A News Release From Michael Dunlop: 13th November 2007:
In the world of retirement, 21 is the new 60.
Short of finding a diamond mine in your backyard, or marrying Paris Hilton, the closest most of us are going to come to retiring young is via the national lottery. But even then the odds are stacked heavily against us.
It seems that in today’s corporate world, working a 9 to 5, having two kids, one car and retirement at 60 (if you are lucky) is generally the road map that we all take…
We are told to eat our greens, look before we cross the road, don’t trust strangers, put some money away for retirement… and with any luck we can scrape through life’s battles and illnesses and finally settle down at 60 after decades of hard work, to look forward to our golden years.
Well that is the idea, but it seems that those golden years are in reality, more like rusty years.
One young entrepreneur certainly didn’t want to wait for the rust to set in before he started enjoying all life has to offer. In fact, he is turning common beliefs on their head with his website retireat21.com
This portal provides free, step-by-step advice to show you exactly how you can make money on the Internet.
“But I am already older than 21”, I hear you cry. Don’t worry, despite the name, the information and advice is more geared towards retiring prior to having a fake hip installed. Even if you retire just a few years earlier due to the advice at retireat21.com it surely has to be worth taking 5 minutes from your day to check it out… doesn’t it?
This stunning new site will show you:
- How to develop your BIG idea… (bigger is better)- How to complete a fully functional website- We put you in touch with other entrepreneurs, you can pick their brains for FREE- Recommendations from the owner and star of retireat21.com- Interviews with young entrepreneurs who are making it BIG on the Internet- All the latest and cutting-edge techniques on the net. There is a lot of rubbish out there, we help you separate the gold from the rust
Thousands of people are using Retireat21.com to change their financial lives, you can do the same for only $4,999 per month….
Only joking!Retireat21.com is and will remain one of the few genuine FREE resources for young entrepreneurs on the net.
Visit today, tell your kids to join, do whatever it takes to avoid the rat race and the rusty years.
www.retireat21.com
A News Release From Midascode Ltd: 9th December 2006:
New Website Promises Young Entrepreneurs A Helping Hand - RetireAt21.com
When history is written it seems almost certain that from a business point of view, the first decade of the 21st Century will be remembered best as the Era of The Young Entrepreneur
Think Chad Hurley and Steven Chen of YouTube
Think Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google
Think Multimillionaires and even Billionaires at very young ages
And it seems these Young Entrepreneurs are getting even younger. So claims a new website launched this week by 17 year old British Entrepreneur, Michael Dunlop, founder of RetireAt21.com.
The website grew out of Mr Dunlop's own experience as a young entrepreneur and in particular his experience of the ups and downs of launching a number of high traffic websites - all without the usual help of facilities like credit cards or business bank accounts. As Mr Dunlop points out, when you are determined enough, anything is possible.
"Do not let anyone tell you cannot do it, don't let anyone rain on your parade, there is always a way. Sometimes it may have to be a little unconventional and it may mean selling some of your relatives on the idea, but it can be done. Above all, if you believe in yourself and believe it is possible then you are more than halfway there"
Among the websites many features at RetireAt21.com is help with learning webdesign, building an online business, marketing, monetizing your website and a growing Mentor Database.
The website is already creating quite a stir and has attracted some considerable support in the form of over $3500 worth of prizes for a Webmasters Young Gun Competition. Competition will no doubt be quite fierce.
And a final word from Michael "While the website may be called Retire At 21, it is of course open to all ages with a particular desire at present to attract Mentors to the site, who can advise these fledgling businesses. Also, while the goal may appear to be retirement, the real goal is to be financially free" One feels, that this young man in particular may be closer to that goal than most.
Of course, the slip side of this discussion is what will happen when these young entrepreneurs do eventually retire? What charitable foundations or other great achievements will these remarkable young people achieve in their lifetimes?
For sure, a visit to this website will allow you to feel the pulse of this growing Young Entrepreneur phenomenon.
Check the website out at: http://www.retireat21.com
Saturday, June 7, 2008
NO GREY HAIR CEOs
No Grey Hair CEOs !
Whoever said that "youth is wasted on the young" should look at how much impact a new wave of youngsters have had in the current business and technological world. From the creation of Google by 24 year olds, to Facebook by a 19 year old, the young entrepreneur revolution is under way, and we have listed the leaders of this exciting revolution. We salute them all.
We feel sure there will be many more No Grey Hair CEOs to follow.
Special Note: Where possible we have included an estimated Net Worth based on shareholdings and information available in the public domain.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin Created Google when they were just 24 years old.
Alexa
2
Date Founded
7th September, 1998
Pagerank
10
Yearly Revenue
$16.5 Billion
Monthly Visitors
There Estimated Networth
1,000,000,000
$18.5 Billion Each
Mark Zuckerberg Created Facebook when he was 19 years old.
Alexa
7
Date Founded
4th February, 2004
Pagerank
8
Yearly Revenue
$700 Million
Monthly Visitors
His Estimated Networth
155,000,000
$3.2 Billion
Chad Hurley and Steve Chen Created Youtube when they were 28 and 27.
Alexa
3
Date Founded
11 Feburay 2005
Pagerank
8
Yearly Revenue
$60 Million
Monthly Visitors
There Estimated Networth
300,000,000
$300 Million Each
Jerry Yang & David Filo Created Yahoo when they were just 26 and 28 years old
Alexa
1
Date Founded
1st March, 1995
Pagerank
9
Yearly Revenue
$6.7 Billion
Monthly Visitors
800,000,000
There Estimated Networth
$2.2 Billion Each
Matt Mullenweg Created Wordpress when he was 19 years old
Alexa
56
Date Founded
21st November, 2005
Pagerank
8
Yearly Revenue
$50 Million
Monthly Visitors
His Estimated Networth
150,000,000
(Unknown)
Kevin Rose Created Digg when he was 27 years old
Alexa
149
Date Founded
5th December, 2004
Pagerank
8
Yearly Revenue
$30 Million
Monthly Visitors
100,000,000
His Estimated Networth
$50 Million
Tom Anderson Created Myspace when he was 23 years old.
Alexa
8
Date Founded
4th February, 2004
Pagerank
7
Yearly Revenue
$850 Million
Monthly Visitors
180,000,000
His Estimated Networth
$100 Million
Pierre OmidyarCreated Ebay when he was 28 years old
Alexa
23
Date Founded
3rd September, 1995
Pagerank
9
Yearly Revenue
$7.8 Billion
Monthly Visitors
54,000,000
His Estimated Networth
$8.8 Billion
Blake Ross Created Mozilla when they he was 19.
Alexa
113
Date Founded
15th July, 2003
Pagerank
9
Yearly Revenue
$100 Million
Monthly Visitors
600,000,000
His Estimated Networth
(Unknown)
Gottfrid Svartholm Created The Pirate Bay when he was 24 years old.
Alexa
146
Date Founded
4th February, 2004
Pagerank
6
Yearly Revenue
$12 Million
Monthly Visitors
55,000,000
His Estimated Networth
(Unknown)
Whoever said that "youth is wasted on the young" should look at how much impact a new wave of youngsters have had in the current business and technological world. From the creation of Google by 24 year olds, to Facebook by a 19 year old, the young entrepreneur revolution is under way, and we have listed the leaders of this exciting revolution. We salute them all.
We feel sure there will be many more No Grey Hair CEOs to follow.
Special Note: Where possible we have included an estimated Net Worth based on shareholdings and information available in the public domain.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin Created Google when they were just 24 years old.
Alexa
2
Date Founded
7th September, 1998
Pagerank
10
Yearly Revenue
$16.5 Billion
Monthly Visitors
There Estimated Networth
1,000,000,000
$18.5 Billion Each
Mark Zuckerberg Created Facebook when he was 19 years old.
Alexa
7
Date Founded
4th February, 2004
Pagerank
8
Yearly Revenue
$700 Million
Monthly Visitors
His Estimated Networth
155,000,000
$3.2 Billion
Chad Hurley and Steve Chen Created Youtube when they were 28 and 27.
Alexa
3
Date Founded
11 Feburay 2005
Pagerank
8
Yearly Revenue
$60 Million
Monthly Visitors
There Estimated Networth
300,000,000
$300 Million Each
Jerry Yang & David Filo Created Yahoo when they were just 26 and 28 years old
Alexa
1
Date Founded
1st March, 1995
Pagerank
9
Yearly Revenue
$6.7 Billion
Monthly Visitors
800,000,000
There Estimated Networth
$2.2 Billion Each
Matt Mullenweg Created Wordpress when he was 19 years old
Alexa
56
Date Founded
21st November, 2005
Pagerank
8
Yearly Revenue
$50 Million
Monthly Visitors
His Estimated Networth
150,000,000
(Unknown)
Kevin Rose Created Digg when he was 27 years old
Alexa
149
Date Founded
5th December, 2004
Pagerank
8
Yearly Revenue
$30 Million
Monthly Visitors
100,000,000
His Estimated Networth
$50 Million
Tom Anderson Created Myspace when he was 23 years old.
Alexa
8
Date Founded
4th February, 2004
Pagerank
7
Yearly Revenue
$850 Million
Monthly Visitors
180,000,000
His Estimated Networth
$100 Million
Pierre OmidyarCreated Ebay when he was 28 years old
Alexa
23
Date Founded
3rd September, 1995
Pagerank
9
Yearly Revenue
$7.8 Billion
Monthly Visitors
54,000,000
His Estimated Networth
$8.8 Billion
Blake Ross Created Mozilla when they he was 19.
Alexa
113
Date Founded
15th July, 2003
Pagerank
9
Yearly Revenue
$100 Million
Monthly Visitors
600,000,000
His Estimated Networth
(Unknown)
Gottfrid Svartholm Created The Pirate Bay when he was 24 years old.
Alexa
146
Date Founded
4th February, 2004
Pagerank
6
Yearly Revenue
$12 Million
Monthly Visitors
55,000,000
His Estimated Networth
(Unknown)
MAKE MONEY ONLINE
Making Money Online
These days everyone wants to make money online, people often create a website, do some promotions, and then wonder why there is no treasure chest at the end of the rainbow. Here is the secret that many webmasters overlook: having a website is not enough to make money, you will need to find a way of turning those visitors into a revenue stream. We have compiled all of the most popular and powerful money making opportunities that every website owner should consider. So eyes forward, pay attention, and decide which money making method is best for your website:
Advertising Programs - By far the easiest way to make money from website's is using advertising programs, simply paste a piece of code and you will have relevant adverts displayed on your website. Everyday there are new advertising program's boasting the new way to make more money than you can imagine. These are the programs that should never stop making you money! Google Adsense,
/* */
Text-Link-Ads , Bidvertiser, AzoogleAds, TNX, WidgetBucks, Chitika and YPN.
Affiliate Programs - Sell other peoples Books, Products, Services and receive a share of every sale you make. You receive a special url which allows you to see the amount of sales you make through sending x amount of people. I like to use affiliate links in my website and articles because i can receive up to a 75% commission on a product i had nothing to do with creating. There are large directory's full of affiliate programs you can use on your website, such as Amazon, Clickbank and Commission Junction.
Website Sponsors - Selling advertising space on your website can be a good way to monetize your site, providing a lot of alternative advertising techniques, Text Links, Banner Adverts, Sponsored Links and Text Ads. Check out our website sponsors page!
Drop shipping - Is when a manufacturer or distributor allows you to sell there products for commission, they handle the packaging and delivery and you handle the sales. This has the same principles of affiliate programs but for a physical product. You do not have to hold any inventory, everything is supplied from by the suppliers and you can have as many suppliers as you like. You can find drop shipping suppliers here...
Paid Posting and Sponsored Reviews - In the last year paid posting has really kicked off, a very easy way for established website's to double, triple, or even quadruple there monthly revenue on some website's! Ranging in price from $100 - $1000 for a 300 review of there website posted on your blog, sure seems like a very easy way to boost earnings. Apart from promoting this service to your visitors, ReviewMe, LoudLaunch and Pay Per Post will take care of handle all the sales, invoicing, and customer service for a 50/50 share and at the end of the month you receive the money earned check or PayPal.
Membership Sites - Instead of providing content for free, restrict the access to paying customers only. Membership sites can be very profitable, for example you have 100 pages on "How to be a lady's man", you charge $37 a month and in the first month you receive 100 sign ups, your already making $3700/month! Now if you offer related website's a 50% commission for anyone they refer to your site and they send 1000 people which sign up. you now making a extra $18,500 a month! For creating a membership site, i highly recommend MemberGate.
Ebooks, Courses, Teaching - Building website's to promote your Ebooks and Courses can be a great way increase sales dramatically! In fact any major competitor in any niche, has brought out there own ebook or course which you apparently can live with out. The net gives people hope and that's why "How to" products sale like crazy. Some products sell so fast and with so little work that there payment gateways have actually crashed because of to many sales! Other Eteaching products consist of, Teleseminar's, Master Minds, Work Shops and Webinar's.
Merchandise - I see alot of website's with younger audience's trying to promote merchandise, such as Miniclips. There website's promote merchandise affiliate schemes such as SpreadShirt and CafePress.
Service's - Promote your services through your website, for example, i have a health blog and my blog writers will promote there services through the blog.
Consulting and Speaking - Websites help you create a following, a reputation and standards. If you are seen a expert in your niche, you could be offered consulting work and speaking at seminar's, workshops and collage's.
Flipping Website's - For someone with money it can be a really fast way to make $1000's profit. Lately you would have seen the buying and selling of websites become very competitive on webmaster marketplace forums such as Sitepoint and DigitalPoint. With story's of websites bought for $2000 and flipped for $20,000 a couple months later, it sure is something to look at. Job Boards -
Donations - Tend to work well on Blogs where they know the owner and know they deserve it. Bloggers ask there readers to buy there lunch or buy them a pint or beer, donations can generate up to 10% of a websites revenue when executed properly.
Payment Gateways - Online there are 100's of ways to pay for products, advertising and services. Its always best to use the most common payment options to prevent any problems, they are Paypal, Western Union, Google Checkout and 2Checkout.
Website's, Blog's or Forums? When starting a website a lot of people don't know whether to build a stand alone website, blog or forum. Below i have created a chart with the pro's and con's for making money online.
Website
Blog
Forums
Advertising Programs
10
8
4
Affiliate Programs
8
8
3
Website Sponsors
8
8
8
Sponsored Reviews
2
10
5
Ebooks and Courses
9
9
1
Flipping Website's
9
10
1
Total:
46
53
22
Products that helped me make a lot of money online:
Ultimate "at-Home" Internet Copywriting Workshop
"Now You Can Instantly (At least) Double The Pulling Power of Any Ad, Email, Web Site or Sales Letter"Sneak Away With Every Single Trick, Tactic, Formula, Shortcut, Strategy and Jealously-Guarded Secret The Internet’s #1 Most-Celebrated Copywriter Uses to Create Huge Piles Of Cash At Will.
Find out more about this product...
33 days to online profits by Yanik Silver!
Give him 33 days and he will show you that you can make real money online! "33 Days To Online Profits is more than an ebook ... it's a step by step blueprint that takes you by the hand and guides you to a successful online business."
Find out more about this product...
Instant Sales Letters
"When I ran across your "Instant Sales Letters" on the web I purchased it immediately. Of all the things I have bought over the web yours is surely the most valuable. Please get the detailed table of stastics at www.retireat21.com
These days everyone wants to make money online, people often create a website, do some promotions, and then wonder why there is no treasure chest at the end of the rainbow. Here is the secret that many webmasters overlook: having a website is not enough to make money, you will need to find a way of turning those visitors into a revenue stream. We have compiled all of the most popular and powerful money making opportunities that every website owner should consider. So eyes forward, pay attention, and decide which money making method is best for your website:
Advertising Programs - By far the easiest way to make money from website's is using advertising programs, simply paste a piece of code and you will have relevant adverts displayed on your website. Everyday there are new advertising program's boasting the new way to make more money than you can imagine. These are the programs that should never stop making you money! Google Adsense,
/* */
Text-Link-Ads , Bidvertiser, AzoogleAds, TNX, WidgetBucks, Chitika and YPN.
Affiliate Programs - Sell other peoples Books, Products, Services and receive a share of every sale you make. You receive a special url which allows you to see the amount of sales you make through sending x amount of people. I like to use affiliate links in my website and articles because i can receive up to a 75% commission on a product i had nothing to do with creating. There are large directory's full of affiliate programs you can use on your website, such as Amazon, Clickbank and Commission Junction.
Website Sponsors - Selling advertising space on your website can be a good way to monetize your site, providing a lot of alternative advertising techniques, Text Links, Banner Adverts, Sponsored Links and Text Ads. Check out our website sponsors page!
Drop shipping - Is when a manufacturer or distributor allows you to sell there products for commission, they handle the packaging and delivery and you handle the sales. This has the same principles of affiliate programs but for a physical product. You do not have to hold any inventory, everything is supplied from by the suppliers and you can have as many suppliers as you like. You can find drop shipping suppliers here...
Paid Posting and Sponsored Reviews - In the last year paid posting has really kicked off, a very easy way for established website's to double, triple, or even quadruple there monthly revenue on some website's! Ranging in price from $100 - $1000 for a 300 review of there website posted on your blog, sure seems like a very easy way to boost earnings. Apart from promoting this service to your visitors, ReviewMe, LoudLaunch and Pay Per Post will take care of handle all the sales, invoicing, and customer service for a 50/50 share and at the end of the month you receive the money earned check or PayPal.
Membership Sites - Instead of providing content for free, restrict the access to paying customers only. Membership sites can be very profitable, for example you have 100 pages on "How to be a lady's man", you charge $37 a month and in the first month you receive 100 sign ups, your already making $3700/month! Now if you offer related website's a 50% commission for anyone they refer to your site and they send 1000 people which sign up. you now making a extra $18,500 a month! For creating a membership site, i highly recommend MemberGate.
Ebooks, Courses, Teaching - Building website's to promote your Ebooks and Courses can be a great way increase sales dramatically! In fact any major competitor in any niche, has brought out there own ebook or course which you apparently can live with out. The net gives people hope and that's why "How to" products sale like crazy. Some products sell so fast and with so little work that there payment gateways have actually crashed because of to many sales! Other Eteaching products consist of, Teleseminar's, Master Minds, Work Shops and Webinar's.
Merchandise - I see alot of website's with younger audience's trying to promote merchandise, such as Miniclips. There website's promote merchandise affiliate schemes such as SpreadShirt and CafePress.
Service's - Promote your services through your website, for example, i have a health blog and my blog writers will promote there services through the blog.
Consulting and Speaking - Websites help you create a following, a reputation and standards. If you are seen a expert in your niche, you could be offered consulting work and speaking at seminar's, workshops and collage's.
Flipping Website's - For someone with money it can be a really fast way to make $1000's profit. Lately you would have seen the buying and selling of websites become very competitive on webmaster marketplace forums such as Sitepoint and DigitalPoint. With story's of websites bought for $2000 and flipped for $20,000 a couple months later, it sure is something to look at. Job Boards -
Donations - Tend to work well on Blogs where they know the owner and know they deserve it. Bloggers ask there readers to buy there lunch or buy them a pint or beer, donations can generate up to 10% of a websites revenue when executed properly.
Payment Gateways - Online there are 100's of ways to pay for products, advertising and services. Its always best to use the most common payment options to prevent any problems, they are Paypal, Western Union, Google Checkout and 2Checkout.
Website's, Blog's or Forums? When starting a website a lot of people don't know whether to build a stand alone website, blog or forum. Below i have created a chart with the pro's and con's for making money online.
Website
Blog
Forums
Advertising Programs
10
8
4
Affiliate Programs
8
8
3
Website Sponsors
8
8
8
Sponsored Reviews
2
10
5
Ebooks and Courses
9
9
1
Flipping Website's
9
10
1
Total:
46
53
22
Products that helped me make a lot of money online:
Ultimate "at-Home" Internet Copywriting Workshop
"Now You Can Instantly (At least) Double The Pulling Power of Any Ad, Email, Web Site or Sales Letter"Sneak Away With Every Single Trick, Tactic, Formula, Shortcut, Strategy and Jealously-Guarded Secret The Internet’s #1 Most-Celebrated Copywriter Uses to Create Huge Piles Of Cash At Will.
Find out more about this product...
33 days to online profits by Yanik Silver!
Give him 33 days and he will show you that you can make real money online! "33 Days To Online Profits is more than an ebook ... it's a step by step blueprint that takes you by the hand and guides you to a successful online business."
Find out more about this product...
Instant Sales Letters
"When I ran across your "Instant Sales Letters" on the web I purchased it immediately. Of all the things I have bought over the web yours is surely the most valuable. Please get the detailed table of stastics at www.retireat21.com
CREATING YOUR FIRST PROFIT MAKING WEBSITE
Today you are going to make your first profitable website!There are many reasons to consider the Internet as a way of making extra money: Some of us are doing it because we are in debt, some because we are fed-up earning terrible wages, others want to experience the millionaire lifestyle.One of the first stumbling blocks is the setup costs, but creating a website doesn't have to cost a lot of money, this guide will show you the cheapest ways to creating a unique and profitable website.Note: Making money online isn't a over night thing but you should expect to see your first pay cheques come in around 30 - 90 days.
Creating Your First Profitable WebsiteWhat you can expect to learn from this guide:
Setting up Your Domain NameWhere and how to register your first domain name
Hosting Your First WebsiteWhere and what hosting account is right for your website
Which Website Platform You Should UseLearn what website platform is right for your website, whether it is a blog, forum or stand alone website.
Designing Your WebsiteWhere to find website layouts, styles and skins for your website.
Monetizing Your WebsiteHow to earn a income from your website
Promoting Your WebsiteFind out where you can promote your website for FREE!
Find the cheapest domain names bellow.
Where to buy a domain name
Website
.com
.net
.co.uk
.info
.org
Name Cheap
$9.29
$9.29
N/A
$5.88
$9.29
GoDaddy
$9.99
$2.99
N/A
$2.99
$8.99
Ukreg
$17.43
$17.43
$5.90
$17.43
$17.43
IPower
$6.50
$6.50
N/A
$6.50
$6.50
UK2
$17.99
$17.99
$5.99
$15.99
$17.99
Creating, setting up and connecting your domain to your host is really no trouble at all, I have personally set up my domain, hosting, website platform and design all in 20 minutes before.
Beginners Hosting Packages
Website
Package Name
Disk Space
Bandwidth
Cpanel
Database
Price
HostedFX
Bronze Plan
2gb
60gb
Yes
Yes
$5.00
Host Gator
Hatching
350gb
3,000gb
Yes
Unlimited
$4.95
Host Monster
Professional
1,500gb
15,000gb
Yes
Yes
$6.95
Dream Host
Standard
500gb
5tb
Yes
Yes
$5.95
BlueHost
Professional
1,500gb
15,000gb
Yes
Yes
$6.95
Easy Space
Starter Web Hosting
500mb
10gb
Yes
No
$5.95
123 Reg
Starter Pro
500mb
5gb
No
No
$7.99
1 and 1
Beginner
1.5gb
20gb
Yes
Yes
$4.95
Deciding at the beginning what website platform you want to use is very important because changing your mind can cause masses of problems and can cost you a lot of money!
Ready Made Graphics
Website
User Rating
Admin Rating
Price
Website
Joomla
8/10
9/10
Free
Php Nuke
6/10
5/10
Free
Mambo
4/10
6/10
Free
Forums
Vbulletin
10/10
8/10
$85.00
Invision Power Board
9/10
10/10
$149.99
Phpbb
5/10
4/10
Free
Blogging
Wordpress
9/10
10/10
Free
TypePad
9/10
9/10
$49.50
E-commerce
osCommerce
7/10
7/10
Free
ZenCart
5/10
8/10
Free
Getting a website designed and programmed can be highly expensive, when starting out on the internet buy pre made designs.
Ready Made Graphics
Website
Min Price
Max Price
Instant Download
Website Designs
Template Monster
$5.00
$275.00
Yes
Dream Template
$59.95
$59.95
Yes
Buy Templates
$29.00
$449.00
Yes
Forum Design
Extreme Pixels
$29.99
$29.99
Yes
Transverse Styles
$30.00
$40.00
No
Forum Monkeys
$25.00
$31.00
Yes
WordPress Design
Premium News Themes
$79.99
$500.00
Yes
Revolution
$79.95
$399.95
Yes
Logo Design
Logo Maid
$19.00
$249.00
Yes
Got Logos
$25.00
$79.00
No
Banner Design
Bannersmall
$24.95
$38.95
No
20 Dollar Banners
$20.00
$27.95
No
Here are the earnings breakdown for Retire at 21, see how I split up revenue streams, so if one fails then I have the other 3 to keep me going while I find a new revenue stream to cover the one I lost.
If a young, dyslexic, college drop-out can do it, you can do it too! These days everyone wants to make money online, people often create a website, do some promotions, and then wonder why there is no treasure chest at the end of the rainbow. Here is the secret that many webmasters overlook: having a website is not enough to make money, you will need to find a way of turning those visitors into a revenue stream. We have compiled all of the most popular and powerful money making opportunities that every website owner should consider. So eyes forward, pay attention, and decide which money making method is best for your website:
Monetizing your Website
Website
Earnings Share
Payout Date
Minumin Payout
Advertising Programs
Google Adsense
Pay Per Click
End of the Next Month
$100.00
Yahoo Publish Network
Pay Per Click
Same Day
$100.00
AzoogleAds
Pay Per Click
15th Month
$50.00
Affiliate Programs
Clickbank
1% to 75%
Twice Monthly
$100.00
Commision Junction
Depends on Product
Monthly
$25.00
Amazon
4% to 8.5%
60 Days After Month Ends
$100.00
Text Link Adverts
Text Link Ads
50%
1st Month
$10.00
TNX
87.5%
Anytime
$5.00
Kontera
Unkown
With in 30 days
$100.00
Link Worth
70%
10th Month
$25
Sponsored Reviews
Review Me
50%
1st Month
$25.00
Pay Per Post
90%
30 Days After Post
$20.00
Sponsored Reviews
65%
Weekly
$10.00
Promoting your Website
Website
Alexa
Page Rank
Average Traffic
Acceptance Rate
Social Bookmarking
Digg
160
8
10,000 - 80,000
1 in 10,000
Stumbleupon
329
8
500 - 3000
1 in 10
Propeller
1,791
7
5000 - 30,000
1 in 3000
Reddit
1,132
8
5000 - 20,000
1 in 2000
Delicious
449
8
5000 - 10,000
1 in 5000
Article Directorys
Ezine Articles
755
6
500
1 in 10
Article Base
11,483
4
100
1 in 3
iSnare
17,381
4
100
1 in 2
Go Articles
9,388
3
150
1 in 2
Article Snatch
32,815
3
100
1 in 2
Web Directorys
Best of the Web
14,419
6
500
1 in 1
Splut
50,814
3
30
1 in 1
Iozoo
137,593
6
30
1 in 1
Google Directory
4
8
50
1 in 2
01 Web Directory
66,607
4
100
1 in 2
Get the full table details at http://www.retireat21.com/
Creating Your First Profitable WebsiteWhat you can expect to learn from this guide:
Setting up Your Domain NameWhere and how to register your first domain name
Hosting Your First WebsiteWhere and what hosting account is right for your website
Which Website Platform You Should UseLearn what website platform is right for your website, whether it is a blog, forum or stand alone website.
Designing Your WebsiteWhere to find website layouts, styles and skins for your website.
Monetizing Your WebsiteHow to earn a income from your website
Promoting Your WebsiteFind out where you can promote your website for FREE!
Find the cheapest domain names bellow.
Where to buy a domain name
Website
.com
.net
.co.uk
.info
.org
Name Cheap
$9.29
$9.29
N/A
$5.88
$9.29
GoDaddy
$9.99
$2.99
N/A
$2.99
$8.99
Ukreg
$17.43
$17.43
$5.90
$17.43
$17.43
IPower
$6.50
$6.50
N/A
$6.50
$6.50
UK2
$17.99
$17.99
$5.99
$15.99
$17.99
Creating, setting up and connecting your domain to your host is really no trouble at all, I have personally set up my domain, hosting, website platform and design all in 20 minutes before.
Beginners Hosting Packages
Website
Package Name
Disk Space
Bandwidth
Cpanel
Database
Price
HostedFX
Bronze Plan
2gb
60gb
Yes
Yes
$5.00
Host Gator
Hatching
350gb
3,000gb
Yes
Unlimited
$4.95
Host Monster
Professional
1,500gb
15,000gb
Yes
Yes
$6.95
Dream Host
Standard
500gb
5tb
Yes
Yes
$5.95
BlueHost
Professional
1,500gb
15,000gb
Yes
Yes
$6.95
Easy Space
Starter Web Hosting
500mb
10gb
Yes
No
$5.95
123 Reg
Starter Pro
500mb
5gb
No
No
$7.99
1 and 1
Beginner
1.5gb
20gb
Yes
Yes
$4.95
Deciding at the beginning what website platform you want to use is very important because changing your mind can cause masses of problems and can cost you a lot of money!
Ready Made Graphics
Website
User Rating
Admin Rating
Price
Website
Joomla
8/10
9/10
Free
Php Nuke
6/10
5/10
Free
Mambo
4/10
6/10
Free
Forums
Vbulletin
10/10
8/10
$85.00
Invision Power Board
9/10
10/10
$149.99
Phpbb
5/10
4/10
Free
Blogging
Wordpress
9/10
10/10
Free
TypePad
9/10
9/10
$49.50
E-commerce
osCommerce
7/10
7/10
Free
ZenCart
5/10
8/10
Free
Getting a website designed and programmed can be highly expensive, when starting out on the internet buy pre made designs.
Ready Made Graphics
Website
Min Price
Max Price
Instant Download
Website Designs
Template Monster
$5.00
$275.00
Yes
Dream Template
$59.95
$59.95
Yes
Buy Templates
$29.00
$449.00
Yes
Forum Design
Extreme Pixels
$29.99
$29.99
Yes
Transverse Styles
$30.00
$40.00
No
Forum Monkeys
$25.00
$31.00
Yes
WordPress Design
Premium News Themes
$79.99
$500.00
Yes
Revolution
$79.95
$399.95
Yes
Logo Design
Logo Maid
$19.00
$249.00
Yes
Got Logos
$25.00
$79.00
No
Banner Design
Bannersmall
$24.95
$38.95
No
20 Dollar Banners
$20.00
$27.95
No
Here are the earnings breakdown for Retire at 21, see how I split up revenue streams, so if one fails then I have the other 3 to keep me going while I find a new revenue stream to cover the one I lost.
If a young, dyslexic, college drop-out can do it, you can do it too! These days everyone wants to make money online, people often create a website, do some promotions, and then wonder why there is no treasure chest at the end of the rainbow. Here is the secret that many webmasters overlook: having a website is not enough to make money, you will need to find a way of turning those visitors into a revenue stream. We have compiled all of the most popular and powerful money making opportunities that every website owner should consider. So eyes forward, pay attention, and decide which money making method is best for your website:
Monetizing your Website
Website
Earnings Share
Payout Date
Minumin Payout
Advertising Programs
Google Adsense
Pay Per Click
End of the Next Month
$100.00
Yahoo Publish Network
Pay Per Click
Same Day
$100.00
AzoogleAds
Pay Per Click
15th Month
$50.00
Affiliate Programs
Clickbank
1% to 75%
Twice Monthly
$100.00
Commision Junction
Depends on Product
Monthly
$25.00
Amazon
4% to 8.5%
60 Days After Month Ends
$100.00
Text Link Adverts
Text Link Ads
50%
1st Month
$10.00
TNX
87.5%
Anytime
$5.00
Kontera
Unkown
With in 30 days
$100.00
Link Worth
70%
10th Month
$25
Sponsored Reviews
Review Me
50%
1st Month
$25.00
Pay Per Post
90%
30 Days After Post
$20.00
Sponsored Reviews
65%
Weekly
$10.00
Promoting your Website
Website
Alexa
Page Rank
Average Traffic
Acceptance Rate
Social Bookmarking
Digg
160
8
10,000 - 80,000
1 in 10,000
Stumbleupon
329
8
500 - 3000
1 in 10
Propeller
1,791
7
5000 - 30,000
1 in 3000
1,132
8
5000 - 20,000
1 in 2000
Delicious
449
8
5000 - 10,000
1 in 5000
Article Directorys
Ezine Articles
755
6
500
1 in 10
Article Base
11,483
4
100
1 in 3
iSnare
17,381
4
100
1 in 2
Go Articles
9,388
3
150
1 in 2
Article Snatch
32,815
3
100
1 in 2
Web Directorys
Best of the Web
14,419
6
500
1 in 1
Splut
50,814
3
30
1 in 1
Iozoo
137,593
6
30
1 in 1
Google Directory
4
8
50
1 in 2
01 Web Directory
66,607
4
100
1 in 2
Get the full table details at http://www.retireat21.com/
INTERVIEW WITH SEAN HAMMONS OF GETCLICKY.COM
Interview With Sean Hammons founder of GetCliccky.com
Sean HammonsInterview with Sean Hammons of GetClicky.com. Clicky is a web analyzer that works great with any web site, even Ajax and Flash sites. It was originally targeted towards smaller web sites and blogs because it tracks a high level of detail on every visitor, and these types of sites find this information very interesting.
Todays interview is with Sean Hammons of GetClicky.com - Web Analytics 2.0.
To quote the website:
Clicky makes web analytics easy, fun, powerful, and drop dead gorgeous.
Clicky's slick interface and powerful feature set make analyzing your site's traffic easy and fun.
You can tell right of the bat -- that this not your usual web analytics website, so it is indeed a great pleasure to interview Sean Hammons.
Hi Sean
First off - can we have a little background information - Where you live? How old you are? What motivates you? Inspires you? I live in Portland OR, 29 years old. A big motivator for me is just having my work appreciated. So many jobs are thankless, and that's depressing. I've worked plenty of crap jobs including fast food, pumping gas, tech support, office cubicle hell... I was just a number and I hated that.Clicky is 100% my code, my design, etc. We get emails all the time of people who love the service, and that's just a wonderful feeling, really it is. 1) Tell us about your main project, Clicky? Why did you launch Clicky? Where are you at now with Clicky?There are thousands of analytics and statistical services, but most of them are bad or outdated. I've never been satisfied with any of them. We wanted to create something that we'd want to use on our own web sites, and we thought there would be a market for a slick "web 2.0" style analytics service. We were right... In just over a year we have made some great partnerships (namely Performancing and Freewebs) and are tracking data for over 200,000 web sites. So we're doing damn good. 2) Clicky is the only web analytic website that offers a affiliate program, why did you decide to do this and how has it improved your business?Affiliate programs are a great way to get some cheap marketing, since you only have to pay the people who create results. Tons of people write articles about us or put our little Clicky "badge" icon on their page simply because we offer this program. Even if some of these links never result in any paid signups, they still drive a lot of traffic to our site and help to build our brand name. 3) On your website you show a chart showing all the features you offer and the features your competitors offer, "Clicky -VS- The Other Guys". How has this contributed to the success of Clicky?It really helps to showcase the features that we have that other products don't, which helps answer the question, "Why would I use Clicky when there are 10 billion other options?". I've found quite a few articles and forum threads where someone will say "They offer tons of features that Google doesn't [link to chart]". Of course these types of first-party comparisons are always a bit biased, we're obviously not going to list features that *we* don't have that other programs do, but the comparison is true, we're not lying about anything on there. Although it's hard to keep up with all the changes to all the programs over time, so some of these services may have had updates since we made the chart, but we're not intentionally falsifying any information.4) Why should webmasters be using Clicky instead of any of your competitors?As mentioned on our front page, we are trying to make web analytics "easy, fun, powerful, and drop dead gorgeous." Other than perhaps "powerful", most services fail in all respects. Every service is different and there are some key features we are lacking (like campaigns and goals) that we know makes us NOT the right choice for everyone, but we're working on that. We think our simple and clean interface makes understanding your traffic a very easy thing to do, and the Ajax adds some flare and fun to it.Most people use more than one analyzer at a time, and we think that's a good idea, especially since they all have hiccups once in a while. Tons of people use Clicky alongside Google Analytics, and I think that's a great combo. Google offers some very powerful and interesting trend data for all sorts of things, while we give the fine grained detail on individual visitors, but also offer other ways to analyze data.5) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?One of the biggest mistakes we made in the beginning was undercharging for our service. I've learned a lot about pricing in the last year and discovered that people will pay any price you ask, as long as it is reasonable. Charging a very small amount of money will not get you more customers, you'll just get the same ones but just make a lot less money. You may even get LESS customers, because some people will equate cheap with bad, and won't sign up whereas they may have if you asked for more. And there's just a certain percentage of people that will never pay for anything online, no matter how cheap it is, it's just against their morals. So, I would tell myself, don't undercharge, it's a huge mistake.6) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?It's definitely in my blood, both my parents run their own businesses. I do think it is something that could be learned, but that doesn't mean everyone can be successful at it. The most important thing is being able to manage your money well, which a lot of people are NOT good at, obviously. If you can't manage your finances, you can't run a business, period.I'm real good about saving it and NOT spending it on shit I don't need, so we're doing real well. 7) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)I admire all successful internet entrepreneurs. From Kevin Rose to Michael Arrington to Ryan Block to Reed Hastings to Sergey & Larry - all of these people inspire me.8) Do you have any favourite business related, internet marketing or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?No I haven't read any books on those subjects, everything I know about that is just from my own personal experience.9) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?I usually work about 10 hours a day, M-F. I spend about an hour a day on emails and the rest programming.I used to work a lot on weekends too but that was taking a big toll on me. I have since started taking the weekends off, except for checking on things to ensure all is well, and answering any important emails that can't wait til Monday.10) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?I really don't know, I can't picture life without internet :( It would probably be in the computer field though, I love programming, so I would probably be doing that.11) What do you like best about the Internet?It's amazing that literally anyone can publish and share any information they want with the entire world for essentially zero cost. I can't believe how quickly this has changed everything. Life just 10-15 years ago seems like caveman times.It's also amazing for running a business, since every person in the world is a potential customer. Half the money we've made has come from Europe, a place I've never been, half way around the world. That's just ridiculous when you really think about it.12) What do you like least about the Internet?What horrible monsters people are when they can be anonymous. 13) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?We hope to make Clicky into the best analyzer of all time and perhaps sell it in a year or two. We'd like to make enough to retire on, but I don't plan to retire, life to me would be boring without doing something productive. Of course I'd love to travel and see the world but that would get old after a few years. We'd like to take that money and invest in other projects that might need it or that we believe in, and also start some additional projects of our own.
Thank you Sean -- great answers. Always good to speak to someone who is enjoying their business. We will watch GetClicky.com with interest
All the best
Michael. Visit http://www.retireat21.com/
Sean HammonsInterview with Sean Hammons of GetClicky.com. Clicky is a web analyzer that works great with any web site, even Ajax and Flash sites. It was originally targeted towards smaller web sites and blogs because it tracks a high level of detail on every visitor, and these types of sites find this information very interesting.
Todays interview is with Sean Hammons of GetClicky.com - Web Analytics 2.0.
To quote the website:
Clicky makes web analytics easy, fun, powerful, and drop dead gorgeous.
Clicky's slick interface and powerful feature set make analyzing your site's traffic easy and fun.
You can tell right of the bat -- that this not your usual web analytics website, so it is indeed a great pleasure to interview Sean Hammons.
Hi Sean
First off - can we have a little background information - Where you live? How old you are? What motivates you? Inspires you? I live in Portland OR, 29 years old. A big motivator for me is just having my work appreciated. So many jobs are thankless, and that's depressing. I've worked plenty of crap jobs including fast food, pumping gas, tech support, office cubicle hell... I was just a number and I hated that.Clicky is 100% my code, my design, etc. We get emails all the time of people who love the service, and that's just a wonderful feeling, really it is. 1) Tell us about your main project, Clicky? Why did you launch Clicky? Where are you at now with Clicky?There are thousands of analytics and statistical services, but most of them are bad or outdated. I've never been satisfied with any of them. We wanted to create something that we'd want to use on our own web sites, and we thought there would be a market for a slick "web 2.0" style analytics service. We were right... In just over a year we have made some great partnerships (namely Performancing and Freewebs) and are tracking data for over 200,000 web sites. So we're doing damn good. 2) Clicky is the only web analytic website that offers a affiliate program, why did you decide to do this and how has it improved your business?Affiliate programs are a great way to get some cheap marketing, since you only have to pay the people who create results. Tons of people write articles about us or put our little Clicky "badge" icon on their page simply because we offer this program. Even if some of these links never result in any paid signups, they still drive a lot of traffic to our site and help to build our brand name. 3) On your website you show a chart showing all the features you offer and the features your competitors offer, "Clicky -VS- The Other Guys". How has this contributed to the success of Clicky?It really helps to showcase the features that we have that other products don't, which helps answer the question, "Why would I use Clicky when there are 10 billion other options?". I've found quite a few articles and forum threads where someone will say "They offer tons of features that Google doesn't [link to chart]". Of course these types of first-party comparisons are always a bit biased, we're obviously not going to list features that *we* don't have that other programs do, but the comparison is true, we're not lying about anything on there. Although it's hard to keep up with all the changes to all the programs over time, so some of these services may have had updates since we made the chart, but we're not intentionally falsifying any information.4) Why should webmasters be using Clicky instead of any of your competitors?As mentioned on our front page, we are trying to make web analytics "easy, fun, powerful, and drop dead gorgeous." Other than perhaps "powerful", most services fail in all respects. Every service is different and there are some key features we are lacking (like campaigns and goals) that we know makes us NOT the right choice for everyone, but we're working on that. We think our simple and clean interface makes understanding your traffic a very easy thing to do, and the Ajax adds some flare and fun to it.Most people use more than one analyzer at a time, and we think that's a good idea, especially since they all have hiccups once in a while. Tons of people use Clicky alongside Google Analytics, and I think that's a great combo. Google offers some very powerful and interesting trend data for all sorts of things, while we give the fine grained detail on individual visitors, but also offer other ways to analyze data.5) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?One of the biggest mistakes we made in the beginning was undercharging for our service. I've learned a lot about pricing in the last year and discovered that people will pay any price you ask, as long as it is reasonable. Charging a very small amount of money will not get you more customers, you'll just get the same ones but just make a lot less money. You may even get LESS customers, because some people will equate cheap with bad, and won't sign up whereas they may have if you asked for more. And there's just a certain percentage of people that will never pay for anything online, no matter how cheap it is, it's just against their morals. So, I would tell myself, don't undercharge, it's a huge mistake.6) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?It's definitely in my blood, both my parents run their own businesses. I do think it is something that could be learned, but that doesn't mean everyone can be successful at it. The most important thing is being able to manage your money well, which a lot of people are NOT good at, obviously. If you can't manage your finances, you can't run a business, period.I'm real good about saving it and NOT spending it on shit I don't need, so we're doing real well. 7) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)I admire all successful internet entrepreneurs. From Kevin Rose to Michael Arrington to Ryan Block to Reed Hastings to Sergey & Larry - all of these people inspire me.8) Do you have any favourite business related, internet marketing or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?No I haven't read any books on those subjects, everything I know about that is just from my own personal experience.9) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?I usually work about 10 hours a day, M-F. I spend about an hour a day on emails and the rest programming.I used to work a lot on weekends too but that was taking a big toll on me. I have since started taking the weekends off, except for checking on things to ensure all is well, and answering any important emails that can't wait til Monday.10) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?I really don't know, I can't picture life without internet :( It would probably be in the computer field though, I love programming, so I would probably be doing that.11) What do you like best about the Internet?It's amazing that literally anyone can publish and share any information they want with the entire world for essentially zero cost. I can't believe how quickly this has changed everything. Life just 10-15 years ago seems like caveman times.It's also amazing for running a business, since every person in the world is a potential customer. Half the money we've made has come from Europe, a place I've never been, half way around the world. That's just ridiculous when you really think about it.12) What do you like least about the Internet?What horrible monsters people are when they can be anonymous. 13) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?We hope to make Clicky into the best analyzer of all time and perhaps sell it in a year or two. We'd like to make enough to retire on, but I don't plan to retire, life to me would be boring without doing something productive. Of course I'd love to travel and see the world but that would get old after a few years. We'd like to take that money and invest in other projects that might need it or that we believe in, and also start some additional projects of our own.
Thank you Sean -- great answers. Always good to speak to someone who is enjoying their business. We will watch GetClicky.com with interest
All the best
Michael. Visit http://www.retireat21.com/
GABRIEL BERNSTEIN INTERVIEW, PUBLIC RELATIONS ADVICE AND TIPS
Gabrielle BernsteinGabrielle Bernstein was just one year out of college, when she co-founded the Women's Entrepreneurial Network, a non-profit professional organization that connects female entrepreneurs. WEN started a local mentor program for young women, WEN Mentors, and is best known for its signature Gift of Service Exchange events.
Todays interview is with PR Expert Gabrielle Bernstein of GabrielleBernstein.com
In 2007, Gabrielle launched the brand "Falling in Love with Your Future: A Young Woman's Guide to Passion and Happiness", which takes the form of books, life coaching, lectures and more. An integral part of the program is the emphasis on guidance and mentors. Bernstein recently launched her social networking site www.HerFuture.com for young women to find mentors.
Hello Gabrielle
Thank you for agreeing to this interview. You are I believe the first PR Expert we have interviewed at RetireAt21.com - so I am sure our readers will find your comments of particular interest.
1) First off - can we have a little background information - Where you live? How old you are? What motivates you? Inspires you?
I live in the West Village of Manhattan. I am 28 years old. I am motivated by happiness – my daily mission is to achieve serenity and share my happiness with others. I am inspired by people that make positive changes in their lives, by beautiful lyrics and metaphysical/ Buddhist literature. 2) Reading your CV I see you have been involved with The Women's Entrepreneurial Network, running your own public relations company, presenting a lecture called "Falling in Love with Your Future" and speaking on Satelilite Radio's LIME station 114. This is a very wide range of activities to be involved in. How do you manage to do them all? Do you have any tips / suggestions on managing your time effectively. I have always believed in multiple profit centers. I choose to manage between three or four at a time. If one drops I am still juggling the other two while looking to replace the third. I have also created a lifestyle and career that incorporates all of my interests. It sounds like the things I do are disconnected though they are not at all. My work as a publicists aids all of the areas of my career. For example, I can be pitching a client like The Pump Energy Food to health and wellness media while simultaneously nurturing that editor relationship for a later pitch on my wellness lectures and books. My work with young women as a self-help author and motivational speaker is a direct result of my path as a young entrepreneur who followed her passion and pursues a life filled with happiness. I have chosen to share my experiences with this audience to inspire them to follow their passions and rebuild their relationship with themselves. The work I share in my book and lectures is based on daily tools I incorporate into my own life. The way that I manage to do it all is by loving what I am doing and incorporating my work into my life’s mission. 3) You are an expert in Public Relations - how did you become involved in this sector? Was it something you always wanted to do? I graduated college with a BFA in theater and no idea what it meant to be a publicist. What I did know was that I loved people, selling and working out (spending most of my time in my gym clothes). With this information I created my first mission statement which was that I wanted to publicize things I believed and be my own boss (therefore wear my gym clothes to the office). Publicity seemed like a natural move for me because I had already seen successes early on when I promoted parties in nightclubs throughout Manhattan. Once I knew what I wanted to do I threw myself in the fire and figured out how to do it. I had great relationships with nightclubs from my experience as a promoter so I parlayed those connections into PR clients. I taught myself how to pitch to the media by collaborating with experts in the industry. The key component to being a great publicist is having strong relationships with the media. I used my people skills and love for sales to build my credibility as a publicist. 4) Why does a business need Public Relations? What public relations advice would you give a young entrepreneur starting up their first business, especially if their funds are limited? All businesses are selling something and without publicity no one will know there is an available commodity. The Public Relations advice I would give a young entrepreneur starting a business is to use the internet as much as possible. Blog, use facebook, myspace, linkeden etc. Things are different today with all of the opportunities online. Another tool I would suggest is for entrepreneurs to understand their consumer’s media consumption habits. Read what they read, listen to what the listen to and watch what they watch. That way you will begin to understand how they want to be spoken to and how to pitch those outlets. Then make a wish list of the leading publications/tv/radio that you want to see your company featured in. The more you know about the outlet the easier it will be for you to position your business to them in an applicable way. I do one on one coaching with entrepreneurs – I call this program How to Create your Own Publicity Machine. If someone cannot afford a fulltime PR firm and want to create a communications plan that they can manage I am available for coaching. 5) Tell me about the launch of http://www.herfuture.com/ a social networking site for girls to find mentors I have always found that once I figure out what I want to do I MUST find someone who is doing it. When seeking a mentor I want to find people that have what I want and then I do what they do. It is not always easy for young women to find women that have what they want. If they are lucky enough to find that role model they then have to face the challenge of asking her to be a mentor. I created HerFuture.com to eliminate all of those barriers. The mission for the site is to created connections and mentoring relationships with likeminded women. By utilizing the web this site will become a resource that can be accessed nationwide and most importantly allow a shy individual to reach out and ask for help. 6) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself? I like this question.
I would simply tell myself to trust the process and let go of the results. 7) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned? I believe it is in the blood. In my case there is no way in the world that I could work for someone else. When people say “wow you are brave working for yourself” my response is – “no you are!”… Like I said earlier – I had to be my own boss and work in my gym clothes. In fact I am in them right now as I write this! I had made it my mission to create a lifestyle rather than a career. 8) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one) My two mentors today are a man by the name of Joe Watson, author, motivational speaker, entrepreneur and diversity pundit. Joe is the one of the biggest gifts I have ever received. He in fact was the impetus for me to write my book. My other mentor is the Bestselling author Karen Salmansohn. Karen is my example of a women in business who has what I want. Therefore I do what she does. She makes suggestions, I take them and the momentum continues. I also chose to model myself after Marianne Williamson who too is a Bestselling author, spiritual leader and motivational speaker. Her lectures change millions of lives on a daily basis and I hope to achieve that one day. Finally, my mother. I adore her and hope to carry all of her strength into my future. 9) What is the best advice you have ever been given? To take things one day at a time and breathe. 10) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business? To write down their Desire Statement (mission) and take lots of little right actions. Starting a business can be overwhelming and if take things one day at a time and continue to take daily right actions towards your goals everything will work out. I also will encourage them to be of service. The best way to learn is to do! If there is someone in the world that is doing what you want to do I suggest you find a way to help them. This is a mutually beneficial act of altruism. 11) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites? Because my work is part of my lifestyle I am pretty much always working. This sounds grueling though it isn’t at all. I don’t believe that you have to be at your desk writing proposals and pitching the press to be “working”. I am working when I am walking on the street, at the gym or in the car. I am always fielding calls, writing emails and acting as a mouthpiece for my clients. Due to the fact that my newest business revolves around writing self-help books and lecturing on the topics, I also consider going to the gym, meditating and reading inspirational books as part of my daily work. The more I perfect my happiness tools the more I have to share with my audience. Finally, (I know this has been said a thousand times, but it’s true!) if you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work at all. 12) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing? The same thing. My work is about sharing a message. The internet is just another tool that allows me to do what I do on a larger scale. Without it I would still be doing what I currently do. 13) What do you like best about the Internet?What I like best about the internet is that it allows more people to have a voice and share their message. 14) What do you like least about the Internet? I don’t like the fact that it can take you away from the beauty of the world. Teenagers today can become consumed with the internet and forget to add more adventure, activity and nature into their lives. 15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals? I plan to be a bestselling author who shares her message throughout the world. I also plan to be a mother and create a beautiful family. Courtesy of http://www.retireat21.com/
Rand FishkinRand Fishkin is CEO of SEOmoz.org. SEOmoz offer a Pro Membership at $47 per month and recently celebrated their 2000th paying member. Now, you do the MATH on that! Well done Rand and Team!
Todays interview is with Rand Fishkin CEO of http://www.seomoz.org/
SEOmoz, is a Seattle-based SEO company, which serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services. Their vast community comprises more than 60,000 registered users interested in the search marketing field. Hello Rand, Thank you for agreeing to this interview. SEOmoz has recently become one of my favorite websites and it is a real honor to have you here at RetireAt21.comFirst off - can we have a little background information - Where you live? How old you are? What motivates you? Inspires you? Certainly! I live in Seattle, WA, just 25 blocks north of the SEOmoz offices (which means I get to walk to work and back each day - a lot of rain, but great exercise). I'm currently 28 years old, and turn 29 this July. As for motivation and inspiration, I'd have to point to my family, my friends and my terrific fiancee. They help to keep me grounded, and remind me what's really important. 1) Tell us about your main project, SEOmoz? Why did you launch SEOmoz? Where are you now with SEOmoz?Main project is surely an understatement :) I live and breathe this company a solid 12-16 hours a day. I originally launched SEOmoz as a place to discuss the difficulties I was having getting clients ranked in Google's search results back in 2004-2005, during their infamous sandboxing period. Today, the company has 13 employees, a board of directors, venture capital investment and a lot of very high expectations.2) What is the biggest mis-conception in SEO that most new webmasters make?Probably in thinking that it has something to do with meta tags. Honestly, the meta tags have been a relic of SEO for at least the past 5 years, but somehow, it sticks in peoples' minds when they hear SEO, and that creates a lot of frustration. I also would caution new entrants to the market against listening to the numerous snake oil pitches out there. If it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is, and if it sounds expensive, but intelligent and legitimate, you're much more likely to have success. Don't let anyone sell you anything related to SEO without first explaining to you their opinion of how search engines index and rank pages. Your own internal BS meter will guide you the rest of the way.3) Where do you see the world of SEO in 2 years time?Most probably in a very similar position to where we are today. Certainly SEO in 2008 has advanced from 2006, but this industry has reached a level of semi-maturity, and although there will certainly be new and better tools and probably a better comprehension of the service as market penetration rises, I doubt we'll see a "whole new world" in SEO. 4) You are recognised as an authority on SEO - other than an extensive knowledge of the subject, are there any other factors that you think has helped you raise to the TOP in a very competitive industry?I think that the relationships I've built are primarily responsible for where SEOmoz is today. I've been blessed with a great number of friends and associates in SEO and around the web world, who've always had positive things to say about us and the brand. I only hope that I can return the favor in kind to everyone who's given me their time, energy and friendship. Honestly, it's the people that make SEO a great industry to be part of.5) http://www.seomoz.org/team/randfish is a very informative web page - I had not realised that it was only in 2005 that you attended your first SEO conference. What, more than anything else that has allowed you to be come such an authority and grow to over 60000 membership in such a short time?I think the website's success is really based on the content we provide there. The blog, the articles, the tools and the community create a brand that I find really compelling and I think many others do, as well. We now have an average of more than 150 people each day sign up at SEOmoz and much of that is to run tools, to comment on blogs, to participate in our marketplace and to interact with a truly informed, intelligent community of peers. 6) I understand that you offer Pro Membership at SEOmoz for $49 per month. How long have you been doing that - and did you have any issues with your Free Membership when you decided to do this?The PRO memebership has been offered for 12 months now, and we've just added our 2000th member today (we had a little mini-celebration at the office). We haven't had any issues with the free membership since, mainly because everything we've added with PRO has been on top of the services and tools already available to free members. Nothing was taken away - things have just been added on. 7) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?Hiring advice. Hiring is the most important job I have and it's the hardest thing to do. That time machine might be able to save me quite a bit of heartache if used properly :) 8) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?That's particularly hard to say with me. My Mom was (and is) an entrepreneur, so it might be in my blood, or it could be I learned it from her, growing up under her office desk as a kid :) I suppose maybe it's the latter, as my younger brother and sister don't seem to have the bug. 9) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)In many ways, I really admire what Craig Newmark has built with Craigslist. I'm also a huge fan of Danny Sullivan's, and have been looking up to him as a mentor and role model for years. 10) What is the best advice you have ever been given?Productize. If we hadn't built the SEOmoz PRO membership, I don't think we ever could have grown beyond a niche consulting firm. We needed a product to be able to scale. 11) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?Hire the smartest, most trustworthy, most inspiring people you can find. Don't worry as much about experience as you do about personality fit, ability to learn, and raw passion and ability for the work. 12) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?I'm sadly in the group who regularly puts in 10-14 hour days, but I hope to curb that in the near future. My tasks right now are so varied, it's almost impossible to describe them all. Basically, I manage all of the projects at SEOmoz from a high level (and some of them from a hands-on perspective). I also have a lot of phone calls and in-person meetings, still do a bit of consulting and, of course, report to our investors. 13) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?Building it! Seriously, I loved computers from the time I was 5 years old (remember those old TI machines you plugged into the TV?) 14) What do you like best about the Internet?The ability to reach so many people around the world and the closely connected communities that feature creates. 15) What do you like least about the Internet?The lack of cordiality and basic humanity that occasionally pops up in social communities on the web. I think we all need to act more like we're talking to each other in a room full of friends and less like we're removed and unconnected. 16) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?I'm getting married in September and taking a long honeymoon - very much looking forward to that! :) Crave for more @ http://www.retireat21.com/
Interview with Trent Hamm - Helping people fight debt and bad spending habits!
Trent HammInterview with Trent Hamm of TheSimpleDollar.com. The Simple Dollar is for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds - we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.
Hello TrentThank you for agreeing to this interview. As I mentioned, I have been very impressed with thesimpledollar.com1) Tell us about TheSimpleDollar.com - how did it get started, what motivated you to blog about a very personal matter - i.e. your financial experiences?It started as a channel for me to write about the things I was learning about personal finance. I was never really intending it to be "big" - I was mostly just seeking a place to practice writing techniques and focus in on a topic that was a big part of my life.2) Before TheSimpleDollar.com had you run any other websites? What is the "day job"?I had a parenting blog around the time of my son's birth, but it was long defunct even before The Simple Dollar started. My day job involves research and I'm largely buried under agreements not to discuss it.3) I love your description of the TheSimpleDollar.com -The Simple Dollar is for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two.Can you elaborate on that pleaseWe're not living in the 1600s here. There are a lot of facets of modern life that we all enjoy and quite often people view frugality as some sort of return to the era of the washboard. That's not true. I try to look at modern life with an eye towards building a financial future without giving up the trappings that we enjoy.4) What in your opinion are the biggest financial mistakes that people make with regards to how they manage money?Personal finance can be explained in five words: spend less than you earn. Do that always and you'll be fine. The mistakes people make today usually revolve around spending more than they earn (usually credit card debt) or spending exactly what they earn (living paycheck to paycheck). If you commit to spending less than you earn every single month - and thenput that extra away for the future - you'll be just fine. The trick is actually doing that!5) TheSimpleDollar.com has become a very popular website in quite a short time - was there any particular turning points or things that you did which led to the site becoming so popular?Not really. I mostly just connected with other bloggers on my topic, commented on their blogs, and linked to them. I tried submitting links to social bookmarking sites, but with little success. My "big break" happened when others "discovered" The Simple Dollar.Thus, my suggestion is to spend more time writing really good content and less time marketing it, especially at first. If you're marketing something that isn't good, you'll get nowhere.6) Do you have and advice / suggestions for new bloggers on things to do and not to do when starting out blogging. For example is there anything that you would not do now, but which you did do when starting TheSimpleDollar.com?Early on, I hadn't really defined what my topic was and I wrote a lot about things that weren't really related, such as blogging tips and such. Bad move. Figure out your topic before you even start.Of course, it's a good idea to define your topic broadly, but you run into some danger when you go too far outside that topic.7) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)My favorite blogger is Seth Godin. He's succinct, to the point, and makes good comments. I strive to write half that well.8) Do you have any favourite business related, personal finance or personal development related books that you can recommend?Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin changed my life. It's the first book I'd recommend to anyone.9) What is the best advice you have ever been given?Spend less than you earn. Seriously. If you actually take that to heart and do it, your whole world changes.10) What advice would you give to a Young people starting out in life - with regards to managing their own financial affairs? The first day you go into your first job after college, set things up so that 50% of your paycheck is deducted out right off the top and put into another savings account. Do that and you're done with work by the time you're 40.11) How much time do you put into TheSimpleDollar daily / weekly? 3-4 hours a day on an average day.12) What have been the most popular posts at TheSimpleDollar, got the most views, comments etc? Why do you think those posts were most popular?My most popular post of all time has been: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/03/15/how-to-make-your-own-laundry-detergent-and-save-big-money How to Make Your Own Laundry DetergentWhy did it catch on? A lot of science-oriented blogs picked it up, so it got exposure in an area of the blogosphere that I don't normally get attention from. Those folks blasted it into the stratosphere on social bookmarking sites.I didn't really think of it as a "big" post, even when it started taking off - it just sort of happened.13) What do you like best about the Internet?It's a meritocracy. If you're not doing something compelling, people will leave. If you do something compelling and keep it up, people will come.14) What do you like least about the Internet?People who insult others behind a shield of anonymity. It's cowardly and lends a very negative tone to the internet.15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals? Where for example do you think TheSimpleDollar website will be in say 3 or 5 years?It'll still be around, I think, writing on similar topics. I hope to use the success of The Simple Dollar to dabble in some other areas - I have a passion for food, for example, so I may start a cooking blog very soon.Thanks again Trent - Great answers - we appreciate your time. Pls, visit http://www.retireat21.com/ for exciting infomation!
Trent HammInterview with Trent Hamm of TheSimpleDollar.com. The Simple Dollar is for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds - we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.
Hello TrentThank you for agreeing to this interview. As I mentioned, I have been very impressed with thesimpledollar.com1) Tell us about TheSimpleDollar.com - how did it get started, what motivated you to blog about a very personal matter - i.e. your financial experiences?It started as a channel for me to write about the things I was learning about personal finance. I was never really intending it to be "big" - I was mostly just seeking a place to practice writing techniques and focus in on a topic that was a big part of my life.2) Before TheSimpleDollar.com had you run any other websites? What is the "day job"?I had a parenting blog around the time of my son's birth, but it was long defunct even before The Simple Dollar started. My day job involves research and I'm largely buried under agreements not to discuss it.3) I love your description of the TheSimpleDollar.com -The Simple Dollar is for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two.Can you elaborate on that pleaseWe're not living in the 1600s here. There are a lot of facets of modern life that we all enjoy and quite often people view frugality as some sort of return to the era of the washboard. That's not true. I try to look at modern life with an eye towards building a financial future without giving up the trappings that we enjoy.4) What in your opinion are the biggest financial mistakes that people make with regards to how they manage money?Personal finance can be explained in five words: spend less than you earn. Do that always and you'll be fine. The mistakes people make today usually revolve around spending more than they earn (usually credit card debt) or spending exactly what they earn (living paycheck to paycheck). If you commit to spending less than you earn every single month - and thenput that extra away for the future - you'll be just fine. The trick is actually doing that!5) TheSimpleDollar.com has become a very popular website in quite a short time - was there any particular turning points or things that you did which led to the site becoming so popular?Not really. I mostly just connected with other bloggers on my topic, commented on their blogs, and linked to them. I tried submitting links to social bookmarking sites, but with little success. My "big break" happened when others "discovered" The Simple Dollar.Thus, my suggestion is to spend more time writing really good content and less time marketing it, especially at first. If you're marketing something that isn't good, you'll get nowhere.6) Do you have and advice / suggestions for new bloggers on things to do and not to do when starting out blogging. For example is there anything that you would not do now, but which you did do when starting TheSimpleDollar.com?Early on, I hadn't really defined what my topic was and I wrote a lot about things that weren't really related, such as blogging tips and such. Bad move. Figure out your topic before you even start.Of course, it's a good idea to define your topic broadly, but you run into some danger when you go too far outside that topic.7) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)My favorite blogger is Seth Godin. He's succinct, to the point, and makes good comments. I strive to write half that well.8) Do you have any favourite business related, personal finance or personal development related books that you can recommend?Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin changed my life. It's the first book I'd recommend to anyone.9) What is the best advice you have ever been given?Spend less than you earn. Seriously. If you actually take that to heart and do it, your whole world changes.10) What advice would you give to a Young people starting out in life - with regards to managing their own financial affairs? The first day you go into your first job after college, set things up so that 50% of your paycheck is deducted out right off the top and put into another savings account. Do that and you're done with work by the time you're 40.11) How much time do you put into TheSimpleDollar daily / weekly? 3-4 hours a day on an average day.12) What have been the most popular posts at TheSimpleDollar, got the most views, comments etc? Why do you think those posts were most popular?My most popular post of all time has been: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/03/15/how-to-make-your-own-laundry-detergent-and-save-big-money How to Make Your Own Laundry DetergentWhy did it catch on? A lot of science-oriented blogs picked it up, so it got exposure in an area of the blogosphere that I don't normally get attention from. Those folks blasted it into the stratosphere on social bookmarking sites.I didn't really think of it as a "big" post, even when it started taking off - it just sort of happened.13) What do you like best about the Internet?It's a meritocracy. If you're not doing something compelling, people will leave. If you do something compelling and keep it up, people will come.14) What do you like least about the Internet?People who insult others behind a shield of anonymity. It's cowardly and lends a very negative tone to the internet.15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals? Where for example do you think TheSimpleDollar website will be in say 3 or 5 years?It'll still be around, I think, writing on similar topics. I hope to use the success of The Simple Dollar to dabble in some other areas - I have a passion for food, for example, so I may start a cooking blog very soon.Thanks again Trent - Great answers - we appreciate your time. Pls, visit http://www.retireat21.com/ for exciting infomation!
Interview with Stuart Wright, Founder of AVForums.com
Stuart WrightInterview with Stuart Wright, Founder of AVForums.com - an audio visual forum with over 200000 members and exceeding 1 Million Unique Visitors a month. This is truly one of the Net's most successful forums and Stuart has some solid tips for any of us who aspire to Forum Success!
The AV Forums is an independently run resource for people interested in home consumer electronics. AV Forums cover all areas of electronic home entertainment including home cinema, DVD, digital photography, camcorders, video gaming, computer hardware and mobile phones. AVForums.com is the largest AV home consumer electronics forum in the UK by a significant margin and the busiest home cinema forum in EuropeHello Stuart,Thank you for agreeing to this interview. I have been very impressed with AVForums.com (Need to know anything AV related and you will find it there)First off - can we have a little background information - Where you live? How old you are? What motivates you? Inspires you?We work from home in a reasonably rural Shropshire town in the UK. I'm 43, I'm motivated by the desire to accumulate wealth to secure a decent future for my children and I'm inspired by any innovations in technology which make life more interesting.1) Tell us about your main project, AVForums.com? Why did you launch AVForums? My hobby was home cinema (home threater in the States) and in '98, seeing that my favourite magazine Home Cinema Choice didn't have a website, I contacted the publishers who contracted me develop the HCC website. It was the third website I had ever created and it grew to become the UK's largest home cinema review resource. Starting a home cinema forum seemed like a natural addition to the HCC website, although I kept it separate. At the time, the only competition with a home cinema forum was Usenet. Now most of my time is spent working on the forums which get many times more traffic than the HCC website.2) You boast over 1 Million Unique Visitors a month, how do you attract so many visitors to your website?Over Christmas 2007, according to Google Analytics, it was actually 1.8 million. We got here by being the first UK home cinema forum, starting in 2000 so being around for a long time, using good software (search-engine friendly vBulletin) and running the forum the right way. Our traffic is seasonal with the peak during the 6 months around Christmas and the trough in the summer when people are outside away from their gadgets. Our biggest source of traffic is Google, and producing a daily sitemap helps. 3) What advice would you give someone who wants to build a successful forum?* Focus on a topic which doesn't already have a significant forum. For example, when I started AVForums, the largest other audio visual forum was (and still is) the AV Science forum. However, AVSForum.com is aimed at the US market. AVForums was initially (and largely still is) aimed squarely at the UK visitor. Our traffic is going to be limited because of that choice, but it means we dominate our market. There was and there still is no other significant audio visual electronics forum in the UK.* Choose a topic which interests you and about which you have some knowledge. In the early days, you may find that you are one of the main contributors.* Try and partner with a website which has the traffic you want but which doesn't already have a community.* Also pick a topic which you can envisage generating advertising revenue. I am lucky because although I didn't consider it at the time, audio visual home consumer electronics can command a fairly high revenue. Hence we have lots of advertisers from a wide variety of product types with a fair advertising budget. This contrasts with, say, a DVD forum where there is a narrow range of related products and very little margin on DVDs. Given a choice, start a forum about real cars rather than toy ones.4) What would you say is the number one reason for your success with AVForums?Being the first forum covering AV in our country.5) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?Have the confidence to take risks, but the wisdom to appreciate that you won't always make the right decisions without the advice of others.Don't spend a penny you don't have to and don't expect a holiday for a few years. Use a good accounting package early on and unless you are a salesperson (I'm not - I'm a geek) get an organisation to sell advertising on your website for you. If they take, say, 30% commission, then the 70% you keep will be a lot more than the 100% of what little you can sell yourself.6) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?On a day to day basis I don't really consider myself to be an entrepreneur. I think it's important to work to your strengths and mine are the technical and managerial elements of running the forum. You have to delegate as much of the other stuff as you can. 7) Do you have any favourite business related, webmaster or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?The most important ones for me were PHP and MySQL books. If you want to start out without any investment other than your own time, then you are going to have to get your hands dirty. My technical background has been invaluable.8) What is the best advice you have ever been given?Don't scrimp on time when it comes to keeping your forum moderators happy. I have 60 or so who donate at least an hour of their time a day (some significantly more) for nothing more than the satisfaction of helping to run the community. That is not something which should be taken for granted.9) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?If you don't enjoy what you are doing so much that you could easily do it 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for several years, forget it.10) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?Blimey! For a start, I have to stop work at 9pm to keep the marriage going! That's most important. Otherwise it's 14 hours a day during the week and maybe 6 a day on weekends. Possibly more. We have a hierarchy of moderators, super moderators and 3 admin looking after the day to day stuff on the forums. I still have to deal with some disputes. Advertising enquiries go to a separate organisation with whom I work very closely. I still organise competitions, develop new areas of sister sites (programming and graphic design work), I do the marketing, some of the accounting stuff, maintenance of the forums and implementation of any modifications, organisation of new initiatives like podcasts, hardware reviews and video production. It's a very varied and interesting job and I love it.11) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?Probably programming computers although I can't imagine I would have been enjoying it. I'm not management material in an office because I hate office politics.12) What do you like best about the Internet?The ability to find the answer to a question in a few seconds. Why is the grass green? Who was Lindsey Wagner married to? Where is the nearest steak house? I'm also a big fan of online gaming.13) What do you like least about the Internet?Having to protect my kids from the sickos that they might encounter on it.14) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?
Since I could conduct my business with a laptop on a beach in the Bahamas (provided it has broadband) I'm wondering why I'm shivering my ass off in Britain. More details at http://www.retireat21.com/
Stuart WrightInterview with Stuart Wright, Founder of AVForums.com - an audio visual forum with over 200000 members and exceeding 1 Million Unique Visitors a month. This is truly one of the Net's most successful forums and Stuart has some solid tips for any of us who aspire to Forum Success!
The AV Forums is an independently run resource for people interested in home consumer electronics. AV Forums cover all areas of electronic home entertainment including home cinema, DVD, digital photography, camcorders, video gaming, computer hardware and mobile phones. AVForums.com is the largest AV home consumer electronics forum in the UK by a significant margin and the busiest home cinema forum in EuropeHello Stuart,Thank you for agreeing to this interview. I have been very impressed with AVForums.com (Need to know anything AV related and you will find it there)First off - can we have a little background information - Where you live? How old you are? What motivates you? Inspires you?We work from home in a reasonably rural Shropshire town in the UK. I'm 43, I'm motivated by the desire to accumulate wealth to secure a decent future for my children and I'm inspired by any innovations in technology which make life more interesting.1) Tell us about your main project, AVForums.com? Why did you launch AVForums? My hobby was home cinema (home threater in the States) and in '98, seeing that my favourite magazine Home Cinema Choice didn't have a website, I contacted the publishers who contracted me develop the HCC website. It was the third website I had ever created and it grew to become the UK's largest home cinema review resource. Starting a home cinema forum seemed like a natural addition to the HCC website, although I kept it separate. At the time, the only competition with a home cinema forum was Usenet. Now most of my time is spent working on the forums which get many times more traffic than the HCC website.2) You boast over 1 Million Unique Visitors a month, how do you attract so many visitors to your website?Over Christmas 2007, according to Google Analytics, it was actually 1.8 million. We got here by being the first UK home cinema forum, starting in 2000 so being around for a long time, using good software (search-engine friendly vBulletin) and running the forum the right way. Our traffic is seasonal with the peak during the 6 months around Christmas and the trough in the summer when people are outside away from their gadgets. Our biggest source of traffic is Google, and producing a daily sitemap helps. 3) What advice would you give someone who wants to build a successful forum?* Focus on a topic which doesn't already have a significant forum. For example, when I started AVForums, the largest other audio visual forum was (and still is) the AV Science forum. However, AVSForum.com is aimed at the US market. AVForums was initially (and largely still is) aimed squarely at the UK visitor. Our traffic is going to be limited because of that choice, but it means we dominate our market. There was and there still is no other significant audio visual electronics forum in the UK.* Choose a topic which interests you and about which you have some knowledge. In the early days, you may find that you are one of the main contributors.* Try and partner with a website which has the traffic you want but which doesn't already have a community.* Also pick a topic which you can envisage generating advertising revenue. I am lucky because although I didn't consider it at the time, audio visual home consumer electronics can command a fairly high revenue. Hence we have lots of advertisers from a wide variety of product types with a fair advertising budget. This contrasts with, say, a DVD forum where there is a narrow range of related products and very little margin on DVDs. Given a choice, start a forum about real cars rather than toy ones.4) What would you say is the number one reason for your success with AVForums?Being the first forum covering AV in our country.5) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?Have the confidence to take risks, but the wisdom to appreciate that you won't always make the right decisions without the advice of others.Don't spend a penny you don't have to and don't expect a holiday for a few years. Use a good accounting package early on and unless you are a salesperson (I'm not - I'm a geek) get an organisation to sell advertising on your website for you. If they take, say, 30% commission, then the 70% you keep will be a lot more than the 100% of what little you can sell yourself.6) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?On a day to day basis I don't really consider myself to be an entrepreneur. I think it's important to work to your strengths and mine are the technical and managerial elements of running the forum. You have to delegate as much of the other stuff as you can. 7) Do you have any favourite business related, webmaster or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?The most important ones for me were PHP and MySQL books. If you want to start out without any investment other than your own time, then you are going to have to get your hands dirty. My technical background has been invaluable.8) What is the best advice you have ever been given?Don't scrimp on time when it comes to keeping your forum moderators happy. I have 60 or so who donate at least an hour of their time a day (some significantly more) for nothing more than the satisfaction of helping to run the community. That is not something which should be taken for granted.9) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?If you don't enjoy what you are doing so much that you could easily do it 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for several years, forget it.10) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?Blimey! For a start, I have to stop work at 9pm to keep the marriage going! That's most important. Otherwise it's 14 hours a day during the week and maybe 6 a day on weekends. Possibly more. We have a hierarchy of moderators, super moderators and 3 admin looking after the day to day stuff on the forums. I still have to deal with some disputes. Advertising enquiries go to a separate organisation with whom I work very closely. I still organise competitions, develop new areas of sister sites (programming and graphic design work), I do the marketing, some of the accounting stuff, maintenance of the forums and implementation of any modifications, organisation of new initiatives like podcasts, hardware reviews and video production. It's a very varied and interesting job and I love it.11) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?Probably programming computers although I can't imagine I would have been enjoying it. I'm not management material in an office because I hate office politics.12) What do you like best about the Internet?The ability to find the answer to a question in a few seconds. Why is the grass green? Who was Lindsey Wagner married to? Where is the nearest steak house? I'm also a big fan of online gaming.13) What do you like least about the Internet?Having to protect my kids from the sickos that they might encounter on it.14) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?
Since I could conduct my business with a laptop on a beach in the Bahamas (provided it has broadband) I'm wondering why I'm shivering my ass off in Britain. More details at http://www.retireat21.com/
FOUNDER OF DOGSTER.COM DISCUSSES BUILDING A COMMUNITY WEBSITE
Ted Rheingold Interview Founder of Dogster.com Discusses Building a Community Website
Ted RheingoldInterview with Ted Rheingold of Dogster.com. Since launching in January 2004, Dogster.com (and its sister site Catster.com launched in August, 2004) have become the fastest growing pet destination on the internet and are now a top-five overall pet destination.
Todays interview is with Ted Rheingold - Top Dog at Dogster.com and Catster.com.
Fancy starting a website in 2004 and growing it to 500,000 Members serving more than 22 million pages a month to over three quarters of a million visitors? Ted and his team have done this. Ted is with out doubt a Master Community Site BuilderHi Ted
Thanks a lot for doing this interview - when I review the stats for your websites, I am blown away.1) Tell us about your main project, Dogster.com ? Why did you launch Dogster? Where are you at now with Dogster?I launched Dogster as a side project that I felt I could complete in my own time on top of the paying work I was doing for clients. This was 2003 and my goal was to get some monthly income to offset the payment gaps contractual work generates2) How did Dogster become so popular and profitable?I simply made something that many people wanted. Half the visitors wanted to show off their dog. The other half just wanted to look at all the dogs. I knew people would like the service, though I had no idea how many. From that moment, however, it's been a daily job to keep offering features and offering services that the customers (aka website visitors want) It's critical everything comes second. We've become profitable by working very hard to find advertisers that want to communicate with our customer, and helping the advertisers understand how to best share their message. We committed to a direct sales model early on which most web sites prefer not to do, but there's almost no money in online ad networks unless you are serving millions of pages a day. 3) What advice would you give someone who wants to build a community driven website?It's critical to realize that making the website itself is not the challenge. Anyone can make or have made a decent community site. The challenge is building the community itself. Without the community of passionate members all you have is a bunch of unused web code. 4) What would you say is the number one reason for your success with Dogster?Putting the customer first and focusing on how to make it a business right after that. We decided early on that VC and investment are a tool to maximize your business, not prove it. So many people focus on the future when the reality is that you have to focus on this month and this quarter or you'll never get very far.5) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?I'm rather pleased with how it went. I waited to see repeat long-term usage trends before even trying to make it a real business and then I bought in a cofounder to lead the business side as that wasn't my strong suit. If you are not going to be the person generating revenue you have to find someone that will. Revenue will not come to you no matter how clever or different you think your service will be. Know your business if you expect it to be your business.6) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)Early on it was HotOrNot.com and LiveJournal.com They were making large sums of monthly revenue from members paying for services. Any web business that can avoid advertising, affiliate or other 3rd party revenue models means it will do just fine. Also, neither of those companies took/needed VC. Today it's Feedburner, Tickle, Etsy, and many others.7) Do you have any favourite business related, webmaster or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?Lucky or Smart by Bo Peabody, the founder of Tripod. It's no more than 100 pages and it will keep your ego and expectations in check.8) What is the best advice you have ever been given?You can't hedge your own bets. All you can do is put all your efforts into what you think is your best move and do your best you can. Later you can change plans, but you can't do two things at one time as you'll never know if you did either of them as well as you could.9) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?Spend as *little* money as possible and don't spend one more dollar than you can afford to spend. A tiny budget forces you to make the best decisions, you don't waste money on decent idea, you only spend it on the best. Only spend money you can afford to spend. If you get in a whole your options become significantly limited as your business has to compensate. So many times a slow-growth business fails to mature because it went bankrupt before it had a chance to get there.10) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?I used to work about 80. Now it's 60. The first two years I did whatever it took. I learned everything I could so I could avoid having to pay someone to do something. Now we are a team of 15. I lead the company and oversee all departments, but I also answer the phone, fix broken code, copy edit, and anything else that can help my team be the most it can.11) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?Working in the international development sector, slowly working my way up a very slow ladder before I could actually start affecting change. Sadly I'm not spending my time on the world at large now, but I'd be so bored if I was doing anything else.12) What do you like best about the Internet?It levels almost every playing field and widens it for the whole world. It's an amazing equalizer that we haven't even begun to comprehend how radically it will change the life of every human on the planet.13) What do you like least about the Internet?The always-on mindset it has induced in the business world. Civilities and pleasantries are being lost as people forget that everyone else is still just a person14) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?To work as little as I have to. To make of my existence that most that it can be.
Ted also has a Blog, which can be found at: http://blog.dogster.com/. More details at http://www.retireat21.com/
Ted RheingoldInterview with Ted Rheingold of Dogster.com. Since launching in January 2004, Dogster.com (and its sister site Catster.com launched in August, 2004) have become the fastest growing pet destination on the internet and are now a top-five overall pet destination.
Todays interview is with Ted Rheingold - Top Dog at Dogster.com and Catster.com.
Fancy starting a website in 2004 and growing it to 500,000 Members serving more than 22 million pages a month to over three quarters of a million visitors? Ted and his team have done this. Ted is with out doubt a Master Community Site BuilderHi Ted
Thanks a lot for doing this interview - when I review the stats for your websites, I am blown away.1) Tell us about your main project, Dogster.com ? Why did you launch Dogster? Where are you at now with Dogster?I launched Dogster as a side project that I felt I could complete in my own time on top of the paying work I was doing for clients. This was 2003 and my goal was to get some monthly income to offset the payment gaps contractual work generates2) How did Dogster become so popular and profitable?I simply made something that many people wanted. Half the visitors wanted to show off their dog. The other half just wanted to look at all the dogs. I knew people would like the service, though I had no idea how many. From that moment, however, it's been a daily job to keep offering features and offering services that the customers (aka website visitors want) It's critical everything comes second. We've become profitable by working very hard to find advertisers that want to communicate with our customer, and helping the advertisers understand how to best share their message. We committed to a direct sales model early on which most web sites prefer not to do, but there's almost no money in online ad networks unless you are serving millions of pages a day. 3) What advice would you give someone who wants to build a community driven website?It's critical to realize that making the website itself is not the challenge. Anyone can make or have made a decent community site. The challenge is building the community itself. Without the community of passionate members all you have is a bunch of unused web code. 4) What would you say is the number one reason for your success with Dogster?Putting the customer first and focusing on how to make it a business right after that. We decided early on that VC and investment are a tool to maximize your business, not prove it. So many people focus on the future when the reality is that you have to focus on this month and this quarter or you'll never get very far.5) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?I'm rather pleased with how it went. I waited to see repeat long-term usage trends before even trying to make it a real business and then I bought in a cofounder to lead the business side as that wasn't my strong suit. If you are not going to be the person generating revenue you have to find someone that will. Revenue will not come to you no matter how clever or different you think your service will be. Know your business if you expect it to be your business.6) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)Early on it was HotOrNot.com and LiveJournal.com They were making large sums of monthly revenue from members paying for services. Any web business that can avoid advertising, affiliate or other 3rd party revenue models means it will do just fine. Also, neither of those companies took/needed VC. Today it's Feedburner, Tickle, Etsy, and many others.7) Do you have any favourite business related, webmaster or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?Lucky or Smart by Bo Peabody, the founder of Tripod. It's no more than 100 pages and it will keep your ego and expectations in check.8) What is the best advice you have ever been given?You can't hedge your own bets. All you can do is put all your efforts into what you think is your best move and do your best you can. Later you can change plans, but you can't do two things at one time as you'll never know if you did either of them as well as you could.9) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?Spend as *little* money as possible and don't spend one more dollar than you can afford to spend. A tiny budget forces you to make the best decisions, you don't waste money on decent idea, you only spend it on the best. Only spend money you can afford to spend. If you get in a whole your options become significantly limited as your business has to compensate. So many times a slow-growth business fails to mature because it went bankrupt before it had a chance to get there.10) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?I used to work about 80. Now it's 60. The first two years I did whatever it took. I learned everything I could so I could avoid having to pay someone to do something. Now we are a team of 15. I lead the company and oversee all departments, but I also answer the phone, fix broken code, copy edit, and anything else that can help my team be the most it can.11) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?Working in the international development sector, slowly working my way up a very slow ladder before I could actually start affecting change. Sadly I'm not spending my time on the world at large now, but I'd be so bored if I was doing anything else.12) What do you like best about the Internet?It levels almost every playing field and widens it for the whole world. It's an amazing equalizer that we haven't even begun to comprehend how radically it will change the life of every human on the planet.13) What do you like least about the Internet?The always-on mindset it has induced in the business world. Civilities and pleasantries are being lost as people forget that everyone else is still just a person14) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?To work as little as I have to. To make of my existence that most that it can be.
Ted also has a Blog, which can be found at: http://blog.dogster.com/. More details at http://www.retireat21.com/
AARON WALL INTERVIEW, SEO BOOK FOUNDER Talks Life and SEO
Aaron Wall Interview, SEO Book Founder Talks Life and SEO
Aaron WallInterview with Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com. The SEO Book Training Program has over 100 cross referencing online training modules that allow you to learn SEO one piece at a time. Many modules also include how to videos and other bonuses like spreadsheets of common keyword modifiers and an example of aligning keyword research data with site structure and on page optimization.
Todays interview is with perhaps one of the biggest names in SEO - Mr Aaron Wall of SEOBook.comSEO Book.com is a leading SEO blog covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to Aaron's mind. ;) The first version of SEO Book came out in December of 2003. Hi AaronThank you for this interview. The many young entrepreneurs at RetireAt21.com will I am sure find your replies of great interest.First off - can we have a little background information - Where you live? How old you are? What motivates you? Inspires you? I am 28 years old and live in the San Francisco area with my loving beautiful wife Giovanna ( http://www.heygio.com/ ). I guess the biggest thing that motivates me is wanting to learn, and being attracted towards things I am passionate in. 1) Tell us about SEOBook.com? Why did you launch SEOBook.com? At the end of 2003 I wrote an article about the Google Florida Update ( http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/buyads.htm ). From that article I got really popular. Like I went from getting ~2 inquiries a month to about 30 phone calls a day. I simply could not keep up with it all, and figured there was probably a good market for selling an ebook offering usable tips, without requiring selling personalized consulting to each prospect. Plus I saw that consulting was sorta feast or famine, and that blogs were getting a disproportionate number of links because they made it so easy to be subscribed to and link to. So I figured being a part of the conversation and selling an information product off of that made sense. It also helped that SEO keeps changing and was a fast growing field. Both of which meant a large number of *potential* customers waiting for me to fill the demand. I was also lucky to get the exact match .com domain name for $8. :) 2) Can you tell us how many copies of the SEO Book have been sold?I think it was a bit more than 13,000 copies sold, a bunch given away to good charities, plus I would guess far more have been pirated as well. Even yesterday I saw an eBay listing someone did. 3) I understand that recently you moved over to a Membership website option - what was the reason for this and how was it received? As the field got more complex (especially with lots of hand editing from Google) I felt that the one size fits all approach of a book just was not as good as offering feedback and strategies specifically for your site. The reason for the move is to establish a deeper, more meaningful relationship with a limited number of customers willing to pay for such a relationship.I think anytime you change business models there is friction, especially if you move from a one time sales model to a subscription. Our SEO training course ( http://training.seobook.com/ ) has been fairly well received...we have far more subscribers than we were expecting at this point, with over 100 people joining in the first 48 hours and almost all of them staying subscribed (yesterday was our 1 month anniversary). I think a big feature we offer that is of exceptional value is our private member community forums. The admission price filters out bottom feeders to keep the signal to noise high. I feel that personalized help I have given has helped many members. And I feel I have learned a lot from member feedback, interacting with members, and reading suggestions members give each other. I look forward to participating there each day and feel I learn something new every day...if I like it that much I figure other people probably do too.4) How do you describe SEO and what do you consider two or three of the essentials of SEO?SEO is the art and science of creating targeted traffic streams from relevant search queries. Keyword research and link building are two basic fundamentals of SEO, but as the web gets more and more conversational I think branding, public relations, and conversations are really sorting out the winners from the losers. What is remarkable about your site? Why should I be talking about it? What makes you unique? Why should I be talking about you? Those are the questions that allow individuals to beat multi-billion dollar corporations. 5) What do you dislike the most about the SEO industry?I don't like how many people who essentially make a living from SEO (like the guy who ran the spammy weblogs inc. linkfarm network) ( http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6312 ) get away with calling SEO dirty. And some people in our industry are ____ enough to ask that guy to keynote at conferences. Google funds a lot of the spam and copyright violations then claims they are above it all. This quote from their search query evaluation guidelines displays their lack of respect for copyright more clearly than anything else I have ever come across "(Scraped Content that is not Spam) Lyrics, poems, ringtones (that the user programs rather than downloads), quotes, and proverbs have no central authority. When you see pages with this content, you cannot judge it to have been copied, and the pages should not be assigned a Spam label. Unfortunately, some content is written specifically for Spam pages and you will not find it on another source. Although you may be convinced that the intent is to deceive, if the content makes sense and appears original, you will not be able to label such pages Spam."Also I think some people quest so much for fundamental truths that they isolate information into meaningless chunks void of context. The truth is we are all a bit lucky, and SEO is becoming more and more of a subset of marketing. 6) What were the main factors that generated sales of your SEO book in the early days? I understand you ran an affiliate program - how important was that?Keep in mind that before I created SEO Book I had already had spent a year learning SEO, and already wrote that wildly popular Google florida update article a few months prior. People think that bolting on a fleet of affiliates is a key to sales, but that is probably only true if they exist as value added resellers, or if you are in with the hype filled joint venture email offer spammers, or if your product is already a market leading product that is impulsively purchased and easy to recommend. Before I changed my model recently affiliates were a good chunk of sales but I need to improve my sales funnel again to get affiliate sales back up. But they were not a big sales channel until my brand was already well known.I think the key to getting early sales was just participating in the community and getting people to talk about me. If Seth Godin mentions my site that is probably another $1,000 in the bank account. And there was a controversial Search Engine Watch forum thread talking about stuff I was doing. Though the thread did not feature me in a good light, it still doubled my income for about a week. Conversation = profits. After I got profits I re-invested into create a better site design and giving away a bunch of free SEO tools ( http://tools.seobook.com/ ), both of which turned out to be good long-term business decisions.7) Do you feel social media marketing / buzz marketing can play a part in SEO? (i.e content that gets linked to?)Well I think one of the leading SEO strategies is to create content that focuses on a topic that is easy to link at. In an ideal world it would be something I did every day. :)Truth be told though I really am only able to practice it on a deep and meaningful level about once a month...but my wife is getting into doing it too...so when she gets some more practice it is "look out world!" 8) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started with SEOBook, what business related advice would you give yourself?Buy a lot of short memorable and keyword laden .com, .net, and .org domain names and sit on most of them for 5 years, while developing out the best ones. 9) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?I think it is both. If you are a person who seeks out why things work the way they do and like learning stuff starts to fall in place for you over time. But you have to be willing to work harder and more hours than the average person does. The world was never fair and was always nepotistic. Winning market-share either means creating new markets or stealing market-share from established players. To do either you need to create social relationships and get people talking about you. 10) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)I think I am still a highly flawed individual, but my mom had great work ethics, my wife is really loving, Tim Berners-Lee created the web, and Seth Godin really taught me that marketing does not need to be as sleazy and destructive as it often is. Noam Chomsky is also an inspiration. 11) Do you have any favourite business related, SEO, webmaster or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?Godin's Purple Cow ( http://www.sethgodin.com/purple ), Steven Krug's Don't Make Me Think ( http://www.sensible.com/ ), and The Cluetrain Manifesto ( http://www.cluetrain.com/ ) are probably the basis for my online strategy. 12) What is the best advice you have ever been given?It was probably something that the guy who goes by the moniker NFFC told me. Hard to pick out just one, but maybe this is it"I think the best brands, the best sites have a large portion of their founders personality in them. Never be afraid to be yourself, after all there are 1/2 billion people on the www, not all of them have to agree with you. Concentrate on the ones that share your views, concentrate on making their experience the very best it can be, the rest forget them. Or to put it another way, the best sites say - this is what we do, this is how we do it, if you don't like it go somewhere else.Ultimately though I think it comes down to desire and the will to win."13) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first online business?Set up a blog and read this SEO guide ( http://www.seobook.com/bloggers ). Understanding how conversational markets work and learning markets is key to being able to deliver products and services that the market wants. Also the relationships you build give you the reach and credibility needed to be able to spread ideas and build market demand.If you start building relationships and market exposure you do not need to make money right away. Many people build for years before becoming stars. It is much easier to become wildly successful if you start sewing the seeds of trust before trying to extract value from the network.I would probably still be marginally profitable if I had not shared so much and built relationships with my mentors like NFFC.Also read Seth Godin's Purple Cow ( http://www.sethgodin.com/purple/ ), Steven Krug's Don't Make Me Think ( http://www.sensible.com/ ), and The Cluetrain Manifesto ( http://www.cluetrain.com/ ) in your first month or two online. 14) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?This probably sounds sad, but I think I would probably be dead or in jail or something. I mean the web saved me in just about every way possible - it even sent me an angel. :) 15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?My wife and I want to have a kid in the next couple years. Some vacation time this year is in order as well. And I want to keep learning every day until I die - which is hopefully a long way off. :)website http://www.seobook.com/ keyword tool http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook bloggers only http://www.seobook.com/bloggers. Visit http://www.retireat21.com/ for more details.
Aaron WallInterview with Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com. The SEO Book Training Program has over 100 cross referencing online training modules that allow you to learn SEO one piece at a time. Many modules also include how to videos and other bonuses like spreadsheets of common keyword modifiers and an example of aligning keyword research data with site structure and on page optimization.
Todays interview is with perhaps one of the biggest names in SEO - Mr Aaron Wall of SEOBook.comSEO Book.com is a leading SEO blog covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to Aaron's mind. ;) The first version of SEO Book came out in December of 2003. Hi AaronThank you for this interview. The many young entrepreneurs at RetireAt21.com will I am sure find your replies of great interest.First off - can we have a little background information - Where you live? How old you are? What motivates you? Inspires you? I am 28 years old and live in the San Francisco area with my loving beautiful wife Giovanna ( http://www.heygio.com/ ). I guess the biggest thing that motivates me is wanting to learn, and being attracted towards things I am passionate in. 1) Tell us about SEOBook.com? Why did you launch SEOBook.com? At the end of 2003 I wrote an article about the Google Florida Update ( http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/buyads.htm ). From that article I got really popular. Like I went from getting ~2 inquiries a month to about 30 phone calls a day. I simply could not keep up with it all, and figured there was probably a good market for selling an ebook offering usable tips, without requiring selling personalized consulting to each prospect. Plus I saw that consulting was sorta feast or famine, and that blogs were getting a disproportionate number of links because they made it so easy to be subscribed to and link to. So I figured being a part of the conversation and selling an information product off of that made sense. It also helped that SEO keeps changing and was a fast growing field. Both of which meant a large number of *potential* customers waiting for me to fill the demand. I was also lucky to get the exact match .com domain name for $8. :) 2) Can you tell us how many copies of the SEO Book have been sold?I think it was a bit more than 13,000 copies sold, a bunch given away to good charities, plus I would guess far more have been pirated as well. Even yesterday I saw an eBay listing someone did. 3) I understand that recently you moved over to a Membership website option - what was the reason for this and how was it received? As the field got more complex (especially with lots of hand editing from Google) I felt that the one size fits all approach of a book just was not as good as offering feedback and strategies specifically for your site. The reason for the move is to establish a deeper, more meaningful relationship with a limited number of customers willing to pay for such a relationship.I think anytime you change business models there is friction, especially if you move from a one time sales model to a subscription. Our SEO training course ( http://training.seobook.com/ ) has been fairly well received...we have far more subscribers than we were expecting at this point, with over 100 people joining in the first 48 hours and almost all of them staying subscribed (yesterday was our 1 month anniversary). I think a big feature we offer that is of exceptional value is our private member community forums. The admission price filters out bottom feeders to keep the signal to noise high. I feel that personalized help I have given has helped many members. And I feel I have learned a lot from member feedback, interacting with members, and reading suggestions members give each other. I look forward to participating there each day and feel I learn something new every day...if I like it that much I figure other people probably do too.4) How do you describe SEO and what do you consider two or three of the essentials of SEO?SEO is the art and science of creating targeted traffic streams from relevant search queries. Keyword research and link building are two basic fundamentals of SEO, but as the web gets more and more conversational I think branding, public relations, and conversations are really sorting out the winners from the losers. What is remarkable about your site? Why should I be talking about it? What makes you unique? Why should I be talking about you? Those are the questions that allow individuals to beat multi-billion dollar corporations. 5) What do you dislike the most about the SEO industry?I don't like how many people who essentially make a living from SEO (like the guy who ran the spammy weblogs inc. linkfarm network) ( http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6312 ) get away with calling SEO dirty. And some people in our industry are ____ enough to ask that guy to keynote at conferences. Google funds a lot of the spam and copyright violations then claims they are above it all. This quote from their search query evaluation guidelines displays their lack of respect for copyright more clearly than anything else I have ever come across "(Scraped Content that is not Spam) Lyrics, poems, ringtones (that the user programs rather than downloads), quotes, and proverbs have no central authority. When you see pages with this content, you cannot judge it to have been copied, and the pages should not be assigned a Spam label. Unfortunately, some content is written specifically for Spam pages and you will not find it on another source. Although you may be convinced that the intent is to deceive, if the content makes sense and appears original, you will not be able to label such pages Spam."Also I think some people quest so much for fundamental truths that they isolate information into meaningless chunks void of context. The truth is we are all a bit lucky, and SEO is becoming more and more of a subset of marketing. 6) What were the main factors that generated sales of your SEO book in the early days? I understand you ran an affiliate program - how important was that?Keep in mind that before I created SEO Book I had already had spent a year learning SEO, and already wrote that wildly popular Google florida update article a few months prior. People think that bolting on a fleet of affiliates is a key to sales, but that is probably only true if they exist as value added resellers, or if you are in with the hype filled joint venture email offer spammers, or if your product is already a market leading product that is impulsively purchased and easy to recommend. Before I changed my model recently affiliates were a good chunk of sales but I need to improve my sales funnel again to get affiliate sales back up. But they were not a big sales channel until my brand was already well known.I think the key to getting early sales was just participating in the community and getting people to talk about me. If Seth Godin mentions my site that is probably another $1,000 in the bank account. And there was a controversial Search Engine Watch forum thread talking about stuff I was doing. Though the thread did not feature me in a good light, it still doubled my income for about a week. Conversation = profits. After I got profits I re-invested into create a better site design and giving away a bunch of free SEO tools ( http://tools.seobook.com/ ), both of which turned out to be good long-term business decisions.7) Do you feel social media marketing / buzz marketing can play a part in SEO? (i.e content that gets linked to?)Well I think one of the leading SEO strategies is to create content that focuses on a topic that is easy to link at. In an ideal world it would be something I did every day. :)Truth be told though I really am only able to practice it on a deep and meaningful level about once a month...but my wife is getting into doing it too...so when she gets some more practice it is "look out world!" 8) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started with SEOBook, what business related advice would you give yourself?Buy a lot of short memorable and keyword laden .com, .net, and .org domain names and sit on most of them for 5 years, while developing out the best ones. 9) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?I think it is both. If you are a person who seeks out why things work the way they do and like learning stuff starts to fall in place for you over time. But you have to be willing to work harder and more hours than the average person does. The world was never fair and was always nepotistic. Winning market-share either means creating new markets or stealing market-share from established players. To do either you need to create social relationships and get people talking about you. 10) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)I think I am still a highly flawed individual, but my mom had great work ethics, my wife is really loving, Tim Berners-Lee created the web, and Seth Godin really taught me that marketing does not need to be as sleazy and destructive as it often is. Noam Chomsky is also an inspiration. 11) Do you have any favourite business related, SEO, webmaster or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?Godin's Purple Cow ( http://www.sethgodin.com/purple ), Steven Krug's Don't Make Me Think ( http://www.sensible.com/ ), and The Cluetrain Manifesto ( http://www.cluetrain.com/ ) are probably the basis for my online strategy. 12) What is the best advice you have ever been given?It was probably something that the guy who goes by the moniker NFFC told me. Hard to pick out just one, but maybe this is it"I think the best brands, the best sites have a large portion of their founders personality in them. Never be afraid to be yourself, after all there are 1/2 billion people on the www, not all of them have to agree with you. Concentrate on the ones that share your views, concentrate on making their experience the very best it can be, the rest forget them. Or to put it another way, the best sites say - this is what we do, this is how we do it, if you don't like it go somewhere else.Ultimately though I think it comes down to desire and the will to win."13) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first online business?Set up a blog and read this SEO guide ( http://www.seobook.com/bloggers ). Understanding how conversational markets work and learning markets is key to being able to deliver products and services that the market wants. Also the relationships you build give you the reach and credibility needed to be able to spread ideas and build market demand.If you start building relationships and market exposure you do not need to make money right away. Many people build for years before becoming stars. It is much easier to become wildly successful if you start sewing the seeds of trust before trying to extract value from the network.I would probably still be marginally profitable if I had not shared so much and built relationships with my mentors like NFFC.Also read Seth Godin's Purple Cow ( http://www.sethgodin.com/purple/ ), Steven Krug's Don't Make Me Think ( http://www.sensible.com/ ), and The Cluetrain Manifesto ( http://www.cluetrain.com/ ) in your first month or two online. 14) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?This probably sounds sad, but I think I would probably be dead or in jail or something. I mean the web saved me in just about every way possible - it even sent me an angel. :) 15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?My wife and I want to have a kid in the next couple years. Some vacation time this year is in order as well. And I want to keep learning every day until I die - which is hopefully a long way off. :)website http://www.seobook.com/ keyword tool http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook bloggers only http://www.seobook.com/bloggers. Visit http://www.retireat21.com/ for more details.
INTERVIEW WITH PETE CASHMORE - FOUNDER OF MASHABLE
Interview With Pete Cashmore - Founder of Mashable
Pete CashmorePete Cashmore is just 22 years old and is the founder of Mashable, one of the most visited blogs in the world. Mashable offers news on social networking and social software and attracts millions of visitors every month.
Todays interview is with one of the top young bloggers - Pete Cashmore just 22 years old!
1) Tell us about your main project, Mashable? Why did you launch Mashable? Where are you at now with Mashable?
I launched Mashable in 2005 to get up to speed with all the new services launching on the web. I wanted to launch my own startup and needed to conduct research; very soon, Mashable itself became my startup.
2) I think Mashable is a great name - what are the origins of the name? What does it mean to you?
"Mashable" comes from the "mashups" trend. In recent years, people have been combining pieces of the web in interesting ways; you might want to plot photos from your Flickr account on Google Maps, for instance. You might also want to combine music, videos and text from different services. Whenever you combine parts of the web like this, it's called a "mashup". These days, virtually everything on the web is remixable...Mashable, in other words.
3) Have you had any particular challenges running such a successful website like Mashable so young?
Not really. The biggest challenge for a blogger is finding the energy to keep going - luckily, young people have plenty of that.
4) Mashable describes itself as The Social Networking Blog. In your opinion what are the next big steps / hot trends for social networking?
There are two huge trends going forward: aggregation and mobile social networking. Aggregation is bringing together all your social networks: you might have a Facebook profile, a MySpace page, photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube and other fragments distributed around the web. A new breed of services is trying to bring those parts together to make our online lives easier. Mobile social networking speaks for itself: people are now sending constant updates to their friends using services like Twitter, while web-based social networks like Facebook and MySpace can be used from mobile devices. This will lead to a lot more overlap between social networking on the web and in real life: you can upload photos to a web profile the second you take them, or add a new friend to your Facebook network moments after you meet in the real world. And let's not forget live video streaming from mobile phones: you can now watch events live, as they happen, thanks to services like Qik.com.
5) You are well known for high quality content - do you have any tips for quality blog posts and also for recruiting writers?
Generally we like writers who can take complex ideas and explain them in simple terms: we hire people who have deep knowledge combined with good language skills.
6) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?
Work smarter, not harder.
7) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?
I'm sure it can be learned, but for a lot of entrepreneurs it seems to come from their character or early, early experiences. Personally, I'm just not good at obeying authority figures.
9) Do you have any favourite business related, webmaster or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?
No, I never remember what I read; I remember experiences. I find it best to dive right in and learn the hard way.
12) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?
I'd possibly be studying law or politics.
13) What do you like best about the Internet?
The unlimited opportunities.
14) What do you like least about the Internet?
Spam.
15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?
Oh, I'm not plotting a lifelong course just yet; there are too many opportunities right now to take just one path. --Pete. For more info visit http://www.retireat21.com/
Pete CashmorePete Cashmore is just 22 years old and is the founder of Mashable, one of the most visited blogs in the world. Mashable offers news on social networking and social software and attracts millions of visitors every month.
Todays interview is with one of the top young bloggers - Pete Cashmore just 22 years old!
1) Tell us about your main project, Mashable? Why did you launch Mashable? Where are you at now with Mashable?
I launched Mashable in 2005 to get up to speed with all the new services launching on the web. I wanted to launch my own startup and needed to conduct research; very soon, Mashable itself became my startup.
2) I think Mashable is a great name - what are the origins of the name? What does it mean to you?
"Mashable" comes from the "mashups" trend. In recent years, people have been combining pieces of the web in interesting ways; you might want to plot photos from your Flickr account on Google Maps, for instance. You might also want to combine music, videos and text from different services. Whenever you combine parts of the web like this, it's called a "mashup". These days, virtually everything on the web is remixable...Mashable, in other words.
3) Have you had any particular challenges running such a successful website like Mashable so young?
Not really. The biggest challenge for a blogger is finding the energy to keep going - luckily, young people have plenty of that.
4) Mashable describes itself as The Social Networking Blog. In your opinion what are the next big steps / hot trends for social networking?
There are two huge trends going forward: aggregation and mobile social networking. Aggregation is bringing together all your social networks: you might have a Facebook profile, a MySpace page, photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube and other fragments distributed around the web. A new breed of services is trying to bring those parts together to make our online lives easier. Mobile social networking speaks for itself: people are now sending constant updates to their friends using services like Twitter, while web-based social networks like Facebook and MySpace can be used from mobile devices. This will lead to a lot more overlap between social networking on the web and in real life: you can upload photos to a web profile the second you take them, or add a new friend to your Facebook network moments after you meet in the real world. And let's not forget live video streaming from mobile phones: you can now watch events live, as they happen, thanks to services like Qik.com.
5) You are well known for high quality content - do you have any tips for quality blog posts and also for recruiting writers?
Generally we like writers who can take complex ideas and explain them in simple terms: we hire people who have deep knowledge combined with good language skills.
6) If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what business related advice would you give yourself?
Work smarter, not harder.
7) Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?
I'm sure it can be learned, but for a lot of entrepreneurs it seems to come from their character or early, early experiences. Personally, I'm just not good at obeying authority figures.
9) Do you have any favourite business related, webmaster or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?
No, I never remember what I read; I remember experiences. I find it best to dive right in and learn the hard way.
12) If the Internet had not existed - what do you think you would be doing?
I'd possibly be studying law or politics.
13) What do you like best about the Internet?
The unlimited opportunities.
14) What do you like least about the Internet?
Spam.
15) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?
Oh, I'm not plotting a lifelong course just yet; there are too many opportunities right now to take just one path. --Pete. For more info visit http://www.retireat21.com/
INTERVIEW WITH PAUL BOURQUE
Interview With Paul Bourque - AzoogleAds Super Star - Earning $300,000 a Month at 19
Paul BourquePaul Bourque started affiliate marketing less than a year ago and now is earning over $300,000 a month from AzoogleAds. Paul is current 19 years old and has done so well for himself over the past year he decided to drop out of college and work full time as an affiliate marketer. Aside from his obsession with conquering the internet, Paul enjoys spending his time with friends and family and plans to move into his dream house in early 2008.
How did you start of doing Affiliate Marketing?
I started browsing ways to make money on the internet when I was in college. I initially tried learning some SEO and Adsense for a few months, but was too much of a noobie with simple things like registering a domain or creating a website to really go anywhere. Then I heard about affiliate marketing, and after profiting the first month, I couldn't turn away. My first month was somewhere around $600 in revenue, and now I'm doing about 1000x that much.
What advice would you give someone who wants to make money online using affiliate marketing?
The same advice everyone else gives but with a little twist : study hard, never give up, and DON'T BE AFRAID. Being scared to lose money is the worst pitfall in the road to success online.
I created an affiliate marketing guide over at my blog where I tried to include as many helpful articles as I could from other forums and blogs. Aside from that, just read around forums and other popular affiliate marketing blogs to learn the basics. Once you have the basics down, it's all about testing and throwing some of your own money into the mix. The biggest secrets come not from reading an eBook or blog, but from discovering them yourself.
I try and share my knowledge and what I've learned in my blog, UberAffiliate.com.
You made over $200,000 in one month from Azoogle Ads, tell us about this?
Well, I made over $200,000. If I told you any more information I'd just be plain stupid :).
What do you spend all of your hard earned cash on?
Investment for the future. Aside from the occasion big purchase like a car or soon to be house, most of my money goes into the bank so I can have it ready when an opportunity knocks on my door.
If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started. What business related advice would you give yourself?
Keep doing what you're doing. I built up my empire rather fast, as I haven't even been in this game for a year and I'm perfectly happy with where I'm at and how I'm growing.
Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?
I think it's in your blood. You have to have a passion for what you do, and different people have different passions. Someone who loves to play music would be better off trying to become a professional musician than trying to make money online when they have no drive to do so.
Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on?
The people I most model myself on are those that I don't even know their names. The huge players in affiliate marketing that make millions a month but block all of their registration information. I'm constantly striving to get to that level, and I won't stop until I'm there.
What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?
Definitely know that whatever age you are - it's possible. At first it was kind of fun, but now it's annoying to hear every real estate agent say "You're buying a house at nineteen years old? What do you do?!" That throws me into a 10 minute conversation about the internet and marketing and yadda yadda yadda. Just know that just because you're young doesn't make you any less genius that anybody else out there.
What are your plans for the future?
Keep reinvesting and building on the projects I have going now. I enjoy blogging so I'll keep that running. I have a few projects in production that aren't directly affiliate marketing, and the potential for all of them is enormous. So right now I'm just focusing on this next month - not the rest of my life. It's no fun that way.
Paul runs one of the top affiliate marketing blogs offering advice to people who want to make money online with affiliate marketing, check out his website… COURTESY OF http://www.retireat21.com/
Paul BourquePaul Bourque started affiliate marketing less than a year ago and now is earning over $300,000 a month from AzoogleAds. Paul is current 19 years old and has done so well for himself over the past year he decided to drop out of college and work full time as an affiliate marketer. Aside from his obsession with conquering the internet, Paul enjoys spending his time with friends and family and plans to move into his dream house in early 2008.
How did you start of doing Affiliate Marketing?
I started browsing ways to make money on the internet when I was in college. I initially tried learning some SEO and Adsense for a few months, but was too much of a noobie with simple things like registering a domain or creating a website to really go anywhere. Then I heard about affiliate marketing, and after profiting the first month, I couldn't turn away. My first month was somewhere around $600 in revenue, and now I'm doing about 1000x that much.
What advice would you give someone who wants to make money online using affiliate marketing?
The same advice everyone else gives but with a little twist : study hard, never give up, and DON'T BE AFRAID. Being scared to lose money is the worst pitfall in the road to success online.
I created an affiliate marketing guide over at my blog where I tried to include as many helpful articles as I could from other forums and blogs. Aside from that, just read around forums and other popular affiliate marketing blogs to learn the basics. Once you have the basics down, it's all about testing and throwing some of your own money into the mix. The biggest secrets come not from reading an eBook or blog, but from discovering them yourself.
I try and share my knowledge and what I've learned in my blog, UberAffiliate.com.
You made over $200,000 in one month from Azoogle Ads, tell us about this?
Well, I made over $200,000. If I told you any more information I'd just be plain stupid :).
What do you spend all of your hard earned cash on?
Investment for the future. Aside from the occasion big purchase like a car or soon to be house, most of my money goes into the bank so I can have it ready when an opportunity knocks on my door.
If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started. What business related advice would you give yourself?
Keep doing what you're doing. I built up my empire rather fast, as I haven't even been in this game for a year and I'm perfectly happy with where I'm at and how I'm growing.
Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?
I think it's in your blood. You have to have a passion for what you do, and different people have different passions. Someone who loves to play music would be better off trying to become a professional musician than trying to make money online when they have no drive to do so.
Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on?
The people I most model myself on are those that I don't even know their names. The huge players in affiliate marketing that make millions a month but block all of their registration information. I'm constantly striving to get to that level, and I won't stop until I'm there.
What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?
Definitely know that whatever age you are - it's possible. At first it was kind of fun, but now it's annoying to hear every real estate agent say "You're buying a house at nineteen years old? What do you do?!" That throws me into a 10 minute conversation about the internet and marketing and yadda yadda yadda. Just know that just because you're young doesn't make you any less genius that anybody else out there.
What are your plans for the future?
Keep reinvesting and building on the projects I have going now. I enjoy blogging so I'll keep that running. I have a few projects in production that aren't directly affiliate marketing, and the potential for all of them is enormous. So right now I'm just focusing on this next month - not the rest of my life. It's no fun that way.
Paul runs one of the top affiliate marketing blogs offering advice to people who want to make money online with affiliate marketing, check out his website… COURTESY OF http://www.retireat21.com/
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