My Creative Classroom Seeks New Online Instructors

In an open call for instructors, My Creative Classroom is looking for talented teachers of arts and crafts online classes. Classes should run 4-8 weeks long and are typically based on techniques or longer projects. Instructor's can be located anywhere in the world as long as they have internet access.

"Our business model offers the best of both worlds for both students and instructors," said Jeri Parks, owner of My Creative Classroom. "We offer highly interactive online arts and crafts courses in a virtual setting. The results are motivated students from all over the United States and beyond and a unique opportunity for exceptional instructors."

My Creative Classroom instructors earn 60% of class fees in addition to auxiliary income through the sale of class kits, products and supplies. Many current instructors are increasing their revenue and traffic to their own personal online stores, blogs and websites.

Once commissioned, instructors create their own curriculum and class schedule. My Creative Classroom offers the online venue and distribution system--similar to online college courses. Required tools for an online instructor includes: a computer with high speed Internet access, a digital camera, photo editing software, word processing software and a microphone. My Creative Classroom offers technical support during set-up for the instructor as well as during the class for students.

Online instructors create all their own course content and produce a step by step PDF with photos and a narrated presentation. Lessons are posted once a week to the pre-registered class. Instructors are then expected to facilitate the class, answer any questions and offer constructive feedback.

My Creative Classroom has connected over 2,800 online students with accomplished scrapbook and art instructors for virtual classes. Both students and teachers hail from the US and over 40 other countries.

My Creative Classroom accepts applications until July 20th, 2009 through their website. To apply for an instructor's position visit the instructor resource page, review the instructor package, download the application and submit your application to My Creative Classroom.

Summertime Tax Tips Available on IRS.gov and Via E-Mail

The Internal Revenue Service is publishing summertime tax tips to provide useful and concise advice on topics that affect taxpayers.

Many people don't think about their taxes until the start of the filing season in January. That can be a mistake. Steps such as checking your withholding, getting the proper receipts from charities, organizing all the records you will need or setting a personal tax strategy that can save money at tax time are most effective if they are done well before year's end.

The IRS is publishing three tax tips per week this summer. Topics range from how parents can get credit for sending their kids to day camp to protecting yourself from identity theft.

Now you can receive IRS Tax Tips via e-mail as soon as they are published by signing up through the IRS e-news subscription page, e-News Subscriptions. When subscribing, a confirmation message will be sent via e-mail. Verification must be sent in response in order to confirm a subscription.

Sign up at http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=210531,00.html

Free CD Helps Mac Owners Survive In Troubled Economy

Millard Grubb and Backyard Gazette Publishing have released a new audio CD for Mac owners that will help make their lives a little brighter. 7 Secrets Of Making Cash With Your Mac looks at using a Macintosh specifically to grow an information business right from your home.

"Being able to work from home on simple projects to make extra income using a Mac has always been my goal," says Grubb. "The easiest thing to do with a Mac is take what's in your head and create something," continues Grubb.

It's often been said that everyone has a book inside them. Grubb maintains that with a Mac, it's not only books, but CDs, DVDs, audio files, and Quicktime movies.

"Everyone knows something that they do well. It might be making the best cornbread, it might be detailing a car, it might be writing folk songs. What ever it is, the Mac helps you to create from your experience, and hopefully gain some cash from the deal."

This FREE CD explains how any Macintosh owner with simple software like iLife can create an income stream. The new CD covers everything from product creation, easy projects, offline projects, online projects, publicity, and marketing.

Website: 7 Secrets Of Making Cash With Your Mac

Business Book Released Just in Time for Out-of-Work Professionals

Teena Rose, one of the careers industries leading professionals, released the third edition of her book, "Start Your Resume-Writing Business: The Ultimate Resource to Building a $100,000 Business" -- a niche book that is getting a surprising amount of attention. The mad rush to find even a mediocre job is being replaced by a thirst for finding viable, recession-proof businesses, making Mrs. Rose's new book release a timely one.

Facing unemployment, Dan Harper recently set his sights on resume writing as a business. A resident of Madison, Wisconsin, Dan was recently let go from Fiserv, after a second round of layoffs. "When I asked my son what I could do if I wasn't working in information technology, he said I should be a resume writer," said Dan. Resume writing, he admits, took a back seat while he continued searching for project management jobs. He only started to take the idea to fruition once he learned an estimated 1,300 to 1,500 people were also competing for the same project management jobs -- hence his business, The Uber Group, was born.

Dan isn't the only one shifting to resume writing as a career.

Recruiters whose industry has been bruised and battered are shifting job roles are incorporating job search and career services to avoid being a jobseeker themselves. Amy Castoro, a staffing and recruiting professional who has worked for major companies such as Walt Disney, Adecco and Right Management, started her company and began offering interview training, resume writing, and coaching as the recruitment industry declined. "The recruiting industry was hit hard by the balancing of the economy. My ability to translate my skill as a recruiter into my own business has been the sole reason I am generating income," says Amy.

Resume writing does take certain skill and therefore not everyone is cut out for it, advises Teena Rose who authored "Start Your Resume-Writing Business: The Ultimate Resource to Building a $100,000 Business." She offers three nuggets of advice to those weighing this type of business:
First, factor the salary differences between a job and a business. Unlike a job, a new business can start strong or start weak -- financial instability can be unacceptable for some.

Second, know your personal traits and what motivates you. Some people work better individually, while others need a team to stay motivated and on task. Make sure you're someone who can manage and steer a business simultaneously.

Third, be prepared for continuous personal and professional growth to remain profitable and competitive. Regardless of what the millions "so-called" online resume writers say, resume writing is more difficult and complex than it looks.

Website: http://www.resumebiz.com/

PRWeb Adds ShareThis Widget to Make it Even Easier for Customers Share Their News Online

PRWeb (http://www.prweb.com), the leading online news distribution service, today announced that it has added the ShareThis Widget to enable its customers to share their news with popular social networks. The new functionality is the latest addition to the broad array of social media functionality currently available within PRWeb and will help customers leverage the latest social messaging technology to reach to an even broader audience.

"Already recognized by Technorati as the newswire covered the most in the blogosphere, ShareThis will further enhance the online visibility of PRWeb releases as news is shared in more places than ever before," said Jiyan Wei, director of product management for PRWeb. "Through ShareThis, our customers will be able to leverage the growing popularity and importance of social media platforms to drive traffic, stimulate viral activity and reach an even larger audience."

ShareThis is the sharing network that makes it simple and easy to share any online content. Through ShareThis, individuals are able to share content with a wide variety of social networks and email options, including Facebook, Twitter, Digg, MySpace and many others. To use the ShareThis functionality on PRWeb, customers and readers can simply click on the ShareThis button included every online news release and select the social media networks where they wish to share their news.

PRWeb is the pioneer in direct-to-consumer distribution, search engine optimized news releases and multimedia news. News releases are distributed through search engines, RSS feeds and directly to tens of thousands of journalists and editors through e-mail. Through partnerships with prominent news outlets like the Associated Press, Yahoo! News and AOL, PRWeb news releases are available to an online audience of more than 70 million unique visitors in the United States alone.

"Help An Entrepreneur Out" Turns Unemployed into Self-Employed

With the downturn in the economy many people, especially Gen Y, have experienced the tumultuous job markets first hand. Many of these individuals have thus pursued their own dreams and started businesses, even though they don't have all the knowledge to succeed. Help An Entrepreneur Out is here to get these upstart business owners answers to their everyday business questions allowing their businesses to reach full potential.

College graduates are entering the worst job markets we've seen in decades. According to the United States Department of Labor 5.7 Million Jobs have been lost since December 2007 with another 2.5million loses projected in 2009 alone. While these numbers are bleak many young professionals realize the opportunity to start their own business but lack the necessary knowledge.

Young entrepreneurs Jared O'Toole and Matt Wilson have taken on this challenge, turning the unemployed into the self-employed with http://HelpAnEntrepreneur.com . Help An Entrepreneur Out or HAEO aims to make the daunting, risky and sometimes down right scary idea of starting your own business easier by getting you the answers you need to succeed. Questions from "How do I form an LLC?" or "Where to look for viral marketing ideas," get answered by the subscriber base of helpful business people via email or Twitter.

Help An Entrepreneur Out (HAEO) was created after O'Toole and Wilson realized how difficult it was to succeed as young and frankly inexperienced entrepreneurs. "We had so many ideas and aspirations but how do we turn these into businesses? We didn't even know what web host to use!" said O'Toole.

Asking a question is as simple as raising your hand in class. Simply fill out the form on http://HelpAnEntrepreneur.com . Anyone from the subscriber base is encouraged to show-off their expertise and knowledge answering the questions. The only way to become a recognized expert in a field is to get out there and showcase what you know as often as possible!

"Everyone knows it's entrepreneurship that is going to lead us out of the recession. Getting entrepreneurs the help they need is the first step in the process," concludes Wilson.

StumbleUpon Launches Su.pr - The First URL Shortener Designed to Increase Website Traffic

StumbleUpon, the best way to discover new content on the Internet, launched a new service today. Designed specifically for publishers, Su.pr is the first URL shortener designed to help content creators grow their audience, while saving time and increasing brand exposure.

Shortened URL services have increased in popularity over the past few months, yet none of them provide any real exposure benefits to the content publishers. Until Su.pr, the main reason to use a shortened URL was in order to fit a lot of information within a small character limit, i.e. Twitter's 140 character maximum. Now, with Su.pr, publishers can drive traffic to their content and post across multiple platforms with a single click, all while preserving search ranking and branding.

Su.pr is a free syndication tool for publishers that makes it possible for them to broadcast content across Facebook and Twitter, while also increasing the content's exposure to StumbleUpon's nearly 8 million users. All publishers have to do is type in their message, hit post, and the message is posted along with the shortened URL. Publishers can identify the best times to post, schedule future posts, and see real-time results on clicks, tweets, and traffic associated with posts.

"Su.pr makes it faster and easier to syndicate and measure your content, helping publishers increase their reach and efficiency," said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon CEO. "And from every Su.pr link, users can discover other great content from that publisher."

Su.pr provides the following benefits:

More traffic -- Every Su.pr URL exposes content to StumbleUpon's nearly 8 million users and allows publishers to showcase their site's best content alongside each link.

Better results in less time -- Publishers can identify the optimal times to post (highest likely traffic) and schedule as many posts as they like, for whenever they want.

One-click posting - With Su.pr, publishers can post to StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook with just one click. (More platforms to be added in the future).

Real-time Analytics - Su.pr provides real-time reports on clicks and traffic, including the number of retweets for each post.

Custom short URLs - Su.pr users have the option to have their own domain-name in the short URLs (i.e. mysite.com/a2b).

Redirect friendly -- Publishers can choose to create links that redirect traffic to their own site (301 redirect), preserving their search ranking.

"Su.pr is one of a kind - in combination with StumbleUpon, it has increased traffic to my site, delivering as many as 24,000 unique visitors to a single post in less than 24 hours," said Tim Ferriss, popular blogger and New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek.

Ferriss added, "Su.pr isn't another URL shortener.It produces measurable results, sending me more visitors in less time. From intelligent real-time analytics to my most important 'retweeters', it allows me to find what really works and ignore the noise. Want to know the best time to post? Done. Post to Twitter and Facebook with one click? Check. It's one-stop shopping for those who want real ROI from social media."

Su.pr is currently in private beta. For more information on Su.pr, visit Su.pr.