Clinton Skakun

What are business books? It might be hard to define what a “business book” is since everything from marketing and sales to investing and economics.

Blow are a few books I’ve listed that I believe are essential reads for anyone in business, especially people who are new to business or just starting. These are also great books for young people getting into the entrepreneurship world.

My Personal Top 6 Business Books

1. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins

Built to Last is subtitled, Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, which should be on the top 50 list of everyone in business. Built to Last is an easy, clear and intriguing read that will open your eyes to a few of the principles behind a few of the longest lasting corporate giants in the world. The author picks 18 successful visionary companies for research in this book. Including Disney, Wal-mart, Ford etc. One of the things that stayed with me after reading this book was that successful visionary companies stick to their core values. I found it interesting that none of these companies were stuck to a specific idea or product that, with time, outlived its years while the company continued on.

2. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Micheal Gerber

This was the first book that enlightened me on the differences between the Entrepreneur, the Manager and the Technician and how each viewed the world and the business differently. These differences in point of view, talents and motivations cause each “personality” to have a unique set of frustrations, goals and work style. The Technician views anything other than work a waste of time. The Manager is constantly planning and managing. The Entrepreneur works and plans as well, but more than anything the Entrepreneur is a “dreamer”, a visionary. Gerber explains that when a employee suffering from the entrepreneurial-seizure starts a business, they start a business related to their previous vocation. A web developer starts a web design company, a cook starts a restaurant, etc. Very few people go into business thinking like a true Entrepreneur, with a vision. In E-myth Gerber goes into greater detail on the stages of a business, from infancy to maturity, and the issues that come in each stage.

3. Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling by Michael Port

This is one of my favorites. I read it a little over a year ago. One of the best books on running and promoting your own business. Even though it’s targeted more towards the self-employed, it’s also great for CEOs or business owners as well. Micheal guides you step by step through a few effective methods for marketing your personal brand and your business. From business cards and elevator scripts to writing and selling your own e-book and info products.

4. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

If there’s one book you need to read to understand the ins and outs of social media it’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR. David goes all out and tells you how to leverage each aspect of social media to market to your buyers directly. From news releases to online video and blogs. The New Rules of Marketing and PR is a manual for learning and leveraging the power of social media.

Some bloggers are dead set against monetization. They think it taints their content and ruins trust with their readers. I’m no expert but beg to differ:

1. Put more valuable time in blogging, create better content. If you could replace your income blogging, or even just replace a few days a month with the cash you make from your blog, it would be fair to say you could spend more time writing valuable content(and less time working.) Lets say you spend 10 hours writing and drafting a blog post. How many people have that much time unless they don’t have to work?
2. Get you more serious about blogging. If you’ve been blogging long enough, you’ve probably had times when you wrote up a blog post and published it off, later regretting the sloppy errors you made. Monetization demands a little more attention. Would you read a blog, that asked for money, and had sloppy content?
3. It takes little effort, if you already have the traffic and the dedication. It’s really simple, just copy the strategy of someone else who has a successful blog(successful in terms of helpful content and makes money) and if it doesn’t work, try a new approach.

I’d love to hear your opinion!

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Services & Talents - Where you offer serives or talents. This is currently what I do for a living.

A Product or Products

– This can be hard to get going but rewarding, creating and selling a product whether it be a e-book, other digital product or a shippable item.

Ads – Ads can be hard to make money on but if you have enough traffic to your site and you know what you’re doing, it can pay off.

Affiliate products – Affiliate programs give you a quick and easy method of selling products in no time at all. Affiliate marketing is where you market products that you’ll never see or touch but make commission on when sales are made through your efforts.

Begging/Spamming/Scamming – The most looked down upon and least sustainable method of making money. Avoid these ones at all costs.

How do you make money online? Please share it with us.

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1. Write about other people/start-ups/businesses

While back I wrote a post about Maynas Eric Chua called Maynas Eric Chua on Building Trust Mask of the Ninja dvd Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia video The Hustler download . About an appearance he made on Singapore News TV station. I knew Eric for a while on Twitter and he was quite an inspiration, as well as one of my first users on my startup, PutFeed.com. I thought, what a great way to add value to my blog as well as send some hits his way. Eric is in the top 3 Twitter users in Singapore and has over 30,000 followers. This guy deserves a post written about him:)

2. Guest Posts

You may not be the most popular person in the world. But you may know a few other bloggers who have connections. Ask them to write a quick guest post on your blog. Chances are they will send hits to the post they just wrote via Twitter or FaceBook, thus giving you more publicity and some credibility in the blogging community. You become open to your Guest’s network, and hey they might know tons of people. It just opens up more opportunity plus adds some fresh ideas to your blog.

3. Interviews

Interviewing is another great way to gain credibility and to give others some publicity. There’s a lot of entrepreneurs, lawyers, brokers, real estate and web design experts that would be glad to participate in an interview. This shows that you have some connections in the blogging community and once again, opens up your blog to the networks of other people.

There are a few ways to undertake an interview:

• Video(post them on YouTube and other video sharing sites)
• Plain old blog post
• Podcast

(You decide the rest, be creative)

4. Ping Other Blog Posts

This is a great way to get ideas for new blog posts and add value to other blogs at the same time. When you see a blog post you like and that you could add some thoughts to, write your own blog post and ping them back(using the ping url). They will love you for it whether you agree or disagree with their views. The fact that you took the time to respond to their post is a sign of appreciation.

5. Stay Connected

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With all the great online and desktop tools we have the ability to stay connected with our community in half the time we used to. Stay connected with people in your niche by doing the following:

• Subscribing to their blogs
• Posting comments to their blog posts(people love it when you post sincere comments)
• Tweet their blog posts and let them know that you are by adding their @username in the tweet.
• Share their blog posts in your FaceBook statuses.
• Connect them with other people in your network.
• Share your own blog posts with them after you’ve added value to their blogs.
• Send a personal e-mail to new blog posters thanking them for their contribution. Give them the chance to reply.

If you stay connected with people they’ll return the favor and send some blog comments or recommendations your way. The rules are, ONE. be sincere, TWO. Add value before expecting others to add value to you.