A $50,000 to $100,000 A Year biz

Hello....I posted the following on another Forum and because I felt it had such "good stuff" in it, I decided to post it here too;

Here it is...
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Back in '91 when my wife and I moved to our town of 20,000 from Colorado the first thing I did was join the local Chamber of Comm.

At one of the first luncheons someone mentioned the Chamber had received over 1200 "requests for info" the previous year. (The requests are now over 2,500/yr)

This caused my "opportunity" brain to start buzzin.

This was BEFORE CD'S....BEFORE the Internet.... BEFORE DVD's. All we had in those days were 1.4meg floppies BUT....I knew a guy who had developed a super compression program for photos....which would let me place about 40 photos on a floppie.

So...the Chamber had a "package" they sent to these inquiries. It wasn't until fall of '93 when I got an updated puter that I decided to put together my "idea"...which was...."TOWN ON A FLOPPY"!

What I did was...contract with TWO Motels to pay $1200 each (one at North end of town and one South) I took 1 outside and 1 inside photos of the motels PLUS an Info Sheet on each motel.

I bought a DOS program a software guy had created in Houston. His program was set up very similar to how a website is set up now. There was a Cover Page, introducing viewers to what they can find...then click to an Index Page which viewers could click on the various Categories offered.

Each Category (Plumber, Electrician, Lawn Maint, Pest Control, Title Co, Realtor, Mortgage Loan, Painter, Auto Repair, Chiropractor...etc) was a single page in the program and I charged $495 for 1200 copies of the floppies and gave each one an EXCLUSIVE in their Category. If they wanted a Photo of their biz I charged an extra $300 ($795 total)

It was BEYOOTIFUL!

The guy who created the program was also doing a similar program in Houston BUT he was distributing his floppies another way.

The Chamber LOVED including my "Town On A Floppy" in their package.

I signed over 60 people who paid $495 to $795 (over half wanted a Photo)

I wound up producing about 4,000 floppies because I got the brainstorm of...."Having a Realtor Hand these out to people who are looking for homes". 500 to each realtor (who would be the exclusive realtor on the disk) (I charged the realtor $2 a disk)

Nowadays you could do the same thing on a CD, DVD or a Video.

What advertisers like is a PHYSICAL thing that can be sent or handed to potential customers.

Use a HTML Editor (I'm an old FrontPage98 fan) to create a website then use an HTML Compiler to wrap up the whole thing into an executable program (I suggest using Activ eBook Compiler for $29... http://www.ebookcompiler.com/)

Then...because this creates an "EXE" file and many people are fearful of exe files...ZIP IT so it has a ".zip" file extension.

In fact...thinking about the fun and money I made back then (I sold the biz and the idiot I sold it to screwed it up and let it die)....I think that I could get an easy $795 per Category NOWADAYS (business people LOVE exclusives) AND...RENEW every year.

Take this and RUN WITH IT! All you need is to make up a sample Disk or CD or DVD or Video....call it "Your Town On Disk" or "Your Town On DVD"...etc.

Show it to
1)your Chamber (get them to agree to send your Disk, CD, DVD in their packages to inquiries.
2)realtors...get the realtor to pay for 500 copies
they can hand out.
3)show it to 5 or 6 realtors (or more)
4) when you know how many copies you will need, show it to advertisers.

This doesn't take "rocket science" or a heavy investment. You can get this one going for less that $100 AND...it has the potential of bringing in $50,000 per Town.

BUT...it takes PERSONAL CONTACT! You MUST go see people IN PERSON! So...that knocks out about 99% of the people reading this because this is appearing on an "Internet Forum" where viewers prefer to sit and look at a "non-threatening" PC screen rather than leave this "comfort and safety" and go out into the "real-world" to talk to actual business owners.

Anyway...to the few who would like some more details because they are SERIOUS about persuing this...drop me an email.

And, to the others...thanks for reading. Time for CSI.

Don Alm
http://www.pjbux.com




Some of my Unique, money-making programs.