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!

Change

There are few absolute guarantees in life and change is one of them. Many wannabe entrepreneurs fear change. Charles G. Koch, the founder of the worlds largest private company, Koch Industries, has continuously embraced change. He has learned to adapt his strategies to embrace change and lead his company to greatness. We encourage you to read more about Koch’s Market Based Management philosophy. He has also published a book about MBM which is a great read!

Economic Uncertainty

You probably think that right now is a bad time to be thinking about starting your own business. Don’t worry, many people feel this way. However, a poor economy creates several opportunity’s for entrepreneurs. In fact a lot of successful companies started and grew significantly during a recession or depression.

One of my favorite examples of this is Jim Koch, not to be confused with Charles Koch of Koch Industries. Jim Koch is the founder of Samuel Adams beer and the Boston Beer Company. He began his journey during the 1980’s recession, which just so happened to be perfect timing. There used to be 1,000’s of brewery’s in the United States but when the recession hit a lot of them flopped. Mr. Koch saw an opportunity and went for it. The recession was a perfect time to enter the marketplace.

Now, think about what business’s were in abundance before the recession and have rapidly declined because of the recession. The biggest one that comes to mind is banks. What else can you think of?

Your Business Will Consume Your Life

You want to start a business but you also want to have time to spend with your family and friends. Many people think that starting a business will disable them from having a social life. Well, this is preventable. Don’t let your business run you. You need to run your business!

The bet example I can provide is from Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Work Week which is basically about increasing your efficiency as much as possible and then outsourcing the rest of the work. The principles apply to every type of business and the extent to which they can be applied varies across business’s. However, you will find it extremely useful.

Fear of Being Your Own Boss

When first starting out it can feel like you are wasting your time or that what you are doing is really not that important. It feels like you are running a lemonade stand on the corner of the busiest street in your town, no one is stopping in  and everyone is laughing at you. It can really be discouraging.

Furthermore, starting a company is not exactly going to provide you with a sense of security or stability. This is often really hard for people to deal with. I know it was for me as well. That is why it is important to set goals. Set goals that can be done in a short time period to give you confidence in yourself and in your new business venture. The absolute key to overcoming this fear is setting goals!

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.

Business Plans? I don’t need one of those!

Oh, yes you do! Having a business plan is important for YOU. Most often people think business plans are for investors like banks, VC’s, friends, family, etc. This is not the case. A business plan is your blueprint for your business idea. It is your road map to success. You do not need to show it to anyone but yourself. If you have employees, an accountant, lawyer’s, etc. This is the best way to communicate to them what it is you are doing.

I Don’t Have Any Competition

I have yet to come across a business that has absolutely NO competition. Even the most unique of products or services has some type of competition. Don’t they? It may be on an extremely small scale but everyone has a competitor. They may not be a direct competitor (two or more firms that offer a similar good or service) but you will find that there is another company that offers a different variation of what you offer. If you have not been able to identify your competition then look harder; they are out there!

I Have The Coolest Product on The Market!

This may be true but does your product have any value. Better yet does it have enough value to cover the costs of manufacturing, promotion, distribution, etc? This is basic economics. If you create a product that cannot be resold then you created absolutely no value! You may have the coolest looking widget in the world but if you cannot sell it for a profit then it’s a waste of time and resources.

Understand Your Limitations

Just because you are the one that invented the product or founded the company does not mean that you are the right person for leading, growing and expanding the company. There are many entrepreneurs that are GREAT at starting companies and coming up with great inventions but they understand if they want the company to grow they need to step down as CEO. It can be hard to let go of your “baby” but if you don’t it is very possible you will fail and end up with nothing.

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.

Experience Is Most Important

It’s one thing to sit in class all day long and listen to a lecture but applying it is most important. A lot of classes do not offer this type of learning. So, do it on your own!

College really has a lot to offer. Think about what kinds of things you have learned so far during your journey. What do you think you will remember the most from your college days? A lecture? Absolutely not. You will remember your experiences in the classroom, outside of the classroom and with your friends. College is more about experience then it is about academics. It’s a unique kind of learning.

Cross Disciplinary Academics

I personally went to a Liberal Arts College so I could get a lot more knowledge across many different subjects. I felt it was important to my college experience and to my professional life after college. I was 100% right. While I will never use a lot of what I learned I did learn some great critical thinking skills, how to question authority, how to sift through the BS, and so much more.

There is a lot more to college than grades. If you are learning stuff and only getting a C in class, that’s okay. What’s the point of getting an A in class and learning nothing? Remember, at the end of your journey college is what you make it. Your college career will be much more fun, enjoyable, and lucrative if you remember to not continuously wrap yourself up in everything. Take some time to be yourself and have some fun!

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?

How To Start Link Baiting

What Type of Content You Should Generate

Determining what to write about is the first thing you need to do. Without having an idea, you are stuck up a creek without a paddle. There are 5 key types of content that the readers of these sites love!

News - People love breaking news. They like to read about things that are ground breaking.

Conflict/Contrary - You could refute an article that you have read. People love drama don’t they? They want to know what you have to say in rebuttal to another persons/sites findings.

Attack - This is more extreme than a simple conflict. This is a blatant attack on someone and is NOT RECOMMENDED.

Resource - Can you provide people with great information that is easy to read and can be of real value to them?

Humor - Who doesn’t like to read some funny stuff. You could post a list of funny pictures or some funny jokes. People eat that stuff up.

Use Catchy Titles

This is really important. You have to be able to catch the readers attention instantly. In general, articles about interesting things! If you can accomplish a catchy title, half the battle of getting people to read it is done for you.

Here are a few titles that people like a lot: “Top 10 ways…”, “How to do…”, “Ultimate Guide to…”. In general people love top lists; top 20, top 5, top 10, etc. So think of ones you can come up with for your niche.

Quality Content

No one will want to link to your site or content if it is crappy. People want to be able to read in English and not try to piece sentences together. Your content really should be outstanding.

If Looks Could Kill

The content should be organized well and should be easy on the eye’s. Using some pictures that are relevant to your post is very important. Try to find some cool pictures and put them in your content.

Add Social Websites

You may have noticed that at the bottom of all of our pages and posts we have a social networking bar so you can easily share the content with members of those sites. We use the Wordpress Plugin Sociable.

Timing Your Link Bait Launch

After following these steps it is now time to launch your article to the world and wait for the traffic to come in. However, it’s important to launch the article to all the sites at the same time. So choose the sites you want to launch to. Open up browsers for each site and submit the article at the same time to all sites.

Why? It’s possible that someone will rip off your content and put it on a social site you did not launch to yet. They will use a different title and a different description than what you used to try and steal your traffic.

Set Your Expectations

• Expect to get many backlinks from sites linking to yours.
• Don’t expect a high volume of clicks to your advertisements. People want to read the content and not see ads.
• Expect your brand to be exposed to the world. So make sure you are ready.
• There is no short-term search engine advantage.
• Your site will improve over the long-term.

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.

So, how does article writing work? Well, basically you write content for people that are in need of fresh content for their websites, press releases, product sales, etc. When first starting out you may only get $1.00 per 100 words, but once you build up a client base and start to build yourself as a professional content writer you can easily make $2.00-$2.50 per 100 words. That is about $10.00 per 500 words, or about 1 page of content. The faster you write the more money you make. The higher your quality of writing the more money you can receive for your services.

Where To Go To Begin Article Writing

Well, there are two main websites that are used heavily by content writers and those seeking out content writing services.

Digital Point Forums

If you are unfamiliar with the Digital Point Forums (DP) than it’s about time you get educated. This is one of the most amazing forums you will find. You can literally find anything on DP. We encourage you to do a little searching around DP to get acquainted with their forums. You must be a member for 14 days and have 25 posts before you can start your own thread. However, you can begin to PM people that are looking for services and try to get some jobs that way.

A Few Tips

• Be flexible – Negotiate your pricing based on the amount of articles that are needed.
• Specialize if possible – write articles for a niche you know about or one that is easy to understand fast.
• Always research your writing topic before writing.
• Offer a discount for the first 10 members that use your services. This method works GREAT!

TextBroker.com

Anyone can sign up at TextBroker.com. People seeking content services post articles that they need written, and you, as an author, can sign up and begin writing for people almost immediately.You just need to submit a sample article for Text Broker to review and than they issue you a “star rating”. They conveniently post their pricing structure on their site for you to see how much you can make! This service actually pays more money than DP, but you must submit a W-2 form. That is the only catch.

This is a simple way for you to begin making money right away online. If you have any questions feel free to comment here or shoot me an email and I will gladly help you get started!

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.

It’s important to understand that your competition consists of big websites and smaller websites; you should look at both. Why? Well, usually the smaller sites don’t have the kind of budget or resources as the bigger sites. So, they need to differentiate themselves in some way. I challenge you to find out how they are differentiating themselves and find a way to differentiate yourself!

Browse Through Online Marketplaces

I make it a habit to browse through online marketplaces like Digital Point (DP) and Flippa.com. Mostly because I am looking for another site to expand my already time consuming life or find a website to flip (more on this later). When I am looking through the sites for sale I often come across sites for sale that are in my niche. So, I take a look at their listing and get extremely valuable information.

You can get earnings figures, sources of earnings and traffic figures. Those are really the three most important things to take away from your findings. You can then figure out ways to improve your site. Maybe they are using a method you never thought of or a source of traffic you never heard of.

Reaching Out To The Competition

Most of the time competition is looked as a negative influence on your business. It’s actually a positive. A lot of companies in the same niche will often times pool together resources to work on a project together. If they share a common goal then they are usually more than willing to help each other out.

This tactic works especially well if you or your competition offers a product or service that the other does not have. Contact them and see what kind of a deal you can work out.

What do you think about your competition? Do you ever do some research from time to time on what they are up to? Better yet, have you ever worked with your competition?

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?

Let it be known that the U.S. Government spends massive amounts of money training leaders. Schools and Colleges also offer leadership courses that focus on making you a leader, or at least teaching you how to be one. For instance, Cornell has a leadership initiative program for students that is a huge success.

So, what can a leadership program teach you?

Many teach that you are actually born with the potential to lead. However, bringing out those leadership quality’s requires effort, and experience is needed in order for you to develop your leadership skills. Just as important, is figuring out what type of a leader you are. These types of programs often give you the confidence you need to engage with your peers at a high level and even surpass them.

Usually these types of programs focus on case study’s. They go through loads and loads of case study’s that focus on facing and figuring out tough business challenge’s, learning to embrace change, learning to build teams and get the most out of your team and most importantly learning how to lead under pressure. These case study’s are real world experiences. They are designed to assess your leadership style and help you improve on them.

Are you the type of person that likes to always do things yourself? In general, I am. However, I know how to identify what my peers can and cannot do. Most importantly I know how to get the most out of them through delegation and collaboration. You really do need a diverse team around you who’s styles complement your own, or you and your team will not reach it’s full potential.

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.

At the time this was a tough question to answer. Basically, I was getting distracted by my social media networks and I was not realizing it. I would have multiple sites open and be talking to multiple people at the same time as I was trying to do work on my sites, ebay, marketing, etc. That’s when it hit me! I needed to stay focused.

Staying Focused

Half the battle of staying focused is admitting that you are distracted. That’s what really opens your eye’s. Once you can admit you are not being as productive as you could be, you can begin to solve the problem and change your work patterns. Staying focused is actually really easy to do. Anyone can do it!

Tips For Staying Focused

• Make a list of the tasks that you need to get done.
• Arrange the list in order of priority – most important goes first, least important goes last.
• Determine how to spend your day.

There are two different approaches you can use to determine how to spend your day and it is based on the tasks you need to do and how much time you have.

1) Option #1

This option is best for people that are online for a long time during the day. It’s an easy way to split up your day and still stay focused. Plus, you do not get “bored” and tasks are no longer mundane.

Spend 1/3 of your day on creating new content and working on sites, etc.

Spend 1/3 of your day marketing your site.

Spend 1/3 of your day obtaining new knowledge.

2) Option #2

This option works great if you only have an hour or two here and there to work on your project. Spend all your time on doing one task. So, if you only have a few hours available than spend it writing new content for your site. Then, the next time you have a few hours available spend it on marketing your site.

Option #2 is really the better option. It maximizes your level of focus and you can really get some work done FAST! Option #1 is also great if you are working all day long on a site. Often times people can get bored fast, or run out of ideas quickly so it’s a good idea to mix up what you are doing. But, always remember to stay focused!

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.

Dedication: This is really the most important thing. If you are dedicated than everything else will fall in line. With that being said, you can still blog part-time. You just need to stick to the tasks at hand. If you do choose to blog part-time than it’s a good idea to set aside 2-3 hours over the weekend and write several posts for the upcoming week. Then schedule them out to automatically post during the week. That way you can spend an hour here or there over the week marketing your blog.

I will say the most important thing is to have a list of tasks that you need to do. Stick to it and make sure the tasks are done in order. Cutting corners will not help you here.

Hard Work: If you are the type of person that has no problem handling a good size workload and working hard to accomplish your goals/tasks, than you will do fine in blogging. As in all business’s you must work hard if you want to succeed.

Persistence: With blogging the amount of work you put in is often correlated to the amount of success you have. Therefore you need to be continually improving the work you are doing. The more posts you do and the higher the quality of the posts are, the more traffic you will generate to your blog and you will get more readers. The more link building you do, the better your site will perform in the SERP’s. You get it? Success does not happen overnight!

Debunking The Myth’s of Blogging

Here is a short list of some common misconceptions about blogging.

1) You will need to invest a little money. You can start for under $20. Just buy a domain, get some hosting and find a free template. Although we recommend investing money in a premium template. Free templates are a great way to start.

2) You will not be able to quit your job for a while, if at all. Blogging takes time!

3) There is no easy way to make money overnight with blogging. Blogging is not a get rich quick scheme, sorry!

4) Most bloggers never become successful, in monetary terms. Many of them stop blogging after many weeks, even months, because they have not made any money.

The important thing to remember is how easy it is to start blogging. Really, it just takes time, some knowledge and your applied ability. How many business’s do you know that you can start for under $20 and potentially make a lot doing? It’s a very low risk proposition isn’t it? Which is why so many people try it and don’t make it. They simply don’t understand what it takes to be a blogger. Do you think you have what it takes to be a blogger?

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.

There are many examples and definitions for what success is. I choose to measure success based on someone’s passion. Passion is what drives people and that drive is what makes them successful; even if other people don’t consider them to be. The best example I can give is of someone that is very wealthy and doesn’t need to work, they don’t need any more money, and they are not doing it for the money. They are doing it because it is their passion and they would do it with or without money. Can you think of people like this? Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc. How about people in your own life, that you know personally?

It’s easy for those that become successful and wealthy to get caught up in the fame of what they do. They begin to lose sight of why they started in the first place. They lose the motivation and the passion that they once had and they begin to crumble. This is what sets successful people apart from everyone else. They are not willing to trade in their values just to make a little bit of money now. They are always helping others, and never lose sight of the long-term.

It’s important to stay in touch with your values as you progress through life. In the long run the only thing that is going to matter is what’s right. What’s right for you, your family, your community, business partner’s, etc. In business, everything you do affects people, even if they are not a part of your life. In business you have the ability to do good things and bad things as well. It’s important to never lose sight of where you came from and where you are heading.

How do you measure success?

I also like to establish business goals for each one of my business property’s. These are a little, albeit, a lot different than my personal goals. It’s important to set goals periodically so that you can go back at the end of the goal period and find out if you have accomplished the goal you set out to accomplish. This is why it’s really important to write down your goals and keep track of them. Putting all of your goals in a 3 ring binder is a very easy way to keep track of everything.

We will focus on setting business, professional, or career goals but this same process and information can be used to set your personal goals as well.

What’s the point of setting goals?

Goal setting forces you to take a look in to your future and determine where you want to be in a year, three years, five years, or longer. This allows you to come up with a vision of what it is you want to do in the future and turn that vision in to a reality.

You will know exactly where you want to go and you will know precisely what you need to do to reach it. Not only will you think about where you want to be in the future, you will also think about what obstacles you may face along your journey; before experiencing them.

Goals are great for motivational purposes. This is why almost every sales firm, and business for that matter, establishes goals that are obtainable. Your motivation will be at an all time high once you actually achieve a goal. You will become addicted to setting goals and making sure you reach them. You will notice that your self-confidence is much higher once you achieve the goal than it ever was before.

Before we go any further I would like to provide you with a simple Goal Sheet that you can use. I recommend hanging it up on the wall over your desk. Unless you have a lot of goals, than use a binder.

Using SMART To Establish Goals

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

Specific - Be as specific as possible about what it is you want to achieve. Specify exactly what it is you want to do, why you want to do it and how you plan on doing it.

Measurable - Simply put, if you can’t measure it than you have no idea how it’s working, right? You want to be able to see changes happening before your eyes or you will lose motivation and think that your goal setting efforts are failing miserably, when they could actually be working great!

Attainable - When setting up goals you need to be able to stretch yourself a little and get out of your “comfort zone”, otherwise the goal will not need your attention and you will not have a strong commitment towards it.

Realistic - Sometimes I see people set goals that are simply unrealistic. The goals set should be do-able. You want to make the goals hard enough that you need to push yourself to achieve them, but not completely out of your league.

Timely - Setting time frames are extremely important, otherwise the goal will never get accomplished (procrastination minus the time commitment means it will never happen). So set goals to be established in a timely manner, make sure they are attainable and realistic.

Goal Setting Steps

1) Vision - This is where you want to be in the future, your company or your website, etc. No matter what it is you are focusing on I’m sure you have a vision for what you want it to become; we all do.

Example: Rich Kid’s Campus wants to provide high school student’s, college student’s, young entrepreneur’s and anyone else that would like to start and run their own business’s, a community that they can come to for encouragement on taking the next step in their career’s. We envision a group of like-minded individuals working together to form a community that shares in a wealth of information.

2) Goals - Goals are more general, but still specific, and can often be unmeasurable.

Example: One of Rich Kid’s Campus’s goals is to get more targeted traffic to our website so we can build a strong community.

3) Objectives - This is where your vision and goals become a reality. They are the bridge between your forecast of the future and what you have envisioned. These are specific and are measurable.

Example: We want to have over 30,000 visitors a month on Rich Kid’s Campus by the beginning of 2011.

4) Tasks - This is where you really get specific. Basically you want to outline the methods that you will use to meet your objective. These are concrete and can easily be measured. Furthermore, if the tasks are not carried out than you will most likely not meet your objectives or goals.

Example: Use Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets regularly to increase traffic and build a strong community.

5) Time line – This is the real key here. If you wait until a month before your goal needs to be achieved than you will never meet it! So, it’s important to set up a time line for when your tasks will be started and it’s also a good idea to establish how often the tasks need to be worked on.

Example: We will have our task list implemented before the end of January, 2010. We will focus on these tasks on a weekly basis.

6) Followup - This is the control portion of setting goals. You need to check your measurements periodically to see if you are on target to achieve your goal. If you are not on track than it’s time to make adjustments to your plan. Maybe you were overambitious, or you have not had enough time or your techniques are simply not working.

Setting goals are pretty simple really. Here is a Goal Sheet to get you started right away!