I’ve spent years helping start-ups, not only with web design, but with planning and consulting. Over the years, I’ve learned several ways to get in early on start-ups like Facebook and I have ownership in a lot of companies. Below is some of what I’ve put into practice.

Earn Shares Socially

One of the really easy ways to get in on the ground floor is to earn shares in a company by way of social media promotion. My busy schedule and lack of time has kept me from making one of my ideas a reality, but thankfully, someone else has done it instead. The idea was to create a site that brings new start-ups together with social marketers to generate buzz for the start-up in exchange for stake in the company that the social marketers would split. Wahooly is trying to do just that. This week, they opened up in beta to 20,000 users and 4 start-ups, promising to pair them up in the relationship I envisioned. This will be one to watch for sure.

Zurker offers what I wish Facebook or Twitter had in the early years. Basically, they’re doing for themselves what Wahooly offers to do, just without the middle man. Zurker is a start-up social network that aims to compete directly with Facebook for your updates and daily loyalty. In an effort to grow their user base virally, they’re offering vShares for referrals. Unlike actual stock shares or options, vShares are a virtual representation of your right to equity in the company if they ever get big enough. You have to have a little faith here, but the payout may be worth it.

Become An Owner In A Product

When you go offline and walk into a store, have you ever wondered who invented the product you just bought? One of my favorite new companies in recent years is Quirky. It’s a platform for inventors, thinkers, and designers to see their ideas and designs come to life in the form of real-world products. Quirky guides the invention process all the way through to a completed product that they then get on the shelves of big box stores like Target and Bed Bath & Beyond. Right now, those stores and others have products on the shelves that I’m getting checks for about every month. If you are creative, check it out but like other ways to earn, be ready to wait a while for that first notable check.

Other Ways To Earn

If you’re in a position to do it, consider taking shares instead of (or as part of) payment for goods and services. Web developers, printers, artists, and anyone who can help growing (and sometimes broke) start-ups save a few bucks can often walk away with shares that have the potential for millions of dollars down the road.

This is better when you really believe in the company and its future, but can be a good idea even if you don’t. A great example is David Choe, the graffiti artist who could be worth $200 million when Facebooks IPO hits. In 2005, when Facebook was still limited to students and relatively a small player, Choe came in to create art and opted for a small stake in the company rather than payment. Even though he reportedly didn’t think much of the Facebook concept, he’s going to reap substantial rewards from its success.

Many companies will pay (in options, often) for your expertise as well. If you can call yourself an expert in anything, leverage your unique experience and knowledge and offer to consult for a related company in exchange for shares or options. The more you help, the more your shares may be worth in the end and everyone wins.

The Waiting Game

Taking ownership in a product or start-up will not make anyone rich over night. David Choe, mentioned above, was once homeless between his work for Facebook and the great position he’s in today. Employees of Google spent years working hard before becoming IPO millionaires. If you need the money now, do things that will earn you money, but if you opt for shares in a company, be prepared to wait for years before your ship comes in.

Conclusions

Even the busiest of people end up with free time spent chatting or playing games on Facebook. If you had an free hour every day (after work and family, of course), would you give it up for a small chance that it could turn into a large profit one day? If so, try some of the things above and report back in a few years.

Are you doing any of this already or is there anything I missed? I’d love to hear your input in the comments below.

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It goes without saying that the Internet has become a communication tool that far outweighs lobbying by large organizations. That’s an awesome thing and it’s one of the reasons we need to fight for our online freedoms.

Today, Frugal Dad released an infographic showing just how much happened on January 18, 2012, the day the internet stood still.

Source: frugaldad.com

Did you protest? If so, how did you make your voice heard?

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Black Out Your Site Like Wikipedia

This site and Wikipedia both used a pretty harmless method to block our content for the protest. The method we used involved simply covering up the normal content with a layer of HTML that hides it and shows something else in its place. To accomplish this in an elegant way, you will need an image and/or content to display, the HTML shown below, and a small change to your site’s CSS. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Create your image and content. In my case, I made a couple very simple changes to a large version of my logo image to make it more protest-y.

2. Add the overlay code. In your site’s template (or your theme’s footer.php in WordPress), copy the code below and paste it right above the /body tag. Modify it as indicated to include your own image or message.


<div style="position:absolute;left:0px;top:0px;
width:100%;height:100%;
background:url(/images/darken.png);text-align:center;">
<!-- Add your image and message below this line -->
<img src="/images/sopa.png" />
<!-- Add your image and message above this line -->
</div>


Here’s the background and content images I used.

3. Stop the scroll. Update your site’s CSS file to stop the original content from being larger than the new overlay content. This may not always be necessary, but will be pretty obvious when it is. Just add the following code anywhere to the bottom of the CSS:


body{overflow:hidden;}


That’s it! Follow the three steps above and you’ll have your protest/maintenance/special message up in no time on every page on the site.

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What Is S.O.P.A.?

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the less known PROTECTIP (PIPA) are proposed legislation that aim to give more control to the U.S. government and copyright holders to thwart piracy online. Sadly, the legislation will instead give our government the power to blacklist sites that allegedly contain any small amount of infringing content, thereby blocking the whole site from users. As an example, if I post a video on YouTube of my cat being funny and it happens to have a pop song playing in the background, YouTube has to remove it quickly or face harsh consequences. And if they’re not fast enough? That’s when Uncle Sam gets to start messing with DNS (the naming system of the Internet), making the site unreachable by normal means to most people in the U.S. If that doesn’t work, private companies (RIAA and MPAA, for example), can get advertising and payment companies like Google and PayPal to shut down the accounts of the allegedly offending site.

In this case, YouTube could vanish to anyone in the U.S. and lose all advertising revenue if I don’t edit some music out of my kitty cat video. Sounds reasonable, right?

And if you want to read the full text, here’s H.R. 3261
Pay attention to 102(c)(2)(A)(i) regarding DNS re-routing and 102(c)(2)(B) regarding search engines.

If all that’s too much to read, check out the SOPA infographic from Mashable or watch a video about the legislation below:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Wikipedia And JoeTech.com Are Going Dark In Protest

At 12:00 AM on January 18th, 2012, the English version of Wikipedia will go dark for 24 hours, and so will JoeTech.com and we’re certainly not alone. Reddit got the SOPA Strike rolling, and Mozilla has been vocal about this for a while. My dedicated server provider, Codero, voiced their own opinion about SOPA/PIPA, urging customers to get educated.

During that 24 hour period I’ll have a blackout page up, but as of 12:00 AM on January 19th, 2012, JoeTech.com will be back to normal.

How You Can Protest

If you have a web site, go on strike with me.

Even if you don’t have a site, you can make your voice heard. That link will do the work for you to connect you to your senators to voice your opinion about SOPA/PIPA. Politely urge them to consider the freedoms we fight so hard to protect before voting on this horrible legislation.

Share this post on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +. Better yet, share any of the helpful links above.

Stop waiting for bad ideas to become laws.

Update: It looks like our politicians are listening, promising to make changes to the bill to help with our concerns, but we’ll have to wait and see what comes out of it. At this point, the bill may be vastly changed for the better or may just die completely.

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Here’s the deal. One winner chosen at the end of the month will be shipped a brand new Amazon Kindle Fire tablet for free and this will include a copy of uRex DVD Ripper Platinum which allows them to rip their favorite DVD’s and convert them to MP4 format they can transfer to the Kindle Fire. If that wasn’t awesome enough, he partnered with New Trent and will also be giving away a New Trent IMP78B Imperial Leather Case and a New Trent Fimir Anti-Glare Screen Protector to the winner of the Kindle Fire as well.

To enter, just do any of the stuff listed below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Kindle Fire Giveaway contest hosted by Dragon Blogger technology blog is made possible in part by these awesome sponsors and you should pay them a visit and thank them!

Sponsors:

Aside from the Kindle Fire, if you could win anything on DragonBlogger.com or JoeTech.com, what would it be?

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PayPal Knows Best

The most popular way to pay for anything on eBay is through PayPal. Outside of eBay, PayPal pretty much has the market cornered for smaller transactions and even a lot of online shopping. People use PayPal because people use PayPal. Most times, PayPal transactions occur as anticipated. A buyer sends money. PayPal takes their cut, and life goes on. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. In the past, PayPal has been known to freeze accounts simply because they had too much money in them and more recently, they nearly ruined Regretsy.com’s charitable Christmas giving. This month, PayPal seems to have not learned anything about bad publicity as they instructed a buyer to destroy a product in order to get a refund. Below are the photo and the details the seller sent to Regretsy.com.

I sold an old French violin to a buyer in Canada, and the buyer disputed the label.

This is not uncommon. In the violin market, labels often mean little and there is often disagreement over them. Some of the most expensive violins in the world have disputed labels, but they are works of art nonetheless.

Rather than have the violin returned to me, PayPal made the buyer DESTROY the violin in order to get his money back. They somehow deemed the violin as “counterfeit” even though there is no such thing in the violin world.

The buyer was proud of himself, so he sent me a photo of the destroyed violin.

I am now out a violin that made it through WWII as well as $2500. This is of course, upsetting. But my main goal in writing to you is to prevent PayPal from ordering the destruction of violins and other antiquities that they know nothing about. It is beyond me why PayPal simply didn’t have the violin returned to me.

I spoke on the phone to numerous reps from PayPal who 100% defended their action and gave me the party line.

The first thing I wondered when reading about this is why PayPal would make such a decision. As it turns out, they even have a clause in their user agreement stipulating that destruction of an item may be required of the buyer in order to get a refund. I can understand if a seller sells something – not worth paying to have shipped back and then relist – and decides he or she would rather just have proof that the unwanted item was destroyed for a refund. It’s still wasteful, but I get it. In this case, it seems the buyer disputed the authenticity of the item and PayPal agreed to a refund if the buyer would provide proof of the items destruction. This also makes some sense if the item is confirmed counterfeit and it’s an illegal knock-off, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Now the buyer is getting (or has gotten) a refund from PayPal, the seller is out a violin (or $2,500, depending on how you look at it), and PayPal is surely going to have to back-pedal again to save face.

PayPal Can Fix This

All hope is not lost. Regretsy tells us that PayPal assures them the matter is being looked into. Perhaps Anuj Nayar, Paypal’s Director of communications, will issue another post similar to the Regretsy half-apology on the PayPal blog. Personally, I find it interesting that he even has a somber picture for posts like this and a smiling photo for up-beat news. That may also hint at what I think the real problem is with PayPal. Any time I hear about PayPal from people, they’re often frustrated with PayPal’s customer-unfriendly decisions and, like many huge companies, PayPal seems to be reluctant to admit any mistakes until the bad press is beyond real repair. My suggestion to PayPal is to take a good look at your account holder/PayPal dispute policies and figure out better ways to work with people instead of just wielding a gavel. I suspect that for every Regretsy who gets resolution to a problem via social media outcry, there are scores of average users who’s voices go unheard.

As for the issue with the violin, I foresee a lawsuit. If PayPal received and debunked the authenticity of the violin, themselves, I would still question the legality of their authority to do so, but ruling in favor of the buyer, sight unseen seems like a legal fumble by PayPal at best. I think PayPal should decide they just bought a violin and pay the seller, especially since the violin is no longer around to authenticate.

What do you think?

Full Disclosure

I’m currently a little peeved at eBay for some anti-seller action they took against me today, but this isn’t about that. Mine is a love/hate relationship with eBay. I’ve been a buyer and seller on eBay for more than 15 years. Sometimes I love them and other times I get pretty annoyed at how disputes and other actions are handled. It really just depends on when you ask. Honestly, though, this is more about PayPal – a part of eBay, but not eBay, itself. I haven’t had any disputes with PayPal, personally.

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1. How to Crack the Account Password on Any Operating System
In this guest post, Blair Mathis from LaptopLogic.com detailed ways you could crack the user password in many different operating systems with detailed instructions. This post was written in January of 2009 but having been read 242,046 times shared 492 times on Facebook in 2011, it still remains the most viewed post on this site.

2. How To Send An Anonymous Text Or MMS Message
When a friend wanted to play a little prank, she asked if this could be done so I went to work creating a blog post with instructions and examples.

3. 5 Geeky Ways to Say “I Love You” on Valentine’s Day
If you know a geek and want to tell him or her “I Love You”, check out this post. It shows up every month in the top 10 read posts on JoeTech.com, proving that you don’t have to wait until Valentine’s Day to make use of the tips.

4. How To Replace A Dell Inspiron Laptop Heat Sink And Fan Assembly
Hardware how-tos are always good for Google traffic and this is no exception. At #4, this is another highly-viewed post every month.

5. My Sony Vaio VGN-SZ430N Hard Drive Crashed and How I Fixed It
Keeping with the laptop repair theme, this post detailed how I recovered from a nasty hard drive crash while at a convention in Las Vegas. I wish less people needed the information, but I’m glad so many found it useful.

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Source: http://frugaldad.com

What was the single most important piece of news you shared this year (online or off)?

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OK, badges aren’t new. Foursquare lead the charge with them long ago. But this is the first major implementation I’ve seen on Facebook. For days, I’ve been seeing ads on the right hand side of Facebook pages, each with a different badge, prompting me to go get my own. I don’t own a Ford, but I decided to see what all the fuss was about anyway.

Why Badges

The image above, found on the Ford Facebook Page gives us a hint about what Ford is up to here. Ford is trying to promote their new Ford Social site in a pretty creative way. One way that things online often become viral is that they speak to your passion. Many Ford owners are passionate about their cars, so why not create a way for them to express it socially, right? A Facebook user sees the ad (or a badge on a friend’s update), creates their own badge, and shares it on their own stream or elsewhere. In the end, Ford directs you to check out their Ford Social site, where you can share stories or ideas and really just interact more with the company on a friendlier level.

When I reviewed the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid Ford gave me a couple years back, I didn’t buy one because of the cost at that time, but I really loved a lot of the tech in that car. If I had a Ford Badge, it would have to be the Tech Geek one. Do you have a Ford? What badge would you pick?

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Sell Old Games Online

Glyde’s selling process is a little different from what I’m used to. To sell your old video games, you just have to start typing in the name of a game, select it when Glyde finds it for you, and click the Sell button. Then you tell Glyde the condition of your game and it will auto-set the market price for you. You can raise or lower the price and then list the item. Although you have to fill out some required information for your first listing, the process is a lot faster and easier than most sites.

To review this site, I figured the best thing to do would be to create an account and start selling. In a test scenario where I might sell the Halo 2 XBOX game in Excellent condition gave me a suggested selling price of $2.25. After the $0.27 transaction fee and $1.25 mailer cost, the total money made from the sale comes out to $0.73. My first thought was that this seems like a pretty low price to let go of my game for. Despite it being an older game, I found it to be a bit low compared to other online shopping sources, as well. I next checked out how much I’d get for Halo Reach, which fell a lot more in line with the average selling price on other sites at $11.51 after fees.

The thing that I found most appealing about the selling process is the shipping procedure. Once someone has purchased your game, Glyde sends you a pre-addressed mailing envelope to ship your game in. All you have to do is pop it back in the mail and you’re done. This is a vast convenience over the way I have to ship things I sell elsewhere, which usually includes a lunch hour wasted at the post office.

Buy and Sell Anything Online

While Glyde may be well-suited for selling old games, you can buy, too, and they don’t stop at just games. I found the iPad, iPhone, Nook, Kindle, and even books. The selling process is pretty similar throughout, but the questions displayed on the selling page are geared towards what you’re selling. When selling an iPhone, for example, you’re asked about if it works and the amount of scratches on it. With a game, you’re asked more generally about the condition of the game.

Buying is pretty straight forward, but the feature that stands out is that Glyde shows you the item that is closest and cheapest for your search. This seems like it would be a no-brainer, but sadly, eBay, Amazon, and Google don’t default to such a listing. In addition, I like that the packaging isn’t suspect to the whim of the seller. You can pretty well expect your item to be delivered in what Glyde deems adequate packaging.

Conclusions

Where Glyde may occasionally fall short in seller earnings on a sale, it doubles up on convenience and ease of use over all. The shipping system stands out in a way that promises to quietly eliminate the usual shipping concerns most buyers and sellers face on other platforms. Personally, I will definitely look to Glyde when it comes time to sell games or some of the books I have sitting around here.

Although the preceding was a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product or site reviewed.

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