I am in the process of writing my first ebook. The ebook came out of my frustration with the whole Need Money To Make Money thing. It is yet to have a name so lets call it.. Book 1. How original.

As some of you may know, in one of my earlier business ventures I spent over 50k developing a product which never took off. 2 years of hard work and frustration led to nothing and I was left demoralised. However a little later I spent $45 and $70 respectively on 2 other projects which have since proved extremely profitable. So why was this?

The problem was I was basing my work on theories developed by people who wanted you to spend a whole heap of money. The theory was that you needed money to create a product in order to make you money. Society makes you believe that this is true and this is the way you have to do things.

Worst of all, individuals now use this as an excuse not to try and get out and do something on their own. Eventually it became the excuse for everyone any anyone who wasn’t where they wanted to be financially. Now this theory has become a viral institution and infected the minds of millions world wide.

Well my aim is to get the message out there and prove that this is not true. Financial freedom does not require you to invest thousands and thousands of dollars before you get going. And I will prove it to you. It does not require you to work 18 hour days for the next 20 yrs. And I will prove it to you. It does not require you to do anything unethical and I’ll prove it to you.

So this is my little super soft pre-launch. The book isn’t released but if you want to get a FREE copy of my new ebook when it is released then please put your details below and I’ll keep you updated and make sure you know about it first.

Oh an I’ll also throw in a little present when you sign-up . To find out what it is fill the form and check your email!!

For the majority of examples, entrepreneurs start a business to generate revenue and hopefully in turn, make a profit.

Before I go any further I want to clarify something. I have always found it perplexing the way people approach how they should be making a profit from their value offering. I’m not talking about the method in generating a profit, I’m referring to how they think about the term, ‘profit‘. People almost feel guilty if they have an aim of making a profit. Why would you feel guilty about this? There is no reason to feel ashamed of doing something to make a profit. If you provide a product which is of great value and set your price in a range where people can and will purchase it then its a win-win situation. First, you generate revenue and your buyer has purchased something that has a certain perceived value for something they were willing and able to purchase it. I don’t see why anyone should be ashamed of this? If you provide a sub-standard product and charge an exorbitant amount to people who don’t know better just to make a profit, then yes you should be ashamed.

Before you go on this post is continuing from my previous steps for starting up a business. Step 1 and Step 2. If you havn’t read these I strongly recommendyou do as you’ll be completely lost for the remainder of this post!

That aside, once I have thought of an idea with potential and then put down some points regarding the concept, my next step is to think of how I can make money out of offering this service. Well the first and most obvious answer would be to copy the Youtube example and place ads on the website which will earn me money whenever a site user clicks on them. That sounds pretty straight forward but people who are regulars to this blog know my thoughts on using advertising as the revenue model. In short, I’m not a big fan. After all, how many times have you clicked on a display or text ad on Youtube?

On the other hand, will people actually pay to use a video sharing service on their mobile when there are so many free options out there? No I don’t think they would to be honest. If I started charging for a service to stream videos onto mobile then wouldn’t my users start reverting back to using another mobile video streaming site? Most probably. I’ll think a little harder.

Ok so what do I do now. I know that Youtube is the giant and so far offers the best mobile video offering available. I also know Youtube only allows streaming to your mobile and the other download sites are not really anything special. So I’m thinking if I can offer the streaming service for free and support it by advertising I will keep and retain the casual visitors. On top of that if I can also offer a premium service for those wishing to download those videos onto their mobile then I would be able to charge for this as the current alternatives are pretty poor. This allows me to work with two revenue streams, the first being advertising for those casual streaming visitors and as well as a membership based premium service for those wanting to download the content to their mobile.

Ok so this is what I’m thinking:

1. Revenue model 1 – Free video streaming (will not include video downloads) will be supported by advertising. Advertising network options include: Adsense Mobile, Admob and Decktrade.
2. Revenue model 2 – Offer a premium paid service where users can stream videos as well as download any mobile video they like directly to their mobile. Premium members will pay a small monthly fee in order to use the download service.

I’m pretty happy with this as it offers both a streaming option which anyone can use and yet also tailors for users that want even more and wish to download any video directly to their mobile. To do this they will need to become site members and pay a relatively small ongoing membership fee. For me that means the highly trafficked free streaming section still generates a revenue but I can also offer great value and charge for membership which is a great form of recurring income.

This is the first post in my Step by Step business series. Instead of talking about how to set up a business I will be actually setting up a business and take you step by step through the process I go through from thinking up a business idea through to implementing that idea and also sharing the results. I’m a firm believer of “doing” and that jumping in the deep end is the best way can learn how to do something. You will never learn how to drive a car by reading a book, you need to get out and drive. You will also never learn how to start and run your own business by reading about it, you need to get out there and do it.

A couple of weeks ago I was raving about how mobile will be the next big thing. What I’m going to do now is start up mobile site from scratch and go over all the steps that I will take to get this up and running and hopefully, profitable. My aim here is not only to set up another income stream but to show you how I do it, step by step. I will be quite candid about the results so if it is a flop, you will know about it!

I need an idea. How do I come up with a concept? Well I looked to the online world for inspiration. I asked myself what online business have taken off yet are relatively easy to replicate in the mobile environment? My first step was to visit Alexa and have a look at the top 100 websites for inspiration. There are the usuals such as Google, Yahoo etc. Some of the most obvious ones are in the ever expanding field of social networking, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc. However a prerequisite to my concept was that it needed to be easy to replicate and these social networking sites would definitely not be easy to replicate. The possible exception to this would be Twitter but Twitter has a great mobile interface and many people are “Twittering” via their mobile, so that was out. What else? Amazon? Probably a little complex and advanced for mobile (at the moment). Wikipedia? ahhh… no.

Then I took a second look at Youtube. My first look was interrupted by those little voices in my head saying “yeh right.. good try!”.. and “.. Youtube, I wonder what I could look up now?”. Just to introduce you, this is Mr. Negative and Mr. Procrastination.. I have been trying to evict these guys for the last 26yrs but they manage to find their way back in occasionally. So on my second look I managed to focus objectively and break it down to get a clearer understanding. What is Youtube exactly? Well in its essence, its a place you go to watch videos and share your videos to the world. Obviously there are far greater capabilities including networking and social interaction but in its most basic form, its just a video sharing site. Would a video sharing site be that hard to replicate?

The next question is to ask myself what is currently available in terms of video sharing in the mobile world? We know that Youtube has its own mobile version so why would people come to my mobile video site? Also what can I do to separate myself from the others? I did a search on Google mobile: mobile video sharing. There are a few present, namely Vringo, Livecast and Yamgo among others (interestingly Youtube didn’t come up). But looking through these and other sites it was obvious that they were either grossly deprived of content and you could only download a couple of bad quality videos, or they were too difficult to find what you want and start watching by requiring you to download some software or sign up with an account. The beauty of Youtube is that anyone can just jump on, watch a few videos without having to fiddle around with accounts and logging in etc. When browing on your mobile you don’t want to have to download software or log in everytime, it’s not like a PC where you can open tabs and have multiple windows on one screen. Mobile needs to be simple, straight forward and to the point. Give the users what they want straight away so they are more likely to come back. Give them a convoluted sign up process and time consuming ways to access content then you have lost them. Simple.

It’s looking more and more like I will head down the video sharing path but I need to differentiate my business from many of those out there. Obviously the biggest competitor will be the video sharing bohemoth Youtube. So what is their mobile offering like and how can I better it? To be honest, their mobile offering is pretty fantastic so there is no point in me going in there are doing the exact same thing with 10 videos asking people to use my site instead. That would be ridiculous. They do a better job than anyone else in the mobile marketplace by making the streaming of videos to your mobile so simple. You do a search, click the video your after and then watch it streamed onto your mobile.

Not worth competing? Well actually I see an large gaping opportunity presenting itself immediately. The problem with one type of mobile video site is that you need to do a whole lot of mumbo jumbo before you can start watching a video. The others that offer a simple download to mobile service (in 3gp format or similar) don’t have much content. Finally, Youtube makes it easy to watch videos but you have to stream them everytime and this costs you a fortune in data as well as the time it takes to download each time.

So I’m presented with an opportunity here. What if I can take the best of all these mobile video services and combine them into a single, easy to use video sharing service where you can search, submit, download and stream videos? It sounds simple enough. Now all I need to do is find out how I can actually do this!

If you were to go 10 years back in time and have the knowledge that you have now, what would you do? First I would buy every decent 3 and 4 letter domain name under the sun. I would set up a social network, a clean cut search engine and maybe dabble a bit in online video sharing. It would be safe to say I would be doing extremely well for myself right now and anyone within a 3km radius.

Isn’t hindsight a great thing? Think about the opportunities!! If only you knew. Well in a way you do. Maybe not on a PC online level but even better than that, the next big thing. Mobile. I have said this before and will continue to say it, Mobile is the next frontier. Growth is massive and the opportunities available are in abundance.

Enough of the mobile praising and let’s get to business. Mobile business opportunity No. 1 – Domain Names. Domain names are extremely important for such things as branding and generating traffic (among a host of others). We also know that the domain name trade is a massive industry with many companies specialising purely in the buying and selling domain names.  Yet entrepreneurs have seemingly neglected jumping on the mobile domain name bandwagon. Since 2006, mobile has been given it’s own mobile friendly domain known as .mobi.

Currently a good .mobi domain sells for anywhere between $1000 – $3500 all the way up to $20,000. Although this doesn’t yet compete with the value of a traditional .com, this is quite significant as .mobi has only been around for the better part of 2 years. With mobile internet growth exceeding online internet growth by 8 times what will these .mobi domains be worth in a year? 3 yrs? 10 yrs?

Interestingly there are still plenty of 4 letter .mobi domains which can be bought for around $11-$15. If you buy now and sell a year later at $5000 that’s a decent investment. Buy up 5-10 of these then there is definite potential.

There are a couple of small catches though. Whether these domains will be as valuable as .com remains to be seen however I very much doubt it. Currently a premium .com domain would sell for almost 15x-20x as much as a .mobi. Even 5-6 years down the track I don’t think their value would be level with .com but expect great margins nevertheless, probably around the area of 40-50% of a premium .com domain. Considering a premium domain may cost upwards of $500,000 (check out Sedo selling results.com for $500k!) that’s not too bad. Some interesting reading regarding the value of some of the top domains can be found at the New Affiliate Resource blog.

The other catch is the problem of cyber-squatting. Before you go out and buy the best domain names you need to be wary of IP and trademarks which would most likely be owned by online based businesses. For example going out and buying twitter.mobi or Myspace.mobi wouldn’t be appreciated by the Twitter or Myspace people and you may expect a elegantly presented legal letter and a battle you don’t necessarily want to be apart of. This is something you must be aware of before going and investing in a good .mobi.

For reference here is some more info regarding domain name parking. Keep domains generic using highly trafficked search words with little characters as possible and your onto something big. So what what will you be thinking in 10 years time?

In my previous post I was referring to a medium which is growing at a phenomenal rate yet has very little barriers to entry and is probably sitting at where the Internet would have been 9-10 years ago. I’m referring to mobile. Entrepreneurs are still shying away from using mobile as an e-commerce tool however this is starting to change with the introduction of the iPhone as well as advancements in PDA style phones, Blackberry’s and most recently Google Android. These advancements have also extended through to “normal” phones with screen resolutions of 128×128 through to 240×320.

Technation released figures stating growth of 23% in 2007 and 30% in 2008. VKI studios talks about Nielsen report data stating that mobile growth has occurred 8x faster than PC Internet growth! More? Well the CNN mobile site now receives 30 million monthly page views compared to 2.7million when it launched in June! Take a look at a company such as Admob. Admob is the leading mobile advertising agency providing a service similar to Google Adsense (and Mobile Adsense of course!) however targeted to mobile phones. To date Admob has served over 70 billion mobile ads and has only been serving since 2006. As of the other day the company launched an iPhone download exchange supporting iPhone developments.  This is a mega dollar infrastructure supported by companies who understand the importance of mobile. This is not a stagnate or even a steadily growing market. This is growth at a tremendous rate. What this outlines is proof that plenty of people are browsing the net using their mobile and where there is an abundance of traffic then there is a requirement for good content to service this traffic. This is content that you can profit from through delivering great value and meeting a demand.

I think the reason behind people not flocking to mobile is the misconception that mobile sites look terrible and functionality is limited. Yes, you cannot serve funky flash banners, frames and complex coding through all mobile browsers (some do allow it.. and this is also growing) but why is this a bad thing? What this means is that you have limited options in order to get the most out of your mobile website. In the online PC world there are practically no restrictions with what you can do so your left with a world to choose from with your budget deciding your next move. You don’t really have this problem with mobile and this is great news for the entrepreneur who wants to start with very little. You create a functional, mobile friendly site which incorporates a good user interface and design and you are already at the top of the game!

Do they look that bad? No, I don’t think they do. If you have a look at your mobile providers main mobile page (ie Vodafone Live ),it’s not your usual html text style site. There are colours, pictures, banners and a decent user interface. However unlike developing for the PC world, it’s not really that complex. It doesn’t need to be and frankly it can’t be. Currently a mobile site is great if you include images, clean style and has clear functions. This means that with very little outlay you can immediately start competing with the big boys! This will obviously change over time but the key is to get in first, develop a solid customer base and grow from there. To single yourself out from the traditional boring mobile sites takes only a little effort but the rewards are well worth it as along with the PC world, to be successful you  need to create the perception of being an industry leader, a forerunner and an expert in order to be a success.

People are yet to provide great content specifically for mobile. I am a motor sport fan and currently there is only 1 decent F1 site dedicated to mobile. One. Do a PC web search and there are hundreds! On top of this their service can be greatly improved, its only scraping the surface. Imagine how many people are needing your expertise via their mobile? Yet no one is there to provide. First mover advantages are in abundance in the mobile world where the traditional web really only has room for ‘me too’s’ with a few exceptions (don’t ask me what these exceptions are because if I knew I would be on to them!).

I can only see this growth continue to escalate. Mobile phone advancements are rapid but most importantly, network operators are also understanding the importance of web browsing via mobile through to provision of data caps and data packages to support mobile web browsing. Only a year ago browsing the net via your mobile was extraordinarily expensive while now, its often included in your package. This alone is testament to the phenomenal growth of mobile.

I currently have a few projects on mobile and am looking at setting up a mobile business course over the coming months to help people get the most out of mobile. I will also be going over a few of my current projects as well as a new one I will be starting shortly. What I will do is cover the process of creating the mobile site, marketing the site as well as it’s progress including traffic and revenue details. I’ll be candid and open so I appreciate any feedback or advice you may wish to give.

I recommend you jump on your mobile, open your browser and do a search for your area of expertise. You’ll be surprised at the opportunities that are still available, especially with such a large and growing user base. The best time to find your second business opportunity is while your still working on your first one.