Creating a presence online is not easy, but there is no reason why it is impossible to do so. All it takes is a little intelligent planning for getting your voice across. You need to build a powerful presence so that you have a devoted community that will help spread your word. So before we move ahead, we assume that what you want to share is actually worth spreading.

Here are 5 ways entrepreneurs can boost their online presence:

Take Time Out To Analyze Your Competition

Your online presence or impact is relative to the presence that your competitor has generated. So if you take time out to analyze your competitors presence, you can get a good idea about the ground work that you need to catch up with. Check what sites link back to them and understand what keywords are clicking for them.

Connect with Real People on Social Network

Many internet entrepreneurs and bloggers make the expensive mistake of mass marketing. They would prefer to spend hundreds of dollars on softwares that promise to generates thousands of followers. Although, they may end up with many followers – few to nil of them would actually be clicking through your links. Most of them would be spam accounts that are worth nothing. Your main focus should be on getting followers who are actual people. Getting fifty followers who actually give a damn about what you write is much more preferable than 1000 followers who would simply add numbers to your Twitter profile.

Take Your Brand Seriously

Focus on building a brand from Day 1. A brand defines the real character of a company or website. An intelligent internet entrepreneur can leverage good brand value to create a strong presence online. If your readers and visitors develop a strong affinity to your brand then you will find that your task of creating an online presence becomes much easier.

Always Have A Face To Your Blog/Website

Credibility is a factor that can really make or break your online presence. And you have to utilize all available options to boost your credibility. Having a face in the about page, with a name and a little personal detail can go a long way in building credibility. Once you are a person who is recognized by a doting community – it becomes easy for you to create a powerful presence online.

Deliver The Best

This is the final tip for creating a presence online. Always deliver the best content and pieces out there.  Photos, Infographics and graphs – all add detail to your content. It helps you generate a much more quality piece of information for your readers. As far as I know, no blog or website has got popular without quality. So remember, deliver the best.

Do leave your comments below.

This post is late by little over a year. But when I make such amazing finds on the internet, it really does not matter. 24 London internet entrepreneurs have bared all for a charity calendar. The hot photos in this calendar were taken to break the notion of internet entrepreneurs as being “unattractive geeks”. Once you take a look at this – your mind will be blown away.

Web entrepreneurs pose for the 2010 Nude London Tech calendar, which features 24 pictures of the capital’s internet pioneers in all their glory. I have only included some of the internet entrepreneur photographs, you can check out the rest with the links that I have provided at the end of the post.

Hermione Way

Hermione Way

Hermione Way - Internet Entrepreneur

Sophie Cox

Sophie Cox

Sophie Cox - Internet Entrepreneur

Poppy Dinsey

Poppy Dinsey

Poppy Dinsey is the founder of Globrix. Globrix is the UK’s largest search engine for property, flats and houses for sale, rental property, flat shares and new homes. They offer property professionals a free service, hence they have the largest stock of property for sale and to rent on the market. She alsp stripped for the charity calendar. The image is shown below.

Poppy Dinsey - Internet Entrepreneur

The charity calendar featured 24 portraits of naked techies, from entrepreneurs and bloggers, to social media buffs and search engine experts. Here is the complete list of entrepreneurs who appeared in the calendar in 2009:

Featuring 24 leading members (12 men and 12 women) of the London tech/entrepreneurial scene, including:

• Alan Wylie, Huddle
• Alicia Navarro, Skimbit
• Andrew J Scott, Rummble
• Anke Holst
• Anna Bance, Girl Meets Dress
• David Langer, Groupspaces
• Elizabeth Varley, TechHub
• Fabio de Bernardi, ilikeucoz
• Gabrielle Laine Peters
• Hermione Way, Techfluff.TV
• The Huddle team
• Joana Simoes
• Joe Stepniewski, Skimbit
• Joshua March, iPlatform
• Lucian Tarnowski, Brave New Talent
• Malcolm Scovil, LeapAnywhere
• Oliver Mardling, WhatTalent.com
• Poppy Dinsey, Globrix
• Rassami Hok-Ljungberg, 2 Pears
• The Reevoo team
• Sam Barnett, Struq
• Sam Mathews, Fnatic & Evisua
• Sophie Cox, Worldeka
• Vincent Camara, intruders.tv
• Zuzanna Pasierbinska-Wilson, Huddle
• A special appearance by Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch Europe

The calender is the idea of Milo Yiannopoulos, who is currently studying English at Cambridge. He said: ‘Someone suggested the idea as a joke, and I just thought why not. There is a perception that the people who run these internet startups are unattractive geeks, and I wanted to show that’s not the case. We are hoping to sell over 5,000, and are also working on an iPhone app.‘

Links for further reading:

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1228689/Internet-entrepreneurs-bare-charity-calendar-prove-just-geeks.html
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gallery/2009/nov/18/nude-london-tech-calendar
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/17/nude-london-tech-computer_n_360829.html

This post has a list of top Indian entrepreneurs blogs. These entrepreneurs have been blogging for a long time and their blogs are archives of a great deal of knowledge. They are successful entrepreneurs with a passion towards start-ups and businesses.

Related Post: Top Indian Internet Entrepreneurs

Om Malik: Om Malik runs a blog linking the world’s leading technology innovators to a global audience of prospective customers, business partners, and investors. His blog was launched in 2006 and currently has an Alexa Traffic Rank of 3,458.

Rashmi Sinha: Rashmi Sinha is a designer and entrepreneur. She is confounder & CEO for SlideShare. She writes about writes about social software and entrepreneurship at her blog.

Munjal Shah: Munjal is a serial entrepreneur who focuses on building companies from scratch. He is currently the Co-founder and CEO of Riya Inc (makers of Like.com).

Shripriya Mahesh: She has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Economics from Stella Maris College, Madras University, India. Shripriya Mahesh has held the post of Vice President of Product Marketing and Platform at eBay (a $400 million business). Currently she is a filmmaker and startup advisor based in New York City.

Dharmesh Shah: He runs a blog for  entrepreneurs who are interested in startups. Dharmesh is a software entrepreneur and currently the co-founder and CEO of HubSpot. He founded Pyramid Digital Solutions which was sold for millions of dollars.

Anand Rajaraman: He is a co-founder of Kosmix, an internet startup focused on organizing the wisdom of the web. Anand has also held the position of Director of Technology at Amazon.com, where he was responsible for technology strategy.

Rakesh Agrawal: This blog will coach you on starting a business and entrepreneurship. He is one of the founders of SnapStream Media, makers of the Beyond TV PC DVR software and SnapStream Enterprise.

Sramana Mitra: She has been an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. Sramana founded three companies: Dais (off-shore software services), Intarka (sales lead generation and qualification Software; VC) and Uuma (online personalized store for selling clothes).

Alok Kejriwal: Alok Kejriwal is a serial internet entrepreneur who is the founder of 2win Group. His first venture Contests2win.com was a contest promotion website in 1998 and the second venture Mobile2win was acquired by Walt Disney in China and Norwest Ventures in India. Alok’s blog is a great community for all aspiring entrepreneurs.

I am sure these entrepreneur blogs will be a source of great insights, analysis and inspiration for you. The names above are industry leaders. There will be more names added to this list of successful Indian entrepreneurs blogs. Leave your thoughts on this post below.

All of us heard of the Cinderella story that most “internet gurus” try to reflect. Plenty of people will tell you that being able to work location independent is a great advantage. The sheer off-the-grid lifestyle that they project can become quite a big motivation for many. But, the fact is. Most of the internet lifestyle guru’s will never tell you the hard part of internet lifestyle. Moreover, many of them have not even experienced it in the first place.

Despite this, the thought of sipping lemonade on a hammock in Hawaii as your blogs make you passive income is quite attractive. Which is why it is worth thinking whether living the internet lifestyle is really the motivation for internet entrepreneurs.

If you are deciding to plunge into the internet entrepreneurship for the sake of the “lifestyle” which you expect then there are a few things you must understand.

“It is Not Really Location Independent”

Sure, you can work from anywhere that has an internet connectivity. But the fact is that unless you are using the coffee shop wi-fi that is  close to your house, your efficiency in working online will go down by almost 70%. The odds are, that unless you are someone like Tim Ferris who blogs at FourHourWorkWeek.com you will be making much less money being location independent than if you had a fixed place to sit and work in front of your PC or Laptop. Moreover, most places are not wi-fi enabled. Internet connection can become a pain in the ass for you.

“The Income Fluctuates”

This is a very real threat that people who want to live an internet lifestyle need to understand. Online income is very unpredictable, some months it might exceed your expectations and in some months you could end up earning much less than what you usually do. This can be a real problem when you need a fixed income to budget and do effective financial planning for your future investments and such.

“It is A Competitve Field”

If you are a successful internet entrepreneur then you might be already aware of the consequences of sitting on your butt after a certain level of achievement. The internet is such a hyper-competitive industry that there are new competitions coming up everyday that could tear apart your business or blog unless you are constantly on the upward slope. Which is why the fire within you should never die, the moment it does – it can kill your internet business instantly. Things change quickly online. Few years back, Orkut was among the most popular social networks and Google was the most visited website. Now Facebook has taken over the crown of both Orkut and Google. This illustration can show the reality of the internet lifestyle.

This post does not mean I am against internet lifestyle. I am all for it, however, you need to understand that all things have their ups and downs – which also includes the internet lifestyle.

For internet entrepreneurs, there is nothing more important than their website or the company website. It is very important that one particular aspect is given special consideration i.e.  speed! Speed is important not only from the SEO perspective but also because it might get you more customers. So internet entrepreneurs really need to worry about their site speed, I have listed out some unique ways to boost your site speed here in the post.

On the web people have zero patience (yes, even the patient types). Google quickly pops up your link during a search, someone clicks it and the timer begins! If your website doesn’t pop open in three ticks then you have just lost a customer. They will quickly press ‘back’ and go to the next link.

Make Use of the Pingdom Tool To Test Site Speed In-Depth

Type in the URL of the website you want to test for speed and click ‘Test Now’.

Pingdom will check out the total time required for your site to appear on the screen..

The cool thing- This is where Pingdom is really useful. No doubt, you get the time required for the whole site to load along with it you also get a chart that displays the loading time for each object on the page.

If You Use Mozilla Firefox

I love Mozilla Firefox and seriously believe it is the best browser available for a blogger, internet entrepreneur etc.

Coming back to the point.

Once you get Mozilla or if you already have install the Firebug and YSlow tools. Then,

Open your site in the browser>Tools>Open Firebug>YSlow>Analyze Performance.

After you finish off with this, the tool will list factors that contribute to site speed and also flag areas that need improvement, along with recommendations to fix it.

Powerful Ways To Speed Up Your Site

You can do a number of thing to speed up your website, here are a few powerful ways to speed up your site below.

• Keep it simple. Don’t try to overdo your site with makeup. Always keep in mind the Google homepage – it doesn’t get any simpler than that. Simple=Sophisticated.
• Combine your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) into a single file.
• Streamline and trim your CSS code by eliminating all the unused styles.
• Using caching plugin if you  are using any blogging platform.
• Trim images as much as possible and specify image dimensions
• Use CSS Sprites to combine background images into a single image.
• Avoid flash as much as possible.
• Move your website from a shared to a dedicated server or choose a more premium web hosting service.

Hope you found the above article informative to improve site loading speed. Having a fast company website could make all the difference between success and failure in your online business.

Here you go guys, the top 8 Indian internet entrepreneurs who are creating waves online. The list that everyone was waiting for from CollegeFallOut is finally available to you budding internet entrepreneurs out there. People listed below may not be the richest internet entrepreneurs but they sure are the top most in India currently (2010).

Related Post: List Of Successful Indian Entrepreneurs Blogs

You will be surprised at a few names and their daring acts in entrepreneurship to achieve what seemed impossible.  This is why I believe that this list can be the most inspiring and motivating thing you have read in a long time.

Here are the top 8 Indian internet entrepreneurs in 2010-

Rashmi Sinha: Rashmi is the founder-CEO of Slide Share. She is an Indian internet entrepreneur.  SlideShare is the world’s largest community for individuals and organization to share their presentations. Today, SlideShare receives more than 32 million unique visits in a month.

Rashmi Sinha

Rashmi is a graduate student from the Brown University. She is also the founder of Uzanto consulting. Recently, she was interviewed by Andrew Warner from Mixergy, where she talks about her venture online and how she took her internet business from 0 to 32 million unique visits per month.

Sanjeev Bikhchandani

Sanjeev Bikhchandani: Sanjeev is the founder of Naukri.com – an Indian job portal. He has an amazing story as an internet entrepreneur. Sanjeev possesses a BA in Economics from Delhi University, he studied there although he had qualified for IIT. After working a year, he qualified for IIM. He is a management graduate from IIM-Ahmedabad.

In 1997, Bikhchandani left his cushy MNC job that paid Rupees 80,000 a month to set up Naukri.com, jobs portal on a server in the United States. By 2005, he was selected as a finalist for “Ernst and Young – Entrepreneur of the Year” award.

Ajit Balakrishnan: He is the founder-CEO of Rediff.com. In 1971, he graduated from IIM-Calcutta. Till age 15, he was brought up in Kannur, Kerala and wanted to be a football player. It was not until his dad showed him an old man sitting on the street and then pointed out, that the man was a football player earlier. It was at that moment that Ajit cam back to senses.

Ajit Balakrishnan

After he graduated from IIM, he worked for few years. He claims he was technically sound and could read codes like articles. Ajit started Rediff.com in 1995, when he was 42. He wrote cheques for Rs two crores (for VC) and had zero revenue for three years.

VSS Mani: His internet company is perhaps something that is attached to all our lives. VSS Mani is an stunning example of courage as an internet entrepreneur. He is the founder of JustDial.com. JustDial.com offers services to customers by providing all informations on yellow pages through the phone. He started his company in 1996 with Rs. 50,000 as his venture capital. With that 50K, entrepreneur VSS Mani today runs a company with 100 crore turnover.VSS Mani claims it was only passion and the ability to dream big that saw him achieve so much with almost nil venture capital.

Alok Kejriwal

Alok Kejriwal: This Indian internet entrepreneur founded Contests2win (c2w) in 1998. C2W was the world’s first customized brands promotions website which held contests for users on the internet. He started off with a shoestring budget of close to Rs 5000. Believe it or not.

Today his companies such as Contests2win, Media2win, Games2win have together recorded a turnover close to Rs 30 crores. His serial venture Mobile2win which was launched in China was brought by Walt Disney in September 2007. The power of dreaming big!And he had left his family Marwari business at 28 to follow his own passions.

He still runs Games2win, Media2win under his brand name. Kejriwal is an M.Com from Sydenham College in Mumbai.

Suhas Gopinath: Suhas Gopinath is the youngest internet entrepreneur in the world. He incorporated his first company at the age of 14, Global Inc. in San Jose, California. Because Indian laws did not permit a minor to do so. By incorporating his company, he became the world’s youngest CEO at age 14. His firm, consisted of 60-members, all of them in the age bracket of 16-22 from all around the world. Suhas is from Bangalore, Karnataka in India.

Suhas Gopinath With Former Indian President

Suhas Gopinath is recognized as the world’s youngest internet entrepreneur. He is resource person for IIM and Advisor at the Entrepreneurship Cell in IIT-Mumbai. Recently, he was nominated as one of the “Young Global Leaders” for 2008-2009 by the prestigious World Economic Forum, Davos. The others nominated alongside him were Indian music composer A.R. Rehman, Hollywood Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Prince of Brunei.

Ram Shriram

Ram Shriram: This internet entrepreneur is very well-known because he is the director for Google Inc. Ram is a founding board member of Google. He is also on the advisory board of Naukri.com (run by Sanjeev Bikhchandani). He is named as one of the richest men in America now, due to his huge sharehold in Google. He is also the founder of Sherpalo – which is basically a company that helps founding members of early stage ventures.

Ram is a Charter Member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs). The likes of Guy Kawasaki are charter members of TiE.

Amit Agarwal: This person is phrased as the “man who bought blogging revolution to India”. This statement is very true because his hugely successful blog – labnol.org was an inspiration to many other bloggers who are currently successful in India.

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal is an IIT graduate and in 2004, Amit quit his job to become India’s first and only Professional Blogger. Since then he has been making a full-time income from the internet. He has been featured in various national televisions. Amit also writes a weekly personal technology column for The Hindustan Times. The Straits Times of Singapore included him in their list of Asia’s Blog Stars alongside Chinese actress Xu Jinglei and Japanese Ambassador Naoto Amaki.

I will confess that there was a lot of research that went into creating this top 8 list of Indian internet entrepreneurs. I really really hope you found it inspiring and insightful at the same time. The guys in the above list are really successful internet entrepreneurs.

As always, wishing you all success in your ventures online.

Before you leave you might also like to check out the Top 10 Most Awesome Internet Entrepreneurs.

Hello Everybody,

CollegeFallOut is now ranking in top 10 for the keyword “Internet Entrepreneurs” in Google India. For the same keyword, CollegeFallOut ranks in top 20 results in global searches of Google.

When I began this blog, I flatly aimed for the keyword “Internet Entrepreneurs”, with no longtail keywords. It was not a wise SEO decision actually. Since new blogs rarely rank well for such mainstream keywords. However, I guess the persistence is paying off now.

In India, there is not a very significant search volume for the term “internet entrepreneurs”, however, the global searches are quite good. This is why it is important for me to continue working on building keyword rich content until I rank in the top 10 for global searches.

Currently, I am facing quite stiff competition from authority blogs for the same keyword by top bloggers like Michael Dunlop and Yaro Starak. Michael Dunlop runs one of the most popular blogs for young entrepreneurs online.

I hope with continuous work to provide more value to readers, I can enter this keyword niche strongly. I also have to thank all my regular commentators on this blog for their support, which keeps me motivated.

• Shabnam Sultan (6)
• Robin (5)
• Shekhar Sahu (5)
• Arafat Hossain Pi… (4)

As always, Wishing You All Success.

Infrastructure Outsourcing, many of you might get an idea about it right from the term itself. However, I am having an increasing number of budding entrepreneurs reading this blog. So they might need an introduction to some terms, right  from the basics.

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is a term that basically means distributing some part of your work to third parties. We have all heard of popular companies like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Accenture etc. These are outsourcing companies. Which means they do some part of the work which is outsourced to them from other companies.

An Example

Suppose you are running a civil engineering business. And you get a client who needs to build a skyscraper with certain specifications. So instead of doing all the work yourself, right from what foundation is the best to what material to use in the building – you can send out some part of the work to outsourcing companies. They will provide you the information and research knowledge which is required.

This way you can save your time, manpower and also costs in the long run. This is the reason why the concept of outsourcing is so popular.

I hope you got what Outsourcing means.

A Bit Of Information About Infrastructure Outsourcing

So I had informed all my readers earlier that my first venture is FizzEdge, which I have started recently. FizzEdge is a startup that periodically holds workshops and seminars for professional bloggers and internet entrepreneurs.

So since my startup holds workshops, I required a place where I can hold them. And obviously I do not have a corporate office where I can hold such events. I hit a dead end on where I can hold my workshops with the necessary infrastructure. The infrastructure I would require would be seating, laptops, presentation tools like projector, screens etc.

This is where after some research and thinking I found a solution – Infrastructure Outsourcing. By infrastructure outsourcing, I will get all the facilities I require without worrying about renting or leasing a place. Since my startup is based in Chennai, I have found out a few companies that provide infrastructure outsourcing here. However, I am looking for even more cheaper alternatives where I may have to spend even lesser.

If you are an entrepreneur who is involved in a startup, then infrastructure outsourcing might be a valuable option available to you.

What are the secrets behind a successful internet entrepreneur? Everywhere, be it on the internet, magazines or books we read about success stories of successful people at the top of their respective professions. We wonder what the secret behind their success is, what they do differently, what their lifestyle, their mantra is and what their mindset is. We admire them for what they are and in our hearts we want to be like them.

But have you ever wondered that in order to be where they are, what was the route they took? Was it that everything was a cakewalk for them or sheer hard work? Well, as we all know internet rules our lives and it is an in-dispensible part of an educated person’s life. So how do you plan to conquer it with its overwhelming barrage of information and opportunities.

Positive Thoughts

To start with, these successful entrepreneurs were not only ambitious but had the right attitude and mindset. This requires some self discovery so that your mind does not get influenced by negative people, even if they are your family or close friends. If you’re serious about becoming a successful entrepreneur then let go of negativity and fill yourself with positive thoughts. That’s the number one rule they follow.

Right Contacts

Besides, they hang out with the right people, that is, with successful people. It is said ‘if you want to be a millionaire, and then be with a millionaire’. This can be done in person or even through other forms of contact like phone. The idea is to get influenced in a positive way and thereby get motivated.

Apart from these two major points here are other secrets behind successful internet entrepreneurs:

• These entrepreneurs invest a great deal of time initially on self development and internet marketing training, which leads to self growth. Listening to cds, videos, and webinars.
• Next to that comes innovation.  Offer something that is unique. Many internet entrepreneurs find themselves remaining in their comfort zones and having a tunnel vision approach about a product or service. They are content with what works now. This will not take you far. But imagining yourself as the person looking for newer products or services and offers, works wonders, gets you inspired.
• This does not necessarily mean the delusion or pretense that you want to change the world. Just the idea and inspiration to simply create a cool and useful service that people would enjoy.

Paul Graham, a successful internet entrepreneur, has rightly pointed out the one idea that you must have in mind, that is, ‘make stuff people want.’ He has successfully launched Viaweb, which focuses on enabling non-tech savvy people to build and run their own online stores.

If you are one among the brave souls who have taken on the tag of an entrepreneur to begin a venture on the internet then this post is for you. Because like all internet entrepreneurs, you will come to meet the truth in the end – Marketing your internet business is way more important that what your internet business is all about. There are so many startups on the internet but many fail because of a stupid system of marketing their business or company.

In todays post I would like to share with you some points which will be very very helpful to you when you market your business. Here are a few mistakes most internet entrepreneurs make while marketing themselves onlines:

Spending Money on Public Relations

Spending money on Public Relations!!? Does your month-old startup really require a public relation campaign. There are many PR campaigns that are initiated by startups like booking bill boards, getting published on authority newspapapers like WSJ or Business Standard etc. Many startups try to emulate PR campaigns started by companies like Pepsi, Adidas, Sanyo and so on.

Unfortunately, many fail to realize that PR campaigns like these are more important for these big corporates because they need branding, their business is quite strongly established. These expensive PR campaigns with articles on magazines and newspapers are targeted at creating a distinguished brand for themselves. Whereas, a startup requires business, branding will come eventually! So don’t waste your money here.

Buzz All Over the Place

I would love to give a very effective hypothetical example here. Suppose you begin an internet business that sells gardening tools and accessories. Then a “bright” (ahem!) idea strikes you – you think that Gizmodo and TechCrunch are among the most popular blogs on the planet why don’t you pay them hundreds of dollar for a review or an ad spot. Then you will be rolling in the dough. Wrong Move!

If your company sells gardening tools promote it on the top gardening sites on the internet – not the top gadget or technology sites. I can guarantee your customers will be much more from the low traffic gardening sites than the monster-traffic technology sites. Don’t put your company all over the place, know where to generate the buzz and you will save a lot of money.

A Note About The Viral Content You Have Written for Your Company Blog

Writing great viral content is a super way to pull in targeted readers who will be interested in your service or product. But make sure your content is related to your internet business. Many startups screw up on this point, their high-traffic articles are hardly oriented towards their area of business. So almost negligible visitors would actually consider turning into customers in such cases.

Conclusion

It is a tricky game, marketing your internet business. But the intelligent move is to think whether the places where you are creating buzz is right or not. Marketing money is precious, it can make the world of a difference between the success and failure of your internet business.