Ouch. Saturday night, didn’t feel like going out. So I just spent at least the last 9 hours going through the 258 young entrepreneur blogs in the YE Blogger network, and manually searching for author and email details, adding those into the lazybase database and then adding the email to the newsletter system.

And being a poor uni student my snacks consisted of slices of bread and butter, 2 bottles of beer and water. Wow, that sounds worse than it actually was… I did listen to music through iTunes on shuffle the whole time

But anyways, it was a necessary thing to do as I had to get these emails into the system so we can actually notify most of these blogs that: a) they’re in the YE Blogger network, b) here’s the benefits it can bring, and, c) could you please add a backlink to the site using either the widget, logo or chickmarklet (coming soon).

A large motivation for me doing this long stretch of work (which I tend to do quite often for various things) was not only from Daniel’s friendly reminders to get onto things but also that the site actually went below the Alexa 100K ranking and hit a 67K rank a couple of days ago. So of course our traffic and pageviews are pretty juicy figures. This got me thinking… I am actually yet to see any blog with our widget and have only seen a few blogs with a logo backlink to YE Blogger. I was also aware that we only had 100 emails in the newsletter system and had sent out only one quick newsletter so far. We now have close to 200 emails in the system, so if we can manage to have those bloggers provide a backlink to the network then traffic should increase dramatically!

Hopefully with v2.0 features and feedback from bloggers and users we can create/update features such as the widget so that bloggers will find great value in using it/them.

You: “How much are you making?!”
Me: “Nothing atm lol”

Despite the high number of pageviews, we haven’t been receiving many clicks which I figure is because the majority of our visitors are young entrepreneurs (what a surprise!) and they tend to be very familiar with ads/adsense and so just don’t click them. We’re working on a few other revenue models which should alleviate this problem and make the long hours worth the work.

Nathan Waters
My wrist sounds like a concrete mixer

“Drop Buy Now Official” was the original post title, but then I started rambling about the steps of registering a business

After a couple of enquiry calls, some changing of details online, a trip down to the local Fair Trading Office and $137 later… “Drop Buy” is now an officially registered business name! You can checkout a scan of the business certificate here… apparently an important document which I didn’t realise the first time around (don’t fold it!! lol). And you can checkout my registration details here.

Once I’d worked out whether or not I could just change all my details online, it turned out that I just had to register a new business name and I just went online and changed a few details for my ABN and GST registrations.

Australian business registrations work a little odd…

1) Registering for an ABN (Australian Business Number) is free and done through the Australian Business Registrar (ABR)
2) Registering for GST (Goods & Services Tax) is free and only mandatory for businesses with a turnover of $50k or more, but it’s beneficial to register before that stage as well. You can register for that through the Australian Taxation Office (ATO)
3) And finally to register a business name, you must go through the NSW Office of Fair Trading or the equivalent for your state if you live outside of NSW. This is the only process that can’t be done online (either done by mail, or going to a Fair Trading office) and costs $137 which registers the business name for 3 years.

Confused yet? … and this is only to register as a sole trader (me) or partnership etc.

This time around I actually found the process quick and easy… I guess it helps when you’ve done it before and already have an ABN and registered for GST

I remember when I first started blueyeT systems, which can now sort of be considered Drop Buy beta v0.1, it was a very complicated task and I wasted many months trying to workout what I had to do in terms of legally registering an ABN, business name, GST and all the other unnecessarily complicated taxation stuff.

There wasn’t and still isn’t a simple guide for young people on how to completely get a business started, especially in regards to tax and legal requirements. I still feel a little in the dark on properly accounting for taxation and GST. When I feel confident about the whole thing, I might create some quick guides to help Aussie YEs out.

I think if I had parents who knew about the whole thing it would have been much easier, but nevertheless I haven’t been sued or fined by anyone yet and make sure I keep my records… so I guess that’s a good sign

So…

Drop Buy checklist in a good order of how to startup a business these days:

• [done*] Quick competition and consumer check (target-market surveys, undercover spying on competition weaknesses etc)
• [done ] Domain Name: www.DropBuy.com.au and hosting
• [done*] ABN
• [done ] Business Name: Drop Buy
• [done*] GST
• [done*] Wholesaler/s… although you might want to double-check prices right at the beginning to see if you can compete with competitors. Currently I only have wholesalers for computer and gaming supplies, so I will start searching for others as I expand the Drop Buy catalog.

* Already done/established/known from previous business, blueyeT systems

• [to-do] Business logo and website design/template… To start with the website will simply be a form to submit a quote until I can build-up enough resources to pay for a completely customised ecommerce package. So I think I will just put up a $150-$200 project on the sitepoint forums for a logo, letterhead, website template etc.
• [to-do] Open a business bank account. Although I might actually put this off for a little while until orders start kicking in regularly. For blueyeT systems I just used my personal account since business was pretty irregular and so I figured the benefits (which were not terribly much) weren’t worth the extra $10 per month.
• [to-do] Advertising… Initially I will target Uni students for a few reasons. One being that I know uni students basically want cheaper prices which I can definitely offer. Another being that advertising should be cheap and easy as I can simply print-off a few flyers myself and put them up around the campus and University itself. And finally, I think that uni students know and have contact with a lot more people than most of the other demographics.

So hopefully if they like the price, service and products it is possible that they could tell 50+ people about it. As you know word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing and getting the word out there about your business, in fact it was all that blueyeT systems ran on since I put off advertising due to time restraints with the final years of high school.

Anything I’ve missed, any tips or advice… please let me know.

Nathan Waters
Drop Buy Owner/Manager/CEO/[insert position]

Just got back up here (Wollongong) on Sunday after a 2 week hibernation back ‘home’ in Moruya.

I live on-campus which you may or may not already know. But this session they shut-down a whole section of the campus as they didn’t have enough new enrolments to fill units (as a lot of Americans stay here for the first session and then go back for the second).

So for 3 hours solid on Sunday I was moving to a new room, which in a way is good but it kind of sucks since I had an awesome ground-floor location. I used to be really close to the laundry, bike shed and the dining hall, plus my room let in very little light which was awesome for laziness, sleeping-in etc.

Oh, and of course it happened to be my 19th birthday when I had to drive 3 hours and move rooms… fun!?

Now I’m on the second floor of another building in a unit of 5 people (inc myself), and they’re all pretty cool except that the doors automatically close so I haven’t really seen much of them so far. Something about my new room that could become painful when the weather starts warming up is that directly beneath my window are 6 hot water heaters. Plus the window is facing north which ads to the heat and also means I can’t manage to sleep-in past 10.30am (which is a lot earlier than my 2-3pm sleep-ins).

This session I’ve decided I’ve had enough of Computer Engineering and so now I’m just doing Commerce. The subjects seem fairly interesting: Marketing Principles, Introduction to Management, Quantitative Methods I and Introductory Microeconomics. But what’s even better is my timetable for this session…

I have 14 hours a week, compared to the 22+ hours a week for Comp Engineering last session. And the earliest time I start is 9.30am and the latest finish is 3.30pm. Plus I have Tuesdays off.

It might not sound much to some lucky students who manage to have 5-day weekends, but it’s a massive decrease in hours from last session which should help give me more time to focus on my business/es.

I’ve give an update on what’s happening with DropBuy (my revamped computer business) and with YE Blogger soon.

Nathan Waters
U–N–I

One of the many projects I’m involved in which has been sucking up my “free time” is the newly launched YE Blogger.

The name pretty much describes it. YE Blogger is the World’s Largest Directory of Young Entrepreneur Blogs and currently houses a network of 120+ blogs written by young entrepreneurs on a range of topics from business, entrepreneurship, personal development and many more areas which you will most likely be interested in if you are reading this.

I’m running YE Blogger in a partnership with Daniel Nerezov (aka akula on the YE forums) which is a great experience in itself. We’re quickly growing the site as it can now be considered as being version 1.5 with the addition of the YE Blogger Toolbar for your browser and a few additional changes.

So check it out and let me know what you think. If you’re a young entrepreneur and run a blog be sure to add it to the network, add the widget to your blog and get connected with more pageviews, more revenues and most importantly more fellow YE contacts.

Nathan Waters
I’m a YE Blogger