Spotting Business Opportunites

One of the many reasons why people are unsuccessful  and it is something that I have harped on about before, is that people become blinkered to their idea and sooner or later it will fall and they will have to find something else. We live in a world where everything changes and develops at such a speed. Sometimes new things have been developed before the old idea has even been realised.

This is something which we have to consider as businessmen too. I say businessmen in the fact that, no matter how big or small you are working on, you are showing and developing skills and mentalities of a business-lie manner and this is something which you have to be aware of. You may only be selling some kit-kats on the school playground but there are still a set of basic principals that you have to follow.

And this is one of them. You have to constantly self-assess yourself, your sales techniques, your products, and the wider market around you. For example, going back to the kit-kat example: It isn't going to be long before the kid over there gets the same idea and starts doing the same stuff as you. and then you have competition. And then you have to think about where you are going to head.

You have to decide whether you think you can move the idea you have onwards and upwards so you become a "market leader" of the playground, or whether you think there is money to be made elsewhere. Now persisting with 1 idea is hard work and not always 100% effective. Sometimes you just don't play your cards exactly right and everything goes down the pan.

My advice is when you get yourself into this position, you need to start thinking about something else. Always have 1 more idea in your mind, so you know there is always something to move to and somewhere to develop. This is a critical part of business. And this is where your 2 categories come in.

Let's take Peter Coates, my local butchers. They are currently in the 4th generation of the family business, about to hand down to the 5th. That is through the persistence and reputation in their area of expertise. The quality of their meat is very good, and the reliability of the sources that they get their meat from are also tremendous. Not only that, but everybody is aware they butchery their meat on their own on-site abattoir and this adds to their established reputation.

However, let's take Alan Sugar on the other hand. Started his life right when the world of audio technology was growing and booming, selling hi-fi equipment. He had that cavalier philosophy of ditching an idea and moving on as soon as he got any competition or opposition. and it was that that lead his busniess to grow, develop and become what it is today.

The difference between the two is the difference between persisting with one idea or moving between ideas and growing upwards all the time. The thing is that hi-fi equipment is not something which is highly skilled to make, it's not a craft like carpentry or stonemasonery, which is where butchery sits. So people are less worries about established reputation and more worried about price and value for money.

You can only make this decision, but my advice to anyone who is selling some bits and pieces small time, would be when it gets tougher, move on. I am not saying move from selling sweets to your mates to selling selling seed treatments to farmers, but just take the other fork at a crossing point.

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Making Some Cash on The Internet

So for a lot of us, we feel the internet is the place to make money. Depending on your skills and interests, there are lots of places to make money. From YouTube, to Blogging, to buying and selling, there is so much you can do on the internet and so many outlets to sell your services and products.

There are 2 main categories which you can make money on the internet. The first is doing something for someone else and the other is selling something to somebody else.

The first, can involve many different things. Some examples inlude famous YouTubers such as The Yogscast, SeaNanners and the like who make videos and post them on YouTube and monetise them by allowing YouTube to place adverts on your videos and give you a cut ofthe profits. You can also do this on google blogs and any other form of posting articles or blog posts such as squidoo and others simular, where you add a google adwords section whih displays results from a google search in a box and then google pay you per click.

You can also offer you services as a freelance writer. Websites such as eLance and others allow you to offer yourself to write and people bid on a certain job. Your profile is stored up and people can view it, thus able to evaluate whether they want to work with you very easily This is a great platform and I have built myself up a little work pile which mainly involves copywriting and proof reading. The easiest and most boring jobs are the ones which you should start with and then progress from there.

The second category involves a little bit more thought and possibly a little bit of an outlay finance. Selling stuff to people on the internet is so easy in the growing global world of online shopping. However people's successes are built on their own good service. If you sell well and reasonably, then people will come back. If you mess people about you loose a lot of customers very quickly.

There are many ways you can sell stuff. eBay, Amazon and the likes are the best, with being able to set yourself up your own web store being even more easy than ever before, the word is your oyster, literally. You can sell virtual products: anything from web templates and websites; to music samples and loops, as well as digital imagery, fonts and graphics. BE very very careful with anything you do in this field that it is enirely your own work. However I may do a future post on this.

The final thing is your traditional wheeling an dealing. The way the likes of Peter Jones and Alan Sugar made their money. And with the internet now it is so much easier to set up an online sports shop for example from your own bedroom. Once again customer satisfaction is key and there is a lot of psychological theories which cover this. These are for another blog post though.

I hope this has filled you with inspiration to start making money on the web and I hope you prosper fully. Make sure you follow me on twitter @peachy146

The Classic Schoolboy Salesman

So I am going to talk you through my best money making scheme at school and tell you what I learned in doing so. Learn from my experience. I got quite into it. I even had an internet payong system set up at 1 point!

So I noticed all the deals going on in the local paper shop and convenience store right by my bus stop. I thought: 'If these companies can sell stuff off so low, there must be a reason why they sell them normally so high.' So I went away and did the maths. It didn't take long. If you can sell 4 mars bars for £1 but sell them singularly for 63p, then something has gone astray. I worked out I could sell a mars bar for 50p, undercutting the shops and making a 100% cut for myself!

So there it started. I bought some and asked guys at school if they wanted to buy. They got snapped up quicker than I could manage and by the end of the week I could buy 4 or 5 packs and sell them all. With a £1 profit per pack this was pretty alright. But of course, little shops sell out fairly quickly. So I had to use a bit of imagination. I realised I couldn't keep the same brands on all the time. I would have to be resourceful.

So I had to look around. Maybe the haribo were on a buy one get one free, or maybe the cans of pop. This is where you should look. Anything that you might be able yo split up and sell. Let me tell you if your mates csn walk into the same shop and buy something for a cheaper price you have lost your sales. You need to hndercut the shops. And the only way to do that is to buy on offer and sell off the offer. Simple.

So I continued buying stock every day. Maybe £4-5 every morning! This was a real slog to get it all into my school bag. I also had to face the disapproval of mum and dad. So everything was bought and sold on the same day. Simple. Nothing went over the threshold of my own house.

It was tricky to do. It taught me a few great lessons. Number one. Being resourceful and creative. Number 2. Judging exactly right. You get to know what your customers want after a while. One of my friends could do kit kats for 40p. There was no way I could do that. So I didn't bother with them. And I knew that if I bought in some pepsi, one of my friends may snatch 4 or 5 cans,  so I could afford to get 2 6 pscks and would be able to sell almost all of them in a day. It was a great lesson to me, about what people wanted and didn't want. And about how people think about money and savings. If someone can buy 1 can for say 63p and 4 for £2, every mug will go for the 4 can option. Even though they may drink 4 in the same day as they would just 1, and therefore they have spent more money, they feel like they have got better value.

And that is how a large majority of people think. They buy in bulk because it is better value and not cheaper overall. The 63p can would have meant people spend £1.37 a day than if they bought 4. Just be aware of how people think about what they are spending and propagate your money tree.

Be Imaginative and Grown Up

One of the hardest things to do as a teenager is to get a job. Trust me. I have been there and done that. Living in a village I was at a disadvantage already with not many jobs going and a lot of people wanting them. The main thing these days is the issue of the law. Anyway, I won't bore you with it, that is for another post, but shopkeepers and employers can't be bothered with the hassle. if you want a paper round before you have finished compulsory education you have to get a working permit, which requires all sorts of stuff from a shopkeeper. Blah blah blah. However there are still lots of jobs which people will employ people from the age of 13 to do little things for them.

For example you may find a gardener who needs a hand on a Saturday or the milkman or whatever. What I am trying to say is don't be closed minded about what you are going to do. It doesn't pay. Trust me.

The other point I wanted to mention was that you need to persevere with your job. For example helping out with pot washer at you local pub could eventually lead to you being a waiter or waitress or even a bar steward. There is a natural progression with every job which moves through the ranks as you become older and more experienced and more trusted by your employer. Let me explain to you my path through my teenager career if you like:

I started as a Sunday Paperboy, earning just £4 a week. After 2 months I had been moved onto a Monday to Saturday round which was £16. I was progressing slowly and surely. After about 6 months of doing that I was asked to help out on a Saturday morning putting the papers up for the paperboys. This was 2 hours work at £3.50 an hour. Rubbish, I know, but from there I got to know how the shop worked. How to work the tills, how to put out the papers etc etc. I kept asking the boss, not so I annoyed him but so I was persistent and keen, if there was a job going in the shop.

Until one day, at the glamorous age of 17, he offered me a job part-time working behind the counter. So there was £23 from my paper round and early Saturday morning, plus 8 hours a week at £5 and I was making £63 a week from my part time job. Not bad eh?

That was just with a little bit of persistence and good hard work that got me to a stage where I could earn enough money to fund a car and a girlfriend. What I am trying to say is approach any job, no matter how boring it may be to start off with, in a mature and proffesional and also positive manner. Don't be the lad that does 3 Sunday rounds and then doesn't bother turning up again. Follow that path.

Don't Spend It, Save It!

One of the most effective ways of making money is believe it or not, saving it. Just think about the amount of cash you may spend on grub from the tuck shop or the newest COD, and think about how much that all adds up to. Try putting the £2 a day you might spend in the shop on your way to school in a pot and see how quickly this adds up. Also think about all the unnecessary purchases. Music, games, stuff like that. You don't have to pay such a price for some things as well.

I am not saying you should just give up all your little luxuries that you buy with the money from delivering the local newspaper, but just think about what you are spending and try saving it in a jar or pot to see how much you really do spend. Trust me, the results are outstanding. You may be able to save up in 2 or 3 months to buy yourself a new x box, or an iPod, or a new Bike.

If you just have a little bit of sensibilty when thinking about each time you spend money, then you can save a packet! Also, cutting down on those sweets will make you a little bit healthier too, which could also be a little benifit! 

Remember, SAVE IT, DON'T SPEND IT!

Link shortening sites: Potential as a money making scheme?

Everybody on the internet is making money from just about anything that you can do on the internet. One of the popular ways which seems to be very popular is link shortening sites such as adf.ly and other similar sites.


There are many different variations on this subject. Adf.ly is currently the most popular and essentially, you register your link, and then get people to click on it and they show the viewer 5 seconds of adverts and then they can redirect to your actual link. The pay is around $5 for 1000 clicks, which to be honest with you is really not very good. If you think about it, you have to be pretty popular to get 1000 views to something. Obviously if you are linking to an internet app or an indie game or something which you have made yourself, and are giving it away for free, then you are making money off the people downloading your app. This I think is a really good way of creating a win win situation for the creator and the consumer, as the creator gets paid for his work, while to consumer doesn't have to fork out money. The trouble is, the amount of recognition the creator gets for his work is peanuts, and doesn't really make it worth it. You have to feel sorry for the creator.


Another way which I have found is a website called DollarUpload.com, which is really quite good, as it pays you between $0.70 and $0.90 per download, which would be a better way to get paid for your downloads. This amount is just under the cost of a song or an app on the iTunes store for example, which getting paid that for your work is very good. Trouble is with this, is getting the views and hits to make the money worthwhile. You can spend days making an internet app or a song or a video or something similar, but if only 1 or 2 people download it you are only getting $1.50 or so for it, which is not a very good hourly rate. However this could be said for any venture of this nature, if you are creating it to generate money, which kind of evens it out.


The question is: Is it all that?


My answer is unless you have a significant amount of views per day, then no. Say you get about  100 downloads a week on a specific app or song or whatever, that is about $70 on DollorUpload, which does become a little worth it, but how are you going to get 100  downloads a week consistently. Lets face it, if you put something like that on the internet, interest in it will die off after a very short space of time, which means you will loose out very quickly. The whole issue with link sharing websites which offer you bags of gold in return for 1 little link is it isn't the money making scheme it is cracked up to be. By no means am I saying it isn't a good way of getting money, but it only is if you get large amounts of hits, which let's face it, this takes a lot of work and really good idea, which unfortunately every one of the 4 billion people who use the internet every day can't come up with a good idea and get it to make money, because it stops being a good idea unless it stands out from the crowd.


If you do choose to use these services, don't expect goldmines to come rushing through your front door the instant that you create the account. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot or perseverance to see any kind of results.

Make a bomb on Web Businesses

Making money is all about making the most of your skills. One way I did this was by making websites. If you know how to code websites from scratch using html and php, or even just have a basic understanding of Dreamweaver, or a similar website package, and an idea which could prove successful, then you could be in with the chance of making money yourself. This may seem a daunting task, but it is the perfect way to create some extra revenue and there are many people out there who would be willing to buy it off you.

All you need is to be able to use a basic program, and a good solid business idea. Easy, right? Although it sounds it, I should warn you of some major pitfalls of this adventure. While it requires outgoing cost to start off with, it is a risky business and needs a good head and a good eye. You need to be able to time your site right as to when to sell it, and know what sites sell well.

When I say it needs no outgoing costs, I am lying a little bit. The user will want to buy the website complete with a domain name and in most cases a web hosting package. This means you need to make sure your domain name for your chosen website is available and ready to go before you put in a whole load of hard work and realise that somebody has already created a business which you are trying to sell to somebody.

People also like to see, if you are going to sell at the higher end of the market, a set of domain names which relate to the name of the site in your possession which they can save so nobody can copy their site. If you don’t understand then an example is Google. They own thousands of other web domains so that nobody can get even close to them. They even own the web domain googlesucks.com!

Next on the list in the internet business purpose. If you try and sell somebody an online store selling cakes and cookies, it will never sell, as somebody would have to make to goods to sell. What I am trying to show you is that the best subject matter for an online business which you are going to sell is always something which is virtual, like a service or a blog, or even something like a program store or a domain store.

The reason why making websites to sell on to other people is such a good money maker is because they sell for lots of money, and this is because people buy the whole package, as I have said before. Now I will explain this in a bit more detail. As you would when you buy a business in real life, an internet business has it’s own corporate identity and it’s own logos and marketing service as well, which would have to be produced to sell with the website.

The other really important thing that surrounds a business is popularity and on the world wide web this is measures in page hits. I would strongly advise, spend a couple of months developing your website and getting it to function as a business before you even attempt to sell it because the thing which will make it sell is an already established customer base, because this means an already established source of income. Everybody knows the hardest thing in the business process is setting it up and people are lazy. The more established it is, the more it will sell for, and the more worth it is for the hard work you have put into it. It is like investing: you have to wait for results. My motto in business, which I have learnt, often the hard way, is that patience is a virtue. And that really is all there is to it.

I have also written an article about making website templates to sell, which is less complicated, but a smaller return than selling web businesses, so please check that out if you like the idea of creating an income from your skills in web design. Thank you for reading and I hope this has been of help. For any further questions please contact me at peachy146@gmail.com.