Members of StartupDelight will now join our Startups.com Community, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome them and let them know how glad we are that they have joined us. For those of you who are unfamiliar with StartupDelight, some background info:

The more people we have in our community, the better Deals we are going to be able to get on the apps, services, and tools we need to grow our businesses.

If you see that your traffic picks up suddenly but you’re not sure WHY, then it’s going to be next to impossible for you to be able to duplicate and build upon those results. Web analytics also help us as business owners to recognize when something’s just not working and when we need to pull the plug.

Check out the Web Analytics you don’t need a degree to Understand with our Deal today for Spring Metrics.

We can’t afford to ignore the numbers but if you’re like me, you may not always have a chance to look at your web analytics and metrics as in-depth as you would like to, and let’s face it – some of us just aren’t that skilled at figuring out what the numbers are trying to tell us.

A lot of entrepreneurs are Idea People. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Without innovative ideas and inspiration, nothing exciting or new would ever happen or be created. And that wouldn’t be we a whole lot of fun now, would it? If you’re an Idea Person, don’t be ashamed of it. Fly your Idea Person Flag high.

At the same time, it’s important to realize our limitations and to outsource or delegate the things we need done but aren’t great at doing ourselves. For me, that includes analyzing web analytics.

Web analytics give website owners a road map that helps them identify potential problems and their solutions. They allow us to test our ideas and to receive concrete metrics to help us analyze our results. The objective data we get from our analytics help us to identify weak areas of our branding and to strengthen them before it’s too late. Analytics can even help us establish our brand and differentiate it from all the other guys out there.

Stone (seated at right) with President Gerald Ford in the Oval Office

In 1960, Stone teamed up with Napoleon Hill to author Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude. I have found his work and life inspirational for a long time (He lived to be 100 years old!) and I’d like to pass on some of that inspiration to you as a way to remember this great man. (He passed away in September 2002)

The 5 Quotes I Read When I need Motivation (or when I feel frustrated with my business) are all from William Clement Stone:

“No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.”

“Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.”

“Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.”

“Everyone who achieves success in a great venture, solves each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves. And they were helped through powers known and unknown to them at the time they set out on their voyage. They keep going regardless of the obstacles they met.”

“Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be.”

I don’t know about you but that’s magic. Although I didn’t grow up in the States, I’ve always had that sort of “American Dream” attitude I guess. I’ve always believed that whomever I want to be, whatever I want to do… I CAN do. It’s just a matter of figuring out HOW. How to get there. How to make it work. How to be the man I want to become.

Finding inspiration and motivation can be hard. I have a dear friend who is an artist and he told me recently that he’s been struggling with finding the motivation and inspiration to work. We talked a bit about what’s been going on in his life recently and it occurred to me that he’s closed himself off from the art world.

I got to thinking about how hard that would be for me – to work without a community of folks to bounce ideas off of and to draw inspiration from.

I guess what I’m trying to say is Thanks. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being part of the Startups.com Community. And please… share your stories… your successes… your favorite quotes… with us. We’d love to hear ‘em.

It has been an eventful day in the world of business and startups… and it has got me thinking about change and specifically business changes and pivots. Which brings me to:

Pivoting Your Business to a Higher Level | Business Pivot …
A business pivot is an operational change driven by a combination of observation, information, and inspiration. With the pace of change today, it should be considered regularly by all businesses.

http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/management/business-planning/pivoting-your-business-higher-level

Our Business Pivot to Freemium: Insights from the Process | The …
Last week, author and tech fan, Tom Taulli of Forbes posted “Should Your Company Go Freemium”, a summary of discussions we have had on the topic. Genius.

http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/5266/our-business-pivot-to-freemium-insights-from-the-process.html

The Pivot With Aaron Batalion of LivingSocial
LivingSocial CTO and Co-Founder Aaron Batalion shares the story of how LivingSocial changed it’s business or in lean startup terms “pivoted” to become the social commerce business they are today at the Tech Cocktail Startup Mixology Conference in Chi…

Pivot and Profit – The 3 Key Habits of Success for Entrepreneurs

Think you’re an entrepreneur? Do you have the passion to go the distance and share that with others? What about the boring stuff, the organization and delivery of a business that creates replicatable, predictable results? Blog post at declandunn.com …

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Obviously, LivingSocial is one of the biggest business pivots in recent memory. You may or may not remember them from their Visual Bookshelf app on Facebook a few years ago. It let you post a list of books you’ve read and the stuff you’d like to read to your profile. It was sort of fun, if you read a lot or cared what your FB friends were reading.

Later they came out with PickYourFive and a few other poll-type apps for Facebook and then a couple of years ago, folks really started to take notice when they acquired BuyYourFriendADrink. (Because really, who wouldn’t want to buy their friends a drink, right?  Especially when they send one back to you. Not to mention that some of the drink choices were hilarious in aืd of themselves. Virtual party, actual fun.)

After their success with BuyYourFriendADrink, they launched a daily deals business and now they’re projected to make $500 million this year. From a less than thrilling app about a bookshelf to $500 million in like 3 years. Is this the most dramatic business pivot in history or what? Possibly not but it’s certainly the most interesting.

LivingSocial recently launched a Family edition and plans to launch a college edition for their daily deals as well. They’re working on expanding into new markets and countries and show no sign of slowing down.

Chris Dixon (from Hulu and other startups fame) said “In my experience, the most common mistake is to pivot too late.”

So I’d like to hear from you… have you pivoted a business? Was the pivot successful? What are some other great Business Pivot stories? You all know how much I love a great success story…

I’m slightly addicted to slashdot.org. And I really do hate to bring it up again (after just mentioning it yesterday), and no… I’m not at all affiliated with them… BUT… Their poll today:

I do my best coding after…

This got me to thinking… (no, not about beer!) about the benefits of working from home and entrepreneurship in general. Sure, we all know there are pitfalls and struggles in the lives of Startups and Founders but there are also some really great aspects of working for yourself… on your own terms.

Source: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, cropped by Remember the dot

A totally strange yet hopefully interesting tangent here for a minute… I was talking to one of our writers the other day and apparently she went to Hope College with Rob Mulda (the creator of Slashdot). I’ve been reading Slashdot since probably about the time they started (as I was just getting into the Online World myself then) and I tried to get our writer to tell me some interesting info about this huge legend and inspiration in my eyes.

As you probably have noticed, I love biographies and autobiographies of entrepreneurs and other successful people and I thought this was finally my chance to really get the inside info…

Do you know what our writer told me? “He can’t smell.”

That wasn’t really the sort of information I was looking for and I don’t know if that’s even true, so I don’t want to start rumors about the man.

Back to the benefits of working at home… Personally, I love the freedom it allows me. I also really appreciate that working from home (at least part of the time) allows me to adapt to all the little things that come up during the day.

Browsing the net today, I found some great stories and articles about some of the other benefits of working at home…

Financial and Environmental Benefits of Working from Home
Financial and environmental benefits of working from home- work from home, work home, working from home, benefits of working at home, how to work from home.
http://www.renewable-energy-news.info/financial-environmental-benefits-working-from-home/

Articles 20VN | The Top 5 Benefits of Working at Home | work time …
How many people do you know that earn their wages working from home
A simple Google or Bing search will return hundreds of thousands of..

http://www.20vn.com/internet-businesses-online/the-top-5-benefits-of-working-at-home-d91.htm

The Benefits of Working With Home On the web Business
The Benefits of Working With Home On the web Business. August 14, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment. Home primarily based online business has later been essentially the most sought-after strategy for those who are searhing for an …
http://www.smoosh-online.com/the-benefits-of-working-with-home-on-the-web-business/

Starting a Home Business – Exposing the 5 Big Benefits of Working …
From a survey done by Home Office Computing Magazine, 98 % are happier working from home. Here are the 5 big benefits of a home run business. 1) Money: On average the earnings of a home run business in America is …
http://www.zuzana-hulka.com/0820-starting-a-home-business-exposing-the-5-big-benefits-of-working-from-home.html

The Remarkable Tax Benefits of Owning a Home Business – eVolv
The remarkable tax benefits of owning a home business are often overlooked and this short video explains those benefits for you. The Rich have a secret, do what they do… The Health & Wellness Market is one of the Best Markets to be in as a Home Bas…

Today’s slightly rambling post (sorry about that) has led me to two questions I’d like to ask you, our Readers:

1. What do you enjoy most about working at home (or, if you don’t work at home, What do you enjoy most about owning your own business?)
2. What’s your favorite biography or autobiography?

And then there’s the story of Ailin Graef, the world’s first virtual millionaire. She has made a fortune selling virtual real estate as well as handling tons of virtual currency to real currency exchanges every day… 

Foursquare is working monetizing their site by on incorporating coupons into their app as well the option to link your foursquare and Amex accounts…

I can’t help wonder… what happened to paper money?

I won’t lie. I pay my bills online and use a debit card a lot of the time rather than carrying cash. I can’t help but wonder though… isn’t the virtualization of money causing us to become even more detached from our spending? Paying for something with physical cash money is an entirely different experience than paying with your iPhone or tap payments.

And what will be the eventual outcome of this virtualization of spending? Are we all on the road to a deep dark pit of debt (like some governments seem to have fallen into…)

Entrepreneur Anshe Chung Makes $Millions Selling Virtual Land …
Anshe was the first person whose virtual property exceeded a real world value of 1 million dollars, and Anshe Chung Studios is perhaps the single largest third party developer of virtual property ever. … http://singularityhub.com/2011/08/23/entrepreneur-anshe-chung-makes-millions-selling-virtual-land-banking-and-fashion/

Virtual Property Tycoon FAST Online Money Making Masterplan …
Exposed At Last: The Invisible Secret That Online ‘Virtual Property‘ Millionaires Are Using Mercilessly To Turn FREE-TO-ALL Information Into Huge And Fast Lump Sum Payouts Without Any Marketing Know How, Customers

http://doublenature.com/internet-marketing/virtual-property-tycoon-fast-online-money-making-masterplan.html

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you think that the virtualization of spending will be the downfall of us all? And… I suppose a bit of a follow-up to my previous post about Security in the Cloud… what’s the risk of our personal bank and credit card information falling into the wrong hands?

After all, even social media giant MySpace didn’t realize or anticipate their security problems until the Samy Virus (also known as JS.Spacehero) affected over 1 million users in just 20 hours in 2005. Luckily for MySpace (and their users), Samy was fairly harmless (it added the phrase, “”but most of all, Samy is my hero” to users’ profiles), but that doesn’t make the threat any less real.

So I’d like to pose the question to our readers today - Are we secure in the cloud?

Let’s take a look at recent discussions on this topic:

Law firms have to vet cloud computing security
BOSTON — Cloud-computing has become so convenient for lawyers that security has almost become an after-thought. But the cloud recently rained down a flurry of concern about security and client confidentiality when users http://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2011/08/12/law-firms-have-to-vet-cloud-computing-security/

Learn to Improve Cloud Computing Security in Global Knowledge …
Global Knowledge, worldwide leader in IT and business training, will host a free, live webinar entitled “Cloud Computing Security” at 12 pm ET on Wednesday, August 10, 2011. In the hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge … http://www.cissptraininglosangeles.com/?p=1353

Cloud Computing Security – Simply Speaking
Cloud computing services such as Google Docs, Zoho, and Windows Azure can be very helpful and convenient for collaborating on class assignments and other projects. You need to be careful, however, what information to share and with whom you share it….

Is Encryption The Solution To Cloud Computing Security And Privacy …
Encrypt your data after storing it in the cloud. By Erik J. Heels First published 8/4/2011; CloudSwitch Blog; CloudSwitch Wikipedia defines cloud. http://erikjheels.com/2785.html

Cloud Computing: Does Your Business Belong in ‘The Cloud’?
The SaaS model that began a few years ago has now evolved into the “Cloud‘ computing model being utilized today. Improvements were made to enhance performance and strengthen security. It is a great option for many organizations because … http://internetarticlesdb.com/Art/28655/269/Cloud-Computing-Does-Your-Business-Belong-in-The-Cloud.html

So I’d like to ask you, as fellow business owners and web-preneurs,  How Safe Do You Feel in the Cloud?

The days of hiring expensive copywriters and SEO “experts” may be coming to an end as more and more talented individuals are showing up and offering their services on Fiverr.com (and some of the fiverr clones such as fourerr, tenbux, and gigbucks).

The premise of fiverr is pretty simple: people post “ads” for things they’re willing to do for $5. You can find everything from pictures and videos of hand-written marketing messages on body parts to handmade crafts people mail to you. But for our day-to-day purposes of running a website, there are several different types of “gigs” (that’s what they call a “job”) that meet our needs very well.

Some highlights of the Gems on Fiverr.com:

Writing, Copy Writing, Spinning
You can find a variety of different writing jobs folks will do for $5. The average is about 500 words of “unique” content for $5. You can also get folks to rewrite your PLR or other content, and you can find people to “spin” you articles (for use with auto-submission software such as SEnukeX, Article Marketing Robot, UAW, and AMA. You can even find folks to ghostwrite ebooks for you (although that generally costs multiple “fiverrs”).

SEO and Marketing
Along with the writing jobs, there are a variety of different things you can have people do when it comes to your SEO. You can find people who will do a variety of backlinking and article marketing campaigns for you. And when it comes to Marketing, you can find just about anything you can imagine. Social networking friends, fans, subscribers? Done! Craigslist posting? Done! Your website name written in alphabet soup? Done!

Website Design and Maintenance
Have your HTML code written, checked, debugged and more.  JavaScript, Mobile App, C++ questions? Ask away!

Multi-Media
You can even find folks to work on your video, voiceover, transliteration or other multi-media projects.

QUICK TIPS for Getting the Most out of your Fiverr: 

• Special Requests – If there’s something you’d like done but you can’t find it, ask for it! Find the “gig” that’s similar to what you’re looking for and then message the provider to ask if they can do whatever it is you’re looking for. You can also post what you’re looking for in the green “request gigs” box in the lower right hand corner.
• Due Diligence – Always check a seller’s rating and feedback before you order. Just click the seller’s name to go to their profile, and then look for the “Rated: ___%” in the upper right hand corner of their profile. That will give you their overall rating. Then for the specific gig you’re considering purchasing, check the feedback. On the gig page, scroll down to “Latest buyers’ feedback” to read what people who have ordered that gig had to say about it.
• Give it to Them! Once you order a gig, you’ll be sent a message from the provider letting you know what information they need in order to complete your order. Be sure to read it carefully and to send them whatever they need.
• Ask Questions – If you have questions about a gig, ASK! Don’t ever assume that reports will be provided unless the listing specifically states that they will be. Most providers are happy to answer questions (and if they aren’t, then you should probably be looking for someone else anyway!)

As many of you know, I’ve been “online” pretty much since the “online” world came to Brazil. I do my fair share of surfing and I wanted to share this cool site I found today with you. I’m not an affiliate or anything and we don’t have a Deal from them but still, it’s a lot of fun and I thought I’d share…

It’s PickYourShoes.com and here ‘s what people are saying about it…

Nike Air Jordan 5 V Retro – Olympic 136027-103 PickYourShoes.com

www.pickyourshoes.com Nike Air Jordan Retro 5 Olympic 136027-103 white – varsity red – midnight navy More Nike Air Jordan Retro 5 V selection on PickYourshoes.com www.pickyourshoes.com The Nike Air Jordan 5 V was first released in 1990 and once again…

Roadtrip – The Hundreds Headquarters – PickYourShoes.com – My …

http://my.kicksonfire.com/video/roadtrip-the-hundreds

Q&A: Nike shoes i don’t want them to be high top or running?

Q&A: Nike shoes i dont want them to be high top or running?  Whаt dο уου rесkοn? Anѕwеr below!

http://howtostartrunningnow.com/qa-nike-shoes-i-dont-want-them-to-be-high-top-or-running/

Mindstyle x NBA Kobe Bryant 18″ Figure PYS.com Exclusive …

PickYourShoes.com is collaborating exclusively with MINDstyle to release the ultra-limited NBA 18″ Kobe Bryant Collectible Figure designed by CoolRain. Kobe’s figure is the first release from the All-Star Collection that

http://my.kicksonfire.com/xn/detail/2085849%3AVideo%3A1374154

Hello Kitty Backpacks by Vanessa PYS – PickYourShoes.com

www.pickyourshoes.com also has Hello Kitty Products…

Some of the buzz about Talan and his innovative startup…

His personal blog… Fat Kid Rules The World – The Movie: Casting Update! | Talan Torriero
Talan’s Newsletter. Email Address. Talan Torriero’s Blog. Welcome to my personal blog where I share my opinions on social media, tech news, and other shinanigans. Categories. Business & Marketing · Social Media …

Former MTV Laguna Beach reality star – Talan Torriero, bringing …

Talan Torriero. Hi Talan, Thanks for doing this interview with me, How are you doing today? I’m doing great, thanks for asking! My girlfriend has the flu but other than that I am just preparing for the relaunch of …

What is a virtual internship?

He explains what a virtual internship is in this video.

Laguna Beach Star Helps Cyberinterns; HomeEntrepreneur.org …

Laguna Beach Star Helps Cyberinterns; HomeEntrepreneur.org Provides Ideas for Home Entrepreneurs. Usually when it comes to internship, students have to get to the venue where the job is. However, with Torriero’s site …

Interview: Former Actor Talan Torriero Creator of CyberInterns …

After launching CyberInterns on February 1st, he’s already seen a strong response and is gearing up to start approaching colleges and universities marketing the site as a useful resource for a more flexible type of industry learning …