Service Magic

As a busy entrepreneur, you probably don’t have a lot of time to do odd jobs around the house, am I right? Well, now there’s a way to find a reliable handyman or other skilled tradesman to come and do the job for you. It’s a Web site called ServiceMagic.com, and it works like this:

First you choose a category that matches your need, next select a sub-category to get even closer to what you’re looking for, then enter your zip code and answer a couple of questions about your project. The system will then do a little bit of work behind the scenes, and it will tell you when it finds some suitable providers for your project.

You’ll need to enter your contact info at the final stage so that the providers can send you the quotes, but the whole process is pretty much seamless. I really like the fact that the providers listed are all pre-screened by Service magic before being recommended. Check out ServiceMagic.com, and get all those overdue jobs done around the house.

Ask500 Independent People

Now there are times in running a business when it’s useful to get feed back from people who give you an honest answer. You know how it is with friends and family. You’ll say, ‘What do you think of this,’ and they’ll say ‘Oh great, fantastic, wonderful, you’re a genius,’ when what they really mean is, ‘Oh I can’t bear to break the news. It’s terrible; I’ll just stroke his ego.’ 

Ask500People.com (Click for larger image).

You know how that is? Hmm, maybe you don’t.

Anyway, now there’s a resource called Ask500People.com, where within 24 to 48 hours you can get feedback from 500 people on any question you’d like to put out there. So it’s a really useful research tool.

Just sign up on the site — it’s completely free — post your question, and within 24-48 hours you’ll get the results. Now if you want to narrow the results just to your existing customers, you can also embed the survey in your own Web site — very nifty. It is a user-friendly system, too so you can set up a question very quickly and, like I said, it’s completely free.