Some Freaky Graphs

Are all graphs only meant for business?

Think again.

Is Digital Advertising only for big companies?

Let’s take a deeper look into digital advertising.

With the evolving internet era, digital advertising has taken the driving seat as a revenue generator. Wish spends on digital advertising being close to $ 15 billion by 2014, it is a very niche yet growing market.

While the trend has been shifting from the primitive CPM model to the lead based advertising model to yield better ROI, most advertisers have not yet completely eradicated their sweet old CPMs. Today leading portals offer sponsorship based or leads based advertising which yields better ROI to the clients making it more effective.

However, if you still insist for branding they will provide CPM advertising at throw away costs like $2 CPM and even lower is most cases.

Broadly, advertising has always been a tool for the companies to showcase their portfolios or brands all across the web, getting listed on Google, etc.

My friend introduced me the other day to a young MBA right out of college, who wanted to do something in the space of advertising. I advised him not getting into the field since advertising as a professional service in India belonged to only a couple of big players in the market like Komli Media, Google Adsense and Ad Magnet and the others.

It was his pursuance on this subject that made me think reverse. I decided to consult him to take digital advertising to the next level.

How?

Like companies, individuals also have to market themselves. We all do, sometimes to the clients, sometimes at home, sometimes at interviews. But there is no platform yet that can help market an individual globally and give him all the benefits that the company gets and to get him listed on the search engines.

That’s how Rs100.net was conceived.

We decided to provide individuals and SMEs with an equal chance to compete with companies in the bigger segment. Rs100, as the name suggests, charges Rs100 (INR) as annual maintenance fees to keep the website running. It provides with a 960x360px banner to the advertiser on the homepage that will keep rotating itself every 4 seconds.

To avoid advertisement clutter, the website also has two instances of the server which keep rotating the ads randomly giving a fair chance to each advertiser.

You may check out the website at http://www.rs100.net or visit their blog http://rs100net.blogspot.com

Million Dollar Question

How do you monetize your website?

Can advertisement revenue offset your business costs?

Can you sell content to others?

Should you invest in creating a mobile app?

I just wanted to start a discussion about how to monetize your website and is internet revenue really substantial to make business sense?

Planning your business

Next Step - Planning your business

I followed your first post and got a hint of what I want to do. Cool! What next?

Now, the next questions in your mind will be:

1)      Do I need to be a management graduate to start off?

95% of successful entrepreneurs did not have a management degree when they started off. All they had was a vision, passion to chase the vision and the thrust to achieve.

2)      How do I go about registering a company?

You wouldn’t always want to have a Pvt Ltd company to start off with. Go to any bank, open a current account and that’s it! Your company is registered. Once you start earning more than Rs 12 lacs annually, opt in for a sales registration number and your done. Once business starts growing in folds, you may go ahead and register it as a Pvt Ltd company.

3)      How much will it take to register a company *?

Starting a current account is free. It differs from bank to bank however average balance you would need to maintain is Rs10000 quarterly.

A sales tax registration number will cost you approx Rs 1000 (including tea and water charges).

Registering a Pvt Ltd company would be approximately Rs 50000 along with additional fees of a CA and nomination of board of directors.

*But before you register a company read point no 6 carefully and see how much money would you be making and by when.

4)      How do I arrange for finances?
By now, I am under the impression that you are already employed and want to start off. Hold back, save the amount required and then register your business unit. If you opt in for a current account, I think it is pretty achievable to save approx Rs 3000 a month as a locked balance.

5)      How do I arrange for resources?

Thumb rule of business – Don’t invest your own money beyond your capacity. Do everything by yourself or leverage your friend or colleague circle. The second option is better since let the experts do their bit. Once you start earning money from the company, and then invest those same funds and think of having your own employees.

6)      When will I start making profits?

Tricky one! Okay, I’ll try to make this as simple as possible. Make a business case (Complicated).

What is a business case? A case is a forecast of your expenses and projection of your earnings. It does not need to be in a predefined format if you are using it for your own reference.

How do I make one? Simple! Use an excel sheet. Make two sheets – Cost and Revenue. Jot down all your items that will be a potential expense for you, for example, stationary, mobile bills, transportation, equipments, manpower, etc.

In the next sheet, jot down all the possible ways of income i.e. streams from where you are planning to earn revenue for example advertising, product sales, service sales, etc.

While entering this data, make sure you have columns or rows on a Monthly basis i.e. all costs will be shown on a monthly basis and all revenue that you expect can be shown on monthly basis.

So your cost sheet would look something like:

Sr No	Item	Month
		Jan	Feb	Mar	Total
1	Equipment	20000	0	0
2	Mobile Bill	500	750	1000
3	Misc Expences	1000	1000	1000
	Total	21500	1750	2000	25250

And your revenue sheet may look something like:

Sr No	Item	Month
		Jan	Feb	Mar	Total
1	Advertising	500	750	1000
2	Sales	100	200	500
3	-	-	-	-
	Total	600	950	1500	3050

The above is just a representation of a typical internal reference sheet. Here you see in the first month you would end up investing Rs 21500 and earn Rs 600, this is because it covers your capital expense of equipment. Moving forward  if you see in the second month you are investing Rs 1750 and earning 950 so you are almost spending double for what you are earning. In the third month you are earning 75% of what you are spending.

Go on and make this sheet and finally you will realize how much time would it take to make the money enough to cover your costs and then by when would you be playing in profits.

Caution – Make this as a very low lying plan as you know that you would be the main person driving it!

7)      Can I give up my job today?

If you are totally fed up, YES. If not, wait atleast till you earn your first buck. Again, how well you manage your time is up to you, but if you have your business case in place, it will be a good driving factor.

8)      Will I be able to make more money than my salary?

YES! But not overnight. Any business takes substantial amount of time, effort and perseverance for breaking your baby out of a cost center.

Feel free to post your comments or email me your questions. I would be happy to help you with all your queries.

Helping Bring Out The Entrepreneur in You

"I want to be the next G.com or the next Y.com"

"There is no point living the life of a salaried, I want to have my own business"

"Itne pagar main yaha pe kuch nahi hoga, usse accha hai gaon jaake kuch paison ki jameen le lunga - kamse kam naam to hoga"

"Recession ke naam pe companies haat dho ke lee rahi hai"

"Did I slog out my education years to get an engineering / management degree and work for someone with target pressure?"

"After Tuesday even the work week says WTF!"

Last week I met around 20 people (colleagues and friends) who were pretty depressed with their jobs and above were the common statements I heard.

Every successful man has made these statements, but not all who do are successful. So where is the GAP?

Lets analyze.

Every day, I keep bumping into people who are not happy with the current, want to venture off, but are not sure of what to do and how to do.

I won't be stating any examples of successful businessmen here because you can Google their stories but I'll be helping you with the go-abouts.

Just follow a few simple steps:

1) Level 1 - Think not so deeply!

Think about what you want to do - a Vague thought!

Great!!! Awesome!!! Its come. I want to be a successful Entrepreneur or a Business Man.

2) Level 2 - Lets get to the tooth!

Cool! That was simple, Isn't it?

Now, think slightly further and deeper of what do you want to establish.

3) Level 3 - Ask not others, yourself!

Just ask the following questions to yourself -

What do I wish to do now, after 6 months, after a year (assuming everything works hypothetically)?

What do I wish to achieve by doing so?

Will this be short term or long term?

Do I have the expertise in this domain (its Okay even if "No" is the answer)?

and the most important question -

What do I have to loose if I go for it?

5) Level 5 - Keep shut!

Okay, now that you have the answer to your questions, Keep Shut! Don't let anyone know about your plans. Its not the risk of your ideas being stolen, its about you giving up on your plans after listening to negative feedback. So just keep happy but low, like exactly what you are doing now, you are so keen that you forgot I missed out on point no 4 - No I din't.

4) Level 4 - Give UP and Quit!

What do you give up? Negative thoughts, constructive feedback (as it will keep asking you to amend your plans), TWA - Time Wasting Associations, Useless conversations that eat up a lot of your time.

Okay, so far so good!

What next?

You can't do everything in one day. So do this exercise and I'll be back with my next blog post soon to show the way further.