While there are many great Internet business blogs about, they are not always easy to find. So I’ve gathered together a list of what I believe are the Top 100 Internet Business Blogs on the Internet. If you feel I’ve missed a blog out then contact me and tell me why.

The blogs are listed in order of their Alexa rankings (A) now that it seems to be more accurate. The rankings are correct at the time of posting.

1. SEO Book A: 6,512
2. SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog A: 9,827
3. Problogger A: 14,176
4. John Chow Dot Com A: 15,979
5. Shoemoney A: 22,624
6. Learn Success With Randy Brown A: 29,945
7. Search Engine Guide A: 34,257
8. Dosh Dosh A: 36,514
9. Copy Blogger A: 38,116
10. Net Profits Today A: 41,596
11. Performancing A: 43,214
12. 5 Star Affiliate Programs Blog A: 44,583
13. Hubspot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog A: 50,105
14. Entrepreneurs Journey A: 50,256
15. Marketing Pilgrim A: 56,068
16. Affiliate Marketing Blog A: 56,940
17. Zac Johnson A: 60,391
18. Daily Bog Tips A: 63,349
19. Online Marketing Blog A: 65,986
20. Why Do Work A: 66,773
21. XFEP A: 69,647
22. Courts Internet Marketing School A: 71,989
23. ClickNewz A: 79,104
24. James D. Brausch A: 83,050
25. UberAffiliate A: 84,398
26. Money Maker Info A: 91,956
27. Caroline Middlebrook A: 92,642
28. John Cow A: 95,039
29. Carl Ocab A: 95,040
30. 45n5 A: 95,986
31. Graywolf’s SEO Blog A: 97,033
32. ReveNews A: 97,229
33. LaborLiberator.com A: 98,153
34. Internet Marketing with Josh Spaulding A: 99,578
35. Winning The Web A: 102,475
36. Tyler Cruz A: 104,011
37. Andy Beard A: 104,631
38. Can I Make Big Money Online A: 105,230
39. Blogging Bits A: 105,573
40. JenSense A: 108,951
41. Internet Business Coaching by Terry Dean A: 109,709
42. Blogger Unleashed A: 110,266
43. How to Make Money Online for Beginners A: 111,344
44. Web Worker Daily A: 111,416
45. Affiliate Watcher A: 111,743
46. Just Make Money Online A: 112,033
47. Virtual Marketing Blog A: 114,524
48. Remarkablogger A: 117,224
49. Ades Blog A: 118,364
50. Emonetized A: 119,365
51. The Writers Manifesto Blog A: 121,286
52. Super Affiliate Mindset A: 124,003
53. DallinDonna A: 124,168
54. Gary Conn A: 125,621
55. Making Sales Making Money A: 125,749
56. cybercashology A: 128,061
57. Small Fuel Marketing A: 129,412
58. Richard Lee A: 129,433
59. Blogging Experiment A: 129,807
60. Pure Blogging A: 132,415
61. Blogging Tips A: 134,248
62. Internet Business With Pat B. Doyle A: 136,093
63. AnyWired A: 140,148
64. Internet Business A: 141,052
65. Business Opportunities and Ideas A: 141,389
66. Nate Whitehill A: 142,240
67. Blogging Secret A: 142,572
68. Ian Fernando A: 144,020
69. Redfly Search Engine Marketing Blog A: 145,590
70. The Unofficial Adsense Blog A: 146,037
71. Who Is Andrew Wee A: 146,295
72. Blog Storm A: 147,550
73. Blogtrepreneur A: 148,135
74. Jim Boykin A: 149,468
75. Newest on The Net A: 150,672
76. Blog Clout A: 152,004
77. Mixed Market Arts A: 154,068
78. Stephan Miller A: 155,534
79. Gather Success A: 155,586
80. It’s Write Now A: 159,605
81. ryanshamus.com A: 161,336
82. Stuntdubl A: 162,601
83. Aaron Brandon A: 162,915
84. here.org.uk A: 163,110
85. Internet Business Blog A: 163,353
86. Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog A: 164,017
87. Net Business Blog A: 168,379
88. Pqinternet.com A: 175,287
89. W Revenue dot Com A: 178,813
90. Daily Moolah A: 189,500
91. Self Made Minds A: 191,944
92. About.com Online Business A: 200,000
93. College Startup A: 202,627
94. Twenty Steps A: 202,838
95. Frank Haywood A: 205,902
96. Jim Karter’s Make Money Online A: 211,835
97. Chris Bloczynski dot Com A: 229,337
98. TheBlogEntrepreneur A: 235,126
99. Solo Entrepreneur A: 264,580
100. Spark Plugging A: 290,724 - Which should probably be higher up, but has a low Alexa ranking due to a recent re-branding.

I define an Internet business blog as one that provides business ideas, advice, commentary or feedback on Internet business related topics (SEO, SEM, Internet Marketing, Blogging Online Business and Making Money Online). I’ve excluded any site that I feel is primarily a news based site or that is merely re-posting content from other sources. I’ve also excluded sites that are too new or have not been updated for over a month.

If you think I’ve missed a blog out then contact me and tell me why. If you find this list interesting you might also be interested in the Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs by 45n5 or the Top 100 Business Blogs.

I’ve been looking forward to reading Rachel Elanugh’s book since she announced that she was writing one. Although her business Red Letter Days ended up in administration before being bought by two of her fellow Dragons I believe there’s a lot that aspiring entrepreneurs could learn from her experience.

So I was disappointed when I first saw the chapter list on the book’s website, as each chapter appeared to be about a different entrepreneur (Simon Woodroffe, Ivan Massow, Nick Wheeler, Michelle Mone, Doug Richard, Lord Jeffery Archer, Brain Souter, Dame Anita Roddick, Al Gosling, James Murray Wells, Donald Trump, Laura Tenison, James Dyson, Emma Harrison, Peter Jones, Lord Karan Bilimoria, Sir James Goldsmith, Dawn Gibbins, Gerald Ratner and Felix Dennis).

Fortunately there is one chapter and various interjections throughout the rest of the book that tell her story, albeit briefly. I would have liked however to have heard more about her other experiences since Red Letter Days, such as becoming the CEO of EasyArt.com for just three months, her endorsement of Your Home Page In and her business The life Changers , not to mention her latest venture Rachel Elnaugh Ltd.

Unfortunately just about every mention of Red Letter Days seems to be accompanied by either an excuse that blames someone else for its failure or an attack on someone Elnaugh deems to have been ill-behaved. In particular outing Activity Superstore’s previous owner Angus Grahame for sending copies of Red Letter Days accounts to key buyers strikes me as on a par with what he did, besides putting it into perspective all good buyers will make sure they see your accounts anyway.

I find it disappointing that Elnaugh does not accept more responsibility for the failure of Red Letter Days. In my opinion, if your business fails while you still own it then it’s your fault. Yes you might have had a weak operations director/marketing director/financial director/managing director or your bank/supplier/staff/systems might let you down, ultimately however you were responsible for who you hired, you are responsible for your relationships with other businesses and the banks and you are responsible for managing the risk your business faces.

Not being the book I hoped Elnaugh would write isn’t however fair criticism, so what did I think of this book? I liked it. The chapters are conveniently short so it’s easy to dip in and out of so you don’t have to set aside long periods of reading time and the mix of entrepreneurs does mean that there’s at least one that you should be able to relate to your business.

I think it’s great to be able to read about the mistakes, problems and difficulties faced by these entrepreneurs. It’s a great opportunity for future/budding entrepreneurs to learn from their mistakes, and if reading it helps you avoid making the same mistakes it could pay for itself many times over. I would suggest all budding entrepreneurs buy a copy and read it.

You can buy it from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

I’ve started a blogging business.

Why am I telling you this? Well, John has often written about blogging as a business , so when I started my own blog I asked if I could write a guest post about it. He suggested that, rather than just write one post, I write a series charting the progress of my blog. This of course presents me with a problem: what if my blog doesn’t get anywhere? John’s attitude to this was straightforward: I’d better make sure it does get somewhere! Here then, is the first of these posts.

The blog is entitled Chess Material, and you can find it at http://www.ChessMaterial.com. As you’ve probably guessed, the topic is the game of Chess. If the title looks odd and/or artificial, please take a look at the “about” page for an explanation of the title.

Motivation

I am an enthusiastic chess player. I play at club level and in weekend tournaments. Recently I decided to take active steps to improve my play, and one of the known best methods of doing this is to go back through your own games, find the mistakes, figure out what you could have done better, and make notes. Basically, a debriefing process, almost exactly the same as is used on software development projects (and projects in many other fields of interest). Anyway, rather than just keep my notes in my own files, why not blog them on the web, I thought – that way, hopefully, other people will get involved too, and we can all learn.

This may make the site sound more like a hobby than a business, but I put it to you that the best businesses are the ones that (a) are fun, and (b) have passion behind them. This is as true of blogs as it is of any other type of business. Note, in passing, that a business does not have to be a full time venture – although doing this full time would be my dream come true!

Business Model

Onto the business side of things. Here I want to discuss two things: how the blog is marketed, and how it makes money. In both cases the approach is typical of pretty much any blog. Note that one of the great things about starting a blogging business is that the startup costs are so small. For a blog like this one, the main investment is your time - you will need to commit about an hour (sometimes two) a day to writing posts (and hopefully replying to peoples’ comments). If the blog takes off, so may well need to devote more time to it. From the purely financial point of view you might as well give it a try - i.e. you don’t need a demonstrable business case like you do for more traditional businesses - because the costs are so small.

Here’s what you will need:

• Web hosting and a domain name, which you can get for about 30 GBP/year in the UK. I recommend Heart Internet, but there are many, many options. Some are much cheaper, but (in my experience) you get what you pay for - particularly when you need support!
• Blogging software, which there is no need to pay for. The most popular is WordPress which is free. Note that if you’re hosting is with Heart Internet, installing WordPress is as easy as clicking on a link
• An authoring and publishing tool, such as BlogDesk - again, free. This provides a word processor rich enough for writing web based articles, and a facility to publish them directly to WordPress bases blogs (I think it can also handle some alternatives, but I’m a WordPress user, so I haven’t looked what they are)
• An account with a provider of PPC ads, such as Google’s Adsense. When I set up my company’s Adsense account it was free, but I don’t know if that is still true (but even if not, I can’t imagine the cost will be prohibitive)

Here are the steps I’ve taken (or will be taking imminently) to publicise the blog:

• Simply email all the chess players I know who have email addresses. Also just tell people about it
• I’ve put up a PPC advert using Google Adwords – this has brought very little traffic to the site, but it does give me specific information about which search phrases produce page impressions
• Get it linked to from other sites – I’ve put a link on my chess club’s web site, this article contains a link, and I’ll be contacting as many others as I can
• I’ll be emailing the editor of my local chess league newsletter (which is also published on the local chess association web site – i.e. visible to web spiders). Also I’ll seek out, and do the same thing with, other regional newsletters

Here are the ways the site makes money, or I plan to use to make money:

• Google Adsense – currently the only revenue generation on the site at the moment (it’s currently still early days)
• Book (affiliate) sales – once there’s plenty of material on the site I’ll contact Amazon applying for an affiliation (past experience suggests it’s best to wait until the site is more plentiful than it is at the moment), thus making money from book sales. Note that I think for books, Amazon is really the only outlet that makes sense
• Affiliate sales of chess sets etc. - there are several mail order chess suppliers who offer affiliate schemes

The Story So Far….

I started the blog in the last week in April. So far this month it has attracted forty unique visitors and four comments. I have also managed at least one post per day – essential for a successful blog, you must keep up the momentum!

The comments I have received (on and off the blog) have been very positive - people have said what a good idea the site is, and they hope I keep it up. Also, looking at the chess blogs I can find on Google, mine seems to be filling a gap - there are many blogs talking about what’s happening on the international chess scene, but not many about a club player’s attempts to improve!

I’ll keep you posted.

About Me

My name is Mark Radford and I live with my family in the Birmingham (UK). I’ve been playing chess at club and tournament level for seventeen years, with several tournament wins behind me. By day, I work in software development.

This was a guest post by Mark Radford a friend of mine who I’ve worked with a number of times.

Seth Godin recently posted a list of “What Every Good Marketer Knows”, but every single point seems to be about advertising. Try it, read his post substituting advertising everywhere you see marketing. Yes, good marketers do need to understand good advertising, but good marketing is so much more than that.

In Marketing Management Philip Kotler defines marketing:

Marketing deals with identifying and meeting human and social needs. One of the shortest definitions of marketing is “meeting needs profitably.”

There are hints within Godin’s list that he recognises this:

Whilst others suggest he doesn’t:

I’d argue that blogging makes you a better marketer because it enables you to have a dialogue with your market. If you understand your market, you’re better able to identify and meet their needs.

What do you think, has Godin confused marketing with advertising?

Over the last few months I’ve received a regular stream of emails asking for advice and guidance on starting an Internet business. Unfortunately, much as I’d love to, I can’t spend all day providing free advice by email. So instead I’m writing a series of books explaining how to start an Internet business. The first book looks at starting a blogging business and is scheduled for release on the 23rd May.

So Why Am I Telling You This?

Because I would like your help please. I want to create the best possible guide to starting a blogging business, one which any novice can pick up, read and apply without having to be a business, internet or marketing guru. In order to do so I’d like to make sure I answer any questions you might have on starting a blogging business.

So if there is anything you’d like to know about starting and running a blogging business please post it as question in the comments (below), email me or post to the forums. As a thank you for your help I’ll give you a 50% discount off the finished book.

Even if you don’t have a question but are interested in the book then if you visit the website www.startingabloggingbusiness.com and register your interest (before I launch the book) I’ll offer you 25% discount.

A couple of weeks ago Sam from 3mobilebuzz letting me know he’d just recieved several of 3’s brand new HSDPA USB sticks and wondering if I’d like to review one. As it happens I’ve actually been looking at mobile broadband solutions so I was quite keen to have play with what 3 has to offer.

Basically these USB sticks provide mobile broadband internet access. Essentially armed with one of these and a laptop you can work absolutely anywhere (ok anywhere you can get a mobile signal), that’s a great freedom, especially for anyone running a small business.

The dongle measure just 87.3 x 25.3 x 12 mm (in other words pretty much the standard size for USB stick), weights 50g and has a maximum download speed of 3600 kbps and maximum upload speed of 384 kbps, although 3 quote their maximum network speed as 2.8 MBs. Out of the box it support Windows and Mac operating systems.

Setting Up The 3 HSDPA USB Stick On Vista

Setting it up on Windows Vista is as simple as plugging it in and following the onscreen instructions. However I don’t tend to lug around my Windows Vista based laptop, it’s just a bit too big, heavy and expensive to drag around coffee shops instead I have an excellent, highly portable Asus EEE PC.

If like me you hate sending text messages on tiny mobile phone keyboards the you’ll be happy to know that using the USB stick you can now type them out properly on your Windows laptop.

Setting Up The 3 HSDPA USB Stick On The Asus EEE PC

To be fair 3 only claim that the USB stick supports the Windows 2000, XP, Vista or and Mac OSX operating systems, so I didn’t expect it to be easy to setup and use on my Linux based EEE PC. However there is a great user community around the EEE PC that usually figures out how to get things working with it so I did a quick Google only to find that the answer I was looking for is in one of Sam’s posts which links to Dale Lane’s blog and his guide to Using a 3 mobile broadband dongle with the EEE PC.

So What Advantages Does Mobile Broadband Offer A Small Business?

Well if like me the majority of your business is run over the Internet then mobile broadband is great, it means you can work almost anywhere without having to worry about the availability, security or price of Wifi hotspots. Even if you don’t tend to work away from the office there’s also another real advantage (especially as 3 has just dropped the price of the USB dongle to £49.99 on their Pay As You Go (PAYG) mobile broadband service and it’s free if you take their Broadband Lite contract for 18 months at £10 per month), it makes an excellent backup connection if your main broadband provider has an outage (which, in my experience happens far too often).

So What Do I Think?

It’s brilliant, despite having a techie background, I prefer my technology to work straight out of the box and this does. It’s easier to setup than standard broadband and so far I’ve managed to get a connection everywhere I’ve tried. Will I be buying one? Yes at £10 per month it’s a nice cheap backup for our office broadband and that’s before I even consider the possibility of working anywhere with my EEE PC! Oh and if you’re already a 3 mobile voice customer you can get 50% off at the moment - shame I’m not.

Last year I wrote Is 30 Too Old To Start A Tech Business which referred to a list of Silicon Valley start-ups and the age of their founders published by Valleywag (the average age being 26). As I pointed out at the time the table misses out some important tech start-ups and is far too small a sample to really prove anything. Recently however the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has in collaboration with researchers at Duke and Harvard universities has carried out a more detailed study of high-tech start-ups. The study analyzed U.S. engineering and tech companies founded from 1995-2005, representing the most current decade of data. The results have been published in the paper Education and Tech Entrepreneurship.

They found that most technology and engineering company founders are middle-aged, well-educated, and hold a degree. In fact, according to their research twice as many U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs start ventures in their 50s as do those in their early 20s.

They also blow a hole in the myth that college dropouts are behind many tech start-ups, as highly ranked schools are over-represented in the ranks of these founders, and Ivy-League graduates achieve the greatest business success; however, 92 percent of the founders graduated from other universities. Having read the excellent The Illusions Of Entrepreneurship by Scott Shane earlier this year I’m not at all surprised by the results of the study. In his book Shane notes that the better educated the founder the higher the chance of success, those with a masters degree having the highest level of success especially those with a some industry experience - all of which would actually suggest a more mature person.

The study also includes some other interesting facts that support Shane’s findings:

• The average and median age of U.S.-born founders at the time of starting their companies was 39.
• Only about 1 percent of U.S.-born founders of tech companies were teenagers.
• 92 percent of tech founders held bachelor’s degrees, 31 percent held master’s degrees, and 10 percent had completed PhDs. Nearly half of these degrees were in science-, technology-, engineering- and mathematics-related disciplines. One third are in business, accounting and finance.
• Tech founders holding MBA degrees established companies more quickly (13 years) than others. Those with PhDs typically waited 21 years to become tech entrepreneurs.

The final point is yet more proof that an MBA has value for entrepreneurs.

Hat tip to Shannon Cherry at Startup Spark from drawing my attention to the story.

What a great headline! It comes from a letter that was published in my local paper this week. The letter draws attention to the fact that we’ve over fished the North Sea and as a result there is nearly no cod left (hence the play on fish and chips). While over fishing is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed it’s beyond the scope of this blog, but the headline is a great example of what is missing from most small businesses advertising material/press releases - a good headline.

Make no mistake a good headline can drastically increase the number of people that look at your advert and when it comes to press releases the headline will almost certainly determine if your press release is binned or used. Somehow I don’t think “Cod Over Fished In North Sea” or “Did You Know Cod Is Nearly Extinct?” would have stood out quite as well.

So next time you’re designing your advertising (or having it designed for you) or preparing a press release, take some time to make sure your headline stands out. Some of the best direct marketing copywriters devote 50% of their time to the headline - they understand just how important it is to get it right.

Photo by mozzercork.

In a recent blog post “And so it begins… (again)” Rachel Elnaugh drew attention to a review of her new book “Business Nightmares” written by Jonathan Guthrie of the Financial Times saying:

Basically he has used the book as an excuse to slag me off (yet again) for being that business failure who is now simply a whining bitch. And it’s clear from the review that he’s only bothered to read the first chapter!!!

Which makes me wonder if Elnaugh has done precisely what she accuses Guthrie of - only reading the first paragraph (chapter) of his review - as his second paragraph consists largely of a quote from chapter six of her book, not to mention various other references to the content of other chapters, not least the mention of her being “photographed naked for PR purposes”. She then goes on to say:

Interestingly, reading Jonathan’s article (and the ferocity of his venom against me) you really have to wonder what kind of person HE actually is.

After all, as the old saying goes, people criticise in others what they secretly despise most about themselves.

An interesting observation from Elnaugh given that she’s written the post to criticise Guthrie and openly criticises many others in her book. Personally I think he’s written a fairly good piece. As a review of the book it drifts rather off topic, dismissing the book as “not very good” in the third paragraph, but he does go on to draw out some important issues for entrepreneurs saying:

Business failure attracts considerable stigma in the UK. Jerry Blackett, who lectures on the subject at Warwick University, says: “Britons have a very negative perception of [business] people who fail. It is very little discussed.” One consequence is that the popular media rarely portray entrepreneurs except as wealthy profiteers lolling on their yachts. The resentment this inspires would be less if another essential ingredient for successful capitalism - failed business people - were depicted too.

Which is very true, in this country we tend to look down on failure in business when we should be congratulating people for trying. Building on this point he goes on to say:

Another consequence of the taboo is that entrepreneurs can feel peculiarly isolated when their venture goes belly up. It also stands in the way of their learning from their mistakes. Chris Argyris, the management theorist, argued that smart, motivated people are often bad at this, preferring to blame failure on external factors. Mr Blackett says bosses need instead “to look in the mirror and ask: what am I doing that is causing these problems?“. This requires personal detachment.

I’ve added the emphasis above because it’s an important point. As an entrepreneur you will make mistakes, so instead of blaming others, try to detach yourself from the situation, step back from things and ask yourself honestly what you have done to cause the problem and how you can reasonably fix it. It’s not easy, believe me - I’m still learning to do so myself!

It’s a shame that as Guthrie puts it “Elnaugh has not achieved that transcendental state” as I believe there are a lot of positive lessons to be learned from her experience and she could better share them by accepting more responsibility for what happened rather than blaming others.

I’ll have my own review of Business Nightmares posted in the next day or two (unlike Guthrie I think it’s a good book). In the meantime Elnaugh has sent out this email:

Just a reminder that my new book ‘Business Nightmares’ is officially launched this Thursday 8 May at 6.30pm at Borders in Oxford Street. Exciting times!

If you would like to come to the launch party but haven’t yet done so please email Ella at ellag -at- crimsonpublishing .co .uk to get on the guest list.

If you can’t make it but are in the Essex area I’ll also be doing a signing in my home town of Chelmsford on 13 May at 12.30pm at Waterstones in the High Street

So if you’re in the area why not email Ella and pop along.

Smarta a new site for entrepreneurs is launching later this year, but until then they are running a pre-release preview site which includes some good content. It appears to have some quite smart people behind it, which makes it such a shame that they’ve posted a rather silly article SEO = Search engine overkill? on their blog. In it they say:

…we’re getting rather excited about launching later this year – which makes us prime target for SEO experts offering to optimise our site.

There’s a whole industry at it. Each has its own understanding of Google’s complex algorithms and how best to trick them.

Expect any combination of keywords, meta tags, cramming core terms on every page while not exceeding 250 words and changing logical titles and headings to tenuous ‘search-friendly phrases’.

What you end up with is barely recognisable or much use to visitors, but he, that’s the price you’re expected to pay for a top five placing.

I’ve added the emphasis. It’s a real shame that people still circulate this rubbish. No decent “SEO expert” will set out to trick the search engines, if Smarta (or you) are hiring such “experts” then get rid of them NOW!

Equally no decent SEO expert will suggest you change a site so much that it’s no use to visitors, that’s just stupid. Anyone halfway competent will design the site to encourage their visitors to take the next logical step (whatever that may be for your site). Next they say:

At the moment, what value is it getting from visitors who realise they’ve come to the wrong place and leave within seconds?

Few advertisers want anyone, so why do we? Retail stores spend millions on branding and presentation to pull in a carefully targeted demographic, not any Tom, Dick and Harry who’ll have a mooch but won’t buy.

So why is there an online propensity to sacrifice the identity of websites to get just anyone through the search door?

Well just like offline retailers there isn’t such a propensity among online retailers, but some sites, especially those that are advertising driven might well take such action as their revenue depends on the number of page views they generate rather than the sales they make - not all that dissimilar to some magazines the drive up subscriber numbers to justify their advertising fees. One of the benefits of CPA of CPC advertising is it discourages this business model (whereas CPM encourages it).

So my advice to Smarta (and you dear reader) - if you’ve hired anyone that’s made such suggestions, fire them. If you want to learn about proper SEO then visit Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.