I have just two questions for you:

1) Have you downloaded your FREE copy of the “Creating Social Media Superstars” report?

2) If not, are you mad?!?

Grab your free report here:

If you like it, send it to your friends.

Dean

Global Entrepreneurship Week | Young Entrepreneurs of the World Come Together

RetiredAt21.com and RetireAt21.com is pleased to support Global Entrepreneurship Week, 17-23 November 2008, the world’s biggest single event celebrating and promoting entrepreneurship amongst young people.

Watch The Video:

If you would like to help us – with perhaps doing your own Young Entrepreneur event 17-23 November 2008 – we would be delighted to hear from you.

Right now we are also looking for suggestions and ideas for events / contests to run that week. It may appear sometime of – but we need to start planning now.

If you want to get involved directly in the program through your school or university – visit: http://www.unleashingideas.org

Please contact us using the form below. Even if you do not have an idea for involvement yet, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Include details of your website if applicable:

[CONTACT-FORM]

Five Steps to Kick-Ass Entrepreneur Success

If you want to eventually become a kick-ass entrepreneur, there are some steps you will need to take.
Many people simply wait for destiny or opportunity to come knocking, but guess what… it isn’t going to happen, you need to MAKE IT HAPPEN.
I have compiled a series of tips to help you force your own destiny and become the success you are capable of:

Be Responsible with Your Responsibilities – Listen carefully, as this part is key. You need to be able to start small, the best way to do this is to have low overheads. You do not want to be paying off a monster mortgage and seven kids when you are first starting out, at first you should be looking to get a series of low winners under your belt, and from there they will naturally grow into bigger incomes.

Have a safety net – If you have a spouse or children, you absolutely must have a safety net of income to cover life’s necessities. This includes rent, utilities, food, transportation, school, and health care expenses.

Have the right toolbox – Here is what you will need: a computer, net connection, phone, printer, digital camera and the software to be able to write content, and upload files to a web server.

The Skills to Pay the Bills – There is no point owning a computer if you don’t know how to turn it on, there is no point having software if you don’t know how to use it, and there is no point trying to be successful UNTIL you have mastered all of these tools. Don’t worry, it will seem daunting at first, but use your one hour per day and you will get the hang of it in no time.

Network - It is not always what you know, but who you know. So make sure that you make an effort to meet all your competitors, they won’t bite. Speak with all your potential advertisers, post at related forums, blog, guest blog… do whatever it takes to build a name for yourself. Your contacts list is one of the most valuable things you will ever own.

Yaro Starak Interview – an entrepreneurs journey

Michael Dunlop over at Retireat21.com (our sister site and Young Entrepreneurs Portal) has just completed a great interview with Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

You can read the transcribed interview at Yaro Starak Interview for RetireAt21.com

Or alternatively listen to the Podcast here. Thank you Michael, Thank you Yaro.

[display_podcast]

At some point in all of our lives we are going to need outside investment to turn our ideas into an actual business. However, funding is not easy to find, and as our parents keep telling us: “Money doesn’t grow on trees”.

So how do we find investors or sources of money to fund our business ideas and ventures?

Friends and Family

Ok, generally it is best to avoid working with, or partnering with friends or family. Trust me, I have done it, and it wasn’t nice. However, if you treat it as a strict business deal, and ensure you have a business plan, then they might surprise you and say yes.

Also, it might be worth asking for a % from numerous family members, as opposed to the whole amount from just one.

Co-Workers and Contacts

It is not what you know, but who you know… right? Well put this theory into practice and ask around. You may have someone on your MSN friends list, or an old work colleague etc… Don’t just limit yourself to your friends and contacts, also look at friends of friends.

Banks

Please don’t tell me you are actually considering this route? An unsecured load is one of the worst options you can take.
SBA

SBA stands for Small Business Administration. They provide loans for most types of businesses, and are backed by the government. This wouldn’t be my first choice, but it is worth considering.
Credit Cards

Actually, this IS the worst option possible. I don’t care how confident you are that you will be successful, do NOT under any circumstances use a credit card. It is a hole that many, many people cannot crawl out of, don’t do the same.

Angel Investors

Angel Investors are becoming a more and more common option, and with good reason. But where do you find them? Angel Investors that is a good starting place, plus do some google searches and ask around. Bear in mind that your business plan and your figures will have to be rock solid before you go down this route.

Good luck.

If you own a blog or content website then you are almost certainly going to want to receive as many juicy links from other websites as possible. A lot has been said about how to get links, but in my opinion, there are 5 idiot proof forms of content that will make your blog a link whore in no time.

1 – Lists – 2007 was the year of the blog list. Everyone seemed to be writing 101 ways to…. or the top 10….. so don’t miss out on this phenomenon, aim to put your content in list format wherever possible.

2 – Arguing (with intelligence) -  Arguing a point of view is a great way to get links and attention. However, arguing like a 12 year old YouTube user is only going to make you look like… well.. a 12 year old. So ensure that you have facts and logical points of view to put across.

3 – Mind Blowing Headline -  The fact that you are reading this now, means that the killer headline has grabbed your attention and guided you into the blog post… like a snake charmer playing his mesmeric tune. If you can write mind blowing headlines, you will get links and attention.

4 – Seasonal/Topical Content -  As long as I have a hole in my bottom, there will be topical and seasonal content getting huge amounts of links. For example, there will be hugely successful blog posts on April 1st that are fakes, spoofs, pranks…. there will be Christmas related blog posts on December 25th… and the week before New Years Day will almost always consist of yearly reviews. Take advantage of these seasonal tricks, and the links will flow like cheap wine.

5 – Celebs -  Don’t worry, I am not suggesting you hire Paris Hilton, despite the fact that I use “whore” in my headline. I am referring to celebs from within your industry, high profile, A-list bloggers and authority based people. Perhaps do a Q&A with them, or perhaps do n interview… just their name alone will attract attention and links.

So there we have it, 5 content techniques that a blindfolded monkey could achieve. Try them today, and enjoy all of those dirty, sexy links…. you dirty devil!

Recently I wrote a blog post that was not planned, was not analysed, and was not based on any methods or technique… I just sat down and wrote it from the heart.

The result? 64 comments in 24 hours, a response of over 140 emails within the first day, and it lead people to say things like this:

With sales copy like that only a moron would not want to hear more. I’m definitely interested in knowing what you have in the works.

Excellent piece of Marketing Dean. You have really got a knack for creating a buzz

It’s interesting to watch this buzz grow in one day. You certainly are talented at getting peoples’ attention.

Dean, your post is very good sales copy.

Ron McDaniel says you are great, and this copy is outstanding. Count me in!

Amazingly I was being hailed as a copy writing expert, and one person even emailed me and said it was the single greatest piece of web copy he had ever seen. I was well and truly baffled.

So here we are, 24 hours later, and still somewhat in a state of shock, but it is now clear why this created so much excitement….

I wrote from the heart and not the head.

I was passionate about what I was saying, everything I wrote was honest and from the heart, and somehow, that passion has leaked through my keyboard, through the cables, across continents and onto the screens of thousands of web readers.

So what is the moral of this story?

Simple. Sometimes the brain should just shut up!

Exclusive Interview with Marie-Claire from http://personal-finance-management.blogspot.com

Marie-Claire is the founder of one of the most popular personal finance blogs on the net. She is a certified management accountant by profession, and has worked for several Fortune 500 companies in New York City. On her blog she discusses topics on the wide range of personal finance subjects from investing, taxes, insurance to retirement.

This is a rare chance to get inside the mind of a personal finance expert:

1 – Marie-Claire, thankyou for taking the time to speak to us today. My first question is what is the greatest reward of being a well read blogger?

The joy of knowing that my ideas on personal finance are read by many people and in some way these ideas will able to help them.

2 – What is your motivation for blogging?

I started blogging as a hobby. Sometimes I have free time during weekends so I came with the idea of writing a blog. My work is related to finance and investing that is way my blog is focused on personal finance management.

3 – If you had to start over with http://personal-finance-management.blogspot.com what would you do differently?

No, I think I’m well satisfied with the attributes of my blog.

4 – We noticed you have had numerous Digg homepage successes, was that something you planned to achieve?

I was a Digg.com reader before writing a blog. Someone posted my article on Digg.com that`s when I noticed my site generated more traffic.

5 – What effect did those bursts of traffic have on your blog?

#1. Some of the readers of Digg are also bloggers so I got more backlinks on my blog, if there are interested in my blog posts.

#2. I got additional subscribers to my feed.

6 – What tips would you give to bloggers looking to get on the Digg homepage?

#1. Create a complete profile on Digg. This means that you should post some of your photos, link your Facebook profile and put your email address so that if there is a negative or positive feedback on your Digg post your friends can contact you.

#2. Your site should provide rich, compelling content and a good user experience, then your site will receive more interested Digg users.

#3. Write about controversial issues. Most Digg users belong to younger age group. When you write an article thinks about topics that is important this age group or things that will be helpful to them.

7 – Have you considered moving from blogspot to your own domain?

I have considered having my own domain but I will maintain Blogger as a blogging platform. Blogger is easy to use, easily indexed by Google (before Digg I get most of my traffic hits on Google searches) and I have no problems in back-end maintenance. This option is best for me because I don`t have to pay for webhosting anymore and if my traffic spiked because of Digg I will have no problem regarding bandwidth issues.

8 – For someone like myself who is fairly new to personal finance, what snippets of advice would you give?

Read my blog and subscribed to my feed.

9 – What does the future hold for you and http://personal-finance-management.blogspot.com ?

My vision for the future for my blog is to get more loyal readers through increased in feed subscription base. I also use my blog as a scratch pad for my plan to write a book on personal finance in the future.

Marie-Claire, thanks for taking the time to speak to us, and all the best for the future.

Retiredat21 Team

Move over Google, there is a new man in town, and he goes by the name of Facebook. Well…. Facebook ads to be specific.

Facebook has now moved into the world of targetted ads, and due to the amount of data they have on us all, they can be much more targeted than Google.

FaceBook Ads – Are they as useful as a chocolate fire guard?

Talk from the valley from mid 2007 suggested that Facebook ads were the poorest performing of all the click based ad systems available. They did some extensive tests and were getting a clickthrough rate of 400 for every 1 million views, which they claim is due to people socializing on the site and not being interested in ads. So that would suggest that promoting your website on Facebook may be as useful as a chocolate fireguard…. but…..

I don’t buy it

Personally I don’t buy the claim that people are not clicking Facebook ads because they are too busy poking each other. Let’s be honest, if they were genuinely busy, then they wouldn’t be on Facebook in the first place.

Also, they claim that the site is mainly just students, well, I know the article was published 6 months ago, but from what I have seen, the site has moved on a long way since starting out as a college platform. I have over 100 friends in my account, and I am 25, yet I don’t think I have one single student in my profile.

Has Facebook Peaked?

I recently read that if Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd biggest country on the planet. So that shows the huge growth that they have experienced. However, I have also spoken to contacts who claim that it will become the next Myspace… aka cesspool of the Internet.

Who knows what the future holds for Facebook, but for webmasters and marketers it is likely to only bring new changes and new options, and that can only be good.

Right, I am off to poke my mum… argghhh, that doesn’t sound right!!

2007 has been quite a year for the team at Retiredat21.com, we are not even a year old yet, but that doesn’t mean we cannot celebrate and reminisce about the most memorable posts from this blog in 2007.

11 – Exclusive Interview with the top StumbleUpon users

We found out that Stumbleupon was listing the top users on the site, so as a longshot we decided to contact them and see if they would do an interview… To our amazement they agree, and what resulted was one of the most comprehensive series’ of insider interviews on the net.

10 – The strangest Interview on the Net with Ryan Deiss

Ryan Deiss is someone we have always been keen to interview, he is the leader in making money from membership sites, and our interview was not only informative, but also very strange as well.

We enjoyed doing it, and would like to thank Ryan again for his time.

9 – The Amazing Earth Clock

To show we are not just obsessed with making huge amounts of cash, we decided to put up a clock that indicates things like levels of pollution in the world.

We didn’t expect anything from this post, but it was a huge hit at StumbleUpon, and drove tens of thousands of visitors our way.

8 – Zero Bullshit Life Advice

This post indicates a lot of what is wrong about kids today.

We are not certain if Bill Gates actually said this, but either way, it is some quality life advice that everyone should read.
7 – The Power of 7

This article comes in at…. yes, you guessed it: Number 7 on our list.

This will make you never look at the number 7 in the same way again.

6 – The 100 Hour Workweek

The now infamous 4 hour workweek by Tim Ferriss was one of the biggest successes of 2007. So we couldn’t resist making a spoof version entitled “The 100 Hour Workweek”.

4 – The Ultimate Geek Test (NSFW)

This has gotten a lot of love in 2007. First published in March, it has regularly received many daily visits.

3 – Self Improvement Advice from the Devil

This article made it onto the Digg homepage, and tens of thousands of visitors followed.

This article was the result of some very clever buzz marketing from Dean Hunt, and just goes to show what a little creativity can do for a blog post.

2 – Entrepreneur Advice from Homer Simpson

Who else would you want life and business advice from but Homer Simpson? Check out his words of wisdom.

1 – ?????????????

Our number one is offensive, edgy, creative and was a huge viral success all across the planet. Can you guess what it was? Check it out here: Viral Succes

It has been a great year at Retireat21.com, we hope you have enjoyed it, and we promise you that 2008 will be bigger and better.