Interesting topic I thought this was. Two people I saw were having a debate in terms of starting up a business that specializes in printing such as business cards. Now both of them want to get into the same industry, but interestingly enough both of them lack the skill that the other has to start one. Essentially, one person has the necessary technical skills to handle the actual backend work but lacks any real funding or sales skills. The other person has a good amount to invest and is good at getting customers. The technical person brought up how that is like a perfect partnership and that they should start a business together where he would handle all of the physical and technical work while the other person would handle the finance on top of bringing in customers. Basically, it would be a 50/50 partnership.

To me personally, that is completely unbalance in this type of a situation as I would have to say the ownership would have to be something like 90/10 in favor of the person with the actual funds. I’m almost inclined to say it should simply be the guy with the funds should open it himself and just hire the other person as an employee. The thing is too, I have had these types of discussions before with people who are more used to being in a traditional employee working environment and I always find it kind of surprising how many feel like in the above example that it is definitely an equal effort from both parties and so a 50/50 seems fair.

The way I see it, if you are talking about something in terms of say a team objective environment where everyone has a task, then in most cases I would agree that a person that say brings in the customers is simply doing his part as without the other person making sure the product is good there will be no business. But when it comes to actually starting and owning a business, I would have to say that the person who actually funds it or is the one who is solely responsible in bringing in revenue outweighs a person who would be mainly doing the physical or creative work only. I guess in my view, if the person doesn’t want to be responsible in anyway in bringing in revenue or is not willing to invest his/her own money in the beginning that he/she is mainly like an employee with little risk compared to the other person. Unless the person had like a skill that no on else in the world could do or was extremely rare, then that would be different.

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A person was telling how he owns so many high definition movies on disc that are all in its originally packaging as he was able to get them for very cheap since the stores simply wanted to get rid of them. The funny thing is he doesn’t even have a player that can play them. He figured that he plans to get one in the future when it becomes way cheaper anyways and that buying like a movie for $6 is about as cheap as he can ever find the movie for anyways even by the time he finally buys one.

While it does sound a little silly, I must say that I do that sometimes as well where if I know the price for a part or item for something is insanely below the actual retail cost I will buy it even though I don’t have the main item that is necessary to make use of it as I do plan to buy it in the future. I suppose in some ways it is a waste of money as it is just sitting there collecting dust and you could have possibly used that money to invest in something else that could possibly bring you more money than what you could have saved from buying the product afterwards.

For small things though I think it can be worth it to do so. For example, I remember I purchased a 2 gig SD card for about $5 when I didn’t even have a digital camera yet as I knew that was a very cheap price. I basically saved about $20 to $40 as oppose to trying to buy the same thing during the exact same time that I bought the camera. Of course, you have to really be sure about the price and disciplined not buy things that you didn’t really intend to use in the first place. Otherwise you will be convincing yourself to buy anything and everything just because it has a cheap price tag.

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Today I was having a conversation about various ways on how some businesses generate customers and how they go about in advertising their products and services. I’ve always been more of a web person as it is one of the most cost effective ways to advertise. A person was telling me more about traditional methods today and one of it was with the old fashion Yellow Page Book.

I must say, the prices seemed pretty astronomical compared to web based advertisements of a similar caliber. For example, a full page color ad was about $7500 a month. The person showed me an example on how this dental firm purchased literally six full colored pages of advertisements. So when you are flipping through the phone book, you literally see that company again and again. Apparently they made that all back though and more, so obviously the return of investment is good for them.

Obviously in the end if your return on investment is really good then the initially price doesn’t really matter too much. I just thought this was an interesting thing to think about as from my experience when it comes to investing in some kind of advertisement fund, you either have the group of people who try to determine how much they can get back by analyzing how many people will enquire about their product along with how much revenue each person is worth or others who see it in terms of an exposure value in regards to how many times their ad will be viewed and it doesn’t matter if they don’t get anyone right then as people saw it and will talk about it.

In both cases it is a numbers game I guess you can say and the best way is whatever works for you. The conversation got more interesting as we kind of debated on whether or not someone who uses a book like the Yellow Pages or say uses a search engine is in more of a state of mind to actually buy something and what type of industries/professions are most suitable for which medium. Speaking for myself, I usually use the web first if I am looking for something and the book comes if I couldn’t find a satisfactory solution. I can easily see it being the other way around for others too. They are definitely things to think about if you are on the fence in terms of spending advertising money to increase business.

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Now since I’m starting with $0 the fist thing that comes to mind for most people is to probably say find a job where you will trade your time and expertise for money. While I won’t rule out the possibility of doing some simple small stuff in the future for the sake of this test, I usually prefer to find ways on how one can generate an income even if they are not there.

For myself, the first thing I thought about is web publishing since it is one of the things that I am very familiar with. In general, people make money by either selling advertisements on their website or through what is known as affiliate marketing where a site owner can get a referral bonus by helping a company to sell its products or services. Due to the subject matter of this blog, I get requests all the time from people who are interested in purchasing some kind of an ad space for their credit card offers or debt reduction programs as an example. Just try to picture how much money making spam comments I get all the time too.

If you have been one of my readers for awhile I guess you have noticed that there are small advertisements at the end of each post which are provided by Google. I personally display it as a way to offset any costs in maintaining this blog as oppose to focusing on trying to make a lot of money from it since that wasn’t my intent. Come to think of it, this is probably going to be the first form of income that I will receive for this journey.

There are a lot of things that I can do, but at the same time I don’t want it to be too intrusive with the content. Maybe I’ll try experimenting a bit with certain web publishing programs or even start to take some offers more seriously (That’s not an invitation for get rich quick offers either). Hopefully I can find other ways that require little or no capital as this route feels a bit too safe for me personally since I am comfortable with it. You have to start somewhere I suppose and you may as well do something that you know a lot about.

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One of my friends is going to a bachelor’s party this week and due to financial difficulties he has opted to not attend the events during the morning and afternoon in an effort to save money. This was kind of surprising to me as I am used to these types of situations as being if you are invited to a special occasion like this that the inviter would normally cover the cost for basic stuff. Of course I’m sure people would rather pay for their own way, but that was kind of surprising to see that apparently everyone had to pay for their own in everyway. I remember doing something like that for my brother’s bachelor party anyways. If people wanted to get themselves hammered afterwards, then that was their own out of pocket expense.

It makes me think of things like say a basic birthday party too. Normally like for that whoever is organizing/hosting the event would cover the cost for basic food and beverages while the attendee showing up and then buying a simple gift is usually the way to pay for it I guess you can say. I guess for some it depends on how formal the event in question is. Imagine going to a wedding and being asked to pay for the food bill during the reception. I’ve also seen some times where people who were invited to dine out at a restaurant for a gathering didn’t think that they had to pay for anything since they were invited and the person who invited them got really upset and they were labeled as a cheapskate from then on.

Kind of confusing at times I suppose and I have seen people who would simply pretend that they never got an invitation to certain events as they don’t want to feel obligated to have to pay to attend in some way.

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