Go fight our ever increasing street crime. You don’t even have to validate it. The problem is there. Go find out what to do about it.

We all have limited resources. Time, money, and opportunities. It is how we allocate them that makes the difference. So, allocate wisely. Because nothing is reversible. The good news is, you can learn to react to the situations.

I bumped into an interesting article from thegongshow showing us how some of the hottest startups now are related to craigslist. I find it amusing. So I wonder if that is doable on other platforms.

So I end up on yellow pages category page, and what is amazing about this is, you get the contacts of all the offline sellers. Depend on how you execute your business idea, you might want to invite them to collaborate with you.

Coming to think of Colbie Caillat, didn’t she use lean methodology in promoting her music? Just a Myspace page, nice songs, millions of hits, successful career.

After writing few articles on this blog and sharing few third party articles. I felt like I did something.  

In fact, I didn’t. And we all know it.

Enough of studying theoretical stuffs, it’s time to get my hands dirty. Do more experiments. Less rambling on non-important stuffs.

I will still be sharing nice articles on entrepreneurship topic on this blog. However, most of my time will be on building things. If you are reading this, I hope you get back to work after reading. Nothing is more important than building. And building, is really the way to be an entrepreneur.

Don’t be a wantrepreneur like me. Go do something, go make it happen!

We listen to what you #WANT, and figure out what you #NEED. We help you identify the core functionality that your product should have before presenting it to the customers. We design and build the MVP for your product a to be taken  you identify the MVP for your product. We design and build the MVP for your so you can take it to your potential customers and learn from it.

Read Quote of Dan Lewis’ answer to Startup Ideas: What are good ways to think of ideas for a startup? on Quora

UPDATE: April 14, 2013

CREATED ON: February 10, 2013

So you are an entrepreneur thinking ways to get the words out about your product.

Or you are a business owner thinking ways to draw more traffic to your e-commerce site.

Or you are an app developer thinking ways to target specific audience to use your app.

Or you are blogger thinking ways to get more readership for your blog.

Or…

You get the idea.

You are seeking attention from others. There are many ways to do it, at least that is what they say on the internet. SEO, social media, etc. How about cold email? How do you craft a perfect cold email? Worry not, I have listed simple 5 steps for your reference. They are easy steps, yet so powerful.

Step 1: Know your target audience

You have to define who are the people you are going to email. Then, find their emails. It can be from their blogs, or social media pages. Next, study their blogs/social media pages and make sure you understand the people you are going to email. It is important to know what they like, what they write, what they believe in so that your pitch to them can be as relevant as possible.

Step 2: Create a compelling subject line

What would you do when you receive an email from someone you don’t know? Before you know it, the next thing you do is scanning the subject line to decide whether it is a spam or not. (Tips: Most likely, emails with subject lines that have the word “Viagra” are spams. Just in case you are away from internet for the last decade.) Your subject line should be direct, much like the title of your blog post, it should be interesting enough for people to keep on reading.

Step 3: Craft your pitch    

Generally, there is a structure you can follow to come up with your cold emails. Using this structure, you can customise your cold emails to your targeted audience in no time. 

The structure is as following:

1. Greeting- greet them with a simple sentence
2. Connection statement- introduce how you know about them
3. Praise- express how much you like their works
4. Pitch- introduce them your product, how it helps them
5. Close- ask for future interaction
6. Signature-  your name with your website url

Most importantly, remember that the pitch is about them, not you! So don’t try so hard to sell your idea. Instead, make an effort to offer something to those who have opened your email. Make it obvious what they can get, how they can benefit, and why should they care. Also, remember to keep the pitch short!

Step 4: Make your email actionable

At the end of the email, create a call-to-action button. It can be asking the reader to like your page, visit your webstore or enrol in a free trial for your amazing product. This is to avoid the reader from having a ‘what should I do now’ feeling.

Step 5: Follow up

Most often, your cold email will be ignored. Don’t give up. Follow up to show your persistence and interest in connecting with the people you email. As a rule of thumb, you should send a follow up email after 3 days without response.

Hence, those are the steps! Afterall, cold email is not something easy. Be patient and the results will come slowly.

Image credit: Wikimedia

We humans, worry a lot of stuffs. Fear of failure, fear of being criticized and so on. The list goes on.

I have been in that position. Deciding whether I should learn Magento or Opencart. After all, it does not really matter. The focus is on the business. Not on the technology.

Let me rephrase. The technology is important, only if you have thousands of visitors. However, in the beginning you don’t. So why worry? There are better options. Instead of self-hosted shopping carts, we can sell on eBay, Amazon, Etsy. Those platforms give you instant validation, whether your product sells or not.  

The are mainly two options, either you:

1. Take your time to build a ‘perfect’ product or experience

2. Screw it and launch with minimal features, and learn along journey

The choice is always yours. 

Image credit: Wikimedia