To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth (Photo: Brian J. Matis)

The $100 Startup is a new book released last week by Chris Gabrilleau. The title of the book give you the general idea of what the book aims to achieve. Is it possible to begin a business today with as little as $100. This is not geared toward creating the next instagram or facebook or twitter, but to ordinary people with an entrepreneurial desire showing ways that one can get started and interviewing many successful business people along the way.

I must confess I have not yet read the book, but I have purchased a copy and as soon as I get my delivery I will update you more thoroughly on the context. I took part in a promotional campaign for this book known as the $100 Startup Kit. For $100 you got not only the book but a bunch of digital products by other entrepreneurs ranging from productivity, to app development to small business structure. I have outlined the contents of the package below.

• “The $100 Startup” by Chris Guillebeau
• Creating, Marketing, and Designing A Blog That Matters ($40) by Corbett Barr
• Blogging From The Heart (eBook version) ($137) by Susannah Conway
• Identifying Your Passion Module + Workbook ($97) by Jonathan Mead
• Live Off Your Passion (lite) ($47) by Scott Dinsmore
• You Don’t Need A Job, You Need Guts ($40) by Ashley Ambirge
• Men With Pens Freelancer Package: Unbelievable Characters, Guest Posting Guide, Beyond Brick & Mortar eBooks ($70) by James Chartrand
• Tao of Awesome ($79) by Johnny B. Truant
• 30 Days of Courage (w/ Yoga Module) ($50) by Marianne Elliot
• Selling & Advertsing ($144) and Ethical Selling That Works ($97) by Pam Slim
• Double Your Ad Income ($47) by David Risley
• The Personal MBA Guide to Small Business Infrastructure ($49) by Joshua Kaufman
• How to Make iPhone Apps ($97) by Free the Apps
• Evernote Essentials ($25) by Brett Kelly
• Turning Your Hobby into a Career (download & audio program) ($51) by Alyson Stanfield
• Unconventional Guide to Publishing ($79) by Chris Guillebeau
• Think Outside the Cubicle by Scott Young (BONUS)

This is what I propose to do. I will take the $100 Startup challenge. The claim of this package is to put me in the right direction provided I take action. Consuming the information is not enough and taking action is the only way for any of us to be successful in any field, business or otherwise.

So here is what I propose in a nutshell. I intend to consume the information in my brand new $100 Startup package, take action and at the end of it have some sort of working business, all documenting it here. It has been a long time goal of mine to be financially self sufficient, let’s see where this takes me.

Unfortunately the video is a bit wide to embed in my theme so you will have to look at it directly over at SlateTV.

Imagine if you really took your time to target your ads and give them a nice free offer. This could really do wonders for ANY business!! AMAZING

Think And Grow Rich is hands down the best selling success book of all time! If you have read any other success books you would realise that a lot of  their suggestions stem from this book right here. The original Think and Grow Rich was published  back in 1937. Napoleon Hill uses examples that include the pioneers that can account for much of what we experience today.

These include Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other millionaires of his generation to illustrate his principles. It is an excellent read and I highly recommend it to everyone starting out.

The concepts are sound and practised greatly by many people today to attain the mindset that leads to wealth.

The Richest Man in Babylon comes in second IMHO to the book above. It is another classic amongst the success and wealth genre of books. It was written back in the 1920′s and is based on the practices of the Richest Man in Babylon, a thriving city dated back to biblical times.

This celebrated bestseller offers an understanding of-and a solution to-personal money problems.This is the original classic that reveals the secrets to acquiring money, keeping money, and making money earn even more money. Simply put: the original money-management favorite is back!

The quote above by the publisher says it all it’s a short read and definitely one for reference if you ever find yourself off track the lessons in this book will keep you on course.

Alright let’s get a little closer to the present. How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneurs Guide is by the genius marketer Dan Kennedy famously known amongst other things for his serious of NO B.S books about everything from time management to sales success. A lot of my friends complain about having all these ideas but not knowing where to take it from there. Well Dan let’s you know where to go and how far you can go and how many different ways you can get there. This book offers case studies from every spectrum of the business world including Dominos pizza.

I always look back at this book whenever I find myself stuck and can’t get my current idea to go any further. A quick flip through the pages and I’m loaded with a brand new perspective! Take a read and let me know what you think. I guarantee it’s a keeper!

By far one of my most favourite books recently read is The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. What a guy! Tim takes you on a journey in this book into the world of the New Rich. In this world you escape the 9-5, live anywhere, work less, make a lot more money and live like a millionaire.

Many of his case studies are his own experiences and in this new expanded version you learn of stories from people who have followed Tim’s principles and succeeded. If you’re still not sold feel free to check out Tim’s blog jam packed with up to date information on living the New Rich life.

What would be better than working just 4 hours a week and making more than most do working for 40!

Lastly we have what some people also consider to be a classic, Rich Dad Poor Dad. Robert Kiyosaki goes into a journey of his child hood where he had what he calls two dads, a Rich Dad and a Poor Dad. He compares greatly what he was taught by his Rich Dad with what he was taught by his Poor Dad.

The comparison gives us insight into the mind of the rich and illustrates greatly how because of this mindset the rich are able to stay that way. At the same time it shows us why the mindset of the poor is a major hindrance to them attaining wealth for themselves.

Take a read and learn what the rich teach their kids that the poor and middle class do not!

I hope you find these books useful to you, let me know how it goes and do enjoy. If any readers have any other book suggestions feel free to leave them in the comments I love getting new insights.

Of course research and learning about what you’re doing is of great importance you still have to take action in order to for any of your dreams, hopes or goals to be achieved. I say this because I too was a constant reader of any make money online material I could get my hands on, but I still would not take action or rather take very little action. The time for that has ended and I am fairly proud of the action I have been taking ever since my involvement in the thirty day challenge.

During the thirty day challenge I was able to make a small $33.28 from my test site which really helped to motivate me to dig deeper and flesh out all possibilities. I have been missing a while from posting to my blog, mostly because of the time I have been putting into building an online business of my own. I have now put together a proper schedule and allotted adequate time to posting to developingeyes.com so that I can keep you the readers informed of my endeavours step by step; which was the whole point of doing this blog in the first place.

What am I up to now?

I am currently involved in a number of projects some on my own and others joint ventures and others merely a concept in my head. These are the ones that I am actively involved in at the moment.

• Affiliate Marketing
• Adsense Niche Sites
• Membership site

Affiliate Marketing

I signed up for Pepperjam’s network about two months ago but rarely did anything with it. I finally made use of it during the thirty day challenge when I applied the techniques to an eBay BANS powered niche site, and that’s how I made my $33. Now I have been dabbling primarily in affiliate marketing, truly testing offers, writing copy, developing landing pages and even Adwords campaigns.

Most of my time has been spent doing this and it certainly is nowhere near as easy as the professionals make it seem.

Membership Site

This online business model has been so highly recommended I could not ignore it any longer. This is a joint venture between me and a colleague of mine. We are developing a number of courses (one to begin with) which we are incorporating into a membership website. The concept is as simple as it gets. Users pay a monthly fee or a discounted lump sum to have access to our course materials. The course material is going to be substantial, with downloadable screencasts, pdf transcripts and one on one coaching to students. I am very excited about this venture and I think it will also be the most lucrative if successfully accomplished

Adsense Niche Sites

This just a little something I would like to try out. I consider it to be affiliate marketing minus one action. Instead of having to encourage persons to click on affiliate links and still make a purchase, you just have to encourage them to click your Adsense ads. This is just an idea I have but I haven’t put it into much effect. Caroline Middlebrook is currently running her own experiment with Adsense niche sites and I’m watching her updates closely to get a better idea of the potential of the market.

So that’s everything I’ve been up to lately, I have made a sound promise to keep you updated every step of the way as I make these moves toward true entrepreneurship and financial freedom.

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The first ten days of the challenge have been pretty fundamental. We have covered

Market Research

Here we used a tool called market samurai. this tool makes it exceptionally easy to research keywords, determine seo competition as well as investigate possible response to your chosen keywords and cost of those same keywords if using Adwords. Excellent stuff!!

Content Development

We also learnt how to find content relevent to our niche and how to take that found content and use it to develop content so that it is uniquely yours. We also found ways to stay abreast with all information relevent to your choice niche using google reader as well as google alerts.

One thing I particular liked was the video on writing your very own copy. I have always had a problem with this and I can now confidently say that I have a fairly good understanding of what is needed to make a good copy.

Simple Site Promotion

Another key aspect we have looked at thus far, is site promotion. The techniques used here will get you quickly indexed by search engines that will in turn bring in the necessary traffic to your blog. We must remember that without traffic we can’t make any money so this was very important to pay attention to.

Face it folks the 30DC is the place to be! I haven’t even scratched the surface as to all of the intircacies of the FREE education I am receiving here. I really recommend anyone interested in making money online to have a go at it. It’s not too late,  10 days is nothing to catch up on once you’re willing to set aside a few hours to go through the tutorials.

Well that’s it for now, I hope to see you at the thirty day challenge today on day 11.

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This week’s entrepreneur is Ephren Taylor of City Capital Corporation and at the tender age of 25, is the youngest African-American CEO of any publicly traded company EVER. Quite an accomplishment where you’re the boss and younger than all your employees. Guy’s like Ephren Taylor show signs of entrepreneurship at a very young age. In fact, he started his first business at the age of 12, where he created 3D video games and sold them to his friends for $10.

At the age of 17, Ephren went on to build a million dollar ($3.4 million to be exact) technology company called GoFerretGo.com, which was then rated #4 of Teen Companies Nationwide by YoungBiz magazine. The guy really has a lot of very serious achievements under his belt. Finally, in 2006 Ephren Taylor became CEO of City Capital Corp, where he oversees over $150 million in assets for a number of clients for clients from Wall Street investors to professional athletes.

Ephren runs a blog where he gives pointers on how to create wealth beyond six and seven figures. I would suggest subscribing to it. Also take a look at the video below where Ephren appears on the CNBC show The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch.

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The entrepreneur this week is Ben Casnocha of Comcate. Ben is 20 years old and has already started his own software company (Comcate) at age 14 as well as written his own book! Comcate develops software designed to help local governments resolve citizen complaints.

That’s a pretty interesting niche one that can really only come from some sort of personal experience. Ben says he realised how poorly governments dealt with customer service issues from his own experience and that gave him the idea for Comcate. That was his second company.

Ben took a year off to travel and write a book, after finishing High School. He wrote about his experiences and called the book”My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley.” This is truly something this is a very well accomplished young man.

On top of this Ben has been named one of the nation’s top 25 entrepreneurs under 25 by Business Week. His blog has been named one of the top 25 in Silicon Valley by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Furthermore while running Comcate he still had time to captain his San Francisco University High School basketball team and be editor of the school newspaper.

Ben Casnocha is now enrolled at California’s Claremont McKenna college and markets himself as entrepreneur, author and college student.

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This week’s entrepreneur is a bit more successful than what I’ve been writing about in the past but may still be a bit unknown to quite a few of us on this side of the Atlantic. Suranga Chandratillake is co-founder and CEO of Blinkx. Blinkx is a video search engine based in the UK and San Francisco, that indexes over 18 million hours of video online. According to their website:

Today, blinkx is the world’s largest single index of rich media content on the Web, delivering more content from a broader range of sources than either Google or Yahoo!

One of the main advantages Blinkx has over the other guys is software that turns speech into text and tells you how many times that word has appeared in a particular video. Blinkx has also taken on contextual advertising using a service they call AdHoc. Think of it as an "Adsense for videos".

The ads take many forms, clickable links that scroll across the screen, banner ads and interestingly a list at the end of the video that shows all the products mentioned in the video you just watched! This is some very interesting stuff and I think has a very good future ahead as more and more videos appear online. A story on Suranga and Blinkx can be found in the Business 2.0 September 2007 edition or on the business 2.0 website.

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Idealist

The idealist entrepreneur is the most common type of entrepreneur shown above. He/She likes innovation and enjoys working on something new or creative or something personally meaningful.

Optimizers

The optimizer entrepreneur comes in a close second and is content with the personal satisfaction of simply being a business owner.

I think everyone would have some sort of satisfaction being a business owner but if that’s what mostly feels important then I guess you fall here.

Hard Workers

The hard workers entrepreneur category includes persons who enjoy putting in long hours to build a larger more profitable business. They like the challenge it presents and of course reap the most rewards if the business turns out to be a multi-million dollar enterprise.

Hard work comes with all businesses but as we now see not everyone works hard for the business to grow as this group of entrepreneurs does.

Jugglers

The juggler entrepreneur likes the concept that the business gives them a chance to handle everything themselves. They are usually people with lots of energy and exist on the pressure of meeting deadlines, paying bills and of course making payroll.

Who doesn’t like pressure? J Last minute deadlines are lovely! I’m sure a lot of you have ended up in a situation where the deadline is approaching quickly. Maybe you’re a juggler

Sustainers

The sustainers entrepreneur category consists of people who like the thought of balancing work and a personal life. Most often they do not wish the business to grow too large where it will cut into their personal life too much.

These guys just need enough to survive. No big hopes and dreams of a multinational corporation or interviews on “The Big Idea” J

So there you have it five categories of entrepreneurs. I’ve been trying to figure out which category best describes me, but I think I have attributes of the first four types. I love creativity and innovation so am I an idealist? I think everyone would feel satisfaction as a business owner, a natural sense of pride would always come with entrepreneurship.

I definitely would love to see any business venture I undertake grow as large as it possibly can so then I’m a hard worker? Yet I work well under pressure I’d say I thrive on it a bit so then I’m a juggler.

I guess I am hybrid entrepreneur. What type of Entrepreneur are you?

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This week’s entrepreneur is Carl Ocab of carlocab.com. Carl is a 14 year old BOY from the Philippines. His major claim to fame is ranking number one in google for the keyphrase “make money online”. When I checked it he currently ranks fourth which is still far beyond anything I have accomplished.

Carl is really doing it big and still going to school. He blogs regularly after school and writes with great authority on his topics, much better than many of the make money online blogs run by adults I’ve come across. I think one of the things Carl has going for him is his family’s support. Many of his posts introductory make reference to his father who he says is a marketer himself.

Carl also has a free ebook called the kidblogger’s master plan, that he uses to make money online and replicates any number of times in different niches. Yes people he is 14 years old, and he started at 13. If this doesn’t motivate you to work harder I really think you should call it quits now. Check out Carl’s blog and read his posts he has some solid advice there and I would recommend subscribing to his blog and getting the free ebook.

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