My Cheaper Goods from Thomas

www.mycheapergoods.com - Make money with your own shop. This is actually my personal shopping portal hosted by and run by EI42. I joined the scheme about 18 months ago and I have made a bit of money in cash.

Every single time I purchase something online I just type in the name of the retailer on www.mycheapergoods.com and click on the link or logo of the retailer. Simple as this and I get referred to their shopping portal, I shop as I would do normally but the difference this time is that I get paid back in cash a certain percentage on my purchase. What's even better is that if any of my friends purchase through their shopping portal I get paid too - obviously a whole lot less but nevertheless passive income.

Basically the retailers are happy that you start your own portal as this mean they don't need to fork out on advertising cost and as such can pay you commission instead. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

The commissions vary from retailer to retailer. The lowest around are around 0.5%, some go up to 10% (rare). I think the average is around 2%.

Insurance companies seem to pay rather well. if the commissions are low you might think it is not worth bothering. Do you say this when you use your clubcard to gather points on the checkout? If you had the same opportunity with your supermarket loyalty card as you do with Ei42, would you refer your friends so that you all benefited? Of course you would. When you earn 1p it is really not much but when hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of people earn 1p for you. Now thats worthwhile.

The other thing I hear sometimes from people is that they don't have enough friends to make this worthwhile. This is the beauty of www.mycheapergoods.com, you do not need to tell many people. It is not a quick rich scheme. Set yourself a goal and refer 5 friends, if your friends refer another 5 friends and they refer another 5 friends well then you have exceeded more than one hundred people in your group who can earn money for you and obviously they earn money for them.

Currently there are about 1500 retailers in the UK and equally there are as many retailers in the US. So even if you have friends in the US they can buy through your website and you will get paid.

For the purpose of the challenge setting up your own shop will cost you nothing at all and as such there is no risk in loosing anything.

Why did I not choose a cash back website?

There are a lot of cashback sites and they all make a lot of promises. If you added together the number of users of cashback sites in the UK I'd say there would be at most 2 million users, but lets cut them some slack and assume there are 3 Million users. In the UK there are about 30 Million adults using the internet so my view is simple. Lets leave the 3 Million cashback site users alone with the possibility of earning a larger percentage on a smaller amount if that is what they want. They probably wont see the bigger picture and therefore will not see that their own spending governs what they can earn and not just the percentage the cashback site pays them. So the cashback sites get 3 Million users and we get the 27 Million people that would never use a cashback site. I'd fit into that category and perhaps you do too? I would not be the slightest interested in the hassle of buying through cashback sites, giving them all my details, the possibility of receiving loads of spam emails or doing surveys to earn a few pence for myself. Ei42 or MyCheaperGoods.com is different, you give up a little financially now to gain a HASSLE free purchasing method as you just use the site and do not worry about what the commission is. Then in the medium to long term you will make Much Much more than those using any cashback site.

Signing up is easy … go to www.mycheapergoods.com, click on the right top corner and join. Your own shop could be up and running in a matter of minutes.

Thanks - From Thomas!

Challenge Day 15 - Update

It's now officially half way through the first months challenge.

You may think 15 days isnt long - this guy changed his body this much in 15 days! pretty mad!

No one is completely out yet! Nearly everyone appears to be making good progress!

I have spent a little time and managed to do well in retail and not so well with a gambling experiment. I have learnt about opportunities that were always around me - "diamonds on the soles of your shoes!", that I had never noticed before. Oh and yesterday I found a penny on the floor.

Thomas has been lucky; he found £5. He has bought some cheap items from his original £1 at a flea market/boot fair and already sold one of them on eBay and has another item on the go, making a profit so far. He did notice the eBay more than normal as the seed amount was so small to begin with. Also he very opportunistically became a waterboy when the local kitchen in our office temporarily closed down. 5p a cup - magic!

Malcs and Team Ganapathiraman and Ramesh had less than perfect starts but have enough time to recover, both have learnt alot about eBay.

Stew has one item on eBay that he sourced from a boot fair; which looks like it should do very well. No bids yet

Essex Girl has shown us all how it's done by picking an item up at a boot fair and selling it for a great profit on eBay!

Vikram, has won a bet making the seemingly improbably a reality.

Sieng told me about some plans but I haven't heard how he is getting on, will be very interested to hear how it's going!

I haven't heard anything from Pinal or Danny come on guys, time is running short!

So far, I have made over £5 in google advertising on the blog. I am thinking alot more the content of my posts, spell checking and all. The blog is slowly gaining in popularity and it is getting well indexed on google searches coming up top for "recession way forward", and high for "double your money", but not quite as well on yahoo or bing, I will continue to work on that in the coming month - any tips??.

I think I find out what I have made through sprinklepenny tomorrow. I have now setup an amazon affiliate account, and put some links to products, which I think I make 10% on any sales made from that click off my site. Not sure whether to include none, some or all of these amounts in my challenge or not yet - not sure when they become liquid - maybe if I tithe I will feel great about it and will have to include it!

Little Money, Big Money - What is the difference between doubling £1 or £1024??

Obviously apart from the emotional aspect of dealing in single £'s or £1000's of £'s; if you start to think how you could spend your seed, outside of the challenge or consume your seed, you might start to loose your way! It must be interesting to see when if people are heading for £1 million, do they chicken out? and at what kind of amount? Just as it's interesting to watch people playing game shows like "Who want's to be a millionaire" or "Deal or No Deal"; to see if their nerve goes; you can see them heading towards a particular amount, I guess their character comes into play; I wonder what those characteristics can be distilled down to?


I wonder if people will treat £1000 they had doubled to differently to if they had earned that money in a more standard way?

Because a one month period is a limited period of time, of average 4 weekends and 4 weeks there is a limited amount of buying and selling opportunities that may appear to the participant, only so many 10 day auctions, etc...




A Simple Equation??

b = buy price
s = sell price
e = buy and sell pair opportunities
u = units
p = profit

presuming you sell for more than you buy.



                 p = ∑e…  u x (s - b)



So, what I am saying is from month to month e remains roughly constant, might be worth thinking about how you could make this larger - collaboration, something else?

I think u, s and b are your main variables to play with as your monthly seed and targets move up and up throughout the year, so in other words, you can either sell more of the same stuff (increase u or units) or you can change the stuff you sell; i.e. bigger ticket items, or at a wider profit margin - larger buy and sell prices - coining a banking term keeping 'positive jaws' where incoming growth exceeds outgoing 'growth'.

i.e. for my shortbread example

b = buy price = 0.9p
s = sell price = 12.22p
e = buy and sell pair opportunities = 1

u = units = 30

             p = profit = 1 x 30 x (12.22p - 0.9p)


So for the rest of this month I could have more e's, and now my seed fund has increased I could increase my u's

But for the £512 to £1,024 month I would have to sell a large volume of shortbread to achieve my target and the limitation of e's in a single month could prove a challenge. Thou certainly not impossible.

Probably it's easier to raise the ticket price of the type of items you are targetting though you would expect to find it harder to find the same kind of margin; though I should learn to not pre-judge, if that is true - there is probably a fine balance between the possible profit margin and size of the price of the items.

Gambling, Risk, Being Risky and Luck

Gambling

Even though I have made the month 1 and 2 targets, I still wanted to carry on with my £1 plan, which was to bet 50p on 5x 10p bets on premiership and cup football matches. I wanted to see if this might be a viable option, Last week I bet 10p on each of the following:-

• Chelsea to win against QPR
• Manchester United to win against Wolves
• Manchester City to win against Fulham.

I got 2 out of 3 correct, which you might think isn't bad; but actually it's terrible at these odds.

So I got 12p, original 10p + 2p winnings from the Chelsea win, and 13p from the Manchester United win, original 10p + 3p winnings. So, I made 25% on these 2, or 5p altogether, but lost 10p on the Manchester City game as although they won the game, the game was a draw at 90 minutes.

So basically, I am 5p down so far, I am going to continue the experiment, with 2x 10p bets on Saturday. Probably Chelsea to win and Tottenham to win, which if they both come in successfully, will take my 50p to 51p, you have to love the bookies business model! quite a different return to the retail/shortbread 30p experiment!

OK, so again over the weekend - won 1, lost 1. My betting experiment is not going very well!!

I remember reading/listening to a definition from Robert Kiyosaki - from the Rich Dad Poor Dad brand, a definition of Risk and Risky in the context of Financial Intelligence. Where he would commonly hear people say that investing is too risky, where he would state that they were talking from a context, that investing was risky for them as them didn't have the knowledge or financial intelligence to be able to confidently make decisions, so investing isn't risky, there is an element of risk involved in investing, but it's the person that is risky, or acting risky, if they are not operating with enough information. I think it was from chapter 15 of Rich Dad's Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in That the Poor Do Not!

Some interesting definitions below of Risk, Risky and Luck.

Risk
Definition - from Wikipedia - Risk
"Risk is a concept that denotes the precise probability of specific eventualities. Technically, the notion of risk is independent from the notion of value and, as such, eventualities may have both beneficial and adverse consequences. However, in general usage the convention is to focus only on potential negative impact to some characteristic of value that may arise from a future event.
Risk can be defined as “the threat or probability that an action or event will adversely or beneficially affect an organization's ability to achieve its objectives”[1]. In simple terms risk is ‘Uncertainty of Outcome’, either from pursuing a future positive opportunity, or an existing negative threat in trying to achieve a current objective."



Being Risky

Definition - from Diction.com - Risky  
Risky - "attended with or involving risk; hazardous: a risky undertaking."

Luck

I have added Luck to this section as Thomas found a £5 on the floor and is using this for the challenge. Hope this doesn't upset the other participants, I have allowed this to be included in the challenge. As it was in the challenge window and brings an interesting aspect to the challenge of luck.

Definition - from Wikipedia - Luck

Interpretations of Luck

Luck is interpreted and understood in many different ways.

Luck as lack of control

Luck refers to that which happens to a person beyond that person's control. This view incorporates phenomena that are chance happenings, a person's place of birth for example, but where there is no uncertainty involved, or where the uncertainty is irrelevant. Within this framework one can differentiate between three different types of luck:

1. Constitutional luck, that is, luck with factors that cannot be changed. Place of birth and genetic constitution are typical examples.
2. Circumstantial luck - with factors that are haphazardly brought on. Accidents and epidemics are typical examples.
3. Ignorance luck, that is, luck with factors one does not know about. Examples can be identified only in hindsight.

Luck as a fallacy

Another view holds that "luck is probability taken personally." A rationalist approach to luck includes the application of the rules of probability, and an avoidance of unscientific beliefs. The rationalist feels the belief in luck is a result of poor reasoning or wishful thinking. To a rationalist, a believer in luck who asserts that something has influenced his or her luck commits the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" logical fallacy: that because two events are connected sequentially, they are connected causally as well. In general:

A happens (luck-attracting event or action) and then B happens;
Therefore, A influenced B.

In the rationalist perspective, probability is only affected by confirmed causal connections.
The gambler's fallacy and inverse gambler's fallacy both explain some reasoning problems in common beliefs in luck. They involve denying the unpredictability of random events: "I haven't rolled a seven all week, so I'll definitely roll one tonight".
Luck is merely an expression noting an extended period of noted outcomes, completely consistent with random walk probability theory. Wishing one "good luck" will not cause such an extended period, but it expresses positive feelings toward the one—not necessarily wholly undesirable.

Luck as an essence

There is also a series of spiritual, or supernatural beliefs regarding fortune. These beliefs vary widely from one to another, but most agree that luck can be influenced through spiritual means by performing certain rituals or by avoiding certain circumstances.
One such activity is prayer, a religious practice in which this belief is particularly strong. Many cultures and religions worldwide place a strong emphasis on a person's ability to influence their fortune by ritualistic means, sometimes involving sacrifice, omens or spells. Others associate luck with a strong sense of superstition, that is, a belief that certain taboo or blessed actions will influence how fortune favors them for the future.
Luck can also be a belief in an organization of fortunate and unfortunate events. Luck is a form of superstition which is interpreted differently by different individuals. Famous Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, who founded analytical psychology, coined the term "synchronicity", which he described as "a meaningful coincidence".
Christianity and Islam believe in the will of a supreme being rather than luck as the primary influence in future events. The degrees of this Divine Providence vary greatly from one person to another; however, most acknowledge providence as at least a partial, if not complete influence on luck. These religions, in their early development, accommodated many traditional practices. Each, at different times, accepted omens and practiced forms of ritual sacrifice in order to divine the will of their supreme being or to influence divine favoritism. The concept of "Divine Grace" as it is described by believers closely resembles what is referred to as "luck" by others.
Mesoamerican religions, such as the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas, had particularly strong beliefs regarding the relationship between rituals and luck. In these cultures, human sacrifice (both of willing volunteers and captured enemies) was seen as a way to please the gods and earn favor for the city offering the sacrifice. The Mayans also believed in blood offerings, where men or women wanting to earn favor with the gods, to bring about good luck, would cut themselves and bleed on the gods' altar.
Many traditional African practices, such as voodoo and hoodoo, have a strong belief in superstition. Some of these religions include a belief that third parties can influence an individual's luck. Shamans and witches are both respected and feared, based on their ability to cause good or bad fortune for those in villages near them.

Luck as a placebo

Some encourage the belief in luck as a false idea, but which may produce positive thinking, and alter one's responses for the better. Others, like Jean-Paul Sartre and Sigmund Freud, feel a belief in luck has more to do with a locus of control for events in one's life, and the subsequent escape from personal responsibility. According to this theory, one who ascribes their travails to "bad luck" will be found upon close examination to be living risky lifestyles. In personality psychology, people reliably differ from each other depending on four key aspects: beliefs in luck, rejection of luck, being lucky, and being unlucky.^[16] People who believe in good luck are more optimistic, more satisfied with their lives, and have better moods.^[16] If "good" and "bad" events occur at random to everyone, believers in good luck will experience a net gain in their fortunes, and vice versa for believers in bad luck. This is clearly likely to be self-reinforcing. Thus, a belief in good luck may actually be an adaptive meme.

Match play Conkers for sale

I am confident that once word gets out on the street, they will sell like hot cakes (or shortbread )

Conkers For Sale Here!

From Malcs

Pewter and brass Alchemy celtic hip flask - grab a bargain!

Look cool and always have an emergency tipple in your pocket.

This Alchemy of Sheffield pewter hip flask has a very stylish brass celtic inlay, and can hold 4oz of your poison of choice.  Be it brandy for mountain rescues, or whisky for medicinal purposes, you never know when a quick snifter is just what the doctor ordered.

Click here to place a bid and enhance your life with this beautiful artefact.

From Stew

Yesterday, I turned 27p into £3.80, a whopping 1407.41%

Yesterday... yesterday was a Massive day for me and my participation in my challenge; I turned 27p into £3.80, a whopping 1407.41 %

So my currently seed money is running at £4.53, which means, as long as I don't loose it, I have achieved the month 1 and 2 goals of £2 and £4, for October and November; Incredible!

I was looking for a cake mix in Tesco's, but unfortunately they were too expensive, but I found something that surprised me shortbread biscuits (10 fingers to a pack) for 9p from Tesco's 'Value' range, less than 1p per finger! And to top it off they taste great!

Why have I never found these before? Normally I wouldn't have been looking for cheap confectionary, or rarely very carefully looked at prices when shopping, so hadn't noticed them???

I was thinking about making a cake from the cake mix and cutting it up into 6 slices and selling them at work, but when I saw these, the same feeling came over me when I saw the 20p book at the charity stall, that feeling in my gut screaming at me to notice that this was undervalued - significantly, in a different market.

I had to get rid of the Tesco Value image, so discarded the packaging and grabbed a load of 'free' kitchen tissues from the office kitchen, and stacked all 30 fingers up and used the tissues to hand them out.

I work in a large office in Central London, UK. You literally can't buy anything for less than 40p, and that's from a vending machine, even in there; general prices range from 40p - £1, you have to love the vending machine business model! Like, I expect, many other large offices, there is also a Starbucks and internal restaurant in the basement of the building, their general prices ranging from ~50p - ~£6 per item, I did spot 2 shortbread were being sold there for 75p after I had completed my challenge; incredible (see image; right). So, I choose a pricing model that would significantly undercut the competition and still make me a hansom profit. So 2 fingers for 20p should do the trick, to sell the 3 packs worth, I would have to make 15 individual sales.

I then composed an email to a load of people I know at work, maybe around 40-50 people, that I was selling shortbread and asking them to help me on my challenge. And to come quick while stocks last! have to pay attention to sales copy, calls to action and all that - should probably learn more about the subject.

Within 3 hours I had sold the lot! A strange thing happened, people overpaid! "I'll have a pounds worth", then as I was counting out ten fingers, they said that's enough, and once they were all gone someone came up and gave me 20p even though I explained there was none left??? I wasn't expecting that, but think it's valid to count those amounts to the challenge. Someone asked if it was for charity, I said no, I'm honestly no sure what I would do with 4k if I get there, maybe charity would be a good way to go, but they did say if it was they would have bought more.

If people asked about the challenge I explained what I was doing, if people asked if I had made the shortbread, I simple said I couldn't say if I had or had not. Also when they were all gone I had 4 enquiries about if there were anymore available, which is a great sign!

Makes you wonder what the profit margins are for both Tesco's -do Tesco's actually make a profit on this? or is this a loss leader for them? and for Starbucks; how much of a mark up are they achieving?
I hope people enjoyed the biscuits and don't feel that I have ripped them off! I don't think I have I think the 'market' here is a rip off; which is what I am actually taking advantage of.

My first step or two on my doublers journey

I have finally past two major milestones:-

1. I have sourced my first product(s), I have spent 27p of the first pound, and believe from repackaging alone (and a different marketplace), I can translate that up to £3.00 (15 x 20p sales), let's see how I get on tomorrow. If it all works I'll detail in blog in a day or so exactly what I did.
2. I finally got the sprinklepenny.com widget working, see top left of my blog, who knows what that will bring. Time will tell!

I have also linked to a number of other doublers blogs; mainly from doublersden.co.uk, see bottom left hand side "Other Doublers".

I am now looking at the upcoming football fixtures and odds to see where to put 5 x 10p bets on this week and weekend.

Challenge Day 7 - We are off the blocks

It looks as though a number of the participants have made transaction over the weekend; there has been a hive of activity at boot fairs, flea markets and eBay. Also a potentially controversial lucky street find of £5.

Please make sure you record all transactions buying and selling with the form created for the challenge, see Record a Transaction

Team Ganapathiraman and Ramesh are off and have got this on eBay, see 1999 US State Quater - PENNSYLVANIA

Stew and Thomas have both sourced products and also either have got listings or are planning to put up listings in the near future, happy to link to the items from here.

I had very little time over the weekend, but did manage two attempts to source some items,

1.      A shopping trip to Tesco’s where I was keeping an eye out for low cost items, I was previously thinking about a child’s cake or cookie mix, but unfortunately most of these are more than the initial £1 stake, cookie mix ~£1.29, and most cake mixes £1.79 to £1.99. Though I did spot 2 items that caught my eye – more to follow shortly.

2.      A trip to a Cancer Research Charity shop in Bromley, they seemed to be a lot more clued up around the pricing of items; than the fun day 20p books stall, with only Videos at £1 – I suspect very difficult to sell, most items were above £1, tapes £1.50, DVD’s £3 - £4. So no real options there and no moral dilemma.

It’s interesting to see how people are approaching the challenge some using part of the £1 seed, others going 100% of the seed on 1 item. I wonder if people would use the split/approach if the seed was larger; would you buy a single item at 2k to make 4k, maybe that is a very reasonable thing to do.

I think I am going to play it safe, spending around 30p on some Tesco’s items to be repackaged and sold at a different marketplace, and maybe around 50p betting on English premiership football matches, 10p bets on favourites, I expect to make the first target with the 30p items.

So I have formed 2 risk categories.

·         “Sure thing” or trade risk.

·         “High” or gambling risk.

It’s interesting how people are naturally finding inefficient markets to source products, and taking the products to a different market to realise a better value (market of choice appears to be eBay), maybe that’s going to have to be a common theme.

Also, most people seem to be trading there way to profit. Trade - as in buy low, sell high. Rather than using any other strategy, which may change as the seed amount increases and other options become more viable.

Recession, mindset and a way forward?

I don't know how much you all know about the law attraction. It simply states that "what you focus on, give energy and emotion to, you get more of." - see The Secret for a slick package of the topic.

If you look at how this applies to money, on a personal level; if you focus on getting out of DEBT, your focusing on debt; so you get more debt. This may sound a bit hokey! but it makes you wonder...


If you focus on accumulation and what you want in life, why do you want money and what would you use it for and put energy and focus into that, that is also what you'll get - simple right.

Now with the help of google trends, if you look at the below graph, since the tail end of 2007, the volume of news articles around "recession" rose significantly (blue line in search volumes and news stories).

Google Trends - recession, accumulation, inflation, deflation

Now I'm not saying the media is accountable for the global recession, they just push stories that will sell papers.

But if you believe in the law of attraction, then what we think and feel can have a massive impact to our current and future situations, on a personal scale and our focus. And the kind of bombardment of news about particularly negative items like recession must have some impact on the individual's mindset.

For the challenge I am asking people to think about how they can accumulate, see - The Challenge which is at a complete juxtaposition to recession in terms of the internal mindset, instead of constriction and a belief in the scarcity of resources, the challenge is asking a simple question - can it be done? 100% profit within one month, and then repeated month on month for a year. This focus's the individual at a stretching but hopefully achievable goal, that requires immediate action.

So this challenge is not only a challenge as stated but also an experiment in the law of attraction :)

DYMC Passed 1000 Page Views

This DYMC Blog has been running now for 2 weeks on Monday, and it has just passed 1000 Page Views, That's pretty cool!

For someone that's never done this kind of thing before - that's pretty big.

Also, I have got my first participant in the challenge that I don't know, which is also kind of cool. Welcome "Essex Girl"...

I also appear to be reaching out to the world, being popular in the UK, India and Pakistan, etc... see left. When adding google analytics and google webmaster for the blog; they offered me $100 of free advertising; click, click, click and here we are, it's interesting to see how that can get you some visits/traffic and the world spread of the attraction of various keywords. And how my social presense (facebook, linkedin, twitter) on the web attracts people to the site... Whilst search engines organic view site result placement of the site grows in confidence... It would be great to get the world acculamating for themselves one visitor at a time.

From £1 to £2 (part 2)

Since the challenge has started I have had a number of interesting discussions, everything from

• Creating your own Country in your garden, meeting the criteral to start your own country, so you can have your own currency and currency printing mechanism.
• Automatic ebay searches/filters, to find low cost / no P+P items to source items.
• Car Boot fairs to source items.
• How fine grained do you get over expenses, if you buy a cake mix for 99p, normally you have to add something like an egg, or milk, which you may already have at home, but would you have then gone over budget? also should you account for electricity or gas on cooking the item?
• sprinklepenny.com.
• google ads.
• paypal sign up bank account verification debit amounts.
  

Also just found this...
Forum discussion - What can you buy for 20p

Transactions

I have created a form for participants to record their transactions - see Transaction Record

Challenge - Day 1

I see Thomas came in at the final hour and Vikram only just realised it started today.

I have been chatting with a few people at work about the challenge, to some the challenge seems too hard to others too easy, and they would like to make it into a race with a prize.

I think 100% profit is only difficult to the extent of the amount of time you have never thought about doing something like this before.

As a student and/or employee you are rarily asked to take your own money and put it to work for yourself, the only person who can really ask this is yourself, and if you are under the impression you don't have money to begin with, then starting with a small amount like 1 penny or 1 pound should help.

I guess the saying "it takes money to make money" comes into play at some point, I am not trying to disprove this, just in a small way question people's thought processes. The initial seed for any given target is important to the context of the current challenge and to the challenge/game itself.

But what is infinitely more important is the participant in the challenge and the ideas and strategies that they come up with and the thought processes behind their approach.

Quote... "Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he can eat forever..."

As to changing the format into a race, and a prize - That is less interesting to me. If people do it faster that's great!

The prize is you can do whatever you like with the money you have made, you can carry on doubling to 1 million or more, maybe who knows... But hopefully we will all have achieved is the knowledge that it can be done and you have done it. If you loose it all you can confidently start again (and maybe do it even better/faster next time).

Moral Dilemma / 712% profit

Just worked through the numbers of the moral dilemma book example, see image below:-

Selling a single book would achieve the first months target, two the second and three the third. I have sold books on Amazon before; I think selling three books in three months should be a very achievable target.

From what I remember these numbers should be pretty realistic. Please feel free to correct me if I am out.

Challenge Starts in less than 12 hours!

Less than 12 hours to go!

This is all too exciting!



I added new count down widget on the left hand bar...

What is it all about? see Chickies Challenge

Want to take part? see come on come on come on let's do it

Weekend local fun day leads to a moral dilemma

Yesterday I helped out at stall for a local disabled charity my wife works at, bizarrely they dont have a website but this mentions them: Dovetail Two they do alot of good work! Yesterday we were at the following event Local Fun Day.


Before the event started and after most of the stalls had finished setting up, including us, I had a walk around with my daughter who had spotted a licorish sticks at a sweet stall from 100 yards. After purchasing she commented this bag is really small then I starting thinking profit and it reminded me of these cool free little games from the Rich Dad Corp Rich Kid Smart Kid Games - 'Jessies Ice Cream Stand' game - smaller scoops larger profits... Yes I have become a man posessed :)

I then spotted a book stall from MenCap Bromley, all books 20p and slowly walked around carefully looking for anything I might want. I found Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and bought it for the 20p, on amazon at least worth absolute minimum - second hand market = £1.08 + PP most seller charging ~ £2.75 so possible some profit there also. Now the challenge doesn't start for another couple of days so I am not going to use this purchase but still... Enter Moral dilema - is this 'robbing' from charities? and should I use a method like this in my challenge, there is obviously alot of profit to be made from people that don't understand the value of what they are selling, but this seems like taking advantage, if most of their books they would be happy to get rid of for 20p have I helped them out or should I have offered them more money? I didn't know how much it was worth at the time either just that it seemed under priced....

come on come on come on.... let's do it

I have created a google docs spread sheet to track everyones progress - http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArZPvxN4jg91dGVxQXRDWmhwNGpEOUVjSmRGcHA4YlE&hl=en

This is openly shared with everyone, so if you also want to take part, just add your name (or alias if you don't wish to share) as a row in the table and use it to let everyone else how you have got on....



Please don't mess up other people's info, that would be really annoying....

The idea is you put your actual amount under the date column for a given target

it's legal

reselling Ubuntu is perfectly legal under GPL license as discussed here - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=49649

also this appears to package up and do the 'work' for you, to package it onto a USB key under windows - http://www.blogsdna.com/3002/create-ubuntu-bootable-usb-flash-drive-with-usbuntu-live-creator-for-windows.htm

thinking about bootable Ubuntu USB keys

Just thought about a possibly good idea for the lower value targets.

My wife has recently been complaining about the slow performance of our home PC running Windows XP, it has a strangly partitioned drive... and she has no patience for technology, and I caught myself starting to thinking about purchasing either a bootable Ubuntu CD, DVD or USB key, as I couldn't download immediately. I could see various people selling them online for £4, £5 and £8 pounds... then thought hang on this could be one for the challenge to make some profit, you can download the distribution for free and put it on any one of the above media, reasonably cheaply, for convient re-sale, I wonder how legal that is? I'll have a read tonight through the license; around resale....

Had a quick look online and you can pick up 1G USB sticks for around £2 - I think I could sell to people for around £5, maybe one for the £2 to £4 month? I wonder how much you can get USB sticks for if you are prepared to make a bulk order, though shifting them in bulk in a one month period may hold some charm of it's own; could be interesting... hmmm.

in the beginning...

TDV gave me a pound

Originality Sledgehammer

OK, so I thought I was being original - doh! I'm like; so 2005...

I just added a search component to my blog and found

Rachel's blog http://doublingchallenge.blogspot.com/
and then
http://doublersden.co.uk

where everyone is doing it,

I guess the unique part for 'my challenge' is the timeline..... Wonder how important that will be??

Also, they generally appear to be targeting 1 million, which is also quite different. I was thinking that if I or anyone else could get to my £4096 target then why would you stop there? but for now I want to take one month/step at a time and see if this is possible; if so, I guess it could be extended, I'll think about it more next year...

Why why why???

Why why why??? Why not??????

I have been listening to Duncan Bannatyne's Audio Books (Anyone Can Do It: My Story
and Wake Up and Change Your Life) and got all entrepreneurial all of a sudden, a few years back; I was thinking of challenging a few colleagues to take £50 and attempt to turn it into £100, but then read this 50 cents to 1 million dollar link and it got me thinking about "small goals and big results...."

I really want to test 2 things

1. Can it be done?
2. Can it be done by me?
   

I am happy for as many people to take part as want to; I would be interested to know if people do take up the challenge how they achieve it...

from £1 to £2

from £1 to £2 - my first thoughts were it's a childs amount

How would a budding child entrepreneur do this?

• Lemonade stand
• Bake cookies/cakes to sell.
  
• Buy something a pack (multiple items) of something cheap and repackage it (single items).
• Wash cars - buy cheap cleaning + warm water

What can't you do?

• Online marketplaces like eBay and Amazon are out due to fees, requiring more than the £1 you start with??
• No gambling (children not allowed) - but maybe a possibility for an adult?
  
• No investing on the stock market - due to fees.
• No high unit price items.

Chickies Challenge

Here is the challenge (Double Your Money every month for a year)

• Start with £1.
• Double your money every month for a year, starting 15th September, 2009.
• Any (legal) strategy is permissible, but you must only use the current money in the game.
• The money has to be liquid on the 15th of each month. 
• If you loose all the money at any point you are out.
• All transactions will be recorded.
• Finish up with £4,096 on September 15th, 2010.

Anyone can join in at any point throughtout the year, the target amounts and dates are not going to change, so the longer you leave the more of your own money you will need to put in! If you want to take part see taking part

Targets 

 
 

Date	Amount
15/09/2009	£1.00
15/10/2009	£2.00
15/11/2009	£4.00
15/12/2009	£8.00
15/01/2010	£16.00
15/02/2010	£32.00
15/03/2010	£64.00
15/04/2010	£128.00
15/05/2010	£256.00
15/06/2010	£512.00
15/07/2010	£1,024.00
15/08/2010	£2,048.00
15/09/2010	£4,096.00

Stew and Vikram - your both in right? anyone else?