Hiya there, folks!

If you’re subscribed to this blog, then you’re most likely an aspiring entrepreneur.

As aspiring entrepreneurs, one of the questions that’s prevalent in our minds is, “What kind of business should I start?”

Hell, my blog statistics show me that the most popular category in Startup Launchr is the “business ideas” category.

Well, I finished writing my first book, and it’s called the ideaSpark: The Blueprint. It’s an entire manual that’s based on.. you guessed it, how to get your hands on that seemingly elusive business idea so you can go ahead and launch your first business.

I don’t want to talk about it TOO much yet. But I’ll tell you what.

I’m going to give away 10 free copies of the book for Startup Launchr readers. There are two ways to enter the contest:

1.) Subscribe to the blog by email and press Submit. I’ll pick the winners randomly. There will be 10 winners from this category.

2.) If you don’t want to subscribe, there’s another way to enter. Simply send me an email using the Contact page and tell me why you NEED a copy of the book. I don’t car what your reason is — it can be a sob story, it can be something that makes me laugh, whatever. Best stories win. I don’t know how many winners there will be from this category yet.

So what’s the catch? For the winners, I want you to let me know what you think of the book. My end goal is to compile an audio collage of readers praising the book (”OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVER!” is ideal, but I doubt that will happen). Don’t know if we can achieve that, but that’s what I’m aiming for.

So, you ready? Then go and enter the contest now!

Note to 12 or so email subscribers: I’m just about ready to transfer you guys over from Feedburner to Feedblitz. If you don’t know the difference, that’s okay — the only thing that matters is that the emails will look prettier. You’ll be getting an activation email by tomorrow. Aight? Aight.

General note: I’m over in New Jersey/New York for the week. Me and my girlfriend had a HELLISH time getting here from Vancouver yesterday. It’s been a long 24 hours… My only advice? Do NOT ever fly United/Air Canada. And if you do, don’t check any baggage in. Ask me about it in the comments section.

PROBLEM

For newly established blogs (such as Pocketpreneur and Startup Launchr) growing its subscriber base is often the biggest problem they have to face. Networking can be tough and sometimes feel like you’re intruding an existing group of friends. Traditional pay-per-click is expensive and don’t convert well for blogs.

Many readers have also developed ad blindness and simply don’t click on ads, making it difficult for the blogger to monetize his blog.

What options does a new blogger have if he wants to be able to grow his subscriber base easily? And can bloggers earn money for their blogs aside from AdSense, traditional sponsorship and affiliate links?

MARKET

New bloggers; blogs looking to expand their subscriber base; existing blogs looking to monetize their blogs.

HOW IT WORKS

PPS functions in the same way as other blog ad networks currently work, except instead of paying for clicks an advertiser will pay for each subscriber received. Think of it as a “sponsored blogroll” with a one-line description for each blog.

Advertisers would be able to pay for a more targeted audience by being able to target subscribers from a particular blog, since every blog caters to a very specific demographic. The costs of paying for a subscriber will outweigh the cost of paying for a certain number of clicks without a guarantee of how many people will convert.

Publishers benefit too, especially blogs in certain topics where Google AdSense isn’t as beneficial and don’t bring in as much clicks. It also won’t look like blatant affiliate advertising since their readers don’t pay anything; the publisher is simply recommending other related blogs their readers should subscribe to.

BUSINESS MODEL

It is essentially a pay-per-action business model catered specifically to the blogosphere. The publisher would be able to specify how much he or she wants to charge per subscriber sent. At the end of the month PPS will bill the advertiser based on how much subscribers they received and pay the publishers on how many subscriptions they sent.

Photo by juhansonin

The only thing I can say is: WOW.

Over the past 7 days, Pocketpreneur’s readership has more than doubled.

OK, going from 9 readers to 23 isn’t really much of an accomplishment. It’s certainly dwarfed by other blogs with hundreds, even thousands, of devoted followers. Feedburner keeps changing up the numbers too.

But I don’t care about them. I care about you.

Whether we have 3, or 30, or 300, or 3,000… I want to thank you guys for subscribing to Pocketpreneur!

Aside from the announcement at Startup Launchr, this blog hasn’t been promoted much. A couple links here and there, but that’s about it. You guys found yourselves here either through StumbleUpon, or 43things, or Triiibes and decided there’s something here worth watching out for.

Can I help it if I think that’s just uber-cool?

OK. Moving on, reason I’m writing this post is two-fold. They are, in no specific order:

• I just wanted to let you guys know that the blog is alive and kicking. I have some posts lined up — it’s just a matter of scanning the illustrations, which is a 2-minute process but I’ve been procastinating like mad! Of course, I don’t want to annoy you by posting just for the sake of posting, so I follow a personal rule of post something useful or post nothing at all.

• TO EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS: there isn’t much of you, but I just want to let you know that I’ll be migrating the list from Feedburner to FeedBlitz by next week. You’ll get a notification to confirm that you’ve subscribed through email before. Please don’t mark it as spam. I won’t ever think of spamming you guys :)

• The real reason I haven’t been actively posting is because I’ve been busy writing a book for Pocketpreneur. I don’t want to reveal too much about it at this time, but the basic premise is that it’s a guidebook on how to come up with your own business ideas and how to know if it’s a good idea. I was going to do a test to let the numbers decide for me again, but I have my heart set on a title already. I promise to have it finished, polished up and out to you guys by August 31, 2008 (or the week of).

And that’s it!

Hello my name is,
Carlo

PS. Introduce yourselves in the comments section, will ya? Let’s hear some comments, questions, discussions. I’d hate this to turn out as a one-man show :)

PROBLEM

There’s a lot of talk in the news that North America is experiencing a recession, which means jobseekers will have a much harder time getting employment. There are also countries where there is a high demand and low supply for jobs. How can jobseekers have an easier time with their job hunt?

MARKET

People looking to start their careers with a full-time job; job seekers looking to build a new career in a completely different industry than they’ve been in; people who are having a difficult time getting callbacks and interviews.

HOW IT WORKS

The basic premise of the business is that you build an agency that helps people find work.

A jobseeker can either get their resumes worked on, get a cover letter, or hand over the task of job hunting completely. The job hunter can guarantee a certain amount of job interviews within a particular period of time or they get their money back.

Once you receive an application, you can work over the jobseeker’s resume and cover letter and go to job sites and submit them yourself. You will change the telephone number and email address to yours so you receive the callbacks (sign up for a Gmail address and forward all incoming mail to yours). You will then schedule the interviews and relay the interviews to the job seeker once the payment has been processed.

The company website can feature case studies and video interviews with successful clients to help convince people to sign up for the service. To keep visitors coming back to the website, it will have a blog that’s regularly updated with job seeker tips on how they can improve their chances of getting interviews and callbacks from employers.

BUSINESS MODEL

Although this idea doesn’t exactly qualify as a business off-the-bat, as the company grows you can outsource the work for relatively cheap.

Instead of taking money from their monthly salary when they get the job, the business only receives money when the job seeker gets an interview request. Whether or not the job seeker will get the job is completely dependent on his or her interview skills.

You first have to figure out a system for resumes and cover letters that get responses from employers. Draft a manual on how you highlight the candidate’s strengths from the interview questions they’ll submit with their application. This manual can also be sold as a separate product in the future. Using the manual as a guide, you can train an employee to work from home so you can focus on growing your business.

Photo by juhansonin

Pocketpreneur is  dedicated to remarkable business ideas, and mapping them out in such a way that the average Joe can understand. And I’d like to take this post to welcome you to the blog :)

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to launch your first business but have no idea what to start, Pocketpreneur will hopefully get you inspired and jolt your mind with some creative juice. Each post contains a hand-drawn illustration that I came up with when I thought of the idea (thus, the title of the blog ;p). Sorry if I’m no Rembrandt.

The Goal

The goal is relatively simple and comes in three parts:

1. To illustrate that good business ideas are everywhere.
2. To show that most (if not all) good business ideas come from solving a problem for a group of people.
3. To unleash the inner entrepreneur in everyone.

To kick things off, I published several posts already for you to read:

• “Calling The Shots” - Sports Gambling Blog
  

• “Moonlighters” - Online Job Board

• “Bored In Class” - Notebooks For Students

• “Your Next Website” - Domain Name Community

What Do You Think?

I started this blog alongside Startup Launchr simply because I think the topic of business ideas and planning deserves a platform of its own. Since it’s a new blog, the design might still be a little clunky… Is it too minimalist for your tastes? I’m depending on you readers to let me know what you think. If something needs fixing, I’ll fix it.

With that said, subscribe to the blog today and we’ll be sure to see you around!

PROBLEM

The problem with big job sites like Monster.com and HotJobs.com is that the majority of jobs they offer are full-time positions. If you’re trying to supplement your monthly income, where can you go and find part time jobs easily without having to sift through hundreds of job listings you’re not interested in?

MARKET

People who are trying to increase their monthly incomes by taking a second job; businesses who are looking to fill a temporary position quickly

HOW IT WORKS

The website will be a simple job board (relatively easy to create one through Jobthread.com or a custom Wordpress template at http://www.dailywp.com/jobpress-wordpress-theme) catering to the part-time/moonlight/sideline audience. The success of this business depends on two factors: the amount of job seekers it has seeking jobs, and the amount of employers it has that are posting jobs.

To differentiate itself from other job boards, this website can include downloadable interviews with successful part-timers/moonlighters and how they’re successful with finding part-time jobs. It can also feature articles on a weekly or monthly basis from employers on what they’re looking for with part-time and temporary employees.

BUSINESS MODEL

The website can either charge employers for listing their vacancies (the traditional model for job boards today) or charge job seekers a monthly fee to be able to submit applications.

PROBLEM

The idea of being stuck in a class learning stuff we won’t need in the future fits the picture of boredom for many, if not most, people.

MARKET

High school students; university students

HOW IT WORKS

It works just like a regular notebook where students can take notes in. Except these notebooks will have games on the side so the students can look like they’re taking notes but really are just playing games.

The games can be relatively simple, such as crossword puzzles, Sudoku, find the words, etc. To include a bit of interactivity, it can feature games they can play with their seatmates such as hangman. To satisfy the inner prankster in everybody, the notebook can also feature lists of things to do to stay awake in class and pranks they can play on classmates and their teachers.

The notebook covers will not be conspicuous and will look like a regular notebook, to prevent detection by teachers. It will have a plain black or blue cover, or maybe a clever and catchy design that bears no “Bored In Class” brand references.

BUSINESS MODEL

These notebooks should be relatively easy to sell. You can buy a domain name, create a landing page and sell these notebooks. To promote the product, you can create a viral video to spread on sites like Youtube and Collegehumor.com.

PROBLEM

How many times have you thought of a wonderful name for a possible business, only to be severely disappointed to find out that the domain name has been taken, and even worse, only being used for advertising and not for anything useful?

MARKET

About-to-be website owners; businesses who want to establish an online presence, but can’t think of a catchy website name; people who want to make money from selling domains but don’t want to invest hundreds (or thousands) of dollars into domains that they can’t be sure would sell.

HOW IT WORKS

To run this effectively, the website must build a community willing to participate in brainstorming ideas for domain names and sharing the idea.

The person in need of a domain name for his business will write basic details about his website to give the community a gist of what it will be about. The community then submits ideas for domains. To make this process easy, there would be a whois widget on the sidebar that people can use to aid their brainstorm sessions so they can find out whether the domain is taken or not.

Only available domain names will be accepted for submissions. As an incentive for the community to submit ideas, a cash prize will be awarded for the domain name that’s chosen. While the community should be able to see how many domains have been suggested, nobody is able to see the domain names except for the buyer himself. This is to prevent domain squatters from using the site to buy existing domains.

BUSINESS MODEL

The person in need of a domain name will pay $99 to submit a domain name request. $80 will go into the person who submitted the chosen domain name, and the remaining $19 will go towards the company.

The person in need of a domain name can increase the cash prize to get more submissions. No matter how large the cash prize, the company will only take $19 for each request.

PROBLEM

Gamblers are hungry for the latest insider news when it comes to their favorite sports. Most sites about sports betting tips offer just the numbers, or have offer no reason why the sports gambler should trust their picks.

MARKET

Sports gamblers; depends on how narrow the blog topic is.

HOW IT WORKS

Passionate about sports? Do you have a knack for predicting the winners of certain games? Instead of setting up a traditional blog on sports news, you can use your knowledge to report on the latest sports developments and how it will affect the outcome of games.

The site will be set up as a regular blog reporting that covers the upcoming games in a particular sport or league (NBA, NFL, MLB, EPL, Spanish Premiere League, etc.). Each post will include tidbits with the teams that are playing and the latest developments with their players, coaches and/or organization itself.

Paid subscribers will be able to view the predicted outcome of the games. The blog will have a scoreboard widget on the sidebar to show everyone their track record so far (for example, “15-2 for the first 17 games of the season”) to give an incentive for people to subscribe.

BUSINESS MODEL

This idea capitalizes on the paid-to-blog model which very few have managed to run successfully.

It will be ran very similarly like the business Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey has in “Two For The Money” except this one is online. Readers will be able to access the regular blog posts without the predictions if they want to call their own shots. To get an expert opinion on what the outcome of the game will be however, they will have to pay. Paid subscribers will see an additional section at the end of the blog post that are only accessible to members of the site.

The blog can charge a weekly or a monthly membership, and eventually hire other writers with a proven track record on predicting games. The site owner could also choose to outsource the article writing to someone else (providing them with the tidbits to write about) and simply focus on calling the shots.