You decided to say goodbye to your 9 to 5 cubicle life. Very well, now you’ll start mastering your time, your mind, your decisions and your thoughts by doing things your own way. Welcome to the sunny entrepreneurship world!

Before jumping in with all your momentum, slow down, put yourself these questions and try to be honest:

1. What is my business offer?

You may have had accumulated some work experience by now, so you have lots of thing you do very well, and you enjoy doing them. One of the most frequent mistakes when starting your first own business is to offer too broad range of services. You may say: OK, what’s the problem here? If I offer many services, it means I’ll have more clients in total; I’ll have more possibilities of finding potential customers, thus increasing my chances of earning more money, and get a recurring income from customer service.

This is FALSE. Think of how you are going to promote your brand new start-up:

a. You’ll want to make use of your relationships (this always works and it’s far more profitable than cold calls). In this stage, you want your acquaintances to associate you with your services, so whenever they might need them, you come on top of their mind. What are you going to tell your friend, or former colleague, or former boss who now owns a big company you could do some work for: “Well, I’m doing internet marketing, trainings, websites, all kind of below the line campaigns… and I also organize weddings… and I run a publishing house”. Guess what your friend is going to remember from your pitch?

b. Let’s suppose that you decided to treat each contact differently, and promote only one of your services: if you guess wrong and that service of yours is not needed, it is very hard to come again and make an offer for the other ones. This looks highly unprofessional and it looks like you are almost starving and going to die soon if you don’t get some business. Don’t ever look like you’re broke, even if your last shampoo bottle has finished last month and you are happy that you did not throw away those good old shoes you did not like anymore.

2. Which of all above mentioned skills gives me more satisfaction when doing it?

If you don’t have a lot of money, it is most probable that you won’t have any employees in the beginning, so you’ll have to do all the work, including the most boring and time consuming tasks. If do well with programming, but you don’t enjoy doing it, don’t jump into web design. You’ll have to spend hours and hours fine tuning the code, in order to get what your client wants. If you don’t enjoy it, then you lose. You’ll go crazy in three months or so.

Here I have myself as an example: when I started the publishing house, I thought I could handle everything for one year, before I would have been able to hire some people for the basic tasks. So I did: together with my partner, we handled everything, for a whole year, from gathering the articles from the authors, to correcting the final layouts, to taking the magazines from the printing house, printing labels, distributing the magazines to the subscribers and handling the subscriptions lists, and we even tried some Autocad design services for one particular client. Not to mention the administrative things required by the law. When the business finally started to grow, I was so sick and tired of all that stuff, that I sold my part of the company to my partner and I never want to hear again of publishing to this day. Do you know why my partner was not sick of doing all those things? Because she loved what she did. Publishing magazines was her passion, so she wouldn’t mind handling the day to day tasks with calm and with a smile on her face.

So, start with your biggest passion. After you get it moving, you can diversify your services, without having to do everything by yourself.

3. What is my USP?

USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition and it is a very well known term in advertising and marketing. We are exposed to lots of messages every second of our lives. It is impossible to notice all of them. In order to stand out of the crowd and make people pay attention to what you have to say, you have to be unique and to communicate this in a very clear, simple and straight way.

Think of watches. What comes to your mind first? Is it Rolex? Now think of coffee? Is it Starbucks? How can you become the Rolex of your field? Know your competitors and be different. And better.

4. What is best for me: going solo or looking for a partnership?

Partnerships are good. It’s much better to have somebody to share your ideas with, and not only ideas. You can do twice as much if you are two. You can split tasks between yourselves. You can do two things in the same time. Nevertheless, try to understand your future partner deeper before making this step. If your work habits, values and principles are very different, you may end up in sorrow and disappointment. Imagine this: you agree with your partner a job he has to do and he agrees. When the delivery time comes and you ask for the work, he turns to you, smiles and says: “Did you really expect me to do that?”. How many of those can you take until you blow up?

So beware: a partnership is different than the other work relationships you had so far. As an employee, you usually have bosses and subordinates, you do your job in an established, vertical hierarchy, so in case of disagreement, usually the highest ranked person dictates the actions. If you are equal, you have to share some life principles and to have an internal discipline which would help things getting done.

Being equal is about knowing how to lead and low to let yourself led and most of all, knowing when to do that. It is like tango: coordination and alternative leadership is the key to harmony.

5. How much can I resist before earning any money?

Don’t expect your business to bring profit from the very first day (or month, or even year). It may happen so, but most probably it won’t. Be prepared to support yourself for about two years, before you’ll make a living from your business. This can happen much faster, but it’s better to be prepared than sorry. When I first jumped into self employment, I had savings for two years. Luckily, after one year, real profit started to come in. But that was also the moment when I decided I did not want to run that business for the rest of my life. So I started everything over, this time with savings for only one year. If things wouldn’t have improved by the end of that summer, I would have been in the situation to go back to the nice and cosy corporate world, full of bosses, regulations, papers, important meetings and reports.

And so this leads us to the last question, which I challenge you to answer by yourself:

Am I prepared to go back, in case things go wrong?

Leave aside for a couple of minutes all affiliate programs which bring you $10 per month, all blogs which are so hard to maintain and so fragile in front of internet G…iants. Forget about your PPC campaigns which bring you nothing but trouble and losses. Forget even my group writing project which could bring you $100.

Today you are dealing with immortality.

If you are good at writing poems, this could be your lucky day. Not only poetry is immortal, but it can also bring you some quick cash:

• A $25 Target gift card every day
• $1,000 on December 15th, 2007
• $10,000 on January 15th, 2008

The poetry contest is free and fun, and the only condition to participate is that the poem and all its rights belong to you. The poem can tackle any topic and it can be written in any style. You are restricted to submit only one poem per month.

So, what are you waiting for? You finished reading here, so go and enter the free poetry contest to win $10,000, and buy me lunch after you win, because I gave you the tip

After discovering blogging, and after learning lots of things about internet marketing, websites development, pay per click campaigns management, or social media, I found myself at the end of the first 8 months being able to deliver such services for other companies. I started to offer such services for free, to a few friends of mine, helping them develop their online presence. After the first results, I became quite confident in my skills, so I started to promote my new services by offering free SEO analyses. Very short after that, I got my first two clients.

Although I wasn’t yet making a full living out of that and of the blogging income, I saw the potential and kept on going with both blogging and internet marketing services (it is true I got a little bit in debt, but that’s not a very serious issue).

Eight months later, namely in October, the things have really started to move, the income from blogging raised at $540, the indirect income was $2000, plus I secured $10,000 for the next three months, from internet marketing clients.

I’m not very fond of making my earnings public, but I publish them every now and then, because I noticed my readers are a bit curious about this blog’s financials. This is a review of both direct and indirect earnings I made from blogging since I first heard the word “blog” until October:

Direct income comes mainly from AdSense and Text Link Ads. The October increase is due to some sponsored reviews, plus a couple of private ads.

As you can see, indirect earnings are already much ahead of direct ones. However, without trying all kind of things with my personal blogs and campaigns, I would have never managed to gather so much knowledge to put in the indirect projects.

Thanks to blogging, a new business was born. Thanks to people, learning was possible. Also thanks to people, experimenting was possible. I take this opportunity to thank my online professors and my readers for helping me become location independent, and for giving me a new trade to make a living from.

“Thank You” image credit: Dominik Gwarek (kikashi)

Wonder 1:

I wonder why people associate working from home with being always available for them?

Wonder 2:

I wonder why people see working from home as a good pretext for lazyness?

Wonder 3:

I wonder why that sink is always full of dishes, although I wash them many times a day?

Wonder 4:

I wonder why last winter’s clothes don’t fit me anymore? (Hint: this relates to Wonder 3)

Wonder 5:

I wonder why the more I learn, the less I know?

Wonder 6:

I wonder where do days go so quickly?

Wonder 7:

I wonder why I didn’t take this step earlier?

Do you have a work from home friend?

If you do, please don’t abuse your friendship. Don’t expect your friend to be happy to spend three hours every day on the phone with you, don’t ask her to visit you every other day, just because she can. If a working from home person has three friends like you, she will have to work at night, because she just gave her days to her best friends and her evenings to her family.

Working from home is about self-discipline, which can be so fragile sometimes, that even an innocent phone call can blow it away.

Four such innocent calls this morning, and a tough schedule for tomorrow made me think of these 7 wonders of working from home. Can you find some more?
In case you still wonder why am I not chasing away these friends, it’s simply because I love them. And I can always choose not to pick up the phone

Since early internet days, more and more universities started to open their eyes and ears to their public needs, and launched online learning programs which are available for a lot of busy people who like to learn or need to get skills in certain domains, such as:

• Art and Design
• Business
• Culinary
• Education
• Healthcare
• Law and criminal justice
• Motor sports and aviation
• Psychology
• Technology

As I wish to take some psychology classes, I started to look into available offers, and once more I felt like my country was too small to get noticed. Why do I say that?

Well, maybe you all know Monster.com, the human resources portal, which already opened branches for a lot of countries worldwide. What you may not know, is that for USA residents, they have an online degrees search portal which can help you discover training opportunities:
Get Degree Today at Monster Learning

The portal is free and very easy to use, and it does not require any registration. In case you like one of the training programs, you can ask for details by filling in a simple form. I just found some Culinary Courses. Who knows, maybe they’ll accept Europeans, case in which, you can expect a whole “cooking experiences” category on this blog.

Below, there are a few details, to see at a glance if you stand any chance to get your tuition fee and books paid. For more about the $10,000 blogging scholarship, go visit the original website.

Scholarship Requirements:

• Your blog must contain unique and interesting information about you and/or things you are passionate about. No spam bloggers please!!!
• U.S. citizen;
• Currently attending full-time in post-secondary education; and
• If you win, you must be willing to allow us to list your name and blog on this page. We want to be able to say we knew you before you became a well educated, rich, and famous blogging legend.

Important Dates:

• Submission Deadline: Midnight PST on Oct. 6th
• 10 Finalists Announced and Public Voting Begings: 9am EST on Oct. 8th
• Public Voting Ends and Winner Declared: Midnight PST on Oct. 28th

I would have liked to enter, but I don’t gather the conditions, so I wish good luck to all of you out there who might qualify.

The secret of loving to sell is to not do it. Don’t sell. Was Ghandi “selling” when he presented his vision for gaining independence for India without violence? Was John Lennon “selling” when he communicated his ideas about peace through his words and music? Was John F. Kennedy “selling” when he gave his speech about putting a man on the moon? Were these people selling?

Yes… and no. The reason why they were so successful at gathering people to their ways of thinking is because they presented an impassioned vision of hope. We all want to feel hopeful. We all want to feel that we can live up to our potential. Hope is an attractive force that draws the hopeful in to ideas that offer the possibility of meaning and fulfillment in our lives. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech is one of the most hopeful “sales jobs” ever.

“Yes, but I’m no JFK!” I hear you say. True, but neither am I. You don’t have to be a JFK or a Ghandi. All you have to do is examine how they “sold” and emulate that. Consider the following:

1. Are you presenting your prospects with a stale list of features/benefits? No wonder selling is painful! Where is the hope and potential in that? Demonstrate, show, and tell stories of success about how your product or service has empowered and enabled people to achieve their dreams. Communicate and demonstrate that feeling of hope, that unlocked potential will be realized. This simple dynamic is why testimonials have always been so powerful: other people are telling your story of hope for you.
2. Are you forcing yourself on prospects? That is not the act of someone with a message of hope! Use the power of the internet (especially business blogging) and word-of-mouth referrals to meet your prospects halfway. Remember that for long-term robust sales, it isn’t quantity, it’s quality. A high volume of cold calls that don’t ever convert is worthless compared to even a tiny handful of highly qualified prospects who are already predisposed to be open to your message of hope. Referrals save you the time of having to break down barriers to get to decision-makers.
3. Are you focused on what you want? Don’t be! Instead, focus on what your prospect wants. Your prospect wants that emotional rush of hopefulness and fulfilled potential. You can’t help them into that feeling unless you’re focused on what they want. That’s the big difference between merely “selling” and closing the deal. Remember that all buying decisions are emotional, not rational. If they were rational, your canned arguments for overcoming objections would work every time, like a computer program. You cannot offer hope to your prospect if you don’t know what she really wants. Listen to the subtext, the underlying needs and wants she’s communicating to you.
4. Are you concerned about a lack of resources? People who fail blame a lack of resources. People who succeed credit their resourcefulness. There is a huge difference in meaning between resources and resourcefullness. What resources did Ghandi have? If you’ve ever read or seen anything about the early American space program, you cannot help but be impressed by their resourcefulness. Resourcefulness requires knowledge, adaptibility, and imagination.

It has long been said: “sell the sizzle, not the steak.” While it doesn’t condense into a pithy soundbite, what I’m saying is: sell the hope of a satisfying, fulfilling meal and family togetherness, which are the rewards of a life well-lived. The purchase of a steak is an outward symbol of that feeling that reinforces and amplifies that feeling.

When you change from selling people to offering them hope, you can go from detesting selling to loving it.

Michael Martine has a vision of hope that entrepreneurs grow and strengthen their customer relations and revenue through blogging. To achieve this vision, he helps them set up and run successful blogs.

The engine of commerce is to buy low and sell high. The bigger the margin, the more profit you make. This rule applies in brick and mortar shops, as well as in online businesses. App-O-Rama took this idea one step further, to a way of making free money without having to handle any goods and without investing anything.

What is App-o-Rama

App-O-Rama is the process of making money by following these two steps:

1. Apply for a massive number of credit cards in the same time. In this way, you’ll have money at your disposal in new 0% credit lines.

2. Invest this free money in a high yield savings account. This will bring you additional money coming from the interest you get for such an account. Not mentioning the countless bonus offers, free plane tickets, gift cards, frequent flier miles and even more cash back.

How Will You Get All Those Credit Cards?

You need to be very fast when applying for the credit cards, because each application will likely lead to a temporary credit score reduction, which will limit your ability to be approved for new credit cards or lines. So you have to send out all applications in the same day, immediately one after the other, in order for your credit score to remain the same within the approval time frame.

App-o-Rama offers you some tools to start with: credit cards, savings accounts and credit tools, as well as a lot of tips and tricks to make it more profitable for you, in case you decide to try it.

What Are The Risks Of App-o-Rama

App-o-Rama can be riskless, but you have to carefully choose risk-free investments. A good discipline and attention to detail are required. Beware at minimum monthly payments which may be required in the terms and conditions of the credit cards. Make yourself a chart with the 0% interest expiry dates, so you avoid paying 15%-20% interest on the amounts you may forget to repay. Closely monitor your credit score, in order to know when it recovers enough, allowing you either to take another App-o-Rama, or to take some other kind of loan, or buying a house or a car.

If you think you’ll need an additional loan in the next year, App-o-Rama is not suitable for you, because your credit score won’t be so good within this time frame.

For any additional information, you can take a look at App-o-Rama website, which is well organized, offering clear information about a lot of cards and savings accounts.

I remembered this on the occasion of a recently made discovery: The Lifestyle Quotient (LQ). Coined by Tim Ferriss and based on the number of hours you work per week and the number of vacation days you take in a year, LQ is an index which gives indication about your lifestyle:

The lower your LQ, the higher your lifestyle IQ. Novice Lifestyle Designers can get to an LQ of 25-30 within 2-4 weeks, and experienced Lifestyle Designers are in the 0-5 LQ range. A 0 LQ means that income is 100% automated.

I tried the tool. According to Tim Ferriss, I’m an experienced Lifestyle Designer, because I got a LQ of 4. It means my income is almost 100% automated, which is great. The bad news is that I barely had any income last year, as a result of my lifestyle design, so I almost managed to automate the big zero :)
I feel like there is something missing in this LQ formula: it would have been more relevant if we divided the LQ index by the amount earned last year, thus leaving aside the zero income case, which would make the equation impossible.

What do you think? What is your LQ? Did you read Tim’s book, The 4-Hours Workweek? I read some reviews about it, and I visited Tim’s website: he has an interesting point of view, and I’m sure what he says is completely feasable. Yet, I can’t say that my big wish in life is to wander around the globe from one place to another, while outsourcing all things in my life that can be done by somebody else on my behalf.

But, who knows? Maybe I should give it a try.

Post Level TLAs offer a lot of interesting features:

• The ability to target highly specific popular blog posts. Now bloggers who cover various topics can also benefit from targeted ads (this is the case of All Tips and Tricks)

• Maximum of one ad below the post. This is good for both bloggers and advertisers: the posts will not be overcrowded with ads and the publishers will get maximum visibility

• Have a full 80 character title and 150 letter description. Lots of things to say for advertisers to attract clients

• Be positioned directly at the end of top posts making it ideal for click throughs.

• Each ad will be on a single page only.

If you are already a publisher, you have to activate the Post Level TLAs option from your account page. Advertisers will be able to see which blogs offer this opportunity, as they will be marked like this:

Do you want to see how your posts will look like? Check out my Post Level TLA’s page. If you consider buying one of those spots, leave a comment here and I’ll give you detailed statistics for that specific post.

Aren’t you a TLA publisher yet? Hurry up, Monetize Your Site!

Do you think that the TLA advertiser position fits you better? Find out how you can Buy Links. You can also benefit from the current promotion and get $100 in FREE Links!