Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

lostinrates

Oh dear. DH called..and he's been on his normal scout around the food halls for new year bargains. He's very excited because he's got some of their best stilton for about £2 a kilo from F&M. But he got 5 kilos of the stuff.....what the dickens do I do with it? Besides freeze most of it!

Nikkster

lostinrates wrote: »

I want one.

I very randomly saw this earlier - stuck in my mind as had never heard of a bat box before! (point proven tomterm!):
http://www.lakeland.co.uk/bat-box/F/C/lakeland-sale-food-gifts/product/42657/pgs/68

PasturesNew

tomterm8 wrote: »

I've been doing some thinking around the entire google thing... I am too dependent on google, and I know it. In the long term, that is a risk proposition. I am considering rolling out ye olde traffic techniques from before the google revolution.

That's been my eternal quest, spending an entire lifetime trying to diversity.... and not succeeding. Having one successful site isn't enough as it can be ripped away (today is looking like half last Thursday's income). That's why I am now on a quest to "make !!!!!!". And I am rapidly coming to the decision that my life lies in making stuff. I believe if I can make something, then use the internet skills to promote it, I stand a better chance than people who make better stuff but don't know how to promote it

tomterm8 wrote: »

And the practical reality is that I am increasingly coming across things I want to sell, which I know people are not searching for.

For example: bat shelters. How many people actually search on how to buy a bat shelter? Next to none. So how do you sell it? If you rely on google, you will not make any sales. But I believe there are a lot of people who have never thought of a bat shelter, but who would buy one if they knew about it.

Nobody searches for a bat shelter, if you make bat shelters then you produce links/graphics and you place your adverts directly onto relevant sites, or use Adwords in the content network... and you physically go out and sell .... and you write a newsletter ... and all that !!!!!!. Promote it through dragging people in. Also, good PR, create some survey and publish it.... get the coverage.

People who are likely to buy bat shelters will be on sites where people go to learn how to knit organic yoghurt.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

I want one.

Simply sign up for a short course in learning to knit yoghurt - and receive a 10% off voucher for a bat shelter, absolutely free! And don't forget to sign up to The Batty Newsletter, where you can read all about bat conservation in your area and get involved!

PasturesNew

Top tip for tom, you're searching for the wrong words... people search for bat box. 27k global, 3k local per month search for that. Costs an advertiser 33p/click.

Although I bet most searches are done locally, so: Bat boxes in Basildon

silvercar

Top tip for lir, you don't want a bat shelter. Once you have bats you will be involved in endless arguements with planning about not doing any building work that could impinge on the endangered bats.

lostinrates

silvercar wrote: »

Top tip for lir, you don't want a bat shelter. Once you have bats you will be involved in endless arguements with planning about not doing any building work that could impinge on the endangered bats.

I know my parents have bats. We have them in the barn but not the house....thank god! (My guess is that's why the loft hatches were removed, to let light up there)

I love bats!

PasturesNew

OK, here's how you solve the bat box shifting problem.
1] Set up your bat box company
2] Set up a separate bat charity.
3] Bat charity says "we all need boxes" and points out that the Bat Box Co will give 10% of profits to the bat charity for every box sold.

Job done. Now you're promoting a bat charity. Bit more wholesome than shifting bits of wood.

tomterm8

PasturesNew wrote: »

Top tip for tom, you're searching for the wrong words... people search for bat box. 27k global, 3k local per month search for that. Costs an advertiser 33p/click.

Although I bet most searches are done locally, so: Bat boxes in Basildon

Yeah... they do search for bat box, and there are advertisers for it, but bat box is actually a rather popular linux distribution, and a ultrasonic way of detecting bats at night.

PasturesNew wrote: »

OK, here's how you solve the bat box shifting problem.
1] Set up your bat box company
2] Set up a separate bat charity.
3] Bat charity says "we all need boxes" and points out that the Bat Box Co will give 10% of profits to the bat charity for every box sold.

Job done. Now you're promoting a bat charity. Bit more wholesome than shifting bits of wood.

Yes, that is an very good idea.

mostlycheerful

PasturesNew wrote: »

That's been my eternal quest, spending an entire lifetime trying to diversity.... and not succeeding. Having one successful site isn't enough as it can be ripped away (today is looking like half last Thursday's income). That's why I am now on a quest to "make !!!!!!". And I am rapidly coming to the decision that my life lies in making stuff. I believe if I can make something, then use the internet skills to promote it, I stand a better chance than people who make better stuff but don't know how to promote it


Nobody searches for a bat shelter, if you make bat shelters then you produce links/graphics and you place your adverts directly onto relevant sites, or use Adwords in the content network... and you physically go out and sell .... and you write a newsletter ... and all that !!!!!!. Promote it through dragging people in. Also, good PR, create some survey and publish it.... get the coverage.

People who are likely to buy bat shelters will be on sites where people go to learn how to knit organic yoghurt.

Hi Pastures, some suggestions, maybe useful, maybe not, probably worth at least a quick skim if nothing else, maybe you’ve already considered all this already or have tried it previously but in case not here it is :

Regarding you current business and orientation you could perhaps be doing affiliate marketing using some or all of your current websites and or some other new platforms. With a few hundred pages of material about various products and services fronting for the affiliate buttons that lead to the sites who do the sales you could be doing very well. Commission Junction is a good place to start and there’s a couple of other big players worth looking at. All the big companies do affiliate marketing and some of the top sites including the click through buttons make a lot of money for relatively little effort.

The other things that many successful business people do are delegate work and get it done out of house. In your business if you got some work experience trainees, sometimes called by the American name interns, then you can get most or all of your work done for you. You teach them for 3 or 6 months then those that make the grade are given a job, subject to the business doing well enough to pay wages. If not then they’ve learnt lots in a real practical environment and have got something good to add to their cvs. You can also give them a bit of commission as they go along, and especially if they pull off a big job or do some particularly useful and helpful stuff.

Trainees come in all shapes and sizes so scrutinise cvs and interview them thoroughly and be choosy and pick the bright, keen, hard working ones and root out the useless numpties at an early stage. You’ve previously done supervisory management jobs before and you said you ended up watching a couple of screens and telling 50 people to get on with it and got paid the stupendous astronomical amount of £56 an hour so you know you can do this. Yes, it has downsides and compromises but so do most things in life. Once you develop this sufficiently you can pretty much retire and leave it in the capable hands of your management team to get on with it, well, that’s the ideal position, but, yes, often quite hard to achieve. But it can be done if you set out to do this.

As well as delegation, getting work done out of house can sometimes be quite powerful. For instance, fulfilment is an often successful way of doing retail and wholesale. There are a number of order fulfilment companies available and when you have all or most of your work being done out of house you can concentrate on the important issues of procurement and bringing in new lines. Dropping shipping and vending are two areas I’ve looked into a bit and, as with any system and market, once you’ve elbowed your way in there and grabbed yourself a piece of the market it mostly does itself, well, as long as you manage it and tweak it from time to time and deal with the issues arising. So it’s still lots of work, but sometimes by doing this you can utilise lots of other people’s work as well as your own.

I’ve read what you’ve said about your current living conditions and lack of space so initially this can all be done over the net and phone. However at some point you might consider renting or buying premises. But that’s not particularly necessary at the start.

If you’re interested in researching this further then I suggest you have a browse of this page :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Distribution,_retailing,_and_wholesaling

and I think you might find some interesting ideas and concepts that you could probably use and implement.

Hope this is of interest or use, or if it’s all old hat and you know all about all this already, sure, ok, all the best, mc