Rohail Rizvi- Entrepreneur in the Making

In order to optimize your ad revenue you have to avoid restricting yourself to a single ad provider. This may seem obvious, but with the recent advent of text link ads and other advertising venues, there is no reason not to expand your revenue reach to other ad providers.

1. Expand your revenue means. Look to other ad providers such as Text Link Ads or Yahoo! Publisher Network so long as whichever advertising networks you choose to publish are compliant with each other. Usually this means you are allowed to place ads of different types (text link ads and Adsense are allowed to be displayed on the same page), but placing Adsense and YPN on the same page probably isn’t a good idea (Check with your specific terms of service).
2. Test your ad placements. Optimizing your ad revenue means finding out what placement works best for you. Refer to guides provided by your ad provider such as Google’s guide to improving performance located here.
3. Become an Affiliate. You can really make a killing by becoming an affiliate for products your blog or site is related to. For example, consider becoming an affiliate for Amazon, which produces one of the largest affiliate programs on the Internet.
4. Sign up with ReviewMe or PayPerPost. These relatively new services allow bloggers to earn money for writing reviews on products or services that normally they would write reviews about anyway. This is probably the easiest way to monetize your blog or site. The sites offer varying levels of flexibility in how self-opinionated the review can be, but they both pay pretty well. Also, a recent FTC move is making it more difficult to post about a service without indicating an affiliation and so that may be something to keep in mind.

Here are my top ten hidden gem business blogs for 2006. I tried to venture outside the Mind Petals network, but still managed to throw a couple well-deserved blogs in there. Some of these blogs have more of a following than others, but they all possess great potential and have yet to be discovered fully by the mainstream (at least in the “blogosphere”).

1. The Entrepreneurial Blog of Oli, Dave, & Burt
2. SportsLizard
3. Blog.compete.com
4. Musings on Money Making
5. Punkstar’s Pad
6. YoungFinances.com
7. Planet Ajaxian
8. Nate Ritter
9. Amit Gupta’s Blog
10. Wisdump

What makes great products stand out? For that matter, what makes anything great stand out? The best products, whether they be a web 2.0 startup or a TV show, have something about them that makes them stand out. As Seth Godin puts it, you need a “purple cow.”

The marketing aspect of your business doesn’t come from the physical advertising such as banner ads or TV commercials, but rather the actual marketability of your product. That is, does your product do you marketing for you? Does it make people talk about it and market itself? You can shout your slogan as loud as you want on that megaphone of yours, but if your product isn’t remarkable, then all the other marketing in the world couldn’t help you.

If you’ve ever watched the show, “Home Improvement,” you’re probably familiar with the character of Wilson, Tim’s neighbor. Now what’s funny about how they portray Wilson is that they never fully show his face. They could have easily portrayed him as any old neighbor by not creating a sense of mystery around him by hiding his face, but instead they chose to do something remarkable with his character. Even though Wilson isn’t a major character in the show, it just goes to show that if you do something remarkable, people will remember it. I’m sure that just by doing what they did to Wilson’s character the show got a boost out of people trying to find out what Wilson really looked like.

It just goes to show that in order to be able to market your product efficiently, you have to let your product market itself (kind of like Wilson’s character). In the end, it’s your product marketing for you rather than you marketing your product that’s going to make it a success.

If you’re like me you can’t wait until break when your amidst exams just so you can get to implement your ideas. However, if you’re also like me, you feel a strong urge to just “veg” out over winter break with your new plasma TV (like this guy). It can be hard to stay focused on your winter goals especially with family around on the holidays. Here are some tips to keep you focused and productive over this winter break (that I myself will attempt to implement):

• PUT THE SIGN UP. Motivational posters tend not to be a permanent motivating force, but if you can manage to put up a sign on your bathroom mirror that reminds you every morning of what your goal for break is in one sentence, then that can be very effective. Personally, mine is going to be taken from Steve Jobs: “If today was your last day on Earth, is how you are about to spend it the way you would?”

• SET YOUR GOALS. Set your goals for the next day, the night before. If you’ve never done this before try it for 28 days and make it a habit. Also, have specific goals that you want to reach over winter break.Whether that means travelling to certain cities or meeting a certain sales goal, write it all down.

• BET AGAINST FAILURE: To ensure yourself some motivation in reaching your goals, why not bet failure against the one thing you as an entrepreneur are afraid to lose the most? Write out a check of a significant amount of money and give it to a friend that you trust. Tell them that they are allowed to cash that check for themselves or for a charity you’d like if you do not reach your particular goals. This can prove to be a very motivating technique.

To my readers and other entrepreneurs- Take it easy with the egg nog and do your best to relax. To the Mind Petals community- We’ve all got big plans for 07 so let’s use this time to recharge right in time to make things happen. I have a feeling we’re all gonna have a pretty crazy and hopefully successful ‘07.

Wishing you and yours a very happy holiday!

I just recently got on board with Text Link Ads (TLA) and am glad to announce that you will now be able to purchase links on this site. Links are going for $25 right now, but I have a feeling they will be going for much more at the next PR update.

• Sign up with Text Link Ads using my referral code please (this means that I get $25 commission in your support for my blog!)
• Click on “Buy Links.”
• Search for “rutgers” in the searchbar of TLA (This blog- Entrepreneur in the Making- should show up by that search) and order either a text link or an RSS ad or both if you want optimal exposure for your site.
• Complete the payment process and I will approve your ad which will appear instantaneously here in the sidebar and feed of Entrepreneur in the Making .

Sometimes things just go downright bad. After two weeks of hardcore promoting and going door-to-door and dorm-to-dorm with my associate, it was just last night that it became apparent Walamu was not letting users post their items. I was wondering why I wasn’t getting any new posts…

By the looks of it, we lost out on at least 30 new users posting books at a horrible time considering this is the time of year when most students are selling their textbooks.

Yeah that news didn’t make for a good night. Throw final exams on top of that and you’ve got a real recipe for a not-so-great mood.

It should have been caught earlier, but I figured I would have gotten a feedback email from a user if the site was not working properly. Now I know not to rely on that.

The site is in working order now and hits are at their all-time high. I’m going to use what I learned this semester and do everything I can to propel Walamu to the next level for the spring semester.

For some reason, a lot entrepreneurs, like Noah Kagan of OkDork.com, love burritos. In fact, I just had my first official burrito last Saturday at Qdoba. Those things are huge! Coincidentaly, burrito places like Chipotle are proving to be spectacular businesses and even more, they seem to be one of the best marketers around. Just take a look at Chipotle’s hilarius marketing campaigns for it’s burritos that I’m sure you’ve seen driving down the interstate.

Check out all of Chipotle’s hilarious ads at www.chipotle.com.

I’m curious as to what all the other entrepreneurs prefer out there. What’s your favorite burrito?

As you probably know, I’ve been a part of the MindPetals network for quite a while now. MindPetals boasts an impressive network with members doing everything from Internet Marketing to starting their own diamond ventures. David Askaripour, the founder of MindPetals, has done a phenomenal job with the site and it’s growth.

The thing I like about MindPetals the most, however, is how helpful and supportive it’s founder Dave is to it’s members. It is clear he is an avid writer and churns out meaningful articles by the boatload. But what’s really impressive is his likeliness to help out a member in the network. For example, he’ll even interview all your competitors for you just to get a member the latest scoop on his competition! I can definitely say I’m pretty up-to-date on all my competitors . MindPetals has received some criticism on it’s similarities to 9rules (even right down to the logo!); However, I find that David is doing something different and creating an entirely new place for all us young entrepreneurs to play and network. I find David’s efforts extremely supportive and he is growing a great network of entrepreneurs at MindPetals. Aside from MindPetals, Dave also runs the blogs Flush the toilet and Marktale. Keep it up Dave and way to go on the support for the network!

Being the hardcore bootstrapper I am, I’ve turned down every opportunity to borrow money (Although, recently I’ve been told that borrowing money doesn’t make you a non-bootstrapper). The thing is I have about $6000 in mutual funds and I’m having a hard time deciding whether I should borrow money as opposed to selling the mutual fund shares. I know it seems like if I have money, why not use it? However, at the same time, it’s a lot less liquid and will take some time for those funds to become usable. So if you were me, would you:

1) Borrow money and pay interest in the end

2) Sell the mutual funds (Already with gains of 24%)