Earlier this month I mentioned that the Young Entrepreneur forums were getting a new look and I highlighted some of the new features. Now here is the official press release with all the details!

Entrepreneurial spirit is alive and kicking — with an estimated 26.8 million small businesses in operation in 2006, according to the US Small Business Administration. Now, young, ambitious entrepreneurs have a compelling resource to help them on their journey to business success: www.YoungEntrepreneur.com. The recently re-launched web site contains numerous tools and value-added services that are all available free of charge.

The revamped web site offers in-depth information, resources and networking opportunities for up-and-coming entrepreneurs and small-business owners — including the following new features:

• Expanded forum topics and articles to help start, manage and grow a successful business (e.g., Business Start-Up, Business Planning, Selling a Business, Famous Entrepreneur Profiles and Search Engine Optimization);
• An updated site layout that provides a sleek, user-friendly interface;
• An interactive system that offers free quotes on business services;
• Business-related videos and podcasts; and
• Free blogging service allowing site members to create their own individual blogs

“Our site stands out among other user-based communities because we have been online since 1999 and still offer our 100% FREE membership to entrepreneurs all around the world,” said co-founder Adam Toren. “We are one of the largest and most active entrepreneurial communities online and continue to grow at a rapid rate with thousands of new members joining monthly.”Since the re-launch of YoungEntrepreneur.com on November 2nd, 2007, traffic to the Web site has more than tripled. “We are on track to receive over half a million unique visitors in the month of November,” said Toren.

The increasing number of visitors to YoungEntrepreneur.com coincides with the latest findings in a study performed by UCLA. After surveying graduating MBA students, it was discovered that the number of those wishing to become an entrepreneur had doubled in the last two decades. In addition, according to the recent “Just Start” Intuit survey involving entrepreneurial trends, 81 percent of respondents said that they perceived owning a small business as more empowering than a “regular” job.

Self-proclaimed serial entrepreneurs Adam Toren and Matthew Toren recognized this growing desire for business ownership when they founded www.YoungEntrepreneur.com in 1999. To date, the web site boasts 30,000 members and approximately 130,000 forum posts. In addition to the primary address, the web site can also be accessed via a redirect from www.YEVF.com (Young Entrepreneur Venture Forum).

YoungEntrepreneur.com is based in Phoenix, AZ. It is an award-winning small business website for aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners who are truly passionate about economic development and enjoy promoting the formation and success of innovative, growth-oriented companies.

Evan Carmichael

Antonette Hoffman-Robinson is the 23 year old founder of Boobie Bib, a new product for nursing mothers.

Antonette is a new mother who found herself at home with extra time on her hands. While reading through magazines she learned about work at home moms who were making millions creating products and selling their inventions.

‘‘I knew I wanted to start my own business. It just took me having a child and finding something I’m so passionate about.”

She began her new business by sewing slings with colorful patterns that mothers could use while breastfeeding. Her original products were called “Boobie Bags”. She sold them to local mothers, changed the name to “Boobe Bibs” and created a website www.theboobiebib.com.

The website was noticed by a local retail store who then decided they would carry Antonette’s new product line.

Now Antonette is considering what the best way to expand will be. ‘‘I’m on the fence about whether I want to have it manufactured or start hiring some work-at-home moms who are great at sewing. It’s not odd that I’m doing this at 23.”

All it took was that magazine article to get her started on her entrepreneurial path.

What got you motivated to start your business?

Evan Carmichael

You work hard on your blog researching and posting every day but how does it compare to others in your industry? You can check it out at Blog Juice.

The Blog Juice calculator is a free tool that will provide you with valuable information about the value of your blog or website, and it’s popularity in relation to similar sites.

I put in our Young Entrepreneur blog and we got a Blog Juice score of 3.3.

The score you get is determined by looking at how you rank in Technorati, Alexa, and Bloglines as well as how many direct links you have to your site.

Bloglines accounts for 40% of your score (YE is 48), Alexa accounts for 15% of your score (YE is 27,040), Technoratiy accounts for 30% of your score (YE is 64,717) and direct links account for the final 15% of your score (YE has 159 links).

While the scoring model might not be perfect it does give you an indication of how you are doing compared to your competition. The tool will also show you the competitors who are slightly ahead of you and slightly below you. J

ust above us, for example, is wolf-howl.com with a 3.4 BlogJuice and just below is pulverblog.pulver.com with a 3.2 BlogJuice.

You can also pick a category to find other blogs that are in your industry. There wasn’t one on entrepreneurship so the closest one for Young Entrepreneur would be Computer / Technology or Money / Finance.

Finally, BlogJuice gives you the option to compare your blog against someone else’s if you have a specific one in mind that you want to match up in a head-to-head analysis.

What is your BlogJuice score?

Evan Carmichael

One of the things I’ve found with many startup entrepreneurs is that they get very excited about new ideas and don’t have the patience to actually follow through on the execution part of it. Most entrepreneurs have a million business ideas running through their heads but continue to jump from one to another instead of sticking with just one.

I’m a part of a Mastermind Group here in Toronto where business owners from different walks of life come together once a month to discuss their businesses. We talk about our plans, our problems, and our goals. Throughout the month we also set up a weekly call with one of the members to help everyone stay accountable.

It’s easy to set goals but then never follow through. When you commit to someone else, however, you are more likely to take action and achieve your goals.

Do you have someone to hold you accountable? It could be a family member, a friend, a business partner, or another entrepreneur. What’s important is that you respect the person, ideally they have some business experience, and you will listen to their advice.

Once you find an accountability partner set regular times to touch base. It could be quarterly, monthly or weekly - as long as progress it being made in between check-ins. You could connect by phone or set up a face to face meeting. Choose a format that best suits your learning style.

Connecting with other entrepreneurs on a regular basis also helps you stay motivated through the tough times. It can help rejuvenate you, give you more energy, and fill you with ideas to help you get over the business hurdles you are facing.

Do you have anybody who holds you accountable for actually doing what you say you are going to do?

Evan Carmichael

“It sounds crazy,” says Chris DeWolfe, “but even in the first plan that I wrote up, I mentioned AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail, knowing we would be big. And it’s crazy to think that it happened.”

Together, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson have over 200 million “friends” and chances are you might be one of them. The two buddies are the brains behind MySpace.com, the online networking site that has taken the world by storm.

The second venture for the pair, DeWolfe and Anderson’s first company was sold for several million dollars.

Now, MySpace.com, which allows members to create interactive profiles, blogs, and post just about anything they want, is the sixth most popular website in the world, and the third most popular in the U.S.

I’m a big fan on a show called The Hour. It’s a Canadian-based, late night talk show geared towards a younger audience and is hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos. The show takes a different take on the news through the lens of George and company. While news shows cover the issues of the day, The Hour dissects the issues within the issues.

George interviewed Tom Anderson on The Hour about the success of MySpace and I thought it would be worth sharing with you as a motivational tool of what is possible when you start your own business. You can check it out on YouTube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=-yWpnto-hqQ - the total clip is eight and a half minutes and worth the watch!

Another great one to watch is Steve Job’s speech at Stanford University (just over 14 minutes) - http://youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA 

What are your favorite entrepreneurial videos?

Evan Carmichael

If you’re planning on building an organization beyond yourself the biggest challenge you will face will be how to attract good employees and how to keep them motivated. You can only do so much work yourself and, at the end of the day, your company will only be as good as the people you employ.

So how do you keep employees motivated? For this week’s edition of Entrepreneur University we turn to HR expert Dr. Fathi El-Nadi. Dr. El-Nadi currently teaching Management, HR, Strategic Management, and OB at a member of prominent private universities in Egypt.

“Although Abraham Maslow had discussed the highly complicated task of reaching a concrete definition of the basic human needs, it naturally follows that there are no easy assumptions concerning what employees really want from their organizations. In fact, the various types of their human needs will be eventually converted into specific ‘wants.’ Consequently, an in-depth look at typical employees wants and how organizations may satisfy them, will reveal some relatedness to Maslow’s ‘Pyramid of Needs’ as follows:

A Meaningful Job:

A very difficult want to supply in today’s world of constant change and demands, particularly in large organizations with division of work culture. A meaningful job is the core to job satisfaction. It has got to do with the job content and how challenging it is. We are talking here about not only the employee’s skills and ability to do his/her job, but his talents to apply creative and innovative ways to do it. Individual’s need for both recognition and drive for self-actualization can be integrated in job enrichment to comply with individual wants. Therefore, the ability of the organization to maintain a good caliber of loyal employees who believe in the value of their jobs in the success of the organization is considered crucial in enhancing organizational competitiveness.

Fair Pay: could be considered the most important of all the basic needs as it should be secured in order for the individual to be able to satisfy any of his basic needs. In other words, a fair pay helps satisfying multiple physiological, security, and egoistic needs, even if it cannot alone motivate the whole person. The problem lies in how an organization ensures that their pay will be perceived by its employees as fair and competitive. From experience, I can safely say that pay is the most argued aspect of any organization.

Job Security: A want which is high on the list due to the constant internal and external environmental threats such as the fast pace technological change, fierce competition, unstable economies, mergers, and downsizing. They all result in escalating sense of insecurity on the part of employees. In fact, unless any pay level is paired with job security employees will still feel insecure of losing their jobs any time and with them the pay they were getting. Organizational ruthlessness in this area poses the toughest challenge to business leaders to formulate plans and strategies that ensure a good market share and growth in order to be able to at least maintain their organizations existing employment levels.

Congenial Associates:

The want emanates from the social need of gregariousness and social acceptance. Here, management can assist the process through careful planning of orientation programs and socialization through rest periods and recreational activities, as well as promoting the formation of work teams. Human related work procedures can also be designed in such a way to make all this possible. Teamwork and team spirit can only be nurtured if the work place becomes a place of functional, interrelated homogeneous teams working together.

Credit for Excelling:

This want stems from the individuals egoistic needs and can be supplied by management through verbal praise of excellent work, monetary rewards for suggestions, as well as public recognition through awards or interviews in employees’ magazines, newsletters and bulletin boards. Recharging employees’ batteries is key to loyalty, increased productivity, and superior quality. It is a sure ticket to escalating net profit.

Opportunity to Advance:

Not all employees want primarily to advance their careers. A strange discovery but true though. Some feel the social needs more strongly than the egoistic ones, but most employees certainly want to be assured that the opportunity is there. They are reluctant to take new responsibility and feel more comfortable with a stable job that requires a ‘good doer’. Such a feeling is influenced by a complicated cultural tradition mix of freedom and opportunity. As a general rule career advancement and development pose a great challenge to the organizations of today.

Attractive Work Conditions:

Working in a safe, comfortable work environment is a strong want. It is driven by multiple needs. People spend at work more than they spend at home with their families, relatives, and friends. A good quality of work life is therefore very important to their well being at the workplace. It also helps in reducing the medication bill, and reduces personal conflicts, and condition employees to tolerate more work pressures.

Competent Leadership:

The want for competent, fair leadership who are human needs oriented and are qualified to inspire and lead by example is becoming a strong demand in the modern workplace scene. Competent leaders satisfy both psychological and physiological needs of the employees. They ensure organizational competitiveness and growth which mean both status and job security for the employees. They also set directions, transparency, and inject new ideas and vision into the organization culture and the workplace dynamics.

A Socially Relevant Organization This want ensues from a self-esteem need, and levies a highly challenging responsibility upon organizational leaders. Sensitivity to the social responsibility of today’s organizations is an important factor in gaining social acceptance for both the organization and its employees. It could be considered as a ‘social investment’ that yields a high return for the shareholders and stakeholders alike. Helping the community develop is in fact helping employees have a sense of ‘belonging’ to the organization as part of their community and not an alienated body with a dominating goal of making money. This kind of interaction between the organization and the community would eventually develop into a customer driven win/win organizational culture.”

What do you do to motivate your employees?

Evan Carmichael

Our 15th Review our Blog entry comes thanks to Joshua Saunders from Ramblings of an Entrepreneur. You can read what he had to say about us in his blog post: The Place to Learn and Network with Young Entrepreneurs.

According to Joshua:

Ramblings of an Entrepreneur contains: The path to starting a successful business - Insights and ideas by Joshua Saunders. Joshua’s interests are: All areas of business, entrepreneurship, start-ups and internet business, Chicago community organizations affecting youth, Public safety / product safety, and Engineering and new inventions.

Thanks for the review Joshua! If you are interested in doing a review, check out our Review Our Blog initiative for instructions.

Evan Carmichael

How much are you willing to give up to launch your business? Would you say no to a full college scholarship and drop out of university?

That is exactly what Bryan Sims, CEO of Brass Magazine did. Bryan was recently voted to Business Week’s list of top entrepreneurs under 25 years of age.

His company is a magazine publisher that focuses on helping young people learn about how to manage their money. When he was 19, Bryan dropped out of college, gave up his full scholarship and focused on building Brass Magazine. I learned about Bryan through an interview with Marketplace.

“There was a lot of people that were pretty skeptical and saying, “Oh, why are you leaving school? You’re not gonna get another shot with scholarships like this . . .” and so. I mean, it was the middle of 2003, and we were trying to raise money for a company starting a lifestyle magazine out of Corvalis, Ore. So, not exactly a lot of people were investing in the idea at the time.”

Now, at the age of 24, Bryan continues to focus on building Brass Magazine into a leading financial publication for young people. Instead of offering in depth articles he provides shorter, more practical advice on topics today’s youth care about such as saving money on road trips or improving your credit score.

Talking about why he dropped out and started the company, Bryan said:

“Well, because of the fact that I’d started the company and then my dad’s working at the company. I came home from school one time and was talking with him and my mom about things, and they said that, like most parents said, “We want you to stay in school and to get a degree.”

But in the same conversation, basically said that if Brass didn’t get off the ground that they’re gonna have to file for bankruptcy, because we had, you know, put everything we had into it. So I decided to leave school, move back home with my parents and focus on getting business off the ground full-time.”

What have you given up to start your business?

Evan Carmichael

Adding on to my post from earlier today I thought it would be useful to look at some of the interesting links that point to our favorite site, YoungEntrepreneur.com.

While I don’t have access to the Google webmaster tools account you can do a quick look for links to any site by going searching for link:url in Google.

Link:www.youngentrepreneur.com for example shows 388 links (Note: YoungEntrepreneur.com has way more than 388 links to the site. This is just a sampling of what Google actually recognizes).

The best way to find out the true number of links to your site is through your Google webmaster tools account.

Some of the interesting links include:

Links From Other Blogs

• Would You Like To Buy My T-Shirt?
• refraining

Directories

• Business.com
• AllBusiness.com

Various Online Lists

• Totalcoop.com
• Internetlisted.net
• StudySphere.com
• entrepreneur.net

This is only a sampling from the first 30 link results that Google recognizes.

Have you found any interesting websites linking to you?

Evan Carmichael

According to my Google Webmaster Central Tools I have a total of 15,937 links to my site. 4,523 of them go to my homepage while the remaining 11,414 go to various pages on my site. My last sitemap indicated that I have 34,789 pages of content on my website so, excluding the homepage, I have about one link for every three pages of content.

I think it’s important to also note that I don’t do any link buying and never tell people what anchor text to use when they link to me. I always suggest that they use whatever text they feel best describes the page they are linking to on my site (if everyone links to you with the same anchor text you can get penalized from Google).

Looking through the links I have to my site I noticed a few interesting sites that you might be able to leverage for your own website. Note that I have never actually gone out and asked these sites to link to me - I was added because one of my readers thought the content was useful enough to post.

An aggressive entrepreneur could use these websites, however, to promote their own business and gain additional links.

Wikipedia.org

While the links from Wikipedia are “nofollow” (Google doesn’t recognize them as giving you Page Rank) they do help drive traffic to your site. My site is currently listed on Wikipedia for a number of terms including: Cold Calling, Fredrick W. Smith (FedEx founder), and Ray Croc (McDonald’s founder). I’m even listed as a resource for List of Hungarian Articles for an article on Steven Spielberg (I’m not Hungarian or American).

StumbleUpon

I added my site to StumbleUpon when I first heard about the service. I saved and tagged a few articles but gave up after I didn’t see immediate results. I’m glad my readers continued to Stumble my articles! StumbleUpon continues to send me traffic every day - one week they even sent me over 5,000 page views! I’m now looking at how to get more of my pages listed in StumbleUpon as it has proved to be an effective source of traffic.

Craigslist

I run a series of events for Toronto entrepreneurs and often post them on Craigslist. The postings send me qualified, targeted traffic and the listings often get ranked alongside my own site for the keywords that describe the event. It’s free to put up a post on Craigslist and they have a massive audience to promote yourself to.

del.icio.us

Again, with del.icio.us I signed up an account a long time ago, posted my site and forgot about it. As it has increased in popularity a number of my readers have now bookmarked sections of the site and I get links and traffic every day from new members who are expanding their del.icio.us profiles. In looking through the list, one of them even includes MarkChg who bookmarked the profile I did on Young Entrepreneur Founders Adam and Matthew Toren!

Kiva

Kiva is a microfinancing organization that lets you lend out money to entrepreneurs in developing countries (all loans are interest-free). I launched an initiative called SEO for Africa here in Toronto where I give workshops on SEO and the proceeds go to support entrepreneurs in Africa through Kiva. Kiva allows you to set up a profile so we did one for SEO for Africa. On the profile you can include a link back to your site and now it’s sending us traffic every day. By doing good deeds you can also help build your website traffic!

Mr. Wong

Mr. Wong is another bookmarking site. They call themselves “Master of all bookmarks.” My site has been tagged (again, not by me) for business keywords like hrm management. I also ended up on there for Cinderella!

Business.com

While directories traditionally haven’t been a good source of links or traffic for me, Business.com seems to be one of the exceptions. It could be because they are highly targeted on the business community and because they didn’t seem to be effected by Google’s recent crackdown on poor quality directories. I don’t actually remember signing up to get my site listed but I’m sure that I didn’t pay for it so all in all it’s been a good experience. Some directories still carry some weight and are worth submitting to.

I hope this post have given you some out of the box ideas on how to build links and drive traffic. And remember - I never actually went out to aggressively promote myself through these sites so with a little bit of effort you should be able to yield some results.

Which sites do you get interesting links from?

Evan Carmichael