Famous Entrepreneur Trading Cards Launch In Support Of Kiva Charity

33 Top Business Bloggers Team Up To Unveil “Entrepreneur Heroes” Series
http://www.evancarmichael.com/Heroes/

EvanCarmichael.com has partnered up with bloggers Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Darren Rowse, Tim Ferriss, Chris Brogan, Tom Peters, and others to create a line of famous entrepreneur trading cards called “Entrepreneur Heroes” – the profits from the sale of the cards go to support entrepreneurs in Africa through Kiva, a micro-financing non-profit organization. So far over 825 new business owners in Africa have been helped!

Get the Ultimate Entrepreneur Collector’s Item

The Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards are instant collectibles. Each of our top 33 business bloggers were asked to pick who their favorite famous entrepreneurs were and gave reasons why. A trading card was then created for each entrepreneur chosen and includes an artistic picture on the front, an inspirational quote on the back, a true story / fun fact about the entrepreneur and other personal information. If you’ve ever collected cards of your favorite sports stars, the Entrepreneur Heroes trading card series gives you a chance to collect your favorite business founders from Steve Jobs to Richard Branson to Benjamin Franklin.

Raise Entrepreneurship Awareness

Just like today’s youth look up to sports, music, and movie stars a goal of the Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards is to inspire the next generation to become entrepreneurs and view starting their own business as an empowering adventure that can help them reach their potential and change the world for the better. To this end EvanCarmichael.com has partnered with Junior Achievement a global leader in youth financial literacy, to use the Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards to raise awareness in business among our young students who on the verge of starting their professional lives.

Support a Good Cause

Profits from the sale of the cards will go to support entrepreneurs in Africa through Kiva and so far over 825 new business owners in Africa have been helped through our efforts. Kiva began in 2005 as a micro-finance project of Matt and Jessica Flannery. Their work has grown into an organization which achieved a repayment rate of 98.27% with over $68 million in completed loan terms helping real individual entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial spirit is not confined within Silicon Valley , but is also very strong among the global poor, and stories have a powerful way of connecting people across the world to help.

Who is Involved: Our Checklist

Here is a list of the famous entrepreneurs we are profiling, the companies they founded, and the bloggers who selected them.

# / Famous Entrepreneur / Blogger

1 / A.P. Giannini (Bank of America ) / Evan Carmichael (evancarmichael.com)

2 / Steve Jobs (Apple) / Guy Kawasaki (guykawasaki.com)

3 / Seth Godin (SethGodin.com) / Darren Rowse (problogger.net)

4 / Vince McMahon (WWE) / Gary Vaynerchuk (garyvaynerchuk.com)

5 / Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) / John Chow (johnchow.com)

6 / Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines) / John Jantsch (ducttapemarketing.com)

7 / Terry Matthews (Mitel) / Paul Kedrosky (paul.kedrosky.com)

8 / Tony Hsieh (Zappos) / Jeremiah Owyang (web-strategist.com)

9 / Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com) / Andy Beal (andybeal.com)

10 / Martha Stewart (MSLO) / Anita Campbell (smallbiztrends.com)

11 / Milton Hershey (Hershey Company) / Yaro Starak (entrepreneurs-journey.com)

12 / Craig Newmark (Craigslist) / Leo Babauta (zenhabits.com)

13 / Bill Gates (Microsoft) / Tim Ferriss (fourhourworkweek.com)

14 / William Gaines (Mad Magazine) / Mark Frauenfelder (boingboing.net)

15 / Peggy Short / Jane Saunders (Body Shop) / Danny Sullivan (searchengineland.com)

16 / Muhammad Yunus (Grameen Bank) / Robert Scoble (scobleizer.com)

17 / Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania Gazette) / Steve Rubel (steverubel.com)

18 / Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post) / Tara Hunt (horsepigcow.com)

19 / Jeff Hawkins (Palm) / Dylan Tweney (wired.com)

20 / Guy Kawasaki (Alltop) / Chris Pirillo (lockergnome.com)

21 / Duncan Hines (Ducan Hines) / Seth Godin (sethgodin.com)

22 / Ray Kurzweil (Kurzweil AI.net) / Adam Pash (lifehacker.com)

23 / Reed Hastings (Netflix) / Rand Fishkin (seomoz.org)

24 / Howard Rheingold (Rheingold Associates) / B.L. Ochman (whatsnextblog.com)

25 / Steve Wozniak (Apple) / Jeremy Zawodny (zawodny.com)

26 / Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library) / Frank Gruber (somewhatfrank.com)

27 / Richard Branson (Virgin) / Chris Brogan (chrisbrogan.com)

28 / Walt Disney (Walt Disney Company) / Brian Solis (future-works.com)

29 / S. Truett Cathy (Chick-fil-A) / Jennifer Laycock (searchengineguide.com)

30 / Ev Williams / Biz Stone (Twitter) / Pete Cashmore (mashable.com)

31 / Wendy Kopp (Teach For America) / Tom Peters (tompeters.com)

32 / Checklist Front – Richard Branson / Michael Dunlop (incomediary.com)

32 / Checklist Back – Ray Kurzweil / Wil Schroter (wilschroter.com)

Contests, Promotions, and More Information

You can learn more about the Entrepreneur Heroes trading card series at: http://www.evancarmichael.com/Heroes/ . EvanCarmichael.com is raffling off an authentic Steve Wozniak signed baseball and limited edition hologram cards of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as well as a 20% off discounted rate for anyone interested in pre-ordering packs.

Questions or Comments?

Please comment below – I’d love to hear from you!

In my last Twitter University post (9 Reasons Why EntrepreneursShould Be On Twitter – Twitter University) I discussed why it was important for business owners to get involved with Twitter. Today I wanted to showcase a few examples of entrepreneurs who are active on Twitter and were able to generate significant traffic increases to their websites.

On EvanCarmichael.com, Twitter has recently become the number four source of traffic. It’s Google, then Yahoo!, then AOL, and then Twitter. Twitter sends more traffic to my site than Ask, Bing / MSN, Wikipedia, Digg, and Facebook. What’s also interesting is that Twitter visitors view 40% more pages and spend 73% more time on my site than visitors from Google. I don’t have any numbers on how well the traffic converts, which is typically a problem for social media referrals, but the growth in the Twitter numbers is impressive nonetheless.

I also wanted to share with the results that other bloggers are experiencing. Let’s start with one of the most popular blogs in the world, TechCrunch. TechCrunch recently released their traffic numbers (For TechCrunch, Twitter = Traffic (A Statistical Breakdown)) and Twitter is the number two referring website after Google. Twitter accounts for 9.7% of TechCrunch traffic, up from 1.8% six months ago, out of millions of visitors. According to TechCrunch writer Erick Schonfeld:

“Some people use it to share their daily thoughts and observation. But it is increasingly becoming clear that one of the most common ways people use Twitter is as a social information filter and link distributor. Twitter is not just about micro-media. The most powerful Tweets are those which point elsewhere. Or to put it another way, the shortened link may just be the most powerful type of micro-media there is. Those retweeted links are turning Twitter into a social broadcast media that rivals any other on the Web. “

Another popular blogger who has been on Twitter is Jeremy Shoemaker, a.k.a. ShoeMoney. Shoemaker has been on Twitter for almost one year and it is also the second largest referral of traffic after Google (For Those Who Still Don’t Get Twitter). Twitter sends him over 25,000 visitors every month and, similar to results on my website, Twitter visitors look at more pages and spend more time on his site than Google visitors. According to Shoemaker:

“You would probably be surprised to learn that less then 5% of the twitter traffic came from my tweets. Just engaging in the twittosphere has been amazingly rewarding. But if you still “don’t get it” its cool. Less competition.”

Chris Brogan, a community and social media blogger, recently shared how he has managed to double the traffic to his website using Twitter (How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog). According to Brogan:

“Since I started using Twitter, I have more than doubled my blog traffic over the last several months, and I can tell you how. I ask my following in Twitter for love three times: once when I post the blog, again if it takes off well in the comments section, and sometimes a third time if I want to really amp the traffic via StumbleUpon. I mix these requests in liberally with all the various ways I help others using Twitter, and so it doesn’t come off like I’m perpetually pitching my own stuff. My current monthly rate of pitching others vs. promoting my own site is 75 / 25 in other people’s favor. That sounds fair, right?”

You also don’t need to be a top blogger to get results from Twitter. A great example is Daily SEO Blog, a website run by Mani Karthik, a self-proclaimed “Internet Enthusiast.” Karthik currently gets 25% of his traffic from Twitter and again, Twitter is the number two source of referring traffic, after Google (How much traffic can Twitter give ?). According to Karthik:

“For those of you still not convinced about what Twitter can give to your website, think again. Most of the sites, Twitter is already giving 1/3rd – 1/4th of its total traffic – those who have embraced the power of Twitter that is. DSB gets a nice 1/4th of its traffic from Twitter too, that is indeed a nice thing. What’s important is that 99% of the traffic is from other people’s tweets. So if you haven’t yet embraced Twitter, try it out this time around.”

My top nine reasons for why entrepreneurs should be on Twitter were:

1. It’s where your customers are
2. It’s where your customers will be
3. Twitter can drive targeted traffic to your website
4. People are talking about you
5. Connect with people you want to get in front of
6. Add credibility to your business
7. Stay on top of trends in your industry
8. Rank higher in search engines
9. Leverage the work you’re already doing

Hopefully today’s post has given you solid evidence for how Twitter can drive targeted traffic to your website and helps bring home some of the benefits of getting involved.

How are you using Twitter for your business? What kind of traffic results are you seeing?