That would be pretty awesome…wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, such a device doesn’t exist (at least as far as I know!) However, you can get pretty close to reading potential customers’ minds with the two methods I describe below…and if you’re anything like most business owners, you’ve probably never tried either one of these. Use both, and you may just be unstoppable…

The key to running a successful business is to align your talents and skills with something that people will pay good money for. It doesn’t matter how awesome your product or service is if no one will pay for it. And often, what we think people would pay for is totally off base. So how do we figure out what problems people will pay us to solve? Here are two ways–that are slightly less invasive than reading people’s minds!

1: Talk to people who are a part of your market.

This can seem initially scary or daunting, but that shouldn’t stop you from doing it. First, narrow down your business idea to a sentence or two, then ask them for their opinion on it. Pretty much everyone is open to giving an opinion.

If they respond with a neutral or negative reaction, ask them what they would pay for instead. The key word is pay for. Sure, it would be nice to have someone who goes out and gets a drink for you from the fridge every time you want it, but how much would you pay for that? These are all valid questions, and it’s perfectly okay to ask someone how much they would pay for your service.

If the answer is less money than you’d hope to earn from performing that service or selling that product, you have two options:

• Increase the value. Can you bundle your product with something else or add additional benefits? Again, this is something to ask your potential customer about. What would they pay extra for?
• Abandon the idea. This isn’t the worst-case scenario. In talking to your potential customers, you may come up with an even better idea, or decide this isn’t a target market you want to sell to. Better to fail fast than to have spent months trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. If this just doesn’t feel right, move on. Ideas are abundant!

If, on the other hand, your potential customer gives you a positive response with a price that you can live with, you may have a winner! Talk to other potential customers first–if several respond positively, then it’s time to invest further in this business.

2: Add the Google keyword tool to your arsenal.

I love the Google keyword tool. I’ve been known to spend hours on it. I use it for everything from blog post titles to forming entire businesses. And…it’s the closest thing to reading people’s minds as you’re going to get without tapping directly into their brain.

What is the Google keyword tool? It’s a free tool that lets you see what people are typing into Google. And it’s a gold mine–the #1 business research tool I use by far.

You can type in any word…I stick to common ones, like “business.” Sometimes I will add question words, like “how to”. (Typing in “how to business” gave me the inspiration for my post How to Start A Business with No Money, which ranked #1 in Google for “start a business with no money” for months!) You can also try “help” or “advice” to find people with problems that you might be able to help solve.

Once you’ve typed in your keywords, sort by “Global monthly search volume.” That’s, on average, how many people type that particular keyword into Google in a month. For blog posts, I generally target keywords with between 800-10,000 searches a month–more and it’s too competitive; less it’s not really worth optimizing for.

How I Came Up With the Business Idea for My Startup

I’ll let you in on a secret: The Google keyword tool is exactly how I came up with my idea for my new startup. I typed in “blogs” and noticed that nearly 250,000 people a month were searching for the keywords “best blogs”.

The next step is to look at what the search results are for the terms you find in the Google keyword tool. I typed “best blogs” (without the quotes) into Google and was disappointed with the results. Where was the dynamic, social site I was expecting? There wasn’t one. After a few months of thinking about it–the idea would not leave me alone!–I decided to create one.

It’s important to remember, too, that a business can’t exist in a vacuum. What is interesting and worth money to you may not be interesting (or worth paying for) to anyone else. Though this can hurt, it’s best to get it out of the way quickly so you can use your skills in a way that will benefit even more people–which will make your business grow faster.

To find inspiration for starting a business or creating a product, the best thing you can do is tap into what other people are thinking about–either by asking them directly, looking at what they type into Google, or, best of all: all of the above!

A Note About My Survey

This post was inspired by a reader question from my recent survey. Thank you to all of you who responded!

You may remember I promised 2 $10 Amazon.com gift cards to 2 lucky random survey-takers. I randomly selected and emailed the winners, who both claimed their gift cards. Thanks again–your responses were truly amazing, and should provide blog post fodder for many months to come!

Recommended Reading:

• This Simple Saying May Kill Your Next Business Idea. Most products aren’t anything completely new or unique–they’re just a different take on a product that is already out there.
• Are You Ready? One of the most powerful posts I’ve ever written–that you probably haven’t read.
• Are You Making This Common Mistake–That Could Ruin Your Business? I pinpoint one mistake I’ve seen over and over and share a true story of how it nearly killed a business.

Meet me at SXSW

Speaking of South by Southwest, I’ll be there all week for Interactive! Will I see you there? I’m not organizing a meetup or speaking–you will mostly be able to find me in the blogger’s lounge. Stop by and meet me, get a sneak peek at my startup, and generally hang out.

Hope to see you there!

Or…meet me at IMPACT!

After SXSW, I come back home to San Diego, where I’ll be a panelist at the IMPACT conference. IMPACT is put on by Ken McArthur, who is one of the most genuinely nice marketers I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. If you’re going to be around 3/19-3/21, stop by–it’s only $97 for the whole weekend, and you will get to meet some Internet business greats.

IMPACT is a great place to get your Internet business questions answered, meet with other entrepreneurs, and interact with a great group of people. Sign up now for just $97 (and no, I don’t get any money for promoting this…in fact, I’m giving my own time to be a part of this just because I enjoy the company at these events!)

Erica.Biz Nominated for An Award!

Wow–I’ve been nominated for a Plutus Award! This set of awards honors the best blogs and companies in personal finance. I’ve been nominated in the Best Personal Finance Blog for Entrepreneurs category…and I’m up against two of the largest personal finance blogs and a huge community website!

I’m the huge underdog in this race…please vote for my blog. There are only a few days left to get your vote in. Oh, and you can vote for other companies or blogs in other categories if you want, but you don’t have to…so don’t feel obligated to fill out the whole form if you don’t know any of the contenders in a particular category. Just vote for me, Erica.Biz, in the “Best Personal Finance Blog for Entrepreneurs” category. Thanks to Flexo from Consumerism Commentary for putting these awards together!

Adam from Man vs. Debt’s New Ebook!

I’m pleased to have been a part of the group that was sending Adam Baker tons of feedback on his new ebook, Unautomate Your Finances.

Though I have to admit I’m not a huge fan of the name, the book itself is great. Baker takes you step-by-step through his journey of getting out of debt and sorting through tough life decisions about money. I wish I would have had this book in 2007…it would have helped me save thousands of dollars!

Baker covers the basics nicely, including how to simplify your finances, how to get rid of credit card debt, and how to figure out where all your money goes every month!

If you’re in debt and feel a bit overwhelmed, or if you’re stuck wondering why, at the end of the month, you seem to have more bills than income, then I recommend you pick up a copy of Baker’s book. Go through it step by step and start getting your finances on the right track. I can attest from personal experience–it doesn’t matter how much money you make–if you don’t know where your money is going every month, making more money isn’t going to help. Get your finances under control first.

Baker’s book also includes a few free bonuses. The first is a 27-minute interview with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. If you enjoy Leo’s take on minimalism and simplicity, you will really enjoy this interview.

There’s also an interview with J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly–one of the most popular personal finance blogs. Plus, there are some other bonuses that make Baker’s system worth far more than just $17.

Pick up your copy of Unautomate Your Finances today and get a pile of awesome bonuses for just $17.

Lisa Morosky’s Discounts for A Good Cause

My VA, Lisa Morosky, has a sister, Kim Lamendola, who will be traveling with a team of teachers from Vanguard Classical School in Denver, CO to Sierra Leone, West Africa to conduct teacher in-services for the teachers living there. Kim and others will be providing the national teaching staffs in Sierra Leone with staff development, further learning, and opportunities to expand the education programs within the local communities.

Lisa is helping organize a donation drive where you give $25 to her good cause and, in return, get discounts on a bunch of great products (including her VA services, which I highly recommend!) I’ve included a $20.00 coupon to Guest Post Secrets in the mix, so if you didn’t get a chance to pick it up during my 3-day special, here’s a good opportunity. And if you need a VA–especially if you’re a blogger–here’s an unprecedented opportunity to pick Lisa’s services up at a discount.

Donate to a good cause and receive huge discounts on tons of products!

That’s all for now…whew!

Look for another meaty business blog post here on Thursday. I hope to see you at South by Southwest and/or IMPACT!

(Don’t forget to vote for me for the Plutus Awards. It takes about 30 seconds.)

If I had to count the phrase that has killed more interesting business ideas than any other, “That’s been done before” would be it.

Ironically, it may also be the phrase that will make your business hugely successful…with one caveat.

Web Hosting–That’s Definitely Been Done Before!

When I started my web hosting company in 2001, I heard a lot of “That’s been done before,” as well as some other scary things. This was 2001, after all, in Silicon Valley…the dot-com bust. Tumbleweeds were blowing through empty datacenters. (Almost literally!) Companies were liquidating equipment at 8 cents on the dollar. “Everyone” was going bankrupt.

Instead of listening to “that’s been done before,” I went headfirst into a “dying” industry.

We provided dedicated servers and colocation. So did thousands of other companies.

We provided hosting in San Jose, CA. So did at least ten other companies (at least five of which were in the same datacenter we were.)

Do Your Customers Ask You to Compete on Price?

In such a commoditized industry, where customers didn’t understand the technical details, they often resorted to price as a qualifier. After all, if you know absolutely nothing about two items, and you have to buy one or the other, and they both look about the same, you’ll probably pick the cheaper one.

We had to find a way to stand out. Price definitely wasn’t it–that was a race to the bottom. I was competing with a guy who made big bucks as a network admin and did hosting in his spare time for fun, and another who ran his “office” out of his house. Neither had employees. Neither had a real profit motive.

I had a real office that cost a few thousand dollars a month, taxes to pay, and employees who depended on my company for their livelihoods.

How To Do the Same Thing As Everyone Else and Succeed Wildly

One of the most important things I learned from my journey is that you can do the same thing as everyone else and still succeed…as long as you have them beat on one option.

Better yet, that option need not be the same for all your customers!

I picked two ways to stand out:

The first, search engine optimization, was a specialty of mine. I had previously worked for a SEO company. At one point, sometime around 1997, I realized I had read every single article on the Internet regarding marketing. (There weren’t too many sites then!) But I knew most of what there was to know about search engine optimization.

With a few hours of work over a couple weeks, I had my site ranking #1 for two keywords people searched for: “bay area colocation” and “san jose colocation”. (Colocation is a type of web hosting.)

Even though those two search terms only accounted for about 100 visitors a month to my site, it was enough. I pulled in one contract that eventually netted my company over $12,000/month in revenue, and many other smaller customers as well.

The second–customer service–was harder. Some customers simply didn’t care about customer service–as long as the network stayed up, they were happy. Since they didn’t form an attachment to our staff, they tended to come and go.

But the customers who did care about our customer service spread the word. They told others that we had a real office where we could meet them face-to-face…where they could work on their equipment or share a pot of coffee with our staff…even an extra little office where they could plug in their laptop and work from our site for an hour or a day.

That we had employees who remembered their name and the names of their staff members; we were flexible and willing to work with them.

Make Referrals A Huge Part of Your Business

One-third of our new customers came in as referrals from other customers, even though we had no affiliate program or any way of compensating those customers. Our customers were just so amazed to find an oasis of real people in a tangled web of of technology and numbers that they spread the word.

Another example of great customer service showed up recently in the TV show “Undercover Boss”. The CEO of 7-Eleven, Joe DePinto, went undercover and masqueraded as a minimum-wage employee in his own company. His first stop was a store in New York that sold more coffee than any other store.

In the store, he met Dolores, the store manager, who had been managing this 7-Eleven for 18 years. Amazingly, she knew every customer by name. Even though the store was packed with customers, she took the time to greet each individual and have a quick chat with them. DePinto is blown away. “She’s like everybody’s mom or grandmother,” he says.

A customer reveals to him that Dolores not only has five children, but is undergoing dialysis twice a week while she waits for a kidney donor. In the meantime, Dolores is happily chatting up the customers, giving no signs that she has any health issues whatsoever.

“That’s why we’re selling 2500 cups of coffee a day,” DePinto concludes. “Not because we have great coffee, but because we have Dolores.”

I was touched by this story. Even in the most commoditized industries, the simplest things stand out: Remembering customers’ names. Unabashedly admitting your mistakes and fixing problems openly. Delivering high customer satisfaction.

Next time someone tells you “That’s been done before,” be proud. Because it’s been done before, a market exists. You can go into that market with a better product or better service and be extremely successful. And remember, you don’t have to have bigger numbers than the next guy, or beat his price. You just have to be better at one thing your customers care strongly about.

Recommended Reading:

• Watch the full episode of Undercover Boss online. I highly recommend watching every episode of this show. It’s a fantastic look into how some of the biggest companies work.
• How To Choose A Business. If you have “too many ideas” and don’t know which one to pursue, this post is for you!
• Beat the Big Corporations by Delivering the Best Customer Experience. Reveals one of the most common mistakes I see when people first start a business.

It used to be, if you wanted to survey your customers or readers, you would have to pony up some hard-earned dollars for a paid online survey tool. In fact, many of these tools carry a monthly fee, and some don’t easily let you export your data–holding you (and your survey results!) hostage. That is no longer the case.

Video: Create Surveys for Free with Google Docs

With Google Docs, a free tool, anyone can create a good-looking survey. Your can accept results online, and have the results in a spreadsheet that you can then export to Excel or OpenOffice, or send to others as a spreadsheet.

Google Docs will generate the same great graphs that other survey tools will, and even supports advanced features like directing survey takers to certain “pages” of the survey based on their answers to previous questions.

I show you exactly how to set up your own free online survey in about 10 minutes with Google Docs in this step-by-step video:

[0:28] To get started, go to http://docs.google.com.
[1:15] Once you’re in to Google Docs, go to “Create New” and then click “Form”.
[1:28] Name your survey.
[1:51] A walkthrough of the various question types: Text; paragraph text; multiple choice; checkboxes; choose from a list; scale; grid.
[3:00] How to edit, duplicate, and delete a question.

[3:32] How to set up multiple pages and set up a “flow” for your survey so survey takers are directed to a different page based on their answer to a question.
[5:00] How to quickly move a question from one page of your survey to another.
[5:20] Editing the text that people see once they complete the survey.
[5:50] Save your survey.
[5:58] How to email your survey to others.

[6:10] How to embed the survey onto your blog or website–it’s so simple! This is one of my favorite features of the Google Docs survey tool.
[6:28] Select a theme (design) for your survey with a couple clicks.
[7:00] What it looks like once people respond to your survey.
[7:45] Showing the pretty graphs that the tool creates of all your responses.
[8:41] How to stop people from completing your survey once it’s over.
[8:55] How to export your survey to Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, and other formats.

Next time you need to create a survey, try Google Docs. It’s free, allows (theoretically) unlimited responses, and is quite easy to use.

Tip for Business Owners and Bloggers:

If you’re running a business or a blog, I recommend surveying your customers/readers at least once a year, and preferably even more often than that. If you haven’t ever surveyed your customers, there’s no better time than the present–even if you only have a few of them. One or two more sales because you are able to offer additional services they need will more than pay back the small amount of time required to create a survey.

If you’re currently paying for an online survey tool, Google Docs has the potential to save you hundreds of dollars a year, so definitely check it out.

Enjoy!

Recommended Reading:

• My YouTube channel. Please subscribe there if you would like notifications of new videos I post.
• How to Make a Mind Map. My last how-to video, where I walk you step-by-step through another free online tool to create mind maps!

I’ve used several different options to get logos throughout the years:

1. I’ve designed a logo myself.
2. I’ve hired a designer I knew personally.
3. I’ve hired a logo design company.
4. And, most recently, I’ve outsourced logo creation through both 99designs and Design Outpost.

In this post, I will run through each of the above four options in detail, and suggest the best course of action for getting you a great logo design at a low price–based on my own experience.

Option #1: Design It Yourself

Doing logo design yourself is cheapest, but good logo design is difficult, and your result will usually be sub-par.

You can see some of my work at the top of this page–I designed the logo for erica.biz. Though I like it, I’ll probably have it professionally redesigned at some point.

Example logo I created myself:

erica.biz, 2007.

Option #2: Hire Someone You Know

Hiring someone you know personally is great, especially if you are already familiar with his or her work. If you have seen the designer’s portfolio and spot several logos you love in it, this might be the right choice. I have done this before with a friend whose portfolio was fantastic and was 100% satisfied with the logo I received.

If you don’t like his/her portfolio, or the designer doesn’t have a portfolio, steer clear! It’s not worth the risk. The portfolio needs to have several logos in it that you fall in love with. Even if the designer comes highly recommended, if his or her “style” isn’t what you’re looking for, you won’t get a great logo.

Cons: Hiring someone who bills him/herself as a “logo designer” is frequently expensive, and if you don’t like the result, you may lose a friend as well as your money.

Example logos created by someone I knew:

Simpli Hosting, 2003. Created by friend (I think she comped this one in exchange for hosting.)

10for10.com, 2005. Created by the same friend who did the Simpli logo.

Option #3: Hire a Logo Design Company

Hiring a logo design company can be hit or miss. I hired one recently for Be The Authority–a new site I’ve been working on that I will unveil later this year. The company is well-known online and has several logo designers working at their location. I paid $395.00 for a logo with their “entry level” logo design package–a fair price.

Unfortunately, the designer who was assigned to me was terrible. She didn’t get the concept I wanted. I finally escalated it to a manager and had her removed from the project. The second designer was great and got me an excellent logo within a few days.

So, with reservations, I say this is a reasonable route, and will probably get you a nice logo. Just don’t be afraid to have the logo design company “fire” your designer if you get the short straw and your logo isn’t what you want!

Example logos created by design companies:

Be The Authority, 2009. Created by logo design company for $395. Most expensive logo I’ve bought to date.

Revamped Simpli.biz logo, 2006. Created by a design company–we won a “worst web hosting website” contest (yes, seriously!) and this was part of the prize!

Option #4: Crowdsource Your Logo Design

Finally, the subject of much controversy–”crowdsourcing” your logo. I’ve done this twice–once through Design Outpost and, more recently, through 99designs. Let’s walk through the experience.

What is crowdsourcing? Crowdsourcing refers to having an open contest for your logo and letting designers compete to win your business. With both 99designs and Design Outpost, you pay up front and set the price for your logo. You then create a “brief” — a description of what you want — and sit back and wait.

In a few days, designers from around the world submit their prospective designs. It’s your job to rank each design and give feedback to each designer.

Eventually, after a set time, your contest ends, and you pick an overall winner, who then sends you the logo in either PSD (Photoshop format; suitable for Web logos) or AI format (Adobe Illustrator–better for printing.)

Why Is Crowdsourcing Controversial?

Sounds great, right? It is–for those of us who are business owners. There is a huge community of designers who hate the concept. They call it “spec work”, meaning they do the work, but only get paid if they are the winner. In fact, some designers have even banded together to create No Spec, a website “[uniting] those who support the notion that spec work devalues the potential of design and ultimately does a disservice to the client.”

They state that many designers on 99designs and other crowdsourcing sites use stock images–images created by others. The images used are not licensed to be used in logos, and you (as the company owner and recipient of the logo) are responsible for making sure your logo doesn’t use any copyrighted work or illegally licensed images.

Of course, a designer you hire could very well use stock photography illegally as well, but it’s likely that a designer who is aware of No-Spec is also aware of how to properly use stock photography in a logo.

So, is a logo design just a logo design, or is it the heart of a “brand awareness strategy” where you will need to have 8-hour intensive “strategy sessions” with a high-priced team who then presents you with reams of paper on how to grow your brand?

There is a time and a place for both, but I’m going to take the stance that unless your company is already well into 7 figures a year and pushing 8 figures, that you don’t need the latter.

What you need is to ship (as Seth Godin would say), and you can do that with a logo. And if you want a great logo, done quickly, I recommend crowdsourcing it.

Having used both 99designs and DesignOutpost, I’d recommend 99designs. I paid less for my logo on DesignOutpost, but 99designs got me far more designers and designs to choose from.

Example logos created via design contests:

Inspiring Innovators, 2008. DesignOutpost contest. $250 to the winner, plus $25 to DesignOutpost. Total $275.

And, finally, my newest logo–for my upcoming startup company:

BestBlogs.net, 2010. 99designs contest. $310 to the winner, $70 fee to 99designs. Total $380.

How Does 99designs Work?

I strongly recommend you create an account and walk through the site as if you were a logo designer to get a feel for it. In particular, you’ll want to click “browse projects” and then “logo design” on the right, then sort by the “prize” column. This gives you a feel for how much others are paying.

After looking at this, I set my logo prize to $310. This is the “eBay mentality.” I saw a bunch of people who were at $300, and noted that my logo would be right above theirs when the contests were sorted by prize. (If you want to be really catty, you can set your logo prize at $311 or $351.)

The minimum prize is $150, but I don’t recommend this, as you won’t get a lot of choices. I’d recommend staying just above $300. (Never use a prize such as $295–there are a lot of people at $300 that your logo will be buried below.)

Writing Your Title and Subtitle

Once you set your price, you will need to write a title, subtitle, and “brief” for your contest.

The key with the title and subtitle is to market your logo contest to designers. The title should attract their attention and draw them in. Don’t use titles and subtitles like “We sell blah, blah, X, Y, and Z.” Boring!!

My title was: “BestBlogs.net = Hot new Web 2.0 startup needs bold logo!”
And my subtitle: “Designers: Looking for a high-profile branding project to put in your portfolio? This is it!”

Notice how my title, and especially my subtitle, catered to the designers instead of being all about me? This was one of the keys to having my contest be a huge success.

Writing Your Brief

Your brief is the most important part of your logo design contest. All of the designers will read it. It should contain:

• The colors you want in your logo
• Examples of other logos you like, and what you like and dislike about those logos
• Who your customers and target audience are (be specific!)
• Branding requirements (capitalization, spacing, etc.)
• What you do want (I wrote, in part: “Looking for a clean design that can easily scale down to a mobile website.”)
• What you don’t want (I wrote: “NO: cartoons; animals; stock photos; clipart; cheesy fonts”)

If you haven’t written a brief before, read several other contest briefs and pick and choose what you like from those.

There is a massive stash of great logos at logopond.com; go there, find at least 5 logos you like, and copy and paste each logo’s web address into your brief.

Should You Pay 99designs to “Promote” Your Logo Design?

Next, you get to choose some optional “promotion” methods that 99designs charges for, like making your listing bold. I didn’t choose any of these options and my contest still came out well, so I can’t say I recommend any of them.

Finally, pay your money to 99designs.

You’re all set at this point! Your contest is running.

Tips for After You’ve Submitted Your Logo

There is one thing you want to do at this point, and that’s to promote your logo contest to your fans and customers. I posted about mine several times on Twitter, for instance. Email your customers, Tweet about it, blog it, and let people know.

Guaranteeing Your Contest

Once you have received 10 logo designs, you can guarantee your contest. That means that you can no longer request a refund from 99designs, and that the winner will receive payment. This will greatly increase the number of logo designs you receive. If you have even a couple of decent logos submitted, you will definitely want to do this.

I did this when I had about 20 logos in, and 150 more logos poured in after I did it…so guaranteeing your contest is definitely effective.

Rating Designers’ Logos

Within a day or two, you will start to get logo submissions from designers, and then you can rate them. At the time my contest ended, my contest had 179 entries. Holy cow! I wasn’t expecting that many, and rating and giving feedback to each one takes time. Make sure to set aside some time each day to go through and give feedback–probably 20 minutes or so.

If you’re not sure how to rate logos, take a look at some logo design tips. Smashing Magazine has a good article on effective logo design. Also–ask your customers and potential customers. (If you have friends who aren’t potential customers, ask them, too, but weigh your decision heavily in favor of those who are or will be your customers.)

Ultimately, it’s up to you to pick a logo that looks decent and that others like, as well. Here’s my contest. Out of several logos I rated 5 stars, I ultimately picked the one I did because it was simple, straightforward, and scaled down to a mobile website easily. Your criteria may be different. (Remember, if you plan to use it in print, you probably don’t want it to have more than 2 colors plus black–make sure to specify this in your brief.)

Correspond with the designer whose logo you like most via the private message function at 99designs. Designers are required to state whether their logo violates any copyrights or uses any unlicensed stock art. If the designer says that his or her logo is original, go for it. Congratulations–your business has a logo!

Conclusion

In my opinion, 99designs and other “crowdsourcing” sites will give you a logo that is cheaper than a typical “logo designer” would charge that will be of similar quality.

It is also my strong opinion that a full-on “brand strategy” is much better saved for when you have already hit the $1 million mark. If you are running a small business, spend your money on something that will directly increase your bottom line and/or give you more time–hiring someone to do “time sink” work is a good choice, as is spending on equipment and direct marketing/sales.

Finally, a word of caution: don’t be cheap. Make the decision to invest at least $350-$400 in your logo. If you can’t afford that, it might be wisest to go without a logo for a few months. Then, make it a priority once your budget opens up a bit.

Try out 99designs for your next logo design. (Note: I don’t make any money from this link or any other link in this post.)

Recommended Reading:

• How I Turned My Mediocre Website Into A Million-Dollar Business. Can a terrible website actually make you a million dollars?
• 20 Scam-Free Ways to Make Money Online Fast. I look at 99designs and other sites from the perspective of a logo designer.
• Why Entrepreneurs Fail (Will You Avoid These Three Traps?) Trap #3 is particularly relevant for your logo design.

I bought erica.biz and moved my blog over to it in December 2007. At the time, I had negligible traffic and only 70 subscribers–mostly my real-life friends.

By December 2009, two short years later, I was getting over 15,000 visitors a month from Google alone–and over 30,000 unique visitors a month total.

Now, I’m going to show you exactly how to do the same thing–get a massive wave of traffic and visitors to your blog or website–for far less than you would pay for pay-per-click advertising!

I’ll show you how to get targeted traffic so you can make sure the people you get are interested in your product or service.

And I’ll show you how to use a simple strategy to rank #1 for Google for keywords that people are actually typing in…like “earn money online”, for which erica.biz ranked #1 out of over 24 million results for several months.

Best of all, I’m offering all of this at a groundbreaking price (to thank you for being a subscriber) so that you have absolutely no excuses to not take me up on this limited-time offer.

Introducing Guest Post Secrets

Here is a simple strategy, step by step, that shows you how to get top bloggers to not only link to your site, but feature your product or service.

I’ve used this same system to drive over 4,000 people to erica.biz in a single day. Another 2-day period using this system brought in over 700 new subscribers to my mailing list. In fact, if you found me from another popular blog like I Will Teach You to Be Rich or Get Rich Slowly, you’ve seen this strategy in action.

Best of all…you can use this whole strategy, over and over again, and it won’t cost you a dime to drive this traffic to your site. The top bloggers will happily help you for free. I show you how.

How much would it cost you on Google Adwords to drive that much traffic to your site? Even if you are only paying 10 cents per click (which, let’s face it, is pretty cheap these days!), it would cost you four hundred dollars to drive 4,000 visitors to your website or blog.

I did it for free, and you can do it, too, within 7 days of taking action and investing in Guest Post Secrets.

Take a look at Guest Post Secrets today and get a breakthrough introductory price!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Who is Guest Post Secrets designed for?
A. Anyone with a blog or website who would like to drive targeted traffic from the Internet’s hottest blogs to their site without paying a dime for that traffic!

Q. Who wouldn’t buy Guest Post Secrets?
A. If you don’t already have a blog or website, this isn’t for you. But if you do–and you want a massive wave of traffic to your site–buy it.

Q. Do I have to do any work?
A. You’ll need to write an article. But it’s not as hard as you think, even if you don’t fancy yourself as a writer. Once you are inside Guest Post Secrets, I’ll show you some great examples of easy articles you can write and exactly how to get the big bloggers to say “yes”.

Q. I really need someone to walk me through this step-by-step. Does Guest Post Secrets do that?
A. I include step-by-step email templates that are foolproof, so you can feel confident emailing even the biggest bloggers. I explain the entire process, including what to do if you get stuck.

Q. Do I need to be super-techie to do this?
A. Not at all! If you can write a document in Microsoft Word, you’ll do absolutely fine. If you’re already writing a blog, this will be a cinch. I walk you through it step-by-step.

Q. What if it doesn’t work?
A. I mentioned Guest Post Secrets earlier on erica.biz without even linking to it, and several people bought it. One of them, Katrina McQuarrie, wrote me back an (unsolicited) email that said this. I’ll let the results speak for themselves:

“I greatly enjoyed the videos in Guest Post Secrets. Not only did they sound and look professional, you have a very good speaking voice and a great way of breaking things down step by step. 

I especially liked how you called out specific resources and provided cut and paste email templates.  You made it so easy to start guest posting; all the tools were right there for me.  In the 6 days since I bought your product, I’ve already sent out one guest post (will be published Monday), received a request to guest post from a second blog, and queried a third site and been accepted to do 2 for them.  (I offered two possible topics and the blog author liked them both!)

Thanks for taking the time to make up such a helpful product. It was just what I needed."

-Unsolicited email from Katrina McQuarrie, who runs Kick-Ass Genealogy

If, for some reason, you aren’t 100% satisfied with Guest Post Secrets, you have a full year to request a no-hassle complete refund.

Q. I’ve heard of guest posting, and have read blog posts about it. What does Guest Post Secrets have that those blog posts don’t?
A. I go far more in-depth than anyone I’ve ever seen. In fact, I even bought another “guest posting” information product and it didn’t have the concrete information mine has. Just some of many examples:

• How to get your blog or website to rank highly in Google for search terms using guest posting
• The most important part of your guest post (something that every single post I’ve ever read about guest posting neglects to mention)
• How to find blogs in your niche to guest post on
• Exactly, word for word, what to say to get big bloggers to say “yes”
• What to do if you don’t have a blog

There’s no single blog post that will cover all of this information. In fact, the videos in Guest Post Secrets have over 30 minutes of content, plus downloadable step-by-step email templates. I’ve made this as foolproof as possible, because I want you all to have access to this fantastic source of waves of free traffic.

Guest Post Secrets is $67, but for you only, since you read my blog, use coupon ERICABIZ to get $20 off–just $47 for a limited time!

Don’t let the low price fool you–this is amazing, never-before-seen, high-quality video content. I want to give you the first access to this product. Imagine, in just one week (or less!), getting a huge wave of traffic to your blog or website without having to pay a dime for it. How liberating!

This is the #1 strategy I’ve used to grow erica.biz, and now it is yours. Only $47 with your special coupon.

Invest in Guest Post Secrets now.

If you own a blog or a website and need more targeted traffic to it, don’t pass up this opportunity. There won’t ever be a lower price for Guest Post Secrets (and frankly, I should charge a lot more!)

Invest Now!

Stop throwing your money away on AdWords, advertising, and other paid traffic strategies.

Purchase Guest Post Secrets now.

Questions? Post them as comments below, or contact me directly.

Please note: Your credit card statement will show “Inspiring Innovators.” That’s my company’s name.

I look forward to seeing you on the inside of Guest Post Secrets!

Purchase Guest Post Secrets now.

The harder you try to succeed, the more failures you will accumulate. Here’s my story:

Flexo’s Failure

I enjoy performing in stage plays, and a play was the scene of one of my failures. I’ve always been the last actor to memorize my lines in the script, being “on book” usually through the final rehearsals before the first performance. My lack of preparedness finally caught up to me while in mid-performance my recurring dream came true: I forgot my lines.

None of the actors covered for me, and I wasn’t about to ask, “Line?” while in front of an audience. A beat passed and I said the first thing that came to mind: a line from another scene in the play. The actors then continued, skipping a few pages ahead, and we adjusted.

I was told the audience and some of the other actors never realized anything was wrong, and my quick recovery saved me from any further embarrassment. After this experience, I made an effort to fully prepare in advance for every situation I enter.

Five Steps to Get Through Your Fear of Failure

Here are my suggestions for handling failure before and after it occurs so you are ready to bounce back:

1. Redefine the traditional concept of failure. There are no failures, only learning opportunities. Choose from a number of cliches that all say roughly the same thing. Like a top 40 record, these motivational nuggets about failure are overplayed and pedestrian, but truth lies within.

To be a successful entrepreneur, or a successful human being of any type, you can’t let major drawbacks discourage you. If you find it difficult to change your mindset by approaching a negative situation with a positive outlook, you are more likely to give up before realizing your potential.

2. Accept responsibility for your situation. As an entrepreneur or business owner, you have control of your situation. If you didn’t get the results you expected, you did something wrong. An individual might be inclined to blame others or the environment for negative outcomes while crediting himself for positive outcomes. However, someone who recognizes his role regardless of the outcome is more likely to succeed.

Since I generally write about personal finance, let me take an example from the financial industry. I’ve been speaking with and listening to the CEOs of major corporations over the last few years, and they all have something in common. In times of great prosperity, with their companies earning double-digit returns while watching their share prices soar, they are quick to credit their management and employees for wonderful talent and endless dedication.

But when their company begins losing money hand over fist, suddenly the cause of this despair is the “overall market” or “investor sentiment.” It is never the fault of management ill-prepared to handle their customers’ needs during any market cycle. If you are rationalizing your setbacks with similar reasons, you are in denial. Eliminate your excuses to succeed.

3. Learn from your mistakes. Once you’ve accepted responsibility, you will be in a position to fully analyze the path that led you to this point. Make a note of what you could do differently that might lead to a more favorable outcome. In some cases, the best options aren’t clear, and a certain amount of experimentation will help.

Communicate with people who are on a similar path or have succeeded in similar endeavors. You might be able to find some shortcuts by learning from other people’s mistakes, but your own experiences will always be the best teachers. Life is short, so you shouldn’t waste it by making the same mistakes repeatedly.

4. Be flexible and quick to adapt. Be ready to react to changing trends, unclear customer needs, and your competition.

American car companies were not ready to adjust to a consumer marketplace that left Hummers behind in favorable of smaller, more cost-efficient and fuel-efficient vehicles. Their businesses suffered not only because they failed to predict the change in attitude, but because these companies took too much time before adapting.

5. Ignore negative influencers. It is important to surround yourself with believers. While being a success when everyone thinks you will fail makes a great public relations pitch, the truth is almost always different.

In order to bounce back, you need people who are going to root for you and support you — not necessarily financially, but emotionally. People who repeatedly remind you of your obstacles and who show no faith in your abilities will do more harm to your success than you will yourself. When you temporarily fail, the “I told you sos” will start to come out of the woodwork.

You might be able to find motivation within the idea of proving the naysayers wrong, but this is rarely a natural form of motivation. For the most part, negative people are just noise. You want to work with people who amplify you and your goals. Get rid of the noise, turn up the amplification, and it will be easier to hear yourself.

You will more than likely experience some form of failure several times before you get to be a success. You must bounce back, remember your lines, and get back on your path with minimal distraction. Your goals might change thanks to what you’ve learned through the experience, but there is no need to abandon your plans.

Erica’s note: Congratulations to Flexo–this is the first guest post I’ve run on erica.biz! Although I plan to keep this blog mostly in my own voice, I’m happy to post the occasional guest post.

I’m looking for your feedback: Do you like guest posts on this blog? What would you like to see more or less of? Feel free to leave your note in the comments or contact me directly.

Recommended Reading:

• Consumerism Commentary. This is Flexo’s blog, where he talks about personal finance and shares personal stories of financial success and failure. Take a look!
• They’re All Going to Laugh At You. Let’s face it. When you start a business, you’re probably going to fail…
• What Just Isn’t Working For You? Something in your life that’s broken? Here’s how I figured out a solution to a problem that was really bugging me.

My Upcoming Product

In January, I will formally release my first information product! It’s called Guest Post Secrets, and it’s designed to help up-and-coming bloggers get a massive wave of thousands of targeted visitors and subscribers to their blog. Guest Post Secrets will sell for under $50, which will be well worth it when you consider how much it will grow your blog.

Guest Post Secrets consists of approximately thirty minutes of video content that I created using Camtasia–a piece of software that records your computer screen while you talk into an attached microphone.

In Guest Post Secrets, I explain what a guest post is and how much traffic it can drive to your blog. A typical guest post I write sends me about 4,000 new visitors. Over half of my 7,000 subscribers have found me through guest posts I’ve done, and my last guest post brought me over 700 new subscribers. I believe anyone can grow a huge blog by guest posting, but most bloggers don’t know how to guest post or aren’t getting responses when they email other bloggers for guest posts.

The current guest posting guides that are out there aren’t very deep. Guest Post Secrets goes crazy deep–showing you the exact email I send to top bloggers to get them to say “yes”, exactly what you need to say in your followup email, how to format your guest post, and examples of guest posts anyone can write to drive tons of traffic back to their blog.

All told, it’s about 30 minutes of video content, plus a “10 Mistakes” PDF that goes over the most common guest post mistakes, plus the email text that you can download and send to top bloggers–and some as-yet-unnanounced bonuses that are going to absolutely rock!

Earlier, I wrote about a four-step process I use whenever I create a new product. I used this method to create Guest Post Secrets. Now, I’ll run it through with you, show you the cost breakdown, as well as showing you each step I took to make my three videos into a product.

The Breakdown–Step 1: Determine A Market

I created my Blog Success Manifesto and released it for free. With over 2,000 downloads in the first few months, plus rave reviews and tons of people asking me for more information, I quickly determined that there was a market of bloggers who wanted more traffic to their blogs.

But a lingering question remained: Would up-and-coming bloggers pay for quality information, or did they all only want free stuff?

Step 2: Decide What Your Product Will Be

Earlier in 2009, I quietly took on a few clients who paid a monthly fee and got personal access to me. They were all interested in learning about blogging.

I created many videos before finally creating three videos, in a series, that I felt summed up the best way to quickly get traffic and grow a blog–no matter whether you were starting from scratch or just wanted to grow your community faster.

I had a decision to make: Should I release this now, as a less expensive product, or keep adding to it and making it a bigger, more expensive product?

I’ve heard conflicting advice from this from other Internet marketers. Some say releasing a less expensive product undercuts your value and time spent creating the product. Others say it helps establish you and get your name out there.

Finally, I decided I needed to get a product out there. I couldn’t know whether people were willing to pay for this information without releasing a product into the market. Releasing a quality, yet inexpensive, product, would allow me to test the market quickly and either poll my customers to create a larger product later or–if it bombed–to move on to a different, more lucrative market.

Step 3: Actually Create the Product

I sent my unpolished videos off to a fantastic video editor in the Philippines, who, for $3/hour, edited out all my pauses, “um”s, and mistakes, and sent them back to me as Flash video files.

Total spent:
Camtasia: $292 at Amazon (cheaper than Camtasia’s website)–but get the 30-day free trial to start out.
Video editing: Under $10.

Next step: I needed a name! I brainstormed several names in my trusty notebook, finally deciding on Guest Post Secrets. I registered guestpostsecrets.com through eNom–my chosen domain name reseller. I already have hosting through ServInt.

Total cost to register the domain name: $10.

I’ve been a web designer since 1996, but design is one of the easiest things to outsource–if you know where to look. I had some good recommendations in this area, and decided quickly on Killer Covers.

I immediately ordered a Killer Website Brand Pack from Killer Covers, and they turned around a fantastic mini-site design in a couple days, complete with HTML files I could edit myself and insert my sales letter into. I also had a professional-looking cover graphic for my product. (If you’ve ever wondered how product creators get those graphics that look like product boxes, CD cases, or book covers, Killer Covers does exactly that!)

Total cost for Killer Covers website and e-cover design: $297. (Note: If you just want a cover, that’s a lot cheaper…check Killer Covers for more information.)

Meanwhile, Lisa, my primary VA, was building out the back end of the product. She installed Wishlist Member, set up Wordpress with the correct plugins, and inserted the videos into the site. She configured Wishlist Member to work with my shopping cart and merchant account. I could now accept payments!

I added some minor site tweaks, and the back end was ready in just a couple days.

Total costs: Merchant account: Powerpay = $10/month (plus transaction fees)
Shopping cart: 1ShoppingCart = $99/month
Lisa’s time: 5 hours @ $26/hour = $130
Wishlist Member: $97 for a 1-site license

I also had another VA work on what would become an amazing upsell product: a list of 100+ blogs that accept guest posts. He spent 12 hours compiling a great list of blogs, complete with Alexa rankings, categories, etc. This has already been worth its weight in gold to me alone; I’ve discovered several popular blogs I was unaware of that I can write guest posts for.

I’ll sell this as an optional add-on for a low price.

Cost: 12.5 hours at $3.33/hour: $41.63.

Step 4: Sell Your Product

Creating a sales letter can definitely be outsourced, but as a writer, this was one thing I decided to take on myself.

I’m going to be frank: Writing a sales letter, especially if you haven’t done it before, isn’t easy. It’s also absolutely nothing like writing a blog post or a newspaper article–the two writing jobs I have a lot of experience with.

The best way to write a sales letter is to download a swipe file of other great sales letters and copy them, sentence for sentence, making them work with your product. Changing from the “voice” of a blog post, where most of the writing is about me, to the voice of a sales letter, which is all about you and your desires, is hard.

I believe copywriting is a skill that can be learned, but it’s not something you’re going to learn overnight. It is probably worth it to pay a professional copywriter for a “copy critique.” I did this and had two copywriters basically rip my sales letter apart. It was a huge blow to my ego, but I have to admit the revised letter cleaned up nicely.

There’s still more work to do on my sales letter, but it’s already far better than my first draft. Ironically, you will probably find that writing the sales letter will take you as much or more time than creating the actual product. That’s to be expected.

I did shoot a video for the sales letter, too, remembering to put myself in my buyers’ position. I uploaded it to YouTube. Then, when a copywriter said it was too long (at 7 minutes), I cut a minute out of it and uploaded it again today.

Hardware and Other Supplies

I needed a microphone to do the audio recording part of the product with Camtasia. I picked up an Audio-Technica AT2020 USB microphone and a pop filter, plus a better microphone stand. This makes the audio portion of the videos sound fantastic.

Total cost for microphone, pop filter and stand: ~$135.

For the sales letter video, I used my Canon HG10 camcorder (which has since been supplanted by the Canon HG21) on a tripod mount, and shot in HD. I also recently invested in a wireless lavalier microphone so I don’t sound so “echo-y” on video.

This setup will not only help me with this product, but with many future products. Of course, if you don’t have the budget for a full-blown video setup, start with an inexpensive Flip HD camera. I do recommend budgeting for the above microphone setup, however; it’s well worth the cost.

Total Costs

At this point, I’d say I have well over 40 hours of personal time invested in this product, in addition to the costs above.

My total costs were $2618.63, not including copy critiques or my swipe file.

My recurring costs are $107/month for my shopping cart and merchant account.

If you subtract out the video camera and the wireless lavalier microphone that goes with it, and instead buy a $149 Flip camera, and create your product within Camtasia’s 30-day free trial window, your total costs would be $1176.63.

Will This Product Make Money?

This is the fun (and somewhat scary!) part of being an entrepreneur. You invest tons of time, and at least a bit of money. Unlike a job, you’re not guaranteed payment for that time. You may release a product and it totally bombs–or you may release a product where your total earnings make you an hourly wage that would make any bigwig CEO proud.

The only way to truly know if your product will be successful is to sell it. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed, or think “I don’t have thousands of dollars to spend!” If you have more time than money, use your time to hone your copywriting and content creation skills. If you have some money, as little as a few hundred dollars is all you’ll probably need to develop a great product.

What to Do With A Minimal Budget?

Assuming you already know what product you plan to create, and have a name for it…

If I only had $300 to spend, no question, I’d spend it on a Killer Covers web design. You can borrow a microphone and get a free trial of Camtasia–but web design is harder to do yourself, and it’s worth it to pay Killer Covers instead of spending hours doing it yourself. (This, coming from someone who made her living as a full-time Web designer and developer for years!)

Recommended Reading:

• My Instant Swipe File. Very useful product, especially with its current low price. I purchased it and am using the template inside it to help develop my sales letter.

Are you planning to create an information product in 2010? Have questions about creating a product? Let me know in the comments!

Do entrepreneurs need to attend college?

My answer is totally different: I don’t think college is beneficial for teenagers who already have a good idea of what they want to do with their lives, especially if they want to start a business.

Here’s my story…and some tips on whether college will be right for you:

My Background

My parents both have Master’s degrees. My father runs a law firm and my mom is a former school teacher. She raised me as a stay-at-home mom and then opened a title company when I was in grade school.

My mom was mortified when I slacked off in school, but school bored me. I am an extreme visual/hands-on learner; I have difficulty picking up information when it’s delivered in auditory format. I was often bored in school because I couldn’t pick up the information when someone spoke it to me, but I could read faster than everyone else, so while most people were sounding out words, I was already finishing the book.

I hated authority and constantly challenged my teachers. In first grade, I asked my teacher at lunch, “If the universe contains everything we know, and it’s constantly expanding, what is it expanding into?” She looked at me helplessly and tried her best to explain.

It was around that time that they seriously considered advancing me a grade. Persuaded by my mom, the principal put me in the third-grade reading class. I was testing at an eighth-grade reading level, but my social skills were woefully underdeveloped. I was not well-liked by the other kids.

Mom was constantly searching for other school options. We lived in a rural part of Indiana, with only one high school for the entire county, so my local options were limited. My parents considered sending me off to boarding school.

Attending a Different School

In the meantime, the state of Indiana was using its gifted-and-talented funding to start up a residential high school for juniors and seniors: the Indiana Academy. After touring it, I decided to go.

Living with other kids was a challenge, but I identified with many of them. I found more deep friendships there than I have in any other environment. It was there that I got introduced to computers and networking. (When I first got there, I tried to plug my dial-up modem into the Ethernet jack on the wall–I had never been exposed to networks before!)

I quickly became the de facto female computer geek. I managed 14 computers on the girls’ side of the school. I set up a web hosting company by colocating my old 486 desktop computer at an ISP; one of the teachers paid me to host his personal website. I ran several websites, one of which was a shareware ranking site that received a good deal of publicity.

When summer of my junior year came up, many of my classmates got jobs at local retail stores. I did something different: I went on Yahoo! and found the listings for local web design companies in Cincinnati, Ohio. I sent all of them (I think there were 20 or 30 at the time) an email asking if they needed a web person, and showing them several websites that I had coded myself. I landed two interviews and got a paying summer job at a web design company coding HTML and Perl.

By the time I was ready to graduate high school, I knew three things:

1. I wanted to go to Silicon Valley and seek my fortune.
2. I wanted to run a web hosting company and design/develop websites–the opportunity for “passive” income (I can confirm that’s a myth after 6 years of running one, but I didn’t know that then!) was hugely appealing to me.
3. I wasn’t going to graduate from college.

Of course, I wasn’t afraid to tell everyone who would listen about these three things. I remember most clearly telling the female computer science instructor that I would go to college because my parents wanted me to, but I wouldn’t graduate.

She was devastated. Then she started yelling. “You don’t understand the opportunities you have been given!” she said. “You’re throwing it all away. The women of my generation had to work so hard to even be in college, and you just want to give it up?”

I shrugged. It was pretty normal for teachers to be upset with me.

I mostly didn’t talk about it with my parents. My mom would get angry, which would cause my dad to leave the room. It was not a pleasant experience. I would go to college, and that was that.

No one could really tell me why college would be great for me. They all assumed I had to go. That there wouldn’t be any questions. That it was necessary to “open doors” for my future.

But was it necessary for someone who wanted to start her own business and who didn’t want a job? No one could answer that question.

Applying to College

I applied to only two colleges: San Jose State and Santa Clara University. Santa Clara University required an entrance essay. My dad encouraged me to write an essay that said I would donate to their alumni association when I became a millionaire CEO. (I didn’t quite put it that way, but I dropped some broad hints about how going to SCU would help me become more successful.)

Santa Clara sent me an acceptance letter. So did San Jose State.

My parents were willing to pay for Santa Clara, but I decided I wouldn’t go there because they didn’t let freshmen choose the hours for their classes. I wanted a part-time job while I was there (this was Silicon Valley in 1999, after all!), so I opted for San Jose State. I took a small class load and applied for a job.

Finding A Job

I scored a job without going in for an interview. I cattily left out the fact that I was 18 years old in the phone interviews, and was hired as a part-time Marketing Director for a small web company. When they found out I was 18, had no marketing experience, and was a college student, they were not amused. They fired me.

I found another job “being the helpdesk” and fixing computers for a small company, Cobalt Networks, that later became one of the largest IPOs in history. Sun Microsystems bought us out in 2000 for $2 billion, then killed the product line.

In the meantime, one of my college professors told me I should drop out of school and “seek my fortune” in Silicon Valley. It took me a year to follow his advice, but after 3 semesters of college, I dropped out.

My mom said it was the worst decision I had ever made. My boss at Cobalt, who treated me like one of his kids (his oldest was only a couple years younger than me), said I would regret it.

My boyfriend at the time, a well-paid techie “whiz kid” who was a high school dropout, congratulated me. (Interesting side note: The vast majority of the guys I have dated have not graduated from college. Several were high school dropouts. This wasn’t intentional; it’s just what happened.)

You probably know the rest of my story (if not, you can read it here, where I go into details of how I created a million-dollar business at a young age.)

How Can You Tell Whether You Should Go To College?

Let’s look at some facts:

• I knew what I wanted from a young age. I knew I wanted to start a web hosting company and do Web development. I went out and got summer jobs in that area to gain experience.
• I wasn’t waiting to be taught by classes. I was a self-taught computer whiz; infinitely curious, a voracious reader, and not afraid to ask questions. I didn’t seek permission to take over those 14 computers in my high school; I simply did it.
• School didn’t suit me well. I didn’t learn well from lectures, and I didn’t enjoy school. I did most of my learning from books and the Web. The Web, being 100% visual, was a miracle for me.

When I look at most high school kids, I understand why college is necessary. They don’t know what they want. They have a vague idea of the future, and college helps them clarify what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

I was totally different. I was goal-oriented, and more importantly, I had a goal (starting a business) that didn’t require a degree.

I will concede that I was different from most teenagers, but by no means do I think I am unique. I think there’s a good percentage of teenagers out there who want to start a business but who, like me, are pressured into going to college by their parents and teachers.

And really, what is that pressure but simple fear?

My Mom Concedes

After several years of not speaking to my mom much (but before I sold my business and would be considered a success), I finally called her and told her I was really upset with her. I mentioned the comment she had made about dropping out of college being the worst decision I had ever made.

She started crying, and told me that she was proud of me for taking the path she never had the courage to take. That conversation meant a lot to me, and it helped heal our relationship. And that’s honestly when I should have written this post, but I didn’t have the courage until now.

Going on a different path takes courage, but the rewards can be huge. Whatever you think you don’t have enough of–money, time, college degrees?–to start your own business, let me tell you right now: You have everything you need to succeed.

Was It Worth It?

I started my web hosting company when I was 20 years old. I had no clue what I was doing. I made huge mistakes. I underbilled my customers, overworked my employees, and pissed off a whole lotta people.

But I also made close friends, learned a whole heck of a lot, and oh yeah, made well over a million dollars.

I had the worst day of my life and the best day of my life in my office, with my employees. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

The people who tell you you need to go to college–they want the best for you. They want you to have the best chance of success. But sometimes, the real path to success lies in doing what no one else is doing. While everyone else is in school, you’re out there knocking down doors and closing deals, signing contracts, and trying to figure out who’s screwing you over and who’s investing in your success.

There’s nothing like it. And if you read this post and, like me as a teenager, are a self-starter, motivated to succeed, and ready to start your business, don’t let college stand in your way. Go out there and get your hands dirty. Yep, you’ll probably fail; most businesses do. But it will all be worth it, and you’ll have learned dramatically more in the process than you ever will sitting in a lecture hall waiting for class to end.

Recommended Reading:

• Hiring is Obsolete by Paul Graham. “While I stand by our responsible advice to finish college and then go work for a while before starting a startup, I have to admit it’s one of those things the old tell the young, but don’t expect them to listen to.”
• 15 Successful Entrepreneurs Who Didn’t Need College. Includes Michael Dell, Richard Branson, and Mary Kay Ash.
• One Thing You Don’t Need to Be An Entrepreneur: A College Degree by Fred Wilson (a venture capitalist.) His point of view: “I have learned that where someone went to college (or even if they didn’t go to college) has absolutely no correlation to whether they will be a good entrepreneur or not.”

Million-dollar innovative business ideas
may be lurking in your nearest newspaper…

Most people tend to make snap judgments about breaking business news. One of the most famous examples of this in the tech industry was Slashdot’s coverage of the original iPod release in 2001. The snap judgment? “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”

While it can be entertaining to make these snap judgments, it’s not really effective in helping you grow your business exponentially.

How One Article Can Show You Many New Business Ideas

Wired recently posted an article about a new type of content company. By reading with an eye toward creating or growing your own business, you can glean all sorts of insights…

In the article, we are introduced to Demand Media. Demand is paying video producers a few dollars to create short videos on thousands of subjects, ranging from “What is the best vodka?” to “How to pack for a trip to Spain.” The subject of each video is determined by an algorithm that figures out not only what people are searching for on Google, but also the highest amount that advertisers are willing to pay for Google ads next to the video.

Demand Media’s goal is to get their videos to the top of the Google search results and place pay-per-click ads next to them. The idea is that someone will watch the video, and a fraction of those people will click on the ads. The algorithm shows that some ads pay up to $20 per click (!), so it’s in Demand Media’s interest to pay, say, $20 one time for a video producer to produce that video.

Demand Media has a goal of producing up to 1 million of these videos a month. And its most recent round of capital values the company at a cool $1 billion.

Instead of judging Demand’s business model, let’s take a look at what trends it could represent. Here are some angles I gleaned from reading this story:

1. The old way of editors choosing the content to write about is dying. Google and its database are the new editors.
2. Short and cheap is better than longer and higher-quality…at least if your goal is to make money fast.
3. Being the expert is free, being the producer pays decently well…but being the aggregator of the content is the billion-dollar idea.

One $1B Company Means One Million $1M Opportunities

Whenever I read about a billion-dollar company, I know that there are a million opportunities for million-dollar companies in the same industry. Here are some million-dollar innovative business ideas that you could start in this industry:

1. Build your own algorithm so others can compete with Demand, and license it to other content companies.
2. Create your own videos on the subjects Demand does, except have them be longer, more in-depth and higher-quality…and charge a fee for access to each of them. (This is the Wal-Mart vs. specialty store approach.)
3. Become your own content aggregator in a specific niche and hire people to do videos based on similar algorithms, with the intent of selling your company to Demand or someone who wants to compete with them.
4. Create specific videos in a niche where information products abound, and instead of gaining a couple cents a click for Google ads, sell those information products as an affiliate and rake in larger sales per video.

Notice that some of these ideas compete with Demand, and some of them go so far as to have you seeking to be acquired by Demand in a year or two. But all of them have one thing in common: you’re picking a small piece of what Demand does and creating a business out of it, instead of trying to go after the whole enchilada. That’s the key to competing with a billion-dollar company if you don’t have millions of dollars to blow.

Use the News To Help You Determine Your Next Steps

As an entrepreneur, anything you read about current trends, especially if it involves a hot and fast-growing company, could be profitable for you. When you read articles like this, focus on what that article is telling you about the future.

Regardless of what you think of cheaply-produced, short videos in the results of certain Google search terms, the fact is that they make a lot of money. How can you use this to help your business, or to start a new business?

I welcome your own innovative business ideas in the comments.

Recommended Reading:

• Why Entrepreneurs Fail (Will You Avoid These Three Traps?) Once you have an idea, avoiding these three traps will help you succeed with it.
• How I Turned My Mediocre Website Into A Million-Dollar Business. My company had one of the worst websites ever (we even won a contest for one of the worst hosting company websites!), but I still managed to create a million-dollar business. How did I do it?
• You Are Worth More Than You Think: Overcoming The Key Reason Entrepreneurs Fail. If you have ever said, “I just don’t have enough time to do [an activity I love]“, this advice is for you.