Classic Gems from Avril Harper

Three Hundred Income Streams and Counting...


Hi Ross

Another email arrived today, saying much the same thing as hundreds of similar missives before it! The story goes something like this…

“…it’s okay for you, you know what to sell, you have hundreds of different products listed on eBay, you write eBooks and content for websites, you know dozens of different ways to make money… all I want is one good idea to make my living online… and I haven’t a clue how to find it!”

And it really is a shame, because they all assume that I - and other online entrepreneurs like me - have access to a magic vault packed with an endless supply of money making ideas...

Sadly, I don't (believe me, I wish I did!)

Yes, I do have hundreds of different income streams making money for me week by week, month by month, year by year. More than this, I have a great many more proven and very profitable ideas than I will ever find the time to use myself.

This does not mean however, that those opportunities came to me out of thin air, it does not mean I did not spend hours looking for and testing new ideas to ensure their viability before wasting time, effort and money on integrating them into my working day.

The fact is I spend just as long searching for new business ideas - usually new products to sell on eBay - than most people spend in their boring ‘normal’ jobs every day. And I’m certain that my willingness to spend several hours researching, testing and sometimes discarding ideas that prove unworkable is what sets me apart from others who wait years for their ship to come in and find it never does.

The reality is, if you want to make money online you have to put time and effort into researching and testing various product and business ideas, and you must never give up looking for the next perfect business opportunity.

The reason researching new business opportunities should be a daily task is to alleviate the possibility of all your income streams drying up.

It’s that old ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ philosophy again and it’s the reason most successful business men and women adopt a portfolio approach to business. For some people that portfolio covers two or three businesses, for others it’s ten or twenty, for people like me our portfolios are jam packed with money making options.

The portfolio approach should be wide enough to allow a couple of income streams to disappear without you feeling the pinch, and flexible enough for you to regularly add new income streams and remove any on the decline.

So, how do you do it?

Start by taking four sheets of plain paper, A4 size; tape them together so you have a sheet roughly 24 inches by 16 inches.

On the tape free side draw lines horizontally and vertically across the four-page sheet until you have fifty to one hundred empty boxes. If you’re ambitious go for one hundred boxes, if you’re sceptical go for less, but never fewer than ten.

Now go online looking for ideas that are making money for other people and which you think might also work well for you.

When you find one add the idea to one of your blank boxes along with your new role model’s eBay ID or Amazon name, website address or other distinguishing feature.

Now research the idea further; study your role model’s product, how many units they sell each week, at what profit margin.

Then look for similar products you can buy to resell, preferably of better quality than your role model is selling.

Study others selling similar products (or operating similar business ideas) and make a note of the features unique to their approach.

You are essentially looking for ways to turn someone else’s business (or product) into something unique to your business portfolio.

Now, this does take time, and it doesn’t always work, but when it does have the seed of an idea that could make you a fortune!

Plant the seed, watch it grow and then cull or nurture it according to whether it proves to be a drain on your resources or a major profit maker.

But remember! All the while you’re looking for new business ideas to fill the other ninety-nine boxes on that sheet.

Here’s what I’ve written in my blank boxes this morning:

Miniature dolls’ house accessories: made from polymer clay, and frequently selling on eBay at one hundred pounds a square inch.

Yes really. There are tiny handmade models fetching one hundred pounds plus and probably taking less than a few hours each to create. Does this mean I’m swapping my keyboard for a craftwork knife? Not on your life, hence - alongside the IDs of eBayers selling tiny models on eBay - there’s a note saying ‘get someone to make them by visiting craft fairs in Durham next month’. You get the picture I’m sure.

Sell autograph and image ensembles of well known historical figures on Amazon, eBay, Etsy and numerous other sites.

I’ll start by looking for ‘clipped’ autographs at local auction salerooms. These are usually signatures with just a tiny bit of border around them so they’re not very attractive or appealing ‘as is’ to collectors. They’re called ‘clipped’ because they’ve usually been clipped from letters, autograph albums and other vintage documents.

Once framed and with a tiny image of the writer these tiny scraps of paper, costing just a pound or two apiece at auction salerooms, boot sales and flea markets, can fetch fifty or sixty pounds each on Amazon and eBay.

Where to get the images without falling foul of copyright laws? From the public domain of course! I print the images and add them to an autograph mount (available in bulk on eBay) with the image showing through the larger aperture and the signature in the smaller one.

Look for wholesalers of wall decals (stickers that cling to most walls and surfaces).

They’re currently fetching double figure sales daily on eBay. The most popular designs are butterflies and dogs with art nouveau borders which sell at twenty pounds plus per transfer (and that’s why I’m searching alibaba.com today for something similar for my own eBay business).

Write twenty to fifty articles, using private label rights articles. Add these to a Squidoo Lens and aim to sell it for a few hundred pounds or even more.

The reason for using PLR articles as the foundation of my own unique articles is purely to save time - researching facts is the most time consuming element of writing.

Once the research is done (by someone else) all I do is rewrite the text into my own unique style, and the articles are exclusively mine. So in the time it takes to research and write twenty articles from scratch - about two days for research and another day for writing - I can create three times as many articles using private label rights. And that means I can create and sell a Squidoo lens every few days, rather than a handful each month were I to create my articles in their entirety.

And yes, you are allowed to sell Squidoo Lenses, they can fetch several hundred pounds each as you’ll discover at:

http://www.squidoo.com/sellmylens

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoolensflipping

So, now you know how I dream up my new business ideas, and I don’t mind you copying any I’ve told you about today.

And while you’re at it, I don’t mind you copying any of 100+ other moneymaking ideas included in my latest book Multi Income Streams which you can read all about here:

Multi Income Stream Business Systems

Best wishes

Avril