Hopefully this will help someone else who is trying to figure out what type of business to start.
I love to save money. If I am going to buy anything, I will make sure I find the cheapest price before I buy it, especially if it’s a big-ticket item. I even go as far as to match up coupons to the grocery circulars, and go to 2-3 grocery stores a week if I can get great deals. I even order coupons on eBay if I see a great deal where I can get something for free (minus the cost of the coupons and shipping).
So when I was trying to figure out what type of business to start, I really genuinely wanted to help others save money. I thought, why on earth shouldn’t everyone do the same little things I do so that they could save money? I know a lot of people wish that they could save more, and if I could do something small that would help others, it would be a win/win situation!
I came up with what I thought was a really great idea. I spend a lot of time each week (and I mean a LOT…) looking for good deals. I go through the Sunday circulars we get in the paper, I go through the grocery circulars, and I also look online at many different places to find good deals on all types of products. So, I decided to create a newsletter that gets sent out twice a week. Each newsletter would have deals in different categories. So one newsletter would have clothing, electronics, and travel deals, and the next might have deals on home, kids stuff, and office supplies. I would even include links to free stuff in every newsletter, so that people can sign up to get free shampoo samples, snacks, magazines, and more. I would also take requests, so if someone was looking for a particular item, I would find the best price for them. I was also going to promise that each newsletter would have at least $200.00 worth of savings in it.
I first tried pricing it at $9.97 a month, and later went down to $4.97 a month, but never got a single subscriber. It seemed that no one wanted to pay money in order to save money, even though they would be saving so much more than they would be paying.
This is where I made my first mistake: Even if you have a passion for something, and think it’s a great idea…make sure that the public is willing to pay for it!
Well, once I realized that people just didn’t want to pay for it, I decided to make it a free newsletter. I would still put the best deals in the newsletter, but if they had an affiliate program that I was part of, I would make a tiny percentage of what they bought.
As soon as the newsletter became free, I had a bunch of subscribers sign up. A year later, I have an even bigger list of subscribers. So it wasn’t that people didn’t like the idea of the newsletter, and didn’t want to save money, it just wasn’t something that they were willing to pay for.
So I was still able to do what I liked, but I just had to change it around so that it worked for the group of people I was marketing to.
But if I had first done more research, and had realized that people might not be willing to pay for it, I might have either not started the newsletter at all or have come up with a different way to monetize it.
If you’re going to start a new business, you should first do the research to make sure people are willing to buy what you’re trying to sell!
I have since learned that lesson, and have moved on…but it was a hard lesson to learn!
