What will Twitter cost your business?

The short answer is : not yet.   Twitter usage is incredibly high, well into the super millions in fact.   And, chances are, if you own a business you have an account.   However, plans are afoot to charge businesses to use the service.   And it is going to happen soon.

Why?   Well, Twitter is free, and free means no profit.   The guys who founded the social networking behemoth managed to pay for it using venture capital.   With most venture capital funded projects, the venture capitalists want to see a return on their investment within a year or so, at the latest.   Twitter’s success is the only thing that has kept the money guys from getting restless, so far at least.

But people are getting twitchy in Twitter World.   You see, Twitter could have started including advertising years ago, and I for one would not be too bothered if I saw ads on it.   But they haven’t done it.   they’ve avoided it without compromise.   To understand why they have not advertised, we need to think about the good old business bluffing trick.

The more Twitter hold advertisers off, the more advertisers will be willing to pay.   Just hazard a guess,right now, as to how much Coca Cola would be willing to pay for even a small box ad unit.  Or how about a movie studio?

Exactly.   I suspect the guys at Twitter never ever want to work again after this.   So I reckon that they are planning this small foray into paid services for businesses as a starter.   Eventually they might well allow advertising.   And then they will make billions.

So far, Twitter is full of business spam Tweets.   Adding this paid service thing may help this, but I seriously doubt it.   The owners of Twitter are sitting on a seriously big golden egg, but I would be very surprised if you didn’t see advertising on there within the next three years.   And then they will make their millions.

Greed?   No, just great business sense that we can all learn from.    There are the seeds of great small business startup advice here in fact.   Make  a product or service that people desire, then focus it entirely on the end user.   Then wait, and wait, and wait some more.   Value is created, and, eventually, someone will want to pay the product’s true value, if not more.

Learn from Twitter, take business planning advice from them.   They know what they are doing.

Until next time, work smart.

Tweet This Post

The perfect image during a recession.

Kiddicare have gone all huge on us.

They were not exactly small in the first place, but now they seem to  have sneaked up on us and created this mammoth store in Peterborough, England.   I could be wrong on this one, but I never noticed any ‘real life’ Kiddicare stores before.

Wrong or right, this store seems pretty new.   And, let’s face it, new stores within the last eighteen months is news.   But maybe this kind of stuff  isn’t going to be such a novel thing for much longer. 

I’m not going to go on and on about how the recession is over (it most certainly isn’t), but I will direct your attention to a rather interesting piece here about how recessions are perfect for starting  a new business.

People can’t get work, so creating work naturally corners the workforce when it comes to low cost talent.   Risk is not a problem for most workers now, either.   Everyone realises that jobs are not safe, so a start up that comes ready packed with a great idea that has true potential is attractive.

Put simply, a start up that has good backing and a great concept is as valuable as any other company right now.  

Which brings me back to Kiddicare.   We are in the process of buying  a new pram soon, and finding a good one is not easy (we’re very particular as parents).   So we look around and find something that is almost like what we want, but it is only available in the Peterborough store.  Nowhere near us, in other words.

The Peterborough store is big, flashy, exciting, and obviously loaded with money.   We want to go there.   We may well jump in our car and make the journey.  

You know why?   Because we are willing to spend money to get what we want.

Kiddicare (and all of the other companies worldwide that are expanding or just looking good right now) are proving that there is money, that people want to create jobs, and that a recession means absolutely nothing to those who have a sound business and a great product or service.

You can survive the recession, just start a business.

There seriously has never been a better time.

Are you ready?

Until next time, work smart.

Tweet This Post

Huge sales, courtesy of a luxury chocolate product.

Slap bang in the middle of a recession, a brand new luxury product starts to roll out.   Here is an article about camels’ milk chocolate.

This will sell comfortably, even though it will only ever have  a small level of accessability.   It is a perfect luxury product, in that it is of high quality (check out that vitamin content) and unique (most of the world’s population see a camel once in their lifetime, a cow hundreds of times).   This is a guaranteed seller, even with the focused niche.

Investors who want something to talk about around the dinner table, take note.  

Until next time, work smart.

Tweet This Post

If you have cash, investment in the company seems obvious, and they don’t even work with iPhones.   Alongside other ‘on-trend’ mobile devices (e.g. CrackBerry), the iPhone only accounts for 13% of mobile sales anyway (sorry, guys).

The business model is all about ease of use and transparency.   They cancel checks if a customer ‘accidentally’ buys (think 12 year olds who want ring tones and use their parent’s credit cards), for example. 

A ridiculously simple business idea then.   Some entrepreneurs provide a service that ten million worth of customers want, at the right price, and with a simple point of access.

Just remember, when it comes to apps, iPhone et al…13%

These guys get…the rest.

Until next time, work smart.

Tweet This Post

Every business should have a spot on this space.

It seems that every major business in the world is on Facebook.   This report shows why.   Any entrepreneur can get themselves hooked up to this phenomenon within minutes.

If you aren’t on, you should be…

Until next time, work smart.

Tweet This Post