Not every product is attractive in either appearance or function. Many fall into the yucky-but-necessary category. So how do you go about selling them? The makers of Naposure, a saline product designed to wash out a mucus laden nose, (apologies if you’re eating!) faced just this problem.

Their solution was to soften the whole thing by using attractive children in the advertisements, demonstrating the product. The cute and funny videos they made seemed to do the trick of making an unglamorous product visually attractive to the target market.

It’s a trick that toilet paper manufacturers have used for decades of course. What Labrador puppies have to do with the quality and effectiveness of Andrex is anyone’s guess, but they serve the function of making the product attractive, while very subtly conveying the benefits.

Perhaps if your product lacks a little glamour, you could think about making it more attractive and appealing by associating it in customer’s minds with something more acceptable. Something o give some thought to.

As an aside, I just discovered that toilet paper was first marketed in the United States just 150 years ago, and up until that point in time, everyone made ‘alternative arrangements’. Just give some thought to that the next time you’re bemoaning the fact that some modern day luxury you’ve become accustomed to isn’t working quite the way it should!

What’s New?

Almost every would-be entrepreneur I speak to is looking for something ‘new’…a product or service nobody has thought of before. But what exactly is ‘new’, and is this a realistic ambition? 

In the early part of the twentieth century, long before the internet, The Boston Globe had an instant real time news feed product, backed by advertising. Breaking news was chalked up on huge boards and placed in the newsroom window which backed onto the street.

The news was usually conveyed by a headline (140 characters or less!) and behind it were paid advertisements. In addition telegraphed communications of boxing matches or football matches was shouted out by employees using loud hailers, round by round or play to an eager audience. Early multimedia in action!

Okay, it’s not quite Twitter, but the point I’m making is that the demand for news of events as they happened was always there, and there was a product to fill the demand. What’s available on the internet today is just a modern day manifestation of a product meeting the same demand.

Rather than looking for something completely new and unique, a more fruitful route to a lucrative business opportunity might be to look at what was popular in the past, and then how it can be given a modern twist. Technology changes, but underlying inbuilt human needs wants and desires do not.

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL JUNK FOOD DAY!  

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

This Will Make You Money, Guaranteed 

Hello,

I know, I know – It’s very big claim in that subject line.

But this really is one of the few extra income ideas where I genuinely believe you can use the word ‘Guaranteed’!

Look, I don’t want to beat about the bush with this.

I’ve had many years experience with these types of systems and this is one I can strongly recommend. 

Take a look today: 

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Best Wishes  

John Harrison

Just read a list of expensive mistakes that businesses make in Forbes magazine, and one error in particular struck a chord – making wildly optimistic sales forecasts.

One of the recurrent head-in-hands moments for me, is when someone hoping to do business with us says something along the lines of…”If just one person in a thousand who reads our ad places an order, we’ll make…”It sounds logical, it sounds viable but it rarely is. It’s usually based on nothing more than guess work…surely one in a thousand will be easy. Most of the time it won’t.

The bottom line is to always make sure your sales forecasts are based on hard facts rather than what ‘common sense’ tells you what should be a viable response from a big target market. It rarely works the way you expect.

Are You Doing Too Much?

Sometimes, what seems like a retrograde step turns out to be quite the opposite. When Terri Urbash left her job as a court reporter to start a family, she expected her income to go into reverse, but in fact the opposite happened. 

You see, the assignments continued to come in, and because she couldn’t now deal with them personally, she started farming them out to other court reporters. Then a large insurance company was looking to hire a deposition service. Urbash assumed it would go to a national competitor, but she applied for the contract anyway, and she got it. Network Deposition Services has soared since landing the client, expanding throughout Pennsylvania and now moving across the country.

What Urbash discovered perhaps by accident, is that you only start to make some real money when you stop DOING the work and start ORGANISING the work. There are only so many hours you can personally work each day or week, but when you start organising the work of others, you can profit from an almost infinite number of hours worked.

Are you guilty of spending too much time doing it, and not enough time organising it? 

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL LAZY DAY!  

         

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

This Will Make You Money, Guaranteed

Hello, 

I know, I know – It’s very big claim in that subject line. 

But this really is one of the few extra income ideas where I genuinely believe you can use the word ‘Guaranteed’!

Look, I don’t want to beat about the bush with this.

I’ve had many years experience with these types of systems and this is one I can strongly recommend. 

Take a look today:

www.streetwisenews.com/variant6 

In the days before footballers got paid £100,000+ a week, you always knew where you’d find an ex-player after retiring – behind the bar of his own pub. It was the career of choice for any player who hadn’t gambled away his wages. Did you ever wonder why?

I think it’s because people naturally gravitate towards businesses they enjoy patronising themselves. If you enjoy spending your leisure time in a pub, why not get paid for it instead? It’s the same thought process that has led people to open coffee shops, gyms, and myriad retail establishments. But does this make sense?

Well, yes and no. If you’re an enthusiastic consumer of something, you should have a good feel for what the market wants. That’s bound to be an advantage. But at the same time, it would be an extra-ordinary coincidence if the optimum business for you turned out to be the type of business you personally enjoy frequenting most as a consumer. And there’s always the chance that you will metaphorically ‘drink the profits.’

The lesson to take away from this is to thoroughly question your motives for following the business path you’ve chosen. If it’s nothing more than an extension of your consumption preferences, it could be worth a rethink.

Pin-Picking Advice

Let me ask you to choose a number between 1 and 50. Pick it at random. Okay? Now, if, like me, your choice was thirty seven, you are in potential trouble. You have what’s known as a ‘group mind’. Apparently, we all follow the herd.

That’s a problem when it comes to picking a PIN number or a password most of us are very predictable! For a PIN, we pick our date or year of birth. Common passwords are 123456, abc123, qwerty, computer, password and the name of the website we’ve accessed.

Other favourite passwords relate to the names of our partners, children and favourite football team. Bottom line? Stick with the random four-digit number sent to you by your bank or, if you prefer, choose a random one of your own. Likewise, passwords – one for each site etc – should be a random mix of letters and numbers, upper and lower case etc.

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL BEST FRIENDS DAY!  

         

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

Forty-year Betting Veteran Makes Shocking Confession…

“I Still Don’t Have A Clue
  Which Horse Will Win!”

But By Analysing The Result Of Over
100,000Races, I’ve Discovered A Back Door
Route To a £20,000+ Guaranteed Year
Round Profit From Carefully Selected UK
Races…

Anyone Can Copy Me, It Takes Just
Ten Minutes A Day. And You Get To
Choose How Much You’ll Win…£10…
£20…Or Even £50 A Race!

For the full story visit;

www.streetwisenews.com/shotgun

Bulletin reader Bob Gregory received this envelope from a restaurant he’d visited before. Rather than a straightforward discount voucher, this is a bit different. It demonstrates the power of one of the most important influencers on human behaviour – curiosity.  

As you can see, the envelope offers money off  a meal at the restaurant, but here’s the  difference, you only find out how much of a discount after eating the meal and opening the envelope on receipt of the bill. It could be 25% or it could be 50%. It’s a surprise and you’re not allowed to find out beforehand.

Will it work? Well it certainly worked on Bob because he booked a meal, and I can see why. It’s something different to the ubiquitous discount voucher, and there’s an element of intrigue and excitement. Bob won’t know how much he’s saved until afterwards. 

Now he may suspect, as would many others, that the discount will be 25%,  but he doesn’t know for sure. Maybe it will be more. There’s only one way to find out.

Is this something you could use in your business? It seems to me there are many different ways this idea could be used. I’ll certainly be thinking about it.  

You’re Never The Wrong Age

I never like to miss the chance to nail the “I’m too young/old excuse, and Nathan Clark has given me another chance. Eleven year old Nathan was doing his maths homework and needed to find a ruler. He looked down at his pencil and that’s when the inspiration hit – why not combine a ruler with a pencil? 

He went out and found a manufacturer, but their minimum order was 1,000 pencils. Not having the funds to proceed, Nathan made a video appeal and approached a fund raising company called Kickstart to raise the $350 he needed. Three days later over $2,500 had been pledged. 

 Will this make Nathan a millionaire? Probably not, but with the ambition and drive that he clearly has, Nathan will have a big success on his hands at some stage in the future.

Now consider this, if he can do all this at eleven, do you have any reason for not taking action with your own pals? 

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL FLUFFY SLIPPERS DAY!  

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

Forty-year Betting Veteran Makes Shocking Confession…

“I Still Don’t Have A Clue
  Which Horse Will Win!”

But By Analysing The Result Of Over
100,000Races, I’ve Discovered A Back Door
Route To a £20,000+ Guaranteed Year
Round Profit From Carefully Selected UK
Races…

Anyone Can Copy Me, It Takes Just
Ten Minutes A Day. And You Get To
Choose How Much You’ll Win…£10…
£20…Or Even £50 A Race!

For the full story visit;

www.streetwisenews.com/shotgun

When I was a kid, my favourite TV show was Batman – not that modern serious nonsense, but the tongue-in-cheek 1960’s series starring Adam West.

One of my favourite scenes (which actually appeared in the feature film) is when Batman is lowered into the sea from a rope ladder attached to a helicopter. His legs disappear below the waves, and when he’s hauled back up, we see that the most unconvincing rubber shark has attached itself to his leg.

Batman is unfazed. He reaches into his utility belt (how I wanted one of those!) and pulls out an aerosol can. On the side are printed the words ‘Shark Repellent Spray.’ One squirt and the unfortunate fish is forced to loosen its grip and crashes back down in to the sea.

It was a bit of frivolous fun maybe, but there’s nothing funny about shark attacks. Recently there have been two high profile cases in which tourists have been killed by sharks while out swimming. I don’t think anyone has developed a repellent spray yet, but Joel Centeio may have come up with something even better.

It’s an electronic repelling device which a swimmer can attach to his arm or wrist by Velcro. In tests carried out by divers, the compact and watertight device drove sharks away. Apparently it works by emitting an electrical pulse which affects the gel in the sharks nose.

There’s no doubt that the perceived danger of shark attack is a lot higher than the actual danger, but that will only serve to boost that market for this device.

Even paranoid British surfers and swimmers could be a viable market!

Talk O Clock

I checked the calendar and it’s not April 1st. This is a genuine business, but it has to be one of the strangest we’ve seen this year.

So you need to get up at 6.00am tomorrow morning…. What do you do? Set your alarm clock? No that’s too simple. What you do instead is contact Talk O Clock, who for a fee will get a complete stranger to ring you up and wake you in whatever way they see fit. The company have a panel of ‘wakers’ who (for reasons I can’t imagine) feel that waking a complete stranger at the crack of dawn is an enjoyable use of their time. If the customer doesn’t answer, he is called again by a robot. Amazing.

The more I think about it though, maybe it’s not such a bad idea. You have someone who wants to be woken by a stranger, and someone else who wants to wake strangers. Maybe a pair of weirdo’s who are made for each other!

Today’s National Day   

NATIONAL LEAVE THE OFFICE EARLY DAY!  

———————————————————————————–

IMPORTANT PUBLISHERS NOTICE…

Forty-year Betting Veteran Makes Shocking Confession…

“I Still Don’t Have A Clue
  Which Horse Will Win!”

But By Analysing The Result Of Over
100,000Races, I’ve Discovered A Back Door
Route To a £20,000+ Guaranteed Year
Round Profit From Carefully Selected UK
Races…

Anyone Can Copy Me, It Takes Just
Ten Minutes A Day. And You Get To
Choose How Much You’ll Win…£10…
£20…Or Even £50 A Race!

For the full story visit;

www.streetwisenews.com/shotgun