You might be thinking this part time business is not that important but is a great path to paying the bills and getting ahead on your student loans. Its also about buildng an online profile that you can apply in a future career path as well.

I personally recommend Reddit.com as my favorite social media hub. Social Media is a new way, well relatively new. I would say it has really grown up in the last 3 years with the growth of Social Media sites like Techmeme, Reddit,and Digg.

While you may or may not have huge success building a business and going to school it is a great learning experience and something you will be able to put on a resume. Social Media Skills are going to be something employers will be craving for in the years to come and grasping this niche will be huge in a declining economy where people are constantly looking to curb advertising and develop inhouse marketing tactics.

So If I were you i would keep this in mind as you build your online profile and business as well.

I tend to stay away from politics on this website. But I couldn´t help but read this article on The Huffington Post regarding foreign policy and education.

This article seems to poke a bit at Sarah Palin´s experience and it is something to think about. 1 Year Intensive Degree programs are common, but real foreign policy leadership would be better learned not in a classroom but in the field.

I love the idea of Intensive Grad School Programs. But I also love the idea of not only adding to them by developing real world skills. Let´s talk about local fundraising projects for amazing groups like Kiva, a startup whose mission is microfinancing for small startups in 3rd World Countries.

Other options would be to actually head out into the field and do a few years with the Peace Corps.   I am sure there are many better alternatives or auxilliary paths to foreign policy experience. My personal concept has been to spend time in areas in which you are passionate. If you are passionate about energy and renewable energy spend a year working with a non profit in Africa helping developing renewable energy for small villages in dire need of affordable energy.

With a troubled economy lets look upward towards ways we can improve the world and not trample it again for the next hundred years with failed economic and energy policies that bankrupt us as well as the rest of the globe.  

Continuing in our excursion into building a business while going to Grad School. Twitter is one of the networking and marketing tools that is essential. I use twitter daily to update folks on recent articles, thoughts, and other insights within my industry.

Twitter allows you to publis 140 character messages online or on your phone and interact likewise with people of common interests. Known as followers. Twitter is a great marketing tool, but its a better tool for conversations and networking.

Great tools to find people you may want to follow:
Twitter Search,twitters search engine is amazing and allows you find topics and people in which to follow.

Twubble, is a great tool to help you find cool people you may want to follow.

The thing I have noticed about Twitter is its all about consistency. You will find you have more interaction with followers if you tweet on a regular basis and dont just throw them Twitter Links to your blog posts.

Bonus Tip: TwitterFeed allows you to share your blog posts directly with your followers. Which saves you time in marketing.

Building a part time business during grad school is a great idea. But how do you do it? I am a huge believer in blogging. WordPress, and WordPress.com in general is a great platform in which to build a blog. And blogging is a great platform in which to build a small business.

Setting up a WordPress.com account is easy. There are numerous great designs from which to choose as well.

I am a firm believer if you are going to setup a blog utilize your Brand Name as your Blog URL. So let´s say for example you are starting a small business selling art, and you are the artist. So use your name. If your name is Jeff Myers. Use jeffmyers.wordpress.com as your blog url. Then I would utilize Jeff Myers The Artist as the blogs title.

Once you get a blog setup, you will have to create some great content right off the bat. This is what is called Flagship content. To sum it up you need some great content right off the bat. Again going back to the theory you are an artist. I would create some articles that would appeal to other artists, as well as consumers.

Here are some example Titles, and Topics:
10 Great Online Artist Resources
7 Great Websites To Sell Your Art
5 Amazing Artists You´ve Never Heard Of

Creating great content is hard work but it does pay off. Setting up a blog is the first step down the path to starting a great online business in my opinion. Doing it in grad school is a time killer but thats´ why I recommend simple free tools to get the job done. So it doesnt kill your already drained bank account.

Anyone looking to build a part time business whether it be online or offline needs to have a web based presence as well. There are a variety of services I would recommend setting up to really get a nice online profile.

Blogging Profiles:
WordPress.com

Everyone one the planet has a story, every business has a story as well. Getting started with a blog is easy. Developing a blog audience is sometimes difficult. We will touch on that in a later post. First off get a blog setup on WordPress.com its a great place to host and better yet its free.

Microblogging Profiles:
Twitter.com

Microblogging allows you to reach a different audience. Albeit it may overlap. Later we will touch on more specifics of how to best utilize Twitter. In the meantime get an account setup,set your homepage in your profile to your WordPress.com blog. Share brief details of what your up to in your business venture.

Social Media:
Mixx.com
Reddit.com
Friendfeed.com

I wont even try to explain to you the details of Social Media. However it is a NECCESITY to setup strong Social Media Profiles. I personally avoid Digg like the plague. DoshDosh has a great indepth series on Social Media you should check out.

Online Business Networking:
LinkedIn.com
Facebook.com
Performancing Hive
FriendFeed Rooms

Business networking is essential in any field. But especially online. I have found that using LinkedIn to find new connections in conjunction with Facebook is great for finding people in my field of interest.

Performancing Hive is great for online marketers. It´s not free. But it brings great value to learning and networking with like minded folks.

FriendFeed Rooms is a great place to network with like minded folks and these are folks who can help bring a name to your brand.

Search Engine Profile
If you are building anykind of website, if just a blog even you definetly need to understand the basics of Search Engine Optimization. You don´t need to be an expert but having a basic understanding really helps. We will touch more on Search Engine Optimization however in the meantime we would strongly recommend you read SEOBook.com to get a better understanding of the field.

That´s the basic gist. We will touch more on each specific topic in future posts.

Over the past 4 years you’ve been through a lot. You’ve lived away from your parents for the first time, you’ve been in charge of your own finances for the first time, you’ve taken responsibility for your academic performance and have asked the multi-layered question: What do I want to do with my life?

There are some people who just instinctively know what they want, but I think many of us need some time to reflect, consider our options and decompress from the ordeals (and fun ) of college life. As you’re in this transition mode, there are a few options standing in front of you:

[click to continue…]

You might believe that going to school is enough to keep you crazy. But there are many people who not only go to school but hold down full time jobs as well. But what I find even more impressive is those few folks who manage to go to school and run successful businesses. I can think of a few people who have managed to pull this off. Ben Bleikamp is one of them. He managed a busy design business all the while attending Ohio State University.

The key thing in my belief is start a simple business. A simple business might be a drop shipping business, or a small web design firm.

In reality its about keeping things simple and managing your time well. Knowing what type of business to start is key. The business does not need to be in your field of interest. Although that would be awesome if you plan to use your GradSkills to build your own business.

In the next part of this article we will focus on how to build an online profile.

For someone who spends a ridiculous amount of time in front of a computer I find myself multitasking often. I have yet to find an ideal online note taking tool.

I find myself using Google Documents a lot as far as taking notes goes. However lately since I am working on a book I have found Wordpress.com to be a great tool. You can create a blog for each class, then using the WordPress.com Dashboard you can switch from class to class.

There are a number of tools to keep your WordPress.com blog up to date, but personally I love the web interface. Having a blog is also cool in that you can rapidly search through your notes on the fly, remember assignments, and if your professors offers videos embed them right into your notes.

Consider WordPress.com not only a great publishing platform but the webs best note taking platform as well.

Trust me on this–when you’re a student who is constantly on the go. You desperately need a dependable laptop. Thus I have scoured the internets to find you the best and most affordable portable laptop for your classroom needs. It needed to be powerful enough to take notes, and browse the web. Since most of my work is done on the web instead of the desktop I found it pretty easy to find a laptop that was both affordable and web friendly.

The Asus 901pc is roughly 500 dollars but comes fully equipped with XP which will run great on this portable laptop.

Its affordable which rocks my world. And its lightweight. I can pretty much do anything I want on this lightweight and yet affordable machine and it handily fits into my backpack without feeling like I am carrying around a 10 lb brick.

Producitivy is something I struggle with at times. Calculating your church will determine if you are busy and unproductive or busy and productive.

By calculating your own churn rate, you can determine, precisely, how effective you are and how this effectiveness changes over time and different types of projects. The details of this calculation are as follows:

1. Make a list of active projects that are important to you to complete. These should not be projects that have deadlines. Instead, make them the optional work that would really help you get ahead if completed. Each should require around 1 - 2 weeks of fairly regular attention to complete. If it requires more, break it up into smaller chunks. If it requires less, don’t include it — it’s a task, not a project. Overall, you should have between 4 - 8 projects on this list.

2. Over the next 3 -6 weeks, try to work only on the active projects on your list. You’ll still have to complete deadline-driven work, of course, but don’t get seduced by a new idea and add it to your list until you’ve completed what is already there.

3. After around 3 weeks you can start calculating your churn rate as often as you like. The formula is as follows:

CR = [(number of completed projects from list)/(days elapsed since start of list)] * 100

Source