Taking a whole new angle on internet entrepreneurship, Freelancer.comprovides a forum for freelancers to connect with small businesses, capitalizing on peoples’ need for freelancer services. The website proudly claims the status of “world’s largest freelancing, outsourcing and crowdsourcing marketplace for small business.” With over 7,500,000 employers networking on their site and with over 4,500,000 projects posted since 2004, they certainly seem fit to make such a claim.

So how does it work? Whether you’re a small upstart, an already established small business, or a full-fledged company, you can upload design projects to Freelancer.com, then compare and consider bids from freelancers interested in being hired. You don’t pay anything until you find a find a product with which you are 100% satisfied. If you’re an aspiring freelancer, all you have to do to find work is sign up for free and browse the project listings!

The ease of this network is really what makes it a beautiful idea—it guarantees quality for the professionals seeking help, and offers a plentitude of easy opportunities to freelancers looking for hire.

If you’re artsy, creative, and bored, try Blendoku.  This mobile app allows the user, or rather, player, to organize colors in gradients by shade, hue, and saturation.  Think it sounds too easy?  Give it a try, and you’ll soon find it gets progressively challenging; if nothing else, you’ll tickle your right brain.

The player is allowed as many free puzzles as he or she can handle, but using more than one hint per day will require purchasing the app.  In theory, the app is educational.  The founders wanted to create an app that would teach color theory, and are working to make it colorblind friendly.  They had observed teaching methods in education from elementary through college, and wanted to make color theory basics fun (and less messy!).  At this point, they only need to spread the word about their app to stand a chance of it becoming successful.  Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to play some Blendoku instead of studying for finals.

Starting an internet business can be challenging. It can also be incredibly overwhelming. Without the right guidance, it can be easy to slip up and make a mistake or give up altogether. Fortunately, there is an abundance of resources online that are designed solely to assist internet entrepreneurs in their quests to create value through their online businesses. IncomeDiary.com has a list of the twenty-five most useful blogs for internet entrepreneurs. That list, which can be found here, is summarized below:

• Blogs for building websites: WPBeginner, Yoast, The Thesis Statement, Tuts+, Build Internet
• Blogs for getting traffic: Copyblogger, Problogger, Social Media Examiner, SEOmoz blog, Think Traffic
• Blogs for converting leads: KISSmetrics blog, Social Triggers, Conversion Rate Experts
• Blogs for making money: Smart Passive Income, ViperChill, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Passive Panda
• Blogs for running a business: QuickSprout, OPEN Forum, 4-Hour Workweek
• Blogs for entrepreneurial development: Seth’s Blog, On Startups, Retire@21, Mixergy, Both Sides of the Table

I am personally using several of these sites, particularly the ones in the first category, for the expansion of my own personal entrepreneurial knowledge. These blogs are some valuable sources for anyone interested in e-commerce.

When thinking of Pakistan, the phrase “hotbed for entrepreneurial growth” is not the first that comes to mind. However, the mixture of untapped markets and increasing numbers of internet users make this country a prime location for internet entrepreneurs and their ventures.

As mentioned in Adam Dawood’s article on the subject, Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world. The number of Pakistanis using the internet has recently reached twenty-two million. Obviously, this is a significant number of potential customers in a region of the world that is rapidly becoming more developed.

Not only is there a significant user base, this market is very unsaturated with businesses. According to a study done by Dawood’s venture capital and consultancy firm DYL Ventures, there are many untapped spaces in Pakistani e-commerce. These spaces include travel, events, subscription, rental, microwork, and ticketing.

This information is a good example of an opportunity that is growing rapidly in size. There are many countries around the world that are quickly developing and becoming more available for e-commerce. The internet entrepreneurs that are willing to capitalize on these wide open spaces will surely be in a position to reap nearly unprecedented successes.

Amsterdam Fashion Week

At fashion shows across the world, high fashion couture has proved itself an innovator and early adapter, with the introduction of clothing printed via 3D printer.  Featured at the right is an exquisite dress by Iris van Herpen.  While a recent trend, each year articles pose many questions about whether 3D printing will produce sustainable textiles to make current materials obsolete.  Is it time to throw out the sewing machine, and depend on the computer?  Will today’s programmers be tomorrow’s fashion designers? To the latter, I certainly hope not.

3D Printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is the process of making three dimensional objects from a digital model.  The object, even if complex, is created through successive layering of material, and is easily replicable once it has been successfully printed.  In the future, as the technology steadily progresses and prices fall, clothes, shoes, and jewelry may be downloaded and printed.  Clothing could custom fit, printed in stores which only require a 3D body scan.

Makerbot recently announced it’s new Digitilizer Desktop 3D Scanner, which allows objects to be copied and printed; 3D printers will make their way into the homes of people everywhere.  Perhaps it will be a while before the average American dons clothes that have been printed, but it wasn’t that long ago Americans were consuming paper clothing (I believe mid-1900s).  Is this all that different?   No matter what, the advent of 3D printers signals many changes for fashion, as well as for multiple other industries.  Fashion is but one area that would be affected by 3D printing.

Before you continue reading, pause and guess how much money was raised worldwide by crowdfunding in 2012.  For real, stop and think before you continue.  I’m guessing $2.7 billion was not your guess.  This was an 81% increase from what was raised the previous year, and projections for 2013 lie around $5.1 billion.  Most of this came from North America and Europe, where I thought philanthropists were a dying breed.  Only 45% of this $2.7 billion was to be paid back to lenders in money or product.

It turns out that there are three main types of crowdfunding: donation-based, lending-based, and equity-based. Equity-based?  Yes, equity-based; it means investors receive a share of the company in exchange for funds.  Last year it was the smallest sector of crowdfunding, at a meager $116 million.  But this trend is changing.  Thanks to changing Securities and Exchange rules in the U.S., entrepreneurs will be able to more easily sell equity in their companies to non-accredited investors.

What are the applications for entrepreneurs, aside from the obvious fact that people are increasingly standing behind what they believe in with their money?  Entrepreneur Magazine reports that communities will increasingly use crowdfunding to support innovative entrepreneurs who are involved in solving complex, social problems.  These crowdfunding communities will be increasingly localized, supporting community members in their endeavors to make a difference in the area.  And finally, women stand to capture more investment dollars as investors prefer to more personally understand who they are backing; women are typically more active on social media, and more collaborative when they invest.

No matter the type of crowdfunding, no serious entrepreneur should ignore it as a viable funding option.  Thanks to modern technology, anyone can succeed with a business; the only start-up required is a dream and a little persistence.