Thread: $3,000 to $1,000,000 in 15 months: HOW TO DO IT

I am curious why you chose to not allow real estate ventures into this mix. It certainly seems to be one of the very vialble ways to accomplish the task.

Great Idea for a thread. I'm still brainstorming so this isn't a plan - but rather just a thought that might spur some people

It seems that there are a number of websites where a company provided an infrastructure for others to provide content. Then, make money off subscriptions, ads, etc., or just sell the site in 15 months for $1M + Think about it - Youtube, myspace, the example above Digg all created value by having others create content for FREE. Another example I have read about in the past, and I'll dig up the name was this - a guy created a website where artists could create t-shirt designs. Those designs were then voted on by users of the site and the top 10 or 20 or whatever were then created as t-shirts that could be purchased. It was a win-win-win for the "community". The artists got a cut of the sale, the purchasers got a cool t-shirt that they voted on, and the website owner got a cut for making it all happen.

I am working on a business idea right now, which is almost in line with the conditions of this challenge. The difficult part is the limit of 3.000 start capital to begin with. Here I should think about outsourcing and a creative payment arrangement.

The idea is an online service where a monthly fee has to be paid. The information supplied by my online service obliges companies in certain industries, to get a membership of my service, which has this monthly fee, that Biophase was talking about earlier.

The question is one million realistic for this service?? The answer yes it is, but can it be done within 15 months... not sure but I will do my best to get it done!!

What kind of service it is, I will not tell, but I will tell you that is fills up an existing need, of a market that is big enough for me, but too small for big companies. Furthermore I am figuring out more ways to add value.

As soon as I can tell more I will let you know.

Dick
TNT (today not tomorrow)

Originally Posted by MQL

I am working on a business idea right now, which is almost in line with the conditions of this challenge. The difficult part is the limit of 3.000 start capital to begin with. Here I should think about outsourcing and a creative payment arrangement.

The idea is an online service where a monthly fee has to be paid. The information supplied by my online service obliges companies in certain industries, to get a membership of my service, which has this monthly fee, that Biophase was talking about earlier.

The question is one million realistic for this service?? The answer yes it is, but can it be done within 15 months... not sure but I will do my best to get it done!!

What kind of service it is, I will not tell, but I will tell you that is fills up an existing need, of a market that is big enough for me, but too small for big companies. Furthermore I am figuring out more ways to add value.

As soon as I can tell more I will let you know.

Dick
TNT (today not tomorrow)

Please keep us updated and post a new thread when you are ready -- we love reading about projects that are just starting.

Originally Posted by Russ H

The whole reason I posted this thread was to challenge ALL of us to expand our thinking.

Yes, it's easier to come up with ideas to make 10K or 100K in a year.

But if you see that, why not try to scale it up larger? Is that possible?

My favorite responses on this thread are the ones who say, "Gee, this isn't easy."

No duh!

If it were easy, it wouldn't be a challenge, eh?

Seems like we get at least 3 groups of people responding here:

Group 1: Those who read the initial post and got all fired up to come up with a solution. They worked out a whole plan-- not just a few half-hearted suggestions, but an actual implementation plan.

Groupl 2: Those who try, but are stymied by their own self-imposed sense of what is -- and IS NOT-- possible. The ones who start, and can only come up with "invest in stocks" or "try this one big general topic". No high-level planning or entrepeneureal thinking is involved.

Group 3: There are others who can't see a thing. They're dead off the line. Car never even starts. Some don't even post--- they just read and click the back button. Others post how hard this is.

All in all, this is a great cross section of typcial responses to any problem.

But you have to ask yourself: If you're in Groups 2 or 3, and you plan on being a millionaire someday, how will this ever happen if your beliefs and lack of motivation hold you back?

-Russ H.

You rock Russ...this thread has inspired me to find my new reality. In a different thread, I introduced myself and I've taken the first steps into becoming financially free - this is giving me the sparks of innovation to look past where I was before.

Real Estate (commercial) will still be in my plan, but as I said, your post and this thread have got my creative juices flowing!

Thank you!!

Originally Posted by AlwaysCurious

OK 3k to 1M in 15 months. Well, I´ve got two suggestions:

1. Forex trading.
This is the way to go: Learn all about this particular business, participate actively in specialized forums to learn markets, language and strategies. Decide for a strategy, open several demo accounts and fine tune on leverage and money/risk management. After 3 months, yes time is running, open a real account and go for it. You still got 12 months left. Keep emotions out of the way and stick to your verified strategy. Don´t change it. If it´s working you´re on the fastlane. Nevertheless it is quite risky...

...

Right now I´m heading for solution 1.

Not to destroy your enthusiasm or anything, but expecting to receive an annual rate of return of more than 10,000% from market trading a very unrealistic, even for the best traders.

If that's your strategy, you might want to try the Lotto instead...

This is something completely crazy but will probably work. SELL YOURSELF. Literally.
Start a website and sell shares of yourself. Describe yourself. Convey that your are a motivated driven person who does whatever it takes to succeed and make people buy a stake in you. Sell shares of yourself at $10 a pop. People who buy shares are entitled to future revenues that you make in your business ventures. I'm sure you can find 100,000 people in 15 months who will buy a stake in you for $10. Infact find some people who really believe in you and they will buy $100 or even $1000 of your shares. Even if you fail it will be great marketing.

I thought of this after I read about a baseball player selling his future revenue streams online.

Ok, Here goes. After reading all the posts on this subject, I think it can be done with some help. So I think one of the first things is to protect the idea while you get help. So where does one (me) get a workable non disclosure agreement? Second, should money be spent on a trademark at the inception? Third, i have the idea, does anyone care to invest? I am going to do this and it may fail but I do not think so.
Also, I have put together a business plan for a brick and mortar business, where are examples of the same thing in an internet business? How do you make money on the internet besides subscriptions, which I don't think will work for this idea or ads?
I want to leverage the minds and maybe your money and expertise in this forum and help myself.

What questions do I need to ask?

If you are willing to help, I will do.

Thanks

Ah, this will be fun. In fact I've been looking for a young hungry buck to teach just what I have learned. If only I could go back to 17 with the knowledge I have now. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I would do exactly what I did with my (now) husband. If you have $3k with which to start, then you're WAY ahead of the game. We started with $50! This will sound over-simplistic, but it is exactly what we did. Sit back and enjoy my little novella.

Spend a few days learning everything you can learn about a product niche. For us, it was menswear, since we both already had some knowledge. Then go to every thrift and resale store you can find and buy every garment they have in the top 10(ish) brands. You'd better know what sells on ebay, because that's where you're going to have to sell them. I swear I'm not selling a "get rich on ebay" seminar. This was our reality for 5+ years. This is how the numbers will unfold (could be slightly different today, as I've not done this for over a year, but it will be darned close):

$3K will buy you (on average) 250 garments, which you will sell for an avg of $80/ea. The first month, this will take you all month (at least!) to turn that inventory around, as you learn the biz. But your gross on this first round was $20K. Note: Our worst month was $2K, our best was just over $30K.

The lesson we learned WAY too late was this: While this is a very profitable venture, it is NOT repeatable, duplicatable or scale-able, because each ebay ad is unique. So in order to grow this exponentially, you will either need to:
- teach the system to employees who will duplicate what you are doing (preferrably in other cities so that you're not all competing for the same inventory) for a cut (or if you're lucky, a paycheck)
- use part of your profits to source one or two items from one of the many 3rd-world countries that are now producing textiles for pennies on the dollar (compared to US and European factories). And yes, if you have cash, they don't care if you're 17. This is easy $$. One photo shoot + one ad = multiple sales. While the margin isn't as good as the second-hand clothing, the $/hour is a no-brainer and involves no measuring, no mothhole fixing and no crotch-rot cleaning. (Should I add this to the list of sh!t jobs on the other thread?)

After 6 months, our young protege could easily have amassed $100K. At this point, he could continue to grow this business or, if he could get a parent involved, start to make some serious investments in real estate. With someone over the age of majority to sign on, I would buy REOs at 60% of assessed value (which in my area, is fairly accurate, as prices don't fluctuate like they do in many other areas), then sell them ASAP for 80% of "market" value. Even if you couldn't get financing, then put the entire sum into an house, flip it and repeat. Without the power of leverage, this would take MUCH longer. But the numbers still work.

OK, I'm braced. Shoot holes in it. I know for a fact that the ebay part of the story works. Unfortunately, we burned out before we got wise to the part about repeatable business. So we were starting every month at 0. Since we were two adults, with two homes and a child in private school to support, we didn't have the benefit of low overhead that a 16 or 17-yr-old living at home would have. But we DID manage to hire several part-time hourly folks to help us with the more mundane aspects of the business.

The real estate piece, I'm pretty sure would work - at least on paper. I hope I'm on the right track there, because that's my next step . . .