In 1984, Branson was already a successful record company executive.  But upon being presented with the idea to start an airline, he jumped at it.  His research consisted of calling a possible competitor, a discount airline called People Express.  When he tried calling to make a reservation, he was put on hold and couldn’t get through to a company representative for several days.  This led Branson to conclude that the company didn’t provide something that Virgin Records, Branson’s first company, did extremely well–good customer service.

This was the “in” he was looking for, his competitive edge.  A few calls later, he signed a year-long lease for a Boeing jumbo jet.  Six months later, Virgin Atlantic’s first flight departed from London.

As the author of the book points out, Branson hadn’t done “extensive research” into the airline business.  He had taken a huge leap into a business that many people knew way more about than he did.  The point of this anecdote, which is probably rather simplified, is that taking action without all the research and the “experience” you think you need may be a good way to get started.

You may be thinking, “well, someone who has the entrepreneurial instincts and past success of a guy like Richard Branson has a better shot at making a new venture succeed.”  And you might be right.  But going form the music business to trying to compete with huge airlines was not an example of “straight line” thinking.  And his research wasn’t what you would call extensive either.

Obviously, a big part of his success relies on the fact that he takes risks and goes balls out where others might play it safe.

It is easy to get bogged down in research and self-doubt.  Sometimes taking the leap is a great way to learn how to do something and figure out how to succeed from inside the business as opposed to getting stuck looking at it from the outside.  In the online business world, where you can start a website or blog in minutes and for little or no money, it has never been easier to take a leap of faith in a new direction and see what happens.

This article is actually not an article, but a list of 33 tools you can use to make your website more efficient, more searchable, and just better overall for your visitors and potential visitors.

I haven’t used most of the SEO tools listed here, but one of them that I have used and that I found very useful and accurate is Website Grader.  This tool gives you a snapshot of the quality of your blog over several different criteriom such as pagerank, backlinks, traffic, and title tags.

Google Analytics is also another must-use tool: it lets you know how people arrived at your site, where they came from, what keywords they used, which of your URL’s are the most popular, and a lot more information besides.  I have only scratched the surface of what this program is capable of, because you can do A LOT more with it.

Much of the success of your website depends on finding and eliminating problems and also finding your strengths so you can focus on them.  Often, the goal of a website–especially if you are trying to make money online–is to attract visitors and gain search engine traffic.  The more traffic the better.

Use some of the tools from the list to make your website better.  Some of the tools are free like the two I mention above and some are not free.

There are hundreds of ways to earn money online–I am researching and trying to find new ways every day.  I’m really interested in online business and I know that it will be even more important and more effective as we go forward.  Frankly, private and public companies can’t be counted on to support workers anymore.  Jobs are not safe and 401k’s certainly aren’t either.

Write Articles Online

One way to earn money while unemployed if you are located in the United States (unless they’ve changed their rules) is Associated Content.  This is a website for writers where you submit work to the site’s editors and they pay you for your work.  You also receive small bonus payments for every pageview your articles receive.

If you are a writer, or even if you just like to write, you can try your hand at writing a few articles for AC.  You can also upload your own videos or audio recordings to the site for payment, so that might be another option.

We’re not talking about a lot of money here, but a few bucks here always helps.  If you write a few articles that gain a lot of traffic, you may be able to earn a nice little chunk of change.  If you have any questions about how to get started with Associated Content, let me know in a comment or send me an email.

I’ve earned as low as $4 or an article and as high as $12.  One article gets a healthy amount of page views and earns me an extra $7 a month.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, and it isn’t really.  But I haven’t written many articles published on the site, so if you had ten or twenty good articles earning that, you can see how you could add to your bottom line–no matter how small the amount of money is per article.  Again, every bit helps.

Start a Free Blog

Blogger is a free service where you can start a blog, name it what you want (if it is available), and write about anything you want to.  It is also very easy to implement the Google Adsense advertising program to your blog.  You can do it right from your dashboard at the site.  When people click on your ads, you earn money.  When you hit $100, you get a payment issued to you.  The keys to earning money from a blog (and this is a very basic explanation of a not too easy process) are writing content based on a consistent theme, gaining a lot of traffic, and having some sort of monetization on your site. You can use Adsense or even try some affiliate marketing products.

These are just two ways to get started earning money online.  I know this is not an in-depth or very thorough post, but I just wanted to throw these two sites out to those of you looking for ways to earn income online during these tough times.  They may not be perfect for your situation, but they are a place to start.  Good luck.

* Update - 11/14

See the comment below from Laura at Associated Content.  There is money to be made at AC if you have the time and the necessary computer connection to write and publish articles.  Get started writing today.

The stories range from marketing guru Seth Godin to online dating entrepreneur Markus Frind to Carlo Feliciano, an internet copywriter who shrugged at his own inexperience and jumped head first into his chosen line of work.

The post is a list with links to ten different articles, each about a different person’s online business success.  These are definitely inspirational and hopefully will give you the kick in the pants you need after a rough day out there on the front lines of the wild wild web.

This feels really good.

Another thing that feels really good is when you begin to earn money from the work you publish online.  This is especially exciting because not only are you able to write and have people read what you write, but you are able to turn a profit (even if it is just beer or coffee money).

The combination of these things–publishing and earning a little cash for your efforts–often makes the writer feel like he or she needs to write something everyday.  It’s natural: you want to keep up your momentum, you become accustomed to writing daily, and furthermore, you like being able to drink Amstel Light instead of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

This is when the fun gets sucked out of online publishing and quality goes to that same sad place the Dodo now reside.

My advice to you burned-out-blogger is to hire someone to write a post for you a couple times a month.  Take a day off from writing and experience the joy of reading someone else’s work on your own website.

You may even be able to entice a “guest poster” to write something in exchange for a link to their own site from the post.  This is a good way to get really good content and creates value for both parties.

Write as often as you like and as much as you like, but don’t kill yourself in the process.

Take a day off and hire a writer.  You’ll come back the next day refreshed and ready to wow your readers once again.

Unfortunately, there are hundreds or thousands of other websites, blogs, or individual pages competing with you for the all important top slots on the search engine ranking pages (SERPs).  There are a lot of things you can do to make your site as search engine friendly as possible in order to attract visitors to your website.  There are also a lot of things you should not do lest you get banned from the first few pages of search engine results.

Here’s a list of 4 things you should do:

Get your website listed in internet directories. Directories like DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory have high rankings and give your site legitimacy.

Try to get subscriptions to your website. This way, when you publish a new article, your visitors are notified and have easy access to your site.  If you can collect email addresses, this is helpful too because you can get directly to your audience with a newsletter, for example.

Analyze your traffic. Google Analytics is a free program you can use to see what URLs on your site are the most popular, and what keywords people are searching that bring them to your site.  This will help you immensely in shaping your site so as to get the most traffic.

Create relationships with the owners of other websites similar to yours. If you can do this, then this can be very helpful.  This kind of promotion works well with blogs, but can also work well for an e-commerce website if you interest other webmasters with what you are doing.

4 Things you should not do:

Do not spam. If it feels like spamming, it probably is.

Don’t buy links. If you buy links from a link farm, chances are search engines will penalize you for trying to boost your rankings in this way.  Get legitimate links by creating good content that others will link to.  Also, comment on other websites and try to get a conversation going with others on the internet.

Don’t stuff keywords into your articles. You may be tempted to throw in your keyword phrases as many times as possible.  As soon as your content becomes unreadable because your keyword percentage is too high, that’s when you know you’ve used them too many times.

Don’t solicit links from any old website. Any link to your website is probably a good thing, but it is better to get links from higher ranked websites that are relevant to your site.  If you get links from sites in “bad neighborhoods,” this could hurt your site.  Don’t worry too much about this, but only do “link exchanges” if there is a legitimate reason.

Creating a successful website takes time, effort, and work.  If you do it right, you will reap the rewards.  Remember, the cream always rises, so if you do good work, you will be rewarded.

Good luck.  It’s tough out there.

If you are interested in getting a business education, maybe you should start an online business.  There’s never been a better time for entrepreneurs than now, and starting a business might be the best way to learn about it.

But if you are interested in taking some free courses in lieu of paying big bucks for an MBA, read this article about ten places where you can find free business education resources online.

First on the list is MIT’s school of management, which offers over 50 free graduate and undergraduate business courses.

Have you ever wondered how much money these new world journalists earn from their blogs.  It’s not the easiest information to find and believe me I’ve looked.

Here’s a good article about how much money top tier bloggers earn published at Read Write Web.

The tool is a very basic internet traffic estimator that gives you a pretty good idea of how much traffic a given website gets over a thirty day period.

I’ve used the tool with several different websites that I already have a rough estimate of traffic for already, and this tool was pretty close to being right on every time.

The tool can be found at TrafficEstimate.com and all you have to do is put in the URL of the site you want data for.  If you are an internet entrepreneur, this is a pretty good way for you to gauge how much traffic a competing site receives.

Websites are the ultimate small business. You have minimal overhead other than computer and web hosting costs, advertising, education expenses, and whatever you put into your product or content.

Another amazing thing about running an online business is you can run it from your apartment, your cubicle, or a beach in Jamaica (as long as there’s wifi).

The sheer scalability of a website is an exciting thing too. Anyone anywhere (well, perhaps not those in China) can visit your online storefront and make a purchase or learn more about your service or whatever it is you have to offer.

If you are interested in starting a small business in whatever field and you haven’t started a website yet, I would recommend that you look into it.  Your competitors are.