As I sit here waiting for a video interview to upload I began wondering about whether or not everybody and anybody is fit to be an entrepreneur. Most people would react harshly saying that it would be foolish to suggest that anybody can be an entrepreneur. Let’s be honest though and explore this question a little more. As far as I am concerned, the number one difference between an entrepreneur and an employed individual is the entrepreneur’s choice to no longer work for someone else. Granted, there are prerequisites to successfully entering entrepreneurship.

One of the primary prerequisites for becoming an entrepreneur is sufficient demand and a cash cushion that you can tap to support yourself for a period of time. Additionally, if you have childred and/or are married it will be much more difficult to pull it off but it is still possible. Many of the people that I surround myself with are entrepreneurial individuals. Some of them are more successful than others but ultimately one person after another that I know has decided to start working for themself. This has forced me to question whether or not anybody can do it. I don’t think that everybody wants to be an entrepreneur as most people are risk-adverse.

Given the right circumstance though, I think the majority of individuals would quit their job to go work for themself full-time. Entrepreneurship is ultimately a human desire that most people share. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a need that fits within Maslow’s hierarchy, I do believe that we are born with the entrepreneurial gene inside of us. At some point in our lives we either dismiss of embrace our entrepreneurial desires. Most people dismiss it but a little piece of their entrepreneurial desires will always remain and can be tapped at any point during their life.

I know this haven’t embraced scientific methodology to support my hypothesis but hey, I don’t need science to express something that I feel. Do you think we are all naturally entrepreneurial? Is it something that some of us are born with or is it something that we try to supress as we get older and acquire new responsibilities?

Today I have really come close to hitting my breaking point. Over the past few months, I have been working harder then I ever have in my entire life. There have been no vacations. Just work with the occasional party with friends but honestly it has pretty much been just work. I frequently stay up until 2 am and then start again the next day at 8. I stupidly accepted a large development contract with a client (although not completely dumb since some extra money is always nice) and now have to do development in addition to maintaining my daily blogs.

While I know that I could probably take a couple vacation days from the blog, there has been this burning feeling inside of me that really make me feel like I’m getting close to my goals with this new company. The funny thing is that I just started. I am about to begin travelling around the country to host events and all this came out of a simple vision. I know it is feasible but I’ve begun to second guess a lot of my decisions. One of those being the decision to wait for investment.

My inbox is a streaming flow of data that is almost as challenging as my RSS feed reader. Ultimately, I should take a lesson from the 4-hour work week and turn off my blackberry and try to limit email to certain hours of the day. Regardless of all the problems, I have to tell you what just happened to me. As I’m feeling like I’m ready to break, I log in to this blog to write to the world what’s going on in my life. The first thing that pops-up to me is a link that says “Just Be Strong” It was like the message was talking to me. It was a backlink to my blog by an individual who’s trademark lawyer will now be attending my Social Times launch event. Here is one excerpt from the post that Mike Bonifer, author of the book “Game Changers” wrote:

Social networking creates endless opportunities for strong choices, for letting others in your network know where you stand. Whether you’re putting a new app on Facebook or launching a shop in Second Life, strong choices stand out. So take it upon yourself to be like Nick O’Neill, whose self-funded, soon-to-launch new venture, Social Times, I just happened to link to today — and now my trademark lawyer will be attending his launch party in D.C. and the network will extend, and new wealth will surely ensue. It happens just like that when you make strong choices. They have a magnetic effect on your audience, including those who will become your customers.

Included was a copy of my Facebook picture. I have never had something like this occur but let me tell you that Mike Bonifer just made my day. Just when I thought that I am the crazy one for working so hard, Mike helped me out. While I still may come to that breaking point and while I know that I will start needing to make quicker decisions, I at least know that I’m learning. I only wish the same for each of you because learning is the most important thing around. Also remember, never settle for good because you can do much more than that. Eventually, it will all work out as long as you believe it will happen.¬† Burnout may eventually happen but given that passion is the fuel for the fire, I’ve got a long way to go.¬† Thanks Mike!

Over the past few months I have been hyping up a new project. Each of those projects have slowly morphed into another eventually resulting in the current one: The Social Times. The Social Times is my attempt at covering the social web while hosting events that help active participants in the social web connect offline. The first event that I’m hosting is the Social Times launch event. We currently have the following sponsors and demos attending the event:

• Wine Library TV
• Freewebs
• Hungry Machine LLC
• Qloud
• Razoo
• Clearspring
• Why Go Solo

I will be announcing more demos and sponsors over the next few days. The event is going to be December 13th in downtown D.C. If you would like to attend, go register for the Social Times launch event. This is probably the most ambitious project I have ever taken on. I am looking to turn this into a national entity in the next 6 to 12 months. I will be sure to document the lessons learned on this blog so you can hear about the trials and tribulations.

I have chosen to go without seed funding from investors and am instead funding it myself. This will be an amazing experience and a massive challenge. I’m excited! I hope that each of you can be part of the journey. See you at the finish line

I just returned from an amazing dinner with some insanely inspirational people. I had the opportunity to sit, eat and chat with Om Malik, Frank Gruber, Ryan Carson and his wife, Brian Williams, Gary and AJ Vaynerchuk and Gary’s wife, Tim Ferriss, the organizers of the New New Internet Conference, James Surowiecki, Rohit Bhargava and a number of other highly inspirational people.

I have never had the opportunity to sit down and chat with such a world class set of people. The best part about it was chatting about the future of the web and the amazing opportunity that is still available to all of the people that choose to be part of the industry. I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to sit and chat with these individuals. I wanted to share with all of you some of the lessons that I learned in the brief discussions that I had with this dynamic set of individuals:

• 99 percent of people aren’t going to try as hard as you will. If you truly have that burning desire, anything you want is within reach if you are willing to work for it.
• Link to the people that you aspire to be and eventually they will begin to pay attention to you. If they don’t, do whatever it takes to make sure that they do.
• Your blog titles may be the most important thing when writing an article.
• No matter how successful you become, always be willing to help others. It will come back to you a million fold.
• Try try again. On the web, there is so much opportunity that not a single one of us can pursue all of the things we want to try. If the first thing you launch doesn’t work, launch something new; eventually something is bound to work.
• When you finally figure out something that works, start monetizing it immediately. Many people fail because they don’t successfully monetize something that is already working.
• As Napoleon Hill says, you need to work yourself into a white heat of desire. Be extremely passionate about what you are doing.
• Finally, pick one thing and conquer it. Spreading yourself thin will only result in disaster.

I cannot express enough thanks to Frank Gruber who informed me of the pre-event happy hour. Thank you so much! I’m looking forward to the conference tomorrow. I hope to be posting about it either on this blog or on AllFacebook tomorrow.

According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the D.C. metro area has the second highest concentration of I.T. professionals in the U.S. next to Silicon Valley. For all those that are trying to help put the D.C. tech community together, it appears as though this is a pretty good goal given the density. Conversely, it should be noted that just because we have the second highest density of I.T. professional doesn’t mean that we have the second highest volume of startups.

There are a number of large companies whose focus is strictly on I.T. services for the government. I would guess that those companies make up the majority of I.T. professionals in the area, but I don’t have the numbers to back it up. Also, the average salary for someone in the I.T. industry living in the D.C. metro area is approximately $122,950. Not bad! Congrats D.C.!

Dave Winer has published the Techmeme top 100 blogs. If you hadn’t heard already, Techmeme is releasing a new tech blog leaderboard tomorrow. My other blog AllFacebook.com has come in 62 on the list. Not bad for starting the blog a few months ago!

People that rank lower on the scale include Financial Times, USA Today, Mashable!, O’Reilly Radar and Valleywag. It’s pretty awesome to see hard work paying off. Rather than embellishing on it (p.s. I am officially a dork), I’d like to post an overview of how to launch a top blog. I’ll be posting some follow-up posts over the coming days to give a thorough overview.

I once read a post by Seth Godin that was titled “How to Get Paid $100,000 a Year Blogging.” The answer? Get a job that pays $100,000 a year and blog from work! While this is the attitude of many avid bloggers, I have also met those that make a living from blogging. In New York this past weekend I met one blogger that had just bought his own house from his network of blogs that he manages. While he was good at making money through blogs, I can’t say that he was truly passionate about blogging given that he didn’t write any of his blogs. It was all other people that blogged for him.

A New York Times article this past weekend asked the same question. Is it possible to make a job out of blogging? The conclusion was that it is possible but very difficult, with the rare full-time blogger making in the range of $40,000 to $60,000 a year. The real money in blogging comes from the connections made. From my two blogs, The Webpreneur (this blog), and my recently launched All Facebook, I have managed to build numerous business contacts. Some of these contacts have even led to potential business partners and start-up funding.

So can you make a living blogging? Yes, but the real value comes from building relationships. When you start a blog you need to be passionate and dedicated because chances are you are not going to see any money coming in the door for months to come. While I have already received cash offers for advertising space on my recently launched Facebook blog, the offers are nowhere near enough for me to live off. So if you have a blog idea, all I can suggest is to get out there and start blogging. There is so much more to be gained from writing down your thoughts and sharing them with the world than just monetary gain. If you choose not to share your thoughts with the world you are missing out on a world of opportunity.

In terms of revenue generation, this is an easy question to answer. Of course the iPhone will generate more revenue, but I’m wondering more about the impact on the web world and the world of development. Just as Facebook opened up their platform to developers, so has Apple opened up their iPhone to web developers. The industry has been waiting on an open source mobile platform just as they were waiting on an open source social networking platform. I was talking about this with a good friend of mine this weekend. There is an underlying story behind all of this that is even more important.

Both apple and Facebook have made strategic moves to position themselves as the next “open-source” platforms. The only problem is that they aren’t actually open-source. They have set up branded platforms that provide developers with the ability to develop applications on top of their existing platform within their defined constraints. This is a step above open-source platforms such as Linux that gave developers complete access to the operating system/platform. Rather than enabling developers to simply expand the operating system, they are enabling developers to expand their brand.

We have entered a new phase in the technology world. Brands (Facebook and Apple in particular) will provide the platform (for frameworks which previously didn’t have “open-source” environments) for any developer to rapidly develop applications that can be immediately released to millions of users. While this already existed with Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX, never before had it been so easy for a developer to release an application and have it rapidly adopted by millions of individuals. Facebook has already illustrated its viral potential, now can iPhone?

Listpic, the site I covered back in January was banned yesterday from accessing Craigstlist feeds. Listpic enabled users to browse through Craigslist by pictures rather than text. It was highly popular and yesterday Craigslist pulled the plug. There is now a forum for users to complain about Craigslist’s decision. Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, said that the site was slowing down the site. I’m a bit skeptical of this but from a competitive standpoint, it makes sense that Listpic was banned. Conversely, Listpic helped increase the usefulness and visibility of Craigslist. Not sure if we’ll see the site come back up anytime soon, but this is a good example of the risk involved when basing your business on the backbone of another business. They can pull the plug at any moment!

Last night I had the opportunity to attend my first Washington, D.C. Blogger Meetup. It was a great experience and I met a lot of passionate D.C. bloggers. One of the more interesting bloggers that I had the chance to speak with was Abi Jones of HeatEatReview.com. Abi and her writers post reviews of frozen dinners. It’s a pretty quirky topic to be covering. I also had the opportunity to speak with Ross Karchner who covers D.C. technology and media news and events. If you want a quick way to meet a few people that share some common interests, then I highly recommend checking out some of your local meetups. There are a variety of options covering a vast array of topics with everything from spiritual topics to people passionate about blogging. Check it out!

Yesterday I registered for the Future of Online Advertising Conference. The conference is taking place June 7-8 in New York City and has some really excellent speakers. Two of my favorite speakers at the conference are Darren Rowse of Problogger and Steve Rubel of Edelman. The conference is being put on by Carson Systems (Ryan Carson is the CEO) who also puts on a variety of other conferences including the Future of Web Apps that I attended in February and Future of Web Design. Topics of discussion include:

• How to guarantee the success of your online ads
• Tips for packaging your inventory and maximizing ad revenue
• Online Advertising Basics – Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask
• Advertising in RSS feeds ‚Äì the next big thing?
• Marketing Beyond Google, Yahoo, AOL & MSN with Scale, Quality and Safety
• It’s all in the creative – how to create successful online ads
• Targeted Ad Networks – Cost Per Influence Vs. Cost Per Thousand
• Ads in Online Video ‚Äì the future of interactive advertising?

This conference should be a great time if it is similar to past conferences hosted by Carson Systems. If you are interested in social media and advertising I highly recommend attending this conference. If you would like to receive a 10% discount on your tickets, you can use the following promo code: 10p3rc. Copy that code and go sign up here.

According to the Wall Street Journal (and Macworld.co.uk), EMI will announce today that they will offer much of their music via Apple’s ITunes store DRM free. Less than two months after Steve Jobs ‚ÄúThoughts on Music‚Äù it looks like changes are actually beginning to occur. I was fairly skeptical about anything coming of Steve Jobs’ manifesto but apparently I was wrong. This will truly be a massive experiment for the record label given that there could be an increase in piracy activity as a result.

The Wall Street Journal also emphasizes the potential benefit gained by Apple from a move toward the removal of DRM:

EMI’s decision, if it’s followed by other major recording companies, could also lessen growing political pressure on Apple by consumer rights organizations in several European countries, including Norway, that want to see Apple make its digital music products, iTunes and the iPod, work with songs and hardware from other companies.

I personally support the movement though and hope that this is only the first in a series of steps toward a DRM-free world.