Hottest Business Opportunities Part 2

RSS  Print  

Business Opportunities In Voice Mail
Business Opportunities In Newsletters On CD
Business Opportunities In Giveaways
Utility Auditing
Business Opportunities In Producing 'How To' Videos
Readers' Comments

6) Making Money Business Opportunities With Voice Mail

Although this money-making is continuously being marketed as "a way to make money with your answering machine", new technology has actually rendered this idea obsolete.

With the proliferation of voice mail, fax-back service, and very inexpensive computerized voice processing systems, the answering machine, with its limited one-call-at-a-time capacity, is no longer ideal for making money. With the advent of these new technologies, the concept has also expanded to a variety of processes which you can use to make money.

Rollover Image To See Recording Of Voice Mail

People Must Call

With answering machines, the only way you can make money is when people call you. Since an answering machine is hooked up to a specific phone number, and since it does not advertise on its own, you will have to establish ways to attract people to call your phone number so that people can listen to the message recorded on your answering machine.

The Message Is The Key

The message recorded on your answering machine is the key to your ability to make money. The message can instruct people to send money for information about any subject matter, or instruct callers to leave their name and address so you can send them a sales brochure. The information you have recorded on your machine should be encouraging and convincing enough to motivate the caller to do what you have instructed.

The One-Minute SPIEL

Think of your recording as a radio commercial. Since callers have short attention spans, and are used to hearing radio and TV spots that are not more than 1 minute long it is advisable that you limit the length of your message to about 1 minute, 2 minutes tops!

Getting The Call And Collecting The Payment

Whatever it is you are selling, and by which you are using your answering, your primary challenge will be in two areas: (1) How you can advertise and make your telephone number known to a lot of people, and (2) How you are going to collect payment for whatever it is you are selling. One of the most popular topics sold on "answering machine schemes" is information about how people can make money with their answering machine. This is worn out and very unimaginative. More than likely, your caller will feel insulted and not order whatever literature, report or booklet you want them to order. Remember, if you want to have a recorded sales message over the telephone, use a voice mail service, which may cost you around $8 a month.

7) Business Opportunities In Producing Newsletters On CD

Minimum Start-Up: $2,500
Average Start-Up: 10,000
One Person Business: Yes

Brandel Communications is currently developing a newsletter that will be released on Compact Discs, mailed to you once every two months. The subscription rate is $195 a year. (Our production cost: around $3 per CD. With 6 CDs a year, our total cost is $18 per subscriber.) Instead of print or video, we have decided to tap the CD market, the fastest growing communications media.

Rollover Image To See Conversion To Computer Language

Opportunity Seekers

To offer a subscription to this (still unnamed) newsletter, we are running full page ads in opportunities magazines, as well as implement a direct mail campaign.

Our initial marketing thrust will be directed at individuals seeking to start their own business, or a second source of revenue. The BizOpp market is at a strategic crossroads where new economic
opportunities intersect with our growing disenchantment with conventional employment.

This market thinks! And it is quick at recognizing new opportunities. This is why we decided that the growth of How-To CDs depend on the variety of titles available.

We Can Represent And Sell Your CD Titles

While we are selling subscription to our newsletter, we offer customers the opportunity to purchase other CD titles. We also have a regular New Titles ad which lists new PowerGuides and How-To CDs available. Every time we send out a newsletter and a catalogue, we include your CD on our title list and orders are sent directly to you. We do not take a commission or a percentage of your sales.

Your customer's orders and payments come directly to you. You fulfil the orders and keep the money. We will design and print your ad for you.

Create Your Own Newsletter

We will accept advertising from those of you who plan to produce your own CD newsletter. Producing a newsletter on CD allows you to collect subscriptions in advance, which is extremely helpful in generating cash flow during your start-up stages. Producing a newsletter gives you a continuing link with a market that shares your common interests. Consider also the interest factor for a newsletter in CD form is quite high.

Production Notes

As of this writing, it is still uneconomical to try and produce your own CDs in-house. It is still cheaper to create a master program and then have it produced by a replication service who can produce copies of your CDs in quantities of 1,000 or more, at under $3 a piece.

8) Making Money Business Opportunities With Give-Aways

The guy who thought of giving away free rolls of film every time you have your films developed at his photo center - is a genius! You know the rest of the story, and so do thousands other photo centers around the world who copy this excellent promotion.

Stretching Dollars

A budget conscious market is always out looking for a free lunch. For this reason, you can build a marketing system that self-liquidates its associated cost, distributing gift certificates that offer free this or free that - all the customer has to do is pay a minimal shipping and handling charge.

Free Software

In Las Vegas, I met a poker player who sells software he put together for $29 and higher. To double the volume and reach other markets, he decided to repackage his software. He gave it a new name, made a new floppy disk label, and offered it at a ridiculous price: FREE.

To receive the software, all you have to do is fill out the gift certificate and send it back to him with $8.69.

THEY WENT APE! He was giving the certificates to schools, businesses, and stores who give away the certificates as their own promotional gifts to their customers. Because the cost to
produce and mail this disk is 60 cents, he was making $8 with every certificate that was redeemed for the free software.

$800,000 In 27 Year

Take a snapshot of this picture: Say, a total of 1 Million certificates were circulated. Let's say you paid half a penny to print and distribute these million certificates. Your cost is $5,000. If you generate a 7% conversion, you'll earn $560,000.00.

Numbers Game

If you give other people permission to make copies of and give away your certificates, your cost to circulate 1 Million certificates will go down. But your opportunity to make money remains the same.

1% response = $80,000
2% response = $160,000
3% response = $240,000
5% response = $400,000
10% response = $800,000

9) Utility Auditing Business

Minimum Start-Up: $500
Average Start-Up: 15,000
One Person Business: Yes

Auditing is not a matter of magic. If you have the patience to sort through regulatory tariff and have a keen eye to spot billing inconsistencies, you can conduct an audit.

Utility Bills

Auditing utility bills has become one of the most popular areas of concentration for auditors because of the inherent complexity of billing for utilities. Utility rates are highly confusing because they differ depending on type of service, volume of usage, and promotional packages offered at the time of installation.

Getting Paid

Utility Auditors earn commissions, usually around 50% of any overcharge they uncover. And this is where you may need to exercise more of your patience. Although utility companies would gladly settle a verifiable overcharge (relatively quickly out of court), it may take them up to six months to issue any refund. This is particularly true with larger utility firms.

Commission Works

Most clients prefer to pay auditors on commission basis for two reasons: No upfront cash outlay, and no risk if the auditor comes back empty-handed. For the auditor, working on commission offers distinct advantages: It makes it easier for them to land clients, and it usually enables hem to earn more than if they would take a basic fee.

Making The Sales

The biggest challenge facing auditors is to get a potential client to admit that "there is a high probability that they (the client) overpaid for their utilities without knowing it". This issue is usually not a problem if the client is a small business where the owner makes all the decisions. However, the executive committee of a major corporation may feel threatened that they'll be held accountable for irresponsibly overpaying for utility. Your job is to convince your potential client that overcharging does happen and that it is the job of an outsider auditor, and not people from within the company, to "fix" the problem.

10) Business Opportunities In Producing 'How-To' Videos

A Florida videographer produced a How -To wedding planner tape and sold over $250,000 worth of videos in just 12 months. Think about it: If you sell your video for $25, all you need to do is sell around 80 videos a week, or 325 videos a month to gross $100,000 a year.

A typical "small" production can sell as much as 1,500 videos a month, or 18,000 units a year, at $25 each.

It's the Topic: If there is one single factor that makes or breaks a How to video, its the choice of topic. Another factor to consider is the length of the material. To remain interesting the average how to video must be fast paced and relatively short not exceeding 45 minutes. More successful videos are no more than 30 minutes long as this is a tolerable length by which a video can effectively cover a topic and remain interesting. Duplication cost The length of your video also affects your duplication cost. Following is a rate structure for duplication charges based on set quantities for a factory-load VHS tape:

10 min $1.50 - $1.15
20 min $2.10 - $1.80
30 min $2.50 - $2.00

The shoot. Who's going to do the shooting? If you decide to do it yourself, where will you get the camera? What format are you going to shoot it in?

The average cost of renting a 3/4 inch U-Matic camera, with wireless mics, and standard lighting equipment is around $495 a day. A camera person with an assistant will cost an extra $250.

The Editing. Once you've shot all the footage you need, you edit the work, assembling the footage in an orderly and coherent fashion that will effectively deliver the thought. Depending on how you shot your footage, editing can take 20 to 50 times the estimated finished length of your video. this means a 10 minute video may take 4 to 5 hours to edit, and so on.

Studio time ranges from $40 to as much as $100 an hour, depending on the special effects you want to have available for your editing project. Packaging Full color printed sleeves start at around 40 cents a piece if you order 1,000 or more. You also need face labels on your tapes, as well as shrink wrapping for protection.

Readers' Comments