10 Inspiring Young Online Entrepreneurs

One really awesome thing about the Internet is that there’s no such thing as age discrimination when it comes to being successful.  It doesn’t matter if you’re 12 or 72 - you have just as much chance as anyone of becoming rich and famous through an online business.  To illustrate the point, here, in no particular order, are 10 young entrepreneurs who are making their dreams a reality through internet businesses.

	Jonathan Mead, 23 of IlluminatedMind.net - Full-time blogger and life coach Jonathan Mead delivers a steady dose of inspiration and how-to content on his blog, and through his popular e-books, Reclaim Your Dreams, and The Zero Hour Workweek - How I Liberated Myself From the 9 to 5 by Getting Paid to Be Me. At just 23, Jonathan has figured out the “secret formula” for becoming a successful entrepreneur by sharing his story and expertise through blogging. Twitter: @jonathanmead
	Michael Dunlop, 21 of IncomeDiary.com - Michael Dunlop started his first profitable website when he was just 16 years old.  Now, at the ripe old age of 21, Michael is truly living what he calls the Internet Lifestyle.  Michael’s blog is all about helping others achieve this same dream.  Through interviews with some of the true thought-leaders in online marketing, as well as instructional content, Michael brings great information to anyone looking to become a pro blogger. Twitter: @michaeldunlop
	Pete Cashmore, 24 of Mashable.com - From the Mashable site: “Pete Cashmore is the 24 year-old CEO and founder of Mashable.com, a Technorati Top 10 blog worldwide. He founded Mashable in a small Scottish town in 2005 at age 19. In 2009, Cashmore was chosen as one of Inc Magazine’s 30 Under 30, Forbes’ Top 25 Web Celebs and the Huffington Posts’ Top 10 Game Changers 2009.” Twitter: @petecashmore and @mashable
	Adam Horwitz, 18 of AdamHorwitz.tv - 18-year-old Adam Horwitz says on his site that he has a goal to make a million dollars a year by the time he’s 21.  All signs point to that becoming a reality.  Adam started out in Internet marketing at the age of 15 and has become an expert in the areas of affiliate marketing and PPC (pay-per-click) advertising.  Now he makes money teaching others to make a living in these areas.  His blog is full of informational videos, tips, and lots of goofy stuff that might not make you a better entrepreneur, but just might make you laugh. Twitter: @AdamHorwitz
	Kevin Sproles, 25 of Volusion.com - Kevin Sproles started designing web sites at the age of 16.  After receiving lots of requests for a shopping cart solution, Kevin, with very little money and a great deal of perseverance, started coding shopping cart software.  Now, at the age of 25, his company supplies the most award-winning e-commerce solution to over online 100,000 entrepreneurs as well as major companies. Twitter: @volusion
	Gurbaksh Chahal, 27 of gWallet.com - Gurbaksh Chahal has an amazing entrepreneurial story.  After dropping out of high school in San Diego at age 16 to start ClickAgents, a performance-based ad network, he grew the company for two years, at which point it was acquired by ValueClick in a $40 million all-stock deal. His next venture, another ad network called BlueLithium, was acquired in 2007 by Yahoo! for $300 million cash.  Gurbaksh started gWallet, a virtual currency platform for social media, in September of 2009.  In 2008, Gurbaksh published his memoir in a book called The Dream. Twitter: @gchahal
	Catherine Cook, 20 of myYearbook.com - Since co-founding myYearbook with her brother in 2005, at the age of 15, Catherine Cook and her team have raised over $20 million in capital and have grown the site into one of the largest US social media sites with over 20 million members.  The site makes meeting new people easy by introducing members to innovative social games that are all tied together by a single virtual currency called “Lunch Money.” Twitter: @myYearbook
	Sam Lessin, 26 of Drop.io - After graduating from Harvard, Magna Cum Laude in 2005, Sam Lessin started Drop.io.  Drop.io is a simple, private, real-time, sharing, collaboration, and presentation site where users can upload files of any kind and have the ability to access, share, and edit those files from any Internet-connected computer.  Sam is also the co-founder of SocialGreat.com, a location-based social media site with a growing user-base. Twitter: @lessin
	Ryan Allis, 26 of iContact.com - Ryan Allis is the co-founder and CEO of iContact, a leading provider of email marketing tools for small businesses.  Ryan has built North Carolina-based iContact from its start in 2003 to its current size with more than 175 employees, 50,000 customers, and $28 million in annual sales, while raising $10.8 million to grow the firm.  Ryan is also the author of the book Zero to One Million, which reached the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list in 2008. Twitter: @ryanallis
	Derek Johnson, 25 of Tatango.com - Derek Johnson was bit by the entrepreneur bug early in life, starting his first business of selling candy bars to fellow students at recess by the age of eight. Derek, a self proclaimed workaholic, puts in 100+ hour workweeks to help fulfill the vision of Tatango.com.  Originally launched as networkText.com in 2007, Tatango has since facilitated the sending of tens of millions of text messages to groups of varying sizes, through their simple-to-use group texting platform. Twitter: @TheDerekJohnson

Once you’ve seen these success stories, you might want to ask yourself: What can they do that you can’t? Chances are you won’t find that they have anything special, beyond a drive to succeed, the belief that it’s possible, and a willingness to work as hard and as long as it takes.  So whatever your age, whether you’re younger or older than those above, know that you too can make your dreams of business success a reality, if you’ll just go for it and keep at it through whatever may come.

Niches to Riches in 4 Simple Steps!

What if you could optimize your marketing in a way that would allow you to save time and money while increasing your conversion rates and your bottom line?  Sounds too good to be true?  Not at all.  The secret is to identify a specific segment within your overall market and change your strategy to speak directly to this niche.  It really is that simple, but of course there are some specific steps to take to make this happen, and they’re listed below.

But first, let’s address why you would want to niche your business. It might seem strange to some people to narrow your market.  After all, don’t you want to sell to as wide an audience as possible?  While that might make sense at first glance, think about what it means.  First, you need to be able to effectively market to that wide audience.  The wider the demographics of the group, the more avenues you’ll need to take to get your business name and offerings in front of them.  For instance, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s each spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to reach their target markets, because their markets are massive - pretty much anyone who doesn’t hate them.  They can afford this kind of marketing, so it works for them, but most of us aren’t in the same boat.  Notice also that these companies tend to be low-price leaders, taking smaller margins to appeal to a wider audience.

On the other hand, look at a guy named Fred Gleeck.  Fred is a marketing expert who had an all-around, general marketing expertise.  Somewhere along his marketing career, he recognized the power of a niche market.  He could have targeted his services at anyone in need of marketing, which is pretty much every business everywhere.  That would have meant spending a lot of marketing dollars to reach his audience in hopes of converting enough people to make a living, and it would also have meant competing with the throngs of other marketing firms, all trying to attract the same prospects.  Instead, Fred decided to niche.  He ended up targeting the self-storage industry.  He changed all his material to focus on this niche and created products that addressed the specific needs of self-storage facility owners.  The result is that Fred became the recognized expert on the topic.  He ended up as a sought-after speaker at industry events and even wrote a book about how to market your self-storage facility.   Not only that, but because he chose an underserved market, he had literally no competition, so he was able to charge considerably more for his products and services than he ever could have as just another marketing guy.

So you can see that finding and targeting your niche can allow you to stand out from the crowd, save money on marketing, and charge more for your products and services.  Now, here are the steps to niche your business:

1. Identify your big target. Who is your overall target audience?  You’re going to get more specific, but start with a wider target first.  Begin by just nailing down who your overall target audience is, from a big picture perspective.  The answer to this question might be “business owners”, or “parents”.  It’s probably a very big group and might cover a very wide age range, both genders, and a wide geographic area.

2. Narrow down your niche. Somewhere within your wider target market is a sub-group of people who have specific wants, needs and characteristics that don’t match up with the rest of the market.  For example, if your wide target market is parents, within that group is the group consisting of single mothers.  While single mothers share a lot of the same wants and needs as all parents, they also have certain wants and needs that married fathers, for instance, don’t have.  You’re not done yet though.  Within the smaller niche, there is often an even more focused niche.  In the example of single mothers, what about single mothers of teens?  Want to get really crazy?  How about single mothers of troubled teen boys?  Obviously, it can get to the point where it’s just ridiculous (southwest Indiana single mothers of troubled teen boys whose favorite color is green…), but the point is to narrow your niche down as far as it makes sense for your business and your market.

3. Analyze your niche market. Get clear on who this customer base really is.  If your answer to the first question was “business owners”, and you identified a niche market of retail clothing store owners, now’s the time to ask what those business owners really want and need.  Are there universal wants that apply to everyone in your target niche?  What are those, and how can your product or service address them?  In addition to analyzing who this group is, it’s important to look deeper and determine the habits of the market - even if it’s not related to what you’re offering.  Where do they hang out online and in the real world?  What’s important to them?  What trade associations serve this niche? Getting inside the heads of your target audience is important to be able to effectively market to them.  If you’re having trouble nailing down a niche, think of it this way:  Chances are the niche that suits you best is the group of people who you can most relate to.  For instance, if you yourself are a single mother of a troubled teen, you’re going to be able to more easily create a plan to market to that group.

4. Build and execute a plan. This is the fun part!  Now that you have identified your niche, it’s time to figure out how you’ll reach them and what you’ll offer to address their specific needs.  This step is very much specific to your business and your niche, so it’s difficult to detail what you’ll end up with.  What we can say, is that step 3 is the key to making step 4 effective.  Once you know your niche market inside and out, you’ll know how to reach them and what to offer them to solve their unique problems.

Remember, the title of this post indicates these are simple steps, but not necessarily easy.  It will take time and effort in the beginning to execute this strategy.  The payoff in the end more than makes up for the work though, so go find your niches, and then count your riches!

Search Engine Marketing – The Basics on Getting Started Today

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website, ranging from free methods, like social media, to very expensive approaches, like buying banner advertising.  Somewhere in the middle is Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  While this method is never free, you can decide how much you’ll spend, and that number can literally go as high as you’d like.  If your marketing budget isn’t unlimited (is anyone’s?), can SEM be an effective way to get traffic to your site?  The answer is almost certainly, yes - if it’s done right.

What exactly is SEM?

Search Engine Marketing is buying search terms and keywords from a search engine.  This means that when someone searches for these terms, they see your ad.  Obviously there’s more to it than that, but that’s basically the general idea.

What Makes SEM Effective?

Whatever form of marketing you use, you goal is obviously to get your target market (those who most want your products and services) to see that marketing.  The more laser-focused your marketing is, the less your per-customer acquisition costs are, because you’re not wasting marketing dollars getting your name in front of people who don’t care.

SEM, more so than just about any other marketing vehicle, allows you to advertise to a potential customer in a highly-targeted manner.  When you think about it, when done right, SEM is effectively showing your ads only to people who just told you that your product is what they’re looking for.  It doesn’t get much more targeted than that!

How should you go about starting an SEM campaign?

As with any other marketing or general business initiative, your first step is planning.  You don’t have to put together an elaborate marketing plan, but there are some things you need to decide.  First, figure out which search terms and keywords you want to target.  This should be easy in the beginning, as you’ll simply pick the terms that most relate to your business.  As you get further into the process, you’ll evaluate other possible terms, using tools like Google’s keyword tool.  Next, you want to set a budget for your campaign.  This of course is an individual decision that only you can determine.  Suffice to say that in general the more you spend, the faster you can expect results.  Once you’ve decided on your keywords and budget, you’ll want to figure out exactly what will display when people see your ad.  There are volumes of information online about how to write compelling SEM copy, and it’s a great idea to review some of it.  Don’t try to reinvent the wheel on this one.  Last, but certainly not least, you’ll need to decide which page on your site people will land on when clicking on your ad.  While at first it might seem like your homepage makes sense, there are a lot of reasons to customize your landing pages based on specific SEM purchases.  Again, there is a lot written about landing pages, and you should research this thoroughly.

Ready, Set, Go!

There are three primary search engines, and most agree that your efforts are best spent with them than with any of the smaller sites.  Here are the three, with links to their SEM programs:

Google: AdWords

Yahoo: Yahoo Advertising

Bing: Microsoft adCenter

Each of the above programs offers solutions for the smallest of budgets, and each provides a wide range of tools and training to help you realize success in your SEM efforts.  This post is just an introduction to SEM.  If you’re considering your own SEM campaign, be sure to research your options and educate yourself on the ins and outs of this advertising medium.  And if you have experience to share, please don’t hesitate to do so in the comments!

Understand Your Traffic Streams

If there is one thing that we would like you to take away from this blog post, it is that you cannot use generalizations when it comes to tracking and testing your marketing efforts. You really need to understand where your traffic streams are coming from and micromanage each stream, effectively, if you want to make an overall improvement in your performance. It makes little sense to try and establish averages over a number of different initiatives, just so that you can see how you are doing in overall terms.

We always seem under pressure to come up with statistics, to show that we are being productive with our time or initiatives or to prove that the money truly is “well spent.” The truth is that any analytics program worth its salt will enable you to drill down and really analyze every single visitor.

If you favor Google Analytics, you may have one of those plug-ins added to your blog to show you how you are doing through a summarized form, complete with miniature graph over the last 30 days. You will see your average “bounce rate,” and this may send you running for the hills, but after all what use are these figures by themselves?

The whole purpose of tracking and testing is to make changes. For sure, you could be the smartest marketer in creation or just plain lucky, find that your promotional and advertising methods work right out of the box and you need to do little to modify. We all know marketing a business is about trial and error and even the most educated and successful among us make mistakes and need to make changes. Be prepared to understand that you need to track each initiative before you put it in place, associate results with that particular track and you must be able to differentiate those results from any other concurrent initiative.

It is important to develop separate landing pages and associated anchor text, crucial reference points to enable you to quickly see where consummated sales originate. Remember also that a good proportion of visitors to your site will be poorly qualified and these will certainly help to skew your conversion rates.

If you are lucky enough to have a very highly trafficked site and have not taken steps to differentiate your sources, you will find it very difficult to move forward with any confidence. Whatever you may do to try and increase conversion rates in one particular area will be difficult to quantify as your average conversion rate, bounce rate or simple visitor rate will tend to absorb your efforts.

If you have not set up a trackable, definable list of goals and events and your landing pages are insufficiently identified, then it may be time for you to start afresh, redefine your objectives, come up with a plan and a means to track it and set a future date to start understanding and manipulating your traffic streams correctly.

Are all your traffic streams profitable - if not which ones are dragging you down?

Adam Toren

Be Different and Stand Out

As an entrepreneur, how often have you tried simply tinkering with your price to see if you can gain just a little bit of advantage over your competitors? Truth be told, this is how we all tend to think at first reaction, as the almighty dollar always dictates a biased decision. But of course it does not. In any wildly cluttered marketplace, where price based marketing is prominent and is often shut out by the consumer, the key is differentiation. Don’t try and compete on price alone, but make sure your organization has something very distinctive to offer that others do not.

We are not trying to say that price is irrelevant and you will surely be disappointed if your pricing structure is badly skewed, but there comes a point when the consumer makes a decision based on other factors as well. If you have been able to differentiate your operation sufficiently, then in the ultimate scenario, price becomes irrelevant.

Are you aware of who your competitors are? Many an entrepreneur is not really able to answer that question, but this form of intelligence is not difficult to gather and you should always be aware of how others are seeking to reach your targets. If you do not know the “modus operandi” of your competitors, you will be badly placed should they choose to launch an initiative to try and steal your revenues. Setting yourself apart from the competition will invariably require you to reassess how you handle all your business processes, how you interact with your clients, and how you treat your relationships. You must have a hands on and conversational relationship with your clients and ensure that you are communicating what sets you apart.

If you just focus on price, how much of a difference are you likely to make? You could pare your expenses to the bone and imagine that you could make up what you’re losing though additional clientèle. Would your existing clients take a dim view of this? There is a danger that you could project yourself as budget quality, driving down the perceived value of your services. In reality, the pure profit involved when you tinker around with marginal price differences could be more than accounted for by a concerted effort to differentiate your service.

Overdeliver at everything that you do, to the point when people wonder just how you can manage to do this and still maintain a profit. This kind of creativity does not have to be the domain of those late-night infomercials on television, which promise you more and more in terms of savings and add-ons, rapidly creating the hook. Take a good look at what your competitors are doing and do it better, or provide distinct value when they are not.

How do you differentiate?

Adam Toren

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