Make money on the Internet

Seth Godin: How to make money using the Internet

Make money: not by building an internet company, but by using the net as a tool to create value and get paid. Use the internet as a tool, not as an end. Do it when you are part of a big organization or do it as a soloist. The dramatic leverage of the net more than overcomes the downs of the current economy.

The essence is this: connect. Connect the disconnected to each other and you create value.

• Connect advertisers to people who want to be advertised to.
• Connect job hunters with jobs.
• Connect information seekers with information.
• Connect teams to each other.
• Connect those seeking similar.
• Connect to partners and those that can leverage your work.
• Connect people who are proximate geographically.
• Connect organizations spending money with ways to save money.
• Connect like-minded people into a movement.
• Connect people buying with people who are selling.

Some examples? I think it's worth delineating these so you can see that the opportunity can be big, if that's your taste, or small if you don't want to invest heavily just yet. ( more )

One-person companies living job to job

One-person companies = microenterprise

"If we are going to solve our current economic problems, our president needs to get first hand information on the impact his proposed policies will have on real Joe the Plumbers. People who are 1-person companies living job to job, hoping they get paid on time. We need to know what the impact of his policies will be on the individually owned Chrysler Dealership in Iowa. The bodega in Manhattan. The mobile phone software startup out of Carnegie Mellon. The event planner in Dallas. The barbershop in L.A. The restaurant in Boston."

Mark Cuban - President-Elect Obama's First Big Mistake

Rural broadband

The Rural Broadband Crisis - An Interview with Frank Odasz

"But at issue is how many more people would subscribe to high speed if they could turn it into an income supplement based out of the home? The obvious answer is “just about everybody” would be interested . . . Where in this state can you go to learn how to do that? It’s not taught in the schools, it’s not taught at the universities, it’s not taught at the small business development centers, and why is that? It really flies in the sense of serving rural citizens . . . And that’s the key, people have to know. And that’s why setting up this bets practices clearinghouse, just getting that information out to people in the community, is important . . . You know, that it’s not just infrastructure - it’s how people can rally around accepting their own full potential, and how we can provide cost-effective online education and mentoring services for all."

What Makes an Entrepreneur?

Not everyone is well suited to the task of starting and running a successful business. That has been a topic for investigation, speculation, and research since the time of Joseph Schumpeter's (1883 - 1950) writings. Schumpeter argued that the innovation and technological change of a nation comes from the entrepreneurs, or wild spirits. Schumpeter came down squarely on the side of the personal individual characteristics associated with entrepreneurs as being the determinative factor. In addition to Schumpeter's idea of the wild entrepreneurial spirit, psychologists have since proposed various critical personal characteristics as being decisive. Some of these characteristics are:

1. A personal need for achievement,
2. the trust in the importance of personal effort on business outcomes,
3. self-confidence,
4. the desire for control,
5. willingness to take risks,
6. tolerance for ambiguity, and
7. decisiveness.

A new study available from the World Bank suggest that family characteristics, or upbringing, have the strongest influence on becoming an entrepreneur. You can find that report here.

Investing in people

With little fanfare, Grameen America opened up shop in the United States about a year ago. Grameen America is a microfinance lending company that serves poor, aspiring entrepreneurs. Microfinance is for micro-enterprises, which are generally defined by governments as a business having 5 or fewer employees and seed capital of less than $35,000. Micro-enterprises have no access to the commercial banking sector, and typically they are single individuals with no capital at all. Grameen America offers loan amounts from $500 to $3,000 coupled with training and peer circle to maximize the chance of business success and loan repayment. Grameen America is built upon the success and experienced staff of Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which was created by Dr. Muhammad Yunus. They were the joint recipients of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for their pioneering work in mircofinance as a tool to fight poverty. A March 10, 2008 Washington Post article gives an interesting view of the progress that has been made by Grameen America in New York City during its first year of operation there. Small Loans, Significant Impact Read more about it: Microcredit Summit Campaign Wikipedia - Grameen Bank Defeating Global Poverty - Grameen comes to the USA