This post is mostly for blog owners or those interested in blog monetization.. This is also not a paid review.

If you haven’t heard of LinkWorth, you’re really missing out. Let me tell you about LinkWorth. I found and signed up for LinkWorth as a partner on March 24th, 2008, yesterday, March 27th, 2008 I had a sale. 40.00/mo run of site text ad. How awesome is that? I didn’t do a thing. I submitted my site, got approved, went through my settings and selected what ads I would and wouldn’t accept, the terms, and thats it.

What I really like about LinkWorth is how nice the interface is. It makes it very easy to manage your site or sites.

But the real BIG plus for LinkWorth is you set your amounts! I can set the price for my links, unlike other services. Minimum payouts can be as little as 25.00 or as much as 250.00. The only thing I don’t like is how scarce the FAQ’s and Help is. Though a few have told me they are quick to reply when you need something, so I’m not too worried about that.

Anyway, won’t keep you too long. Check out LinkWorth, and if you sign-up because of this post please use my affiliate code.

I was going to write a post about Online Press Releases, but then I found this video from PRWeb.com. I have used them and in my opinion they are one of the better services. Priced right too, a normal release is 80.00.

Anyway, check out the video. It kinda sums up what a PR release can do and how easy they are to fire off.

I see a lot of business people who think they can sell to everyone. You can’t and you don’t. One way to drive your business and business plan to the bottom of the barrel is to say you sell to everybody. Yes, there are products or services that everyone needs, but you can’t provide or market to everyone. So you need to pick a specific target market to focus your efforts on. Because plainly, you won’t be selling me the same shampoo you’re selling my mother.

Think about the target group that could benefit the most from your business and hit them hard. Get really specific. With my commercial photography company I target Architects and Architecture Firms. It’s a pretty small niche and is not as crowded as say Fashion or Advertising photography.

Once you have narrowed your market down as small as you can get it, see if there are enough in that market to satisfy your business. If there aren’t, move a little broader. Do this until you find a suitable market to point yourself to.

One good resource for looking at markets and educating yourself on that markets habits are demographics and census information. Try the Census Bureau Home Page for more info on the census database. This is a free service and you can get pretty specific in your searches, down to the zipcode and county.

If you do not want to put your own demographics together, there are services you can subscribe to like DemographicsNow. With DemographicsNow you can build your own reports and get very specific. I recommend them because the reports you generate are well put together and the data is not so raw as using the Census Bureau. However, DemographicsNow runs around 1300/year. You commit to a yearly subscription. So I would suggest if you plan on accessing it very casually that this is not a service for you. Work with what the Census Bureau offers. Once you play with it a bit it becomes a lot easier to turn into something presentable!

UPDATE: 

I completely forgot about FreeDemographics.com ran by DemographicsNow.com. I would also suggest signing up there and running all the free reports you can. It still comes out looking better than raw Census Bureau data. Here is a sample report.

There are a few pivotal questions that your business plan should be able to answer. Not being able to answer these questions reflects a lack of knowledge and is simply frightening for most you present it to. You have probably heard them before, but I’m going to tell you again. They are who, what, when, how, and why.

Who -  Who are you? Who is going to be working with you? Who will be under you? Who is your target market? Who are your competitors?

What - What are you selling or offering? Is it a service or a product? What does it do?

Why - Why is your product or service different? Why should a consumer or business use your company?

How - How are you going to differentiate? How is your service going to be offered? How is your product going to be made? How are you going to market it? How marketable is it?

When - When is your service available? When is your product ready for shelves? When are marketing initiatives going to take place? When will you break even?

It probably sounds elementary, but I promise these are basic questions that YOU and YOUR business plan better be prepared to answer.

Recently, I had the privledge of attending the e-nnovations 2007 Mid Atlantic Entrepreneurs Conference. It took place the BWI Marriot hotel, which was astounding. The one thing I like about conferences: free stuff and food. Seriously, they feed you like its their job! Check out the rundown on the menu for the day.Breakfast:

• Cereals, snacks, pastries, milk, juice, water, coffee.

Lunch:

• Prime rib sliced thinly over caesar salad.
• Vegetable crab soup.
• Raspberry cheesecake.

Mid-day Snack:

• Haagen-dazs and Good Humor ice creams.
• Powerbars, fruits, granola.
• Gatorade, soda, water, juices.

Dinner:

• Spinach salad with gorgonzola cheese and walnuts w/ dressing.
• Chicken breast over rice with a light mango salsa, carrots and green beans.
• Raspberry Chocolate Cake!!

I’m still full, and that was a week ago.

We also got some free swag and snazzy name tags.

Besides brochures and ads from sponsors, along with the agenda and handouts, we also received a beautiful padfolio, a book on franchise opportunities, and a faux addidas gym bag to put it all in.

But in all seriousness, what really counts is what you take away from the conference. Which for me was handfuls of powerbars and gatorade. Just kidding (not really…). There are great networking (I know, scary.) and learning potentials at conferences. As long as you don’t eat so much you pass out in a breakout seminar. You can check out the agenda for the entrepreneurship conference by clicking here (pdf).

I managed to not just give out cards to a few people, this time I came back with someone to exchange emails with and a person who has a gig for my company. Between the food, free gear, and picking up a job.. That’s pretty sweet and goes to show you the great potential of these types of events, even if you hate networking as much as I do.