Hiya there, folks!

If you’re subscribed to this blog, then you’re most likely an aspiring entrepreneur.

As aspiring entrepreneurs, one of the questions that’s prevalent in our minds is, “What kind of business should I start?”

Hell, my blog statistics show me that the most popular category in Startup Launchr is the “business ideas” category.

Well, I finished writing my first book, and it’s called the ideaSpark: The Blueprint. It’s an entire manual that’s based on.. you guessed it, how to get your hands on that seemingly elusive business idea so you can go ahead and launch your first business.

I don’t want to talk about it TOO much yet. But I’ll tell you what.

I’m going to give away 10 free copies of the book for Startup Launchr readers. There are two ways to enter the contest:

1.) Go to the Subscribe page and enter your email address then press Submit. I’ll pick the 10 winners randomly. There will be 10 winners from this category.

2.) If you don’t want to subscribe, there’s another way to enter. Simply send me an email using the Contact page and tell me why you NEED a copy of the book. I don’t car what your reason is — it can be a sob story, it can be something that makes me laugh, whatever. Best stories win. I don’t know how many winners there will be from this category yet.

So what’s the catch? For the winners, I want you to let me know what you think of the book. My end goal is to compile an audio collage of readers praising the book (”OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVER!” is ideal, but I doubt that will happen). Don’t know if we can achieve that, but that’s what I’m aiming for.

So, you ready? Then go and enter the contest now!

Nothing displaying? Tough to read? Click here and view the Classroom in full-size. Feel free to link here.

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.

Nothing displaying? Tough to read? Click here and view the Classroom in full-size. Feel free to link here.

NOTE: StumbleUpon people, here’s a brief background to clue you in what’s happening here at Startup Launchr.

A couple of posts ago I announced that a new blog is in the works and asked for your help in naming it. The poll received a great response from Startup Launchr’s readers (that’s you guys! Don’t worry, your free report that I promised will be headed your way real soon).

In anticipation of the new blog to be launched alongside Startup Launchr (more on that in a couple of days), today’s post deals with the core elements of a successful business. This new blog will be dedicated strictly to the business ideas, and will venture to the business planning process in the near future.

Which name did I eventually choose to use, and how did I come to that conclusion? Are you hungry for ideas to help jog your mind for businesses you can start in an instant? Subscribe to the blog, and wait for the next post to find out. Till then, enjoy this week’s treat on Startup Launchr!

Every profitable business is built on a solid foundation. 4 of them, to be exact.

In order for a business to be profitable, these four elements must be in tune with each other from the core to the outer layer. They supplement the 6 rules to follow and give you a basic framework for your business model. When coming up with business ideas, think about it using this structure, starting with the core and building upon it layer by layer.

These 4 layers also serve as a troubleshooting guide. If your product isn’t selling, reverse-engineer the process. Fix your outer layers, and dig in deeper as necessary. If your outer layers are all in check and your product still isn’t selling, then maybe you need to consider moving on to the next business idea and hit a different market altogether.

Using this framework will tremendously help you in brainstorming for new business ideas, as it allows you to think of businesses, markets and products in a systematic manner. Of course, brainstorming should be as form-free as possible, but having guidelines to steer you in a general direction never hurts.

To view this Classroom in the proper order, start with the core and start going outwards.

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Photo by athena

When it comes to making business decisions, I’m a huge fan of giving equal importance to both numbers and instinct.

I thought of launching a blog about my business ideas while I was on the bus home (instinct). Before doing anything about it however, I looked at my statistics before taking any action on my idea (numbers). I’m also testing out several names to guide my decision on the URL and what to name it.

According to the numbers, people are clicking on the business idea category the most (aside from the main page and individual posts, that is). That category edges out every other category and even beats the About page in terms of clicks and visits.

When you’re running an online business, it should be a given that you NEED analytics software, and a great one at that.

Enter Clicky

Clicky is an up-and-coming web analytics software, which apparently are partners with Freewebs, Performancing and BlogFlux. They’re an alternative analytics software apart from others like SiteMeter, StatCounter and the monster-of-a-program Google Analytics.

Some of the ways you can use analytics software to your advantage:

• For blogs, look at which topics are most popular with your readers and cover those more

• Use keywords, sections and categories to determine which products you can offer your customers

• Look for pages that rank for a wide range of keywords, and model your other pages against it

• Find which keywords people are using to find your page and optimize your site for it — if you find that people are finding your site using “top mortgage lead” as the keyword then it would be smart to optimize your entire site using that keyword.

Clicky is a wonderful choice for your analytics software and can do all of these for you. In some instances, it’s a smarter option than Google Analytics. Read on to see why.

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