RORY HANSEN

You’ve probably heard of Vistaprint before; they’ve been one of the largest sites offering custom printing services online for a while now. You’ve probably even heard that they offer free business cards.

But did you know that they also offer free custom printed t-shirts?! This was news to me when I found out just a few days ago.

Read more »

Many of the big names in internet marketing are proponents of setting goals for their affiliate and internet marketing campaigns. And, while I’m also a firm believer in goal-setting, I’ve never actually sat down and thought about my affiliate marketing goals– at least, not in any way which would result in a firm, realistic goal.

But, that’s all changing today. I’ve decided that, after many months of saying I’m going to actually start trying to make money online, that I’m finally going to put forth a somewhat serious effort to do so. And the first step in reaching my goal is to state it in black-and-white, here on this blog, so that I can be held accountable for reaching it.

My goal: By June 30, 2009, my monthly net earnings from all affiliate and search marketing efforts are to exceed the amount of my monthly mortgage payments. (For the sake of security and privacy, my target goal will be simplified to $1500/mo.)

So where am I today with respect to that goal? It’s been a while since I’ve actually tallied up the numbers from the myriad of affiliate and internet marketing programs that I participate in. But here’s a decent estimate:

Current status:

• Time effort per month: ~3 man hours
• Earnings per month: $250 US
• Costs per month: < $10 (web hosting)

So, as you can see, although I only spend about 3 hours per month working on the niche sites I run, I still earn about $250 US per month through a variety of programs. To reach my goal of $1500/month, I’ll obviously have to spend more time developing my sites, but hopefully, I’ll also be spending this time smarter than I have been to this point.

Anyway, I’ve got a number of ideas bouncing around my head that I’ll need to start executing on, so I’ll end this post here. I’ll be posting monthly summaries of my earnings results, so that my visitors can track my progress. I challenge you to set your own affiliate marketing goals, too, on your own blog, and through friendly competition, naybe we’ll meet our goals together.

Now that I’m living on my own, I’m tasked with doing my own grocery shopping each week. While my weekly purchase is fairly small (a few pieces of fruit, some meat, and lots of prepared foods), I find that I rarely get to take advantage of the deals that are available at the supermarkets. So, instead of buying the bulk peanut butter, I buy the mini jar. Or, I buy one or two buns, rather than a dozen. Or I get the pack of 12 rolls of toilet paper rather than the 36-roll pack. In doing so, I don’t get the same cost-per-item deals that most families would take advantage of.

At the same time, I realize that in my apartment building, there are probably many other young, single professionals like myself that are facing the same dilemma. A possible solution: create a website which allows singles living near each other to find each other and share grocery and supply lists.

Don’t need a full bag of sugar or salt or pepper or any other seasoning or spice? Log into the website, find people in your area that are looking for the same ingredients (with hooks into Google Maps for convenience), and see if they’d like to share.

Understandably, we’re often just talking about fractions of dollars here, but to help with that, make the website credit-based. For example, I buy $10 worth of credits and when I need some salt, I pay $0.25 for a few tablespoons worth and that credit is then dropped into the supplier’s (ie. one of my neighbours) account (with the site taking a small margin).

As the site would be completely localized to the various parts of each city, there’s a great opportunity for local grocers to advertise (coupons, ads, etc.) through the site and target residents that live in the surrounding areas.

Thoughts?

Scenario 1: I’m walking down the street and an idea for a new website pops into my head. I even think of a great domain name, but have no idea if it’s already taken. But I’m forgetful and chances are, will have forgotten the whole business idea and associated domain name before I get to a computer.

Scenario 2: I buy domains and sell them for a profit. While in line at Starbucks, I think of a great one, but don’t know if it’s available. In my industry, domains are disappearing quicker and quicker and my window of opportunity may not exist when I get back to the office.

Solution: Create a service which allows people to check the availability of domain names via text messages from their cell phone. If available, also lets them purchase the domain name.

How would it work:
1) User sends a text message to service containing the domain name their interested in.
2) Service responds with “Available” or “Not Available”. If available, service also sends back numeric reference number and message that says “Please reply if you’d like to purchase this domain name now.”
3) If user replies with intention of purchasing the domain name, an automated phone system calls the user back, takes reference number (to avoid re-typing of domain name) and credit card info and processes the purchase.

Target customers:
1) Those that make purchases based on emotion, gut feeling, or instinct.
2) Domain squatters.
3) Brainstorming entrepreneurs hoping for the next YouTube.

What do you think?

Here’s a business idea: Create a website that makes it easy for people to create and study using flashcards.

How could this website be profitable? Everyone can create flashcards for free for their own use. If they like, they can then “share” these flashcards with the public, so that others can benefit from their hardwork. But, as incentive to create quality flashcards and share those cards, others would have to pay to access them.

For example, Sam creates a deck of flashcards for his Biology 101 course. He chooses to share them with the public. Karen, who is in the same course at the same university as Sam wants to study using flashcards but doesn’t know Sam nor have the time to create her own deck. So she pays $2 to use Sam’s deck. The website keeps 50% of all payments and rewards Sam with the other 50%.

Throughout university, I’ve often found using flashcards useful for studying, but buying the flashcards from the store and creating them takes so much time that it becomes difficult to justify expending the energy to do so. If I had the chance to buy pre-made, university course-specific flashcards online, I actually might have!

The key idea is that these flashcards would be specifically catered to courses at various universities by students in those courses. This makes them so much more valuable then generic, pre-made flashcards that you can buy in stores, as they would test the exact types of information that you’d need for your course.

They could also be used for years to come, as courses usually change very little over even a number of years. This creates a passive income stream for the flashcard creators.

The website would be totally Web 2.0 centric, with the ability to “tag” flashcards with topics, relevant courses, etc. AJAX could be used to shuffle through the deck while studying. Separate stylesheets would need to be created so that the flashcards could be viewed online or printed for offline use.

The only difficult part would be the actual creation of the cards. Version 1.0 would probably only support text and HTML markup, but later releases would also have to support images (uploading and placement), formulas for physics and math, and perhaps even doodling using your mouse as a pen tool.

Lemme know if you are interested in making this happen!