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C’mon, admit it — you made a resolution this January 1st to start an online business, didn’t you?

You see, I am NUTS when it comes to small business books. I love to read anything about entrepreneurship I can get my hands on, and if something promises to be of at least some value, I’m heading to the checkout counter to buy it (I’ll take a picture of my entrepreneurship book collection as soon as I clean up around the room if anyone wants to see it).

But every time I head to the business section of my favorite bookstore (Chapters, here in Canada) most of the books I skim are either:

1.) About stuff I can easily get for free on the Internet,
2.) The same old rehashed information from other books, or
3.) Written for business executives working in corporations.

No, you don’t need to buy a book that shows you how to register your business. Neither do you need a book that teaches you the technical stuff about registering a domain name. Those are the easy, mindless things that you can spend 30 minutes learning about from Google.

So I cherry picked the best of the best in my collection of small business books to read for aspiring online entrepreneurs who want to try their shot at a one-man business to put a little extra money in their pockets this 2009. These are books that give you more than enough of the fundamentals that you need to learn, and should be more than enough to get you started.

11 books, 11 months left in 2009 (not counting January anymore because you have to give time for Amazon to ship these books, right?). Read the books here and learn about the intricacies of online entrepreneurship. Get inspired by the stories of others, and get to action and start your online business.

Note: I actually hesitated to put a few of these books up on the list because they were best-sellers, and there’s a huge chance that you’ve probably already read them if you read business books at all. However, I realize that plenty of my readers are people just planning or dreaming about starting an online business, and likely to be beginners in their own right.

February: “Getting Real” by 37Signals

Easily one of the better books to start off the year with. 37Signals is the genius company behind web applications such as Basecamp and Backpack. The “Getting Real” method revolves around the concept of less is more in business, and really inspires you to get something out there as soon as possible. Did you know you can read the book for free? Not a bad start to a top 12 list.

March: “Ready, Fire, Aim” by Michael Masterson

This is a book by the man behind Early To Rise, one of the newsletters published by the multi-million dollar publishing company Agora Inc. The beautiful thing about this book is that it is so much more than empty rhetoric but thin on actionable items — not this one. It’s full of useful tactics and strategies, and actually breaks down what it takes to create a multimillion dollar publishing business from scratch.

April: “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson

The long tail is such an important economic trend that this book is worth reading again. A takeaway from this book is that the best strategy to online business success isn’t to sell a lot of a few, but to sell a few of a lot. I’ve read this book twice now and I’m able to pick up nuggets everytime I’ve read it.

May: “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim

How would you like to start an online business in a market that seems too crowded, but still manage to blow your competitors out of the water by finding untapped market spaces? “Blue Ocean Strategy” is THE book for innovation and differentiation. Caveat: As amazing as this book is, sometimes it reads a little too scholarly. But don’t worry, you’ll be learning way too much to even think about falling asleep while reading it.

June: “AdWords For Dummies” by Howie Jacobson

I normally don’t buy print books with anything related to the Internet simply because the medium changes so much and so often that you never know when the book you bought was out of date. However, “AdWords For Dummies” is so excellently written and tops most of the pay-per-click courses you see online (which are usually full of hype and rehash) that I didn’t hesitate to pick it up. Get this and learn the ins and outs of advertising your website online.

July: “Get to the Top On Google” by David Viney

If I generally don’t buy books on pay-per-click advertising, then I’m more hesitant to getting print books on search engine optimization. This book tells you everything you need to know about how search engine optimization works and how you can get your website to rank highly in Google. It’s a great resource, and it reads very easily — a no-brainer if you absolutely MUST get a print book on SEO.

August: “Made To Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath

Think about the number of advertisements you’ve seen today — how many can you name off the top of your head? “Made To Stick” breaks down the SUCCES formula (no, that’s not a misspelling) on what makes people remember one idea, and forget everything else. This is useful not only for creating advertising, but also for analyzing your business ideas in the first place.

September: “The E-Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber

An entrepreneurship classic. This is one of the first entrepreneurship books I’ve ever read, and I’ve come back to it many times since then. Here you will differentiate between a business and a job, discover the importance of creating systems that you can scale, and learn the true meaning of “working on your business, not in it.”

October: “Adweek Copywriting Handbook” by Joseph Sugarman

One of the better guides on copywriting I’ve seen. Direct response advertising is an absolute MUST if you want to start an online business. Joe’s salesletter style is smooth, brilliant and engaging at the same time — making the book AND his ads really easy to read. I cannot say enough about the effectiveness of this book — it’s the perfect introduction on how to start creating your own copy.

November: “Influence” by Robert Cialdini

This book is a must read and will supplement the copywriting knowledge you have learned from Joe Sugarman. Persuasion is a science and has 6 ingredients: reciprocity, commitment/consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. By using these six principles in your business, you will never have a difficult time getting sales for your products (note that “Influence” is one of the most recommended books for business professionals and entrepreneurs alike).

December: Anything and everything by Seth Godin (All Throughout The Year)

You can’t spell Godin without the letters G, O and D. Honestly, I could have an entire blog post about Seth and that would nowhere be enough. Possibly the most influencial marketing non-guru ever — and you gotta love how he actually puts what he talks about into practice. The essentials? “Purple Cow”, “Meatball Sundae”, and “All Marketers Are Liars”.

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How’d you like the list above? Let me know in the comments below!

PS. I’m thinking about doing a similar list for business blogs… If that’s something you want to see, let me know.

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Launching an online business doesn’t have to be, and isn’t, that difficult.

Making use of the Internet for your first company allows you many advantages over the traditional brick-and-mortar business.

• An online business doesn’t require a high amount of capital to start with — many businesses can be started for $200 or less.

• You can constantly test (Startup Launchr readers will soon find out how anal I get about numbers) and tweak according to what the market is telling you.

• Spreading the word is easy with the help of social media tools (how did YOU find this site?) and other vehicles for word of mouth.

• Your shop is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I could go on and on, but you probably already know all the benefits of setting up shop online or else you wouldn’t be reading this.

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Pocketpreneur has officially been launched.

It’s live and kickin’ at this very moment, so head on over the minty-fresh, brand new blog and have a see for yourself.

How I Chose The Name

If you look at the poll from a couple weeks ago, “Pocketpreneur” received over 50% of the overall votes. In addition to that, I also ran PPC ads on Facebook to test which name would generate the highest click-through rate.

Looking at the click-through rate, “Compact CEO” comes out being a slight winner with a 0.17 CTR (yes, Facebook advertising come with very low click through rates as you can see). I should’ve left the test on for longer to get more accurate data, but I’m quite an impatient man.

Next, I took “Compact CEO” and pitted it against Pocketpreneur.

Pocketpreneur pulled twice as many clicks as Compact CEO did (47 clicks after 77k impressions; Compact CEO would pull approximately 24 clicks at the same amount of impressions).

So if you have to decide on something (such as the name for your next online business, for example), pay-per-click advertising is a relatively cheap way to find out. It’s a great tool to test titles, names, concepts, and even actual products. I’m a firm believer of acting on instinct, but it’s also smart to have numbers backing up your decisions.

How does Pocketpreneur differ from Startup Launchr?

Got sidetracked there for a moment, but here we are again.

It’s quite a simple difference, really. Startup Launchr is dedicated to the execution side of things, while Pocketpreneur is for the business ideas and planning. Both topics are huge beasts, and I felt they both deserved their own dedicated platform (can’t be bad for the branding, either).

So head on over to Pocketpreneur, have a read around the published posts, and subscribe. I’m sure the one-two combination of Startup Launchr and Pocketpreneur won’t disappoint you.

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So you’ve read through the 6 rules to follow when starting your online business, and you’re itching to launch something.

You understand that your business must, first and foremost, solve a problem for a certain group of people. You’ve taken it to heart that you must be able to get your business up and running quickly. And most important of all, you understand that your business must scale and should require the same amount of work whether you’re servicing 10 or 10,000 customers.

With that said, I’m going to share you with 10 types of businesses you can work on today. These are all businesses you can start without having to quit your job, and can be worked on during nights and weekends.

Hopefully, this should generate some buzz for the launch of Startup Launchr’s sister site (name TBD — help us name the new blog, will you?).

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“What kind of business should I start?”

Most aspiring entrepreneurs ask this very question during the beginning of their journey into business. If you are like most people, the idea of starting your own business probably involves a restaurant franchise, a coffee shop, or a retail store of some sorts (such as selling clothes or books). Or, if you’re a little more in-tune with the times, you’ll be thinking of starting a technology company of some sorts and hoping to secure some venture capital funding.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with these types of businesses. However, if you’re a first-time entrepreneur (and likely, you are if you’re asking this question) these businesses are a bad idea to start with. They are very risky, take a lot of start-up capital, and you’ll most likely end up doing 12-hour work days, 7 days a week. Even more so, you are betting your most important resources (time and money) on an unproven strategy.

Instead, I challenge you to think of your first business as a pet project of some sort. Something that you are passionate about, and don’t mind spending a little bit of money here and there. You’ll never “fail” — you’re simply learning.

And to maximize your chances of success with your business, here are 6 rules you should follow when you’re launching a new business.

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