An article over at Web Worker Daily titled “Why You Still Need Business Cards” started a mini debate about the need to still have real business cards as opposed to online business cards. Adam Pash, at LifeHacker, has replied to this post with his opinion (here) and started the debate asking his readers (including me) if they still carry business cards.

As my comment stated over at WebWorker, I still strongly believe in real business cards, not only the embarrassment of having someone ask you for one and you saying you don’t have any, but also the fact that it’s a great referral tool, many people have handed me information from a business card, if not the business card in question to fulfill a need I had.

That said, of course, as someone who does most of his work over the web, I have an online business card (www.jamienorthrup.com). I really do believe that both are needed and both have their place.

A common practice I have noticed amongst people who work a lot online, is the custom mini cards offered at Moo.com, basically you can get a bunch of cards with different pictures or images on one side and your information on the other, which seems to be a good way to get remembered and noticed. This is also somewhat of a cheaper way than professional business cards.

As for online business cards, you can easily create your own with Flavors.me (See this article for details) for free or if you want something more personal and flexible you can purchase a template (See 14 Great Online Business Card Templates) and make your own website with it.

A great place to see which designs for “real world” business cards work or don’t is BusinessCardCritic.com.

What does it take for a site to sell for $250,000.00?

Well it’s a complicated question and there are definitely a lot of factors. In the case of ReTweet.com that just sold for that amount it’s basically three factors.

First the amount of visitors comes in to play, 26 million visits a month and 12 million of those are unique visits. You can get more of the actual stats from the sales page on Flippa where the auction took place.

Second the domain name plays a huge part, Twitter has a function called “ReTweet” which basically means to repost something of interest on Twitter, so you can see how this domain can be of interest.

The third reason, is actually what probably limited the sale to that amount is the fact that the site hasn’t been monetized, basically that they aren’t making any money. I do believe that they haven’t tried, and once someone tries, if it’s done right, it will work and bring in quite a bit of money. That being said, I’m sure if they had monetized it first they could’ve sold it for much more, but a quarter million dollars might be the right amount not to go through with all that effort.

Evidently it was for them.

I’m pretty sure everyday you do a favour for someone that is worth at least $5 but that you don’t charge them for it because it’s for a friend or family member or maybe because it’s just so easy to do for you. Well that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people out there willing to pay you for it, Fiverr is there to bring them to you.

I translate stuff for people all the time and help people set up stuff on the web or their PC and don’t charge, and this won’t change as I do it as favours to friends, family members, colleagues, even customers from time to time. However there is now a place where you can list different things you are willing to do for $5.

Just from the front page of the website you can get an idea of the variety of tasks offered, from the funny (I will your boss in the middle of the night to tell them how much they suck for $5) to the more serious tasks like lessons (I will send you a video guitar lesson for $5) and design (I will create a 3D virtual box for your product for $5).

Here is basically how it works:

If you haven’t heard of Betty White, she is one of the famous actresses/comedians that appeared in the long running sitcom, The Golden Girls, that ran form 1985 to 1992. She is now 88 years old and had all but disappeared from the radar in recent years until a Facebook fan page changed all of that.

David Mathews, one of White’s many fans, started a fan page on Facebook back on December 30th 2009 and thanks to some media exposure about the page and to Betty being back in the media’s eye lately thanks to a Super Bowl commercial and a role in the succesful movie, The Proposal, the page soon had almost half a million fans basically petitioning for Betty White to host Saturday Night Live.

And guess what? It looks like it’s going to happen. Yesterday at the Oscar, White confirmed that she would be at least appearing on the show.

You can’t deny the important of Facebook and other similar sites in our society today, between helping Barack Obama becoming President of the United States and now this, not counting the hundreds if not thousands of other opinions and decisions it has influenced.

In this case chalk up another victory for Social Media!

We all know what a business card is, if you don’t well it’s normally a small piece of paper containing your contact information, sometimes it contains a logo and some description of what you do. We also all know that the times are changing and more and more activities take place online, including networking.

Now you can always scan your business card and send it to others as an image, but that really isn’t efficient in this day and age.

A lot of people have started creating their own online business cards, basically a website that contains all or some of your information, whether it be your contact info, a porfolio of your work, a list of your social network bookmarks, your thoughts, your websites, your resume or anything else you choose.

I have created my own personal one at www.jamienorthrup.com.

I have listed 14 great templates that you can purchase to make your own.

1. vCard Site Template (Cost: 15$) Demo – Purchase

2. Strokes! Personal Website Template (Cost: 9$) Demo – Purchase

3. Introducto (Cost: 9$) Demo – Purchase

4. The Virtual Business Card (Cost: 9$) Demo – Purchase

5. V-Card Fissure (Cost: 9$) Demo – Purchase

6. vCard Professional Template (Cost: 9$) Demo – Purchase

7. vCard Personal Mini-Site (Cost: 9$) Demo – Purchase

8. proCard HTML Template (Cost: 8$) Demo – Purchase

9. vCard Professional Portfolio (Cost: 20$) Demo – Purchase

10. vCard Portfolio Template (Cost: 9$) Demo – Purchase

11. Professional vCard (Cost: 12$) Demo – Purchase

12. Pixel Portfolio (Cost: 9$) Demo – Purchase

13. vCard Professional Portfolio Template (Cost: 9$) Demo – Purchase

14. Plasma Card (Cost: 10$) Demo – Purchase

Feel free to share your thoughts on these or others that you know of in the comments.

If you have yet to hear about either of these products, get ready because for the coming months this is the battle you will see, and it has already started.

These two tablet PCs will be competing for the untapped market that is out there right now, and both will be big winners and make lots of money no doubt. Time will tell which will be the better one, and also there will without a doubt be others in the running but for now these are the two big ones coming out.

Yesterday during the Oscars, Apple released the first iPad commercial, here it is:

And of course with that being out there, you know that HP isn’t far with it’s ad for the Slate:

Now the question is, will you buy one and if so which one?

The 2010 Geneva Auto Show was used by Ferrari to showcase this incredible new Ferrari 599 HY-KERS Hybrid Supercar.

Based on the 599 GTB Fioriano, this car is not only beautifully motivating, but also powerful and energy effecient with it’s hybrid system that works somewhat like the Toyota Prius.

Ferrari chairman, Luca di Montezemolo, stated:

We want to build a hybrid with huge power and huge performance. Within three to four years, every Ferrari in our lineup will offer some version of hybrid operation.

Click here to see more picture and learn more courtesy of InHabitat.com.

As everyone knows, a lot of people have lost their jobs in the past two years due to the recession that has hit many countries around the world, and, although this is unfortunate, it has created an opportunity.

That opportunity is basically to match up people that are searching for jobs with employers offering jobs. This industry has seen quite an impressive growth lately and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

Monster.com, one of the biggest employment websites out there offers a program that will pay you to refer people to them.

It’s a pretty simple payment program, you get 17% of job or resume purchases, $1.00 for a new seeker resume and $0.50 for a new seeker account.

Basically this works by posting available jobs on your website, this is a great way to not only make money by referring people but also it provides fresh content to your website that will interest a great number of people.

There are so many things that people can do on their own but choose to pay others to do them instead. Usually there are three reasons why people don’t do it themselves; either they don’t have the time, the knowledge or the desire to do it themselves.

If you don’t have the desire or time to do it, unfortunately this won’t change that for you, but if you don’t have the knowledge then this might be for you.

As I’m sure many of you have done before when you faced doing something you weren’t sure how to approach, you can surf the web, or Google it and find a few dozen solutions, then you try searching through the websites to find one that you understand or makes sense to you. This approach is definitely better than the old days before the internet, however we now have an easier and quicker solution.

This solution is called 5min Life Videopedia, which is basically your one-stop shop for instructional videos and do-it-yourself projects.

From their “About” section:

5min Media is the leading syndication platform for broadband instructional, knowledge and lifestyle videos. Our library includes tens of thousands of videos across 20 categories and 140 subcategories, which are professionally produced and brand-safe.

Whether it be how to build a deck, take care of a wound, or more interesting to us how to make money, start a business, get more sales, or anything else for that mather, 5min.com will more than likely have a short video helping you in your project.

I’m not sure if you have heard or not, but you can buy Fans for your Facebook Pages.

There are several different ways to do this, but this most popular, and reliable company out there right now is uSocial. Their packages start as low as 197$ for 1000 fans and go as high as 10,000 fans for 1167.30$. Now they aren’t just giving you a bunch of people that aren’t real as fans, they are giving real active users that are targeted to a specific location (country) and/or an industry or interest group.

We have heard a lot of scepticism from people about this tactic, saying that it’s all about the quantity but that the quality isn’t there. I can certainly relate to this, but I can also relate to the other side of people having a hard time getting fans, or more specifically fans that become customers.

Although I haven’t personally used uSocial’s services yet, I have used them for 2 of my customers so far, and both were satisfied with the results. Basically it gave them credibility and made them get noticed by others who were interested in what they were providing.

If you need more specific fans, for example, city specific, than this isn’t for you as they don’t go more specific than country.

In the end, whether you buy them or not, the point is to keep them or get interested, the more communication there is between the page and the fans the more success you will have.

Don’t buy fans for the purpose of buying them, but if you need them, then uSocial is there to get them for you.