I don't care what people say but being optimistic at all times is the worst thing you can be. If you are optimistic at all times then you are in a state of fully daydreaming. In your mind the underdog always wins; web site traffic pours like thunderstorm; money grows on trees; and stock market always goes up and so on...

At the same time being Pessimistic at all times is equally worse. In your mind you have the worst luck; you can never win; there are too many other people better than you; everything you try to do the opposite happens. People who are pessimistic at all times tend to not do anything at all because they say to themselves "if i'm going to fail then why bother trying!" and my answer is always "but if you don't try, you never know!".

Here is where the balance comes in, both optimists and pessimists are only right about half of the things and in the real business world they fully compliment one another. since examples are the best way to convey a message here are a few of them:
 

1)

OPTIMIST would say:
"We have a web 2.0 idea and when we make it and launch it, within 1 year we'll be like google"

PESSIMIST Would say
"We can never beat or match google so why bother"

BALANCE of the two results:
"It's hard to beat google, but we still have a chance to make good grounds, and what if we never get the traffic we need to make decent money so what do we have to do? lets plan this to the smallest detail"
 

2)

OPTIMIST would say:
"We have an idea and millions of people would want it"

PESSIMIST Would say
"it's a stupid idea because nobody would want it"

BALANCE of the two results:
"What would make a million people want it? and what do we need to consider if nobody wants it? Either way lets put our target getting a 1,000 customers first then we can worry about the next 10,000 and the next 100,000 and eventual million target"

What is the BALANCE?

Balance allows you to see things in perspective, like seeing both sides of the coin, it helps you plan for the best and the worst. Knowing about the worst things allows you to be prepared in case they happen, also knowing there even worse things that could happen also gives you enough motivation to be optimistic about even the little gains. Balance allows you appreciate you gains, your efforts and your life. It's helps you avoid pitfalls and makes every mistake a step closer the ultimate success.
 

So go ahead and be pessimistic and optimistic at the same time. It's only good for you!

It is obvious that business is about managing money. You'd be surprised to know that majority of Online Businesses, web developers, designers, advertisers and bloggers cannot manage money. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why web 2.0 sites go after funding the VC firms look into management and want to see a manager with at least MBA running things.

Managing money is about what you can, cannot and should not buy. Just because you have money doesn't mean that you should spend right away. Sometimes the biggest mistake a starup makes revolves around spending money at the wrong time towards the wrong thing.

Managing Money is about being smart and thoughtful with money, here are a few ways to be smarter with money

Expenses

No matter who you are or what you do you've got expenses whether you like it or not. Being smart with money would allow you to analyze your expenses, take out the unnecessary ones or bargain for better deals. For example, there are hundreds of options for having a cell phone plan, but researching a little about you talking habits allows you select the most appropriate plan that over time saves you money. You can apply this to cars payments, office lease, Internet and tv bills, computers equipment, starbucks coffee, lunch and dinner.

Employees

If you are working on your own then you are your own employee and not your own boss. If you are in the online business and you're making money then the chances are that there multiple employees working in that company. Most startups, as soon as they come in contact with money they go crazy with hiring thinking that the same money they're making this is going to continue to next year and year after that. Not so fast, in the online work you can be on top one months and at the bottom by years end. Never estimate or speculate when it comes to online. Keep you team small, and hold on tight to your money.

Hosting

Hosting can be very cheap or very expensive, but did you know that it doesn't matter what kind of hosting you start with for as long as it is flexible enough to grow as you grow. If you have a blog, or thinking of starting one, think for a second what is your blog going to be, if it's a hobby blog then a cheap shared hosting with $5-10/month hosting is good enough, but if you intend to really promote the site and make a bit of income on the side while holding your day job then stay away from shared hosting and go with a small Virtual Server for $30-50/month and as the traffic to your site grow so can your server resources this way you don't have to spend more that you need.

I know a few startups that before they even had a decent application on their hand they were going around shopping for servers and co-location options. As a startup stick with small, go with a small Virtual Server, this way if you hit big you can easily upgrade to fully dedicated servers and multi server with load balancing options but don't blow the money you don't have right from the get go, what if you're doesn't pick up at all, all that money wasted!!!

Marketing

Every business, website or blogs needs to be marketed otherwise how would people find out about it. But did you know that in this day and age the most effective marketing doesn't actually cost a penny? all it costs it time! in the next article i will be talking a great deal about this.

We use names to identify with People, object and subjects. Brands names are basically the names that have become popular. To come up with is rather simple, if you want to name a baby all you have to do is to go to a baby names website and pick the one you like best, but making brand names are not only tough in practice but even tougher from a scientific point of view. Brand names are in fact scientifically made, coincidentally or not.

The Logical Definition of Brand Names:

Brand Name = Name + Brand Positioning + Strategy + Marketing

Naming:

No matter what your business is everybody needs to identify you some how. But just having a name is not enough, your name should be easy to read and understand; it also has to be memorable and friendly.

Unique names tend to be special since they are new words people have never heard before and any sort of definition you give to it has the tendency to stick. The biggest problem however is unique names tend to be easy to forget unless you have the resources and money to keep repeating it until it becomes a part of natural language. It's hard to come up with unique names, you can mash up a few alphabets together but names also have to make sense. Web 2.0 sites have exhausted the idea that a misspelled word is still a unique name, in my opinion if there is a spelling error in a name it just shows the dumbness of its creators. Flickr was a clever name because it was among the first but every other similar name that came after was really dumb and since the idea was no longer unique and clever it lost its appeal.

How to find a good name?

To find a good name first make a list of keywords. By keywords i mean words that mean want your name is trying to represent. Categorize each keyword into definition groups, so if you have a whole bunch of keywords but 5-6 of them basically mean "inventive" then create a group called "inventive" and put all the keywords associated with that meaning under that group. Next find as many COOL words that are also synonymous with "Inventive" by looking into thesaurus part of dictionary, also don't forget to look into other languages to find cool translations.

When you have lots of words that seem to be cool enough start the word play. Playing with words involves mixing up words that are in the same category or in the contrasting category, manipulating words, cutting words into pieces and matching them with other pieces from other words. The list goes on. The goal is to come up with at least 50 new words.

To make sure your new names are easy to read try to read them out loud your self and ask others to read it out loud as well. If you find that you have to correct others in pronunciation then there is something wrong with that name. Forget fixing up words at this point. you have lots of names to go through. The words that pass the "read" test move on to "understandable" test.

To see if your new name is understandable, ask people to see if they can guess what the each word suppose to mean. Better yet, ask them what is the first thing that comes into their mind. Narrow the list down to those words that convey the some what original meaning.

You list should be very short by now, i'm guessing we are down to about 5 to 10 from 50. You next goal should be to narrow it down to 3. Sometimes it's a matter of taste or a hunch, no matter how you decide to narrow down the list the important thing is that you as the new owner of the name can totally relate to them name.

When you have you top 3, it's time to do some more research. If your name is going to be a global player then it has to have safe meanings in all of the popular markets. I have my own way which is a proprietary way used in the industry and i can't disclose it yet, i can't bite the hand that is feeding me. But i will give you an example, There is a clothing company in Canada and it's called ROOTS, when the Olympics was held in Australia, ROOTS was the clothing sponsor for the Canadian Team, Little did they know in Australia ROOTS means having sex. The ROOTS name was ridiculed all over the world, it was a disaster for the brand name because it was opening locations in Europe and Australia and after what was thought to be a great investment ended up forcing the company to abandon its plans and invest in only North America.

Back to conclusion, After you've done your research on all your top 3 names then now is the time to pick one. But before you pick that 1 special name consider the following:

• make sure .com domain of that name is available
• finalize any changes to the alphabetical structure of the name
• search the trade marks database to make sure the name is available
• search google to see if anybody else is using the name and what are they using it for
• make sure the name has a clean, safe and trusting meaning

Now you have a name, good luck!

Brand Name = Name + Brand Positioning + Strategy + Marketing
 

It doesn't matter if you own a simple blog or a complex web app, to survive you need to be mentioned on other news blogs and editorial news sources as often as possible. While you might look at being mentioned on news sources as publicity, in reality what you getting is far more important; you're gaining respect and acknowledgment. So next time you're thinking about how you can be mentioned on popular sites like TechCrunch, Mashable, GigOm, CNET, Wired, or any other on constant basis think about how you can build up on your reputation first and everything else would fall into their place much easier.

important: A full featured website that has done all the needed development up front and doesn't need to do much else is unfortunately newsworthy only once. If you don't need to innovate or improve on your perfection then there isn't much else news sites can talk about other than what they have said at the beginning. Take the examples of Truemors, Pownce, and Answers.com for example, they have not done any major updates or upgrades since the last time of their world wide web coverage. They haven't even redesigned their site and as a result you don't see them being mentioned on news blogs. Why is that? well, they don't have anything news worthy.

The trick of publicity savvy and business minded innovators is to draw a very complete and solid plan but release in phases. revealing all your cards at once doesn't do you any good but having something new to show for every few weeks keeps blogs on their tails as to what you have in store for them. Though most of the things you want to do are pre-planned but a multi phase release shows that you are constantly innovating under the hood, it also shows that you are pretty serious when it comes to taking care of business not to mention that you are trustworthy when it comes to taking care of people and that makes you newsworthy on a constant basis. Take the examples of FaceBook, Apple and Google, none of the news sites can't get enough of them, not because their are brand names but because they have something new that news sites can talk about. How do you think great brands are built anyways???

Whether your project is a startup or small business site, you should stay away from marketing at all costs. Marketing is basically spending money to promote your site by buying advertising space, paying for editorial features, mail outs, and the list goes on. Your Marketing effort is measured by ROI - Return of Investments and since as a startup to small business your level of brand reputation is low all your marketing efforts will go to waste anyways. Instead of marketing you should Campaign. Campaigning doesn't necessarily cost money, there are a lot back alley ways to getting your name out there without needing to spend a dime!

Campaigning is much harder than marketing which is one of the biggest reasons why most businesses take the easier way out. My philosophy is "No Sweat, No Result" meaning you have to work hard, you should NOT start thinking of cheating the system right from the get go, in other words stay away from the lazy route.

To Campaign first measure your competency with available opportunities, know where you are most strong and leverage your strengths to enhance your brand by giving it personality. I know an entrepreneur who was great at public speaking, so to promote his business/brand/product he kept participating in all sorts of forums and conferences. He aligned his speeches so that he can integrate a part of his brand into them. In a way his was selling his brand indirectly and was getting paid a lot of money to promote his own business.

Focus on speed, develop a competitive instinct, know that it's a jungle out there, you either kill or be killed. In this world R&D does NOT mean Research and Development, R&D means Rub and Duplicate as soon as possible, never let your business lose it's competitive advantage to another party. Come out with a simple idea you can stamp into everyones brain then expand the idea by adding more aligned products and features. Do NOT tangent into off topic industries, for example, if your site is about cars, don't tangent off into talking about politics, but instead expand by adding motorcycles, or motor sports and so on, keep everything relevant because your existing customers are the most profitable ones.

Campaigning is time focused. you cannot expect a campaign to last you a year, most campaign run for only a few months. The beginning of a campaign is a critical time, you have to be able to come out hard and fast. To do so, Exploit the gravitational center of your industry with space and energy. Find out what drives your industry and try to be controversial, or critical and at best interesting. People love to read about controversy and cannot stand criticism while they constantly seek better benefits, and blogs love to write about what people like to read.

Forget about soft selling. Replace soft selling metrics like satisfaction, delight, impressions and gifts, with hard campaigning metrics like big benefits, revolutions and evolutions all with revenues and margins in mind. Your business should be focused on building revenue streams rather sales channels.

Don't just run an ad for 3 months while thinking you have 3 months of nothing else to do. In 3 months you should constantly update and upgrade your site, enhance the user experience, experiment with different campaign strategies, and live in a suitcase going from city to city, newspaper to newspaper, radio to radio. You have to let everybody know that you are serious about this. This is no longer the time where you can get away with BETA software and half baked business ideas. Each business idea has only one chance to make an impact, sitting around and spending money on ad dollars wouldn't get you there! It's you against the whole world!