the right classes will give you a strong return on your investment.

Ruby presents Life Takes… Hard Work! posted at Advice and Rants. Choice quote: “When you realize that nothing in life is truly “easy”, even relatively difficult things start to seem easy!”

Eric Hudin presents You Can Make More Working Less posted at Everyday Marketing Ideas. Time management is a myth. Time doesn’t stop. There is no managing something you can’t control. What you can do is eliminate your wasted movements to become more efficient and effective.

Sales & Marketing

Jack Yoest presents Close the Sale: Make the Pain Worse posted at Yoest.com. I need to read Jack’s blog more often – this is a great post. I’ve always had an issue with Solution Selling, or rather, the misinterpretation of it by the salespeople I’ve dealt with who are at a loss when the customer tell them, “We have no pain.”

Becky McCray presents Simplified Online Marketing posted at Small Biz Survival. Never having been a fan of long, complex business plans or marketing plans, particularly for part-time businesses, this post rang especially true with me. Great quote: “Having an active online presence is 90% of online marketing.”

Chuck Lafean presents The Relevancy Continuum posted at Relevancy Marketing. Cool stuff. I’ve always done this intuitively, but it’s great to see it explained in a way everyone can understand and apply.

Chris Tackett presents How to Write a Headline and Grab Your Prospect by the Eyeballs! posted at Direct Marketing News. The art of writing headlines is critically important for direct marketing. Chris offers his tips on how to come up with great headlines.

Miscellaneous

Mark at The Sports Biz Blog reports that YES Is For Sale; Are the Yankees?. Fortune Magazine is reporting that the Yankees regional television network YES is for sale for a mere $3 billion. Given the health problems facing the Boss, that could be the first step in the dismantling and sale of the Yankees empire.

Jason Rakowski presents How To Deliver Technical Support That Delights The End User, Part Two posted at Learn Good Customer Service. For computer companies technical support can make or break you. If you’re in high-tech this is a must read.

Well, that wraps up this week’s edition. Next week will be held at Spooky Action. If you’ve enjoyed this and would like to learn more, here are some useful links:

• CotC Home Page
• Submit a blog post to the next CotC
• RSS feed for CotC
• Host a future CotC