Here is your trivia question of the day: What do tsunami, xbox 360, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears and Harry Potter have in common (Insert Jeopardy theme music here.) The answer: They were five of the top ten Google News searches in 2005. (Yes, Brads current flame also made the list.) When I was nine years old, the word googol was the answer to another trivia question, this one posed by my older brother: What is the worlds biggest number After I finally learned the answer, he said, Nope, its a googol-and-one. Aargh!
Today, of course, most everyone knows about Google. Its a major part of our Internet cultureboth a noun (Go to Google and find out) and a verb (Lets google it). With their ever increasing offerings, it appears Google is attempting to become much more than simply the worlds largest search engine. While it seldom invents a feature, the ones it adds are usually the best. Other services offered by Google include: Earth; Desktop; Image; Alerts; Froogle; Directory; Book Search; Music; Scholar; Picasa; Video; Gmail; Catalogs; and, Maps.
All this from a company founded eight years ago that gives nearly everything away for free! But Google does make money from those small ads on the right side of search pages, and right now those Sponsored Links are the golden goose (doubling revenue to $1.58 billion for the most recently reported quarter). And with $7.6 billion in cash, Google has plenty of ways to gather new technology. For instance, their latest initiative is an alliance with Sun Microsystems to take over the office environment dominated by Microsoft, in which you would someday access all your well-organized business information over the Internet, instead of on your servers.
Success Handler Action: Google went public in August 2004, at an offering price of $85 per share. In early 2006, it topped a dizzying $450, and a major Wall Street firm raised its price target to $600. A recent Forbes article suggested the key to Googles success is hiring only the truly brilliant and pursuing a rapid-fire food-fight strategy that throws out ideas as fast as possible. Hire the best; act quickly. Good strategy. After you finish reading this E-Newsletter, ask yourself these questions about the speed in your small business:
~ Who among your team members are the smartest and best
~ What types of new ideas do they come up with Think big picture.
~ Where do you send them to improve their personal and professional skills
~ When was the last time someone took the initiative to fix a problem on their own
~ How often do you find yourself asking more than once for something you need completed
Googles stated mission is to Organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful. They see themselves as an engineering company focused on creating many new offerings one project at a time. Employees work in small teams, taking new ideas from inspiration to results in less than six weeks, or dropping them completely. One success in 10 tries is acceptable, and one in five is considered superb.
Success Handler Action: Another key to Googles spectacular results is never allowing anyone to call an idea stupid. Employees spend 10 percent of their time dreaming up new things. As long as sufficient data exits to support a vision, Google teams are willing to explore it. To encourage employees to be more involved in setting the course for your small business, consider these five possibilities:
1. Gather your team for a brainstorming session, and choose six initiatives to pursue in 2006.
2. Choose an easy-to-read business book like Who Moved My Cheese and work through it together.
3. Focus on communicating, and helping your employees understand the big picture.
4. Pick a critical expense category, and teach everyone how they affect the bottom line.
5. Ask your team members what they would do, if they were in charge. Their creativity will surprise you.
Last month CNN.com asked users to choose the Internets most significant development in the last 15 years, and the leading vote-getter by far was the introduction of Google. This mega-empire with a market cap greater than Disney, Dell or Home Depot is expanding at a blistering pace by encouraging employees to play a critical role every day. Allowing your team members to join you in developing the vision for your small business will keep you from becoming the answer to a trivia question.
Copyright 2006 by Success Handler, LLC. All rights reserved.
The Coach, David Handler, is the founder of Success Handler, ( ), and specializes in helping small business leaders find clarity and take action. He understands the challenges of running a business, because hes been there as a small business owner, franchisee, franchisor, corporate leader and trainer. Much like sports coaches, his coaching will show you how to compete on a level playing field in your industry.
Now think of the stuffs you are excited about. Think of your interests. Come on...you must have several...! Well, let me help you with this. They can be reading, traveling, babies, books, shoes, flowers, golden fish, cats...shall I go on
Or you can tell me more about yourself... Are you a vegetarian.. Are you a big fan of swimming.. Do you drink tea everyday as a must.. Are you an expert in something.. What problems can you fix.. You got the point!
Next thing to do is to write them down. You should come up with at least 2 interests...
Finished
So now what OK. The next step is to predict whether those hobbies of yours are profitable or not in the internet. If so, lets determine which one is better.
If you have more than 3, I suggest you squeeze them into 3 subjects that you like most. Were going to analyze whether they are profitable in the internet or not. It is always easy to start with smaller numbers...
Then we shall start focusing on the one subject that you like most and could possibly generate high income in the net.
If you havent done your homework yet, then this lesson isnt for you! This is a step-by-step lesson, so please do as I tell you in each lesson...that is of course if you are serious to earn a nice income through the internet..!
Have your list with you OK lets go...
Now, to figure out whether those subjects you have are profitable or not, of course we have to know first whether people are looking for them in the internet or not. Its that simple. So we are going to use the search engine for this.
The Concept of Demand and Supply
Demand simply means... how many people are searching informations on a certain subject. Lets say your main interest is flower. Lets see how many people searched for this subject during March 2005.
Go to: http://inventory.overture.com
This is a very useful tool to track the Demand of a certain subject. I typed the word flower in the box and the results....Voila!
2,296,287 people searched for this single word during March 2005. Although this result is different with what you get from Google, but Overture makes a good comparison. Some say that the numbers of searches in Google are approximately 8 times bigger than the ones in Overture.
OK, that means the Demand for flower is 2,296,287.
How about the Supply The Supply simply means...how many sites are related to a certain subject, in this case flower.
And we will talk about this in more detail in the next lesson..
Farid Aziz is the author of How to Make Money Onine with Your Hobby. Visit to grab your FREE copy of Internet-Business-In-A-Box, a kit worth US$ 497.00.