After starting a website several years ago that featured interviews with Christian young people, I found out I needed to learn how to connect and make acquaintances with people online, quickly, easily, and effectively. Being a pretty outgoing person, I’ve never really had a fear of chatting with and meeting new people face to face. But after running the site for several weeks I found out that “meeting” people online is a bit different then meeting people face to face.

One of the big differences is in your presentation. When connecting with someone in real life, most of the time you try to establish common ground with the person first. Whether it be sports, politics, beliefs, etc.  This works online, in certain situations. When I contact people to interview them, I don’t necessarily find something I have in common with the person. I usually cut straight to the point and tell the person about myself and the reason why I’m contacting them. Now if your looking to make a friendship with the perspective person, then I would suggest finding common ground. But if you need to interview a new person every week, then you may not have time to do this.

Another thing I’ve learned is if you contact the person via social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, your likely to get a quicker response. I personally usually find it strange to be contacted by someone by email before I hear from them via social networks.  I believe the reason for this is because social networks are for just that, networking. Now there are exceptions to this “rule”. If the person you would like to contact hardly ever checks their social network profiles, then your probably better off with contacting them via email.

How about you? Do you have any tips for connecting and making contacts online? Let us know in the comment section below.

Well I’ve been hard at work saving up for my new desktop computer. I’m looking to save up about $700 and I’m almost at $200 after about 3 weeks of saving and selling a ton of stuff on ebay. I’ll probably end up selling a lot of my book collection to help pay for the computer. If I can sell 10 books a month and make about $50 profit, then add in my dog walking pay, and any video jobs I get and I’ll probably have my new computer in about 2 months. Then I’m going to save up and buy 2x 22 inch monitors. At some point down the road I’d like to update my mouse and keyboard and get a nice wireless set, but thats all extra.

Speaking of video jobs, I’m hopefully going to be working with The Batavian and producing some video ads for them. It’ll look nice on my portfolio and will be a nice source of income.

I’ve also been working on promoting and setting up a facebook profile picture competition with my friends. You can see the video ad I made for it below.

I used to update my blog more often, but lately I can’t seem to find the time. Anyways…

Earlier this month I started my newest project the Young Entrepreneur Podcast. After interviewing Mandee Widrick, we discussed the idea of her becoming my cohost. By the next episode she WAS my cohost. We’ve done several episode since then, the newest of which will be posted this coming Monday.

A couple days ago I was contacted by a man who helps run the LEAH convention in Rochester. Their interested in having me produce some video’s for them. I plan on giving them a call tomorrow to work out some of the details. I hope it works out, since it would be a great experience and tons of fun.

I ordered a two feet by 5 feet banner for Just Passing Thru Productions earlier this week. It’ll hopefully arrive tomorrow morning. I’ll post pictures when it arrives.

Thats it for now! God Bless!