But over the past few years the comedian has struggled. Two of his most recent films, Imagine That and Meet Dave, were colossal failures. Murphy was paid millions up front to star in the films, but neither one earned back its production budget at the box office. Meet Dave earned only $50 million on a budget of $60 million. Imagine That did even worse. It brought in only $22 million on a budget of $55 million.

Those disasters turned Murphy into the second most overpaid star in Hollywood by our calculations. For every $1 Murphy was paid in salary we found that his recent films have returned an average $2.70. To put that in perspective, Nicole Kidman, who ranks 10th on our overpaid list, returns $6.70 for every buck she is paid.

So it’s no surprise to see the 50-year-old Murphy in career-building mode. It helps that he has director Brett Ratner on his side. Ratner helmed Murphy’s latest film, Tower Heist, which hits theaters Friday. Murphy stars as a thief who helps Ben Stiller and a motley crew of amateurs rob a Bernie Madoff-like financier who has stolen their pension money. Early reviews have been decent. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter says that “however far-fetched [the film] is all but irresistible in its criminal legitimacy and its promise of just desserts.” Exhibitor Relations expects the film will top the box office this weekend with $26 million.

If the movie is a hit, it will go a long way toward improving Murphy’s reputation and his ability to offer studios a better return on investment. Murphy is also slated to host the Oscars ceremony (which Ratner is producing) next February.

Another consolation: compared to Drew Barrymore, Murphy is a financial superstar. The actress tops our 2011 list of Hollywood’s Most Overpaid Actors, returning just 40 cents (not a misprint) for every dollar the studios spend on her. Barrymore doesn’t earn as much as someone like Murphy but her recent films have performed horribly at the box office. Her 2009 film Everybody’s Fine earned only $16 million globally and her 2007 film Lucky You brought in only $8 million. He’s Just Not That Into You, which Barrymore produced and appeared in, did better earning $180 million globally but we didn’t count it because Barrymore wasn’t really the star of the film.

To create our list we looked at the 40 highest-earning actors in Hollywood. To qualify, each had to have starred in at least three movies in the past five years that opened in more than 500 theaters. Movies that opened after May 1 of this year were not counted.

We also didn’t look at animated films because the stars aren’t really the draw. So Murphy doesn’t get credit for the Shrek movies where he voiced Donkey. Those films have brought in a total $3 billion at the global box office.

We used data gathered for our annual Celebrity 100 list to calculate each star’s estimated earnings on each film (including up-front pay and any earnings from the movie’s box-office receipts and first year sales of DVDs). We then looked at each movie’s estimated budget (not including marketing costs, which are susceptible to accounting chicanery) and box-office and DVD earnings to figure out an operating income for each film.

We added up each star’s compensation on his or her last three films and the operating income on those films, and divided total operating income by the star’s total compensation to come up with a return-on-investment number. The final number represents an average of how much a studio earns for every dollar paid.

For a full list of the Hollywood: a href=http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mfl45hlff/hollywoods-most-overpaid-actors#contenthollywoods overpaid/abr /br /a href=http://assetjunkie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/20111106-002139.jpgimg src=http://assetjunkie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/20111106-002139.jpg alt=20111106-002139.jpg class=alignnone size-full //a

Comment on this and let me know how you use social media!

Diet guru Jenny Craig is selling her Rancho Santa Fe, California home for $8,995,000 (because a flat $9 million would just be too much).

For a woman who made her millions off of portion control, there’s nothing small about her home.

Built in 1992, “The Villa” sits on over three acres of land and is a sprawling 10,029 square feet (making the price per square foot $897, if you were wondering). There are four bedrooms, four full bathrooms and three half baths in the main house. A private guest house has two bedrooms.

Exquisite details abound inside the home. The master bedroom suite includes a hand-painted mural on the ceiling and there is a similar mural inside Jenny’s personal bathroom (her husband opted for a mounted television in his).

Outdoor amenities include a heated resort pool and spa, a full tennis court and a 1500 square foot “pool pavilion”.

Jenny’s late husband, Mr. Sidney Craig, had a historical car collection, and while most of them were auctioned off (including vintage beauties once owned by Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Clark Gable) the property still has a  finished four car garage and car museum.

The home sits on a private bluff, and oversized windows throughout the home will afford the new owner breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding landscape.

In addition, the backyard overlooks Rancho Paseana Farm, Craig’s 228-acre thoroughbred race horse training facility. Purchased by the horse lover in 1995, Jenny Craig listed it for sale for $29,950,000 late last spring.

According to The Real Estalker, “Rancho Santa Fe is consistently ranked among the top 3 or 4 most expensive zip codes in California and among the most expensive in all of the United States of America”.

The folks at Insure.com also say that ill-advised Facebook postings increasingly can get your insurance cancelled or cause you to pay dramatically more for everything from auto to life insurance coverage. By now almost everybody knows that those drunken party photos could cost you a job, too.

You can certainly enjoy networking and sharing photos, but you should know that sharing some information puts you at risk. What should you never say on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site?

• Your birth date and place. Sure, you can say what day you were born, but if you provide the year and where you were born too, you’ve just given identity thieves a key to stealing your financial life, said Givens. A study done by Carnegie Mellon showed that a date and place of birth could be used to predict most — and sometimes all — of the numbers in your Social Security number, she said.

• Vacation plans. There may be a better way to say “Rob me, please” than posting something along the lines of: “Count-down to Maui! Two days and Ritz Carlton, here we come!” on Twitter. But it’s hard to think of one. Post the photos on Facebook when you return, if you like. But don’t invite criminals in by telling them specifically when you’ll be gone.

• Home address. Do I have to elaborate? A study recently released by the Ponemon Institute found that users of Social Media sites were at greater risk of physical and identity theft because of the information they were sharing. Some 40% listed their home address on the sites; 65% didn’t even attempt to block out strangers with privacy settings. And 60% said they weren’t confident that their “friends” were really just people they know.

• Confessionals. You may hate your job; lie on your taxes; or be a recreational user of illicit drugs, but this is no place to confess. Employers commonly peruse social networking sites to determine who to hire — and, sometimes, who to fire. Need proof? In just the past few weeks, an emergency dispatcher was fired in Wisconsin for revealing drug use; a waitress got canned for complaining about customers and the Pittsburgh Pirate’s mascot was dumped for bashing the team on Facebook. One study done last year estimated that 8% of companies fired someone for “misuse” of social media.

• Password clues. If you’ve got online accounts, you’ve probably answered a dozen different security questions, telling your bank or brokerage firm your Mom’s maiden name; the church you were married in; or the name of your favorite song. Got that same stuff on the information page of your Facebook profile? You’re giving crooks an easy way to guess your passwords.

• Risky behaviors. You take your classic Camaro out for street racing, soar above the hills in a hang glider, or smoke like a chimney? Insurers are increasingly turning to the web to figure out whether their applicants and customers are putting their lives or property at risk, according to Insure.com. So far, there’s no efficient way to collect the data, so cancellations and rate hikes are rare. But the technology is fast evolving, according to a paper written byCelent, a financial services research and consulting firm.

In some instances, both private and public companies may issue shares to their own employees as part of a compensation program. This action is designed to motivate employees by tying a portion of their earnings to the company’s earnings.

In some cases, people may eventually want to sell their shares. For publicly traded shares, this process is simple: an employee can just sell the shares through a broker. Private shares, on the other hand, cannot be sold as easily. Because private shares represent a stake in a company that is not listed on any exchange, finding a buyer may be difficult. The lack of information about most private companies tends to dissuade investors, who are usually very reluctant to buy into a company that they know nothing about.

The simplest solution for selling private stocks is to approach the issuing company and to inquire about what other investors did to liquidate their stakes. Some private companies may have buyback programs, which allow investors to sell their shares back to the issuing company. Private companies may also be able to provide leads about current shareholders or new investors who have expressed interest in buying the company’s shares.  After an investor manages to find a buyer for the stocks, it is suggested that he or she visit a securities lawyer in order to finish off the paperwork because although private stocks are not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), all SEC regulations involving selling stocks must still be followed. Failure to comply with all relevant regulations may result in civil, administrative or even criminal penalties.

However technology has made this process much easier and legitimate. Sites such as SecondMarket and SharesPost offer online markets for these private securities. So if you want to buy Facebook, Twitter, CafePress or any other private company you will most likely find it on one of these two sites.

You can find plenty of arguments for and against outsourcing the management of your company’s social media initiatives. From ghosting your company’s blog entries, Facebook status updates and tweets to monitoring and mining platforms for inappropriate content and customer insight, some companies just find it easier to pass these responsibilities to a third-party provider.

Whether you outsource or manage everything in-house is up to you. But if your company is already outsourcing its social media work, or is considering doing so, take note of the following do’s and don’ts:

1. Do ask for references: The Internet has no shortage of self-proclaimed social media “gurus.” Make sure the individual or business has a solid track record with plenty of satisfied clients. Ask your potential social provider if you can contact any of his or her clients for their input. If they say no, keeping looking!

2. Don’t wing it: Develop a plan that includes two or more goals, and stick to it unless you have very good reasons to change course. Without goals in mind — and in writing — your efforts are likely to lack sufficient impact.

3. Do demand an editorial calendar: An editorial calendar establishes a plan of attack to optimize results and keep your content on a proactive rather than a reactive track. Be sure the calendar is flexible enough to add content when the need arises.

4. Do proof content: Personally review nearly everything prior to posting, not only for typos and other editorial errors, but to ensure the content is relevant, accurate and expressed in an appropriate tone. What may appear as a minor issue regarding how something is worded can have major repercussions if it’s open to misinterpretation. Your social media “expert” may be a trained and professional wordsmith, but it’s your business and nobody knows its nuances and politics better than you. Once you train them, you may find that proofing everything isn’t as necessary.

5. Do create and give your third-party provider key messages and talking points: Key messages and talking points are always based on your business’ short- and long-term goals. Whatever these may be, develop a related communication plan and make sure your third-party social media provider understands that everything they do on your behalf needs to be tied to your company’s business-aligned communication strategy.

6. Don’t allow your company to be held hostage: Create your own social media accounts, complete with a unique username and password for each account, to avoid being locked out of your own accounts. You need to remain in control of your blog, Facebook page, Twitter account and other accounts should any disagreements arise between you and your social media provider.

7. Do get everything in writing: Operating without a contract is risky business for you and whomever you hire. A written agreement not only lays out each party’s obligations but also establishes ownership of the assets being developed. Your online assets can be just as valuable and sometimes more valuable than your offline assets.

8. Don’t operate without analytics: Managing a social media campaign without metrics is like flying a jumbo jet without gauges. Detailed data and statistics provide you with the insight you need to make well-informed content decisions and determine whether what you’re doing is actually having the desired effect.

Laima Tazmin

Age 17, LAVT, New York City

When we first wrote about Laima Tazmin in 2004, as part of an article titled “25 Entrepreneurs We Love,” she was a high school freshman with her own website design company, LAVT, in New York City. Today, as Tazmin is finishing her last semester, her business continues to expand. Now it manages 20 ongoing projects, including designing banner ads starting at $1,000 each, for clients such as the producers of the movie Saw II and of Kanye West’s second album, Late Registration.

The company earned $25,000 in 2006, and Tazmin put that money toward paying family expenses while her mother struggled to find work. “It was overwhelming, but I managed,” says Tazmin. “The independence and maturity I learned helped my adult clients feel calm and comfortable.”

Tazmin hasn’t found it easy to make the transition from solo businessperson to manager. Lacking time for supervision and coaching, she has burned through 10 freelance designers. The problem is that, in addition to her company, she maintains a roster of high school activities. She’s a shooting guard on the basketball team (“I like scoring points–I’m not a passer,” she says) and works on the yearbook staff (“I get a little too control-ly,” she admits). Tazmin, who will attend Columbia University in the fall, is also working, predictably enough, on starting a second business. It will create Web portals for college towns.

Derin Coleman and Rayneshia Rodgers

Both age 17, Bling Buckles, Oakland, California

Derin Coleman and Rayneshia Rodgers have been friends since the seventh grade and business partners since 2004. Together, they run Bling Buckles, an Oakland, California, company that sells custom chrome belt buckles with white rhinestone lettering for $25 apiece. Bling grossed $2,075 during the last academic year, selling belts primarily at events sponsored by BUILD, a program in the Bay Area created to teach high school students in low-income school districts about entrepreneurship.

“They work great together,” says Curtis Below, an executive at GetActive Software, who serves as the company’s mentor. “Rayneshia is the more outgoing of the two, chatting up customers and constantly throwing out ideas. Derin is mature and does whatever needs to be done with a smile on his face.”

The partners, who are juniors at a charter school called Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy, were tested during their first holiday season in business, when Bling faced a big backlog of orders. “Derin and I were making buckles over Christmas vacation and on our lunch hours,” says Rodgers.

Just as the company is taking off, however, its future is in doubt. Rodgers and Coleman are applying to colleges far apart. In fact, in addition to launching and running a company, BUILD helps students prepare for the college board exams. Eight out of every 10 BUILD graduates have been the first members of their families to go to college.

Not that the passion for entrepreneurship is lost in the shuffle: “I like school, but running a business feels more real,” says Coleman. “Oh, I can learn how to make a million dollars? Okay, I’m listening.”

Omar Faruk

Age 18, BlueStream, New York City

Omar Faruk believes that social entrepreneurship can make the world a better place. He’s CEO of BlueStream, a Web management company that specializes in helping nonprofits with limited resources. The business grossed $40,000 in 2006 and earned Faruk the Youth Entrepreneur of the Year award given out by Ernst & Young and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. “Make a difference first, make the money later,” Faruk says.

In 1997, at age 9, Faruk immigrated with his family from Noakhali, Bangladesh–”The district that Gandhi visited,” he notes–to New York City. The family had been well off back home but ended up with eight people sharing a three-bedroom apartment inBrooklyn. By the time Faruk enrolled in high school, he was spending a lot of time online and learning the ins and outs of Web design. Three years ago, he started BlueStream to build websites at a cost of $200 and up for fledgling nonprofits. The idea was to marry his interest in social activism to his interest in technology. One of Faruk’s customers is Intertradingcorp.com, an organization that helps women in Guyana sell crafts on eBay. “Omar helped the idea to flower, and he makes the world of commerce so much fun,” says Avi Shiwnandan, Intertradingcorp.com’s founder.

In the meantime, Faruk is trying to bolster his grades in an effort to get into Babson College, where he hopes to study social entrepreneurship. Shiwnandan, for one, is not worried about Faruk’s prospects: “I have no doubt he will make a lot of money in his lifetime, even if it isn’t his main ambition.”

Jake Fisher and Weina Scott

Both age 17, Switchpod, Miami and Rochester, Minnesota

Only five years ago, two enterprising teens might have mowed lawns to earn spending money. Today they can start a company on the Web. That’s how it worked for the co-founders of Switchpod, Weina Scott and Jake Fisher. And, oh yeah, they live 1,440 miles apart–she’s in Miami, and he’s in Rochester, Minnesota.

The two met via a message board in June 2005, got to talking about podcasts, and started Switchpod within the month. Scott already had a Web design business, which she started at age 13. Fisher, for his part, says, “I wanted to get into a business at the beginning of some new technology bubble.”

Their basic podcasting package, which covers hosted space on their servers, costs as much as $30 a month, but they’ll give it for free to customers who take out an advertisement on their site. By the time Switchpod’s product had generated 800,000 downloads, a company named Wizzard Software came calling. The Pittsburgh-based business, which makes speech-recognition and text-to-speech technology, was looking to add podcasting to its product mix.

Wizzard Software CEO Chris Spencer, 37, remembers that it took him a while to realize that the students he was negotiating with were in high school rather than college. Odder still, Scott and Fisher met face-to-face for the first time at Spencer’s home in Fort Lauderdale, where their parents brought them to sign the paperwork transferring ownership of Switchpod to Wizzard in an all-stock transaction worth $200,000. The sale also provides the partners with annual salaries of $40,000 for a 20-hour work week. It acknowledges that their schoolwork comes before business.

Who in their right mind turns down something that’s free? You’re thinking, nobody. Right? Not so fast.

The answer depends on what is being offered for free. You may stand in line for a free iPad or maybe a free laptop, even if you already have one, you could gift it to someone. You may love using a site like Twitter free of charge, but you may be a little skeptical about a dating site that is free.

Small-business events are one of those things that should not be free.

Admittedly, I have a personal vendetta when a women in my office hosted a FREE lunch and networking event. 1000 invites went out, no RSVP but an assumption that at least 10-20 people would show up; yet not a single person came. She had space available for 60 people (in case someone showed up with a  fleet of friends). Imagine her disappointment, because she could have had the room set up to look smaller.

Needless to say, she will think twice before offering an event of any type again.

So why is it that people like free, except when it comes to events? Here are my four reasons.

1. “What’s The Catch?” Once you host a free event, people always ask themselves that question. They call up a friend and say, “The event’s free … but …” and they both spend some time envisioning the potential scheme. While you’re hosting a free event because you’re trying to gain some trust: Instead, you could end up with the opposite.

2. There is no sense of urgency. When did you last feel some urgency toward something that was offered for free? People appear less likely to register for free events and, when they do, the percentage of no-shows is higher than that of paid events. In one of its online discussions, a small-business event host from Biz Nik admits that the average no-show rate for free events was 20 percent compared with 1 percent to 2 percent for paid events.

3. Value is questioned. Most free items are offered so that a potential client gets to know you better. You want them to test the waters. While some people may appreciate this when it comes to informational products, they may not value this when they’re forced to give up time to sit at an event. Some may even start wondering whether something is wrong with you or your business because you’re willing give up your time for free.

4. Attendees may not be real prospects. Let’s face it, people will pay for what they deem important. People who only attend an event when it’s free usually will not pay for a coach, expert, consultant or advisor, either. Most of the time, this group is sure it can do better on its own. These people are there for one thing only — free information — leaving you with a headache and no hopes of ever earning their business.

How will your industry do? Take a look at the top-performers report. It shows that with the recession ebbing, some industries will profit by helping consumers pull out of the downturn, while others are already building on recovery.

1. E-commerce and online auctions — The top performer with more than 11 percent projected revenue growth, e-commerce will simply keep gaining on brick-and-mortar retail next year. Is the downturn making us drive less and shop online more? Not clear, but America’s love for shopping with a click will not abate next year.

2. Real estate appraisal – With the housing markets firming up and fears about buying in a still-dropping market lessen, there’ll be more demand for appraisers. Still-low interest rates should help drive more home sales next year, helping appraisers see nearly 9 percent revenue growth.

3. Environmental consulting — New laws and growing consumer interest in going green will help environmental consultants see 7.5 percent revenue growth in 2011. I’ve been researching green supply-chain issues recently, and one driver is big retailers demanding green operating principles from their vendors — which in turn drives those vendors to look to their own suppliers for greener practices. Upshot: Lots of companies that need to cut their carbon output, and need experts to help them figure out how to do it cost-effectively.

4. Debt collection agencies — This has been a busy industry the past three years, and next year it should keep growing revenue — IBISWorld says more than 4 percent. The theory: as unemployment eases (finally!) and the housing market recovers, debtors will be able to pay back more of what they owe, improving margins for collection agencies.

5. Advertising agencies — Many companies are looking to jump on any hint of economic upswing, and are finally adding to their marketing budgets. The forecast is for 3.5 percent revenue growth. Expect agencies with a specialty in online and social-media advertising to take the lion’s share of the upswing.

6. Job training and career counseling — This one also mines the downturn, to the tune of 3.4 percent growth. Helping the unemployed retrain for new careers will still be big business next year.

The holidays are a time of hope and joy. They’re also a time when my email inbox fills with an avalanche of small-business predictions, best-practice tips, and success-strategy recommendations. Here’s a collection of some of the more interesting forecasts for small businesses in 2011:

1. Financial savvy: More companies will use direct deposit to save money and help the environment, according to the Pay It Green Survey 2010. Calculate how much you could save by switching to direct deposit with this calculator.

2. Venture capital and IPO markets: This year saw a big thaw in the public markets — the volume of IPOs more than doubled, PricewaterhouseCoopers reported. The value of fourth-quarter IPOs this year is more than we saw in the same period of 2007. This should translate into more venture capitalists seeing payouts…which means more venture capitalists with money to reinvest next year.

3. Leadership success skills: Humor will be a secret weapon of smart CEOs next year, says Francie Dalton, host of the new blog talk radio show Overcoming Business Nightmares. Enough with the gloom already!

4. Management: From Business Innovation for Dummies author Alex Hiam: Maybe while you’re on vacation in the next couple weeks, take time away from your business to think about it. Then: Implement something by mid-year.

5. Tax smarts: Companies that take advantage of tax breaks expiring this year will have more growth capital for 2011, notes Brandon Edwards, president of the Tax Credit Company.

6. Next-generation marketing: New high-tech methods of reaching customers will be hot next year, including smartphone-readable QR codes, says Melanie Attia, product manager for email-marketing firm Campaigner. If your business doesn’t have a Facebook fan page, she says, 2011 is the year to take the plunge.

7. Cloud, here I come: More small-business functions will be done on free, cloud-based platforms, predicts Bob Egan of research house The Sepharim Group (at least until you get too big and have to pay for an upgraded version).

8. IT spending: IDC forecasts you’ll spend more on IT next year. No, really: You will sleep now, and when you awake, you will realize your current computers and networks are hopelessly outdated.

9. Retail: Smaller stores will rule — that lower overhead will give sharp operators an edge.

10. New forecasting tools: My favorite is the Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce, a new index that tracks real-time consumption data in the form of information on trucking-shipment volume. Its most-recent report indicates we’re not out of the woods yet in terms of consumer-goods purchasing.