I just started using Outright about two weeks ago. At first I was just manually adding my income data to test out the system.

But now, I'd like to begin importing my account information such as Paypal transactions into Outright. My question - during this import procedure, will it over-right what I previously did? Or will it create duplicate inputs?

Share the strategies you use to stay motivated.

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth loses the past and is dead for the future.” Euripides

We tell you about the power of stories quite a bit. And now we’re able to see what happens in our brains when we encounter a compelling story. But how do you learn to tell these types of stories? Often, just by studying great ones. Take 37 seconds to read this one: ______ The soul of the city is [...]

If you missed Tom Friedman’s OpEd piece in The New York Times yesterday on why the Obama administration needs to focus on youth entrepreneurship, please read it here right now. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Friedman suggests that President Obama seems to have all but forgotten the “amazing, young, Internet-enabled, grass-roots movement he mobilized to get elected.” I couldn’t agree more. Sure, there was a meeting of young entrepreneurs at the White House last March, organized by Elliott Bisnow, founder of the Summit Series. In attendance: Jake Nickell (Threadless); Tony Hsieh (Zappos); Aaron Patzer (Mint.com); Evan Williams (Twitter), and 25 or so others. But what has the administration done since then to engage this incredibly entrepreneurial generation? Not much, as far as I can tell. Yes, we need health care reform and we certainly must put some regulatory reins back on the financial sector, but most of all, we need to create jobs by stimulating the creation of new companies. And while organizations like the Kauffman Foundation, for which I have great respect, claim that the majority of new entrepreneurial firms are started by people in their 40s, I think a strong case can be made for devoting significant resources to young entrepreneurs. First of all, we know that they are a generation of serial entrepreneurs. Over 75% of the entrepreneurs I interviewed for my book, Upstarts! said that they were very or highly likely to start another company; most had already founded two or more. Why does this matter? Because practice makes perfect and by the time they’re in their forties, many of these young business owners will have several start-ups under their belts, having learned as much if not more from their inevitable failures as from their successes. And that will help them grow into an exceptional generation of entrepreneurial leaders. I’m not the only one who thinks so. Last month, I had the incredible privilege of having tea with Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of the Girl Scouts, founder of the Leader to Leader Institute, and now the Chair for the Study of Leadership at West Point (she’s the first woman appointee and the first non-graduate of West Point to hold the position). Ms. Hesselbein, who Peter Drucker described as one of the greatest leaders he had ever met, knows leadership when she sees it. And she told me with great enthusiasm that she views the current generation of cadets at West Point as the most promising group of future leaders she has ever met. Why? “They understand the importance of service,” she said. And she wasn’t talking just about service to one’s country, but to communities in general. “The first thing they want to tell you about is the volunteer work they’re doing,” she said. I found the same to be to be true among the young entrepreneurs I interviewed for my book: 70% said their companies had a social mission. But make no mistake: they’re laser-focused on the bottom line as well and they understand why growing a profitable, sustainable company that creates jobs is a social good in and of itself. It’s pretty clear to me: this is a generation worth investing in. So, back to Friedman, who suggests that the best thing President Obama could do is to “bring together the country’s leading innovators and ask them: What legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over?” He also mentions two youth entrepreneurship programs that are worthy of being replicated: National Lab Day, which pairs scientists and engineers with budding student inventors; and The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) which teaches entrepreneurship to low-income kids. He might have also included Junior Achievement’s new Be Entrepreneurial program, which is focused on helping high school students start their own businesses. And what about funding/incubating programs like TechStars and YCombinator? Both organizations receive hundreds of applications every year but can only accommodate a few promising young entrepreneurs. Is there some way that government can support and/or offer incentives to spur the creation of similar programs? I know there’s a strong contingency out there that believes government should simply step aside and let entrepreneurs do what they do best with minimal interference from inside the Beltway. And maybe in the best of times, that works. But we’re in crisis mode now, so I stand with Friedman and his call to President Obama to help ignite a youth entrepreneurship movement. I think our future economic growth depends on it. What about you?

More people are working from home, and more of them are working for themselves, according to Census data released today. The chart below compares the growth in the number of self-employed people working exclusively from home to growth in total home-based workers and the total number of people employed.

The number of self-employed who work exclusively from home increased from 3.47 million in 1999 to 4.34 million in 2005 (the latest available from the Census). The total population of working from home at least some of the time increased from 9.48 million to 11.33 million in the same period.

Also notable: the home-based workforce is well-educated and earns significant income. In 2005, 46.5% had at least a bachelor's degree (compared to 27.2% of the total population over 25) and had median family income of $63,648 (compared to the national median of $46,242 that year). The biggest share (28%) of home-based businesses were in professional services -- lawyers, accountants, programmers, consultants, and the like.

This data reinforces the trend that more and more home-based businesses are serious enterprises. We wrote about this last year, when Steve King of Emergent Research published a report on "homepreneurs."

"The myth is around people working from home don’t make money, and that these things are part-time, hobbies," King told me this morning. "There’s a big chunk of these people who are serious as opposed to hobbies."

King also notes that the Census survey asks people specifically about whether they work from home, rather than whether they have a "home-based" business or job. So people who work out of the home -- consulting on site, or home-improvement contractors, landscapers, etc., -- are not counted. King's research suggests that there are about 6.6 million "serious" home-based businesses that provide at least half of their owners' household income.

The technologies that enable more people to work at home have advanced significantly since 2005, so the number of home-based entrepreneurs is most likely even greater today. Explore the Census data tables here.

For many, blogging conjures up fears of being chained to one's computer spending countless hours on content that no one will read. But it doesn't have to be that way. From an online journal at 1,000 words per post to a simple 140-character Twitter feed, blogging has taken center stage largely because of how useful it has proven itself to be in almost all areas of business. Blogging can also be profitable according to research by Technorati, an Internet search engine for searching blogs, which reports that for blogs with 100,000 or more unique monthly visitors revenue averages about $75,000 annually. As a companion to my popular series on Blogging, here is a step-by-step guide to getting your blog from zero to thousands of readers.Note: This guide doesn't touch on micro-blogging, the type of short blog posts that can be found on Twitter or on other social networking status updates. For more information on how these blogs can be helpful, read 5 Ways to Actually Make Money on Twitter.Step 1: Determine why you are blogging. In my post "To Blog or Not to Blog", I outlined the four reasons why a website exists to aid a business: 1) to build a brand, 2) generate leads, 3) generate direct sales, or 4) generate advertising revenue. A blog can also support any one of these goals. Which goals are you trying to accomplish with your company website and which are you trying to accomplish with your blog? Define what success looks like? If your goal is branding, what awareness studies will you do? If your goal is advertising revenue, how much do you hope to make? How many readers and page views do you need? For lead generation, how many phone calls or e-mails do you want to get from your blog? These goals can change, but it is important to put a stake in the ground and then measure against it. Also, take a look at How Twitter Helps a CEO Run His Company for a peek at how micro-blogging (Twitter) helped this CEO gain feedback about his company.Step 2: Determine the "concept" of your blog. What is the niche you will write about? Who will care? Once you know WHY you are blogging, you can think about WHAT to blog about. You may go back and forth between Step 1 and Step 2 for a few rounds before making your final decision. Some people start with an idea for a blog but when they put it to the test of actually generating revenue the idea changes. Step 1 and Step 2 must work in tandem and you have to know that there is an audience for what you have to say.Your blog concept can be very narrow, attracting a small but passionate niche of readers and few, if any, competitors, or it can focus broadly on a topic that is widely popular but has a lot of competition. Much of your decision may rely on the resources available to you and ultimately your goals. Do you have a large marketing budget, staff and resources for your blog? Do you already have access to a large audience of readers (thousands to tens of thousands of readers)? Do you have a long period of time (2-3 years) over which you can consistently devote 5-10 hours per week of writing and marketing efforts to slowly build your blog audience and subscriber base? If you answered no to all of these questions you may want to consider focusing narrowly since creating a very unique voice or speaking on a unique topic is a much easier and faster way to break through the noise than writing about the same thing that everyone else writes about.Step 3: Will your blog be separate or integrated into your site?This is actually two questions:1.    Will your blog be under the same domain name as your site? The benefit of this is that you will get more (search engine optimization) SEO value out of the content of your blog. Some advise putting your blog under a different domain and linking generously between the two sites in order to gain "link popularity." But link popularity is not necessarily the most important element of SEO (nor will it help you much to have many links between two sites neither of which is itself highly ranked). Having a larger amount of keyword-rich content on your site is usually far more important. Having your blog hosted under the same domain name as your site will add all of your blog content to your site content when search engines determine where to place your site in the rankings. For more about Search Engine Optimization read this detailed guide or my blog post on the topic.2.    Will your blog exist within the same software as your site? If your website is built within a Content Management System (which is usually a very good idea because updating is made easier) it is typically most useful to have your blog constructed within that same CMS. These programs, including Drupal, Joomla and WordPress, will typically allow users to build both a website and a blog. The benefit here is that you only have ONE login to access and update all of the content of your site. Plus, there's only ONE system to learn. See my post titled "Build Your Blog" for a lot more detail on different options for building your blog, including free vs. paid, self-hosted vs. blogging-company hosted, WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com, etc. Step 4: Decide what you will write about.There are several decisions you'll need to make somewhat in tandem:1) Frequency – Look at your resources and determine how often you can comfortably write content. Do you plan to pay someone to write content or write it yourself? While blogging frequency varies widely, the most typical frequency is daily, weekly or monthly. The more often you post, the more traffic you'll get.2) Content – Now comes the part where you actually have to write something. It will be harder than you think. My strong recommendation is to compose your first five posts ahead of time and post them according to the schedule you devise. From there, you can determine if your frequency is realistic. Don't forget the power of headlines - a great headline will do a lot to attract readers. A great resource to help you with headline writing, copywriting or even blasting writer's block is CopyBlogger. NOTE: It never hurts to take a cue from the experts. We've rounded up a list of 19 bloggers who not only provide great tips for your business but are also provide good examples of how to do it right. 3) Content Organization – Some content can be organized in topic categories while it may make sense for other blogs to be listed by date. If your style is more of a personal journal like the author of Dooce.com, categories won't make as much sense. Dooce blogger Heather Armstrong writes about whatever is on her mind at the moment so chronology works best.4. Call to Action – How will you engage your readers to reach your ROI? Here are some phrases to include in your blog:  •    Join my email list•    Download my ebook•    Buy my product•    Sign up for my service•    Call or email me for a consultation•    Buy advertising on this blog•    Connect with me on various social sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace etc.)•    Visit my store or office•    Come meet me at this live eventIntegrate the calls to action that make sense for your needs into both the content and design of your blog. Your calls to action should impact your success goals from Step 1. If success for your blog is just having 10,000 readers per month, then your calls to action will focus heavily on marketing to new audiences and keeping existing readers happy. You can accomplish that by making content easy to find, highly engaging and being available to your audience.Step 5: Determing your process.Will your blog be managed by a single person (i.e. you are a solo entrepreneur) or will each blog post be reviewed by senior management? Who will be responsible for updating blog posts? These questions will affect frequency. This article on Blogging for Business highlights the things to beware of in establishing your blogging process, matching it to your goals and maintaining transparency and authenticity.Step 6: Design your blog. Now that you have an idea of what your calls to action will be, you have some actual content that can be used and you know the purpose of your blog you can determine design. If you are working with a budget of less than $5,000, I would strongly recommend working with a pre-designed template. You can either modify the template as needed or use the template as is. A custom template can be expensive when done well or not very good if done cheaply. You will often be far better off getting all the built-in testing, browser compatibility, features and functionality of a well made pre-designed template.You can find some free templates here and paid themes here. Step 7: Building your blog.

What software will you use and where will you host your blog? You have two options: 1) Host your blog with a third-party blog service provider like WordPress.com or Blogger.com; or 2) Get the software (WordPress.org is the most popular) and host your blog internally or with a hosting company.

Hosting internally provides more control over your content, updates, and is currently the only option if you plan to generate advertising revenue with your blog. Read "Build Your Blog" for more details on this software and hosting decision. If you are working with a budget of less than $5,000, the wise decision is probably to identify which software you can afford FIRST, and then determine your content and design based on what that software provides. If your budget is $5,000 or greater, you'll have more flexibility and should determine desired features first, then choose the software and create a design based solely on your needs. Features and Functionality - Do your homework and identify what features and functionality you want to have on your blog. In these articles, I outline 8 fundamental features and 13 must have features. Do you want to manage your own comments or use a service like Disqus? Do you want to automate a battery of "share" links into each post or choose select ones? Will you allow people to subscribe to automatically receive an email whenever you update your blog? What service will you use to do that?Step 8: Marketing your blog.There are countless ways to market your blog, but the key is that you actually do it. Basically you are trying to find ways to establish both creditability and visibility for your content. People have to know your blog exists and is useful. You have to remind them that it exists as often as possible and in a non-annoying way. Many of the features that are included in a blog are designed to help you drive traffic. I break the marketing job into two categories: 1) getting new readers, and 2) building loyalty amongst your existing readers. For a list of the best ways to market your blog see my post here on the top ways to market your blog.Step 9: Monitor your traffic and analyze your success. Establish a process (weekly, monthly or quarterly) to assess your blog's success and failures with a keen eye on what's driving each. Are you getting a lot of traffic from particular places? Boost your presence there. Are you spending a lot of energy on a particular topic that consistently gets very little traffic? Perhaps you should either stop writing about that topic or consider if you are marketing to the wrong audience. Are you not generating the advertising revenue you had hoped? Perhaps you don't have a large enough readership, or perhaps you're not making an offer that's relevant to advertisers (audience demographics, pricing, ad placement, etc.). Perhaps your going after the wrong advertisers. Make sure you assess your blog on a regular basis against the goals you defined in Step 1. •    Tools for traffic assessment will include website traffic statistics software Google Analytics or the simpler traffic statistics software that should come for free with your hosting account. Ask your hosting company how to access it.•    Once you know your site traffic, you can also benchmark it against other sites with Compete.com and Quantcast.•    For advertising rates, search competitor sites for their "advertising rate sheets" for free data or you can use paid tools such as Nielsen Adrelevance, Nielsen @plan.Step 10: Monetize your blog.If you choose to take the route of generating revenue from your blog, I'd like to offer some sobering information supplied by Technorati. Based on the 2009 State of Blogoshopere and 2008 State of Blogoshopere, 72 percent of respondents have not monetized their blog. Only 4 percent of respondents derive their primary source of income from their blog. In fact, the median annual revenue for the bloggers who do have advertising was $200. That means 50 percent of the respondents earn less than $200 per year from their blogs with CPMs of $1.20 or less. The top 10 percent of bloggers earn an average of $19,000 annually. The top 1 percent earn $200,000 or more. The average annual income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than one million visitors each month). This should provide some grounding on what to expect from monetizing a blog both in terms of dollars and traffic thresholds. If you're going to monetize your blog you should be aware of the options that are open to you. Most people think of monetizing only through selling ads but there are many other possibilities.1) Supporting an existing online store. Zappos is probably the best example of this.2) Selling your products and services. Blogs are often used to drive sales of information products (i.e. ebooks etc.) or services.3) Selling products for other affiliates. Earn a commission from the sale of other people's products on your site.

4) Selling advertising. Do your own sales, hiring a sales team, or join an ad network. Here is a fantastic list of advertising networks from econsultant.com.5) Pay per post. Companies will actually hire you to write a post for them or review their product on your blog.

WARNING: This technique is controversial and may damage the trust your readers have in you.6) Arrange speaking engagements. The authority you establish in your blog can translate to your ability to speak on this topic to a live (or virtual) audience.7) Paid writing and media appearances. Write for other publications or make media appearances.

8) Blog roundtables. Provide your opinion and feedback on products.9) Event attendance. Sometimes all people want is your presence! Let's face it, blogging is resource intensive but can be highly valuable. Make sure you're going to get your money's worth or else those resources might be better used elsewhere.

This applies both to actual celebrities, and people who are building a brand that can be clearly defined as having a "voice." People like Perez Hilton, Oprah Winfrey and Tony Hsieh of Zappos immediately come to mind. All of them have Twitter feeds and each of them has a very distinct voice. A recent post from the CEO of a company with projected 2008 revenues of $1 billion: "In waiting room at doctor's office. In addition to magazines, they should offer a selection of paint so people can watch it dry." People follow these feeds for a variety of reasons but mainly because they receive something emotionally satisfying from the postings.

The Guide is typically a person or people assigned to seek out messages posted by people with questions related to a certain topic, products or services they have expertise in. For example, this Blackberry-related company set itself up as a Blackberry trouble-shooter.

Someone proactively seeking out mentions of their company name or product name and responding personally to each post. Companies can win big brownie points by having very senior staff members respond to customer service questions. The idea here is that by providing direct access to someone who really knows what they're talking about, companies can prevent damage to their brand from disappointed customers.

Very similar to the Brand Watchdog, this too is focused on watching for and responding to customer service questions. This category is usually filled by the unsung Twitter heroes (Twiroes?). They are likely handling questions in other (non-Twitter) venues and have added Twitter to the ways they communicate. The catch here is that some Twitter customer service reps will actually help you resolve your issue. We'll see how long that lasts!

People and companies will often use Twitter as a way to simply feed followers information about their area of influence. A lot of news is now breaking on Twitter before it hits major publications. But you don't have to be first, just relevant and somewhat consistent. A really interesting take on the publisher model is The Brooklyn Museum, which is monetizing their social content and their community by offering memberships to a "socially networked museum membership" for $20 per year.

Both spammers and e-commerce sites fit into this category, but the e-commerce sites use Twitter in interesting ways to do promotion and inform customers about products they are interested in. Take a look at Amazon on Twitter. Their feed is a little bit all over the place in terms of content, and they don't have an individual person that followers can connect with (which limits conversation and can limit follower numbers) but they've still managed to collect almost 4,000 followers as of the publishing of this article. Contests, Twitter-only discount codes, and free giveaways are all part of the promotion channel arsenal.

Many of the most popular tweeters are those who actively engage with their followers. In essence this is what really makes Twitter unique as a communication tool, although it's also what scares the bejeezus out of small business owners. Being the Conversationalist can be very time consuming, but the rewards are high in terms of building a loyal following and truly connecting with people who are interested in what you have to offer. This approach involves talking several posts per day, many of which are directed at specific people.

There are many people who don't post to Twitter at all. They use it as an information resource, watching the Twitter trending topics to crowd source their news or follow people they find interesting or informative. This can be a great way to use Twitter and learn a thing or two. The key here is to be careful about who you follow – you want people with a high signal to noise ratio, usually with infrequent, but high-quality posts. -- Maisha Walker

This is one of those classic “do as I say, not as I did” posts. As our company grew, so did I– around the middle. I’d been pretty good about regular exercise before then. But when our business took off, I couldn’t wait to get into the office early, get my coffee, and start my work. [...]

I set up my DBA and bank accounts a couple years ago, but I am wondering if I shouldn't get an EIN for my business. Is there an advantage to doing that? A disadvantage? At the end of the day, what will it cost me to make that transition?