Archive for entrepreneurship

admin | August 15, 2012
No comments

6 Entrepreneur Website Ideas

You can join the world of Internet entrepreneurs but merely owning a website.  Many opportunities are available out there if you have the drive and desire to make your dream come true. 

Some of these ideas are shared with you so you can contemplate and explore what might be a fit for you. If you find something that appeals to you, spend the time, research it, and if you can still see yourself working with it a month from now, it might mean you need to pursue it!

 

1.  Affiliate Marketing

This is performance-based marketing where you get compensated for each visit you send to another company’s website.  This visitor is driven to the site by the marketing done by you, the affiliate marketer.  You can create , for example, micros sites that are entirely designed to get that user to click and be redirected to another site. The more you can do this, the more money you make.

 

 2.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of increasing the visibility of your website by naturally inserting keywords or phrases into the contents of your website.  This is one of the most sought after techniques of bringing more visitors to your website, because it can generate more traffic and more traffic is more money. 

Good SEO practice contemplates what a potential buyer might want to find and how the various search engines work and merging the two together through the website html and content.

SEO however, requires more than just randomly sticking keywords on the content.  It takes practice and training to get the technical abilities down along with the art of it to really gain an advantage.

 

3.  Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing can achieve traffic and attention  to your website through different social media networks, like Facebook and Twitter.  You need to develop content that will engage the readers to post it on their own social media networks or pages, to make it viral.

 

4.  Freelance Writing

If you love to write, this is a wonderful opportunity for you as most people don’t, and you can take advantage of that fact.  You can express your opinions and knowledge on various products and get paid. With freelance writing, here’s a list of what you can do:

  •  own a blog
  •  be a journalist
  •  develop business plans
  •  ghostwrite articles or a novel
  •  academic writing

 

5.  Website Server Administrator (SA)

Basically, this field is all about being in control of a server, operating system, or computers of a business.  The SA’s role, typically, is to insure top performance by developing,  installing, optimizing and administering a company’s servers. It is important to keep these servers running smoothly, especially in big organizations who are trying to stay current with communication, production, sales, and the overall operation of their  company.

 

6.  Virtual Assistant

With the current technology of today’s world, you can do anything while working from home.  Being a virtual assistant is a possible idea if you want to become a website entrepreneur.  Moms can have the time to spend with their kids, as well as able to contribute to family finances.

 

 

 

Category: entrepreneurship |
admin | November 20, 2011
No comments

Does Firefox support mp4?

NO.  Yep, that’s right, the much lauded favorite browser on the net for the majority of techies (and others) does not natively support the popular and maybe best video format currently for most internet needs, mp4 videos.

Chrome supports it natively and so does Internet Explorer, making the use of HTML5 video tags, something long overdue, not possible with Firefox without a plugin/player … notably done with a Flash player.

The issue is that Firefox and Opera support only Open Source formats and mp4 is not one of them. We’re told that for a browser to natively support MP4 it will need to pay a royalty fee for each browser download. 

This royalty fee (to the developers who are:  Moving Picture Experts Group) has been delayed until 2015 but at some point they will want their fees.

So ultimately this impasse is a loss for all as it’s long overdue for all browsers to support the most popular videos formats and make life just a little simpler for us all by simply embedding video files like jpg’s with easy playback. 

 

  Ogg Support H.264/MPEG-4 Support Market Share
Internet Explorer No Yes 61.58%
Firefox Yes No 24.23%
Chrome Yes Yes 5.61%
Safari No Yes 4.45%
Opera Yes No 2.35%

But video is an important part of current and future web use so it’s safe to say this war is not going to get settled anytime soon, if at all.  

There’s seems only 2 ways of getting universal html5 video tag support, the MPEG declares their code Open Source (not happening) or some future video file format comes out as a next generation and that is open source and overtakes mp4 (if at all possible, is years away).

Options for your website

  1. Go ahead with the HTML5 videos tag route but export your video to both mp4 and webm/ogg formats
  2. Stick with the Flash video player and play mp4 in all browsers
I for one will go with #2 the Flash player. I don’t want to deal with 2 files for one video – now that doesn’t make any sense!
Enjoy coding!

 

Category: entrepreneurship |
admin | October 1, 2011
No comments

How to think like an Entrepreneur

Or maybe a better title would be: How NOT to think like an employee

In the business-world there are 2 types of people:

1) Entrepreneurs

2) Employees

Chances are you’re in the #2 category, and wanting to be a #1 if you’re reading this.  I’d be willing to bet you’ve been thinking about this for awhile. People seeking out such information on how to be an entrepreneur, how to transition to be an entrepreneur, what do entrepreneurs do, how do they succeed, etc., are rarely doing so on a whim or chance. It’s a desire and a yearning for quite awhile before most of us start info gathering. So you have a spark.

if you come from a family that has a history of nothing but being workers, be they blue or white collar, with no business owners, you’re going to have to step out and up mentally more than those who don’t – if you want your own business. This means to stop thinking like the beaten down slave employee that you are.

The unPromised Land

Is it possible to fit all the empty promises we’ve been told by our bosses, HR, employers, company board’s, etc. all into the endzone of Giants Stadium? The answer is a heaping, pile of ‘no.’

The endless meaningless meetings, long petty office politics, the lack of rewards, the unstable chairs with cheap cushions, small monitors and dusty cubicles, the annual promises of stock options worth pennies and commitment to inadequate health insurance … after 10 years of this, well, it was enough mentally.

It’s difficult to explain the contempt that I had developed. 10 years of work, belief, and maleable resumes, was enough before the veil of contempt was uncovered.  My motivation to be my own man was as much a positive one (my own clients, my own hours, ‘don’t tell me what to do’) as a negative one (quitting corporate America and telling them to stick-it). And there’s nothing wrong with that.

For most of you, you gotta get Mad and use it to be motivated.  99% of all employees are too scared to get off their behind and work through the daily work and commitment of being an entrepreneur, when you already have a fulltime job, school, kids, etc.  But you have to find a long term commitment. And one way to do that, is get mad you … ! (Glengarry anyone?)

What I’m trying to tell you is you need a hot heavy fire inside your belly to make it work. Trust me on this.  Most people don’t have that fire and wont make it. You must have a furnace of stoked burning coals to power the perseverance you will need. You will literally need years worth of it to make it on through to the other side, you see, it’s life or death.

The Loss of Security, The Gain of Dignity

Do you really feel secure in your job?  Do you really? If you do, you might be on quaaludes. It’s just not the money too you know. It’s the grind, the feeling of purpose of the structure you’re in. Most of you don’t realize it but you will when you leave. It happened to me.

That first weekend you quit your job is great… you don’t have to answer to anyone Monday morning. But Monday morning you realize you don’t have a paycheck either. I’m not going to lie, especially if you have kids, it can be real scary with thoughts of ‘what did I do?’ But again the one undeniable constant of an entrepreneur who makes it is perseverance. Perseverance in thought and action. If you persevere, over time, the loss of that alleged security, and the realism of a steady paycheck, are nothing to what you get for its loss.

But with the loss of security, both real and imagined, comes the gain of dignity.

dig·ni·ty

definition: nobility or elevation of character and self; worthiness: dignity of sentiments. elevated rank, office, station, etc. having gained self-worth.

Dignity is a self-worth and self-determination of self, having to be able to stake your claim as a man or woman and define and reveal your own journey and destination.  You can only obtain such a profound level of being by your own actions, never by a construct, belief or system of others. Step back and think about it.

I challenge you to seek your dignity. This plus your own children, your own flesh and blood, are the greatest realizations of your life.

 

 

 

Category: entrepreneurship, internet business, motivation |