Really Broke Entrepreneurs TV?

It was suggested to me, so I've been really bouncing around the idea of Really Broke Entrepreneurs Television, but since an actual television show would cost me several thousand dollars, even on public access, the natural choice would be none other than YouTube. It would be so easy - and free. I already have the ideas and format laid out, and as usual, I've developed the whole program in my mind, but the reality is that right now, I just can't make the time commitment. However, YouTube is a excellent tool for all entrepreneurs to use for their business, especially broke ones - because its free! I think its time we start harnessing the power of this fabulous service and use it for good.

Think about how many times each week or even each day you are either emailed a link to a You Tube video you just "must see", or how many websites you visit where they have highlighted a particular Video of the Day to share with their visitors. It could be a funny video or a clip of an actual newsworthy event, but videos tend to spread as fast as email chain letters. And with YouTube serving at least 100 million videos per day, I can't even imagine what that translates into in terms of actual visitors. You only need a small percentage of that to view your offering, and like it, and then share it with their friends.

Everything is popping up on YouTube these days and I'm really interested in how its gone from just a fun, social site to a serious business tool. Major companies are using it to promote their own products by uploading videos or commercials targeted to the YouTube crowd. What's been most exciting to me is the way bloggers have taken to creating video blogs to accompany their entries so you can share a more personal audience with your favorite blogger. One great example is low carb diet expert Jimmy Moore, who now does regular videos of himself (and wife Christine) preparing low carb meals or conducting an interview with another person of interest to his readers. It adds yet another dimension to the entire blogging experience and broadens your overall exposure and reach!

Did I mention that YouTube is free? Of course, they're not the only free video sharing site around, but right now they've got a lead over the others because they're the first and the most well known, and they currently have the largest number of users. I've seen some video sites where you can't comment or vote on the videos, so the experience is pretty much one-sided, but at YouTube, not only can you get feedback from the viewers but you can include links to your site and other information about yourself and your business that will help drive viewers from YouTube to your own website.

I suggested to a cake decorating friend that she set up a YouTube channel and show videos of herself creating some of her artistry, then discuss techniques and interesting stories from behind the scenes of this growing industry. I thought it would be a great way to build an audience and get exposure for her business, especially since she plans to ship her fake cakes all over the world. She hasn't put my idea into action yet, but a quick search on YouTube uncovered many others who had the same idea, and one in particular has had over 45,000 views of their cake decorating tips.

So how can you use this in your business? The same way you would use a blog. If you're selling a product, create some videos that show you demonstrating the product, or put together your own mini infomercial of others using your product and giving testimonials. Dress up your video with background music, graphics, and opening and closing credits. If you need help with this, don't hesitate to enlist the aid of the nearest teenager with a video camera - which, these days, should be just a stone's throw away! You can easily edit your video with Windows Movie Maker, a free program included with Windows.

You can also make video commercials for your service business, or create a commercial to drive traffic to your website. Have fun with it and come up with some creative ways to use this in your business. Think of it as having the keys to your local television station - and you can go on the air and do whatever you want to do without worrying about how much this is going to eat into your budget.

I'm really liking the idea of Broke Entrepreneur TV. I can just see myself interviewing local successful entrepreneurs for their backstory on how they started with next to nothing, and having them give tips to my viewing audience. Maybe even take some questions ahead of time by email. It could be a lot of fun as well!

If video doesn't interest you, next time, we'll look at how you can use podcasts to effectively market your business.

Wait...Backup...Now, Go!

You'd think I would have learned to practice what I've preached all these years - I'm always telling people to back up their data, purchase an external hard drive or backup system, or just burn it to CDs - but somehow I neglected to backup my own. As fate would have it, my computer crashed a couple of weeks ago and took several gigs of not just data but my precious years of mp3s! Actually, I'm not sure which loss hurts me the most, the data, or my music! Oh, but the story gets better, shortly after the desktop computer crashed, forcing me to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows, my laptop also shut down on me and just refused to boot up again, even with the power cord plugged in. Searching online for possible answers, it seems the problem with the laptop could be the power supply, which is going to run me at least $150, in addition to the new battery pack that it already needed, that's another $150.

My laptop had all of the same software as my desktop, and also a separate collection of several thousand mp3s, but I can't access any of that until I shell out some money. I'm working again on the desktop PC but I haven't reinstalled any software because I'm hoping to get the data professionally recovered, and reinstalling any software or saving files will overwrite what still resides on the hard drive. So I'm working bare bones right now.

I figured this was a perfect time to remind everyone to BACK THAT THANG UP! lol Don't end up nearly in a heap of tears as I was. You would have thought a relative died, who knew one could be so attached to files???? As time goes by with no recovery, I'm starting to let go of it in my mind, a little bit at a time. With every day, I find myself thinking, well, I could possibly recreate/rewrite/redownload that, but while I could maybe survive without what I lost, my kids had some things on that computer that they are pretty hurt about and I would feel bad at not at least attempting to recover their things.

Professional data recovery is no joke either. I'm looking at prices ranging from $150 to as high as $800, depending on the amount of data to be recovered. What I'm leaning toward right now is purchasing two replacement computers, one desktop and one laptop, and then letting them both go to the shop, so I'm not under a crunch to get them out.

Here's the thing though, this PC actually crashed on me about three years ago, and I found this wonderful program called Easeus Data Recovery for less than $100. I was skeptical at first but I tried the trial and I got excited when during the initial scan I could SEE my missing data flashing past me on the screen, so obviously everything was still there. This must be how criminals are caught - you never completely ERASE anything from your computer! Even if I were to overwrite it by rebuilding the system right now, let me commit a crime and CSI could still get my files back! Anyway, I sprung for the software and ran it with my heart caught in my throat - and it WORKED. Just beautifully. It took a couple of hours to complete but I think it recovered close to 100% of my files. About 20% of them were dumped into a folder called Raw Files because the software couldn't identify them, but I could easily see what they were and I just needed to sit and rename them all.

You would think I had learned my lesson then, right? I should have ran out and bought a backup system three years ago, but that kept getting pushed to the bottom of list of To Dos, Not wanting to spare the $150 bucks - and the price on external hard drives has dropped tremendously, along with everything else, so now I can get a 500 gig USB hard drive for as low as $130. Still, you can't put a price on something like this, I should have paid for the external drive years ago, and I wouldn't be here now.

Anyway, I pulled out my Easeus software, which I kept on a flash drive because you can't recover from the same drive from which you run the program - but it keeps getting to a point in the recovery where it freezes and then restarts itself. I wrote to technical support - excellent and prompt, by the way, and they want me to send screen shots and logs, so hopefully they will have a solution and not tell me that the disk is damaged and I'll have to take it in to a professional. I'm hoping to avoid that, but if I can't, I'll stop fighting it and drop it off somewhere.

I still recommend the Easeus software because it does work, they have excellent support and free upgrades, for about $86. Also, the external or portable hard drives are so cheap that you absolutely need one so you can just unplug it from your computer and take it to another system and keep working. My plan is to install both my software and save my files to the external, because its a pain to reinstall and reconfigure all of those, but at the very least, get one and keep your files on it, because software is always replaceable, data is not.

The absolute cheapest option for saving data only is a 2 GB flash drive for about $25, or 1 GB for even less. I carry around a couple of 512MB drives and they hold a LOT of files, but you may need a few of them if you're going to store mp3s on them. However, as I said, they're the cheapest option, even if you have to purchase one 2GB drive a month and keep them organized, anything is better than nothing. It can be a pain, however, to remember to unplug them wherever you use them, because I've encountered and read about problems with the USB ports from leaving them plugged in, and I've often left mine plugged in at work accidentally.

Burning to data CDs might actually be cheaper, and again, something is better than nothing, but I would try to avoid this because its time consuming and the CDs can be scratched and damaged unless you're extraordinarily careful with them. Speaking of cds, with all of this technological progress, when is someone going to come out with scratch-free CD-Rs????

Oh, I put up the Joomla blogsticker because I have article about Open Source software that I have to rewrite (sigh), but I'll try to get that one up this weekend.

Are you throwing your ideas away?

I'm so sorry for the delay in updating, but I got sidetracked by a beauty called Joomla. Why didn't someone tell me about this before? I've spent hundreds of dollars and hours on software and training to do what Joomla does for me effortlessly, but at the same time, if web development continues to progress in this direction, there won't be much need for designers. Programmers maybe, but only for tweaking because the design work is progressively being simplified into push button interfaces that a 12 year old could navigate. I don't know if that's good or bad, considering I owe more in student loans than I'm currently earning - and then Joomla comes along and says, degrees? Ha!! Just click here and it'll all be fine....

I don't want to harp too much on this because its been a hot story lately and everyone's covered it. But there's still people that I speak with who haven't heard of Ashley Qualls and amazing story of how she turned $8 into a million dollar website - all before the age of 17. Go to FastCompany for a great profile on young Ashley, and then check out doshdosh's analysis on her entrepreneurial and internet strategies. In a nutshell, Ashley was a typical teenager using MySpace where she was creating layouts for her friends. The layouts were so popular, that she put together a website to upload them and allow others to use them for free. Word spread quickly and traffic literally exploded until Ashley had to face the fact that she had unwittingly created a monster - that monster that most of us dream about creating, one that would even best Oprah.com in Google rankings.

What Ashley did with Whateverlife.com wasn't complicated. She took a simple idea, something she loved doing and imagined others would love to, and she acted on it. The rest is history. And she did it all with merely $8 for her domain name. She says that she has not spent one dime on advertising, and she originally afforded her webhosting by providing web design services for the company. This is a most incredible example of what a broke entrepreneur can accomplish with little or nothing.

How many ideas have you had that you passed on? How many did you believe in for a day or so, and then either convince yourself that it would never work, or you listened to others who laughed at it and told you not to quit your day job?

One of the most amazing things about the internet is how it opened up the opportunity for virtually any and everyone to TRY. Anything. For less than the cost of a tank of gas, you can purchase a domain name, secure webhosting, launch your business and as they say, see if it flies. Of course, you'd have to apply some marketing and SEO techniques to generate traffic, but you will have taken the steps to make it happen, and not just dream about it.

I carry a composition book around with me where I jot down my ideas all day. No matter how impossible the thought or how undeveloped, I write it down and review it later. Sometimes I scratch them out, sometimes I combine them with others and go in an entirely different direction, but I'm dedicated to not letting any more ideas just slip through my fingertips. I was in the habit of grabbing domain names whenever the thought crossed my mind and it was available, so at one point I had collected nearly 50 that I was simply holding on to. Finally, I decided to let some expire. Now the smart thing to do would have been to AUCTION them off to the highest bidder, but this was one of those times I just wasn't thinking clearly. One of them I dropped was leaveawish.com, which I originally planned to develop as a site where people could post their wishes and have an anonymous benefactor help them out by either donating to their cause or supplying them with other necessary resources. Out of curiousity I later went back to check to see if I could renew leaveawish, and found to my dismay that it was now owned by some megamillion dollar ebusiness investment firm. I was literally nauseous thinking that if they wanted that name, it must be worth something, and I had passed it off, putting it right into their hands.

That's when I purchased the composition book and I've been writing in it ever since. When I read stories like Ashley's, it reminds me of all of the simple ideas that I've thrown away for lack of time or motivation. It's not always the money that keeps success from just within our reach - sometimes its just us and our lack of action. It was Helen Keller who first said, "Ideas without action are worthless", so today, I'm instituting the first principle to follow for all Broke Entrepreneurs - TAKE ACTION. Whatever you're thinking of, take at least one step per day towards making it happen. Even if that first step is buying a composition book. Oh, and a nice pen. Something about nice new pens just make you want to write - don't you agree?