Business

A good friend of mine recently quit his day job and began selling baseball cards on Ebay to pay the bills. He’s done a lot more than just pay the bills, though, as he’s become his own boss and now works about 70% less than he did when he was “employed.” And his income? Oh, maybe quadrupled.

Although he’s only been at it for about four months now, he’s really improved his quality of life substantially — it’s the kind of success that makes you half-jealous but also inspires you to go out and do something similar for yourself.

But despite his initial success, my buddy realizes that he can accomplish more. Problem is, he’s not quite sure how to go about it.

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While the Web is certainly a publishing destination in and of itself, I constantly find myself amazed by sites that bridge the gap between concrete and cyberspace. Specifically, I’m talking about sites like the New York Times, Wired, MacWorld, and a host of other Web-and-print outfits.

Half of my attraction to sites like this is the fact that they’re all viewed as major publications. The other half is that they convey such an impressive breadth of information in a way that is both entertaining and easily-consumable for your average Internet Joe. One thing these sites have in common is that they were all highly successful print outfits before they became successful Web destinations. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that all of this is about to change…

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What’s the most rewarding part of your job? Is it collecting a pay check? Solving a problem? Helping people?

Lately, the one thing that really keeps me going is providing support for the PressRow theme via comments, email, and update releases. The PressRow home site has grown to become a pretty useful resource thanks to users’ comments and suggestions, and it’s been fascinating to watch the community grow without a lot of external advertising or exposure. The theme itself is completely open-source, and generally speaking, I think open-source communities have a genuine feel about them that gives people the warm fuzzies.

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With each passing month, it becomes increasingly clear that there are a zillion ways to make money on the ‘net. One of the most direct and sustainable ways to create a passive income stream online is to parasitically attach oneself to the Google teat and commence sucking. Plenty of armchair Seach Engine Optimizers (SEOs) have spammy, made-for-AdSense sites that act as Google breast pumps for niche topics. Once the milk starts flowing, it’s green, and it’s steady. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

If the only thing that really matters is making money, then I guess these “splogs” aren’t that big a deal. When you look at the relationship dynamics of everyone involved in this AdSense exploitation, though, things are quite different. In fact, I don’t really see how you can possibly claim that splogs developed solely for Google or Yahoo ad exploitation are ethical.

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…unless they’re idiots, in which case you should make fun of them on your blog. Today I’m going to grace you all with a lovely tale from the retail side of things. Think of a beautiful story of love, compassion, reason, logic, understanding, and excellent grammar…and then take the exact opposite of all that

In today’s story, all correspondence is reproduced exactly as it came to me. Ver-freakin-batim, baby, mistakes and all.

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There’s no scripted way to become an entrepreneur, but there are certainly things you can do to make your journey easier. All the time, you hear people talking about their past, saying, “Boooyyy…if I only knew then what I know now……” Of course, when you’re sitting in their rotted out double-wide while they’re waxing nostalgic, [...]

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