Another two for one post; primarily since the events go together. This deals with responding to new Opportunity / Opportunities. And taking action to investigate and trace down the opportunity to see if it is a viable fit for your enterprise. I am really pleased with my decision to journal my thoughts as it is quite interesting to go back and review where my mindset was and as I recently found out to go back and pickup or complete things that I had not quite finished. Anyway from 10/10 and 10/28.

From 10/10

Wow, it’s amazing how quickly plans change. So I fully intended to add the $xxx to Propser, purchase 12 new loans and be done with it. However, I found an App that scanned barcodes and returned competitive pricing online and in other stores. On my day off this past Friday, I stopped in Best Buy looking for products with potential pricing discontinuities. Didn’t find anything meaningful there or any clearance item products that were selling above the store listed price. I moved on to Target and what d’ya know, bingo. I found several marked down items for a limited duration. Some were $5 off a normal $25 price, others were $10 or $20 off a $100 price. I found one product that was $60 off a normal $150 price and when looking at comparison pricing online found the refurbished item prices to be above the discounted prices for new items…so yes, opportunity. It’s a Ninja juicer of some sort that went off sale on the 8th. I’ve signed up for an Amazon fulfillment account and plan to list this (actually bought 2 and a few smaller items from CVS) on the site to see how it works out. My goal is to make $xxx profit on the sales. And if this is viable I will begin using my Fridays off to find products in Target, CVS and maybe Kmart in a town not too far away for FBA opportunities. So the $xxx did not go to Prosper as planned but this more immediate opportunity is something that I needed to take action on. I already know the safe route thru Propser, but the goal is to generate income. Still working on the WordPress site. The goal there is to be done with the basic site development in a couple weeks. I’ll do the SEO as best I can and then launch. Still need to develop that detailed weekly schedule to ensure proper focus and motivation. But looking back to July I couldn’t have imagined that I would have progressed this far from an idea borne of frustration to a ‘newborne’ business, nursing and suckling on its way to viability. I can’t wait to create the site to share my story and show, talk folks thru the nitty gritty step by step to moving past inertia to action for the financial benefit of themselves and their families. I continue to say that I cannot thank Pat enough, even though he doesn’t know me from the Man on the Moon.

10/28

Two and a half weeks have passed since my last musings. First the bad news, I’ve had to backtrack on the Amazon opportunity. I’ll eventually take the products I bought from Target back for a refund. I checked Amazon and Ebay and both sites have a minimum 15% service fee; which translates to a 15% hurdle just to break-even, not including shipping costs. This is not a path for business for me at this time. Comparatively, stock and options trading on a small $500 order cost ~3% each way or 6% total and have no product/shipping costs. Proper has a ~4% loss potential the way I have it set up so both options are far superior to product arbitrage. Hey but I ventured out, purchased, investigated and now have data on this opportunity.

Now the good news; the website for all intents and purposes is complete enough to be functional. That is the only missing information are the ‘things to do’ pages for each site. I can add those in while the site is up and running. I am now working thru the SEO activities to ensure the site begins to get indexed on Google and to add Analytics to monitor traffic. The goal is $1 / day for the site. I’ve already applied to Google Adsense and if that request is approved I’ll start strategically adding Affiliate links as it makes sense. Speaking of affiliate links, I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out a way to promote and represent brands I luv (Hilton, Delta, bowlingball.com, my cell phone service. You know the brands I consistently spend money on and recommend. How do I turn that into a win-win for me and the companies? Also trying to think what my next website adventure will be. I had some ideas noted (manufacturing company listings in the state (however the Chamber of Commerce) basically has this information or much of what I was thinking of creating). Manta is out there but ‘supposedly’ has all companies listed. I guess thinking thru it there really are only two competitors in the field. I’ll have to think some more about that. Anyway, my goal is to get started on the next website within a month, so by Thanksgiving and to finish my financials. I guess I will take the $xxx and put it into Prosper as well. I’ll save the $xxx for the next equity injection I make into the company and use that for the stock/option account. I contacted an SEO guy that Pat recommended on his show and am using the WordPress SEO tools via Alexa. Hopefully, in two weeks, I will be able to see traffic to the site due to the indexing in search engines. I’ll need to also consider setting up FB and other social media accounts.