Cheap Resources from Entrepreneur.com

Not sure if you want to pursue your Internet idea? Or maybe you don’t have the funding for it? If you’re like me, you also don’t want to work in a big corporation while you try to hit it big. So how do you make money to fund your own idea but not work for someone else?

A great resource for ideas is Entrepreneur.com. They offer 18 different start-up guides for those looking to start part-time businesses in their spare time. These range from specialized services like consulting to general services such as starting your own eBay store.

These step-by-step startup guides provide you with everything you need to start your own business. They even include software with business calculators, ready-made business forms and sample business plans to simplify the process. Don’t have enough time to read through the guides? Get the audio version and listen to it while you’re on the go!

Let’s take a startup guide and check out the contents. I chose the eBay store guide at random. The site provides a product description outlining the contents including a Table of Contents and an excerpt of first chapter. The guide starts by providing the reader an introduction to eBay. It moves on to talk about who the sellers are on eBay, what successful eBay sellers have in common, turning your hobby or special interest into a business on eBay, eBay businesses you can purchase, buying before selling – and that’s just the first chapter.

I also noticed from the excerpt that the guide introduces you to successful eBay sellers, highlighting what they did right as well as the mistakes they made along the process – a huge benefit! There is a lot of information you can find online about selling on eBay, the nice thing about this guide is that it provides it to you all in one place.

What else does Entrepreneur.com offer? The site also provides start-up guides for those looking to start a small business in areas such as business services, computer services, food businesses, personal services and retail businesses. This section also offers the same features as the part-time business guides such as software, a product description, a Table of Contents and an excerpt of the first chapter.

While I was doing research for this post, I was surprised to learn that Entrepreneur.com also offers logo design through a partnership with LogoYes. We’ve had successful results with another logo company called Logoworks (Read our “An Evaluation of Logoworks” post for more details). However, LogoYes is cheaper and the turnaround seems faster. It’s a site that we’ll try and recommend to our clients if we are happy with the results.

I also saw that Entrepreneur.com had a “State Startup Series”. These are guides on starting a business in your state that contains information on your state’s demographic and economic data, tax strategies, employment information, safety and health laws and regulations, and more. This is another avenue to pursue if you’re looking to launch an Internet site as well as a brick and mortar location.

In addition, I noticed that Entrepreneur.com recently launched a new website for women entrepreneurs. The site features articles, columns, blogs, success stores, news and resources to help women succeed in small business. Check it out at www.womenentrepreneur.com.

Hopefully, these guides will be useful in your quest to obtain additional funds for your startup. If there are other beneficial resources that Entrepreneur.com offers that we didn’t see, please let us know!

By: Yasmine Mustafa