Start small. Established entrepreneurs can attract millions of dollars in venture capital with a good business plan and a few handshakes. Chances are, you cannot. Focus on easy business ideas that you can implement by yourself or with the help of a few friends—and with money you already have.

Focus on something you enjoy. In life, we end up doing a lot of things we don’t enjoy—we take classes and work jobs outside of our areas of interest because we need to graduate or put food on our tables. Your own business, on the other hand, should be doing something you like. Finding a business you enjoy won’t only make you happier in the long run, it’ll also increase your businesses’ chances of success.

Network. Find other students at your school who are running their own businesses or who are interested in starting. Go to dinner or throw a party to pick their brains and find out how you can help each other.

Be realistic. Some business ideas seem better in theory than they are in reality. Almost every college has an entrepreneur who thinks he or she is going to revolutionize the purchasing of college textbooks by setting up a book exchange; in reality, it’s very difficult to pull off. On the other hand, while business ideas like selling baked goods or providing a babysitting or tutoring service for local families won’t win any ingenuity awards, they can be set up and profitably run pretty easily.

Do your homework. The internet is chock-full of resources that can help college entrepreneurs succeed. Check out the Collegiate Entrepreneur’s Association and Entrepreneur Magazine for starters.

Do you have experience running a college-based business? What was it and how did it work out?

The three most common kinds of business structures are incorporations, limited liability companies (LLC), and sole proprietorships. Each has distinct pros and cons.

Incorporations

New businesses can choose to incorporate as either a C corporation or an S corporation. What’s the key difference? C corporations face double taxation, meaning the business is first taxed on its profits, and the shareholders are taxed again on their distributions. S corporations are not subject to double taxation, but cannot offer incentive stock option plans.

Advantages of incorporations:

• Corporations can go public, making them attractive to venture capitalists.
• S corporations avoid double taxation.

Disadvantages of incorporations:

• C corporations face double taxation.
• S corporations can only have a maximum of 35 shareholders.
• Both types of corporations require lots of paperwork. They must file articles of incorporation, hold directors’ and shareholders’ meetings, keep corporate minutes, and hold shareholder votes on major corporate decisions.

LLCs

The LLC is a business structure that has only been around for about 25 years, but is steadily becoming the most popular way to structure a business.

Advantages of LLCs:

• As with corporations, owners are protected from personal liability for business debts.
• LLCs do not face double taxation.
• Earnings and losses “pass through” to owners, meaning they are reflected on owners’ personal income tax returns.
• LLCs have fewer paperwork requirements.

Disadvantages of LLCs:

• Taxation of LLCs varies by state, which is especially a concern if you will do business in several states.
• An LLC can’t go public, which may turn some investors away.
• Lawyers may charge more to form an LLC than a corporation.
• Some states require two or more partners to form an LLC.

Sole proprietorships

A sole proprietorship exists when one person is in business for him or herself.

Advantages of sole proprietorships:

• There is no paperwork to file and no legal formalities in making business changes.
• Taxes are simple, what the business earns or looses, the owner earns or looses.

Disadvantages of sole proprietorships:

• Owner is personally liable for any business debts.
• There is no way to apportion shares of the business, making it difficult to raise capital.

When should you incorporate or form an LLC?

In general, there is no rush to incorporate or form an LLC—even if your business is already operational and making money—unless your business reaches one of these junctures:

• You borrow money for the business.
• You take on one or more business partners.
• You hire employees.

For start-ups, business structures are mostly about liability. Whenever your business reaches a point where you think it could possibly be sued, it’s probably time to incorporate or form an LLC.

What does it take to incorporate or form an LLC?

Incorporating or forming an LLC is a matter of filing the right papers with your state government and paying applicable fees, which range from around $200 to $1,000. The more complex your business, (the more partners you have, or the more money that is invested), the more work will be involved in forming your business entity. That’s when you’ll want to get a lawyer involved.

Otherwise, you can navigate yourself through the process with materials from NoLo, or form your business entity online using a service like LegalZoom. A good gut-check though: If you’re not serious enough to hire a lawyer, you probably don’t need to form a business entity yet.

1. Better balance transfers

The number one reason to get a business credit card? Many feature longer 0% balance transfer offers than consumer credit cards. Advanta—a leading credit card issuer for small businesses—offers a 0% balance transfer for 15 months on the no annual fee Advanta Platinum Card.

2. Better 0% introductory offers

Want to make a big, new purchase and pay it off over time—for free? Try the no annual fee Chase Business Rebate Card offering 0% for 15 months on new purchases.

3. Generous bonuses

If you don’t need a low interest rate, but want to pocket some cash with your new card, the Discover Business CashBack Card will give you $100 after your first purchase (which is interest free for 12 months, by the way).

4. Useful rewards

Consumer credit cards like the Chase Freedom and Amex Blue Cash offer decent rewards, but some business cards top them. For example, that Chase Business Rebate Card gives you 3% cash back on all purchases at restaurants, gas stations, office supplies, and home improvement stores; and 1% cash back on everything else.

5. Higher credit limits

The terms on business credit cards are so good because card issuers know that businesses spend more—and are better credit risks—than consumers. Therefore, the credit limits on business credit cards are typically higher than consumer cards—often between $10,000 and $35,000. Why would you want a higher credit limit? Obviously not to rack it up, but to improve your credit. A higher-limit card on your credit report reduces your debt utilization ratio (the percentage of available credit used) and, in turn, improves your creditworthiness and FICO score.

How to apply for a business credit card

You can apply for a business credit card as an individual by selecting “sole proprietor” as your business type and using your social security number. You don’t need a legal business, and you don’t need a business tax ID number. You do, however, need very good credit.

Compare business credit cards at our partner site, Arrive Financial.

Do you use a business credit card for personal purchases? Let us know why!

Photo by shoothead

In this third part of my blogging for profit series, I take a look at how to drive traffic to your new blog.

After all, blogs make money from advertisers, affiliates, or by leads generated for your business or services, and it’s impossible to get those clicks, sales, and leads if nobody visits your site!

Just as the prerequisite to earning money from you blog is traffic, the prerequisite to traffic is great content.

Writing Blog Content

Let me ask you a question: You wouldn’t visit a store with no merchandise, right? Well, people aren’t going to visit a blog without great content, either. Content – typically articles – are what drives blog success, whether that success is measured by daily page views, RSS subscribers, advertising revenue, or referrals to another business.

As a new blogger, hopefully you enjoy writing (if not, blogging is going to get tedious quickly). That’s because to get your blog noticed, to attract subscribers, and to begin to get a decent number of search engine referrals, you will need to post between five and twenty-five articles a month. Any less, and new visitors will loose interest in checking back on your blog and it will take a while for your site to have numerous pages rank in search engine queries.

That said, your blog posts don’t all have to be 1,000+ words. In fact, many blogs have success posting many very brief articles each day. Your content does, however, need to be unique, valuable, and well-written.

With so many blogs out there, being unique is not always easy. Chances are, if you can think of it, somebody has written about it. The key to being unique is to try to put a spin on you article’s topic. Maybe it’s your passionate opinion, a personal anecdote, or an interview with an expert.

Sometimes, even being unique isn’t enough to capture readers’ attention. In the increasingly competitive online space, you need to provide value. What is value, as it applies to Web content?

I like to think of the value of a blog post as being measured by what the reader can take away from the article. Value is created when you answer a reader’s question, teach readers something, provide actionable ideas with which readers can use to improve their lives.

For this reason, there are certain kinds of articles that lend themselves well to creating value, like how to articles or articles that provide aggregate tool sand resources for solving particular problems. For more on creating really valuable content, I recommend Chris Garrett’s free eBook on Creating Killer Flagship Content.

Finally, your content has to be well-written. You don’t have to write like you’re shooting for a Pulitzer, but you do have to get your point across clearly, and with as few mistakes as possible. If you need help in this area, pick up a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, surf Web writing blogs like CopyBlogger and Men with Pens, and practice, practice, practice.

Getting Traffic

Now that you have a respectable collection of high-quality content on your blog (let’s say 20-30 posts), it’s time to hunting for traffic! Hunting? Yes, hunting.

You can’t just throw a blog up on the Web and expect Google to come by, see how amazing it is, and send millions of visitors your way. In fact, Google may not send you a single visitor for anywhere between one and six months. Don’t be discouraged, though, there are plenty of ways to start getting your site noticed – and if you continue to provide top-shelf content – your traffic will grow exponentially.

Let’s take a look at the five big potential traffic sources for your blog. To be successfully, you will want to incorporate as many as possible.

• Direct Visitors
• Referrals from Other Websites
• Subscribers
• Referrals from Search Engines
• Paid Advertising

Referrals from Other Websites

When you click a link from one website to another (as long as you’re not starting on a search engine), this is a referral to the new website. And this is where you want to start getting your traffic. But be prepared, because getting links from other websites takes some effort.

To start, there are two things that every new blogger should do. First, send an introduction email to a dozen or so other bloggers on your topic that you respect. Don’t ask for a link, but just say “Hi, I’ve been reading your blog and think it’s got some great content, and I actually just started my own site on the same topic, at www.yourblog.com. I hope that perhaps our paths will cross down the road!”

If the blogger checks out your site and likes what he or she sees, there is a good chance they might link to you from their site. Also, it doesn’t hurt if you have already linked to them from yours.

Secondly, get into a habit of leaving comments on other blogs. When you comment, you have the chance to provide one link to your site. You will get a few curious clicks from folks reading the comments you leave on other blogs, but the main benefit is the blog owners will get to know you and be more inclined to read (and hopefully link to) your blog.

One note about comment etiquette: Avoid leaving fluff comments like “nice post.” Write something of value or nothing at all. Second, use your first name or blog title – never a keyword – as your name, and provide your homepage URL, not a link to a specific article.

Self-promotion (emailing others) and commenting are the two best ways to get links to your site, but you shouldn’t stop there. Social media sites give you the opportunity to submit your site and let others vote on it. Competition on these sites is fierce, but if your page is a hit you could get thousands of visitors overnight.

Also, you may be able to find a blog aggregator on your topic that republishes headlines and brief snippets of hundreds of different blogs articles every day. Submit your site to get noticed by readers and other bloggers. An example, for personal finance blogs, is PFBlogs.org.

Another strategy is to write articles on your topic for other sites. There are hundreds of article sites, such as Ezine Articles and Associated Content, that will publish your content and let you include a link back to your site. (The trade off is they get the free content, you get the link). You can also volunteer to write guest posts on other blogs, who will usually let you link back. If you try this, however, be sure that the articles you submit to other sites are totally unique of anything on your blog, as republishing duplicate content will impair your ability to rank well in the search engines.

Finally, there are hundreds of Web directories out there that will include your link (often for a fee). If you find free directories – especially if they are especially on your topic – you might give them a shot. Even still, your time can probably be better spent writing new content or commenting on other sites.

The amount of traffic you receive from referrals will usually be a small trickle, punctuated – if you’re lucky – by an occasional deluge from a social media site. Still, working to get lots of inbound links to your site is a critical first step because it gets your blog noticed, and will be critical in getting noticed and ranked by Google.

Direct Visitors (Including Subscribers)

A direct visitor is somebody who comes directly to your blog by typing in your URL into their browser, or by clicking a bookmark. In order to get direct visitors, however, they need to know about your site. So start telling your family and friends about your blog, and invite them to read it, leave comments and feedback, and to subscribe.

You can also drum up direct visitors by printing up business cards with your website and handing them out or by running offline marketing campaigns, such as t-shirts, signs, or bumper stickers. Until your blog really establishes its name and brand, direct visitors will be a small percentage of your traffic, but they can be an important primer as you’re getting started.

Subscribers

As you start to get some readers from inbound links and direct visitors, you want them to come back! To help them remember to return, get them to subscribe to your blog via RSS (allowing them to read your articles from their RSS reader or homepage) or e-mail.

The best tool out there for this is Feedburner. For free, Feedburner lets you add subscription buttons to your blog and automatically tracks and delivers your subscription content.

For the best results, advertise your subscription options prominently and in multiple places. (I recommend at the top of your sidebar and just below each post).

Search Engines

Someday, search engines may provide the bulk of your blog’s traffic, but it takes time to get there. Search engines won’t find your blog for a few weeks, and even if they find your site, they may not include it in results for a while until the search algorithms trust that your site is legit, so don’t freak out if you can’t find your site on Google in the first week.

Though there are millions of little search engine optimization (SEO) tips out there, which many Webmasters pay big bucks for, I am a firm believe that there is no real substitute for great content and great links from other sites. If you focus on those two things, the search engine traffic will come.

That said, there are a few SEO basics you’ll want to pay attention to.

Your article titles and URLs should accurately describe your article. Don’t stress about finding the perfect keywords for every article, but if your article is about a Nikon D60 Camera, put “Nikon D60 Camera” in both your title and your URL.

Avoid duplicate content. Basically, don’t steal content, write your own. Stealing is illegal, and it will ensure Google will not like your site.

Link internally. Just as links from other websites help your search engine rankings, links on your site to other pages on your own site will help to. Especially as you start writing, provide links to related articles on your blog in every article.

Follow these basics, and your site will do just fine in the search engines. You can worry about advanced tactics later when you begin going after specific traffic that you think will convert into affiliate sales or subscribers. And remember, the more content you have, the more stuff the search engines have to find. So keep writing!

Paid Advertising

The final traffic source for you to consider is paid advertising, usually from a pay-per-click network like Google Adwords.

Adwords allows you to write a small text advertisement and have it display when people search Google for words you choose. When somebody clicks on your ad and arrives at your blog, you pay Google for that visitor.

Many Adwords users are online merchants selling products or businesses collecting leads for their services. For these users, Adwords can be an incredibly profitable marketing channel because users can track exactly how much it will cost to get 1,000 visitors to their site and exactly how much they will earn from the percentage of those 1,000 visitors that become customers.

For blogs, Adwords is a bit trickier. You aren’t buying clicks to sell a product and make a profit, you would buy clicks to get traffic in the hopes those visitors will become subscribers or return visitors, increasing your potential to earn money from affiliates and advertisers down the road.

If you have money to invest in your blog, spending between $50 and $200 a month on an Adwords campaign to get visitors to your site is just one more way to introduce your site to the world.

Follow these pointers for writing quality content and brining traffic to your blog, and you will soon be on the road to making money blogging, which is exactly what I will cover in the next and final post in this series.

If you’re serious about blogging, I highly recommend Darren Rowse’s new book ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. Darren, through his site ProBlogger, has been such an inspiration to me along my blogging journey, and his new book is an awesome resource for newbie bloggers and established bloggers alike.

Photo by shoothead

Now that you have chosen your blog topic based upon your interests and expertise, competition, and income potential, it’s time to launch your site.

Before doing so, I recommend having a minimal amount of content written and ready to post. There’s little value to having a website up without so much as a couple of articles and a description of what the blog is about, so before your blog’s launch, I recommend writing:

• A handful (maybe 2-5) articles on your topic
• An “about me” page describing you and your blog’s goals
• A links page that includes links to other blogs on your topic

Writing Your Pre-Launch Content

As you progress as a blogger you will focus on content that accomplishes a number of goals. Some articles will provide immense value so that readers will want to subscribe to your blog or share it with friends, some articles will be keyword rich to attract search visitors, and others will provide opportunities for you to earn money from relevant advertisers.

When starting out though, your articles should accomplish two things: They should be high quality so that the first readers to see them will want to come back for more, and they should include keywords on subjects you think may be able to draw visitors from Google. While it may be tempting to write very broad articles on your chosen topic, consider writing specific articles on a particular product or narrow subject, as these topics have less competition for top search engine rankings.

Writing Your About Me Page

Your about me page can be as long – and as personal – as you like, but consider the goals you have for your blog when you write it. Do you want your blog to benefit your career? If so, include career accomplishments in your resume. Do you want your blog to attract clients for consulting or other work? Describe your experience and services that you might be able to offer them.

If you wish to remain anonymous, focus your “about” page on the blog and its goals. What is the site’s mission? What value will it deliver to readers? What kinds of readers can it deliver to advertisers?

Whatever you do, spend some time on your “about” page to make it interesting. Capture readers’ attention with a question, a quote, or a funny story. Especially as you work to build up the content on your blog, your “about” page will be a factor in whether readers ever return to your site.

Linking to Other Blogs

Linking out to other sites – especially blogs – that you enjoy and are relevant to your topic is critical. First, it may get your site noticed by those other bloggers, but it also tells the search engines that you are referencing other sources relevant to your topic. Eventually, you’ll want to have more links pointing to you than going out, but linking to other relevant sites should never be seen as a bad thing.

Launching Your Blog

Now that you have some content written, it’s time to go live! Here’s where you need to decide whether you want to host a free site or pay about $20 up front, and probably an extra $6 - $10 a month, to have a self-hosted blog.

If you have serious ambitions for making money from your site, I strongly recommend paying for a self-hosted site. In the long run, this will give you more control and credibility.

Free Hosting

Setting up a free blog is easy. Just visit either Blogger or Wordpress and sign up for an account. In about ten minutes, your blog will be live! There are other sites out there, such as TypePad and LiveJournal, which have some free blogging capabilities, but charge for enhanced features.

Paid Hosting

With a few dollars and a little extra work, you can enjoy the unlimited creative control of having your own professionally-hosted website. Before buying your hosting, you’ll need to get a domain name, which costs between $6 and $10 for a one-year registration. I recommend GoDaddy.com.

Choosing a good domain is tricky because so many are already taken. While it may be tempting to grab a keyword-rich domain that exactly describes what your blog is about, you might have better luck finding a shorter, easier-to-remember domain that may have nothing to do with your topic. That’s OK, because eventually that name can become your brand.

Once you have your domain name, you can choose to buy hosting from GoDaddy also. (This is what I do, and I have no complaints, though many other bloggers prefer alternative hosts). I use Economy Linux Hosting from GoDaddy, which is $4.08 per month when you pay for a year up front.

Other recommended hosting options, starting at about $7 per month, include:

• Dream Host
• Blue Host
• AN Hosting
• Laughing Squid

If you buy your domain from GoDaddy and hosting elsewhere, you’ll need to transfer your domain to your new host. Check your host’s tech support or FAQ pages to find good instructions on how to do this.

Finally, it’s time to get your blog onto your host. To do this, I wholeheartedly recommend you use Wordpress, a free open-source blog management system which will manage all of the code for your blog, so all you have to do is write and post your articles.

You’ll need to download the Wordpress software and follow the installation instructions for uploading the software to your host. If you follow the instructions, this is usually an easy, ten minute process. If you run into any bumps, however, Wordpress provides a support forum to help you out.

Finding a Theme for Your Blog

The theme of your blog is its visual layout and design. Just as Wordpress handles all the technical stuff for you, your theme handles all the visual stuff for you. Wordpress comes pre-loaded with a couple of simple themes, but to give your blog a unique look and feel, you’ll want to “shop around” for a theme that fits your taste and topic, most of which are free. Search for Wordpress themes and you will find more than you know what to do with.

Once you have choosen your theme, download the files and copy them to the /wp-content/themes/ folder on your host. You then just select the theme in the Wordpress dashboard and your blog is instantly “redecorated” with the new theme.

Loading Your Content and Writing New Posts

The final step is to take the content you have already written for your blog and go live! In your Wordpress dashboard, you’ll simply click on “write post” and past your articles, using the text editor to format your articles, add links, etc. Once you hit publish, your content is live! Congrats!

In Monday’s continuation of this series, we’ll look at how to get your blog noticed and how to get traffic coming to your site.