I find this interview quite interesting, Tony Gilroy, whose new film, Duplicity, stars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, discusses why he makes movies about business’s dark side and how spying can trump innovation.

From FastCompany by Chuck Salter

In one New York high-rise, Howard Tully, CEO of consumer-products giant Burkett & Randle, is briefing his competitive intelligence unit about a top-secret breakthrough: “Why are we here? Because it’s no longer enough to have the best ideas or the best manufacturing or the best pipeline to deliver your product. We’re here today because we find ourselves in a world where Duplicity and theft are tested daily as replacements for innovation and perseverance.”

At that same moment, in another high-rise nearby, Dick Garsik, the CEO of rival Equikrom, is reading aloud from a stolen copy of Tully’s speech. “You believe this?” he scoffs. “This from the guy who bought a dump so he could go through our garbage.”

This dark, funny scene is from Duplicity, Tony Gilroy’s latest exposé of the inner workings of the corporate world. Although the writer-director works in fiction, his films exude the gritty authenticity of investigative journalism. In Michael Clayton, which garnered 11 Oscar nominations (and one win) last year, George Clooney plays a morally ambiguous fixer for a major law firm that is defending a chemical company trying to cover up the fact that its fertilizer causes cancer. Duplicity, a romantic thriller that opens this spring, features rival consumer-products companies going to incredible — yet true, Gilroy insists — lengths to protect an innovation and prevent a leak, or, failing that, to steal the other’s product.

Fast Company visited Gilroy in his office in the Brill Building in midtown Manhattan, where he and his team edited the film.

FC: Several of your movies explore the corporate world: Proof of Life, Michael Clayton, and now Duplicity. What intrigues you about business?

I don’t think of it as business. It just seems contemporary. I like work. I’m intrigued by what people do. The way they do their job. The way they think about their job. There’s a lot of meat on that bone for a dramatist. Those things help inform a character. If I were writing a Western, I’d ask, How does a gunfighter care for his weapons? Those are the tools of his trade. That tells me a lot about my gunfighter.

But you return to the drama of organizations trying to win, often at all costs. What interests you about that conflict?

These companies are kingdoms now. This is what passes for village life, isn’t it? People go to the office and they’re very involved in what they do. Like that building across the street. I don’t even know what company it is, but I’ll watch the people at work from my desk. These kingdoms have a public and a private face.

You show what’s usually private, how people bend the rules. Is a certain corruption inevitable?

You have incredible imagination and incredible money and innovation, but in the end, human beings ruin it.That’s always interesting to me.

read more at FastCompany.com

This is a good read for us small businesses that wanted to know about cloud computing and whether we need it for our businesses or not:

By Michael Fitzgerald

A lot of people are talking about cloud computing these days. It’s a fuzzy term that’s somewhat easier to understand only if you know that cloud is a word techies use to refer to the Internet. Cloud computing works like this: Instead of buying, installing, and managing your own servers to run applications, you rent server time from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or another company. Then, you manage the servers over the Internet while paying only for the processing and storage you actually use.

Cloud computing offers more flexibility than the traditional setup. You could, for instance, rent 10 servers for when your website traffic peaks at 7 p.m. but scale back to just two for when traffic wanes at 2 a.m.

This promise of more flexibility and lower costs has grabbed the attention of many business owners. And big technology companies are ramping up their cloud-computing offerings in response. Last fall, over the course of a few weeks, Amazon moved its Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, service from beta testing into full production; Salesforce.com announced it would expand its cloud-computing platform; and Microsoft unveiled its cloud operating system, Windows Azure. Microsoft’s foray into the market is of particular note, because it’s a big shift for the world’s dominant traditional software company. “That Microsoft has wholeheartedly embraced the cloud is an indication that it’s here,” says Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise.

Cloud computing is still very new, and building applications that work on cloud servers requires technical chops, says Frank Gillett of Forrester Research. What’s more, the services require a range of programming skills. Microsoft’s Azure uses Microsoft’s .NET developer platform; Google’s App Engine uses Python, a popular open-source programming language; and Salesforce.com’s service uses its proprietary Apex development language. Amazon’s EC2 offers more programming flexibility, although it still requires coding skills.

So, don’t expect to just shut down everything and move to the cloud. Moving your data, for one thing, can prove challenging. And if your company has just dropped a lot of money on new software and hardware, it may make sense to get some use out of them first. Still, cloud computing makes sense for many companies. Here are the sorts of businesses that probably belong in the cloud:

Tech start-ups that could take off quickly

Using cloud-computing services makes it easier to scale up technology to handle a big increase in demand. That’s why Gad Barnea, whose air travel start-up FlyMiwok launches this month, decided to try cloud computing. The Burlingame, California, company sells seats on charter flights throughout Southern California. FlyMiwok calculates the price on the fly, based on demand.

read more at Inc. magazine

I wonder sometimes who still collect business cards or keep the old fashioned Rolodex these days. Contact management programs have been around, even the address book on some email clients are getting better. Now with cellphones all over the place, here is a service that will enable you to receive business contact information via SMS. You can even request a person contact info by texting the preset number. The company that provides this digital service is Contxts.

I got a chuckle out of reading this story on TechCrunch.com headquarters has to move to a real office:

By Mike Rosenberg, Daily News Staff Writer

Atherton’s hard stance against excessive traffic has driven the headquarters of a popular blog from its founder’s home into the Internet startup haven of downtown Palo Alto. TechCrunch.com, recently named the Web’s sixth most valuable blog, moved Friday into a new, 6,000-square-foot office space on the corner of Lytton Avenue and Bryant Street. The office, one block from University Avenue, is a short walk away from Facebook and several other Internet startups.

TechCrunch founder and co-editor Michael Arrington said he moved the company’s interns and 10 full-time employees from his Atherton house after city officials started to “freak out” over anonymous complaints about increased traffic and parking in the area.

Arrington said he hosted large gatherings at the house, and his employees, interns and prospective business partners dropped by the home office constantly, working all hours of the night.

Though the company’s legal team advised Arrington the city probably couldn’t force him to move, he decided the real estate collapse offered him a good opportunity to gobble up prime office space.

Atherton does allow home offices but prohibits employees who don’t live in the home from working there, said Marc Hynes, who was Atherton’s city attorney during the conflict but quit a few weeks ago.

“The concept is, if it starts looking more intense than a residential use, then it’s not something we’d allow,” Hynes said. “You want to keep the residential areas as quiet and peaceful as possible.”But Arrington said it’s just as well, since he ended up getting a “great deal” on the office.

read more at MercuryNews.com

An inspirational article on Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh by Alissa Walker in Fast Company magazine:

It’s not about shoes, it’s about customer service. At least that was the gist of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh opening keynote at SXSW this year. Although the hoodie-wearing entrepreneur—#20 on the 2009 Fast Company 50—does sell about a billion dollars worth of shoes and accessories a year, what’s more important is their platinum customer loyalty record. Could they be an airline someday, maybe a bank? They’re not ruling it out, he says. Hmmm, Zappos Air? We like the sound of that.

Hsieh started out with a pizza delivery company in 1994 where he learned the value of making people happy (Zappos COO Alfred Lin was his #1 customer). No doubt you’ve heard from an ecstatic shoe fetishist about their one-year grace period for exchanging and returning goods; Zappos is laser-focused on cultivating repeat customers. Forget marketing (one notable exception are those brilliantly-placed Zappos ads in the bottom of the trays our shoes use to glide through airport security), Hsieh is way more focused on creating the “wow” experience for repeat customers by upgrading their shipping—some customers get their shoes the same day—even though it’s “ridiculously expensive.” And they’ll only display products on the site that are physically in stock, even though by not showing those products they lose 25% of their potential business. Their warehouse also operates 24/7, certainly not the most efficient way to manage it, but an investment in being able to say they’re always open.

And for a web company, their phone skills are impeccable. “The telephone is one of the best branding devices out there,” he says. “If you get the interaction right.” At the Zappos call center there are no scripts, no upselling, no call times. The longest call in their history was four hours–we have to imagine that one went a little beyond helping someone locate the right color of Uggs. “Some people are just lonely,” Hsieh says with a shrug: Most Zappos customers call HQ at least once during their lifetime.

But here’s the real secret to customer loyalty, he says:  It’s actually making corporate culture a priority. “if you get that right, you won’t have to work so hard to get the rest of the stuff.” When they interview, they ask questions directly related to the Zappos Core Values, including asking candidates to gauge their own weirdness, open-mindedness and sense of family. New hires spend five weeks training in their Vegas headquarters, taking phone calls, and doing fulfillment in the Louisville facility. The now-famous policy is that at any time during the training they can take $2,000 to quit. (They keep upping the amount, too (it used to be $400), and still only 1% take the offer.)

read more at Fast Company

Another good read in this tough time:

By Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek

Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek

During our interviews with 55 successful business and social entrepreneurs worldwide, we were struck by the fact that many had started their enterprises during a recession or in the wake of one. Prominent examples include Clif Bar, Chipotle, and Hanna Andersson. Several others started their companies (including Cranium and Honest Tea) just before a recession.

Many people assume that entrepreneurs are allergic to recessions. It turns out that downturns can be times of tremendous opportunity–and, yes, profit–for entrepreneurs. But only if they play their cards right.

That’s exactly what the founders of Clif Bar, the organic nutrition bar enterprise, and Method, the environmentally friendly cleaning supplies company, did. (Both were recently featured by Inc.com.)

Gary Erickson discovered some real advantages to starting Clif Bar smack in the middle of a recession, like contract manufacturers hungrier for business. As an entrepreneur in start-up mode, Erickson had the luxury of focusing on just a few key things–product development, sales and marketing, packaging, distribution–while his competitors languished in a parade of financial challenges. The result: Clif Bar weathered the storm and this year expects sales of more than $200 million.

Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan launched right into the carnage of the dot-com crash when they started Method. The silver lining was that they received more investor attention after the bubble burst, since competing start-ups were scared off by the economy and Method’s business model was decidedly low-tech. According to Ryan, “Starting a business in a recession is like vacationing in the off-season. It’s a little less crowded, and everything starts going on sale.”

After a while, they racked up $300,000 in debt and were down to their last pennies. Lowry explains: “We had to appeal to the inner entrepreneur of each of our vendors” to float credit. Through aggressive bootstrapping and business development, they managed to raise money, reach their goals, and stay afloat. Today, they’re gunning for $100 million in sales. Looking back, they say the recession made Method better. Says Ryan: “The hungriest wolves hunt best.”

During our interviews with 55 successful business and social entrepreneurs worldwide, we were struck by the fact that many had started their enterprises during a recession or in the wake of one. Prominent examples include Clif Bar, Chipotle, and Hanna Andersson. Several others started their companies (including Cranium and Honest Tea) just before a recession.

Many people assume that entrepreneurs are allergic to recessions. It turns out that downturns can be times of tremendous opportunity–and, yes, profit–for entrepreneurs. But only if they play their cards right.

read more at Harvard Business Publishing

Instead of feeling down, doomed and gloomy, and thinking there is no way out, I hope this article will keep your spirit up.

By Brad Sugars

More publicity. Less competition. Talent waiting to be scooped up. Here’s why starting in a recessed economy may give your business a better shot.

Do you have one good reason to start your business right now?

How about 10?

Regardless of what people around you (including the media) may say, right now is the best time to get into business. Just go back and look at the economic slowdowns throughout history. Most recessions in the post-World War II era last an average of 10 months, followed by growth cycles that last an average of 50 months.

What this means for the startup is there’s no better time than right now to get going and start pursuing your business dreams–in anticipation of the next period of growth.

So with a nod to David Letterman, here are my top 10 reasons you should start your business now–despite the current downturn:

1. Everything is cheaper.
   Let’s face it: There is great value right now in this and in world markets. This is the right time for fantastic deals in virtually every category, from land and equipment to commercial office space, personnel and labor. As asset prices have been knocked down, there is no better time to get into the real estate or financial markets, or even heavy equipment and construction. Some people have waited years to find value in these markets–and now that time has come.
2. You can hire more and better-qualified people.
   In an era when even Microsoft is laying off, you can find great resources at affordable rates. Thinking about getting your high-tech startup off the ground? There are plenty of engineers waiting to be hired. Thinking about forming a professional services firm? There are many accountants and attorneys looking for their next opportunity.
3. People are looking to change suppliers.
   From a cost perspective, everything is on the table for most companies. Even if your prices are higher, if you can come in with greater value, you have a good chance at winning new business. You also have the advantage of being the new kid on the block when it comes to pitching your products and services. Many companies are desperate to find new partnerships with new companies that have a different, better or more innovative way of delivering those products and services.

read more at Entrepreneur magazine

This is an interesting article and a good read. Just like what Sir Richard Branson said in the previous post, there would be new generation of entrepreneurs that will come out of this recession with new innovations, inventions, and imaginative ways of saving cash.

Personal computers and canned foods were some of the inventions nurtured in recessions past

By the editor at the NYT

With consumer confidence plunging, the jobless rate rising and the gross domestic product falling at a rate second only to the decline seen in the 1982 recession, there’s little hope of good economic news anytime soon. But some economists and historians point out that such fallow ground can make a fertile bed for seeds of innovation and invention.

What kinds of businesses thrive in recessionary times? How do entrepreneurs get a running start in a recession?

• Amar Bhidé, professor of business
• Scott Reynolds Nelson, history professor
• Rita Gunther McGrath, professor of management
• Don Kelly, patent agent
• Martin Lindstrom, marketing consultant

continue reading at the NYT

Social Network and Social Media are household names these days. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and many others. Like a lot of people, I do have Twitter and Facebook accounts, however I don’t let them taking over my life. There are many other things outside Social Network that I like to do. Wanna go fishing?

CEO Zuckerberg has started wearing a tie - "2009 is a serious year," he says.

By Jessi Hempel, writer

President Obama used it to get elected. Dell will recruit new hires with it. Microsoft’s new operating system borrows from it. No question, Facebook has friends in high places. Can CEO Mark Zuckerberg make those connections pay off?

(Fortune Magazine) — Facebook held no appeal for Peter Lichtenstein. The New Paltz, N.Y., resident had checked out so-called social networking sites before, and he wasn’t impressed. (”MySpace,” he recalls, “was ridiculous.”)

A chiropractor and acupuncturist, Lichtenstein was already a member of a few professional web-based user groups. The last thing he needed was another message box to check. Then a buddy posted a link to photos from a trip to Thailand and India on his Facebook page and flatly refused to distribute them any other way. The friend’s assumption: Duh - everyone’s on Facebook.

And so Lichtenstein, 57, recently became an official member of the Facebook army, 175 million strong and, Facebook says, growing at the astounding rate of about five million new users a week, making it a rare bright spot in a dismal economy. If Facebook were a country, it would have a population nearly as large as Brazil’s. It even edges out the U.S. television audience for Super Bowl XLIII, which drew a record-setting 152 million eyeballs.

But these days the folks fervently updating their Facebook pages aren’t just tech-savvy kids: The college and post-college crowd the site originally aimed to serve (18- to 24-year-olds) now makes up less than a quarter of users. The newest members - the ones behind Facebook’s accelerating growth rate - are more, ahem, mature types like Lichtenstein, who never thought they’d have the time or inclination to overshare on the web. It’s just that Facebook has finally started to make their busy lives a little more productive - and a lot more fun.

read more at Fortune

I asked the same question also before and decided to pursue Science. Nowadays I have been doing web and internet projects but still love Science. Eventually though, I’ll go back to academia and pursue an advanced degree.

By Tim Berry

I’m probably too certain about this one, in an age when certainty is usually a sign of not understanding the problem. Still, I am. There is no “best major” for a college student who wants to be an entrepreneur. The best major is whatever you want to study.

I got to this yesterday on Twitter, with somebody referring me to this site–not particularly impressive, to be honest–where a freshman is asking that question.

In the meantime, I’d been meaning to post here about Fred Wilson’s post One Thing You Don’t Need To Be An Entrepreneur: A College Degree, on his A VC blog. I like his work a lot, and I recommend it a lot, too. It’s on my blogroll here.

Still, Fred is answering the wrong question–or at least, we could say, a different question. He says you don’t need a degree to be an entrepreneur. Not like for a doctor or lawyer, he explains. And I don’t disagree with that; it’s a plain fact. But given the whole range of his writing, I’m willing to bet he’d agree with me that having a degree is much better for you than not having it. Even Bill Gates, the world’s richest dropout, agrees with that–and he now has several.

So the question isn’t whether or you need a degree to be an entrepreneur. It’s do you want one. And the answer to that is yes. Education makes your life better. If you have to drop out to support your ailing grandmother, so be it. But for the record, I practice what I preach. I earned two graduate degrees after marriage, the second one after marriage and kids, and my wife and I paid for both. I worked while getting a Stanford MBA degree, and we’re still married.

read more of this article by Tim Berry

I agree with Richard that out of this recession will emerge new generation of entrepreneurs, millionaires, and billionaires. In my opinion going back to the basic of good business practices combined with imaginative ways of saving cash, and innovative ways of seizing opportunity, will boost the economy to its healthy state.

Sir Richard Branson believes that the downturn is an opportunity for the next entrepreneurs

By David Robertson

Sir Richard Branson believes that the next generation of self-made billionaires will emerge from the corporate wreckage of this recession. In an exclusive interview with The Times, Sir Richard said: “There are a lot of Richard Bransons that will come out of the next three or four years.”

The Virgin founder believes that the depth of this recession and its impact on once-impregnable industries has presented entrepreneurs with their greatest opportunity in generations.

“Fortunes are made out of recessions. A lot of entrepreneurs get going in the economic depths because the barriers to entry are lower,” he said.

Sir Richard highlighted the banking sector as particularly ripe for a shake-up as the established giants of the industry have been humbled, giving new ventures a chance to grab market share as disillusioned consumers look for alternatives.

He wants Virgin to be part of the shake-up in banking, but he also expects as yet unknown companies to seize the opportunities presented by the complete or partial nationalisation of Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, RBS and Lloyds Banking Group.

Sir Richard was sharing his thoughts on the state of the economy while flying around the world last week to promote the launch of his newest airline, V Australia. Although he believes that the recession will be prolonged, he is also optimistic about the prospects for the UK’s 4.7million small and medium-sized companies.

“If you are best in your field, then don’t cut back on quality because good companies always survive … I got into business aged 15 and since then I’ve seen four recessions, so I’m quite used to weathering these storms. We are not going to be out of this one any time soon, so people are going to have to dig in and work longer hours to pull us out.”

Sir Richard is concerned that the ambitions of the next generation of entrepreneurs could be scuppered by a lack of financing. Sir Richard is one of Gordon Brown’s business advisers and he has been urging the Prime Minister to make the liquidity crisis the Government’s top priority.

read more at Times Online

Is the bailout of A.I.G. really worth it, or is it just another game of those at the top end of A.I.G. play just to rack in more money from the government (read taxpayers)?  Gretchen Morgenson from the NYT has a good way of explaining it in this article A.I.G., Where Taxpayers’ Dollars Go to Die . Just listen to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G., explained to investors last week that “the vast majority” of taxpayer funds “have passed through A.I.G. to other financial institutions” as the company unwound deals with its customers, or “counterparties” as the Wall Street calls them, and Mr. Liddy wouldn’t provide details on who the counterparties were or how much they received. But a person briefed on the deals said A.I.G.’s former customers include Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and two large French banks, Société Générale and Calyon.

All the banks declined to comment.

How much money has gone to counterparties since the company’s collapse? The person briefed on the deals put the figure at around $50 billion.

This alone should make the taxpayers angry but it won’t stop there, the rest of the A.I.G. bailout, which is ~$110 billion would also be gone to these secret “counterparties” and not back to the american workers and taxpayers.

read more at the NYT

This is a good and fun article I’ve read in awhile, it makes me smile. I know it was posted in April 2008 but I just stumbled on it today. There are also a lot of articles, podcast, and presentations on his site.

By Ian Lurie

Ah, youth. 13 years ago I started my company with a spare room in my house, a credit card (limit: $1500) and a computer (Pentium 75 mhz, Windows 95).

I was out of my ##@!)(@#$*!@@ mind.

If I’d known then what I know now, would I have gone into this business? I don’t know. But here’s some wisdom I wish I had back then:

1. No one has a clue how to market anything. We are all winging it. It’s just that some are better at winging it than others.
2. Corollary: Seth Godin, et al are brilliant about the high-level stuff. But on a tactical level, everyone fails, most of the time. Learn from it.
3. That which you doubt becomes a trend. When I started, I hedged my bets that this internet thing was a fad by writing copy for print pieces, too. Cough.
4. Today’s hot trend vanishes like a fart in the wind. The flip side of doubt is that the hottest trends often die so fast the universe forgets they ever existed. Remember ‘push technology’? Wired does. In 1997 they were shouting how push would replace the web browser. 11 years later, RSS adoption is around 3-8% depending on who you ask. Don’t jump on every new thing. The trick, of course, is knowing what to jump on, and what to jump over.
5. Get a bookkeeper. My wife is a Chartered Accountant (a Canadian CPA+). She did our books for about 2 years. After two years of her harassing me for receipts I knew I’d lost and me driving her crazy with my squirrelesque accounting practices, I hired a part-time bookkeeper. Best money I’ve ever spent.
6. Get a retainer. Clients you think are the nicest folks in the world may have painfully slow accounts payable departments. Get 30%. Up front. No matter what.
7. You are right. When in a discussion, assume you are right. If you waffle, there’s not much point in discussing anything.
8. You are wrong. Don’t be so blockheaded that you can’t change your mind when you’re clearly wrong.
9. Buy a really nice monitor. Definitely buy a humungous monitor. I love mine, and I’m far more productive for having it.

please continue reading this article at Ian Lurie’s blog ConversationMarketing.com

This excellent article by John Quelch is written a year ago, but it’s very timely and it’s worth reread it again. John Quelch was one of ten marketing experts profiled in the 2007 book, Conversations with Marketing Masters, authored by Laura Mazur and Louella Miles. A professor at Harvard Business School since 1979, he is known worldwide for his research on global marketing, global branding and marketing communications.

By John Quelch

“Recession is possible.” Fed Chairman Bernanke has used the R word in this week’s Congressional hearings. That in itself makes a US recession more likely. The proposed $700 billion bailout will apply a temporary “bandaid” to the current dire economic situation, or, to use current parlance, put lipstick on a pig. The pressure for tax rate increases at Federal and State levels will increase; expect accelerated privatizations of public infrastructure as elected officials do everything to avoid the day of reckoning.

Consumers will be poorer or feel poorer. They will be more frugal and cautious in their expenditures. Reassuring the consumer, holding her hand in a “we’re going to get through this together” manner is a vital ingredient of successful marketing during a recession. Value brands with low cost structures such as JetBlue and Wal-Mart will do well. Fighting brands — low priced brands supported by minimal advertising and competing on price to retain market share — will play a greater role. Companies targeting the middle segment of the market will face the most difficulties.

Marketers should fasten their seat belts for a long and difficult 2009. The pressure for proven returns on marketing expenditures will increase. More agency consolidations and single client-single agency alignments are likely. Marketers should avoid long-term commitments on advertising time and space as spot market rates for media will become progressively more attractive.

Below is my earlier blog “How To Market in a Recession,” posted on this site in February, 2008.

————————————-

The signs of an imminent recession are all around us. The spillover from the subprime mortgage crisis is weakening both consumer confidence and the consumer spending–much of it on credit–that has been buoying the US economy.

Companies should bear eight factors in mind when making their marketing plans for 2008 and 2009:

1. Research the customer. Instead of cutting the market research budget, you need to know more than ever how consumers are redefining value and responding to the recession. Price elasticity curves are changing. Consumers take more time searching for durable goods and negotiate harder at the point of sale. They are more willing to postpone purchases, trade down, or buy less. Must-have features of yesterday are today’s can-live-withouts. Trusted brands are especially valued and they can still launch new products successfully but interest in new brands and new categories fades. Conspicuous consumption becomes less prevalent.

2. Focus on family values. When economic hard times loom, we tend to retreat to our village. Look for cozy hearth-and-home family scenes in advertising to replace images of extreme sports, adventure and rugged individualism. Zany humor and appeals on the basis of fear are out. Greeting card sales, telephone use and discretionary spending on home furnishings and home entertainment will hold up well, as uncertainty prompts us to stay at home but also stay connected with family and friends.

please continue reading at Harvard Business Publishing

Increasing traffic to your blog doesn’t have to be complicated and expensive. There are a few things that you can do right away to your blog that will generate significant traffic. Here is a great article by Jack Humphrey with his 21 tips to increase blog traffic.

By Jack Humphrey

If you are stuck and don’t know what to do next to increase your blog traffic, this list of hand-picked resources is going to come at the perfect time for you! If you are on track and growing your blog traffic, there’s still going to be some things below you haven’t read or done.

I’ve left out some tips. There are many more. Please feel free to share your favorites with fellow FTR readers below!

1. Commenting: The importance of commenting and engaging on other blogs in your niche cannot be overstated.

Tactics and Resources:

• Blog Commenting for Traffic
• Link Building with CommentLuv
• When Do You Comment?

2. MyBlogLog: Join MyBlogLog and then join communities.

Tactics and Resources:

• 10 Important Blogger Hangouts
• MyBlogLog

3. Blog Catalog: Join Blog Catalog and participate in threads.

Tactics and Resources:

• 10 Important Blogger Hangouts
• BlogCatalog

4. SEO for Bloggers: This is for search engine optimization. Your main keyword should be early in your title and then repeated somewhere within your first paragraph. First sentence preferred. Shorter titles generally are better than long ones.

Tactics and Resources:

• How To Increase Blog Traffic and Improve Search Engine Exposure
• SEO for Wordpress
• SEO for Wordpress (2)

read more at jackhumphrey.com

I have read two books by Tony Robbins so far, “Unlimited Power” and “Awaken the Giant Within.” Both books are inspirational, hence I read them again a few times. These books are like my personal coach in business and in real life. Those that haven’t read them or haven’t listened to his audio books should go and get them, it’s money well spent. Here’s an article from Success magazine.

by Marc Figueroa

Unleashing the Power - Tony Robbins - Helping people reach their greatest potential.

Tony Robbins has coached U.S. presidents, Fortune 500 CEOs, sports and entertainment superstars—all seeking strategies to reach the next level in their lives and careers. People often call upon Robbins to help remove barriers holding them back and to inspire them to take action. This master motivator is equally adept at keeping a crowd of 10,000 people on its feet for hours. He’s also addressed the World Economic Forum, British Parliament and Harvard Business School.

Robbins’ message goes beyond positive thinking; intelligent thinking is what drives him. He understands that when people are feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and fearful, they’re rarely capable of brilliant analysis and decision-making.

“Confidence and competence is not the same thing,” Robbins tells SUCCESS, following his return from a recent seminar tour through Australia and India. “No one should go into their garden and chant, “There are no weeds. There are no weeds. There are no weeds.” For people to be true leaders, they have to first see things as they are, not worse. Then see it better than it is, and then make it the way you see it.

“The bottom line is that people have within them a force that is so powerful, there is nothing that can keep them from doing, being, sharing, creating and giving whatever they envision in life,” Robbins continues. “My entire life is helping people unleash that power. Nothing drives me more than to see someone or an organization transform and begin to pursue goals with a purpose that inspires them, and gives them a greater sense of meaning—in not only what they do, but who they are.”

read more at Success magazine

I really love inspirational stories of all kind. Like this one, despite all the hurdles along the way, against all odds, they made it big. In a true entrepreneurial spirit, Marc Ecko is one of them. Here’s Arthur Lubow interviewed Marc.

“It’s going to be big”

By Arthur Lubow from Inc. magazine, March 2009

Marc Ecko always had the dream. Over time — it wasn’t easy — he developed the skills. Here, he talks about how he got smart, why his billion-dollar clothing company is really a marketing company, and what a T-shirt king can learn from going upscale.

Marc Ecko got into business by spray painting T-shirts, sweatshirts, and jackets, then driving them to shops and street fairs.

Fifteen years later, at age 36, he owns half of Marc Ecko Enterprises, a manufacturer of street-inspired apparel with a staff of 1,500 and reported global revenue of $1.5 billion. Ecko is the biggest company in the urbanwear category — an achievement that is all the more notable when you consider that its main rivals (Phat Farm, Sean John, Rocawear) were started by black hip-hop royalty, and Ecko is run by two Jewish guys from New Jersey without built-in street cred.

Inc. spoke with Ecko in his raffishly lavish headquarters in the Chelsea district of Manhattan about his beginnings in Lakewood, New Jersey, an exurb of New York City, and his on-the-fly business education.

To grow up on a block with such diversity — that was the pivot for everything. My very best friend in Lakewood — it always sounds so corny, “My best friend was black” — but it’s true. The mainstreaming of black culture from hip-hop was happening. So the cool kids of all sorts were interested in hip-hop. I didn’t identify with my ethnicity. I was a plain-vanilla guy who had a Jewish orientation — at least, according to my family I did. To me, it meant you ate bagels and lox when you got together. In this ethnic background, I really gravitated toward hip-hop. Michael Jordan was a god.

I started doing T-shirts in eighth grade. I got a book of graffiti art in seventh grade, and that was the path into it. When I would draw graffiti, it would get the same approbation from my peers that I had got from my relatives when I copied comic book characters. I asked my parents for an air compressor and airbrush. By high school, I was wearing my own T-shirts. People would say, “Where did you get it?” I’d say, “I made it.” They would say, “Can you make me one?” I was making more money than the drug dealers. Some weeks, I might have $600 or $700 cash. I did it all the way through high school. I became the guy who was known for that.

read more at Inc. magazine

This is an excellent article from BusinessWeek on email newsletters that can generate ad revenue, whether it is an ad newsletter or content newsletter.  A lot of companies abandoned email newsletters for reason not being viewed as spammers. Here’s the article.

By Sarah Lacy

We San Franciscans think New York isn’t quite as Web savvy as we are. No offense to my BusinessWeek overlords and Silicon Alley pals, but we’re convinced that the smartest, most innovative ideas for using the Internet emanate from this coast, not yours. Heard of Google (GOOG), anyone?

Here’s the shocker. As the ad recession deepens, it’s a handful of Silicon Alley Web companies that are getting one thing right that many Bay Area companies abandoned years ago: the e-mail newsletter. That’s right. The East Coast is leading the way in showing how to make money from those electronic digests of a site’s content, delivered regularly to your already cluttered in-box.

Daily Candy’s Toothsome Morsel

The most noted success story is DailyCandy.com, purchased by Comcast (CMCSA) just before all hell broke loose in the economy last fall. Reportedly, it fetched $125 million. Not exactly a home run in Web terms, but a big win nonetheless.

DailyCandy.com has done well enough that its investors at Pilot Group Ventures in Boston have backed several companies that also use e-mail newsletters, among them the newsletter-for-dudes-who-read-newsletters Thrillist, which is launching in its 10th city, Philadelphia, this month. The company says it is profitable on annual sales of $5 million to $10 million. That’s saying a lot in this economy.

Wake up and smell the CPMs, Silicon Valley. Of course, we’re all waiting on companies like YouTube, Facebook, Slide, and Twitter to come up with the next great Google-esque plan to make money from social media. Meantime, why not reap some low-hanging fruit with a newsletter? No, it’s not likely to make your company a billion-dollar Web powerhouse. But it just might help you eke a few more months—if not quarters—from your dwindling venture capital dollars.

continue reading the article at BusinessWeek

By Michael Edward

In 2000, Tim Westergren started Pandora, a pioneering Internet radio company that now has 22 million intensely loyal users. The site recommends songs to people based on their favorite artists, tracks, and albums. Along the way, the Oakland, California entrepreneur has reinvented his business model again and again. He has also clashed with the recording industry and was nearly forced to close his doors several times last year. “I’ve never, ever given up, even when we were in the most depressive bleak times,” Westergren told Inc. in 2007. “I always thought Pandora was a good idea and would have a day.” Here’s how he built a web behemoth.

Step One: Be Human

Step Two: Be Willing to Evolve

Step Three: Listen to Your Customers

Step Four: Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

As you all know, I am a frequent reader of Yaro Starak blog, and his latest article is a great one.

By Yaro Starak

I remember a year or so ago I was trawling a popular Internet marketing forum. This particular forum has some successful marketers, but mostly the members are opportunity seeking newbies, including lots of young guys who are looking to make money online quick and care little for hard work.

I did an “ego” search in this particular forum for my name (market feedback I swear!), and came across a thread from some people discussing my Blog Profits Blueprint free report. Someone had asked how to make money blogging and my report was referenced by another member.

Some of the feedback was positive, but there was also a few replies that were along the lines of…

“It’s full of too much fluff”
“Just show me how to make money”
etc…

My report talked too much about things you control with your mind, like being consistent and persistent, finding passion and then narrowing down to a focus, and not enough about specific techniques that just make money flow like mana from heaven.

Put in other terms, these particular people wanted to know the “how” without really knowing the “why”. Unfortunately, you can make a little money by implementing certain techniques, but if you don’t know why you are doing something and how it fits into the big picture, and most importantly, how you as the owner of your business impact your results, then any success you have will be short lived.

I wasn’t really upset about these comments, rather I felt bad for people who wanted a quick fix and weren’t seeing what they were doing online as building a long term sustainable asset. They preferred to flutter from technique to technique hoping to strike it rich one day, just like miners digging for gold.

Impatient people rarely have time for “mindset” lessons, thus they will stop reading an article like this after the first few paragraphs. Discussing things like the inner game seems useless to them. In their opinion all you need to do is figure out what works and do it, there’s no need to worry about much more than that. That might work if we were all robots, but we’re not, so you do need to pay attention to your fallible human characteristics, like your thoughts and your feelings.

The Inner Game of Business

What the people in the forums were neglecting is the importance of your “inner game”. The concept of the inner game is widely used in fields like personal development, in the seduction community and is talked about in business circles as well, yet I find people often have trouble grasping exactly what the inner game is, since it’s such an intangible aspect of life.

Some people, particularly men of course, don’t like to talk about things like feelings and thoughts, when they consider what really matters are actions and outcomes. That’s true, but behind every action and the resulting outcome is a thought and a feeling. Doesn’t it make sense to track back all the way to the origin of something to make sure we have all aspects of the process congruent? Of course it does if we want success, and that’s exactly what the inner game is about.

continue to read this great article at Yaro Starak’s Blog