Another spot we visited was Ephesus, which is where St. Paul wrote the book of Ephesians in the Bible. The city was actually built well before Paul’s time, way back in 550 B.C.

Say WHAT??? 550 B.C.???

There’s few buildings in Canada or the States barely a 100 years old let alone 1000s of years old!

Throughout our two week trip, I was constantly blown away by the rich history, culture, people, food and so many other amazing things Turkey has to offer. If you ever get the chance to go, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it.

At several points throughout the trip, my partner Sarah and I kept saying to ourselves “Why don’t we travel more often? We should do this EVERY day!”

On the plane ride home, while we were anxious to get home to see our friends and family, the thought of getting up for work on Monday did not have the same appeal as what we had just experienced for two weeks.

This got me thinking about a simple dilemma we all face each and every day, whether we are consciously aware of it or not.

Am I living to work or am I working to live?

Just before heading out on holiday and in honour of Labour Day, I posed this question in a Facebook poll to find out what you and others might have to say.

Maybe it didn’t get the attention or visibility it deserved, as I posted it on a long weekend and, hopefully, everyone was out “living” rather than “working”

But, I thought it would be a worthy discussion here to see what people have to say.

First, let’s examine both sides of the coin to understand that characteristics describe those who live to work from those who work to live.

The “What do you do for a living?” question always gets me.

Society has trained us to automatically respond with the our job or occupation as the first response. Yet, think about the question “What do you do to LIVE?

Do you seriously LIVE to be X employee for Y company?

Try asking this question at the next dinner party or networking event and see what people say. You’d be surprise how very few people answer with what they REALLY do to live.

So, what has this got to do with bootstrapping or becoming an entrepreneur?

Well, this is meant to put things in perspective and challenge your motivation for pursuing your own business. Many of us become entrepreneurs because we want to “work to live”, but end up following the “live to work” route instead.

Picture this…

• You’re old and retired after a long, eventful life.
• You’re sitting on the porch at Horizon Village (or whatever old folks home you may end up at)
• You’ve now got all the time in the world now to sit back and reflect on your life.

You lean over to your partner and say…

“Man, I’m sure glad I worked so hard to get to be CEO or start ABC company.”

Or, would you lean over and rather say…

“Remember that time in Turkey, when we visited the Blue Mosque and those ruins in Ephesus? That was amazing!”

You make the choice!

I’m not saying you’re better off one way or the other. You need to decide for yourself which way will get you to accomplishing what you want out of life.

I’m sure you can tell which side of the coin I’m on. While it’s a challenge some days, I choose to work to live.

And, “What do I do for a living?” you might ask…

I live to travel the world, hang out with my family, friends and dog and help others discover their true passion in life.

***

Over to you…

What do YOU do for a living? Do you live to work or work to live?

Leave your answer below or take a moment to answer the Facebook poll.

BTW, did you know that Labour Day came from the labour union movement as a holiday to celebrate the achievement of work/life between 8 hours of work, 8 hours of recreation and 8 hours of rest?

I sit down with the man who inspired me to start this blog in the first place – Corbett Barr from ThinkTraffic.net.

Listen in as we…

• Hear Corbett’s story first hand of the ups and downs to being an entrepreneur
• Talk about Corbett’s success in building a blog with over 100,000 monthly visitors
• Learn why it’s absolutely important you build a thriving audience FIRST that’s hungry for your product or service
• Share role models that have inspired the “bootstrapping” movement
• Explore money saving tips to bootstrap your business with little to no money
• Discover one more “thing you didn’t know about Corbett” that helps him be successful in his business

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOJtFjlBckw

People and resources mentioned in this interview

• Corbett Barr and ThinkTraffic.net, Traffic School and Start a Blog that Matters
• Jason Fried, 37signals, and the book Rework
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
• Chris Guillebeau and The Art of Non-Conformity
• Leo Babauta and Zen Habits

Here’s my August 2012 progress report on The Bootstrapped Entrepreneur.

For those you wondering what this progress report is all about, I check in once a month to share with you what’s going on with the blog. I’ll share with you real traffic and sales results from last month, key learnings and insights and what to look forward to in the coming months.

I aim to be 100% transparent and hold nothing back in what I share here with you. Honesty is the best policy

With that, on to this month’s report!

August Analytics

The nirvana of 1,000+ visits from the launch last month has worn off and reality has set in. However, this is still early days for the blog and there continues to be a steady stream of 10-20 visits a day.

Things can only go up from here!

Top Traffic Sources

Direct traffic continues to be the top performing traffic source. This is a healthy sign as people are either bookmarking the site’s URL, directly typing in the URL in to the browser or clicking through from an email not tracked as campaign.

The Bootstrapped Entrepreneur name is getting out there!

Social media referrals from both Facebook and Twitter continues to be a strong contributor of referral traffic. While my posting frequency on these outposts has not been as frequent than last month, I had been running a Facebook Like campaign since launch to help grow the Likes on the fan page.

You’ll also notice google / organic now in the top 5 of results, yet organic search traffic didn’t even register in the top 10 last month. I had originally picked the keywords “bootstrapped” and “entrepreneur” in my domain in hopes of ranking well for these keywords. Checking in to my Google Webmaster Tools account, I can see that Google has started scanning and indexing my content in recent weeks, which would explain why I’m starting to gain traction in the search rankings.

While I am not focusing on any particular SEO (search engine optimization) strategies or tactics to this point, I have been making a habit of including keywords in my page titles, headers, etc. I don’t want to get too wrapped up in writing awkward sentences and language just to appease Google’s search.

Remember – as a blogger, you are writing for an audience, not a Google bot.

Top Content

Here’s the posts I published this month…

• 7 Ways to Turn Your Passion into an Online Business
• Monthly Report – July 2012

Unfortunately, I fell off the bandwagon with my regular weekly posting schedule. And, this shows in the visits and traffic coming to the site.

What happened???

Well, I’ll get into that in a bit.

Followers

Despite the limited posting frequency or lack of guest posts, the tribe of fellow bootstrapreneurs I’m trying to build here with the blog continues to grow.

I still managed to pick up a few email subscribers along the way. And, there’s also a small pickup of Twitter followers. However, with so many bots and fake Twitter accounts, this follower count is constantly a moving target. So, I wouldn’t put much weight into the numbers up or down.

The highlight here is the Facebook Likes, which continues to grow. While I had a bit of help from the paid Like campaign running through the month of August, the Insights provided by Facebook for the fan page indicate a handful of these Likes came through “viral” or word of mouth.

Financials

Revenue

Probably the best news of the whole month – I made my first dollar blogging!

While it’s definitely not enough to quit my day job and do this blogging thing full-time, this is an encouraging milestone for anyone who knows how hard it is to make that first dollar.

How did I do it?

I made an affiliate commission by selling an image over at iStockphoto.

• You’ll notice the Featured Images I use on each of my posts.
• iStockphoto is my goto source for these images, as they have millions of professional quality photos I can use here on the website.
• At the end of each post, I include an image credit to acknowledge the use of the image in this post.
• Behind that image credit, I’ve placed an affiliate link so that if anyone clicks through and buys that image or any other image at iStockphoto, I earn a commission for the sale.

Affiliate marketing will play a key business model to monetize the traffic on this site and I will share more about how it works in future posts.

Expenses

In last month’s report, I counted most of my initial launch expenses in with July’s expenses. As you can see, this month I only had a handful of ongoing monthly expenses, plus a line item for a new service I discovered called Fiverr.com.

Fiverr is a crowdsourced marketplace, where you pay a “fiverr” five dollar minimum gig for somebody to complete a favour for you. There’s some funny ones on there like paying $5 for someone to wish you a happy birthday to paying $5 for someone to impersonate your favourite movie star. But, there’s also more serious gigs to help you outsource the small tasks you just don’t have time to complete.

I used Fiverr to pay for someone to create a Facebook Timeline Cover for the Facebook fan page. I felt like people needed a better cover photo than just my mug on there. And, since I can’t draw to save my life, I decided to give Fiverr a try and get someone to design something cool for me.

Check out the new Timeline Cover on the Facebook page! I’m curious to hear what you think.

Quick shout out to Rohit Vidwan for his creativity and quick turnaround on this cover photo!

Key Learning

Normally, I would have a few lessons to share with you this month. But, unfortunately, they can all be summed up into on BIG lesson.

No Posting = No Traffic!

The numbers speak for themselves…

While I had every intention of keeping up with weekly posts I promised and committed to you last month, I fell off the wagon in posting regularly in August

• Blame it on procrastination.
• Blame it on too many distractions (day job, birthday, vacation planning).
• Blame it on “analysis paralysis” and over thinking the posts in the hooper.
• Blame it on unrealistic or not so SMART goals I set out last month.

Well there is never a good enough excuse, my worst fear is letting you YOU – my friends, followers and customers – down. The last thing I want to do is disappoint anybody.

But, I realize I tend to take things a bit too seriously and can be pretty hard on myself. It is what it is and I cannot go back and change it. What I can do is move forward, look ahead to this month and set realistic, achievable goals.

Rather than trying to “kill myself” by trying to set a bunch of unachievable goals, I will be focusing on one and only goal for September.

1. Publish one post each week

While this seems pretty simple and reasonable, I am pretty confident I can achieve this this goal. This puts the delivery of content as #1 priority and makes sure I can deliver on my promise of providing WEEKLY quality content to you, the readers. Once I can establish a regular posting rhythm, there’s no sense trying to layer in additional goals that will just distract from the core content delivery.

Looking Forward

I’d be lying if I told you the blog is the most exciting thing coming up for me in September.

I’m heading to Turkey for
TWO WEEKS!

While technically I will be on vacation, I do plan on “testing the waters” for a few days with the whole “lifestyle design” and “nomad entrepreneur” concepts of working remotely while traveling.

• On the plane ride over, this will give me plenty of time to get all my brainstorming and planning down for the “full court press” for the remainder of 2012.
• Each morning while I’m sipping my Turkish coffee from the apartment patio, I’ll check in on emails, comments, tweets and likes to stay in the loop with what’s going on back home.
• The bulk of the day will be spent touring and exploring the many wonders and culture Turkey has to offer. So I don’t expect much work to get done.
• However, after enjoying a scrumptious meal and as the night winds down, I will write as much content as I can to get ahead for when I’m back.

Stay tuned for pics and stories!

Oh, and I do have a couple posts scheduled for the weeks I’m gone. So rest assured, I’ve learned my lesson from this month and won’t let that happen again.

Photo credits:
#18627043 | iStockphoto
#13207067 | iStockphoto

***

What are your travel plans this fall? Any other nomad entrepreneurs out there? How do you balance work vs travel to get a fuller experience out of life?

Leave a comment below and tell us where you’re off to!

Bored of the 9 to 5 rat race? Not following your interests or passion?

We’ve all heard success stories of people “cashing in on their hobby” or “pursuing their passion” to becoming wealthy. And with the Internet opening so many doors for people, these stories are becoming more and more popular every day.

But if you’re the average joe, this may seem like an impossible dream to achieve.

You may think your hobby or passion might not be good enough. Or, you think it’s impossible to reach outside your personal network of family and friends, let alone the millions of potential customers on the Internet. Or, you may be at a total loss for how to setup a website.

Well, have no fear!

While the worldwide web has definitely opened doors for people, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and you don’t even need a website to still get in front of millions of customers online.

Here’s seven different ways or websites you can use to turn your hobby into a profitable business.

Imagine these websites as a shell for your business.

• They already have secured the storefront in the “supermall” of the Internet.
• These websites have already built a massive audience of shoppers ready to come through the store.
• And, they can already take payments for whatever you have to sell.

The only missing ingredient is “inventory” to stock on the shelves.

That’s where you come in!

All these sites hinge on user generated content, where users upload their ideas or products or services to “stock” the shelves. Without your inventory, there’s nothing to sell to customers.

So, while I cannot guarantee you will make millions from any one of these endeavours, what I can guarantee is you will find a way to profit from your passion without having to do all the heavy lifting of building your own website.

1. Doodle a t-shirt design for Threadless.com

Maybe you liked to doodle during lectures back in high school or university. Sure, they were no Mona Lisa or Sistine Chapel. But, they helped you pass the time and maybe even learned a thing or two.

Threadless offers you a way to get your “masterpiece” out to the masses. Threadless is a marketplace where you can submit a t-shirt design, the community rates a new design every week and if your design gets picked, you can earn up to $2,000 cash for each t-shirt design

Threadless initially started out with just t-shirts but has since expanded to include hoodies, polos, backpacks, notebooks and now laptop and iPhone cases.

Enter the next winning design at Threadless.

2. Write a book through Kindle Publishing Direct

Maybe your passion is writing. You could be a writer professionally. Or, maybe you write in your spare time. Or, maybe you write a blog like me.

Whatever the case may be, you may be holding back on publishing your work to sell, as you’ve heard about how difficult it is to get a book published these days. And since readers are turning to Kindles and iPads, you may be asking yourself “are my national bestseller dreams gone forever?”

Well, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing might just be able to make your bestseller dreams come true after all. With Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) you can easily publish your own book to the Amazon Kindle Store. You earn a 70% royalty on all book sales and customers can purchase your book either online through the Kindle Store, Kindle devices or Kindle apps for the iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Mac or PC.

And, if you still want to go the old fashioned route of getting your book to print, you can also checkout CreateSpace by Amazon too.

Publish the next New York Times bestseller with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.

3. Invent the latest gadget through Quirky

Maybe you like to tinker in the garage. Or, if you’re an engineer like me, you like to disassemble and reverse engineer everything to learn how it works. This curiosity constantly challenges you to think up new inventions or things to simplify our daily lives.

Quirky.com (affiliate link) is just the thing for you. Quirky is a social product development platform that breaks down the barriers to getting your latest invention out in to the marketplace. All you need is $10 and a 140-character elevator pitch to get started.

As you move through the different stages of development, the “peanut gallery” of Quirky members chime with their comments and feedback, earning them influence rewards. These influence rewards are a dedicated portion of the profits evenly distributed across those members who give their feedback at each step of the process.

If your product makes it to the prototype stage, Quirky will hold a presale to gather qualified buyers while they source the manufacturing for your product. Once your product makes it to the big time and is ready to ship, Quirky will sell it in their online store for you. Quirky has also partnered up with big box retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Target and Toys ‘R Us to sell products too.

Submit the next”light bulb” idea to Quirky and join the likes Edison and Einstein.

4. Design a logo or website with 99designs

Maybe you can more than just doodle, and have legit chops for drawing or designing. 99designs is a way for you flex your artistic skills and help others at the same time.

99designs.com (affiliate link) is a design marketplace where people submit a design project, including a creative brief on the logo, business card, website, banner or mobile app they need designed.

You “bid” on the project by submitting your best compositions according to the design requirements. If the project owner likes what they see from you, they will give you real time feedback or maybe ask for a few revisions along the way.

Each project includes a predetermined prize value that is awarded to the winning designer. Prizes start as low as $299 for a simple logo design to as high as $1499 for a full website design.

Design the next kickass website at 99designs.

5. Build software through Elance

Maybe you’re really in to writing code or building software. You dream in 1s and 0s and every decision you make comes with an “if… else” statement. And with apps being all the rage these days, you’ve got the techie skills to make an impact.

Elance.com (affiliate link) is one of several websites, where non-technical people can come and outsource their development projects to people like you. Elance works similar to 99designs, where a project sponsor will submit a brief outlining the work required and then you bid on the work if you’ve got the skills, passion and know-how to get the job done. Projects can range from functions or a piece of code within a larger project, whole websites or programs or simple mobile apps. And pricing for the projects can range from a per project price to a hourly rate and project budget.

Elance has also expanded into offering more than just development projects and now includes writing, marketing, accounting, design amongst other skills. So, it’s a perfect platform for the freelancer looking to launch their career with virtual clients.

Build the next biggest app or launch your freelance career with Elance.

6. Sell your handcrafted wares on Etsy

Maybe you like to spend your weekends hawking your goods at the local flea market, street corner or craft bazaar. While this experience is a great way to learn your sales skills, your success heavily depends on two things – location and foot traffic. If you pick the wrong location without enough foot traffic, you’re going to have a tough time finding customers looking for your product. Imagine if you could have millions of customers right at your doorstep, ready to buy your product.

Etsy.com is the world’s largest flea market where artisans can sell their goods to world. You can sell everything from knitted scarves to pottery bowls to handmade jewelry to just about anything made with your hands (no assembly line or mass production products allowed).

Etsy will provide you with a “storefront” to list your products and advertise to visitors on the site. Once somebody decides they want to buy your crafty item, Etsy will take payment on your behalf. Then, the rest is up to you. You simply need to ship the customer whatever they just bought from you.

Etsy charges a small $0.20 fee to list each item for sale and then collects a 3.5% fee on the purchase amount to cover the credit card processing and overhead to run the website.

Start selling your crafts and wares on Etsy today!

7. Become an ace photographer on iStockphoto

Maybe you like to snap pictures on your weekend hiking trips. Or, take shots with your trusty, old school polaroid or new fangled Instagram app. If you’ve got an eye for photography, then check out becoming a contributor with iStockphoto.

iStockphoto.com (affiliate link) features millions of user generated images from contributors like you from around the world. Customers include agencies, bloggers, designers, entrepreneurs, marketers, webmasters – anyone looking for that right image to use on their website or marketing material.

By submitting your photos to iStockphoto, iStock doesn’t actually sell your photo to the customer. Instead, you consent to iStock selling a license for the customer to download and use the image. For every time your photo gets licensed, you earn a royalty ranging from 15-40% depending various different factors.

Keep in mind, iStock will only accept photos people want to buy and use for their website or ad campaigns. So, don’t be upset if your picture that’s out of focus or you forget the red eye reduction to remove those “devil” eyes. Take a minute or two to brush things up in Photoshop before submitting your best pictures.

Go shoot your portfolio and submit your best shots to iStockphoto.

***

Now, these seven sites are only a small sampling of the host of other crowdsourcing, outsourcing or freelance sites catering to user generated content.

What user generated content websites do you use to cash in on your passion, hobbies or pursuits?. Leave a comment below to tell us all about it.

[photo credit: 19138014 | iStockphoto]

For those of you following The Bootstrapped Entrepreneur leading up to launch, you may recall the weekly journal entries I was making for Traffic School. Well, now that the blog is live and running, I’m morphing those updates into these monthly reports.

For those of you who reading for the first time, welcome!

Two of my blogging “idols” Pat Flynn (SmartPassiveIncome.com) and Corbett Barr (ThinkTraffic.net) have popularized the concept of a monthly progress report or accountability journal as a way to share how their blogs are growing.

Do you keep a accountability journal or a running progress report on your blog or website? If so, what are the things you talk about and share? Let us know in the comments below.

I write these progress reports once a month not to brag or beat my own chest.

Instead, I write these reports for two main reasons.

1. Keep myself accountable to the goals I said I was going to deliver from the last report
2. Inspire you in your quest to building your business

I will be 100% transparent about the things I’ve learned this month and include real numbers and data to show you what’s going on “behind the scenes”. No bullshit. Just the real, honest truth!

Since there’s been a lot of ground covered in the first few weeks of the blog, let’s dive in.

July Analytics for The Bootstrapped Entrepreneur

Here’s a quick few snapshots from my Google Analytics account.

1,000 visits in the first month! AWESOME!

While I had not made any specific traffic goals for the first month, this result far exceeded my expectations. With close to a third of those visits came in on the July 17 launch day, the trailing results for the weeks following show a strong foundation I can continue to grow and build upon in coming months.

Top Traffic Sources

Prior to launch, I spent a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook engaging with people through follows, mentions, likes, shares, etc. I felt this would be an important way to hear what people are saying about bootstrapping and entrepreneurship, plus start building an audience ahead of time.

All that hard work paid off!

Next to direct entry, Twitter and Facebook are the two most popular traffic sources. And, without any requests or prompting, one follower included me in their Founders Weekly newsletter.

Founder Weekly (Issue 38 – July 25, 2012) su.pr/1IzxZw#startup #founder #entrepreneur #business #tools #vc #marketing #book #tips

— Rahul Chaudhary (@rahulgchaudhary) July 26, 2012

Thanks Rahul!

Top Content

Here’s the blog posts I published leading up to and during launch week to kickstart the blog.

• The Bootstrapreneur Manifesto – You Might Be a Bootstrapreneur IF…
• The Biggest Lessons Learned from Bootstrapping a Startup
• Welcome to The Bootstrapped Entrepreneur
• Bootstrapping + Entrepreneur = Bootstrapreneur

You can see the most popular post was “The Biggest Lessons Learned from Bootstrapping a Startup” where I asked 47 entrepreneurs to share their experience on bootstrapping a startup. I got 20 responses back or a 40% conversion rate from ask-to-response – not too shabby!

I consolidated all 20 of these quotes into a “round up post”, where each entrepreneur was featured with their quote, a short bio, headshot and link back to their website and Twitter handle.

Then, once the post was published, I sent a quick email to each of the entrepreneurs, thanking them for their insight and including a non-intrusive link back to the post. I followed up the email with a quick Twitter @mention shout out to let them know I appreciated their support.

Well, without even having to ask, many of them went ahead and re-tweeted, liked or mentioned the post to their audience, driving traffic back o the post.

The round up post technique really works!

I also wrote a guest post that was published during launch week over on ExpertEnough.com.

Hack Your Way to Becoming an HTML Expert

Guest posting on other authority sites and blogs is a great way to bring referring traffic in to your site, earn backlinks to rank well in the search engines, plus help get your name out there. This will be a key tactic I will use in future months, as I look to build a thriving audience here.

Followers

Prior to launch, I setup a splash landing page to give people a teaser of what the new site was all about and give them an opportunity to get notified when the new site would launch by entering their email address.

These email addresses would form the basis of my email subscriber list and will be important relationships to develop moving forward.

As I mentioned before, I also spent a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook leading up to, during and after launch. This not only helped me build an audience ahead of time, but I also made some great relationships with fellow entrepreneurs and people looking to start their own business.

I had a little extra help on the Facebook side of things, but I’ll get into later…

Financials

Since I’m treating this blog like a business and in the same vain of transparency from above, it’s only fair I share with you the financials or business behind this blog.

Revenue

My #1 focus and priority for the first 6 months of this blog is building traffic and a thriving audience.

And, while there is no revenue to speak of yet, I plan on building out the following revenue streams along the way:

1. Affiliate Marketing – This is the quickest, easiest way to start generating income. You will never see a banner ad on this site from some random advertiser or annoying Google Adsense. Instead, all you will see is quality products and services I have personally used and recommend.
2. Consulting – While my time is limited, there are people out there who may find I can contribute to their success through dedicated time together. And until I have my own product to sell, the next best thing I can sell is my skills and expertise.
3. Information Products – The most profitable and scalable business model will be the information products I have envisioned for the blog. These could be anything from ebooks to courses to apps to who knows what will come along.

Look for these different business models to debut when the time is right, as I build the business side of the blog alongside the traffic.

Expenses

NOTE: Several links in the above table are affiliate links to products and tools I personally recommend. If you click through and decide to purchase the product, thank you! I will receive a commission for referring you and I will reinvest this money into the growth and development of this blog.

You may be thinking… “wait a minute, if this blog is all about bootstrapping a startup on a budget, shouldn’t I just use free tools to get started”.

While there’s a lot of free tools out there and included in this list, free does not always equal freedom or the amount of free time and know how to get started. Besides money, you may be bootstrapping your business as your time and resources are limited. If you don’t have the time or expertise available, shelling out a bit money is a small price to pay to fast tracking your business to market and revenue much sooner.

I won’t get in to detail here on all these tools or how they work. I’m saving that for an upcoming Resources page and future review posts to help you out.

Facebook Like Campaign

The only one I will mention is the $50 Facebook Ad Credit I received for FREE from Bluehost.com. I setup a mini “friend of a friend” Facebook Like sponsored campaign.

This campaign is basically sponsoring the word of mouth reach possibilities by presenting your Facebook page to your friends and friends who like your page.

For more tactical reasons, I used this campaign to acquire the minimum 25 Likes on the page Facebook requires to secure the custom username, plus gain the valuable Insights reporting to see how people are engaging with the page.

I’ll break down how these campaigns work in a future post, so you can learn how to build a thriving audience on Facebook.

Key Learnings

Leading up to blog launch, I had enrolled in the Traffic School and Start a Blog That Matters courses offered by Think Traffic. These courses were a tremendous help in laying down a blueprint to follow. While I’m not quite 100% through the courses just yet, I did accomplish the primary goal of getting my blog launched in roughly the same timeframe they talk about in the courses. I will be finishing up these courses in the next 1-2 months to further grow and optimize whatever parts might still be needing attention on the blog.

Here’s the four biggest actions I took away from the courses that I feel that contributed to a successful launch.

1. Pre-launch buzz
   

   In daily conversation, I mentioned to people I was launching a blog. And several of them checked out the site, entered their email address or became a Twitter follower or Facebook fan. Also, I got my social media outposts up and running as soon as possible.

   I cannot reiterate enough how these conversations and engagement helped create a captive audience ready for the content as soon as I launched.

2. Write epic content
   

   The content I’m writing about related to bootstrapping and entrepreneurship is a bit lesser known to most people outside startup and entrepreneur circles. So, I wanted to produce content that would be consumable to the average joe or layman wanting to start their own business.

   I tried to put my best foot forward at launch by spending a lot of time writing and re-writing the posts published during launch week. Or, at least my best for now.

   Writing doesn’t come naturally to me, but one of the reasons I took up writing this blog was to hone and practice this skill. As I grow and develop as a blogger, some of my best work or “epic” content is still to come.

3. Content promotion
   

   As I published posts throughout launch week, I made a point of syndicating this content to the social media outposts and email subscriber list. Also, for the round up post, I reached out with a personal thank you to each of my interview subjects, who acted on my behalf to promote the content to their audience.

   It’s one thing to write good content. But, if there’s nobody around to read it, what’s the point?

4. Join a mastermind group
   

   This is probably the single, most productive thing I did leading up to launch. I hooked with a few other students from Traffic School to meet once a week, where we discuss what each other is working on, what we may be struggling with and how we can help each other from one week to the next.

   This form of accountability is a godsend for a procrastinator like me. Each and every week these meetings give me a “kick in the pants” to spur me on to bigger and better things for this blog and my business.

   Thanks Pamela, Jason and Ryan for your continued support along this journey!

Looking Forward

For the month of August, I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Rather than trying to set unrealistic goals outside of my control like x number more visits or y number of Facebook fans, I’ve tried to set SMART goals that I can control based on my time devoted to the blog.

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Relevant
T = Timely

In due time, the traffic and followers will come based on the actions I take below.

1. Continue posting a minimum one post per week.
   

   While this is the BARE minimum, I have a lot of post ideas floating around in my head and lots of info to share. And, I develop a better rhythm and schedule for posting, getting these posts on to paper will be become much easier over time.

   So, I may from time to time send out more than one post per week. I don’t think anybody’s gonna mind that, eh?

2. For every 1 weekly post, write 1 guest post
   

   As I’ve found already, guest posting will be the key to growing my audience OUTSIDE my current network. So, for every weekly post I publish, I will also be writing and submitting a guest post to blogs that have similar interests, topics or audiences that could use my skills and expertise.

3. Build up a 4 weekly post reserve
   

   I am preparing for a two-week holiday to Turkey in early September. And I plan on visiting a few remote locations where it’s doubtful I’ll have WiFi access. So, to hedge my bets, I need to get ahead of schedule and build up a reserve of posts that I can schedule while I’m away. This will mean one extra post per week for this month in order to get there.

   But, don’t worry… I’ll still check in and respond to comments as often as I can. As, building relationships with you, the readers, is the most fun and exciting part of this blog.

4. Finish Start a Blog That Matters course
   

   Since I cannot finish both courses at the same time, while I’m also posting and guest posting, I will focus on wrapping up SABTM first. And, since I’ve only got 5 more lessons to go, this should be quite feasible to accomplish.

Photo credit: #18627043, iStockphoto

***

What are your goals for the summer? Do you write a similar journal to keep you on track and accountable?

Leave a comment and share your experience below.

]]> http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/monthly-report-july-2012/feed/ 4 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/manifesto/ http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/manifesto/#comments Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:34:06 +0000 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/?p=1318 Remember Jeff Foxworthy and his “you might be a redneck if…” jokes?

Humour me for a second and let’s take a trip down memory lane.

You Might Be a Redneck IF…
… you think a woman who is “out of your league” bowls on a different night.
… you’ve got more than three cousins named “Bubba”
… that billboard that says, “Say No to Crack” reminds you to pull up your pants
… you think subdivision is part of a math problem
… you stare at an orange juice container because it says, “CONCENTRATE”

And my personal favorite…
…  You think you are an entrepreneur because of the “Dirt for Sale” sign in the front yard

All kidding aside, what makes these jokes so funny is that Jeff pokes fun at the redneck “underdog” of society. Yet to the redneck, these are not jokes at all. They most likely don’t know any different and live life as they know it.

People who bootstrap a startup are often perceived as the “underdog” by other entrepreneurs or venture capitalists. A lack of cash or resources may seem like a disadvantage to some, but to the bootstrapreneur this may be the only way to get their business up and running.

However, if you’ll recall the biggest lessons learned from bootstrapping a startup post, many of the entrepreneurs I spoke with CHOSE to bootstrap their own businesses.

Whether it was for 100% control in decision making, to tightly manage cash flow and expenses, or to have a sense of personal pride and accomplishment, all these bootstrapreneurs created their own success by choosing to bootstrap.

The Bootstrapreneur Manifesto

Taking a page from Jeff Foxworthy, I’ve put together the top 10 reasons “You Might Be a Bootstrapreneur IF” to serve as The Bootstrapreneur Manifesto.

Consider this manifesto as rules to live by that you and many fellow bootstrapreneurs don’t even have to think about – they are simply engrained in your DNA.

While the manifesto may not be nearly as witty or funny as some of the redneck jokes, if you can identify with at least one of these rules, than mission accomplished.

Rather than simply write out the manifesto here, I’ve put it into a few different formats for you to consume and share with others.

PDF Poster
You can download a graphical version of the PDF poster, print it off, stick it on your mirror, tape it to your whiteboard, put it wherever you need to see it the most and be reminded why you choose to be a bootstrapreneur.

Shareable Infographic
If you’d like to publish this image on your own site, you can also embed this shareable infographic.



The Bootstrapreneur Manifesto is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Feel free to share this manifesto anywhere you like. Just make sure to link back to this post or website using the handy embed code below.

Embed Code
Copy and paste this code into your blog post or web page:

<a href="http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/manifesto"><img src="http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/bootstrapreneur-manifesto.jpg" alt="The Bootstrapreneur Manifesto" title="The Bootstrapreneur Manifesto - Infographic" width="560" height="725" /></a><br /><small>Like this infographic? Get more helpful tips and advice from <a href="http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net" title="The Bootstrapped Entrepreneur">The Bootstrapped Entrepreneur</a>.</small>

***

So, what about you?

Why do you bootstrap your startup? Are you forced to bootstrap due to limited time, money or resources? Or, do you choose to bootstrap for your own personal fulfillment and reasons?

Leave a comment below.

]]> http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/manifesto/feed/ 7 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/bootstrapping-lessons-learned/ http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/bootstrapping-lessons-learned/#comments Tue, 17 Jul 2012 14:30:00 +0000 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/?p=210

Many of us are faced with bootstrapping our own startup.

But, let’s face it…

Without a roadmap or knowing which path to take to lead to our success, we often make decisions and learns things the hard way, through “trial and error”. While bootstrapping a startup is no science, there have been several people who have gone before us that have managed to find their own way to achieving success.

I recently reached out to some of my fellow entrepreneurs and bootstrapping success stories I had read about, as I was keen to get their thoughts on the lessons and experiences that helped make them successful.

So, I posed the following “fill in the blank” question…

The biggest lesson I’ve learned from bootstrapping a startup is __________

I was overwhelmed by the response and quite encouraged to hear similar lessons with my own startup experience. Read on further to see what each of these people had to share.

Then, I’d love to hear from you what you’ve learned in the comments below.

Here’s a list of shortcuts to each answer or you can scroll down to read through all the answers (trust me, you’ll want to read them all):

George Achilleos, Corbett Barr, Jeff Butterworth, Devesh Dwivedi, Brad Feld,
Pat Flynn, Brian Gardner, Jay Gibb, Chris Guillebeau, Colin Holowaychuk,
Guy Kawasaki, Andre Kroecher, Matt Mickiewicz, Justin Nowak, Neil Patel,
Nathan Seidle, Lori Stewart, Zachary Vex, Andrew Warner, Carla Young

 

George Achilleos

Co-Founder at Out There Inc. and LiveOutThere.com



Be ready to “pivot” and take the time to prioritize your focus list.

I have found that the idea at the start is not necessarily the “success” idea in the end. LiveOutThere.com started with a “social” lead and made a dramatic pivot to e-commerce. What we thought would work was wrong and we needed to have the courage to change.

Second bootstrapping is about focus and prioritization. The startup phase can be exciting and entrepreneurs spend time on “non-important” activities – making business cards, spending time coming up with fancy taglines etc…, however, there are much more important things to focus on. What will drive revenue? What will build momentum that will get you past the inevitable point of discouragement? That is where focus should be.

Follow George on Twitter or learn more at Live Out There

 

Corbett Barr

Entrepreneur and Founder of Think Traffic



Building an audience first before developing a product is a more powerful and less risky way to build a business.

Follow Corbett on Twitter or learn more at Think Traffic

 

Jeff Butterworth

Queen Bee at Alien Skin Software



Founders should have the skills to make the product themselves. Most bootstrappers don’t have enough money to hire engineers. Even if they do, the product will be better if the founders’ vision is directly poured into it rather than translated by someone else.

Follow Jeff on Twitter or learn more at Alien Skin Software

 

Devesh Dwivedi

Startup Mentor, Blogger at Breaking the 9 to 5 Jail



Spend very very wisely because there was no cash to cover up mistakes and every dollar was critical to survival so, as they say – measure twice, cut once.

Plus remember, Bootstrapping is not about Skype versus Landline; it’s about being open to untraditional, innovative, & cost effective ways of solving problems and getting things done.

Follow Devesh on Twitter or learn more at Breaking the 9 to 5 Jail

 

Brad Feld

Managing Director at Foundry Group, Blogger at Feld Thoughts



Never run out of money

Follow Brad on Twitter or learn more at Foundry Group and Feld Thoughts

 

Pat Flynn

Entrepreneuer and Blogger at Smart Passive Income



Just how many ups and downs there are. One day I’ll be incredibly happy with the way things are going, and the next, something will happen and it’ll seem like I’m at the bottom, often times wanting to just give up. When we’re down, it’s easy to forget that there are ups too – ups that we’ve experienced that are important to remember, and ups that will happen if we just keep going.

Follow Pat on Twitter or learn more at Smart Passive Income

 

Brian Gardner

Creator of StudioPress, Partner at Copyblogger Media



Bootstrapping is the only way to go since you can retain full ownership in your company and you don’t have to answer to investors when making decisions.

Follow Brian on Twitter or learn more at Brian Gardner and Copyblogger Media

 

Jay Gibb

Founder of CloudSponge, Managing Partner at Arizona Bay Technology Ventures



Saying “no” more often than I say “yes” is critically important. It’s difficult to say “no” to ideas and requests from customers, shareholders, advisors, teammates and myself, but it’s the only way to get momentum during the budget-sensitive bootstrapping period.

Follow Jay on Twitter or learn more at CloudSponge and Arizona Bay

 

Chris Guillebeau

World Traveler, Entrepreneur, Best-Selling Author, Blogger at The Art of Non-Conformity



Starting a business on the cheap is a benefit, not a handicap. You’ll gain more by spending less money and using more of your brain.

Follow Chris on Twitter or learn more at The Art of Non-Conformity

 

Colin Holowaychuk

Founder of Merchee



Focus on the end goal, it’s hard to filter out all the distractions.

— or as Gary V says “all the other bullshit is horse shit”

Follow Colin on Twitter or learn more at Merchee

 

Guy Kawasaki

Best-Selling Author, Technology Evangelist and Founder of Alltop



Too much money can be deadlier than too little money

Follow Guy on Twitter or learn more at Alltop.com

 

Andre Kroecher

Inventor of Dairy Free Vegan Cheese



Well, to me, bootstrapping implies “no help” achieving an impossible task on one’s own, generally. I was fortunate to have selected a business partner to pull half the load, one who has smarts in areas I don’t. So I would probably say, self-reflect and recognize one’s own strengths and weaknesses, then surround oneself with people who excel where you don’t.

Follow Andre on Twitter or learn more at Daiya Foods

 

Matt Mickiewicz

Serial Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of 99designs, SitePoint, and Flippa



Be aggressive with pricing & margins. Customers might be willing to pay a lot more than you think.

Follow Matt on Twitter or learn more at 99designs, SitePoint or Flippa

 

Justin Nowak

Startup Weekend Calgary Organizer and Blogger at Young Go Getter



Learning how to barter and negotiate to get what you need!

Follow Justin on Twitter or learn more at Young Go Getter

 

Neil Patel

Co-founder of Crazy Egg and Kissmetrics, Blogger at Quick Sprout



Start making money from day 1

Follow Neil on Twitter or learn more at Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics or Quick Sprout

 

Nathan Seidle

Founder of SparkFun Electronics



The fine art of the shell game. Business
types call it ‘cash flow projections’ but to me, it’s the idea that I’ve got to manage the cash of my business well enough to pay off the credit cards at the end of every month. For years if I added up all I owed against how much money I had in the bank, it was red. But I always had enough incoming money to pay off the credit cards when they came do. I’d then ask the credit card company for an increase in my limit then get back to growing my business. A line of credit certainly helps as a pressure release valve. And the eventual goal is to have more money in the bank than we owed. We’ve happily made it, but now we’ve grown to a size where I’ve had to learn the different between ‘cash accounting’ and ‘accrual’. Don’t worry if you’re just starting out – you’ll learn what accrual is when you need to.

This ‘fine art of the shell game’ teaches some good lessons in and of itself. When choosing whether or not we should purchase something (a new computer, a used desk, etc) we always looked to see if we had the cash. Some folks would call this ‘cash accounting’ but to me it was a good way to force ourselves to be scrappy. We were have remained very healthy because of it.

Follow Nathan on Twitter or learn more at SparkFun Electronics

 

Lori Stewart

eCommerce Executive and Founder of Awesome Foundation Calgary



Focus completely and absolutely on solving a defined market need, rather than building a cool solution for a non-existent market problem.

Follow Lori on Twitter or learn more at eThor and Awesome Foundation Calgary

 

Zachary Vex

Inventor of Z.VEX Guitar Effects and Amps



Don’t be afraid to be weird

Follow Zachary on Twitter or learn more at Z.VEX Effects

 

Andrew Warner

Serial Entrepreneur, Host of Mixergy.com



Boostrapping forces me to make sure I know what my customers want before I create it.

We always see heavily-funded startups in the news because they have enough money to pay for PR people, but there are bootstrappers out there who are quietly building profitable companies that are changing the world. Glad Blair’s site will help them.

Follow Andrew on Twitter or learn more at Mixergy.com

 

Carla Young

Writer and Founder of MOMeo Magazine



Spend money wisely. Look for no-cost ways to get the ball rolling before you invest in developing infrastructure that will likely need to change within the first year as your business evolves.

Follow Carla on Twitter or learn more at MOMeo Magazine for Work-at-Home Moms

 

***
Now, it’s over to you…

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from bootstrapping a startup?

I’ve love to hear from you! Leave a comment below to share your experience.

]]> http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/bootstrapping-lessons-learned/feed/ 10 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/welcome-to-the-bootstrapped-entrepreneur/ http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/welcome-to-the-bootstrapped-entrepreneur/#comments Tue, 17 Jul 2012 04:45:00 +0000 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/?p=1175

Today, I’m proud to introduce The Bootstrapped Entrepreneur!

The Bootstrapped Entrepreneur is a blog dedicated to exploring the lost art of “bootstrapping” a startup with little to no money. Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to pursue my passions for entrepreneurship and online marketing by working with some amazing people and companies along the way. This blog will be an outlet for me to share those experiences with you, so you can build your own success.

Be sure to check out the About to learn more about this blog and about me. And, check out the Bootstrapping + Entrepreneur = Bootstrapreneur post, where I define a “bootstrapreneur”, a term I’ve coined to use throughout this site.

For those who know me, I’ve been talking about doing a blog for years. I FINALLY got down to business and here it is! Thanks for your patience and bearing with me. I guarantee it was well worth the wait

Not only is this blog a passion project of mine, it’s also the output of the teachings and learning I’ve received from Traffic School and Start a Blog That Matters offered by Think Traffic.

A huge shout out to Corbett Barr and Caleb Wojcik for putting these courses together! This blog would not be possible without them.

So, without any further ado… Welcome and Enjoy!

-Bdot

Photo credit: #614729, iStockphoto

]]> http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/welcome-to-the-bootstrapped-entrepreneur/feed/ 14 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/bootstrapping-entrepreneur-bootstrapreneur/ http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/bootstrapping-entrepreneur-bootstrapreneur/#comments Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:00:00 +0000 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/?p=209

Photo credit: #17921870, iStockphoto

Raise your hand if you want to…

• Make your own money,
• Be your own boss and
• Escape the 9 to 5 rat race.

Well, duh! Who wouldn’t raise their hand to that???

Of course, we all want to be live the dream of sitting on a beach, drinking margaritas and sit back to watch the money flow in.

But, for every entrepreneur who manages to realize this dream, there’s thousands of others who flame out and never quite get there.

So, what does it really mean to start your own business or become an “entrepreneur”.

According to Wikipedia, the textbook definition of an entrepreneur as “an enterprising individual who builds capital through risk and/or initiative.”

We all know it takes time, effort and sometimes money to build a business from scratch. But, when you hear the word “risk”, this often conjures negatives feelings and connotations that could lead to giving up on an idea or venture too early.

But, being an entrepreneur doesn’t have to be a scary thing.

You could be an entrepreneur if you…

• Own a retail store, restaurant or service business
• Freelance or consult with clients based on something you’re good at
• Invent a new product, service or technology from your own imagination

These are all legitimate business models where people had to risk something to get started.

• Money to buy inventory or lease a store space.
• Time to learn a skill or trade through formal schooling or work experience.
• Resources to experiment and prototype before arriving at the final product

To spin the word “risk” into a more positive light, let’s consider the term “bootstrapping”.

Bootstrapping in the business context means “relying entirely on one’s efforts and resources” or “to help (oneself) without the aid of others” according to Dictionary.com. And, in order to accomplish the ultimate dream we talked about at the beginning of this post, you will most likely need to a “self-generating and self-sustaining” business that could be run on auto-pilot or from anywhere in the world.

So, if we now combine “bootstrapping” with “entrepreneur”, you get a “bootstrapreneur”.

Bootstrapping + Entrepreneur = Bootstrapreneur

An enterprising individual who builds self-generating or self-sustaining capital through one’s own efforts, resources, risk and/or initiative.


All the “risk” involved to building your own business boils down to YOU.

What are you willing to give up and “bootstrap” your way to success? Is it your time? Your money? Your own expertise or resources?

Are you ready to be become a Bootstrapreneur?

]]> http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/bootstrapping-entrepreneur-bootstrapreneur/feed/ 3 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/traffic-school-weeks-9-10/ http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/traffic-school-weeks-9-10/#respond Sat, 07 Jul 2012 16:53:27 +0000 http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/?p=695 I fell off the wagon the past couple of weeks with a bit of freelance client work (YAY for paying customers!).

Back on track this week and pushing towards blog launch in 10 days – July 17, 2012!

Last Week’s Progress

1. Finish round up post requests
   
   Completed.

   I sent out 47 requests to a host of different entrepreneurs within my network. And, I received 18 responses back to date with another 2-3 expected to roll in before launch.

   So, a 40% conversion rate from request to response is pretty good! Not quite the 50% target I was gunning for, but I’m still quite pleased with this result.

   Stay tuned for the blog launch week, where I’ll be using a round up post to feature all the amazing quotes received back.

2. Complete SABTM Week 6 action plan
   

   I’m almost done this lesson and should be on track to wrap up this weekend.

   • About page
     80% of the way done, but need to trim done, pare out some of the content out and split up between my Welcome and Manifesto posts
   • Three blog posts
   • Two guest posts
     one submitted and approved, one more to write and submit
3. Complete TS Week 8 lessons
   

   I watched the The “Epic Shit” Factor lesson, which of course was inspiring in the midst of writing launch content.

   But, since I’m so close to launch now, I will be pausing the TS lessons until after launch and continue following the SABTM lessons 6, 7 and 8 to launch.

4. BONUS: Canuck Mastermind Group
   
   We officially have our four members now in the Canuck Mastermind Group!
   • @ryancruzca
   • @pameladale
   • @jgoldfarb
   • @blairdejong

   Thank you friends for your encouragement, support and feedback along the journey so far! Here’s to our success moving forward!

This Week’s Goals

1. Complete SABTM Week 6 lesson
   
   • Finish the About page
   • Complete 2nd guest post
2. Complete SABTM Week 7 lessons
   
   • “Welcome to my blog” post
   • “Round up” post
   • Follow up post for launch week
   • Two guest posts (time permitting)

I’ve got my work cut out for me over the next 10 days. But, I thrive under pressure and look forward to next week’s update, just before we hit the LAUNCH button.

]]> http://bootstrappedentrepreneur.net/traffic-school-weeks-9-10/feed/ 0