Having a big ego may sometimes be considered a negative thing but I think having an ego is very important when it comes to creating a successful business. I am not saying that you can’t run a successful business without one, I just think it is a huge asset.

I want you to know that I do think there is a difference between having a big ego and being arrogant. I hate being around people who are arrogant and think they are better than everyone else. I especially hate it when those people like to tell you why they are so awesome and why you should think so too. But is it okay for us to think we are better than someone else at something? I think it is, you just don’t need to go telling everyone you are better.

Since having a big ego can be perceived as a negative personality trait, another way to think about a big ego is to think of it as having a large amount of confidence. When we think of someone having confidence it is usually something we admire about that person. Having confidence is something that shows outwardly but we don’t have to go telling everyone how great we are.

Why you need a big ego.

Having an ego means that you think pretty highly of yourself. If you are going to be successful in any business it is important that you believe that you are one of the best at what you do. You must also believe that you are going to be successful because you are just that good.  It is okay to think highly of yourself and believe you are the best at something.

When you truly believe something almost anything is possible. When you begin to doubt the potential for success then there is a good chance things will not work out the way you had hoped. Stop doubting and identify why you are going to be successful.

Be careful.

If you decide to start building up your ego it is very important that you don’t get carried away. I hope that you can acquire a big ego but I ask that you don’t become an arrogant bastard. Becoming arrogant and completely in love with yourself will make a lot of people not like you and can also make running your business harder.

So you want to start building your ego?

Building up your ego is really about listening to others and changing your mindset. When others say you are good at something, believe them and remember it. Usually people only say something positive about you if they truly believe what they are saying. If they don’t think you are good at something they will usually not say anything at all.

You should also focus on being optimistic. Work on intentionally changing you mindset to where your have a positive outlook on things. Optimism is one the driving forces of a successful entrepreneur and pessimism is one of their downfalls.

Below are some ways you can start to build up your ego:

• Recognize what you are good at. We are all good at something. Write down everything you are good at, even if it doesn’t have to do with pursuing your own business. If you are good at soccer write it down. Anything you are good at is something to be proud of and will help to build your ego.
• Remember compliments you have received. Any time someone compliments you believe them and if it helps write it down when you get a chance. Remembering compliments you have received can easily give you an ego boost if you are in need of one.
• Find ways to measure your success. I am addicted to measuring and tracking everything I do whether it is my running workouts or the number of visits to my blog. I guess you could say I am a spreadsheet junky. What is great about measuring your success in different areas is that you can see how far you have come. If I started off only running one mile at a time and now can run 10 miles, that is something to feel proud of.

There are a number of other ways to build your ego but remember that a big ego means that you feel confident in yourself and does not mean that you have to go around telling everyone about how great you are. When you believe you are great others will too without being told.

Is having a big ego necessarily a bad thing or do we just need to change the way we think of our ego? Let me know your thoughts and if you think increasing your ego could potentially increase your success or if you disagree with this idea.

Photo credit: ntr23

Last week I wrote about how I started working a day job separate from my businesses. The reason for doing this is so that I can meet my highest priority goal which is to pay off all of my debt. This new job only lasts for five months and I will be able to put all the income I make from it towards debt. I am really looking forward to the feeling of freedom I will have once I don’t owe anyone anything.

I do spend some time in an office working but I also spend a lot of time on the road traveling. I really enjoy that I get to travel all over the country and get to frequently escape the cubicle.

As of today I have now had this job for two weeks and have started to get used to having a lot on my plate. Even though I am used to it doesn’t mean that it is easy. I have a lot to accomplish and as a result feel increased pressure and stress in my life.

While running a business and having a day job can be very hard at times, I feel that it gives me an opportunity to learn how to manage my time efficiently and help others who are wanting to start their own business while working a job do the same. Time management will be key if I am to continue to meet my business goals and not delay them until after my day job has ended.

Planning.

To meet my business goals I must first write down everything I want to accomplish for the week. I usually plan several weeks in advance. This process will not take up very much time and many times I will only have 2 or 3 main things I am trying to accomplish for a given week.

Once I know my weekly goals, I will break down what daily tasks I need to complete for the week to meet those goals. I usually try to only schedule tasks on Monday through Friday unless I know I will need additional time to meet a goal. By relaxing on the weekends I stay less stressed and have a better quality of life. I don’t want to risk burning out.

During the week days when I know I have to come home and work on my businesses I have found that starting to work immediately after getting home seems to be the best strategy. It is very tempting to want to relax for a while first but I have found that if I relax I begin to put my work off later and later and sometimes decide I will just do it the next day.

When I begin working as soon as I get home I am still in work mode and not relax mode so I find myself getting things done a lot faster and have plenty of time afterwards to relax and be lazy.

Procrastination.

Sometimes it is hard to get to work immediately, maybe after a tiring day, and some days I can’t even motivate myself to work at all. I think this is okay every now and then but it is important not to make a habit of it. The more I procrastinate the more work I have to do on the weekends or the more I push back meeting my goals.

I have found it particularly hard to work when I am traveling. Sometimes all I want to do is go to my hotel room and lay on the bed and watch TV.

Working on the weekends is something I am used to doing, but I want to keep that work to a minimum if at all possible. If I put off tasks until the weekend and find myself working more than enjoying my relax and play time I will quickly begin to burnout. Once you feel burnt out it is hard to recover quickly so it is best to avoid it at all costs.

Having days of rest is extremely important so that you can enjoy life instead of adding unnecessary stress that will only make your life harder. Remember why you are starting your own business and make sure your reasons to do so aren’t forgotten during the process.

Creating a plan for you business and work schedule will help you reach your goals a lot faster while also keeping your stress level in check. Meeting your goals is very important but remember that maintaining your quality of life is the most important.

What strategies have you found helpful for getting things done while maintaining quality of life?

Photo credit: Cliph

I have been hard at work getting my new affiliate website setup and ready to go and have been coming up with a lot of great ideas on how to drive traffic to the website and increase my potential to make money. Driving the right traffic is key if this website is going to be successful.

I have created a hand full of affiliate websites in the past and seem to learn something new every time. Creating the website has never been the hard part for me it is bringing the right traffic to the website that takes some skill. I don’t want just anybody to come to the website, I want people that may have an interest in buying the product I am selling.

If you remember a few weeks ago I announced that my affiliate website was going to sell a product that teaches you how to start your own iPhone app business with out needing to know how to program for the iPhone. This is very exciting because with this information almost anyone can start creating iPhone apps and even better they can do it and start making money from them. How is this possible? You learn to hire the right people to do it for you. You would be amazed at how inexpensive some apps can cost to create.

My current progress.

There are two main components to a website: the domain name and the web hosting. I will need both of these before I can start working on my website. This is the part where I spend the majority of my $100.

Usually a domain name and web hosting are purchased as two different items but there is a great web hosting company that gives you a free domain name when you purchase hosting. And what’s even better is that the hosting is affordable.

The web hosting company I decided to use is Bluehost.com (<–this is an affiliate link). I have used them for many other websites I have created and had a great experience with them every time.

For my website I am using Wordpress which is a content management system that makes building the website very easy and you can use FREE pre-designed templates to make it look awesome. Bluehost.com allows you to quickly and easily install Wordpress with no technical knowledge. I may go over this in a video later.

The hosting should be my only expense unless something comes up that I am not thinking about. So let’s look at a break down of everything I have done so far and what everything has cost me.

Keyword Research tools: FREE
Product to sell: FREE
Domain name: FREE
Web hosting: $83.40 (this is for the whole year)
Domain privacy: FREE
Wordpress template: FREE (next step)

Next steps.

My immediate next step is to choose a free Wordpress template. I will be looking for a template that is visually appealing and also user friendly. The reason I am not designing my own template is because it would take more time than I have and is also unnecessary with all the free templates available.

After I choose my template I will begin adding content that will be valuable to visitors looking to get into the iPhone app business. At this point I will also implement my product into the website and get everything setup so that when someone purchases it I get paid.

Having a website with a product to buy doesn’t mean I will start making money. I will need to start driving traffic to the website and there are a lot of different ways to do this but I will talk more about that when I get there. The important thing to know is that this step is key if I want my website to be successful.

I am off to a great start and very excited about launching the website soon. Once the website is complete I will let you know and post the address for all to see. Let me know what you think so far by leaving a comment.

Photo credit: cma3

I really enjoy working for myself because I get to make my own schedule and have the freedom to do almost anything I want to. However after almost a year of working completely for myself and with complete freedom, I decided to get a job.

As of last week I now have a full time job and I wanted you, my readers, to know why I made this decision even though I prefer working for myself.

You may also be wondering why I would even bring this up on a blog where I try to encourage others to start businesses if they are tired of working for someone else. The answer is simple, I believe in honesty and also want you to trust me. With out your trust nothing I encourage you to do on this blog will mean anything to you.

Goals

I have a very large list of goals that I want to accomplish at some point in my life. Some of my goals are very big and will take many years to meet and others I may be able to meet within the month.

A number of my goals are also dependent on another goal. This means that to meet a certain goal I may have to do something else first. Because of this I have to prioritize my goals and start pursuing the ones with the highest priority first. The priority of my goals may change from time to time depending on what I am wanting more at the time.

If one of my goals has a very high priority or may be the goal with the highest priority, I will do almost anything to meet that goal. To me my goals are not dreams they are things I really think I can accomplish and because of this taking action is the only way I am going to meet them.

Debt

As of right now the highest priority goal I have is to be out of debt. Not having any debt has been a goal of mine for a while now and I have managed to stop accumulating debt for the past several years. But with school loans and irresponsible credit card debt, just refraining from getting into more debt is not enough to get out of debt completely in a few years. It is also important to add that the school loans are from both me and my wife which increases the amount of money I need to pay off.

Making minimum payments on our debt is not a big deal. We have been doing this for years and financially this is very easy for us to do. For me continuing to live with debt is not acceptable. Having debt makes me feel trapped and feel someone else has control over me. I am tired of owing others money and long for the sense of freedom I know I will feel once we are completely out of debt.

Why get a job instead of working harder at my businesses?

Deciding to get a job was a very hard thing for me to do. After having almost a year of complete freedom, the idea of going back to the lifestyle of working for someone else did not sound enjoyable.

I considered the idea that if I work harder on my businesses I could bring in more money and put that towards paying off debt. The issue I found with this was that working harder does not always guarantee an increase in revenue and even if there were an increase it may not be consistent.

By getting a good paying job I would be guaranteed a certain amount of money every month. Since I will still be running my businesses and the money from those helps support my family, all the money I make from my job will go straight to our debt.

The job.

I was very lucky to get the job I did. It is a contract job that only lasts 6 months which is the perfect amount of time to get our debt payed off.

For the next 6 months I will be a technical consultant for a company located in Austin, TX that does business worldwide. I am not going to talk about the name of company and what they do on this blog but if you see me I will tell you all about it.

A very nice added bonus to the job is that I get to do a lot of traveling. This is exciting for me because it will allow me to be out of the office quite a bit and not stuck at a desk day after day.

Running a business with a day job.

Having a day job while also running several businesses was not well planned on my part. I believe this will give me valuable experience to pass on to others who may be wanting to start a business while working a day job.

I am sure that it is not going to be easy for me and have already started to feel the affects of having a lot on my plate. But I am confident that I can do it and know for sure that this was the right decision for me to make so I can meet my goal and get out of debt fast.

Photo credit: wageslaves

A few weeks ago I completed my first iPhone app. For a while now I have thought it would be great to have my own iPhone app I just never knew what to create one for.

In the last month or so I started looking into how to make an iPhone app. Most of my programming knowledge is in web development so when I started looking into Objective C, the language iPhone apps are written in, it was like learning a new language.

Luckily there are a lot of free resources on the web for learning the basics. I even found source files to apps that had already been created that I could look at and figure out how things worked.

There are a lot of apps that take a very high skill level and many hours to develop and I knew this was not the route I wanted to take. I wanted an easier route for my first app.

One of the easier types of apps to create is one that pulls in the data from an RSS feed and displays it within the app. An RSS feed is used to publish frequently updated types of media such as blogs and news headlines.

This type of app was the perfect idea to use for the local beer blog I run with my brother-in-law Chris Troutman, BeerTownAustin.com. Not only would it give an added resource to our readers but also gives me a reason to create an app. And so that is exactly what I did.

When you open the app the first screen you come to has a list of the latest article posts from the blog. This screen is an aggregation of all our posted content on the website.

The next tab has all of our videos listed that we have saved on YouTube. While these video posts are listed on the main screen, the video tab allows you to quickly find a video you may want to watch.

Other tabs within the app include a podcast tab with the audio from all our podcasts, BeerTownAustin’s latest Twitter posts, and the last tab includes all of BeerTownAustin’s photos that are saved on Flickr. Overall this app gives you a way to view all content from BeerTownAustin easily and on the go.

Once the app was created I had to submit it to Apple for review and hope they accepted it. It was accepted in exactly two weeks which seems like a pretty reasonable time considering what I have heard from other iPhone developers. This quick turnaround may have been because its function was fairly straight forward.

I have decided I am going to leave the more complicated app developments up to the professionals. I am just happy that I have created one myself. I think I could create another app similar to this one but don’t have anything to create it for so if you have any ideas let me know.

In the near future I hope to have some more complex iPhone apps made as an alternate source of revenue. I will keep you updated when I decide to pursue this.

If you have an iPhone please download the app and let me know what you think. It is free so at least check it out and if you have no need for it you can delete it.

Again let me know what you think in the comments. Also if you like the app leave a review for it in the App Store.

Photo credit: brandon shigeta

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Todd Knowlton, president and co-founder of Smooth Fusion Inc., to discuss his journey to becoming an entrepreneur, things to consider when starting a business, and things to consider when running an existing one.

Todd has been starting and running businesses for a while now. Before he was a business man he was a best-selling author of a number of textbooks. Opportunities arose from his success as an author and he established a company called Knowlton and Associates that became a premiere web development company for companies such as Microsoft Inc. Knowlton and Associates began after Microsoft asked Todd to make a website for them. One website became many more and his company grew to have a team of almost 10 people.

He later became the Managing Director at Full Moon Interactive and then went on to create Smooth Fusion Inc. with two of his colleagues Brad Hunt and Jay Bates.

During our discussion Todd talks about how starting a business wasn’t the scary part of entrepreneurship for him but it was when he decided to start hiring others. There is a great sense of responsibility that becomes yours once you are worrying not only about your financial well being but others as well. When hiring even just one person it is important to consider whether or not your business is profitable enough to pay someone’s salary and benefits (if you are offering benefits).

Todd also stresses the importance of surrounding yourself with people you trust that will give you valuable feedback on business ideas you are considering to pursue. It is very easy to get caught up on your own idea and not see that it may actually be a bad idea. Feedback from others can be very valuable especially if you want your business to be a success the first time.

Well I won’t give anymore away. Check out the video to hear what all Todd had to share. Also let me know your thoughts in the comments on what was discussed. If you have any specific questions regarding starting or running a business that you would like me to ask future entrepreneurs I interview, let me know those as well.

It has been two weeks since I started the One Hundred Dollar Business project and I have spent that time brainstorming and trying to determine what business I am going to start. I came up with a very large list of ideas and while I made it a point to think completely open minded and not limit myself, I did have to narrow my list down by what ideas cost less than $100 and wouldn’t be too time intensive.

So once my list was narrowed down one idea made the most since for me. This idea is very low cost and it is something that interests me. Two very important factors with starting this business. And with any business it is always a good idea to do something you are interested in or you will loose motivation quickly. So what’s the idea? I have decided to start an affiliate website that will attract people wanting to start their own business making iPhone apps. I know a lot of people, maybe including you, that think it would be really great if they could have their own iPhone app that makes them money but they don’t know where to start and have no programing knowledge.

In the past month or so I have become very interested in the idea of making money creating iPhone apps. I am not particularly interested in making iPhone apps for other people but to make apps that will generate an income using advertising. The apps I have an interest in making are apps that are free for people to download from the App Store but have ads that show up within the app. When one of those ads is clicked I will make a little money.

My first iPhone App

I have been working like crazy the last week learning how to develop iPhone apps and understand the whole process. In fact I developed my first iPhone app this week. It has been submitted to the app store and hopefully will be accepted without any issues. I will let you know what it is soon.

After developing my first iPhone app I realized that it would make a lot more sense for me to have someone else make the apps for me so I don’t have to spend all day trying to figure out how to make my app idea work. I have decided that I am going to start hiring others who are more experienced to make the apps and then I will submit them to the App Store and be ready to move on to my next app idea. You would be surprised at how inexpensive it is to have apps made.

Affiliate Website

Because of my new interest in iPhone apps I want to create an affiliate website that will teach others how to start creating iPhone apps without needing to know how to program and develop them. There are already a lot of great resources, such as ebooks, out there that I can become an affiliate of and get a percentage of each sale I make.

If you haven’t already figured it out, creating an affiliate website is one strategy to start generating passive income. I already have a handful of affiliate websites created that are making money for me and that is another reason this idea made sense, I have experience doing this. Essentially an affiliate website is just a website that promotes someone’s digital product and streamlines the sale process. You don’t have to worry about setting up a shopping cart or collecting money. All you have to do is promote your website and the product on your website and you will get paid if they purchase it.

Passive Income

So if you don’t know what I mean when I say passive income let me explain. Passive income, in this context, is working really hard to get a website up, start promoting it, and then only spend a few hours a week maintaining it while you bring in money. The amount of money you make depends on several different factors when creating your website, including the affiliate products you choose to promote. I will go into more detail once I start creating the website and give you a thorough walk through of what I am doing each step of the way.

Over the next week I will spend my time deciding on a domain name, purchasing web hosting, and begin building the website. I will also start looking at a variety of affiliate products that relate to creating iPhone apps and determine the ones I would like to use. As I begin this process I will let you know everything I am doing with blog updates as well as video explaining exactly how I am doing each step.

Have you ever thought about creating iPhone apps? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Photo credit: mastrobiggo

Here are 5 tips that will help your business grow faster and build momentum.

1. Create a Brand.

Creating a brand for you business is one of the most important decisions you will make during the life of your business. Your brand is what people will identify you by. If you don’t have one no one will remember you and if you have a poorly executed brand no one will want to do business with you.

Having a logo is usually what we think of when we hear the word brand but your brand is actually so much more than that. Your logo is the visual part of your brand, other parts of your brand may include what makes you different from other companies in your industry, how you run your company, or how you advertise your company (goofy videos).

However you decided to create your brand just remember that you want it to be memorable and keep people coming back.

2. Get Online.

Having a presence online is essential when starting a business. Even if you don’t have an online business it is a way for you to reach out to potential customers. It will allow customers to easily find you and learn more about what you do.

The first step to building your presence online is to get a website. If you think you don’t have the money to get a website, think again. There are a number of websites that will allow you to create a free website until you have the money to make something better. A lot of the free website services even allow you to purchase a domain name for around $10 so no one will know you are using a free website service.

Free website services:

• Weebly.com
• SnapPages.com
• Wordpress.com

I also would strongly suggest getting a Facebook and Twitter account for your business. You may believe this will not be beneficial for your business but you must know that most of your customers are on one or both of these networks and this is one more free way you can reach out to them.

3. Make your first sale.

When you first start your business making that first sale can sometimes be very intimidating. It can also sometimes be the hardest sale you make because you aren’t exactly sure where to start. Start with people you know. Let all your friends and family know what you are doing and if it makes sense offer them a discount if they do business with you. Making that first sale, even if it is to a friend or family member, will jump start your business and motivate you to keep going.

4. Testimonials.

It is very important to start building credibility for your business from day one. Getting testimonials from your first sales will help you build your credibility and encourage more sales down the road. Don’t be afraid to ask a customer or client what they thought of your product or service. Most people love to tell you what they think and asking them to come up with at least one or two sentences shouldn’t be too much to ask.

5. Create buzz.

Creating buzz about your business can be very fun. Think of creative ways to do something that will get people talking. You may think about holding some kind of contest or doing a crazy video. Whatever it is you decide to do you will need to get the word out about it. A great way to do this is to contact the local newspaper or TV news station and tell them what you are doing. Reporters are always looking for something interesting to talk about so if you can drop something in their lap there is a good chance they will spread the word.

I know there are many more tips out there to accelerate your business. If you have any others let me know in the comments.

Photo credit: Sekaino Ai

When I first started running again after about a 8 month hiatus it was very hard. When I quit running I could easily run 10 miles and now I could barely run 2. It is very frustrating when you start doing something you used to do and it turns out to be a lot harder than you remember. I would go out for a run and my side would start cramping and all I would want to do is walk. After pushing through all the pain I would notice distance wasn’t my only problem, my time was terrible as well. I longed to be where I was before when running was easy for me.

I don’t think I was really that surprised when I couldn’t run as far or as fast. I didn’t expect to be running 10 miles as easy as I could before and I knew that if I wanted to increase my mileage and speed the best thing for me to do was to keep running. I knew that I had to create a running plan for myself and decide what days of the week I was going to run and for how long. After making the plan I knew that I had to commit to it and not flake out no matter what. I am happy to say that since starting my 3 day a week schedule I have not missed a single run.

It is great to see how my consistency has paid off and I am now faster and can run farther than 2 miles. I am setting new goals every couple of weeks and meeting them every time.

When you start off in any sport the only way you are going to get better is if you keep doing it over and over by establishing consistency. Practicing only when you feel like it will never get you where you want to be. You must make a plan and decide what days you are going to practice and not miss a single day. Establishing consistency is the only way you will improve.

Once you have established consistency you will start to see yourself get closer to your goals. With my running I started getting faster and started increasing my mileage. If you stay consistent you begin to build momentum and it starts getting easier and easier to improve. Adding one more mile to your run doesn’t seem as difficult as it would have when you were first starting out.

Consistency When Starting A Business

This same principle can be applied to starting a business. In the beginning it is hard and there are so many things to figure out. Even after you have the business setup and ready to go you still have to get people to purchase your product or service. Finding customers can be very hard in the beginning. You must create a plan and consistently follow it. It is very easy to get discouraged in the beginning. You must realize that starting a business is not going to be easy at first but if you consistently work at it things will get easier.

And if you stay consistent, once again, you will build momentum. Having momentum in your business is the best thing that can happen for you. It doesn’t mean you can stop working as hard. It just means that all your hard work is finally paying off. Before it seemed like you were never going to get your first customer, now you have customers coming to you with out you even looking for them.

When I first started Design Shaman, which is a company that does web design and branding, I had no idea who we were going to make websites for. I knew that we were really good at what we did but no one else knew that. And who could pay us what we were worth? Most of the people I knew who were starting businesses didn’t have a budget for a website.

My partner and I worked very hard building our brand and our website. We made sure to create a website that would really show our creativity and talent. Now all we had to do was find someone to hire us. So what did we do? We started talking about it. We started telling everyone we knew that we had just started a new web design company and would give them our business card or send them a link in an email. We created a Facebook page and a Twitter account and began talking about what we do on the web.

For several weeks we talked about our new business to a lot of people but still no business. So what did we do next? We kept talking about it. We knew that if we were ever going to get any clients everyone we met needed to know what we do. So we consistently talked about it every chance we got. And before long we started getting clients. It was only a few at first but over time we started having people come to us that were referred by someone we knew. The number of referrals just kept coming in and are still coming in. We had finally built up our momentum.

So let me say it one more time, establish consistency so that you can build momentum.

Steps to building momentum:

Set goals.

You must create realistic short term goals for your business. The reason I say “realistic” goals is because you want to meet these goals so you will be motivated to carry on. It is important to always have goals throughout the life of your business. As soon as you stop working towards something your momentum begins to slow and all that hard work will be lost.

Create a plan.

Once you have your goals set you need to come up with a plan to meet your goals. That plan needs to include consistently working towards your goals. If you want to sell 10 products by the end of the month the best way to meet that goal is to consistently try to find buyers for that product. If you stop trying, unless you are lucky, you will not sell the 10 products. Without a plan and consistency your business will never be the best it can be. Having a product or service to sell doesn’t mean everyone is going to come buy it. You must consistently pursue them and before long people will start pursuing you.

Setting goals is the easy part when starting a business, and sometimes the fun part, but consistency can be difficult. Getting tired and discouraged will usually come fairly quickly but you must push through those symptoms and keep moving forward. Because when you keep moving forward “gravity” takes over and you gain momentum.

Let me know some of your goals in the comments and how you plan to meet them and begin building momentum.

Today the first week of the One Hundred Dollar Business came to an end. For the first month of this project my plan is to come up with a business idea, develop a marketing strategy, and launch the business. Every Friday I am going to update you on my progress with the One Hundred Dollar Business. I will let you know how my week went and what disappointments and successes I encountered.

I spent this week brainstorming business ideas everyday for one hour a day. In my opinion my ideas have been somewhat mediocre. I have not written my ideas off completely and realize I still have more time to brainstorm. This is something I expected since I am squeezing this project into such a small window of time.

Here are some of the ideas I came up with:

Starting an affiliate website.

An affiliate website is a website that promotes a product that someone else is selling. Usually these websites will use some kind of link tracking to track when someone has clicked on your website and been directed to the website of the affiliate. If that someone ends up purchasing something you will get credit for it and make a little money. I have done this in the past and currently have a few websites like this running. This is a good option for me because I have experience starting a website like this.

What is great about a business like this is that you will work very hard up front but once the website is established and has traffic coming to it your work load greatly decreases. The entire transaction process involves nothing from you. Your only responsibility is to drive traffic to your website and deposit the checks you get in the mail.

The downside to this kind of business is that you are competing with thousands of other people trying to make money promoting the same product. This means you will be competing for the same keyword phrases on Google and other search engines. You will also have to do a lot of research and come up with a clever strategy to drive people to your website. Unfortunately just having a website doesn’t mean people will come to it.

Creating a discount offering business.

By discount offering business I mean a business that offers discounts to other business in my area or elsewhere. You could think of it as a coupon business. This idea will require me to find merchants that are willing to offer some kind of discount and in return I will drive customers to their businesses.

Figuring out how to present these discounts to consumers is going to be extremely important if I want this business to be successful and not require a lot of up front costs. Printing of any kind will be out of the question. To print the quantity that I would need to distribute all over my area would cost me quite a bit more than $100.

A possible solution for presenting the discounts to consumers is to create a website that will list all of the discounts and allow the consumer to print them off and use. If this is going to make any money someone will have to pay for this service. It will either be the merchant or the consumer. Getting the merchant to pay would probably be the best option but will make it much more difficult to receive discounts. I could on the other hand have the consumer pay a monthly fee to log into the website. Once they are logged in they can view and print the coupons. Obviously the fee for the consumer will have to be very low to make it worth it for them. You see why the limitation of money (money to print coupons or discount cards) makes it difficult when pursuing this option.

Teach others.

I have several skills that I believe others would like to know how to do. I could start a training business where I would train others how to do something I have knowledge about. If I were to train others one on one this would not be very beneficial for me because I would be limiting the amount of money I could make in the time I spend training. To make this idea worth pursuing will need to train a group of people and require a reasonable fee from each person. Since time will be an issue I will only be able to do this maybe one day a week.

If I am going to be teaching a group of people I will need a place for us to meet. And since I will only have $100 the place will have to be very cheap to rent out for a few hours or free. I can however use any profits I make from the class to pay for the following meeting times.

Another aspect I will need to keep in mind is materials and/or tools that will be needed during the class. Most likely I will need to print out some kind of guide for the students to follow or refer to. If I am training them on a subject that requires a computer I will need to figure out how each student will get a computer. One option for this is they could bring their own computer.

Brainstorming for only a week will not always produce that “great” idea you are looking for. It is important to keep working at it and at some point you will find something you are excited and confident about that you would like to pursue.

By the end of next week I hope to have chosen the business I am going to start and the following week begin setting up that business. At that time I will also start thinking of some marketing strategies and how I can get the word out about my new venture.

Tell me what you think about the ideas I have presented today. Tell me what you like and don’t like about them. Also let me know any experiences you have had in the past when brainstorming business ideas.