Taking a whole new angle on internet entrepreneurship, Freelancer.comprovides a forum for freelancers to connect with small businesses, capitalizing on peoples’ need for freelancer services. The website proudly claims the status of “world’s largest freelancing, outsourcing and crowdsourcing marketplace for small business.” With over 7,500,000 employers networking on their site and with over 4,500,000 projects posted since 2004, they certainly seem fit to make such a claim.

So how does it work? Whether you’re a small upstart, an already established small business, or a full-fledged company, you can upload design projects to Freelancer.com, then compare and consider bids from freelancers interested in being hired. You don’t pay anything until you find a find a product with which you are 100% satisfied. If you’re an aspiring freelancer, all you have to do to find work is sign up for free and browse the project listings!

The ease of this network is really what makes it a beautiful idea—it guarantees quality for the professionals seeking help, and offers a plentitude of easy opportunities to freelancers looking for hire.

Outsourcing is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

How many times have you realized, after the fact, that you had a discount at that store you just left, that you could have saved money on entrance tickets to that last museum you visited, or that you had a membership loyalty card to that retail store, but forgot all about it in the chaos of trying to find your credit card? And who can keep track of all the membership bonuses and perks from all of their clubs and associations?

Mobile app and web service Larky offers a solution to this dilemma, organizing all of these rewards systems, so that you can get the most out of your memberships and can capitalize on as many savings as possible. Currently, Larky only has an iPhone app available, however their Android app is promised as forthcoming. The app service serves not only as a means of organizing all your rewards programs on its “perks dashboard,” but also as an alert system, alerting users when they are near potential savings and membership bonuses and discounts.

This service is obviously targeting a pain felt by the majority of frequent buyers and cuts right to the heart of loyalty programs’ weaknesses. With this system at our fingertips, not only will consumers be better off and organized, but merchants will be able to offer stronger loyalty programs, since customers will be better assured of the benefits.

Larky is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

Professor Ray Meddis, formerly a professor of psychology at the University of Essex, is part of the BioAid development team. Here he explains the product in more detail:

Besides offering improvement of life for the hearing-impaired, this app also signals a new age of medical technology: cheaper, easier, and increasingly user-friendly.

Bio Aid is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

Users can download this separate app, use it to filter a picture of their most recent culinary discovery, and then transfer the filtered photo to be filtered & uploaded via instagram, the same way one usually would. FoodShareFilter adds a message to the photo reading, “This photo helps millions of people to avoid starvation” in Spanish, along with the hashtag #FoodShareFilter.

While the developer does not profit from the sale of the app, users do pay a minimal fee for the app of just over $1, which goes directly to prevention of world hunger.

This unique solution to an awareness and fundraising dilemma poses exciting possibilities for other NGOs and social causes. Blogger Murtaza Patel poses an intriguing question: how can other charities capitalize monetarily on the current online sharing fad?

(This logo reads, in Spanish, “#FoodShareFilter: If you’re going to share your food, share it for real.” )

#FoodShareFilter is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

This innovative, Google Chrome-based browser is currently available for Mac OS X 10.6 and later and for Windows XP 7 and later. With a browser like this, the real question is: why would we ever use Internet Explorer ever again?

Perks of Websurfing is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

In an interview with the editors of Springwise, innovator Tomonori Kagaya offered a couple pieces of insight and advice for the aspiring Entrepreneur.
When asked about his regular habits, Neurowear founder Kagaya hinted at the foundational importance of novelty in the process of innovation. To unwind, he visits new cities and new restaurants. To garner inspiration and motivation, Kagaya suggests the following: “Encounters with new experiences. I’m always looking for a new experience – that makes me excited.” The secret to being a successful entrepreneur is coming up with a new, innovative concept. Differentiation is key.

Kagaya confessed that the most frustrating part of the innovation process was having to keep on schedule. He also expressed regret at not having taken time to gather more user data. However, that oversight at the beginning of the process does not seem to be dissuading this brilliant mind from pushing forward. Kagaya expresses a hope for a huge increase in number of users, and mentions their plans to expand their Neuro-music database.

If his future innovations are anything like the ones he currently has out on the market, I would say we can expect some exciting new things from Tomonori Kagaya.

Insight From An Innovator–Tomonori Kagaya (Part 2) is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

Thanks to Japanese visionary Tomonori Kagaya, this is now an actual possibility. Neurowear, Kagaya’s Tokyo-based company, offers a line of innovative products designed to respond to the wearer’s emotions and thoughts. For example, one of Neurowear’s first innovations was a pair of novelty cat ears that would twitch according to the wearer’s mood.

Kagaya’s most recent and brilliant innovation is Mico, a pair of headphones that play music based on the wearer’s thoughts and emotions—an accessory that reads and responds to mental processes even before the wearer can express it himself. This introduces an entirely new level to musical discovery. How many times have we wished for just the right mix of melody, mood, and lyrical composition to match our current disposition? While we cannot always find that tune even in our perusal of the extensive musical collections that we have at our fingertips (e.g. Pandora, Spotify, Itunes, etc.), Mico is designed to find and introduce the perfect song to us, eliminating the need for painstaking search.

“If we don’t know the title, artist name, genre, then how can we find the song? We need another approach. Don’t go searching for music, let music find you – that must be a new experience. So we made Mico.” –Tomonori Kagaya

Mico–Tomonori Kagaya (Part 1) is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

In a world deluged with new ideas and messages, design is the key to differentiation. Hunie is a new internet forum for creative collaboration which both recognizes the importance and encourages the improvement of creative website designs. Seeking to harness the creative insight of graphic designers all over the globe, Hunie utilizes the power of crowdsourcing to offer constructive criticism on every submitted web design.  Users share peer-to-peer insights, helping each other graduate their designs from functional to memorable and effective. In this video, Hunie’s founder Damian Madray offers a preview of how the process works.

Hunie is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

Here are some best practices that require a shift in your mindset.

Know your customer

Your customer operates differently than at any point in the past. He or she can no longer be told what to do or think; they have taken the search for a solution to a need or pain to a whole new level. The internet has given them all the resources they need to know what they need to know. This does, however, open a door for you. With all this information, information overload plays a huge role in consumer decision making. If you as the business can simplify things for your customer, you can easily differentiate yourself in the market. Additionally, while traditional market research focuses much more on demographics, psychographics are becoming more important. A business solution in the online space may apply to a broad swathe of demographics; picking the right potential customers often requires going a step deeper into their psyche. Finally, the internet has introduced the power of narrowcasting; that is, a very targeted, niche-ified means of reaching a market segment. This means no more boatloads of money thrown to the wind in an all-out advertising campaign, but it also means you’d better know just where your market is spending their time.

Network, Network, Network

In a traditional business model, you usually want to keep to yourself, protecting all the details of how you operate from your competitors. However, the internet has introduced a phenomena of collaboration. It is increasingly popular for companies to open up, sharing the nitty-gritty details of operations with customers, as doing so builds loyalty and trust. There is also an increased atmosphere of sharing, as companies/entrepreneurs find coming together to partner for anything from private coaching and advice giving to a promotional or product development campaign offers them greater chances for success than holding their cards close to their chests.

Do what’s most important to the core of your business, and outsource the rest

As an online entrepreneur, it is vital that you focus on doing what’s at the heart of your business. In one sense, this should (hopefully) be your passion. In another, it is the one, two or three things that drive your business forward. Broadly, these include new product development (or delivering well whatever it is that you provide to your customer), sales, and customer interaction (this builds trust with your customers as they feel you are invested in their success). For all the other details, find someone who specializes in that area and hire them to do it for you. This saves you time, allowing you to grow your business (or reach whatever other business goals you have more quickly) and therefore also increasing revenues. It also means all those other sides to operating your business are done well, something that you on your own wouldn’t be able to do.

These best practices require thinking a bit out-of-the-box. But doing so can allow you to create the business of your dreams.

3 Best Practices to Internet Stardom is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

Every business idea begins with you, the creator. Motivation is a key factor here. Statistics demonstrate that the most successful entrepreneurs are those who are driven by a passion for the area they are working in. Monetary gain rarely offers the motivation to overcome the challenges faced by any business, and even when it does, the work is not fulfilling. Find something you are passionate about. But in addition to passion, you need to have the skill to carry it out. If you are passionate about a topic but have not developed a skill for that thing, take the time to learn it well. Take classes, get some practical experience, do whatever it takes to get good at it. Once your passions and skills are aligned, you have the basis for a successful business.

The second factor is a need or pain. It’s great that you now have a passion/skill, but if there is no market for it, it can never be more than a hobby. As one online business owner said, “I can be passionate about eating pizza, but unless someone is willing to pay me for doing it, it’s not a business.” Do your research. Talk to potential customers. Find out if there is a felt need that the thing you are passionate about helps address.

Finally, any business requires certain resources to bring your solution (your passion or skill) to the market (to address the need or pain). For internet entrepreneurs, this is not hard to come by. What is incredible about our time is just how easy it is to get started with almost nothing. All it takes is a bit of know-how with WordPress to set up a website and start creating content to build traffic. From there you can figure out what resource needs your business has; an automatic email tool? An e-commerce widget? A mobile app? Once you have identified what these additional tools are, it is easy to find providers of these tools online. www.earlytorise.com has a member’s area that lists the most commonly used tools for most of your online needs.

In today’s age, building a business is not hard; it simply requires the creativity to bring together your passions and skills with the market’s needs, wants, or pains and do so with the proper resources.

From Concept to REAL Business: A Proven Strategy is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College