Visionary Entrepreneur » bootstrapping

Are you Ready?

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:48:06 +0000

As many of my friends graduate from college, I’m able to watch what takes place in their lives post graduating. The majority of them are out looking for jobs or have already found a job and the others are either considering traveling or getting back in school to pursue further education. Both of these paths are using the decision making process that our brain goes through before we move forward in life. Staying to get your MBA is suppose to earn you more, but you miss the opportunity over the time in school to find those jobs. Jumping right into a career might be impulsive during this economic downturn and you might regret it 6 months from now. So what to do? Well for me I know that my lifestyle of an entrepreneur is not what you want to hear but might be the right thing to do.

You might have considered trying something on your own – Perhaps owning a local boutique, restaurant, online business, etc. The problem most people run into is their risk level (wall) comes up and says to you – “Don’t do that, it might be too risky”

Not all of us have the need to take some of the risk associated with owning a business but all of us have the opportunity to start something – Even if it’s small at first! Here are some tips of raising some start up funds”

Entrepreneur Start-Ups said, With the economy in the grips of a major recession and credit crunch, many entrepreneurs have little choice but to tap friends and family members for their startup capital. But that doesn’t mean you should treat them like “friends and family.”

Nobody gives you money to start a business. People either loan you money–which you must pay back with interest over a specified time period–or they make an equity investment in your business–buying the right to receive a percentage of your future profits. Without proper documentation, there’s no way of knowing whether your uncle is making a loan or an investment. If your business becomes successful, he will want a piece of the action. If your business fails, he will want his money back with interest.
Let’s talk about how you can get started!!

Create an Ad

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:28:31 +0000

Craigslist or Facebook? Both are great options for entrepreneurs wanting to get the word out about your services. We just recently ran some ads on Facebook and the budget was spent within the first hour. It also provided a good amount of leads for the service we were trying to market at that time. Craigslist provided about 10x the amount of leads with about 50% the cost of facebook. So why not just use craigslist?

In my opinion, Facebook is worth the investment because it allows you to use the platform such as groups or pages to send people to you. Then you also have the option to communicate with them and continue branding them. When using craigslist, you’re most likely sending them to a place such as your website that will have to convince them to stay and communicate with you. Now if you’re selling a used piece of furniture…craigslist knows how to get that thing sold in about 2 minutes. How do you attract your clients?

PR is suppose to be free right?

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:12:43 +0000

So in school they teach us that the free advertising is called PR…Well that doesn’t take a rocket scientist unless you don’t know what the term means but then you go online and discover you have to pay for it. I’ve used a site called PRWeb.com a few time for releases and saw a little return from using it but not enough to be paying for the service. I just discovered a blog that featured all of the free services out there for the starting entrepreneur! Take a look -

24-7PressRelease.com – Free release distribution with ad-support

1888PressRelease.com – Free distribution, paid services gives you better placement and permanent archiving.

ClickPress.com – Distributs to sites like Google News and Topix.net, Gold level will also get you to sites like LexisNexis.

EcommWire.com – Focuses on ecommerece and requires you include an image, 3 keywords and links.

Express-Press-Release.com – Free distribution company with offices in 12 states.

Free-Press-Release.com – Easy press release distribution for free, more features for paid accounts.

Free-Press-Release-Center.info – Distributes your release, offers a web page with one keyword link to your site. Pro upgrade will give you three links, permanent archiving and more.

I-Newswire.com – Allows for free distribution to sites and search engines, premium membership differs only slightly in adding in graphics.

NewswireToday.com – All the usual free distribution tools, premium service includes logo, product picture and more.

PR.com – Not only will they distribute your press releases, but you can also set up a full company profile.

PR9.net – Ad supported press distribution site.

PR-Inside.com – European-based free press release distribution site.

This information came from here.

PRBuzz.com – Completely free distribution to search engines, news sites, and blogs.

PRCompass.com – Distribute your press release with a free or paid version, others can vote it up ala Digg () style.

PRUrgent.com – Not only distributes your release, but attempts to teach you how to write one, and even offers downloadbale samples for you to work with.

Press-Base.com – Submit your release for free and get on their front page and the category of your choice.

PressAbout.com – A free press release service formatted as a blog.

PressMethod.com – Free press release distribution no matter what, but extra services based on the size of your contribution.

PRLeap.com – Free distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS feeds. Fee based bumps get you better placement.

PRLog.org – Free distribution to Google News and other other search engines.

TheOpenPress.com – Gives free distribution for plain formatted releases, fees for HTML-coded releases.