If you want to be an entrepreneur, who better to study than Michael Dell? He is an inspiration to entrepreneurs around the world. Starting out in his college dorm room building computers, his business savvy has made him an icon of success in the tech business field.

In two keynote addresses delivered nearly a decade ago, Michael Dell defined three principles, or concepts, for successful Internet businesses. Much of what he suggested is now standard practice, and in some cases has gone beyond what he probably imagined.

These principles are sometimes called the 3 Cs. They are content, commerce, and community. Careful study of these three principles can help entrepreneurs, home-based businesses, and network marketers.

The first of the 3 C’s is content.

How did Michael Dell define content? Listen to the words he uses to define it for the Detroit Economic Club on November 1, 1999: “The first stage of content means delivering compelling information. That’s how we started our online operations in 1993, when we put our technical databases online.” to access customers. It was a relatively simple start, but it showed us tremendous interest from our customers.”

In the keynote speech at the Southwest Government Technology Conference in 2000, he made suggestions similar to those he made earlier at that Detroit meeting.

He suggested this: “By content, we mean putting information online. Anytime you have a form, manual, or document, put it online. This is the foundation of any Internet strategy. Once we put information online, it became clear to us where the opportunities were in the world of transactions: simple things like order status and trading, and we’ve added more complex things over time.The key, again, is that it’s experiential and you learn making”.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, what is the content you already have, what content do you need to develop?

Do you look at your present or future business from the perspective of content? Define your content. Learn from those who have created that type of content. Do what they did to create it.

You need products or services to provide to customers. List the content they will need to explain, troubleshoot, access, or learn about your products and services. A viable startup needs content tied to real-world products or services.

The second of the 3 C’s is trade.

Read how Mr. Dell in Detroit defined it: “The next stage is commerce, which should be seen as all transactions, not just buying things over the web. In fact, our first activity in this area had nothing to do with purchases. It was simply the status of the order.”

A few months later, at the conference in the Southwest, he reiterated: “The second stage is trading. You should think of this as any kind of transaction. Our first experiment with transactions really had nothing to do with the ‘trading’ tool. status. We knew we were right when, in the first week, 5,000 customers used this tool, and we didn’t even advertise that it was available. This formed the foundation of our online sales effort.”

He continued: “Our ultimate goal is to deepen customer relationships by providing greater convenience, efficiency and cost savings, and a broader range of services. The Internet creates an opportunity to move these key transactions online and reduce transaction cost to almost zero. “

Does your trading process resonate with Michael Dell’s suggestion? Think about the last date. “The ultimate goal is to deepen relationships.” Business aspects can reduce costs and increase efficiency, but with a purpose. The ultimate goal is C#3, which is community.

How important is community, the third C?

According to Mr. Dell, “The final stage is to develop an online community. We are building two-way relationships over the web with our customers and suppliers.” – Detroit Economic Club.

He went on to express the goal of “establishing communities of vendors and end users who share common interests.”

At the subsequent conference in the Southwest, he concluded by noting: “In short, the Internet is changing the face of the entire economic and social fabric of not only this country but the entire world, and governments have a great opportunity to embrace it. We are seeing a transition from physical government to online government. The benefits will include things like speed, efficiency and a better customer experience.”

The Internet has matured since Michael Dell first spoke about the 3 C’s, but as a model they still make sense. If anything, community has become even more important. They are not a shopping list to choose one to keep and one to leave.

Today, the community is so important that it has ushered in a renaissance of web marketing, often called Web 2.0. It depends on social marketing, blogs, myspace and other elements to build that community. Both content and commerce serve the last C of community. It is in the community that loyalties, relationships and trust are built.

Where there is community there are regular customers. Building a community is a vital skill to have if you want to be an entrepreneur.