In fact, blogging is so easy to do that anyone can have a go – my wife has just started her own video blog at LoveScene Magazine.  Keep it up Sam!

Anyway, have a look at the blogs below and see how much their owners make.  Worth having a go.

Article from http://gobusiness101.com

Article from http://gobusiness101.com

Rats appear capeable of a complex form of thinking - before known to exist only in humans and other primates — the capacity to reflect on what they do or do not know.

“If rats can do it, this capability may be more widespread than imagined,” explained Jonathon Crystal, a comparative psychologist at University of Georgia, US of A.

Humans often are aware of what knowledge they possess or lack and what they are or are not capeable of. 

So the rat-race definition:  ‘An exhausting routine that leaves no time for relaxation’.   Sound all too familiar?

The rat-race nowadays (for me at least), equals waking up too early to get through the traffic on my ride into work.  Once at work, the mundane activities of completing my role see me merely counting down the time I have there.   This blog is my starting journey from the world of employment into full time web entrepreneurship.   My ‘job’ is  pretty dull stuff to be honest and I jump at the chance of doing something different, just to break up several parts of my day in the desperate hope that time actually quickens somehow.   Come 5pm, I’m out the door a few seconds past and beginning my epic rush-hour journey home.  A 20 minute journey takes me over an hour most days… and it generally frustrates me endlessly.  But I LOVE IT.  Am I in love with driving?  No.   Am I insane?  Maybe.  

The reason I actually like the the rat-race, is it has indirectly inspired me from the start of my online business plan and it constantly motivates me every single day to achieve success with my online business and get me out of the rat-race… and soon.   Think about how great a tool it is to drive into work - constantly dreaming of the day I don’t need to do it anymore.   I’m sure that everyone in your workplace hate their job (apart from passionate people who love doing what they do, which is fine)  but everyone wishes they didn’t have to work anymore.   Funny thing is, if they used their energy in a more positive direction, they actually wouldn’t have to. 

 So why do 95% of people stay in the rat-race?   Truth is, most people feel they are stuck in the ‘routine’ for various reasons; security, money, mortgage etc.   Guess what, business owners have the same costs, the same mortgages, the same monthly outgoings (if not more).   They just chose to life live differently.  They took the leap of faith into the unnown and embraced the risk for the chance of freedom.    Success and freedom is simply a choice.    This has been preached millions of times by every motivational speaker you can think of.   Success is just a choice, yet most won’t take the first step.   That’s where you and I differ as people…

By reading my blog, I’m assuming that you’re looking to get off the paycheck-to-paycheck treadmill or to drop out of the rat race altogether.   Here’s what you’ll need: a solid plan for how you’ll spend your time and a way to either earn dramatically more or spend much, much less.

This is not an impossible dream.   Back in 2004, 7.5 million U.S. households had $1 million in assets, not including their homes.   The number of people worth £5 million has quadrupled in the past 10 years and now numbers nearly 1 million.

So how do you get there?

• Set goals and have a long-range plan to reach them.

• Automate deposits to retirement and savings accounts, so you won’t be tempted to spend that money.

• Pay down your debt.  Get them cleared so you can start a business ‘fresh’.

• Figure out ways to build your savings, even if you have to play mental games with yourself.  Small little changes, can have big effects over time.

• Take inspiration from the many who quietly gained wealth by saving religiously and investing wisely, whose homes and cars don’t scream “rich”.  Ther’ll be plenty of opportunity in the future to spend on flash cars and houses etc, but you need to get there first.

• Get some business education. That may mean holding a desk job for several years or taking classes.   Learn how to learn and study your market and how your web business will fit into it.   Become an expert by researching constantly.

• Pick partners who complement and enhance your strengths.

• Get good advice. Alumni networks and sources such as YoungEntrepreneur.com offer plenty of it.

• Write a solid business plan.   Your plan should be able to champion your idea to potential investors in the future.   It is also vital for steering your web business and a great resource to check back regularly to make sure you are still on track to your initial goal.

• Raise money.  Don’t depend on your credit card to carry you in the first six months, when you’re unlikely to be making a profit.   Whatever your budget is at the start, there will be likely a few unexpected costs you didn’t think of initially.   Expect that.   It’s not a bad thing, it’s just part of building a business.

• Don’t immediately quit your day job (like me).   Markets change all the time, so make sure you are hitting a constant income for a good few months consistently before deciding to leave.  It will make leaving your job all the more sweeter when it happens.   Understand what ‘Delayed Gratification’ truly means.

• Develop self-discipline.  It’s a lot harder to meet demands you’ve imposed on yourself than those of a 9-to-5 employer.   Put in plenty of work and energy.  Luckily, with most web companies, the biggest push of energy and time will be at the start as most web businesses will require less once the site is launched.   Think  the mentality:  ’I do today what others don’t, so that in the future I’ll do, what others can’t’.  I love this quote.

To many, ditching the rat race means downshifting to a less demanding and more fulfilling career.  That’s understandable and perfectly OK.  But to me, and hopefully most web entrepreneurs, leaving the rat-race means ending employment alltogether and becoming a self-made success story.

Obviously there are so many different types of business to get going with – but for the purposes of this post, let’s divide this simply into 2 sections: an online business and an offline business.

Offline Business

This is the normal route most people would consider firstly when they think “I’ll start my own company”.  Maybe that means starting a retail shop, maybe a call centre, or maybe a trade service like an electrician, engineer etc.  Either way, you will have plenty of overheads whether that be from renting office space, shop space, or buying stock or equipment, hiring staff (if required) and stationary.

If you deal B2C (business to customer), your hours will be sporadic, maybe daytime hours, maybe evenings and weekends.  If you work B2B (Business to business) then you’ll typically work 9-5 monday to friday.

Online business

An online presence for business is a very powerful marketing and communication tool.  It is also an incredible source of cost-efficiency, an environmentally friendly way to work and a sign of professionalism which is pretty much a requirement today.  Powerful, fast and efficient make this a marketing and communication tool medium.  Here are a few reasons why I (and you) should consider an online business:

• Minimal startup time & investment. Search engine optimized websites pay themselves off very quickly as long as they provide customers with valuable products or services
• The most environmentally friendly way to run a business. Telecommuting reduces the number of cars and car miles. You can test your sales strategies and offerings without wasting precious paper and other valuable resources. Put your invoices, newsletters and catalogues online and save numerous little green trees.  Plus, you can run your business in your pyjamas if you want.  Who doesn’t want to work everyday in the pj’s?
• Very inexpensive – A great way to reach new markets and interact with them on numerous platforms.
• Office & transportation cost savings – no office space, no staff and no stocktaking.  Your bedroom is your office.
• Unlimited possibilities for automation of your business – You can automate your orders and payment processes, inventory management, your customer support tasks and more.  Lazy? Love spending time with friends and family?  This is a HUGE plus (one for me was not having to commute anymore in gridlocked traffic)
• Freedom to live and work where you like – You can be travelling while running your online business and run multiple businesses simultaneously!  Take your laptop on holiday and run your business on the beach if you want.  Sweet.
• Global presence 24/7.  Your business is making you money while you sleep.
• A sign of professionalism – AND the fact that you can appear as a huge multi-national company – even though it’s just you.

There are so many benefits of an online business compared to a normal business blueprit.  For freedom, ease of use and low costs and overheads, make an online business plan to seriously think about.

Tips to get rich young

As my intention for this blog is to archive lots of information that future entrepreneurs will find useful, the main purpose of writing this is to share with you every step of a journey to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

I’m currently in the midst of setting up various little companies (all run by just me), and beginning to formulate a small group of foundations that will hopefully, set me in the right direction of becoming a successful business owner.

On a daily basis, I will be working on these projects, either crawling the net for resources or articles I can use and learning the steps from the highest businessmen that exist today – basically anything that will help me and my future profits.

So where am I up to when I start this?

Well, it’s Wednseday the 15th of April 2009.  It’s 9.18am and I’m currently sat at my desk at work, NTL Telewest business.  I’m wailing in the face of redundancy and from an email memo that’s circulating here this morning, officially redundant on the 22nd. Very soon.

Redundancy seems to make people change.  I have seen evidence of people who have become apathetic and unfriendly in light of the situation.  People stop caring.  Managers stop managing and it really is a sad state of affairs.

I quite like it.

Redundancy for me, has been quite possibly the best thing that’s probably ever happened to me (apart from getting married) in my life, and potentially… that probably ever will.

It was during the beginning of the ‘big black’, that I came across an article on inc.com, a popular entrepreneur magazine, that I had an idea.  The idea was to start an online business that could be very popular and could earn a life-changing amount of money.  I was intrigued.

I began researching the market, making sure that such a website could exist today, and began contemplating the notion of actually starting a business, hey, I even had the money coming in from the redundancy settlement to pay for it.

I have no programming skills, my special skills are in thought and concept (maybe a little graphics/design), but not programming (I thought PHP was a drug?), MySQL (My-what?) and CSS.

So I did the best I could, learnt dreamweaver, built a few experimental sites from basic templates (E.g, ww.evo-power.net), and tested aspects such as Adsense, custom html and flash on the sites.  Learnt Google and it’s analytics and affiliate marketing – everything for getting started.  I practiced much into each night, until my foggy eyes could take no more, and I attempted to do a crash course in web development, web design and graphics – merely to get a good idea as to the basic understanding of the web, how it is made and how to make money from it.

I am still in no way an expert (took me 2 days to set this wordpress blog up!), but neverthless, more confident at what I’m doing 4 month on.

Anyway, I digress.  So I’m working at my day job still, and blogging/working on my projects in the evenings.  I work hard at present (4.5 hours sleep most nights), but it’s doing what I love, so it doesn’t feel straining at all – I know the value of a good work/life balance.

Now I’m not trying to say I don’t trust you, but for my own reasons, I cannot tell you the name or industry of my unlaunched online business (I’m waiting on the trademark and other protections), but I will tell you of the steps I’ve taken to get to where in the project life we are presently.  So for the purposes of this site (until my site is launched), I’ll call it Project X.

From doing all my research, contacted industry experts and looked at the other closest ‘competition’ (thoroughly!), I found a company who could build my site.  They are one of the best high-end designers and dynamic developers I have ever mseen, with a superb portfolio and a very professional and thorough approach, I don’t mind paying a little more for the right company.  I’m dealing directly with the CEO and we email and Skype almost daily with any small adjustments to features or requirements I have and how we can develop them.  We are certain we can produce a website that has the capability and design of a very successful business, glorifyingly beautiful to look at but ultimately simple to use for the user.

I have a name, I know the hosting company I’m going to use for the dedicated hosting and the overall style or theme of Project X – down to the colour range.  I have thought and documented everything.  Starting a business has certainly made me see just how much there is to consider – it’s no small feat.

All the sites features have been at their birth, an idea.  The whole site was just an idea initially.  It soon snowballed the more and more I thought it through or talked it over with family and friends for idea bouncing sessions.  I’m quite creative anyway, so had a few ‘brainwaves’ which have now given me the edge of any competition and makes my site unique, offering features to this market which no other site does. But talk things through, and listen to what people say to you, ask questions and get a feel for a target audience.   Know your customer.

I have learnt on the net how to write a business plan – very important – from various sources online.  After all as the saying goes; “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.   This is so true.   See my seperate blog for how to write an efficient business plan for more information, but it’s pretty simple and straightforward and is a good excerise to replay everything in your head and highlight anything you may have missed out or overlooked.

Once I had this idea for a business and began putting into action, I then began playing around with Adobe Flash CS4 and building a simple flash site for me as a company.  I couldn’t just be Phil Owen, I needed a name for my company, so chose OwenDevelopments and set up  www.Owen-Developments.info.

This was really only for myself (in fact, I didn’t even submit it to any search engines apart from Google).  Again, it’s all Flash, FTP and Adsense practice to me.  It’s good to update things on that site too whenever I make progress with Project X.  I get the realization then, that things are moving forwards and it’s rather exciting.

So now I have my project I’m working hard on, see my categories for where I’m up to, what I’ve learnt, what I’ve found useful and any comments are always welcome.  If you’re stuck at the beginning and need advice, let me know and I’ll try to explain what I did.