I’ve recently thought of my own experience hiring, firing and creating a partnership with someone. That is because I wasn’t always successful and on a few occasions it ended up really bad.

First time I worked with someone, I investigated the guy really well because on the internet you can never know. I managed to choose the right person because I had him as a partner for about 3 years and he never tried to scam me.

Then I tried to teach some guy from Bulgaria how to make money on the internet because his family had really big issues. I succeeded again, but the family problems turned out to be fake and the guy left with no word to me. I found out later that he had put up another idea involving HYIP pyramid scheme. So I guess this turned out bad.

The list can continue as I always got involved with people when creating something on the internet but I think, I’d better tell you what I think of hiring or firing.

Hire only if you need

I’ve been lured a few times to hiring someone just because they were family or because they needed some fast cash. You should get quality for the money you spend. You shouldn’t choose someone just because you feel sorry he lost the job. It won’t be fair for your company or for the employees you already have.

If you have some open spaces in your company then you can go ahead and search, otherwise, put the hiring away. If you don’t need a PHP programmer, don’t hire one with the thought of using him in a few months.

How to hire someone?

It’s not very hard to get people to call you or email you with their applications. Forums, fliers, local newspapers, Craiglist or a bunch of other resources can help you find possible candidates. However, that’s not the hardest part.

After getting some people that you think are fit for your needs you should test them somehow because you need to know them, you need to trust them. So, pay them low in the beginning and then you will know if it’s the right person.

How to fire someone?

If you already made the mistake of choosing the bad employee for the job, or if you just need to cut some costs you should be able to fire someone. If you will keep them on board, results may go from worse to much worse. Why not save your business by firing someone if you can do it.

Some people say you should follow rules when firing someone, like timing it wisely. Do it early in the week and early in the day, and never do it before a weekend or a holiday. I say that’s bull, because if I am not satisfied with the service anymore, I shouldn’t lose the money for the whole week just to make sure the employee won’t be upset over the weekend.

I do agree, that when you let someone go you should be backed with some good reasons. Do not point to only one event or the person you’re firing will think you are just trying to get rid of him. Explain the reasons why he’s not filling the job requirements.

It’s been a while since I haven’t found such a good story on Digg, that it’s not Apple, iPhone, Microsoft sucks or anything like that. It’s the story of two guys that used to work in GoDaddy and managed to create Zenter, the online version of PowerPoint, which was later bought by Google. Now that’s a great story because it only took them 6 months to get bought.

What I am going to do now is a little different from what I did so far. I will re-write these guys’ article but thinking of making money online. After reading it, I realized these ideas work great if you are starting a new blog for example and couldn’t resist.

• Don’t focus on monetizing the site. Their example with the 70y old lady looking for a husband is great. It will happen to you when you least expect it, so why get stressed out thinking of how to increase your earnings.
• Focus instead on your visitors and offer them quality articles, not only ads. Check your comments and establish a relationship with them. If they want certain articles, research and give them what they want. You will increase your RSS readers if you deliver what’s needed.
• Don’t be afraid to tackle the giants. I love this one the most, because even if you are starting-up many of the top bloggers may not be better than you. If you disagree with what the pro bloggers in your niche say, do not hesitate to correct them or make your voice heard.
  ps: usually the dot com moguls enjoy a good debate, so you may take advantage of that.
• Ignoring limitations. Many will think why shouldn’t I set some limits. Well don’t get me wrong but you should. This is however something different. If you ever come up with an issue that you think it’s unsolvable, don’t embrace “NO”, try to find a way around the problem, around limitations. If you don’t think negative you will seek solutions from different angles, and actually find one in the end.
  
• Pay attention to the details. These guys said that if you think your product is 80% done then you have another 80% to go. What a good one. Think if your blog wouldn’t have a “home” button and your visitor would come directly to a post you’ve wrote. Where does he go next? AWAY! So, test your blog theme before you launch and ask your visitors what else, they need added.

The Zenter guys, Wayne Crosby and Robby Walker also mentioned the fact that you should have an understanding spouse. I don’t know what I can say since I am single but I am sure you need one if you have some metal on your finger.

So, for those of you that needed some hints to start a blog (business), keep in mind that the online version of PowerPoint got acquired by Google only after 6 months of work. How good are these guys? Great!

Day by day Yahoo is much more behind Google. Google has Feedburner, Google has Youtube, while Yahoo is waiting scared in a corner. But rumors say that they’ve engaged in discussions with Fox to acquire Myspace.com for 25% of the combined entity shares.

Myspace was worth $10 billion late last year, and is worth at least $12 billion today so imagine how much money (or shares) would Yahoo give up at. I am sure for Fox this would be a great deal since they only invested $580 mil in Myspace, but would it be such a good deal for Yahoo? Think of the quality of users on Myspace: full of perverts, illegal stuff and related.

Michael Arlington believes that Myspace is going down the slope, and I agree. I don’t think that the increased number of page views and users is a good reason to pay $12 billion dollars. I think the rumor will not confirm, but if it does, Yahoo just made the first mistake in the chess game. From what I see if Yahoo really needs to buy something now, why not look in the Facebook direction? It is much cheaper (maybe $2-$3 billion dollars) and they really seem to be on an upward slope. Check up this chart from Compete.

How abut “MSN buys Yahoo for ….. “? I think this would be the best solution in 2008 to run closely behind Google, if not in front.

I just saw a very very interesting interview with Jason Calacanis where he explains why Mahalo is going to be a success in the next 5 years and why there was need for such a service. I must say he has some good points that I really enjoyed hearing.

The first thing I agree with, is that the search results we see these days on Google, Yahoo!, MSN or Ask are filled with websites designed for the spiders instead of the visitors. It’s the era of SEO and everyone needs to get there building link farms or other black methods, that made some of the search results look like a garbage dump. We polluted the internet by not focusing on quality. Agreed.

For those of you that didn’t know Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine that is supposed to be “as big as Google” (yes I think you’ve gone mad) in the next 5 years. The difference between Mahalo and the other spider dependent search engines is that they will not have any spam inside because everything gets through a hand.

The interview however has some very interesting ideas about promotion, marketing and how to create a rock solid company to compete with the big guys.

My Mahalo Conclusion

• These guys (40 people so far) are going after 25-30% of the queries (top keywords of the long tail) which is pretty decent. But I am not very fond of how their results look like. I agree the idea of doing it manually gives some sort of “weight” but I did a search for Paris Hotels because that was the guys example throughout the interview. For a traveler like me, that looks for a hotel in Paris the most interesting things to see would be : average price to see if I can afford it, area (he has Google Map) and some reviews.

• I really like the design.

• I fear that in the next few years, when they will grow, there will be people willing to pay to get a hotel up there in the list. I am not sure if they will be able to say no to money when the offer will pop in.

• Last thing is that I don’t think 5 years is enough to cover the 10-15 percent of the queries people run these days. Either hire 10 times more the people they have now, or move the deadline from 5 to 10 years.

I don’t want people to think I am against the idea because I am not. I really believe in it, but just not the way they are doing it now. Surely along the way their experience will speak for themselves and things will improve.

There are many people that have a day job and think of getting online because they see Adsense checks with thousands of dollars per month, or they see how much a blog is making each and every month. They usually get the idea that working online is fun and doesn’t involve work. Mistake: it is fun, but almost all the time, involves lots and lots of work.

I’ve seen it many times on the DigitalPoint forums that people are ready to file their resignation and enter the world of online money. The decision should be taken after thorough analysis because, most likely, you will not earn from your site/s in the first 6 months, and you need money for monthly expenses. This is why I advise people to check their financial lifeline. What does it mean? See for how many months you have money to live. For example if you have $15,000 in your bank account, and your monthly expenses are $3,000 then your financial lifeline is 5 months. However as I said, do not expect money in the first semester, or at least not anything serious. A financial lifeline of 15 months is what you should have, before quiting your job and moving online.

Now that we have that one sorted out and you are on your way to making millions on the internet, let’s talk about financial freedom and what it means. I have a bachelor degree on finance and banks so I can tell you what I know. Being financial free means that no matter what will happen to your day job you will earn enough passive income to pay for what you spend each month. Sources can be : dividends, rents, bank deposits or anything like that, that will bring cash monthly. However, one that is financial free today, may not be tomorrow. Why? The bank goes bankrupt, the company you’re getting dividends files for bankruptcy or the house you’re renting collapses. This doesn’t mean you lose your money (insurance) but you no longer get a check every month for doing nothing. However these kind of activities are considered to bring you financial freedom.

Thinking that the internet is a source of becoming financial free is wrong, because no matter what website you start, you need to promote, optimize, update the content and so on. You’re active. In my opinion there is nothing that we can call 100% passive income, because no matter what, be it one time a year, you get interested and you act. Active again.

I like what John Chow said about getting truly rich by becoming financial free:

A job was never designed to make you rich. It was design to make you exist and make the business owner rich. This is not to say you should quit your job. Far from it – you still have to exist.

That’s true, but make sure you’re not missing opportunities, because you can be the next business owner to hire people and becoming rich. Put all the pros and cons in one bag, see what your financial lifeline is, and then if you think you can get it done, enter the online world.

This guest post is written by Mihnea Boiangiu.

Google empire is going to add one more company. Probably you have heard the rumors about FeedBurner. But the rumors from yesterday are the reality from today. The business went official and Google will buy the RSS management company - FeedBurner.

I remembered about the fictional future company called Googlezon from the Epic’s movie which you can watch below:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=I_v15VV226s[/youtube]

Fortunately, this movie is fictional. At least the most part of it! The question is “Where we are going to…?”, because Google tends to become a monopolistic company. This year they have bought the DoubleClick company and FeedBurner is becoming the second acquisition in 2007. What should we expect next?

In this way, we will assist to the battle of the giants. Microsoft starts loosing terrain in front of Google. They should purchase something sooner, if they don’t want to lose the battle. In my opinion the Internet will become a battlefield between the big players. The regular Internet users will become part of the system and they will need to obey the rules. For example, check up the new Google rules about link exchange and paid links. Google won’t accept the publishers who sell links and their sites will be removed from the search engine. And that would be enough to close your business. Something should be done to stop this companies to monopolize the Internet until is not too late.