It’s Saturday, and I’m off to work again. Not that working on Saturday is new to me – I generally spend most weekends working on my long-term investment projects. This weekend is different, however, because I am going to work for my employer. You see, the weather right now is very nice, and during the summer, the work I do requires we take advantage of every good day possible. It looks like this may not be my last weekend at work either. My own investment work is forced to a standstill.

Working for different companies through the years, I have thought about what it means to be an employee. When we are children, we are taught to be selfless, work hard, and succeed. These values remain in our society throughout our lives, and people generally expect you to “go the extra mile” to help your employer out. I feel like a lot of employees give their lives to their employer, sometimes without getting a lot back. This brings me to my original dilemma of Saturday work. I am not at all bothered about working on Saturday. I do however feel that when I work for someone else, they ultimately benefit more from the fruits of my labor than I do.

When you work for a company, they take your human effort, and by combining it with everyone else’s at the company, create a product that is ultimately exchanged for money. Now, imagine for a moment that everyone was paid the percentage that they were worth to the final product. Where would the profit be for the company? Sure, the company is worth a small amount as the “glue” factor that holds all the employees together, but ultimately, it’s a matter of taking human productivity and reselling it at a profit.

Am I selfish for wanting to be the beneficiary of my own hard work? This is the main reason I strive to be an entrepreneur – I know that what I accomplish is for myself and my family. The values of entrepreneurship are also very strongly rooted in America, and I find myself torn between these two “value systems” of work.

Anyone else out there struggle? Anyone else torn between throwing every effort into your traditional 9-5 versus the desire to work for yourself?

Martin, our guest writer this week, offers a dilemma that’s been leaving Aridni deep in thought since he suggested the topic. We know that Martin works pretty dang hard, and we’re anxious to see what you think, readers.

The next time you are surfing the net, take a look at some of the websites you are on. If it wasn’t for the internet, could that company survive? Well it’s not fair to ask that, but how about we modify that to, ‘If it wasn’t for the internet, could that company prosper?’

In a world without the internet, all the content would have to be delivered through the traditional routes. You would get news and articles from magazines, newspapers, direct mail, and television shows.

Fortunately we do have the internet and you can get your Aridni articles quite easily! And we don’t have to print off a thousand copies of articles everyday.

While chatting with a friend the other day, we came up with a great idea for a ‘webusiness’ that we could work on. That is basically any business model that is reliant on the internet to be successful. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo are webusinesses. Could you imagine if they weren’t? How about MySpace? That would be a disaster if everything wasn’t organized neatly in databases.

After hammering out a few key details and determining the additional work that would be required for the new project, we decided to go ahead. I purchased the domain name and hope to have a decent start by next weekend.

Even if I have to put the idea off for a month, domain names are only $7 a year at Godaddy. Hosting is dirt cheap as well. So there is no reason to delay setting up your webusiness today. Or at least you could register the domain name and get a jump on your neighbors. The amount that you would be out if you decided to terminate the project early is quite minimal.

Every project has to start with an idea, what do you do with yours?

In case you weren’t aware, Microsoft recently stated that there is a 20% chance that they will delay Vista again, and not be ready for the anticipated January 2007 release.

A software company missing their own deadline multiple times isn’t a new thing at all, they’ve been doing it for years! Granted there is a lot of work involved in creating any software, let alone an operating system, but is there a logical reason to let down your customers?

If I wanted to run a circus, I wouldn’t start putting up flyers right off the bat that say “Circus coming on Saturday!” and then start working on the logistics. Instead I would start gathering the people, animals, and supplies I need to make the show happen. Acrobats, clowns, daredevils, lions, elephants, tents, and everything else would need to be rounded up and trained or tested.

Once my circus has an actual show to it, I might think about printing up my flyers and announcing the show.

It’s hard to name companies that actually do this, outside of the obvious Google. They practically wait until they are launching their new software before they even think about telling anybody it is being developed.

So are you telling people about your circus now? Or waiting until you actually have made it functional?

I’m sure you have heard of Multi-Level-Marketing before, heck if you read Aridni just yesterday there was an article supporting it. Today’s article is not going to be quite as affirmative.

If I were to start up one of these companies, for the example we’ll call it “Todd’s super-cool MLM company” the first step I would take would be to find some product to sell. Okay how about we sell lemonade and lemonade accessories.

I’ll get my catalog all set up and good to go with all kinds of exotic lemons, juicers, squeezers, mixers, pitchers, and those big wooden spoons. Now it’s time to take TSCMC out to make some money.

I go around to some houses selling overpriced lemonade and find out one big thing. It’s only a matter of time before I discover that selling things is hard work and not very much fun.

My next step is to get an army of cronies to go door to door. I’ll sit at home watching movies while they fill the streets selling my lemonade and lemonade accessories. Now for every piece they sell we both make money.

(Continue reading this article…)

Thanks to technology more homeless people are getting online. And not only that, but they are making money. People who have lost everything have nothing to lose. Therefore they are not afraid to take risks.

Terri Hellerich began an online business and quickly made $100 while sleeping on benches and under bridges. This small amount was enough to get Terri’s life back on track. Now she is living in a small apartment in Northern California.

Now that some homeless shelters have computers as well as most libraries, using free services on the nonbiased internet everyone is equal.

Anyone can make money online, so get out there and do it!

For more, check out this article - Laptops Give Hope to the Homeless

Here on Aridni, I often talk about dreams and ideas. As everyone knows, unless you put them to use they will accomplish nothing.

The last thing that I want to do is be all talk and no results. That is why I am driving across the county over to Buffalo New York. I have a friend who lives over there.

The two of us will be spending the summer working on a couple of projects and business ideas. All of them are of varying difficulty and not necessarily closely related.

I will be returning to Montana this fall, hopefully we will have accomplished something noteworthy by then. If we don’t reach our dreams that’s to bad, but we’ll be able to say that we went out and tried.

If we can establish anything successful, that money will be gravy to help build my wealth.

I am getting out of the sheltered world of Montana and into the world of real business. I’m off to put everything to the test. Take every idea, value, and philosophy I’ve posted on Aridni (and some I have not yet written about) and apply that in the ever changing world of business.

With that, open road here I come!