Life of an Internet Entrepreneur

One major indicator of the health of our economy is the state of the automotive industry. Since cars are one of the largest purchases we will make in our lifetime, we tend to put a lot of thought into it, and can generally afford a new car only during good times.

Being that times are not so great for the Detroit 3 and car sales are dropping, let’s look at some strategies that can help dealers sell cars more efficiently. This will hopefully be interesting to everyday people, and vital to car dealers to read.

I was recently reading Ari Herzog’s post about how avatars changed online, and I thought he brought up some excellent insights that you would enjoy.

According to Wikipedia, an Avatar is

 a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities.

In the early days of the internet, there was much fear of the internet, and the openness of it.  Additionally, slower modems handled small avatar graphics much better than large graphics. These were also the days where internet dating was laughed at because of the unreliability of the photos people did post.

As an entrepreneur, you often need to make do with less, go up against larger competitors, and take big risks.  One of the most important tasks for you to complete is figuring out your raison d’être, or “reason to be”.

What I mean by “reason to be”, is you need to figure out why you are doing what you are doing in the first place, what your goals are, and why you are the right person at the right time to get it done.

With the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you have more ways than ever to get your business in front of potential customers.

Graphic artists can showcase their designs with custom Twitter profiles and Myspace backgrounds. Programmers can strut their stuff by designing apps and plugins that they can give away for free as list building tools to create an audience aggregator, and PR professionals can get the word out for their client.  For the creative marketer, the list of ways to use social networking for self-promotion is virtually endless!

I recently reviewed the book How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Other Social Networks by Brad Schepp, who had interviewed myself and several others.

Here is an excerpt from the book, offering my tips for using LinkedIN to grow your business, and a few tips that weren’t in the book:

I found clients in the following ways through LinkedIN:

By type of company

When I had a service to offer a particular type of person, industry, or geographical location, I used the advanced search to target the decision makers.