Business On A Shoestring, Part Two

I suppose if I were to summarize what I've learned about bootstrapping to date, it would be: don't spend money unless you absolutely have to; what you make from your business, sink back into the business; and don't quit your day job until the numbers are right. As promised, here are some great resources I've found in the course of my research.

Entrepreneur.com is a must-read site for the bootstrapper. Here's a great article on bootstrapping your startup; be sure to follow the links he's included, which provide some helpful additional reading.

If you don't have many resources, marketing can be a challenge. This Enterpreneur.com article provides some creative ideas for marketing your product with little or no cash outlay. I'll cover some of the things I've been doing to promote Metier in Part Three of this series.

Bob Weinstein's contribution to Entrepreneur.com tells some success stories and gives his take on bootstrapping. He also provides some advice from a professor of entrepreneurship at a Pennsylvania college. A good deal of overlap with the other articles, but also worth reading (hey, another viewpoint is always worth the read).

Jeff Cornwell runs the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University, and frequently blogs about bootstrapping. Put bootstrapping into the search window at his site, The Entrepreneurial Mind, and see what he has written on the topic. This is a great site in general for the entrepreneur.

He's selling a book, but The Bootstrap Entrepreur provides a number of freebies at his site that are worth the read. I can't say anything about the book, because I haven't read it but the site's worth a visit just for his tips & articles. My take on it is, if you're spending a lot of money on books, seminars, CDs, and other bootstrapping learning tools, that ain't bootstrapping. :)

This is a great opinion piece on bootstrapping by a CEO in the software industry. The focus here is on why bootstrap rather than the how. Definitely worth the read.

You can't have too many top 10 lists, right? Here's a list of 10 tips for the bootstrapping entrepreneur that focuses on the home business startup.

The Bootstrap Network provides a fantastic networking opportunity for the bootstrapper, and has as of today 16 local chapters in the USA and India.

Finally, BootStrapMe is a blog that provides a lot of good articles & links for the bootstrapper.

That should get you all going. In the third (and probably final) installation in this series, I'll talk about the things I've been trying to bootstrap my business ventures.