I’ve personally always felt that the greatest value of a university education wasn’t so much in the careers that would become available to you as a result, but rather the network of friends that you develop, the expansion of your horizons, and the renewed perspective that can be gained with a proper education. There’s nothing wrong with going in trades or earning some other certification, but the enlightening experience at university simply cannot be matched.

They’ve said for a while now that university graduates earn significantly more than their non-university counterparts, but I think that this data could be largely skewed by the mega-earners in the bunch, like those who go on to become high-powered lawyers, doctors, and accountants. This might be the case, but the numbers are certainly convincing.

Granted, this data is from a 2001 Canada census, so it’s not the freshest information, but it gives you some perspective:

* Less than high school graduation certificate $21.230
* High school graduation certificate and/or some postsecondary $25,477
* Trades certificate or diploma $32,743
* College certificate or diploma $32,736
* University certificate, diploma or degree $48,648

Look at that jump! Comparing a college certificate or a trades diploma against a university degree, you find that the average annual earnings of the latter is 150% of the former. Surely, there are folks without university degrees that earn lots of money (John Chow, for example), but they are the exception, rather than the rule.

The take home message — and this is appropriate given that it’s the first week of September — is stay in school!

Well, I shouldn’t say that you’ll be selling nothing, but one of the fastest emerging trends in e-commerce is to sell virtual goods. As you can imagine, selling virtual goods can be quite lucrative because you will never run out of inventory, you don’t need a physical warehouse to store your goods, and the entire sales process can be fully automated with no human intervention whatsoever.

Take Facebook, for example. If you’ve got an account on that social networking site, you’ll notice that there is a daily gift available for sale for $1. All that is involved is a very small image file that you can “send” to one of your friends and it shows up under their list of gifts received. It costs Facebook virtually nothing to create this gift, but if you look around at people’s profiles, you’ll find a few gifts scattered about. Imagine how much they’re making! And then there are third-party Facebook applications that can be easily monetized for more money.

A similar phenomenon happens over at Second Life, but according to ABC News, making money in Second Life is harder than you think. Within the virtual world of Second Life, people can exchange real money for virtual goods like a virtual plot of land, a commodity, or just about anything that you could buy in the real world. In talking with my friend Ed Lau, he told me that he was once offered a plot of virtual land in the Second Life and this was way before the “simulation game” really took off. He respectfully declined. John Chow was made the same offer and he also declined. Imagine how much money they could have made!

It goes to show you, when it comes to selling things online, these products need not physically exist for them to be lucrative. Think outside the box and you could be the next Internet millionaire.

The Internet is a very interesting place. Within it, you’ll find all sorts of different kinds of people, each of whom probably have something valuable that they can offer. For example, to catch up on the latest Hollywood gossip, you may want to turn to Perez Hilton. To learn how to make money online, John Chow is a good bet. Even when it comes to the average blogger, you can gain some insights into some nice places to eat, cool shows to watch, or other useful tidbits that you may not have already known.

At the same time, as I’m sure you’re already aware, there are countless hacks, charlatans, and fakes on the web who aren’t exactly who they claim to be. I’m not just talking about scam artists and websites filled with Trojans. What I’m talking about are self-proclaimed experts, and one arena where this has really started to grow is with bloggers “teaching” us how to make money blogging.

Everyone wants to come off sounding like an expert, but more often than not, these are amateurs with just as much (if not less) knowledge and expertise than you. There are people who will recommend a particular ad network, inundating their posts with referral links, even though they have yet to make a penny using that network. You’ll have people who will tell you how to increase comments, only to have a post with zero comments. They’ll tell you how to increase RSS readership, only to display a Feedburner widget with 3 subscribers.

There’s nothing wrong with providing guidance, support, and advice. Just make sure that the person on the receiving end realizes that this advice isn’t exactly coming from a dot com mogul. Would you agree?

I was reading the National Post this morning and the cover page story was the death of Brooke Astor, a New York socialite and philanthropist. She was 105 years old.

The reason why I bring this up is because in my iGoogle page, I include a widget for three daily quotes. Sometimes these are funny, other times they are informative, and maybe, just maybe, they can be inspiring. One of today’s quotes came from Nancy Astor, a non-blood relative of Brooke Astor (they both married into the famous Astor family). Her quote read:

“The only thing I like about rich people is their money.”

It seemed that the two women shared similar viewpoints. Brooke Astor was known to be quite the philanthropist, being very active in charities in and around New York, like the Lighthouse for the Blind, the Astor Home for emotionally disturbed children, and the Fresh Air Fund. She loved the city and the New York Public Library was one of her favorite charities. As a result of her generosity, Brooke was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Being a part of the Astor family meant that she had a lot of money, but just like Nancy, Brooke didn’t see her riches as means to buy nice things for herself. Money, in and of itself, isn’t of much value and it was through giving that she found pleasure and happiness. In fact, her life motto was:

“Money is like manure, it should be spread around.”

John Chow talks a lot about making money and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a few bucks. Despite referring to himself as the root of all evil, Chow actively contributes to various charities. I think that we can all learn a lot from Nancy and Brooke Astor (and John Chow too).

Last week, I brought up the topic of young entrepreneurs and how Generation Y is “the most entrepreneurial in history.” As an under-30 running his own freelance writing business, you could say that I fall under this trend as well. They say that this generation is driven to learn and to create for themselves, unlike previous generations where most people looked for conventional work under more standard circumstances. Well, in the comments in that post, Christian mentioned a a 70-year old who has embraced technology. I’ve seen this Peter fellow before, but I felt it was rather appropriate to bring him here today.

When you ask most older people about computers, video games, and Internet, they typically try to push it aside, saying that technology is for young people and they can’t be bothered to learn about all this new stuff. After all, computers (and the web) advances at a breakneck pace and by the time you think you’ve got the hang of things, you could very well be outdated. Not all seniors feel this way.

YouTube sensation Geriatric1927 — known as Peter to the real world — was born in 1927 but he has embraced this whole web 2.0 phenomenon. He keeps an active video blog (vlog) on YouTube where he discusses and rants all sorts of things, telling it as it is. What’s more, he also maintains a WordPress blog, though there is no monetization on the site whatsoever. He doesn’t blog for money; he blogs (and vlogs) because he wants to. He’s not entrepreneurial in the traditional sense, but if he chose to make some money online, I’m sure he could.

This goes to show you that no matter how old you get, you can always get “into” technology and keep up with all the young people who you may think have a leg up on you. If the 79-year-old Peter can actively and positively contribute to YouTube and the blogosphere, why can’t you (and your grandpa)?

Inc.com recently compiled a list of who they believe are the top 30 entrepreneurs under the age of 30. They note that “Generation Y” is by “the most entrepreneurial in history” and this is largely thanks to “how new technologies, a proliferation of resources, and a disenchantment with the corporate world.” Personally, I think that it’s the Internet that has opened up these sort of options to younger people, myself included, because without the instant and easy access of the world wide web, I couldn’t have ever started my freelance writing business.

I may not be one of the top 30 most successful entrepreneurs under the age of 30, but here are three guys that have managed to make it for themselves, escaping the confines of working for someone else. It just goes to show you that with a good idea and a healthy level of determination, anyone — young or old — can be super successful running their own business.

Dubbed The Innovator, 20-year-old Ben Kaufman is the founder of Mophie, a company that makes iPod accessories. Doesn’t sound all that innovative, right? So, what is it that makes Ben so successful? It’s because he allows his customers to design their own accessories, ranging from headphone splitters and FM transmitters to remote controls and protective cases. He plans to revolutionize the way consumer products are developed.

Sean Belnick developed the entrepreneurial spirit very early on, selling office chairs online at the young age of 14. He started with just $500 to his name, creating a Yahoo store account to power his direct-shipping company. Today, Sean runs his own $24 million furniture company (BizChair.com), providing furnishings to such huge clients as Microsoft, Google, and the Pentagon.

Sam Altman got in on the social networking and he has never looked back. Altman took the concept behind social networking and brought it into the real world. He developed “Loopt”, a social mapping service that allows friends to quickly and easily answer the most common question sent via cell phone text messages: “Where are you?”

What will be your idea? Will you make next year’s list of top entrepreneurs?