#1 Trust the Game

Michael Jordan believed that he would get out of the game exactly what he put into it.

If you don’t completely trust the game – if you think it’s “unfair” or “rigged” – then deep-down you’re not going to be feel motivated to give it everything you have. With that attitude, you’ve lost before you even begin.

Whether in life, business, or basketball, you get out what you put in. Trust in this:

#2 Master the Fundamentals

Basketball’s like anything else: it mostly comes down to doing all of the basic stuff right. Once you’ve got the fundamentals down, you’ve got a solid foundation to build on.

Jordan warns that when you “get away from fundamentals… the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job… whatever you’re doing.”

#3 Learn from Your Parents

You might expect that Michael’s boyhood heroes were NBA superstars like Jerry West and Kareem Abdul-Jabar, but you’d be wrong.

Jordan’s respect and admiration for his parents is one of the keys to his success.

#4 Practice Every Day

When Jordan first tried out for his high school basketball team, he didn’t make varsity. In an interview with ESPN, Jordan described how he felt:

“It was embarrassing not making that team. They posted the roster and it was there for a long, long time without my name on it. I remember being really mad too, because there was a guy that made it that really wasn’t as good as me.”

Jordan channeled his embarrassment and anger into motivation during practice:

“Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I’d close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my name on it… that usually got me going again.”

Jordan became better at playing than everyone else by first becoming better at practicing than everyone else. Until the end of his career, Michael was known to be the first person to get to the gym and the last one to leave.

#5 School is Important

Jordan decided to leave the University of North Carolina to enter the NBA draft one year early. In 1984, he started his professional career without a college degree.

Despite immediate success in the NBA, Jordan decided to go back to school. In 1986, he returned to North Carolina to earn his degree.

#6 Don’t Let People Get in Your Head

Jordan was getting a lot of attention his rookie year. Sports Illustrated put him on the cover of their magazine with the words “A Star is Born” just one month into his NBA career.

All that quick attention aggravated a few NBA veterans. They decided to execute a “freeze out” of Jordan during the All-Star game where they simply wouldn’t pass him the ball.

But Jordan was unfazed. When the regular season resumed, he continued his stellar play and went on to win Rookie of the Year. Jordan is proof that you don’t have to let other people get into your head.

#7 Know How to Respond to Failure

Jordan wasn’t always a winner.

The first time he got to the NBA playoffs, his Bulls were knocked out in the first round. The next two years, they were swept by the Boston Celtics. After that, the Bulls were beat by the Detroit Pistons three years in a row.

All Jordan knew was failure. But it only made him want to be better. He’s said, “Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

Video: “I’ve Missed More than 9,000 Shots in My Career”

Text From the Video:

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot… and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

How to be More Like Mike:

Failure has a way of making people want to give up. But it has the opposite effect on Jordan.

If you don’t already, start thinking of your failures as fuel to work harder.

#8 Fear is an Illusion

“I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it’s an illusion to me.”

Michael Jordan

Fears can be self-fulfilling. Sometimes the only thing holding you back from being successful is the fear that you may fail.

When we let go of our fears, we’re free to be more aggressive and take full advantage of our opportunities.

#9 Just Do It

There are three types of people. Jordan’s the type of person who makes it happen.

Which type are you?

#10 You Can’t Do It Alone

Throughout the 80’s, Jordan racked up a ton of personal achievements (scoring titles, league MVP awards, and “Defensive Player of the Year”). But no championships.

Those didn’t come until he had the help of Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, and Phil Jackson.

#11 Excellence Speaks for Itself

At their prime, the Bulls would sell out every stadium they played in – home or away.

But the thing bringing in big crowds wasn’t the marketing department. It was the superior performance that Jordan and his teammates were putting on display.

When you consistently deliver an excellent product, people will find out. No marketing firm necessary.

#12 Expect Your Shots to Go In

Jordan wouldn’t be legendary if he didn’t have such a knack for making the “big shot.”

Time and time again, Jordan would have the ball in his hands in the final second of a pivotal game and… swoosh. In all of those big moments, he never once entertained the possibility that the ball wouldn’t go in:

 “I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot… when you think about the consequences you always think of a negative result.”

In big moments, you should feel totally confident that you will succeed.

How to be More Like Mike:

Take a moment now and think about what you want to achieve more than anything else. Do you fully expect yourself to make it happen?

If the answer sounds anything like ‘no’, it’s time for a change in your attitude. Remember that every time Jordan pulled up for a jumper, he was expecting the ball to go in.

#13 When it’s Time to Change, Change

Jordan made one of the most shocking decisions in sports history when he retired from professional basketball on October 6, 1993. It’s hard to fathom quitting after winning three championships in a row, but Michael’s reasons were actually very simple:

“I just needed to change. I was getting tired of the same old activity and routine and I didn’t feel all the same appreciation that I had felt before and it was tiresome.

“A lot of things correlated with that — my father dying, the opportunity to play baseball, my desire to make a change. I look back on it and it was perfect timing to break away from it and see what I was missing, to see what it meant to me, to see the enjoyment that I got from the game.”

Even though Jordan didn’t make it into the major leagues as a baseball player, it was important that he listened to the voice in his head that was telling him to make a change. He returned to the NBA refreshed in 1995 and promptly won three more championships.

#14 The Best Marketing is Simple

On March 18, 1995 Michael Jordan announced that he was coming out retirement with a press release that simply read, “I’m back.”

Two words were all it took to cue a media circus. Jordan’s first game back with the Bulls had the highest Nielsen rating of any regular season NBA game in twenty years.

Often, the most effective way to get the word out is to get straight to the point.

#15 Demand the Best from Your Team

Michael Jordan would often get frustrated with the effort of his teammates – especially at the end of his career when he played for the below-average Washington Wizards.

Fred Lynch, one of Jordan’s high school coaches, recalls that Jordan was demanding even as a teenager: “He’d get on his teammates all the time. He hasn’t changed that. What he always expected was everybody play the game as hard as he played it.”

Expecting the best in others helps bring it out in them. Of course, it’s most effective when you lead by example (as Jordan did).

#16 Learn to Harness Your Emotions

After winning his first NBA championship in 1991, Michael Jordan cried like a baby. He cried again following the 1996 championship. In those two moments, you can really see the depth Jordan’s emotional investment in the game.

Showing emotion is commonly considered a sign of weakness, but for Michael it was a source of great strength. Jordan had the rare ability maximize his emotional energy while still being in complete control.

#17 Love What You Do

Jordan loves basketball so much, he once said it was his wife (“It demands loyalty and responsibility, and it gives me back fulfillment and peace”).

When you do your work with love, as Jordan did, it will shine through in your performance.

#18 Play Business like a Game

You may have assumed that the “game” Michael’s talking about above is basketball, but he’s actually giving advice on the game of business.

If you think that business is boring, then you’re doing it wrong. The more fun you make your work, the more energy and enthusiasm you’ll bring to it – and the more success you’ll find.

#19 Forget the Past

Jordan’s made some tough decisions, but he doesn’t dwell on them.

There’s no reason to worry about the past because it’s not coming back.

#20 Ignore the Future

It happens all the time in basketball: one team gets out to a big lead only to get overconfident and lose the game in the final seconds. Their mistake is thinking about the victory celebration instead of focusing on the game at hand.

There’s no point in distracting yourself with possible future scenarios. You’re not a psychic. Nothing’s going to play out like imagine. Your focus would be better spent on making the most of the present.

#21 Embrace the Present

Every moment you’ve experienced has been right now.

If you want a deeper sense of contentment and satisfaction in your life, begin making the most of the present. Starting now.

Read more: ‘21 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs’

The post How to Be Like Mike: 21 Life Lessons from Michael Jordan appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

What does it take to create the world’s largest online retailer, amass a personal wealth of over $83 billion, and be chosen as Time’s Person of the Year?

Better ask Jeff Bezos.

He’s the founder, chairman, president, and CEO of Amazon.com. But he almost wasn’t. Below, I’ll share Bezos’ amazing story and 15 lessons from his life that you can apply to your own business.

#1 Act

It is only through deliberate action that we can bend the universe to our will.

But there’s a common misunderstanding about action too: that we must know the exact right action to take before doing anything. This way of thinking leads “analysis paralysis” and inaction.

Bezos is not the type to fall into this trap. Though he’s well aware that taking the wrong action will have negative consequences, he doesn’t mind:

In 1994, Jeff Bezos was faced with the biggest decision of his life: should he quit his “well-paying” job as NYC hedge fund manager to create an online bookstore… or should he stay put?

He decided to drive across the country and buy the domain rights to Amazon.com. The rest is history.

As Amazon has grown, Bezos has encouraged his employees to err on the side of action. Sometimes this has resulted in pure brilliance (the development of one-click shopping). Other times it has resulted in total failure (the development of Amazon Auction, which couldn’t compete with Ebay).

Bezos doesn’t mind the occasional misstep:

It’s all part of the Amazon company philosophy. Bezos lists having a “bias for action” as one of Amazon’s six core values.

#2 Minimize Regret

When Bezos was debating whether or not to quit his day job and start Amazon.com, he realized that he lacked an analytical framework for making big life decisions. So he made one up:

In this big-picture perspective, the right decision was clear. He wouldn’t regret losing his job at the age of 80 (surely he would have found another good job by then), but he would still be kicking himself for not cashing in on the online gold rush (at that time, the Internet was growing at a rate of 2300% per year).

Give Bezos’ “regret minimization framework” a shot for yourself. You may be surprised what action it inspires you to take.

#3 Grow Slow

How long should it take before a startup becomes profitable? Maybe six months?

For Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com, it took over six years. Even then, the company made only about $5 million in profit out of revenue of over $1 billion.

That might seem like a long time (and a razor-thin margin), but it all went according to Bezo’s unusually slow-paced business plan. Bezos was in no hurry to rake in a profit because he wanted keep prices low while reinvesting as much revenue as possible back into the company.

This strategy frustrated investors in the short-term but it paid off in a big way when Amazon survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble and started posting bigger profits quarter after quarter.

#4 Encourage Word of Mouth

When Bezos started Amazon he didn’t have a marketing budget. The only way his company would succeed was if it was so good that it spread by word of mouth.

There’s no better way for a business to grow than through positive word of mouth. The only way to achieve that is to deliver a product or service that’s worth talking about. Part of that means providing excellent customer service…

#5 There is Nothing More Important than the Customer

Everybody knows that the customer is always right. But Bezos and Amazon have taken the customer-first philosophy to the extreme. For Bezos, customer satisfaction isn’t just everything, it’s the only thing. It’s the very foundation of his business model:

Bezos considers customer service to be Amazon’s biggest competitive advantage:

The customer experience has never been more important than it is online. Word of mouth spreads quickly on social networks and your competitors are always just one click away. If you want your brand to thrive online, focus like a laser on customer satisfaction.

#6 Charge Less

Some companies are always trying to find ways to charge you more. Just think of all the extra fees that airlines and car dealerships tack on to the advertised price.

Amazon could probably make a killing with this strategy, but they don’t. Instead, Bezos tells his employees to find ways to cut costs and increase efficiency so that they will be able to charge their customers even less.

It’s easy to raise revenue by raising your prices, but it can also lead customer dissatisfaction (which will lower your revenue in the long run).

Before you charge more, do everything possible to make your business model cheaper and more efficient. You’ll help your bottom line and you may even be able to charge your customer less. That’s win-win.

#7 Never Stop Innovating

Normal human beings fear change. Jeff Bezos is more afraid of becoming stagnant.

His tendency to push the envelope has given Amazon.com a reputation as a nimble, always-evolving company.

Amazon started out simply selling books, but it hasn’t stopped expanding since its inception. Today, Amazon sells just about everything – but it also creates its own products, offers a host of web services, and even delivers groceries to your door (if you live in Washington).

#8 Be Flexibly Stubborn

Bezos is a man who understands the value of a good paradox.

It seems impossible to be both stubborn and flexible at the same, but that’s exactly what Amazon is. Bezos explains:

Stubbornness and flexibility are both valuable traits. Like just about anything things in life, the key is finding a middle road between the two.

#9 Be Realistic

One of my favorite quotes is from Will Smith: “Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity.” The idea is that if you never allow yourself to imagine an extraordinary life, there’s no way you’ll ever obtain one.

On the other hand, it’s possible to dream a little bit too wildly – and I think this affliction is particularly common with entrepreneurs. If you expect overnight success with minimal effort, you’re setting yourself up for never-ending frustration and disappointment.

As Bezos points out, being realistic about your business is also a way to ease the pressure of being an entrepreneur:

#10 Imitate

It’s good to be unique. But it’s even better to put a unique twist on something that’s already been proven to work.

Don’t turn a blind eye to your competitors. Chances are they’re doing something you could learn from.

#11 Work Backwards

How do you develop a product that’s guaranteed to sell?

The best advice I’ve heard is to first figure out what your customers truly want and need. Provide that with your product and you’ll have no trouble selling it.

This is a strategy that Amazon has implemented many times, most famously with the Kindle e-book reader. Bezos explains:

In 2006, Amazon was an online retailer – not a maker of handheld electronics. But Bezos recognized that Amazon’s consumers needed a way to read the e-books that they were purchasing from his site. So they worked backwards to meet that need.

When Amazon released the first generation Kindle in November of 2007, it sold out within six hours (and remained out of stock for five months). To this day, Kindle remains the leader in the e-reader category and in November of 2011 they reported sales of “well over” one million sales per week.

#12 It’s Good to be Misunderstood

When you’ve got a business idea that’s destined to change the world (like Jeff Bezos did in 1994) there are bound to be people who just don’t get it. The more revolutionary your thinking, the more likely it is to be misunderstood.

Bezos has particularly thick skin when it comes to this kind of thing:

Amazon never shies away from a good idea because they’re afraid some of their customers won’t like it. According to Bezos, they’ve “always had a lot of skeptics,” but they’re confident in their vision – and confident that they can convert skeptics into believers.

#13 Be Picky About People

One of Amazon’s core values is to have a high hiring bar. That means they only bring on a new employee if he/she is a perfect fit.

Bezos is so particular about who he hires because he realizes that great company culture flows naturally from the people who you bring on board. As of April 2012, Amazon.com employs about 56,000 of the world’s best and brightest people.

#14 Be Far-Sighted

Bezos recognizes that “a lot of people believe that you should live for the now.” But he’s says, “I’m just not one of them.”

He recommends that people “think about the great expanse of time ahead of you and try to make sure that you’re planning for that in a way that’s going to leave you ultimately satisfied.”

The Benefits of Long-Term Business

Amazon is a company that will sacrifice guaranteed profits today in hopes of scoring even bigger profits decades from now. Bezos has said that “sometimes we measure things and see that in the short term they actually hurt sales, and we do it anyway.”

Here’s his reasoning:

#15 Make History

For us, it seems like Bezos has already reached his zenith – the pinnacle of entrepreneurial achievement. But in his mind, he still has miles to go. He’s openly said that he hasn’t yet built “a lasting company” and that “the Internet in general and Amazon.com in particular, is still in Chapter One.”

Bezos is out to make history. And if you want to find similar success, you’ll have to adopt his “go big or go home” attitude. I’ll leave Bezos with the last words:

Read more: ‘The 100 Richest Internet Entrepreneurs’

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The post 15 Business Lessons from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Creating a quality video tutorial doesn’t have to be difficult. It’s actually possible to create an adequate tutorial in ten minutes, no video editing required.

I’ll teach you how to do that below, but I’ll also give more in-depth information for those who are re­ady to dig in and really create a top-caliber video. That means how to prepare for your video, tips on recording, getting your audio right, and how to best edit, upload, and publish your video online.

You can jump right to the beginning of the guide by clicking here or by using the table of contents above.

Example of a Video Tutorial

I made my first video tutorial a few weeks ago for PopUp Domination. I learned a lot through the process and it inspired me to write this post for you. You can watch that video tutorial here.

Expert Video Advice:

Throughout the article, I’ll be sharing exclusive advice from Gideon Shalwick of Rapid Video Blogging. He’s had huge success through video tutorials so I’m really happy to be including his insight in the article.

All of these Gideon Shalwick quotes are from Income Diary’s own book of interviews with top online entrepreneurs, Web Domination 20.

Now, onto the guide.

Before You Press Record

Know Your Stuff

The first step to making a good tutorial is to know all of the ins and the outs of the subject you’re teaching. Hopefully, you’re already an expert on the process you’re teaching. If not, you should probably run through it a few times to make yourself as knowledgeable as possible.

I also suggest looking around on forums and blogs to see what problems people are having commonly and the types of questions that they are asking.

Write a Bullet-Point Script

I don’t recommend writing out the entire script of your video, because it’s better to be in the moment and to sound natural (this is called an ‘extemporaneous’ delivery). But having a few key bullet-points in front of you on a piece of paper or electronic device can help make sure you don’t miss anything important and remind you what’s coming up next.

Create a Clean Environment

Keep in mind that if you’re recording your computer screen that may include recording your desktop background, programs you have running, browser windows you have open, your bookmarks, and more. Before you press record, make sure that your computer’s display looks professional and won’t show any overly personal information.

Choosing Video Recording ‘Screencasting’ Software

You can spend your time downloading and installing any number of free screencasting options. But I tried this and was met with unacceptably low-quality video. If you’re absolutely set on using free software, then the highest ranked free screencasting software (according to Wikipedia’s comparison) is VirtualDub.

But in my experience, you get what you pay for. If you want the cream of the crop, go with $299.00 USD Camtasia. Personally, I chose the $49.95 Snagit and I couldn’t be happier. It’s easy to use and it has all of the options that I wanted (plus a few more).

If you’re not ready to part with real money, both Camtasia and Snagit offer free trials. Download one for a month through the links above, make a few tutorials with it, and then you can decide whether or not to invest with a purchase.

Audio Recording

The Right Mic

With Snagit, you can record your voice through your computer’s microphone simultaneously. This is an easy way to do it, but the audio quality may be thin and full of static. If you speak loudly and clearly, your audio will likely be okay.

If you’re going to be doing this a lot, you’ll probably want to invest in a quality USB microphone, like the Yeti. Gideon offered us microphone advice for the professional:

“My microphone that I currently use with my Canon 60D is a wireless microphone from Sony, the UTX-B2. So that plugs into my camera and then I can have a very nice, little, wireless lapel mic on me when I record the videos. They’re a bit more expensive, $700 bucks or so.”

And the budget-conscious beginner:

“You don’t need to start with the UTX-B2. I actually used a $30 Audiotechnica microphone that I got from an electronics store. It provided near professional quality audio and the only drawback was that it was not wireless. It came with a four meter cord. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to get a great result.”

An Optimized Acoustic Environment

Turn off any fans, heaters, or other devices that produce ambient noise.

Also look out for flat, uncovered walls and hardwood floors that may create harsh, reverberant echoes. If the room that you’re in is producing too much reverb, you can cover the floors with rugs, the walls with blankets or paintings, and place pillows or comforters in the corners.

Or simply record in a different room with better acoustics.

The Sound of Silence

After you’ve finished recording your voice walking through the video, record about 30 seconds of dead silence. When you’re editing the video later, you may need to separate parts of the voiceover and you can use that “white noise” to fill in the gaps without the audio cutting out entirely and distracting the viewer.

Background Music

There’s a variety of sites online to find licensed music for free in the creative commons. I’ve had good luck with ccmixter.org and that’s what I used to find the background music for the PopUp Domination tutorial video.

If your voiceover is difficult to understand for any reason, then you may want to consider skipping the music altogether. In any case, keep the volume down so that it doesn’t distract from what really matters.

Cleaning Up Audio

Cleaning up noisy, static-filled audio is easier said than done. You can use advanced software like ProTools or capable freeware like Audacity, and they all have ‘noise reduction’ tools and equalization, but the truth is that it’s usually impossible to cut out static or noise without also cutting out important frequencies of the voice itself.

For that reason, I recommend most people just try to get the best audio quality to begin with and don’t count on any audio editing magic to bail you out.

Recording the Video Tutorial

If you know the process that you’re teaching and you’ve familiarized yourself with your screencasting software, recording the tutorial should be a piece of cake. Just press ‘Record’, then walk your viewers through the process.

Striking the Right Tone

It’s good if you can be personable and maybe crack a joke or two. Your personality can make your video stick out and encourage people to feel the type of personal connection with you that will get them to want to come back for more tutorials.

But if you’re taking a lot of time with your humor and theatrics you’re just going to frustrate your viewers. For a video tutorial, I would rather have someone be dry and to the point then overly colorful. Of course, the best option is to find the happy medium.

Recording a Video So You Don’t Have to Edit

When you click ‘Record’ with Snagit, they give you a three second countdown before it starts recording your screen. That’s enough time to switch windows to the screen you want to start the video with. In most cases, that can simply be the software or web page that you’re going to be instructing the viewer on.

If you want to get really fancy, you can design a special title screen to welcome your viewer and inform them about what you’ll be teaching. In that case, you can make that image your desktop background or have it up in a photo viewing program.

This is the welcome screen for the PopUp Domination video that I designed in Adobe Photoshop. I used graphic design that had already been made for PopUp Domination’s website in order to give it a professional, branded look.

If you like, you can make another such image for the conclusion of your video. With Snagit you can press Shift+F10 and exit the video promptly without any wasted seconds at the end.

Regardless of whether you use special screens for the beginning and ending of your video, if you go through the process clearly, quickly, and you don’t trip over your words too much, you can record a video that is completely functional without having to do any further editing.

If you want to add text or interactivity to the video, you can add those through YouTube annotations. I recently wrote a guide on how to use YouTube Annotations if you would like to learn more.

Nevertheless, if you want the highest quality of video tutorial, you’re probably going to want to do some basic editing.

Editing Your Video Tutorial

Choosing Your Software

As with screencasting, there are a bevy of video editing software available, both free and paid. In fact, most computers come with perfectly capable video editing software and many screencasting programs (such as Snagit and Screenflow) also feature video editors tailored to the needs of someone editing a video tutorial.

For WebDomination 20, Gideon Shalwick walked us through his process of selecting video editing software:

“I started with iMovie, worked my way through to Final Cut Express, and I ended up settling with ScreenFlow.

“Once I started using ScreenFlow, I thought, “Why bother with Final Cut?” ScreenFlow did everything that I wanted it to and it was much easier to use and gave me amazing results.

“Even to this day, if I want to get a video done really quickly, just something with simple cuts and very simple editing, I use ScreenFlow. Just record, get it on ScreenFlow, export, upload, done. It’s just so good.”

I use Adobe Premiere to edit my videos for work and you can get a free a trial of that through Adobe’s website. But generally the more advanced video editors have a higher learning curve and they won’t provide casual video editors with anything that they really need for most videos.

Edit to Save Your Viewer’s Time

One of the principle benefits of editing your video is using transitions to save your viewer’s time. If there’s a process that takes a while in the middle of your video (like a loading screen or an upload) then you can simply cut that part of the video. It’s also a good opportunity to fix slip-ups or pauses in your speech.

Adding Text to Guide Your Viewers

By going through the process and talking to your viewer, you can convey most all information necessary. But if you want to help the learning process further, adding text is a great way to add further clarification for your viewers.

I added text at the top and bottom of the PopUp Domination video tutorial with a template that I created in Adobe Photoshop. The text on the top tells is like a header, identifying the larger goal we’re accomplishing in the video. The text below identifies the individual step in the process that we’re currently completing in the video.

Branding and other design elements add to the professionalism of your video and help your viewer to remember your name. As you can see, I incorporated the PopUp Domination logo directly into the design of the text bars.

Outsourcing Editing

Hiring someone else to edit your videos for you can result in a more professional video and free your time up to focus on other activities. Gideon Shalwick put in his time editing videos himself but he explained to us that he now mostly outsources:

“Currently, I don’t do much editing myself anymore. My business has progressed so well now that I can afford to have a team of video editors to do all my editing for me. That’s really helped me take my business to heights that I couldn’t have even imagined. My videos look so much more professional now than I could have ever even tried to do on my own.”

If you decide to go this route, you can create the tutorial yourself and outsource the editing or you can hire the entire tutorial created, as Michael did when he recruited my video service.

Wrapping Up

Choosing a Video Service

There’s no shortage of ways to get your video online and for the most part they all work fine. But if you want your video tutorials to be found and viewed freely by as many people as possible, YouTube is the way to go. Gideon Shalwick explains:

“Really it’s all about traffic on YouTube. That is the short answer. Last time I checked, YouTube is the second biggest search engine, after Google. Three billion views a day is pretty impressive. Personally, I can’t really fathom the number three with nine zeros next to it. It’s just incredible.”

Uploading & Optimizing

There’s a host of things you can do to optimize your video so that it will show up in more sources. That’s not really the subject of this article so I’ll be brief.

The title is the most important part for SEO, but it’s also important to fill in the keywords and description area. You can use the list of bullet points you created earlier to fill in the description area in a breeze. Don’t forget to add a link to your website in the first couple lines of the description area so that people will be able to click on to your site.

Make an Accompanying Blog Post

If you really want to do it up, write a blog post that also walks through the process and embed the video at the top of it. Now you’ve created a complete educational resource that’s likely to be favored by Google’s search engine spiders.

That’s a Wrap!

You can rest easy knowing that every day someone, somewhere is learning thanks to the time you spent putting together a quality video tutorial. That’s a pretty cool feeling.

If you want to learn more about video, you can check out my articles on the top YouTube channels, profiles in viral video marketing, and my 21 ways to dominate YouTube.

Check out this website if you want to create great videos using Screenflow.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Making Online Video Tutorials appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

That would be Matt Mullenweg, the 29-year-old at the heart of WordPress. With 60 million websites built with WordPress (including this one), it is by far the most popular blogging platform in the world.

From the beginning, Mullenweg has done business differently:  WordPress was open-sourced , which means that the code was free to be developed by anybody who wanted to contribute. Mullenweg is also a vocal advocate of distributed work and 130 of Automattic’s 150 employees work outside of their San Francisco headquarters.

Let’s dig in and find out who Matt Mullenweg is, with an eye for learning from his innovative business strategies, productive work habits, and his best quotes.

Who is Matthew Mullenweg?

• Born January 11, 1984
• Studied Political Science at The University of Houston before dropping out in 2004
• Founded Automattic in 2005, the company behind WordPress
• Matthew lives in San Francisco, CA but he travels as many as 200 days a year
• Hobbies include photography and music
• Mullenweg maintains his own blog, Ma.tt

Photo Credit:  : kwightca via cc

5 Business Lessons from Matthew Mullenweg

#1  Occupy the Space Left Open by Competition

Mullenweg would have never started WordPress if another platform hadn’t disappeared overnight. Back in 2003, Mullenweg was a teenager volunteering some of his time coding for B2/cafelog — an open source blogging platform that was employed on about 2,000 blogs [wikipedia].

One day the leader developer disappeared, leaving Mullenweg and the rest of the volunteer programmers without a project. Matt decided to step up to fill the void. He wrote a blog post to the community, rallying them to join him in starting a new open source blogging platform. Mike Little commented on the post, “You serious about this? Let’s work on it together.” The two had never met. Mike was in the UK and Matt was in Houston, Texas. But the partnership worked. “We just started collaborating over the Internet,” Mullenweg explained. WordPress was born.

WordPress caught it’s big break the following year, when one of its leading competitors — Movable Type — decided to start charging its users. Hordes of thrifty bloggers abandoned Movable Type for the best free content management system available:  WordPress.

#2  Seek to Better Understand Your Users

“It’s my responsibility to meet as many users as possible and direct the software project in a way that reflects their interests. Last year, I probably met 2,000 or 3,000 people who make their living from WordPress.”

Matt Mullenweg

Knowing your end user is the first step to being able to give them what they want. Mullenweg is one of most well-informed founders in the world when it comes to understanding his audience. His robust travel schedule brings him to scores of WordPress conferences every year.

#3  Know Your Creed

“If you’re building a startup or any sort of organization, take a few moments to reflect on the qualities that the people you most enjoy working with embody and the user experience of new people joining your organization, from the offer letter to their first day.”

Matt Mullenweg, from ‘Why Your Company Should Have a Creed’

According to Mullenweg, a creed is “basically a statement of things important to us, written in the first person.” And Matt’s such a big believer in creeds and their influence on company culture that he’s put Automattic’s creed above the signature on every new employee’s contract. He described the move as “an easy change that had a big impact on the company.”

In case you’re curious, I’ve included the entire Automattic creed at the bottom of the page.

#4  There’s Always Room to Grow

“There’s 6.999 billion people who don’t have a blog yet, don’t have a website yet, don’t have WordPress yet.”

Matthew Mullenweg, from Unreasonable.is

Matt is a mild-mannered Texas native, but his ambition is anything but mild. When asked how he felt about his platform serving 17% of the web, he said, “I obsess over that other 83% of the web that we don’t have yet.” Matt said in an interview, “There’s a much longer road ahead of us than what we’ve done so far.”

#5  Eat, Breathe, and Sleep Your Business

“WordPress is a part of who I am. Like eating, breathing, music, I can’t not work on WordPress.”

Matthew Mullenweg, from Ma.tt

We work best on the projects that are aligned with the core of who we are. That’s what Mullenweg has with WordPress. He has said, “I go to sleep and I wake up thinking about WordPress,” and “I consider myself very lucky to be able to work on something I love so much.”

10 Productivity Tips from Mullenweg

Back in June 2009, Matthew Mullenweg told Liz Welch about his day-to-day habits running WordPress in a piece called, “The Way I Work.” The next ten productivity tips have been culled from Mullenberg’s account of his highly-effective work habits.

 Photo Credit:  Khalid Almasoud cc

#1 Wake Naturally

Waking with the daylight instead of to a screeching alarm helps you go to work with a calm and focused mind. It’s also linked to higher blood pressure (ABC News, 2011)

Mullenweg says he tries to “avoid alarm clocks as much as possible.”

#2 Have an Unplugged Morning

Mullenweg told Inc. that one of us his goals was “to avoid looking at the computer or checking email for at least an hour after I wake up.” Starting your day unplugged gives you time for reflection and calm at the beginning of your day.

#3 Ditch the Coffee

To many, caffeine is a prerequisite for productivity. Not for Mullenweg. “I’ve got enough stimulating things in my life already,” he says.

Going without caffeine has been linked to increased calmness, less anxiety, and better sleep. But I must confess, I took a sip of green tea before writing this sentence.

#4 Know Your Prime Times

Mullenweg has noticed that he’s more productive at particular times of the day. Matt has said, “I do my best stuff midmorning and superlate at night. Even though midmorning is prime working time, Matt doesn’t do meetings in the mornings. “The earliest I’ll do a meeting is 11 am,” he told Inc.

Everybody has times of the day (or night) during which they can be particularly productive. Try to make sure you’re working during the times when you do your best work.

#5 Respect Flow

Mullenweg on flow:  “When you’re coding, you really have to be in the zone… if you are taken out of the flow, if that little toaster pops up that says you’ve got mail – and you look at it, you’ve lost it.”

To me, being in a state of ‘flow’ means being totally immersed in the task at hand. When I’m flowing – whether I’m writing, editing a video, or making music – I find that my work comes easily, happily, and inspired.

You can increase your chances of achieving flow by turning off your cell phone and your computer’s Internet connection. One of Mullenweg’s methods is listening to music.

#6 Music is a Focus Tool

“Music helps me when I’m coding… I’ll listen to a single song, over and over on repeat, like a hundred times.”

Matthew Mullenweg, The Way I Work

Mullenweg’s favorite musicians include Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Jay-Z, and Beyonce.

#7 Rescue Your Time

A couple years ago, I recommended adopting Rescue Time as a great New Years resolution for entrepreneurs.

Turns out Mullenweg is also a big fan of the productivity app. He called Rescue Time, “one of my favorite programs that I didn’t make.”

#8 Cut Back on Email

Reports suggest that the average office worker spends a quarter of their day in their inbox (about two and a half hours). Mullenweg has made a concerted effort to avoid the great email time-suck:

“I realized that even though I was doing e-mail only a couple of minutes at at time, it was adding up to a couple of hours a day. So I’m trying to reduce that.”

#9 Multiple Monitors, Multiple Devices

“In my home office, I have two large, 30-inch computer monitors — a Mac and a PC. They share the same mouse and keyboard, so I can type or copy and paste between them. I’ll typically do Web stuff on the Mac and e-mail and chat stuff on the PC. I also have a laptop, which I have with me all the time, whether I’m going overseas or to the doctor’s office.”

Matt Mullenweg, The Way I Work

Notice the way that Matt talks about his various digital tools: each one has different responsibilities and roles. If you can afford it, try boosting productivity by using specific devices for specific tasks.

#10 Hire Well, Manage Sparingly

Sometimes the key to productivity is setting things up so that they require less work. That’s how Mullenweg has turned management into something that takes very little time out of his workweek.

“My management strategy is to find extremely self-motivated and talented people and then let them go.” Mullenweg explained.

Note:  for more, see our list of 7 Surprising Productivity Tips for Self-Employed Entrepreneurs

10 Best Matt Mullenweg Quotes

Photo Credit:  Kris Krug cc

#10  “If you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version, you waited too long.”

#9 “I don’t have big ideas. I sometimes I have small ideas, which seem to work out.”

#8 “Technology is best when it brings people together.”

#7 “As the web becomes more and more of a part of our everyday lives, it would be a horrible tragedy if it was looked up inside of companies and proprietary software.”

#6 “Do what you love and don’t focus on the money. Life is too short.”

#5 “For me, it always comes back to the blogger, the author, the designer, the developer. You build software for that core individual person, and then smart organizations adopt it and dumb organizations die.”

#4 “You can’t teach taste.”

#3  “My own personal dream is that a majority of the web runs on open source software.”

#2  “I am an optimist, and I believe that people are inherently good and that if you give everyone a voice and freedom of expression, the truth and the good will outweigh the bad. So, on the whole, I think the power that online distribution confers is a positive thing for society. Online we can act as a fifth estate.”

#1  “We are much better at writing code than haikus.”

Note:  if you like quotes, take a look at our list of the Top 40 Blogging Quotes.

The Automattic Creed

As promised, I’ve included Automattic’s official creed (posted by Mullenweg in September 2011):

I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.

This is a robust set of values that lays out not just how to be a good employee at Automattic, but how to build a successful business or achieve any great goal. I hope that you’ve found these lessons, productivity tips, and quotes from Mullenweg instructive and inspirational.

If you like learning from the founders of the top Internet startups, you may enjoy our 21 Lessons from the Life of Steve Jobs.

The post 25 Lessons, Quotes, and Productivity Tips from WordPress Founder Matthew Mullenweg appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

There’s been a lot of excitement leading up to the biggest Internet IPO since May 2012, when Facebook went public. That day was a nightmare for Zuckerberg and Co., as widespread demand caused glitches that left investors unsure whether or not their transaction went through. Facebook’s stock suffered, but has been skyrocketing for the last 12 months.

Will Twitter follow suit? Nobody knows for sure – but the financial world has been abuzz with speculation ever since Twitter’s IPO filing last month. The SEC filing revealed previously secret information, like exact revenue and growth numbers. Twitter excitement has reached a frenzied level in the last few days. Investor interest has spurred last minute price hikes up to $26 per share and it’s been reported that banks underwriting the IPO have received so much interest they’ve had to close their books.

All this for a company that hasn’t ever turned a profit? I get into the juicy details of Twitter’s highly anticipated IPO below.

What You’ll Learn:

• How Much Twitter Earns Per Tweet
• How Twitter’s value compares to Facebook and LinkedIn
• How Much Co-Founder Jack Dorsey Stands to Gain
• How Twitter’s IPO will be Different than Facebook’s
• Whether or Not to Invest

21 Things to Know as Twitter Goes Public

#1 Revenue is Real and Growing

Twitter revealed that they’ve already earned $422 million in the first nine months of 2013. That’s more than double their revenue from the same period the year before. They’re on pace to make over $600 dollars in 2013.

Twitter’s sales are projected to rise 53% next year to $950 million according to an estimate from the company’s bankers.

#2 But Twitter has Never Seen Profit

In 2011, Twitter lost $128.3 million dollars. In 2012, they cut that number down to $79.4 million. Since it’s inception in 2006, Twitter has lost a whopping $418.6 million.

The good news is that revenue growth is outpacing expenses by a factor of three. According to the Wall Street Journal, between 2010 and 2012 Twitter’s revenue rose 1,021% and expenses rose only 311.5%. Still, they aren’t expected to see a profit until 2015.

#3 Almost All that Money is Coming from Ads

“We generated 85% and 87% of our revenue from advertising in 2012 and the six months ended June 30, 2013, respectively.”

– Twitter, in IPO Filing

As of now, “substantially all” of those advertising dollars come from three sources: promoted tweets, promoted trends, and promoted accounts.

In the future, more of that money may come from inline advertisements. Twitter is also looking to boost their ad revenue in the coming years by becoming more visual and more mobile.

#4 75% of Active Twitter Users are Mobile

According to the IPO, three out of four Twitter accounts are accessed through a smart phone or tablet.

This bodes well for Twitter, given the rise of mobile web. According to Salon, global mobile advertising revenue nearly doubled from $5.3 billion to $8.9 billion from 2011 to 2012.

#5 But Only 65% of Ad Revenue comes from Mobile

Twitter makes less money from their mobile users and that’s something they’ll be looking to improve upon as they make a push for profitability in the coming years.

#6 Twitter has 230 Million Active Monthly Users

If Twitter’s users were a country, it would be the fifth most populous in the entire world – between Indonesia and Brazil.

#7 About 25% of Twitter Users are American

Twitter was founded in San Francisco, but today the vast majority of Twitter users live outside the States. 49.2 million Americans use the service compared to over 169 million internationally.

Of those international users, about 15 million live in the UK. With a population of about 63 million, that means almost one in every four people in the United Kingdom use Twitter. In the US, that figure is lower (about 1/6).

#8 They’re Sending 500,000,000 Tweets Each Day

That amounts to 5,787 tweets per second.

#9 For Every 1000 Tweets, Twitter earns about 75 cents

The numbers are higher in the US, where Twitter gets $2.17 per 1,000 tweets. Internationally, it’s a paltry $0.30 for 1,000 tweets.

This an important lesson in online business. All people are created equal, but some web visitors are worth more advertising dollars than others. Targeting an audience in the United States or other affluent nations will result in higher earnings per visitor.

#10 There are More Tweets than People

Since 2006, there have been over 300 billion tweets. That makes the world population of 7.12 billion people look pretty measly in comparison.

#11 Twitter is Growing Faster Internationally

According to Twitter’s IPO filing, they’re growing at a rate of 35% in the US and 47% globally. This trend is expected to continue, as global markets are significantly less saturated.

#12 Twitter’s Stock Ticker will be TWTR

Simple and to the point, this ticker is reminiscent of the company’s original name: twttr.

#13 Twitter’s IPO Values the Company at $18.3 Billion

That may seem like a lot for a company that’s never turned a profit – and it is. But it’s still about quite a bit less than the value of LinkedIn ($26 Billion) and Facebook ($120 billion).

#14 Demand for Twitter Stock has been High

“Banks underwriting the IPO told investors that the order book closed Tuesday morning, earlier than expected.” USA Today describes this as “a bullish sign.”

Initially, Twitter was going to be selling its shares at $17-$20. But after receiving a warm pre-IPO response from investors, that on Monday, November 4^th Twitter raised the price to $23-26 per share. Finally, the night before their market debut, Twitter settled on the high-end:  $26/share. That means they stand to raise about $2.1 billion from the sale.

#15 Twitter’s Selling Less of Itself than Facebook

Twitter’s IPO is the biggest Internet IPO since Facebook, but it’s still much smaller than it’s social media rival. Facebook sold 421 million shares at $38 each. Twitter is selling only 70 million shares.

Fewer public shares means that the IPO will not raise as much money, but it’s also safer and ensures a higher degree of control for the existing owners.

#16 Former CEO Williams Stands to Gain Over $1 Billion

Here are some notable Twitter stockholders:

• Evan Williams, Founder and Former CEO – holds 12%
• Peter Fenton, Board Member – holds 6.7%
• Jack Dorsey, Founder and Chairman – holds 4.9%
• Richard Costolo, Current CEO – holds 1.6%

Jack Dorsey ownership of Twitter will be worth well over a half billion dollars.

#17 Current CEO Richard Costolo’s Salary is Just $14,000

Don’t shed any tears for the guy: he made $11.5 million in 2012 and his stock is estimated to be worth about $200 million.

#18 Twitter will be Traded on NYSE

Nasdaq is “technology focused” stock exchange, home of Apple, Google, and Facebook. But Twitter decided to be listed with the larger New York Stock Exchange.

The New York Post’s Mark DeCambre attributes the move to NYSE’s long courtship of Twitter – along with the fact that NYSE has more Twitter follower’s than the Nasdaq.

But the biggest reason may have to do with Twitter’s biggest competitor. According to Reuters, “many analysts said the trading disruptions that occurred on Facebook’s Nasdaq debut likely played to NYSE’s favor.”

#19 And NYSE isn’t Taking Any Chances

On Saturday, October 26, 2013, NYSE performed an unprecedented system’s check in order to avoid any technical difficulties on opening day. Investors can rest easy knowing that the tests went well.

#20 It has been a Strong Year for IPO’s

Reuters reports that, “Both NYSE and Nasdaq have said 2013 is shaping up to be their best IPO year in more than half a decade.”

#21 It’s a Bull Market

The markets have been soaring in the last year, particularly for online companies. Facebook and LinkedIn have both doubled their share prices in the last year. Bloomberg says, “The climate for Web stocks is particularly hot, with the 77-member Bloomberg U.S. Internet Index trading near the highest valuation relative to the S&P 500 since 2007.”

In other words, the time is right for Twitter’s IPO.

Should You Invest in Twitter?

Anybody who tells you they know what’s going to happen with Twitter is either a liar or a psychic. Of course, that doesn’t stop analysts from chiming in. Predictions run the gamut, from the dire…1

“When you look at valuations and look at the lack of earnings and revenue, it seems to me much like the dot-com bubble. This market looks a little frothy and Twitter is the personification of a risky trade.”

– Matt McCormick, to Bloomberg

…to the exuberant…

“Our own view on management is very favorable given our observations of decisions they have made to date. We have a high degree of confidence that Twitter can continue producing sales growth for many quarters to come.”

– Matt Weiler, to Wall Street Journal

…and everything in between.

Ultimately, it comes down to whether or not you believe in Twitter. It’s valuation at over $10 Billion is based on assumptions that it will continue to grow and increase revenue for decades to come.

My Opinion:

I believe in Twitter and think that it’s a unique platform that’s well-managed and well-positioned to mature along with mobile. But I’m a low-risk investor and no matter how you slice it, Twitter is a high-risk stock. For that reason, I won’t be buying Twitter stock any time soon. That said, I bet Twitter’s opening day will go off without a hitch and its price will finish higher than $30.

A Message from Twitter to Investors

Included in the filing was this message for investors from founder Jack Dorsey:

Twitter was born on March 21, 2006, with just 24 characters.

We started with a simple idea: share what you’re doing, 140 characters at a time. People took that idea and strengthened it by using @names to have public conversations, #hashtags to organize movements, and Retweets to spread news around the world. Twitter represents a service shaped by the people, for the people.

The mission we serve as Twitter, Inc. is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve–and do not detract from–a free and global conversation.

Thank you for supporting us through your Tweets, your business, and now, your potential ownership of this service we continue to build with you.

Yours,

@twitter

Jack’s also the founder of Square and a pretty interesting guy. If you want to learn more from the man behind Twitter, I’ve compiled 9 business lessons from his amazing life.

The post Twitter Goes Public: 21 Things You Should Know appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Confucius once said that there are three ways to become wise:  the noble way to get wiser is through self-reflection; the bitter way to get wiser is through experience; and the easy way to get wiser is through imitation.

Personally, I’d rather wise up the easy way — and that’s why I’ve made the following resource.

To imitate the wisdom of the world’s most successful CEO’s and Founders, I’ve spent the last week sifting through the vastness of the Internet for the most wise thoughts on business. The wise thoughts below come people like Steve Jobs, Andrew Carnegie, Richard Branson, and PayPal founder Elon Musk (who I recently profiled for startup advice).

I’ve organized this post into six sections which you can skip to with the table of contents on the right. I’ll start off with my five favorite business proverbs, which I found here. Then I’ll share business leaders’ wisdom on what really matters, the importance of customers, metaphors for business, business tips, and conclude with my top ten most wise thoughts on business.

5 Wise Business Proverbs

#1  On Planting Trees

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

– Chinese Proverb

#2  On Focus

“He who begins many things finishes but few.”

– German Proverb

#3  On Castles

“Building a castle is difficult. Defending and maintaining it is harder still.”

– Asian Proverb

#4  On Perseverance

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”

– Japanese Proverb

#5  On Your Calling

“Everyone should observe carefully which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.”

– Hasidic Proverb

Photo Courtesy of Skoeber

10 Thoughts on What Really Matters in Business

#1  Vision

“Capital isn’t scarce; vision is.”

– Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

#2  Service

“He profits most who serves best.”

– Arthur F. Sheldon, Early Rotary Club Leader

#3  Knowledge

“To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.”

– J. Paul Getty, Founder of the Getty Oil Company

#4  People

“Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.”

– Andrew Carnegie, Founder of the Carnegie Steel Company

As Mary Kay once said, “A company is only as good as the people it keeps.”

#5  Experience

“In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins:  cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.”

– Harold Geneen, Former President of the ITT Corporation

#6  Peers

 “It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.”

– Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

#7  Character

“Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” –

– Norman Schwarzkopf, US General

#8  Time

“Your greatest resource is your time.”

– Brian Tracy, Motivational Speaker and Author

#9  Your Network

“Your network is your net worth.”

– Tim Sanders (and many others), former Yahoo! Director

#10  Your Customers

“Revolve your world around your customers and more customers will revolve around you.”

– Heather Williams

10 Thoughts on The Importance of Happy Customers

I found so much wisdom on customers, I had no choice but to give customer wisdom its very own segment. Great business minds just seem to get that “the result of a business is a satisfied customer” (Peter Drucker).

#1  Think of The Customer as Your Boss

“There is only one boss:  the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

– Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

#2  Let them Design Your Products

“Who decides what’s in Windows?  The customers who buy it.”

– Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft

#3  …Or Don’t 

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

– Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple Inc.

More on Jobs:  21 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs

#4  Talk to Your Customers

“The more you engage with customers, the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.”

– John Russell, President of Harley Davidson

#5  Learn from Your Customers

“Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.”

– Zig Ziglar, Founder of Zig Ziglar Corporation

More on Ziglar:  11 Life-Changing Business Lessons from Zig Ziglar

#6  Happy Customers are Your Greatest Marketing Tool

“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”

– Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon

There’s simply no more effective, more persuasive marketing tool than word of mouth. Bezos has talked about word of mouth is particularly important for online businesses:  “If you make your customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”  I would argue that the same is true today regardless of whether the business is online or off.

More on Bezos:  15 Business Lessons from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

#7  Good Customer Service Never Quits

“Customer service is just a day in, day out, ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity.”

–  Leon Gorman, CEO of L.L. Bean

#8  Like and Respect Your Customers  On liking:

“If you don’t genuinely like your customers, chances are they won’t buy.”

– Thomas Watson, Former CEO of IBM

And respecting:

“It all starts with respect. If you respect the customer as a human being, and truly honor their right to be treated fairly and honestly, everything else is much easier.”

– Doug Smith

#9  Focus on Maintaining Customers

“Every client you keep is one less that you need to find.”

– Nigel Sanders

 #10  The Customer is Always Right

 “Right or wrong, the customer is always right.”

– Marshall Field, Founder of Marshall Feed and Company

5 Deep Metaphors for Business

#1  Business is Art

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

– Andy Warhol, Pop Artist

#2  Business is War + Sport

“Business is a combination of war and sport.”

– Andre Maurois, French Author

#3  Business is a Seafaring

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”

– William G.T. Shedd, American Theologian

#4  Business is a Game

“Business is more exciting than any game.”

– Lord Beaverbrook, Anglo-Canadian Business Tycoon

#5  Business is a Struggle

“Business is always a struggle. There are always obstacles and competitors. There is never an open road, except the wide road that leads to failure. Every great success has always been achieved by fight. Every winner has scars.”

– Herbert N. Casson, Canadian Author

10 Wise Business Tips

  #1  Have Fun…

“A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”

– Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group, Ltd.

More on Branson:  15 Business Lessons from Richard Branson

#2  …But Not Too Much Fun

“I don’t like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do the things that cause the company to succeed. I don’t spend a lot of time doing my favorite activities.”

– Michael Dell

#3  Be Decisive

“The first one gets the oyster; the second gets the shell.”

– Andrew Carnegie, Founder of the Carnegie Steel Company

The first person to identify and capitalize on a new business model has a huge advantage over the competition. Act decisively and quickly to benefit. Act slowly and you end up chewing on oyster shells.

#4  Take Risks

“You cannot avoid risk, you just need to manage it.”

– Dr. Neal W. Pollock

#5  Think Positive

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.”

– Henry Ford, Founder of Ford

#6  Work Hard

“Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.”

–  David Rockefeller

And another:

“No legitimate business man ever got started on the road to permanent success by any other means than that of hard, intelligent work, coupled with an earned credit, plus character.”

– F.D. Van Amburgh, Author of The Mental Spark Plug

#7  Have a Heart

“To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.”

– Thomas Watson, Sr., former CEO of IBM

#8 Mess Up

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not making decisions.”

– Catherine Cook, Founder of MeetMe

#9  Make it Personal

“All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal.”

– Mark Cuban

More on Cuban:  10 Winning Business Lesson from Mark Cuban

 #10  Solve Big Problems

“Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems.”

– Sergey Brin, Founder of Google

More on Brin:  Google’s 8 Simple Rules

10 Most Wise Thoughts on Business

#1  Change = Opportunity

“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

– Peter F. Drucker, Management Consultant and Author

#2  Fast is the New Big

“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”

– Rupert Murdoch, Founder of News Corporation

#3  Lead through Innovation

“Innovation distinguishes between being a leader and a follower.”

– Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple Inc.

#4  Automate (Carefully)

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

– Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft

More on Gates:  Top 10 Business Lessons from Bill Gates

#5  Figure Out How to Provide More For Less

“The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.”

– Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company

#6  Good Business Benefits All

“I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.”

– Alan Greenspan, American Economist and Federal Reserve Chairman

#7  Elevate the Product

“I’d say stay very focused on the quality of the product.   People get really  wrapped up in all sorts of esoteric notions of how to manage etc., [but]  I think people should get much more focused on the product itself – how do you make the product incredibly compelling to a customer – just become maniacally focused on building it better.  I think people get distracted from that.”

– Elon Musk, Founder of Tesla Motors

#8  Pay Well

“I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.”

– Robert Bosch, German Industrialist

#9  Don’t Seek Perfection

“Business is complicated and imperfect. Every business everywhere is staffed with imperfect human beings and exists by providing a product or service to other imperfect human beings.”

– Bob Parsons, Founder of GoDaddy.com

#10  There’s No Limit 

“We are currently not planning on conquering the world.”

– Sergey Brin, Founder of Google

Want More Wise Thoughts?

I hope you’re feeling more than just one day wiser after reading these 50 thoughts on business. But if you’re still hungry for more wisdom, you can check out the inspiration for this article, 50 Great Thoughts on Success. Here’s one of my favorites:

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

–  Winston Churchill

Before I go I want to leave you with one wise thought, from one of the wisest people to have ever lived, Socrates:  “The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing.”

The post 50 Wise Thoughts on Business appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Keep reading and they might tell you.

We combed through the interviews, speeches, and rants of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs to find their best quotes. Some quotes will inspire you, others will inform you, and a couple might even just change the way you think about online business forever.

I’ve broken the quotes down into categories like Quotes About Risk and Practical Quotes, which you can view on the table contents to jump to whatever section of quotes you like.  The Internet’s brightest young entrepreneurial minds are talking on subjects from Simplicity to Social Media – and we would be fools not to listen.

Everybody on this list below started their company in their teens or early 20’s and they’ve all achieved wild success beyond their years. A few of the young entrepreneurs on the list’s age has crept into the early 30’s, but that’s still pretty young to be a CEO.

The 50 top quotes from the top young entrepreneurs is below. If you’re interested in this post you may like our 50 Great Thoughts on Success and our Top 30 Quotes To Inspire Entrepreneurs.

Getting Started

“I find it best to dive right in and learn the hard way.”

– Pete Cashmore, Mashable

“If you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.”

– Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

“A hard thing is done by figuring out how to start.”

– Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

“To any entrepreneur: if you want to do it, do it now. If you don’t, you’re going to regret it.”

– Catherine Cook, MyYearbook

“If you’ve got an idea, start today. There’s no better time than now to get going. That doesn’t mean quit your job and jump into your idea 100% from day one, but there’s always small progress that can be made to start the movement.”

– Kevin Systrom, Instagram

– Ben Weissenstein, Grand Slam Garage Sales

The “Big” Idea

“I don’t have big ideas. I sometimes have small ideas, which seem to work out.”

– Matt Mullenweg, WordPress

“I suffer from the delusion that every product of my imagination is not only possible, but always on the cusp of becoming real.”

– Sean Parker, Napster

“Choose something unique.”

– Angelo Sotiro, DeviantART

“People tend to think that in order to start a new business they have to come up with something new and dazzling, but that’s a myth – and it’s often propagated by venture capitalists.”

– Gurbaksh Chahal, RadiumOne

“If Google teaches you anything, it’s that small ideas can be big.”

– Ben Silbermann, Pinterest

Being a Young Entrepreneur

“I think I was very naïve early on, but that also meant I didn’t know what couldn’t be done.”

– Matt Mickiewicz, 99 Designs

“It’s not about how many years of experience you have. It’s about the quality of your years of experience.”

– Jacob Cass, Logo of the Day

“The earlier you start, the more time you have to mess up.”

– Emil Motycka, Motycka Enterprises

“There’s no committee that says, ‘This is the type of person who can change the world – and you can’t.’ Realizing that anyone can do it is the first step. The next step is figuring out how you’re going to do it.”

– Adora Svitak, Flying Fingers

Quotes About Risk

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not making decisions.”

– Catherine Cook, MyYearbook

“If you start with nothing and end up with nothing, there’s nothing lost.”

– Michael Dunlop, Income Diary

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

– Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

“Don’t make decisions based on fear.”

– Jake Nickell, Threadless

Quotes About Failure

“I’ve also learned that the biggest lessons came from my biggest mistakes.”

– Gurbaksh Chahal, RadiumOne

“The hardest part about being an entrepreneur is that you’ll fail ten times for every success.”

– Adam Horwitz, Mobile Monopoly

“Running a start-up is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood.”

– Sean Parker, Napster

Quotes About Making Money

“I think not focusing on money makes you sane because in the long run it can probably drive you crazy.”

– Kevin Systrom, Instagram

“The companies that I really admire the most are the ones that have a deep visceral understanding of why people use their service, and they figure out ways of making money that are completely consistent with how people are feeling and what they are doing at the time.”

– Ben Silbermann, Pinterest

“Great products sell themselves.”

Kevin Systrom, Instagram

“To be successful online, you have to be nimble and evolve where the opportunities are. You have to layer revenue streams.”

– Angelo Sotiro, DeviantART

“There are a lot of rich people in the world. There are very few people who have the privilege of getting to invent things that billions of people use.”

– David Karp, Tumblr

 Following Your Passion

“Every single person I know who is successful at what they do is successful because they love doing it.”

– Joe Penna, Mystery Guitar Man

“Anything can be done, as long as you truly believe it.”

– Ashley Qualls, WhateverLife

“We led with our conviction rather than rational, because rational said it was impossible.”

– Daniel Ek, Spotify

“Find something you love and do it better than everyone else.”

– Gurbaksh Chahal, RadiumOne

Practical Advice

“My number one piece of advice is: you should learn how to program.”

– Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

“If you make the Internet, live on the internet.”

– Matthew Mullenweg, WordPress

“A poor logo doesn’t mean a business will fail, and a good logo doesn’t mean it will succeed – it just helps. Ultimately a good logo is something that people recognize instantly and relate to.”

– Matt Mickiewicz, 99 Designs

“SEO is a race, not a sprint.”

– Neil Patel, Quick Sprout

“Don’t take too much advice. It’s just that most people who have a lot of advice to give—there are a few people who are exceptions, and they have a lot of data in front of them—most people generalize whatever they did and say that’s the strategy that made it work.”

– Ben Silbermann, Pinterest

“Over-deliver every time.”

– Alex Maroko, Game Speed Insider

Quotes on Social Media

“Building and hanging on to an audience is the biggest role of social media.”

– Matthew Inman, The Oatmeal

“I believe photos is one of the underlying things in every social network that becomes successful.”

– Kevin Systrom, Instagram

“Social media really grew up.”

– Kevin Rose, Digg

Quotes on Startups

– Blake Ross, Mozilla

“There’s a lot of pressure to look like the last company that was successful.”

– Ben Silbermann, Pinterest

“The pace of change for entrepreneurs is rapidly accelerating, and the cost and risk of launching a new business and getting off the ground is just amazing. The ability to gain user feedback really quickly and adapt to what your consumers want is totally different with the web as it is now. But finding a new market, helping people and taking that original idea and turning it into a business is really exciting right now.”

– Matt Mickiewicz, 99 Designs

“Every startup should address a real and demonstrated need in the world. If you build a solution to a problem lots of people have, it’s so easy to sell your product to the world.”

– Kevin Systrom, Instagram

“The transition strategies are more important than understanding what the outcome state will be.”

– Sean Parker, Napster

“We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform.”

– Pete Cashmore, Mashable

Quotes on Simplicity

“Every feature has some maintenance cost, and having fewer features lets us focus on the ones we care about and make sure they work very well.”

– David Karp, Tumblr

“Focusing on one thing and doing it really, really well can get you very far.”

– Kevin Systrom, Instagram

“The trend of design toward simplicity and accessibility in software happened for a reason—simple sells, simple’s usable and simple scales.”

– Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

“I’m a firm believer in shades of gray.”

– Blake Ross, Mozilla

“A poorly implemented feature hurts more than not having it at all.”

– Noah Everett, Twitpic

Quotes on Success:

“Success is defined in units of fun. It’s all about being happy.”

– Jake Nickell, Threadless

“Success comes down to hard work plus passion, over time. If you work really, really hard over a long period of time, it will pay off.”

– Stanley Tang, eMillions

“Solving specific problems is what drives me. I am not interested in having a career. I never have been.”

Sean Parker, Napster

“I’m here to build something for the long-term. Anything else is a distraction.”

– Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Inside the Mind of a Young Entrepreneur

I love quotes because they’re a window into a person’s mind while they’re thinking their most clearly. And obviously it’s best when the people you’re quoting are as innovative and intelligent as these young entrepreneurs. After compiling a post like this, I feel like I’m swimming in wisdom and insight from the best and brightest.

I would be interested in hearing from you below. Are there were any quotes above that struck you in particular or ones that you disagree with? Are there any young entrepreneur quotes that I didn’t include above that I should have?

If you read this article because you’re starting out on the path to online entrepreneurship, we offer a road map to making money online that links to guides and resources every step of the way. If you’re just looking for more inspiration, I recommend you check out 21 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs.

The post Top 50 Young Entrepreneur Quotes appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

A: Trust.

Trust is scarce because anyone can publish content online. There are no publishing companies or editors to separate the good writing from the bad or to make sure all of the sources are double-checked and cited.

Trust is valuable because if once it’s established, you open up the door to a world of opportunity: more readers, higher opt-in rates, and increased product sales. Thankfully, there are methods to make your website more trustworthy and I’ve listed my top 25 below.

25 Ways You Can Gain More Trust Online

#1 Eliminate Broken Links with Free Software

Nothing is permanent – especially on the Internet.

Eventually a link on your website will lead to a place that no longer exists. If a user clicks on that link and is greeted with a 404 page they’re going to be (A) upset that you’ve wasted 5 seconds of their precious time and (B) less trusting of your links in the future.

Avoid this scenario by installing free software that automatically scours your site for broken links and notifies you about them. If you use WordPress I recommend you use Broken Link Checker, which has 4.1 out of 5 ranking.

Oh and if you needed more incentive, broken links are bad for SEO too.

#2 Go Blue

According to color psychology, blue “creates the sensation of trust and security.” So you may want to consider using a blue color scheme for your website, like Facebook does.

#3 Show Yourself

You can establish a lot of trust simply by featuring your name and photo prominently with every article. It can also be good to get a little personal on your about page, as Neil Patel does with a funny cartoon.

Dropbox is a big business. But they still keep a personal touch on their about page: the images and names of all of their employees. Seeing the real people behind a website makes it easier to trust.

#4 Proofread

Always read over your entire post one last time before clicking ‘publish’. I find it’s especially helpful to read the text out loud.

#5 Nix Autoplaying Audio/Video

Hate is a strong word, but I really, really, really don’t like media that plays automatically when you open a web page. It’s disrespectful to me as a user and it’s the fastest way to break my trust.

Autoplay is fine when the site makes it clear that I’m visiting a page specifically so I can play a song or video (like on YouTube). Otherwise, just don’t do it.

#6 Get a Professional Logo

A great logo design doesn’t come cheap, but it’s the single biggest investment you can make in the trustworthiness of your online brand. Your logo will go everywhere you go – from your header to your business card. Hold your logo to a high standard of professionalism and people will view your business in higher esteem.

#7 Allow Comments

Let’s face it: humans don’t exactly have a reputation for being respectful online. So putting a comment box underneath your content is a brave thing to do. You’ve carefully built a website and now you’re just going to open it up for anyone to scribble on?

There’s good reason to allow comments, though. By allowing a public forum for opinions both positive and negative, your website shows confidence in what it’s presenting to the world. It shows that you don’t have anything to hide and that you’re willing to accept fair criticism. To me, that equates to a little bit more trust.

Admittedly, some comments are spam and need to be deleted and not every website necessarily should allow comments. Seth Godin has one of the world’s most popular blogs and it doesn’t have comments (thought that’s mostly for personal reasons).

#8 Get Press and Feature It

A website’s header gets to make the first impression on its viewer. Press is so important for a website’s trust that Income Diary puts some of our press mentions right in the header, to be viewed on top of every page.

Press creates the type of trust you can’t buy or manufacture. It took over 150 years for The New York Times to build its reputation as a trustworthy news source. But it took only a few seconds for Gene Marks to publish this article mentioning Income Diary. In that moment, The New York times lent a little sliver of its hard-earned trust to our humble blog.

Don’t have any press yet? The first step is for you to find a way for your business to be a remarkable story. That’s the hard part. From there, I recommend this free online create your own press release wizard.

#9 Keep Your Copyright Year Up-to-Date

I’ve never thought too much about copyright dates on websites. But when I was writing the last point and scoping out that free press release website, I couldn’t help but notice that their copyright was still for 2010. It made me doubt if I should link to the site.

I determined that the site was still useful even though its owner hadn’t touched in three years (and might not for another three) so I linked to it. But your site might not be so lucky.

Either update every year on January 1^st or use php to add a dynamic copyright date that’s always up-to-date.

#10 Implement Testimonials

Testimonials are key to building trust online, especially if you’re selling a product or service. When you have a happy customer or reader, consider asking them to give you a testimonial. Then feature a few of them prominently on your sales page.

#11 Don’t Make Promises that You Can’t Keep

If you tell your audience that you’ll have a post up every Monday, you’d better do it.

#12 Show Your Trophy Rack

Don’t be overly humble about any honors or awards you’ve received. Feature them prominently on your about page and possibly in your header, footer, or sidebar.

#13 Don’t Slip Up (Not Even Once)

“I takes many good deeds to build a good reputation and only one bad one to lose it.”

Benjamin Franklin

In life, “almost always” is almost always good enough. If you remember to floss your teeth before you go to sleep “almost always,” that qualifies as good oral hygiene.

But when it comes to being trustworthy, “almost always” isn’t good enough. It only takes one single piece of untrustworthy information for everything you’ve ever put up online to fall under suspicion.

So don’t think that it’s okay to lie, cheat, steal, or otherwise misguide visitors to your website “occasionally” or “just this once.” As the ever-wise investor Warren Buffett has said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

#14 Do Your Research

When I profiled Elon Musk a couple of weeks ago, I started out knowing almost nothing about him. So I went on a research-binge. Before I knew it, I had about 20 tabs running across the top of my browser. 10,000+ words later, I knew Musk’s life story backwards and forwards. Only then did I actually start writing the article.

Research might not sound like fun, but it’s a necessary part of being a good writer. You owe it to your audience to be well-informed about your subject. When your readers notice the many references and facts that are the mark of a well-researched article, they’ll know that what you’re saying can be back up.

#15 Don’t Overreach

“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”

Henry Ford

“Fake it ’til you make it,” is usually pretty good advice.

But when you claim authority by flaunting something you haven’t really accomplished, people can smell it from a mile away. I’ve seen far too many blogs with authors who claim to be gurus in SEO, web design, blogging, or social media but who are clearly nothing of the sort.

When you’re first starting out online, be up front with people that you’re a beginner. Invite them to join you on your journey to becoming an expert in your field. At each milestone you accomplish, update your about page.

#16 Redesign Your Website

People judge books by their cover and they judge websites by their design. A quality design means quality content that they can trust.

Appearances matter. That’s why one of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s life lessons is to “have an amazing haircut.”

If you’re in need of a great new web design, hire a designer from AwesomeWeb today!

#17 Admit When You’re Wrong

Everybody makes mistakes. Even though I research and proofread, I still publish incorrect information and misspellings on this site from time to time.

When you make a mistake online, don’t try to cover it up. Fix it, but own up to it. When your audience sees that you’re willing to admit to your errors and even draw attention to them, you’ll gain a reputation for accuracy and trustworthiness.

#18 Get Social

At Income Diary, we feature a Facebook widget in our sidebar that proves that over 5,000 people like and trust what we’re doing online. That’s powerful social proof.

You can add a Facebook widget on your website by following this link. Here’s something similar for Twitter and for Google+.

#19 Use Specific Statistics

The footer at the bottom of every Income Diary page cites a blog post that got 20,293 hits in one week. Using a specific number like that is more trustworthy than just saying “tons” or “tens of thousands,” especially when you can back it up with screen shots from your stat page.

Personally, I love it when bloggers lay it all out on the table for their readers: their traffic stats, their income, and their social growth. Even if your numbers aren’t impressive, you’ll gain your readers’ trust by showing you have nothing to hide.

#20 Stay Above the Fray

“Never make negative comments or spread rumors about anyone. It depreciates their reputation and yours.”

Brian Koslow

Online as well as in life, what you say about others reflects more on you then on them. Talking bad about others just makes you look bad.

#21 Reread Old Articles Yearly

Let’s say that you published a blog post about how to optimize your business’s Facebook page back in 2011. Since then, Facebook has changed the page layout to the ‘timeline’ – making some of your advice obsolete. In this instance, you should probably delete or correct the outdated information.

I recommend skimming through all of your published content yearly and looking out for expired content.

#22 Get Certified

There are a host of organizations and services who verify your websites quality and security. If you pass, you can proudly display their badges on your site and boost your trust with visitors.

Good practice seals (with links):

• Better Business Bureau
• Bizrate
• STELLAService

SSL Security certificate providers (with links):

• Digicert
• Geotrust
• GoDaddy
• McAfee

#23 Pick a Good Domain Name

Your domain name says a lot about your website. To make a good impression, keep it short, use .com or .org, and avoid hyphens.

We always hear good things about NameCheap, which is why they’re our top recommendation!

#24 Keep Ads to a Minimum

There’s nothing wrong with having ads on your site. In fact, many of the worlds’ most trusted and respected websites have advertisements – including Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. At Income Diary, ad revenue has played a major role in monetization.

That said, overwhelming your visitors with ads is only going to tell them that you care more about the almighty dollar than their user experience. Keep ads to a minimum and you’re in the clear.

#25 Be Selfless

When we don’t trust someone, it’s usually because we think they might be putting their own best interests ahead of ours. When you put a ton of your time and energy into something that very helpful to them – like a step-by-step tutorial, in-depth guide, or free ebook – and don’t ask for anything in return, it communicates that you put your readers’ needs first.

Selflessly help a person once and they’ll trust you forever.

Final Words

“If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.”

D.L. Moody

The quote above really gets to the heart of it. Ultimately, the best way to gain trust online is to have genuinely trustworthy character. Be patient, be honest, keep your promises, and treat other people the way you want to be treated.

The post 25 Ways You Can Increase Trust On Your Website appeared first on How To Make Money Online.