Hearty Surprise

Unbelievable? Interested to know what business she is upto ? A clue: This 17 year old minor who runs whateverlife.com that provides free myspace layout.  Did you guess who? Be introduced to Ashley Qualls who is the president of whateverlife.com who boldly quit school to run a million dollar business. Her initial investment is $8 for the domain name.

Ashley started the company in 2004 and by 2005 offered the do it yourself myspace layout for people to use. In less than 2 years time her layouts has become the rage of the teenagers.  It is reported that her site receives 7 millions visitors and 60 million page views per month. 

Her earnings is about $70,000/ pm and the best thing is  that the revenue is only through advertisement and nothing through the sale of her product, because her layouts are free. Imagine if she had offered her layout which are grabbed like hot cakes for a small prize. Now please hold on to your jaws. They are dropping.    Not many corporates who deal with her initially know that they are talking to a 17 year old who is not yet eligible to do business as per law.

Just take a look at recently done and todo list as of 20th Sep on her blog:

“… You may have seen me on CH 4 or CH 7 in the past few days if you live in the Detroit area! So that was fun! I just did a photoshoot for StrutMag.com (Women’s publication in Detroit) (got done about 20 minutes ago) Tonight I have the Detroit FreePress, so look out for that! ….  I’m leaving Monday evening for NYC and returning next Sunday! ..  On Tueday morning I’ll be taping for The VIEW! YES! I’ll be on with Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Sheppard! … It’s going to be a 6-7 minute interview and it will air Friday, Sept 28th! …  I’ll be doing some big ad sales in NYC while I’m there- and I’m sponsoring the Ypulse Tween Mashup!  … “

With no guidance, no godfathers/ godmothers in the family with business knowledge , with no academic degree and from a relatively average family backgroud, this little girl had come a long way. But she is strong minded to reject a cool 1.5 million offer for her company. That proves the power which drives Ashley.

This is the amazing power of the internet. Internet Entrepreneurs come  from all walks of life and rise to a level and scale never ever imagined . It is sheer hard smart work and correct timing that matters most.

Good Luck young lady.

Courtesy :  Fast Company

Popularity: 87% [?]

What you are going to read now is another opportunity to make money online. We all know that affiliate commision is one of the biggest money getters . That is why this post is on dealdotcom .

Did you hear the recent buzz in the blogosphere.  Not that I am hard on hearing, but just that I was waiting to see how loud the buzz is.  And since the who is who is blogging community brags about this dealdotcom guys to be the next revolutionary in affiliate commission and in selling IM products at a never heard/seen price , these guys have atleast succeeded in shouting out loud.

 In case you have been deep in the forest or sun-bathing in a remote island , read this information  from the out of proportion blown up guys at dealdotcom: 

… When you refer others to DealDotCom and they get their free account, they are marked in our system as having been referred by you. Anything that they ever buy from us nets you a 35% commission. Notice the word “ever” in the previous sentence… as in FOREVER. It doesn’t matter if they buy something tomorrow, next week, or fifty years from now - you’re going to get paid. What’s more, anyone that they refer to DealDotCom goes on your second tier. Anything people on your second tier buy nets you a 15% commission. Again, FOREVER….

Are We Talking About Lifetime Affiliate Commision  ?

If that jolted you back to real world, it means that you read the word ‘Commision’ and ‘Forever’ correctly in the quot above.  These guys promise a 2-tier commision for life . Now don’t ask me whose life. Try to outlive them and drill out the commission from these chaps.

One Deal One Day

The other stuff that will be of interest is the product on offer everyday. These guys atleast are clear in their approach to get the crowd to knock on their doors everyday. So to know what is the offer for that day we have to to their website.

But either being a shopper or an affiliate there is a nice chance to get a raw deal. That is what people are dealdotcom are trying to say.  There is less than 24 hours before their doors are open on Sep 15 2007 . So be the early bird and start counting your commission.

Popularity: 75% [?]

The internet entrepreneur profiled for this week is “Craig Alaxander Newmark”, the person who turned a hobby into an institution.

First, for the benefit of those who did not get the chance to know about craiglist, it is a classifieds site carrying ads on many topics under the sun.It also has a large forum for people to discuss. It is largely non commercial, that is you don’t see irritating popups and screaming banners there. The revenue is generated through fees for the ads posted and that too only on certain categories like jobs, home brokering and only in certain cities.

Flashback

The story begins in 1995 when Craig maintained a list of email address to announce people who were interested to know the events happening around San Francisco. This list gradually grew in size and people were not only interested in knowing about events but selling, renting, services , jobs etc etc until it was no more a small list to manage.

While working at Charles Schwab he started craigslist (the name suggested by his friends, else it would have been called SF Events ) in 1995 to distribute events list more effectively. But today it distributes a lot more not only to SF Bay area but to people in 5 continents across 50 countries who contribute to more than 25 million hits per month. One of the secret to its success is that the company is still run with less than 25 employees.  Big is out. Small is good.

Connection With Ebay

About 25% of craigslist is owned by ebay after its shares was sold by a former employee in 1994.  While both ebay and craigslist are geared towards for the people and  by the people , there is a commercial difference in their business model.  While ebay is commercial , craiglist still retains its essence of giving back to the community.

Thus the craigslist.org which was born out of the genuine interest in reaching out to people remains so till date. That is why it has a devout user base running millions.

 Tidbits

Craig was born in 1952 and is now a multi millionaire. He is also very actively involved in charity work. He is responsible for the customer service at craigslist and personally responds to the mails. How many big shots still do that ?

craigslist , Internet Entrepreneur

Popularity: 77% [?]

Today we will get an introduction on one of the important tool to perform online business - Credit Card Transactions. Amex, Visa, Mastercard, Discover are some of the popular cards used by millions of customers on the net.

Credit card transactions are common in most business today.  Customers need flexible options to make payment and by providing them with one of the popular mode, you attract more customers and grow your business. 

Benefits of credit card transactions

1. Credit Card transactions helps to transfer funds to our account faster(say in less than 2 weeks) rather than follow the customer periodically to pay outstanding amount.

2. Many clients would like to receive a consolidated statement of their outstandings rather than individual invoices.  Providing them one would help to build more business opportunities.

Merchant Account and where to get it ?

To accept credit card transactions you need a merchant account.  Bank, Third party processors, Financial Service Provider , Trade business associations are some of the places that can help us to do credit card transactions. Ms.Merchant Account  is one such company that offers merchant solutions for both Low Risk (Hotels, Bars, Stores  etc) and High Risk(online high volume stores, travel ticketing, adult entertainment etc) merchants. They track the market so as to give the best discount rate for the benefit of customers.

Points to consider when evaluating the merchant service

1.  Credibility of the Company: Unless you open an merchant account with a bank or a reputed firm , your first task to check if the company is genuine, how long they have been in business and their track record.

2. Fees : Most obvious is the discount or the fee charged per transaction  by the merchant. Then there is fees for the transaction statements. Apart from this each merchant has numerous add ons like annual fee, processing fee , etc ..  Get to know all the fine prints.

3.Customer Service : There is nothing worse than being left to help ourselves when things are go wrong and the support people are having a long break. Time wasted is is money and business lost forever. Find more about the companies customer service and read testimonials.

It may do you good to contact Ms Merchant Account to know more about credit card transactions and analyse if their services will be of benefit to you.

Popularity: 70% [?]

It is quite interesting to read the article published today in the NYT  titled “As Prostitutes Turn to Craigslist, Law Takes Notice “.  It shows how well the world’s oldest profession has adapted to use of the newest technology namely internet.

Do you get what I am talking about? From the day the corporate and personal website cropped up , the adult sites also made its way. The anonymity provided by the internet brought porn to the living room through paid subscription and free previews.

When anyone can make money through internet by selling other people’s products , the prostitutes decided it was time to take up the internet seriously and make money too(after all they are selling their stuff). But ebay or amazon does not have a category for this services(may be there is but not reported yet) and fortunately craigslist gave them a loop hole. Every one in the worlds know that craigslist is an over exploded listing of ads of all sorts. So under the service category  “Erotic”  these masters of trade advertise their service and find their customers.

Craigslist employees are not at fault if the ads being posted leads to a service offering additional perks.  They have better work to do than monitor the original intention of the thousands of ads posted everyday. That is the reason the users have been empowered  to flag a post for removal if it hurts them. But is ‘Erotic Services’ category really required when they have more useful categories which attracts tons of ads postings.

Back to our topic here, so these employees and the employers (the pimps) put up ads, recruit, schedule, organize, solicit all through internet and mobile phones.  So mankind’s oldest business is flourishing since these people  have the mobility to visit multiple places , arrange for encounters on the fly and make easy contact with people. 

While the police and law enforcement are smart to sniff out these ads, these entrepreneurs come up with more challenging patterns to do business in the dark.  But internet is a leveller,  any one with an entrepreneur spirit and a smart brain can flourish here. If the business is illegal , they better learn how to cover it or give up.

Courtesy :  NYT

Popularity: 34% [?]

Should I say he is the author of the recent NYT best seller “The Dip” which talks about quitting and move on to become the best and has written several other best sellers like “Small is the new big”, “Purple Cow” , “All Marketers are Liars” , “Unleashing the Ideavirus”  and 4 more.

• Is he one of the greatest marketer who coined the term “Permission Marketing”

• Is he the founder of Squidoo which is a popular recommendation website where people can create lenses to write, share their passion and promote websites/blog ?

• Is Seth the renowned speaker who is rated as one of the 21 speakers for the next century by Successful Meetings  and whose clients reads like a list of Fortune 100 companies ?

• Is he the philanthropist who regularly contribute his earnings and royalties to charity work ?

• Is he the writer of the famous marketing blog ?

• Is he the visionary and entrepreneur who made it big on the internet ?

Seth is all these and much more combined to one. He holds an MBA degree from the Stanford Business School. He found Yoyodyne an online marketing company and successfully sold it to Yahoo.

Tidbits

Not much of Seth’s personal life is known except that he was born on July 10 1960 and the visible feature that he is bald . Because there is way too much inside the head that things outside or the absense of it serves only to physically identify him.

My salutations to the marketing genius.

Courtesy : Seth’s Blog

Popularity: 17% [?]

You can learn from Catherine Cook and David Cook how to run a company and earn millions when still in your teenage.  They are the whiz teens behind myyearbook.com which is an online year book where millions of school and college students gather to network and socialize.

I was clueless when I was a teen. Ok to be fair enough I just had a goal to get into a good university and join a big corporate.But here is Catherine and her brother David who started www.myyearbook.com in 2005 when they were in high school and now runs a 20+ employee company.  Geoff  their elder brother gave life to the dreams by funding $250,000  to come up with the year book which has become the default social networking site to many school and college children in US. Geoff himself is an internet entrepreneur who has successfully founded and sold ResumeEdge.com and EssayEdge.com

The site looks quite interesting with flashy icons and cools features such as battles, pimp, quiz, match etc.They boast of a user base whose average age is lower than myspace and facebook which makes it quite an attractive place for the young. Most of the features in this site is from ideas from their friends and the development work was outsourced to India.

With a couple of millions members and about 4+ millions revenue this is a remarkable feat. They also generate revenue from ads from some big names in the industry. It is no surprise that these siblings have already made headlines in  Washington Post, Entrepeneur , Yahoo Tech , New York Times, CNN, Business Week and the list goes on. I gues 

Interested to know more . Read on here …

Popularity: 17% [?]

I recently read an article about the untapped high end luxury market where the rich and the ultra rich prefer to shop online. But the problem, most of the top brand companies do not actively engage them in online stores and still follow the traditional Brick and Mortar shops. 

The popular brands fear that selling on the internet will reduce the brand value since anything going online is consider a cheap buy. Online tickets are cheaper, purchases from online stores are cheaper than the traditional stores.  While  getting it cheaper does not mean the product is cheap but who says the rich don’t care about getting a good deal ? They sure will consider if we give them the opportunity. Just boost their moral and let them brag how they managed to spend $100,000 less for their private jet  by buying online.

Imagine looking at the the Rolex Watch, Louis Vuitton  Purse or a Fendi Bag complete with a 3 dimentional view and detailed specification while sipping hot coffee or a favourite drink at your home.  I guess it suits well even for celebrieties/ public figures who wish to shop in the privacy of their home rather than demonstrate a gate crash by their fans at the shop.

Now do you fear about the rich people’s online browsing capabilities ?   It is reported that most are internet savvy. Don’t you think that their parents would have ensured that their children attended the basic computer lessons.  Even if the rich guys don’t know to browse, I am sure atleast their personal assistants know how to get this done. Just make sure the online store is extremely trendy and attractive as the product itself. It should have a class for the class people to come.

Ok , that sounds convincing enough. What do you think are the top items expected to rake big money ? Can you believe it is going to be a cool $22 billion on clothing, accessories and footwear. Buy Footwear online? I thought choosing a footwear is more hands legs on experience. You have to try them before buying. I was told to wear the shoes and catwalk the store twice before purchasing the few tens of dollar worth shoes when I was a kid.

Those predictions on hot items are not mine, I would like to list items such as luxury boats, high end cars and bikes, mobile phone, gaming devices, audio and video devices, health and beauty supplements, home/office designer furnishings  etc ..

The Rich People Are Waiting To Pay Us. Have you opened your shop? Please do invite me too .  I may not shop (I don’t qualify for the ultra rich category)  but sure can help to spread the word around about your shop

For some more insights click here.  Before that drop a comment about the online shops that sell top brands for the benefit of the shoppers here.

Tags: online store , luxury brands

Popularity: 13% [?]

Fathers Day is on 17th June , have you decided for the perfect gift for your wonderful dad ? If you are still thinking about shirts, perfume, ties, watches and electronic gadgets , Hold on. Fathers have been receiving this for so long. Don’t you see they are tired of it. Why not make surprise him with a gift he would never have imagined ?

Yes, get a domain name registered and gift him. If you have a good budget then get it hosted with a good hosting company and putup a website or a blog. Who said all presents should be tangible. You may unleash the creativity flowing in him and gift him endless hours of fun , oppurtunity to connect to his near and dear ones, earning potential and above all something that is memorable for life.

I’ve mentioned 2 tasks above. First is to obtain a domain name and the second is to host it. A domain name is just an address in the world wide web similar to a postal address in the real world. So it might look like www.abcd.com .The second step is to get an Web Hosting company to host it so that you can build a website and pages at this address.

Buying a domain name in not very expensive.There are many domain registrars in the market where you can register a domain.  You can  check out http://www.whois.org/ or http://www.domainsite.com to check if a name of your choice is available or has been already taken up.  A hosting company normally has many plans ranging from a few dollars per months to few hunderd dollars depending on the size, bandwith, load and other factors we take up on their server.  Most companies offer a combination of domain registration plus hosting. 

Some of the factors you could consider while choosing a domain name for your dad could be his

1.  Name (eg.  johnspeaker.com)
2.  Passion(eg. johnmotorbikes.com)
3.  Family (eg. johnfamily.com)
4.  Expertise (eg. johntaxadvice.com)

Or just anything that you think is relevant like www.mygreatestdad.net . You need not restrict to dot com as the extension, go for dot net, dot org, which ever suits your purpose. 

Imagine the joy on his face when he sees the site with nice information about him. If he is more tech savvy why not let him explore and fill the site according to his taste. Think about it.

Why not drop a comment on  interesting fathers day gifts you presented or received.  Happy Fathers day !!!

Popularity: 14% [?]

I have a lot of admiration for people doing business. A business, be it growing chicks or selling airplanes needs dedicated work and constant attention from the patrons. Doing business on the internet is a different ball game and this is relatively new only about 2 decades young compared to the traditional business which started when our ancestors were cavemen.

This article is the beginning of a series which I intend to report on varied topics such as  business opportunities on the internet , its pros and cons, the requirements,  new business ideas , success stories about internet entrepreneurs - people who have ventured into the virtual world and everything related to internet business.

In the traditional business people belong to one or more of the 3 markets or levels as listed below

1. Level 1  - Grow or cultivate things which can be either consumed directly (eg. fruits, vegetables)  or  provide things that become the raw materials for other products (eg. metals, crude oil)

2. Level 2 -Here the output from the primary market is into finished goods that can be used directly or form a part of  another product. For eg

   • Process milk from the dairy farm and package it for public distribution

   • Rubber from level 1 is made into tyres in this stage.Unless someone has found a way to ride on the tyre directly this has to be fixed to a vehicle.

3. Level 3 - The shops , markets that sell the finished product . Service industry such as hotels, hospitals etc.

All of the above require certain investment in either land, building or machinery depending on the type of product we deal with and the nature of our business.  Apart from these Human resource forms one of  the main component.In each and every level listed above there are people who directly and indirectly work for the businessman. An farm owner has people to work from tilling the soil to reaping the produce. A hotel  staff range from the manger to the cleaners.
Further our business can be affected by a thousand external factors from geography to government.

The internet is also filled with business of different types. Here I list some broad categories. As we move along , we will go in breadth and depth across other categories.

1. The software houses , hardware designers and  technology trend setters  who  provide the platform for the people to make a presence on the internet.

2. Consultants who use their expertise in their fields to provide solutions to others. These are the technology users who range from data entry , transcription, programming, website development and maintenance, medical specialist, auditors, virtual assistants to major organizations who purely operate using internet or use internet as a platform to do traditional business.

3. Virtual shops  - Individual shops selling their products or mega stores like the amazon and ebay that sell virtually anything under the sun. Virtual stores sell tangible products such as phones, computers etc or intangible ones like domain name, websites etc.

Is It Easy To Start Business On The Internet ?

The internet with its doors wide open is a playground for millions of people implementing radically new ideas. It is possible to start a business on the internet with just $0 from your pocket. This is a fact and there are many who have done it.  Blogging is just one example.  Use any of the  free blog host like wordpress.com, blogger, myspace, squidoo lenses, technorati , start putting in some interesting articles and monetize them. While in the long run you accumulate value and credibility if you have your own domain name and a website,  to start your business with $0 you can shelve the idea of own domain.

Some of the benefits of an internet business which is not available in the traditional business are

1. The global reach - No brick and mortar business can reach the people all over the earth (and even those in space too) in a minute like the internet business does. Thanks to the growth in telecommunications and technology, even people living in the most remote place on earth if connected can be your client on day 1 of your business.

2. Every day is a business day -  If not all, atleast 95% of the traditional business houses/ shops  close for weekends and have off days. But business on internet is done during our holidays when skiing on the Alps or even while sleeping. This is a true 24/7 or 365 day with least effort. 

So we just had an introduction on online business, we will see more on various business ideas, how to grow and sustain it and the trends. Why not subscribe to my feed to stay tuned on the topic of doing business on the internet ?

You may wish to read the following to know about one successful internet business man with a new concept.

$300 Million Kingdon - Domain Name Trading

Tags : internet business , blog , entrepreneur

Popularity: 14% [?]