Rewrite and Republish Out-of-Print Books
Copyright on books lasts something like 70 years, so books published before 1937 are eligible for republishing by anyone if the copyright has not been renewed (which does not happen often).
Of course, most of the knowledge written and published before 1937 is rarely directly applicable to today's modern times. Some re-writing will have to be done on these old works, but modern word processors can make this job easier.
For instance, someone reportedly republished a book on stock investments from the 1920's. They performed a 'search and replace' function via Microsoft Word to automatically replace the names of specific industries and companies with today's industries and companies.
Some books may need to be completely retyped by hand, which can take considerable time. Some books may be scanned page by page, or even two pages at a time, since most scanners today have accurate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technologies. OCR means the scanner software analyzes the text in the scanned image, and converts it to editable text instead of un-editable text in an image.
Once the masterpiece has been reworked and updated for today's chic, anyone can republish the old work via lulu.com, which then also feeds listings into amazon.com. After that, it is up to the writer how much promotional work they want to do for sales.
It is still a true adage that promotional book work equals sales.
Think Bigger When Thinking of Flips
Flipping homes is such a common activity now, how many television shows feature the process?
I once read or heard Donald Trump say that flipping a $100,000 home and flipping a $100 million commercial development property is the same type of work. The only differences are in scale and complexity. However, they are similar in project management skills, attention to details, budgeting, cracking a whip on contractors, and in risk.
The risk should be considered the same in both scenarios, but the rewards are the biggest difference. A $100,000 home flip gives you a much more limited potential reward than on a $100 million flip.
So think big! Go big! Flip big!
You do not have to be in Las Vegas or New York City to flip a big commercial development.
Any medium sized town in America's heartland will do. Pick any city with 40-80,000 people, drive around, and you are bound to find an empty big-box retail store. You will probably find an old strip mall even attached. The area will be covered in graffiti and decrepit.
This is your goldmine!
Get information from the owners, the whole lot has probably been on the market for years. Get facilities, site plans, zoning information, etc.
Research the golden concept that will almost guarantee the success of your commercial flip: new urbanism.
In a nutshell, new urbanism involves higher density design than "island" stores and suburban neighborhoods. Think of constructing four-story buildings across your abandoned lot.
Each four-story building should have retail shopping/restaurant spaces on the first floor, commercial office spaces on the second floor, and residential apartments/condos on the upper floors. Basement parking is a huge plus, and should also be considered.
Consider bike paths, a plaza for public events, a fountain that kids can play through, and a little park in your development. The more reasons you give people to come interact in your development, the more successful your flip will be.
The most successful commercial flips involve work, shopping, entertainment, services, special public events, activities for all ages (2-99 years old), managed transportation solutions, and living spaces.
Plan these things, approximate where the buildings and public access ways will go, then approach an architect for some preliminary site designs and preliminary sketches of what your buildings may look like and how they might be arranged. You are not looking for detailed plans, since this is too expensive and imprudent at this time.
Get cost estimates from your architect to demolish old buildings, prep the site, and to develop the land and buildings. Go ahead and be generous at this point. Add a humble developer's hut/office in public view. This will be your point of contact and your sales office, which will be important to recoup your investment.
Take your plans, your budget, your overall concept, and find investors. Banks may or may not be willing to fund this, especially if you have no prior experience with big commercial developments.
Think outside the box. Look to rich local businessmen, treat them to a dinner and a half-hour presentation of your idea. It should not take long, they will either get the concept and see that you have the passion to follow through, or not.
Keep in mind phases. You will not construct all the buildings in a day. Plan on two buildings to go up as soon as possible, and plan for the profit on those buildings to help fund the other buildings.
The best aspect of flipping big time is not just the huge rewards at stake, it is both the free publicity buzz you will get from your project (local news loves these projects), and the hero status you will earn in the city for transforming an eyesore into a cherished space for decades.
Cash in on Apocalyptic and Survivalist Nuts
Money can be made by playing off right-wing nut fears.
Many left-wing nuts also believe the world is going to hell, but they would rather fight and protest the powers than prepare for survival. One could generate sales with books and blogs describing how to fight authority and create anarchy. That is another subject.
Right-wing nuts tend to worry about a religious war resulting in apocalypse and surviving nuclear war. These folks were the kind that helped hype the Y2K bug fear. They are afraid gays, Hillary Clinton, and the U.N. are coming to take their guns, force their families into pornography, and burn their bibles.
Take advantage of this fear by creating books and blogs that hype up these fears, creating scenarios even they never imagined. Making thin connections between seemingly unrelated events is a great way. For example, connect some aspect of the current war with the foreseen North American Union. Connect Janet Jackson's Superbowl breast reveal (the infamous wardrobe malfunction) with a terrorist bombing in the world that week; make the connection that the Janet Jackson episode provided a distraction for the bombing.
After generating fear in the absurd, then you have to transform it into an action that the believers can do to try helping themselves against the coming catastrophe.
A great way to direct their fears is towards buying emergency survival kits. There should be one for the home, one to go in the car, and one bag for each family member.
The home survival kit should include a first aid kit, full changes of clothes, plastic sheeting and tarps, ropes, chains, locks, plastic zip ties, filled water gallons, dehydrated foods, nuts, foods with high calories, flashlights, batteries, protective wear like coveralls and Kevlar gloves, tools like crowbars, adjustable wrenches, screwdrivers, staple guns, matches, lighters, etc.
The to-go survival packs should include transistor radios, cash in small bills (remember ATMs probably won't work after a disaster), important documents (home insurance policy, medical insurance cards, passport, driver's license, bank records, photos of individual family members and copies of those photos, local maps, etc.), spare keys, mylar space blanket, extra clothes fitting each person, food like sports bars and drinks, critical medicines, ibuprofen, painkillers, children's medicines, duct tape, signal devices like flares or fireworks, and multitools like leatherman or gerber.
And of course, a list should be made of the items that will be most valuable to sell after a disaster, to generate greed in their minds.
If this seems unethical to you, by all means do not do it, you need stomach for it. However, keep in mind that our mass media and government do it everyday, so why shouldn't normal entrepreneurs do it also?
Rent prom dresses out of your home
Prom dresses will always be needed in America, probably second only to food.
Every school year, all across America, high school girls are vying for pretty prom dresses.
Prom dresses are expensive.
It is possible to buy below-cost prom dresses via sales, closeouts, and used (local paper or eBay). Get a mix of modest and risque outfits. When you know you have a popular outfit, try acquiring multiple sizes of the most popular sizes.
Many people find an easy business is renting those prom dresses out of their homes. You reserve one room as your "store", and display the dresses in there.
Provide a lighted closet or privacy screen for girls to try on the dresses. Provide a 3-fold mirror for the girls to model the dresses for themselves. Take care that the mirrors reflect neutral surfaces, rather than harsh elements that could discourage buying comfort.
Rent the dresses for $10-30 for two weeks, and stipulate the dresses must be returned dry cleaned or an extra $25 fee applies. Add a $1 per day late charge on the 15th day.
Most prom dresses rent for $50+, because those businesses have to pay for expensive retail storefront space. Do not dream that you can go bigger than your home rental space, because you would have to jack up your prices accordingly.
Look at this as a way to generate some extra cash, while helping out the market of girls struggling to afford nice dresses.
Create a sales form that functions like a contract in case you have to kick ass.
Check with your city's municipal laws regarding home businesses.
Do a seminar and publish a PDF on biggest tax scam tripups
It should not be a big surprise that nobody wants to pay taxes, so everyone wants to claim as little income possible and as many deductions possible.
This zeal can lead normally intelligent people to make stupid mistakes. A common tax mistake is to try deducting the cost of home renovations. The only way home renovations are deductible are
1-if part of a flip where you live there less than two years,
2-if the renovations were needed for handicap accessibility (lower kitchen counters and bathtubs with grab bars count; new siding does not count)
3-if the renovations are directly related to a home business (an entrance to the office counts, new kitchen cabinets in the home area do not count)
Many people try to take advantage of the third deduction reason. They may run a small business out of their home, but they fail to actually do renovations related to the home business.
Many people take this deduction and get away with it the first year. They think they got away with it.
The pipers (and tax attorneys) come to be paid at the time of selling the home. Normally, people living in their homes at least two years can keep all home sale profits tax free. This is a legitimate benefit of home ownership.
People who claimed their home as a place of business must pay taxes on their home sale profits. This is a normal part of doing business.
People get tripped up and signal red flags at the IRS when they have claimed home improvement deductions as a business need, then try to keep all the profits from their home sale because they were never really running a legitimate home business.
The penalties, back taxes, and interest can be huge.
If someone could research just the top ten ways that people get caught up in tax troubles, a short PDF and fee-entrance seminar could be given to teach those things. The PDF could be sold on eBay, and the seminars could have a $10-30 per-person charge, and could be given at any local library or motel room.
Telemarketing the Easy Way with Skype
Running a telemarketing business is difficult.
There is finding a hotel or office space, paying activation and installation fees for all the phone lines, renting all the phone sets, running employment ads and going through the hiring process for the people to do your telemarketing, trying to keep those people showing up and reading your script without pissing off the customers, delivering the goods, paying out the employees and hoping they will return after payday.
Imagine using Skype to telemarket instead of paying human workers to do it?
Imagine programing Skype to call a list of phone numbers. The phone number database could be purchased, or could be a simple numeric listing. Given today's restrictive telemarketing laws, you would likely have to still purchase a vetted database/list.
Imagine Skype calling out on a broadband line (no extra phone line costs), when someone answers it plays a pre-recorded sales pitch, and directs the customers to press "1" to speak with a sales associate to complete the order. People who press "1" to order are brought up on the computer and you take their sales order.
It's like running a telemarketing room, but with virtually no phone costs or employee costs if you can take the orders yourself. Telemarketing profits would shoot through the roof.
DUI and DWI Humiliation Programs
Given the huge number of DUI and DWI's around America, there seems to be opportunity for creative local entrepreneurial solutions. Austin, Texas appears to have an unusually bad problem with DUI and DWI offenders, with DWI attorneys and DUI attorneys paying top dollar for online ads.
These DUI and DWI offenders are a criminal justice conundrum. Their problem is more bad judgment and chemical addiction than criminal intent. However, they are endangering us all, and when they do hurt people or property they must pay the price.
Unfortunately, our prison and jail system is also overloaded, and creative alternative punishments DUI / DWI offenders are needed to ease the overcrowding burden.
I suspect one could build a private business based on punishing and rehabilitating DUI and DWI offenders. The punishments could include the company supervising offenders in public cleanup efforts while wearing bright yellow jumpers identifying their crime. The company could offer some of the best counseling techniques, GPS-bracelets to track offenders going into bars, and selling and installing those breathalyser ignition systems into offender cars.
Develop a local business that addresses the punishment and rehabilitation problems of DUI and DWI offenders, and you will likely soon win municipal contracts from grateful criminal justice systems.
Especially if you live in Austin, Texas.
