Starting anything is never easy, especially when there is a lot on the line. That is the situation most new entrepreneurs find themselves in. They throw all of their energy, time and resources into developing a new idea that they hope will find its feet in the market. But you can do more than hope!

The 50 bloggers below have established themselves as experts in the field when it comes to starting up a new business. Get their tips, read about their lessons learned, and avoid making the same mistakes they did.Starting up a business is always a challenge, but it should also fun! Let these experts show you how! You can see last year’s list here.

News Blogs

Michael Arrington, TechCrunch

1) TechCrunch
http://www.techcrunch.com/- TechCrunch is a leading technology media property, dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news. Founded in 2005, TechCrunch and its network of websites now reach over 10 million unique visitors and draw more than 33 million page views per month.

2) Mashable!
http://mashable.com/ - Founded in 2005, Mashable is the top source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture. With more than 40 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific news site reporting breaking web news, providing analysis of trends, reviewing new websites and services, and offering social media resources and guides.

3) GigaOM
http://gigaom.com/- GigaOM delivers breaking news and in-depth analysis on the business of technology. Their reporters investigate trends and examine emerging. It offers Web 2.0 news, analysis and opinions on startups, new technologies, broadband and online games.

4) VentureBeat
http://www.venturebeat.com/- VentureBeat’s mission is to define innovation for forward-thinking executives. In 2008, the New York Times called VentureBeat one of the “best blogs on the Web,” and began publishing VentureBeat’s articles on its web site. In March 2009, VentureBeat signed a partnership agreement with IDG to produce DEMO, the leading conference for launching emerging technology products.

5) Xconomy
http://www.xconomy.com/- Xconomy is dedicated to providing business and technology leaders with timely, insightful, close-to-the-scene information about the local personalities, companies, and technological trends that best exemplify today’s high-tech economy.

6) Crenk
http://crenk.com/- Crenk, founded on September 22, 2007, is a blog dedicated to reviewing some of the newest and best web and mobile apps on the web. Additionally, they have insights and analysis on some of the hottest topics from around the net.

Spot The Trends

Zee Kane, The Next Web

7) The Next Web
http://thenextweb.com/ - The Next Web launched in January 2008 as a spin-off to The Next Web Conference. Soon after, the site found a life of its own and the potential for a technology site from an international perspective became a reality. Since then, it has expanded to include a number of “glocal” blogs with technology news in their own language from blogs across the globe, and channels focused on select topics including Apps, Apple and Viral Sensations.

8) PSFK
http://www.psfk.com/-  PSFK is the go-to source for new ideas and inspiration for creative professionals. They provide readers, event attendees and corporations with fresh trends and innovation stimulus.

9) TrendHunter
http://www.trendhunter.com/- With 35,000,000 monthly views, TrendHunter.com is the world’s largest, most popular trend community. Their head office is based in Toronto, Canada, and they are fueled by a global network of 56,000 members. Trend Hunter, Trend Hunter TV and Trend Hunter PRO feature 109,000 micro-trends and cutting edge ideas.

10) Don Dodge On The Next Big Thing
http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing - Don Dodge is a Developer Advocate at Google helping developers build new applications on Google platforms and technologies. Prior to joining Google, Don was a startup evangelist at Microsoft. Don is also a veteran of five start-ups including Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks. Find his advice from years of experience here.

Make Your Marketing Work

Seth Godin, Seth's Blog

11) Seth’s Blog
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/- Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. In his blog, Seth riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.

12) Duct Tape Marketing
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog - John Jantsch has been called the World’s Most Practical Small Business Expert for consistently delivering real-world, proven small business marketing ideas and strategies. He is a marketing consultant, award winning social media publisher and best-selling author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine. This is his personal blog.

13) A Smart Bear
http://blog.asmartbear.com/ - Jason Cohen’s blog is all about marketing and small business. Gear-head geeks like him tend to think these things are inscrutable, best left to MBAs and right-brain types. Jason is here to tell you that’s not true!

From The Venture World

Fred Wilson, A VC

14) A VC
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/ – Fred Wilson is a VC and has been since 1986. He helps people start and build technology companies. He does it in NYC, which isn’t the easiest place to build technology companies, but it’s getting better, he says. Get his advice here!

15) WiredVC
http://wiredvc.com/- WiredVC is a leading source for Venture Capital, Private Equity and Business Entrepreneur news. They focus on covering the ever changing landscape of emerging companies while providing news, in-depth reports and interviews with industry leaders and Venture Capitalists.

16) InfoChachkie
http://www.infochachkie.com/ – John Greathouse has held a number of senior executive positions with successful startups over a period of more than fifteen years. He has repeatedly been one of the very first businesspeople hired, helping build large businesses from the ground up, with an emphasis on market engagement and scalable customer acquisition. Get all of his advice here!

17) TechStars
http://www.techstars.org/ - TechStars is a mentorship-driven seed stage investment program. They run a three month long program once each year, and select 30 companies to get up to $18,000 in seed funding, three months of intensive top-notch mentorship, and the chance to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program. Follow their progress and get advice on their blog.

Big Ideas

Chris Turner, Springwise

18) Springwise
http://springwise.com/- Helped by a network of 8,000 spotters, Springwise editors scan the globe for smart new business ideas, delivering instant inspiration to entrepreneurial minds. Time to start the next big thing!

19) Inventor Spot
http://inventorspot.com/- InventorSpot.com is a fun and informative website focused on Inventions, Innovations and Interesting Ideas from around the world. They offer serious fun for the inventor in all of us.

20) This is going to be BIG!
http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/- Charlie O’Donnell is a Principal at First Round Capital, working on very early stage investments in the New York City area.  He founded New York’s largest independent innovation community group, nextNY, and was voted one of the 100 Most Influential People in New York Technology the last three consecutive years by Alley Insider. This is his personal blog on BIG ideas!

21) Leveraging Ideas
http://www.leveragingideas.com/ – The mission behind Leveraging Ideas is to provide unique analysis and commentary on early-stage investing, internet startups and entrepreneurship.

Startups 101

Martin Zwilling, Startup Professionals Musings

22) Startup Professionals Musings
http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/ – Martin Zwilling is the CEO and Founder of Startup Professionals, among other ventures.  This is his personal blog where he offers his own musings on launching a startup.

23) Business Pundit
http://businesspundit.com/- Business Pundit is a daily business magazine with forward thinking business ideas. Visit often to stay on top of the game.

24) Chris Dixon’s Blog
http://www.cdixon.org/- Chris Dixon is the co-founder of Hunch and a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, Foursquare, Kickstarter, Stack Overflow, TrialPay, DocVerse , Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that are still in stealth mode. Get his tips here.

25) Noobpreneur Business Blog
http://www.noobpreneur.com/- Noobpreneur is a business blog offering tips and ideas for small business owners and those who want to enter entrepreneurship with the right mindset. Starting out as a personal business blog, Noobpreneur gradually evolved into a multi-authored blog. The number one benefit of having multiple authors is the many perspectives that they bring.

26) Founder’s Blog
http://blog.jitbit.com/- Alex Yumashev is the founder and lead developer at Jitbit Software, a software business. This is his personal blog, where he shares his thoughts on running bootstrapped software startups, entrepreneurship and other “stuff”.

27) Steve Blank
http://steveblank.com/ – Put to a vote, Steve Blank might have been chosen “least likely to succeed” in his New York City high school class.  His path has taken him from repairing fighter planes in Thailand during the Vietnam War, to spook stuff in undisclosed locations, and he was lucky enough to arrive at the beginning of the boom times of Silicon Valley in 1978. After 21 years in 8 high technology companies, he retired in 1999. He now blogs about his experiences and lessons learned.

28) Stealthmode Blog
http://blog.stealthmode.com/- Self-described geek-to-human translator Francine Hardaway is the  co-founder of Stealthmode Partners. She is a serial entrepreneur who counsels and invests in other startup entrepreneurs at Stealthmode. She can tell you how long it really takes to get beyond those early adopters.

29) Learn to Duck
http://learntoduck.com/- Micah Baldwin, the self-proclaimed “coolest dude on earth”, writes about succeeding through failing, including startups, entrepreneurship, social media.

30) Paul Graham: Essays
http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html- Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer, and investor. In 1995, he developed the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2005 he was one of the founders of Y Combinator. He is currently working on a new Lisp dialect called Arc. Browse through his directory of useful articles on all things startup here.

31) Mixergy
http://blog.mixergy.com/- In his 20s, Andrew Warner used credit cards and ingenuity to create a $30+ mil / year (in sales) internet business with his younger brother. He created Mixergy to help ambitious people who love business as much as he does learn from a mix of experienced mentors. He does that by inviting speakers to live events and online interviews.

32) Up and Running
http://upandrunning.bplans.com/- Up and Running contains the largest single online collection of free sample business plans. In addition, it has helpful tools and know-how for managing your business. It includes practical advice on planning, interactive tools and calculators, and a panel of experts who have answered thousands of questions from people like you.

33) Startup Nation
http://www.startupnation.com/blogs – StartupNation is a free service founded by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Rich & Jeff Sloan created this site to be your one-stop shop for entrepreneurial success, and it has grown to be one of the leading online content and community resources for entrepreneurs.

34) Silicon Moon
http://bernardmoon.blogspot.com/- Bernard Moon is Managing Director of the Lunsford Group, a private holding company consisting of entities in real estate, technology, media, research and consulting. This is his personal blog.

35) The Product Guy
http://tpgblog.com/- When you create a new product, there are a lot that of different things that go into it. Here, at the Product Guy, you will read about the challenges, successes, failures, and other learning experiences from which everyone will be able to benefit — and, at least enjoy reading. Topics cover stories of creating and growing start-ups, the challenges of the teams (real and virtual) behind the products, and features about the product design (and launching) process itself; essentially, all the ingredients that go into making a great web product.

36) Startable
http://www.startable.com/- The Startable blog was started by Prasad Thammineni, a serial entrepreneur and founder of OfficeDrop, and Healy Jones, Head of Marketing at OfficeDrop and former venture capitalist, to share their ideas on starting new companies with the world, and hopefully to hear the opinions of smart, experienced people in the startup community.

37) Startup Muse
http://www.startupmuse.com/- Alexander Muse began writing about entrepreneurship and startups back in 2005 amassing a body of more than 2,000 articles and 70,000 monthly readers on the popular Texas Startup Blog. The Startup Muse is a fresh start, a new outlet for his writing.

Niche Startups

Ashish Sinha, pluGGd.in

38) pluGGd.in
http://www.pluggd.in/ – pluGGd.in is an Indian English-language news service founded in 2007 with focus on business, technology and entrepreneurship around Asia. A well-regarded publication in the business and entrepreneurial community, PluGGd.in is a preferred address for Technology startups.

39) Young Upstarts
http://www.youngupstarts.com/ – At Young Upstarts they like to write about things that change the world in little ways. That’s why they focus on small business stories, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, social causes as well as new ideas that help make the world a better place. They especially love to highlight young people and their small businesses, and celebrate their vision and role in changing the world with their ideas, products and services.

40) Arctic Startup
http://www.arcticstartup.com/ – ArcticStartup, founded in 2007, is the biggest technology website reviewing and reporting on technology startups and growth entrepreneurship from the Nordic and Baltic countries. They aim to encourage entrepreneurship and to help create a radically optimistic entrepreneurial culture in the Nordics and Baltics by writing about the startups, the stories behind them and the events that influence them.

41) The Next Women
http://thenextwomen.com/ – TheNextWomen.com is the first award-winning online Women’s Business Magazine and Networking Forum, with a focus on startups and growing businesses, led, founded or invested in by women. It brings news on business, events, funding and tech from a female angle and interviews and profiles Female Internet Heroes, making them notable and quotable.

42) The Mogul Mom
http://www.themogulmom.com/ – If you’re a mom entrepreneur, you’ve come to the right place. The Mogul Mom is where you’ll learn how to run a home business, raise a family and rock both.

43) ArabCrunch
http://arabcrunch.com/ – Since 2008, ArabCrunch Group is the only entity  from the private sector  in the world that is dedicated full time to empower entrepreneurs, startup, tech professional and geeks in the Arab and emerging world via its network of sites and events.

Online Startups

Tyler Cruz, TylerCruz.com

44) TylerCruz.com
http://www.tylercruz.com/ - TylerCruz.com chronicles this blogger’s day-to-day operations as a web entrepreneur and someone who makes their living entirely from the Internet. Post topics range from blogging tips, affiliate marketing, inspirational and motivational posts, contests and competitions, guest posts, in-depth articles, reviews, and the occasional personal post.

45) Killer Startups
http://www.killerstartups.com/ - KillerStartups.com is a user driven internet startups community. Entrepreneurs, investors, and bloggers are staying informed on up-and-coming internet startups using their blog platform, where internet entrepreneurs submit their startup to see what others think about it.

46) Startup Meme
http://startupmeme.com/ – Startup Meme is dedicated to covering Facebook and the world of Social Startups. The blog was started by Mohkim Khan in 2007.

47) Blogtrepreneur
http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/ – In February 2006, Blogtrepreneur.com was born as a way for a young entrepreneurial UK student named Adnan to share his ongoing exploration in blogging and business. Since then, the site has grown in readership and popularity thanks to Adnan’s passion for online entrepreneurship, and his dedication to building Blogtrepreneur.com into a powerful resource for other businesses, online and off. It was since acquired by Adam and Matthew Toren.

48) OnStartups
http://onstartups.com/ – Hopefully, like Dharmesh Shah, you’re interested in startups – more specifically, software startups. During his own process of starting up, Dharmesh figured out that there are others out there that are also fascinated with startups and what it takes to make them succeed.  So, he started this blog, a site for and about software startups.

Live The Dream

Tim Ferriss, The Blog of Tim Ferriss

49) The Blog of Tim Ferriss
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog – This blog offers experiments in lifestyle design from Timothy Ferriss, nominated as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People of 2007” and Forbes Magazine’s “Names You Need to Know in 2011.” He is an angel investor (StumbleUpon, Facebook, Digg, Twitter, etc.) and author of the new #1 New York Times bestseller, The 4-Hour Body. He presents entrepreneurship as a tool for ideal lifestyle design and world change.

50) Escape From Cubicle Nation
http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com/ – Pamela Slim is a seasoned coach and writer who helps frustrated employees in corporate jobs break out and start their own business. Her blog, Escape from Cubicle Nation, is one of the top career and marketing blogs on the web.

Grab the Badge

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?