
How to Get Good at Making Money - 6ren
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110301/making-money-small-business-advice-from-jason-fried_Printer_Friendly.html
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asanwal
I'm not sure this article will show you "how to make money" (I doubt any
article can do that). Nevertheless, there were some gems in here that seem to
contradict or generally undiscussed as part of the current startup zeitgeist &
ethos.

"Making money is not the same as starting a business" -

A lot of the conversation, content, advice, etc today seems about the "art of
the start" which is about fundraising, customer development, etc. Those may be
necessary but definitely are not sufficient to having a business.

"...from Day One, a funded business is all about spending money...Anyone can
spend money. Making it is the hard part"

Gary Vaynerchuk had a similar comment about us celebrating the fundraise.
Again, fundraising is a worthwhile and perhaps useful milestone, but it's a
means to an end which should ultimately be building a real sustainable
business.

These points are what you'd expect from Jason Fried, but it was refreshing to
see nonetheless.

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medinism
I am especially fond of the make money from your customer advice - under boot-
strapping. Sure there are biz that will make $ in the long term from having
large volumes of something, but for the rest of us, charge early!

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chunkyslink
Duplicate:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271421>

The printer friendly version is actually nicer to read:)

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brc
I love the idea of buying and reselling the same item to see if you can make
money. Very good.

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codexon
This advice is horribly outdated stuff from the 90's.

With Ebay and Paypal fees eating up at least 10% of your earnings, it is
highly unlikely you can just resell iPods or anything else on Ebay and make a
profit.

"I love doing this, because there's no real risk involved."

No real risk except losing all the money you've invested and wasting a lot of
time making Ebay entries and repeatedly learning how to pack and ship.

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danmaz74
The point isn't earning money, but learning to sell, just at the cost of fees.
And where does the risk of "losing all the money you've invested" come from?
If they bring the fees to 100%?

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codexon
Take it from someone who has bought and sold on Ebay recently.

The point is that you won't even be selling at the cost of the fees. Needing
to make at least 10% profit due to Paypal and Ebay fees is a huge obstacle
unless you are buying in bulk. In this case you are assuming a huge amount of
risk for a 5-10% discount because you are probably buying 100s at a time.

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ra
So many gems in this article, like this:

 _" Whether you're playing drums or building a business, you're going to be
pretty bad at something the first time you try it. The second time isn't much
better. Over time, and after a lot of practice, you begin to get there."_

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kghose
Small point that puzzled me: He said he got a reseller's license to buy stuff
for himself from distributors, and he mentioned he bought "a" radar gun. I
thought distributors only sold in bulk and the discount only came out because
of the bulk part.

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ovi256
Of course, that's "mostly" true. But he was a sixteen year old with a
reseller's licence. Most people love to help a kid out. So I'm pretty sure
that's what happened, he talked to them and the rules were bent.

That's an even more important lesson that should be spelled out: rules are for
shy people who are afraid to ask.

That reminds me of a passage from Jobs' biography. When they started
prototyping the Apple I, Woz needed memory chips. But those were expensive and
available only in quantity, so they would be hard to get for a prototype. Jobs
just called and got the manufacturer to send some samples. That blew Woz'
mind.

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zrail
I've done that trick with chips a few times. Manufacturers want to sell you
huge bulk supplies and their costs are so low for things like simple logic or
ADC chips that they'll send you a single tube of them just for asking.

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ilaksh
"I realized that when customers shop for shoes, they do three things. They
consider the look and style. They try them on to see if they're comfortable.
And they consider the price. Endorsements by famous athletes help a lot, too.
But the technology, the features, the special-testing labs—I can't remember a
single customer who cared."

Does this apply to software or online services? What do those customers really
care about?

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CosmicShadow
You know when you hit the Readability bookmarklet and say "god this is just
beautiful", this is one of those situations.

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phatbyte
I couldn't agree more on points 5 and 6.

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billpatrianakos
I absolutely love the guys at 37signala. In particular, their writing style. I
recently bought Rework and it was an incredibly easy to finish book, fairly
short, but at the same time packed full of more information than books I've
read that were twice as long on the subject.

I like the ideas put forth here. Sometimes we forget about these basic
concepts like the fact that we deserve to be paid fairly for our work. How
simple is that?! I know I lose sight of it all the time. I've been in business
for a year (2 weeks is when my 1 year anniversary is) and I now charge ten
times as much as I did the first month I started and I _still_ have to raises
prices a lot more. This isn't a good thing. It's bad because I obviously
undersold myself because I lost sight of the fact that I'm giving something
valuable to someone and I should be well paid for it. Instead I felt guilty
for charging when I was enjoying my work.

Most of their writings on business is so simple but profound (to me at least).
From what I've read, it all boils down to making sure you're being paid for
your work, always see if there's a better way to do things, and your business
should grow into itself instead of fitting into someone else's mold (e.g.
Following business advice that doesn't apply to what you're trying to achieve
just because everyone else is doing it and that's what you "should do". ).

I also love the fact that they're Chicago boys. I always root for the home
team, haha. I have a friend who knows Jason Fried and I really hope I get an
introduction one day.

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mhartl
s/money/wealth/g

