TechLifeMashup | Entrepreneurs, Social Media, and Technology

The primary employee motivator for most businesses these days continues to be money.  The idea is straight forward enough.  If you want people to work harder, then you pay them more money (bonuses, pay increases, etc…) in order to motivate them through some sort of cash incentive.  A recent study done by MIT decided to put this theory to the test to see if various cash incentives actually motivate people to work harder towards a specific end goal.  Below is an awesome clip that summarizes the test done by MIT and the results found, which I think will shock most people.  Take a look for yourself:

The most interesting result to me was that while money worked to motivate people to work harder if the work required little thought, it actually didn’t motivate people at all if the work required any type of critical thinking.  That’s not to say people shouldn’t be compensated for working harder, but rather that companies should consider looking for additional (more effective) ways to motivate employees to get certain tasks done.  The clip above also touches on some ways a few companies out there are already looking to these additional methods to get people more motivated.

For the past several months, I’ve invested a great deal of my time into researching and understanding just how professional bloggers make their money.  Let me start by saying that I consider a professional blogger to be anyone who operates a blog full-time and is able to generate a livable income from that blog.  I’ve often thought wouldn’t it be great if there was a do-it-yourself guide written by a professional blogger, which walked you through step-by-step on how they make a living of their blog?  Well, I’m happy to report that I recently stumbled upon such a guide! More »

Many of us dream of being a professional blogger (myself included), but very few actually get to live the dream. I like many share the hope of one day turning my blog into some form of a success story.  It seems anyone can create a blog and many more can get some people to visit their site, but I’ve quickly come to realize it takes certain key components to build a successful blog community and to keep people coming back for more over the long-run. That’s why I’ve decided to highlight some of those crucial components that have made other blogs a success along with some of my own personal experience. More »

In the back of our minds we all have that part of our brain that feeds our desire to make it big. Whether you have a small blog somewhere on the internet or a fast growing business, everyone at some point dreams of a life with more money. These thoughts seem to be much more frequent these days with all the buzz about booming start-ups and overnight success stories like Facebook or Digg. It still surprises me though how all these internet success stories have come about, and yet we don’t often get any interesting TV shows or specials revolving around internet life. Well, in my quest for some quality tech lifestyle entertainment I happened across a 1 season series of a show that anyone with an interest in the internet and entrepreneurship should definitely check out! More »

Do you have a great idea for a start-up company and lack only some cold hard cash to get it started? Well, you might be in luck because I found one possible solution that I thought was worth noting during my daily browsing for internet goodness. It’s a site called Y Combinator and the idea behind it is quite simple: reward the entrepreneurs with the best ideas the financial backing they need to make their dreams a reality.  Read on to see how your next idea could be the only thing stopping you from making it happen! More »