I've shared this with a few people recently in conversation and they encouraged me to share it as a post that they can refer other people to. I've been using this process since late 2012 (it's May 2014 as I'm writing this) and it's been extremely helpful for me. 

This might sound odd coming from a guy that runs an agency focused on search engine optimization and Google rankings, but anytime we launch a new venture within the agency, I aim to launch the business solely on the back of online advertising. In short, we pursue niches where we can buy traffic from search engines, convert leads or revenue, and make a reasonable profit at the same time - "free traffic" from Google rankings will come, but it will come later.

The short answer is because I'm impatient. Building up a large amount of traffic from SEO for a brand new online business can take 3-6 months or more, and that assumes that you're cranking and doing things right.

Most of the businesses that I’ve pursued are web-based, so I’ve had my fair share of computer time through the years. Through this experience (sometimes I feel like I type and send emails for a living lol…), I’ve learned some tips and tricks to be more efficient with email management that I could not live without now.

In short, many of things you do on your computer could be done in half the time or less if you identify more efficient ways of doing them- using keyboard shortcuts instead of the computer mouse is one of the best ways to do this, and email is the best place to start. I compiled this blog post after showing a few clients tricks they weren’t previously aware of- hope these can help you too!

In an effort to provide a solid answer when someone asks me “what are some good web and mobile apps I should consider?” in business or personal life, I’m going to constantly add the below list over time.

Feel free to comment on this post with additional ideas too!

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Everyone has a little bit of entrepreneurship in them- not everyone has experience building a successful company, but everyone has a little bit of “wouldn’t it be great if XYZ?” in them.

This post is not meant to show you how to build a successful business- you’ll find a lot of that online, some of which works and some of which does not. Instead, this post will walk you through a number of specific steps that you can use to go from “wouldn’t it be great if XYZ?” to actually pursuing the business idea, if you choose to do so. In addition, I’ve also listed some great tools that may help you along the way

Having been in web marketing for most of my adult life, friends and family often ask for marketing advice that they can apply to their own business or career. In many of these cases, they're striking out on a more independent career path such as business consulting or independent sales where they will be responsible for generating sales for a firm.

While there are obviously numerous ways to market a business, my own experience has shown me that striving for expertise in a market and sharing that expertise in a constructive way is crucial- and it's often enough to build a steady stream of referrals. After all, the "product" of a business consultant is really their expertise in the area they're consulting in- clients are paying for their expertise for the betterment of their own firm. The same goes for someone in sales- prospects need to be confident in your expertise in order to trust the product(s) that you're selling.

I have to say, even I was amazed when I read about this tactic (over at Wealthy Affiliate). It's a tactic that involves promoting someone's ebook at a tradeshow and getting a commission for it.

While getting a commission for selling someone elses ebook is common, I hadn't looked into promoting ebooks at offline tradeshows yet...

Being a web-based entrepreneur (i.e most of the projects I work on are usually websites, involve heavy amounts of SEO and web marketing, etc.), I've spent countless hours trying to figure out faster / better ways of doing repetitive tasks online.

Google Docs- It's More Than Docs and Spreadsheets
Google Docs, a seemingly simple free tool Google provides to create online word documents and excel spreadsheets, can be used in quite a a few different ways to rapidly complete tasks that may otherwise have taken you hours.

Below is a Google Docs hack that saves me countless hours each week.

Getting the feedback of other people as you develop your idea can be incredibly powerful. Not only will you start to see if people "get it", but you may begin to expand or refine your idea based on common responses that multiple people give to you.

You had a great idea for a web-based startup, have hacked together a prototype to test the concept, built a great team, and have ultimately produced a market-ready product (wow- that makes it sound a bit too easy).

But now you need users...