How to Create Your Own Offline Business

Lots of people on this forum have a biz offering services - SEO, websites, etc. - and that's a great way to make money offline.

But there is another method that people can use, and the learning curve isn't necessarily high. (Some aspects of it may be more so than others.)

My off-line business is a publishing company. I have different divisions within that company, but the umbrella company is a publishing company. (The great thing about having a publishing company as your main company is that it's flexible. )

Here is a basic outline of how you can come up with your own unique idea for your own unique, brand-able business.

1. Start local - unless you live in a very tiny town, it's best to start local for what I am about to suggest. Not only will you be familiar with the area, but you can also go in person to businesses if you need to in order to seal the deal. You won't need 50 businesses in order to make yourself a nice income - the method that I'm showing you can be done with as little as eight or 10 businesses that are on board.

2. Create something of value - there are a few examples of this on the forum already (Martin Buckley has a number of ideas. Bob Ross has his postcards), but the sky is the limit when it comes to creating your own business.

Do you live in a tourist town? Create a guide for tourists. Do you live in a college town? Create a special offer packet for college students, or maybe even some tips for getting a summer job, or tips for helping to finance their college costs. Or you can create something that would appeal to moms, like an activity suggestion packet, or a list of local free attractions that are kid friendly.

Newsletters, place mats, city guides - you really are only limited by your imagination.

3. Investigate printing costs - a good ballpark figure is 10,000, but you don't need that many if it is something that is fairly targeted. If this sounds like a huge amount, it really breaks down to dropping off 500 guides at 20 restaurants, for example. Or 1000 at 10 places.

Whatever your printing costs are, divide that by the number of advertisements you can have. Then multiply that number by two. That should, be a starting point for how much you charge for an ad - but you can charge more if you can provide more value to the business owner.

An example would be if my printing cost for 10,000 brochures is $2500. If I can get 16 ads on one, the cost per advertiser breaks down to around $155. Twice that is $310, but I shoot for $495 because of the nature of the advertising. (That gives me a lot of wiggle room, if I need it.)

4. Sell the ad spots - I am not going to reinvent the wheel here. You can see all kinds of threads about how to find clients: telemarketing, walking in cold, direct mail, e-mail, in-person networking, etc. Remember that you are providing a good value for your advertisers, and you are also introducing a new method of reaching a different set of prospects. If you believe in what you are offering, people pick up on that. Having a mockup helps tremendously. You can generally get a mockup for just a few dollars, if that. It's well worth it.

Make sure to advertise your own biz on each piece. You don't have to take up a whole ad space for it - a tagline will do.

5. Lather, rinse, repeat - Your first month or two may not be spectacular. It happens. Keep going.

Do you have a great biz going locally? Are you selling all your add spots every month? Then think about expanding into some other areas, if you want. Or create more than one project. This is a scalable biz model.

I know this won't be a revelation for the veterans here, but hopefully it'll help some of the newbies get some ideas.