Rich Kid's Campus|A Community for High School and College Entrepreneurs

I’ve worked with dozens of potential entrepreneurs over the last 10 years and it’s always the same old song and dance. They continuously think about an idea and research it to death! Now, I am no stranger to this myself. I have been a victim of such fear. When I started my online sports store I spent a year and a half researching it and making sure I knew all that I could know.

Well, guess what? It was one of my biggest mistakes. I should have just jumped right in and got at it. As a result of my inaction I wasted a lot of time because the majority (90%) of the research I did was never used. It meant absolutely NOTHING. Experience is the best learning tool you could ever have. That is why I constantly tell entrepreneurs to dive in head first and learn to swim.

Failure

People get immobilized when they think about failing. Some people cannot face failure head on, but successful entrepreneur’s can! Failing is a part of life. It’s a huge part of finding out what works and what does not work. That is why I tell entrepreneurs to fail as fast as possible so they can find out what is working. The more times you fail the faster you find out what works!

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If you have been thinking about becoming an entrepreneur you have to understand what it takes to be one. There are a lot of overnight success stories (as we’ve mentioned previously) but these are few and far between. It really does take a lot of hard work to be successful. Starting a business can be really daunting in any economic environment. You need to have vision, goals, good leadership skills, excellent delegation skills, lots of courage, be resourceful, confident and most importantly, you need capital. There are many, many traps that young entrepreneur’s can get caught up in. These are just a few of many.

Build It and They Will Come

Well, a long time ago this was the case. All you had to do was build a nice site, throw up some good content or products (for eCommerce) and you could easily get traffic to your site. Now there are thousands of websites and blogs created DAILY. It’s hard to just build a site and expect people to just show up. So be prepared to do some serious marketing if you want your project to be successful.

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Most college curriculum’s are extremely difficult and often times college work is all you have time for. If you already have a business and you are in college then I’m sure you know exactly what I am talking about. With all the school work that you need to get done it’s very common to push friends, family and your business to the waist side.

It’s important to take a step back from your studies and really think about your life. What is really important to you? Of course school is very important to you right? Otherwise you would not be there; simple opportunity cost. However, keeping your life in perspective will help you with school in the long run.

Enjoy Your Life

College is as much about academics as it is about finding yourself. This is really the time when people break away from their family. They have an opportunity to grow and find out what they really want out of life. College is a great way to really find yourself. So, enjoy your life! Go out with friends, hang out with your family, go to a party and have some fun! Explore what it is that makes you, well, you.

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Link Baiting is one of the best ways that you can generate traffic to your website. This method is most often employed by bloggers. If you own a website of any kind this is a great method that you can use as well.

I believe that Link Baiting gets a negative wrap. It’s not a black hat method technique, it’s a white hat method and it’s really a great source of generating some targeted organic traffic to your website. The name “Link Baiting” really does sound like it’s bad, but we are here to debunk your thoughts.

What is Link Baiting?

Have you ever fished before? Well this concept is very similar to going to a lake, throwing a line in the water and trying to catch a monstrous fish. Basically when you create a new page or post you submit it to sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. You throw it out to the public with the hopes that other blog owners will link to it. Sounds easy enough. So, how do you get people to link to your articles?

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We understand that the job market is still taking a beating right now and many unemployed people have stopped looking for jobs entirely. So, what does this mean for High School students and College students? TOUGH TIMES. if you live in a heavily populated community or college town it may be possible to secure a job at a grocery store, or department store, but you want to be an entrepreneur and work for yourself right? Well here is a great solution for you.

Start Writing Articles For Money!

There is a massive job market out there for content writers. As long as you can string together a few good sentences you can easily do this. You will not get rich doing it but you will be able to make a little money to go out with your friends and more importantly you will have money to invest in new businesses. This is in no way a glamorous job but it is a great stepping stone for your future plans.

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Do you know who your competition is? Knowing your competition is a big part of your future successes and failures. I am not a fan of recreating work that has already been done. Maybe you never thought about this before, but your competition actually has a lot of positive influence on your business. You may be asking yourself how that is possible? Well, let’s explore this phenomenon.

Determine Who Your Most Successful Competitor’s Are

This is actually the first step for many people before they venture into a new niche. However, the buck usually stops here. As a general rule of thumb I like to explore my competitor’s website about once a month. Why? You can see what it is they are doing. If they took something down it’s probably because it was not successful so don’t bother trying it. If you see them pushing a certain product a lot, than you know it’s probably profitable for them.

In addition to understanding their revenue streams you can also determine their overall strategy for their website. Are they trying to drive traffic? get people to sign up to their mailing list? are they doing a lot of product reviews? etc. You can get a firm grip on where they are heading.

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This question may withstand the test of time. Then again, maybe not. With the way technology is advancing and humans are evolving this issue may be addressed sooner rather than later. One thing that we do know is what some of the top characteristics are of the greatest leaders we have seen. Integrity, dedication, hard work, trust, charisma, and the ability to effectively communicate their vision while also inspiring people, are just a handful of those characteristics. So, are these characteristics learned or are we born with them?

There are pretty good arguments for each perspective. There is a theory in consumer behavior that people’s memories can be unlocked using a “key”. That key can be a taste, smell, picture, video, etc. Anything that makes you think about the memory that you have “forgotten”. Have you ever heard a song on the radio and it made you think of someone that was once in your life? Well, that’s a “key”.

With this knowledge, is it possible that people are born with certain characteristics and traits but they are not actually “unlocked” or utilized until they get some training, knowledge and experience?

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There are so many social networking sites these days it is hard to stay focused on any one individual task. You sign on to twitter and start chatting with some people, then you open up facebook and start talking to people there, check out the top digg’s, etc. We live in a world full of distractions, don’t we? Many people call this multi-tasking and indeed that’s basically what it is. It’s also distracting!

I have a bad habit of trying to multi-task a lot. That’s mainly why I am writing about this topic. One of my personal goals for this year is to make sure I complete one task before I move on to the next task. This saves an incredible amount of time. Really, it does! Why? Well there are start-up times involved with each task you do. That’s why it is best to complete one task and than move on to the next.

Social networks are incredible. They connect you to so many people and so many ideas it’s no wonder you can spend all day on them. I was once asked by one of my twitter followers, who was having a hard time managing her time, how I manage to not get distracted and spend all day talking to people on twitter? and believe me, that is easy to do.

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If you are thinking about becoming a blogger than this article is a must read! Blogging is actually really easy to do, technically. However, it does take the right mindset if you want to become successful at it and potentially make money doing it. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of stories about people that are making a living by blogging online. No doubt they are extremely inspirational for those that are looking to generate some extra revenue, or maybe as a way to make a full-time income.

Some of those success stories may have really happened “overnight” but for the most part those that have become successful at blogging worked really hard at it, for a long time. There are some key characteristics that need to be looked at before you start blogging, to see if you have what it takes.

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I know this may be hard to think about at the moment, but for some of you it will be easy. Can you remember when you were asked, as a child, about what you wanted to be when you grow up? I think the most common answers were something like: policeman, fireman, astronaut, etc. Those were many of the role models for children as they were growing up. At least until they got older and started exploring things for themselves. The idea of a child’s ideal career evolves and changes over time.

Now, some people would also say something like this: I want to be a fireman, be successful and have lot’s of money. Note the “successful and have lot’s of money”. Inherently, even as children our subconscious separated the difference between money and success. I think it is pretty well understood that monetary wealth is not correlated with success.

For example, think of a lottery winner. It’s great that they won the money and now they are some of the richest people in the world! Well, does this now make them successful? How many times have you seen on the news, stories about lottery winners that are now filing for bankruptcy? All the time! Success is a lot more than having money.

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