Double Your Money Challenge

Long Time No Increase

2011-05-11T07:50:00.000+01:00

Hi,

Sorry it's been a long time!

Just found a site that you might find interesting:-

http://www.ttenner.com/

You can basically say what you would do for a tenner or a fiver I think and people can see it on their site and take you up on it, pretty straight forward.

Cheers and keep on doubling!

40p - The start of a new Era

2010-03-23T16:21:00.000Z

Just got a bit of luck and took advantage opportunitistic situation - just got a Vending machine freebie - one Galaxy Caramel - and sold it for 10p less than the Vending price to a guy at work 40p bagged!

Needing pounds, finding pennies

2010-03-22T19:21:00.001Z

Ok so I just found a penny on my local station platform, my initial thoughts were - cool - that's another penny for my challenge. My subsequent thoughts were hmmm I need more than pennies to get back on track...

I'm still not taking enough action!

Finding pennies may get me to my target amount... eventually, but not in my target timeframe, I was thinking if I slipped one or two months but still achieved my 1 year target, just in 13 or 14 months - would anyone notice? Obviously I would know which wouldn't be good, but still begs the question - who am I doing this for? If just me - would I be happy with myself if I changed the rules of the game, I am just about still playing?

Well no I wouldn't - this was suppose to be a mind/context shifting experiement, and in some small ways it already has been, in others I have simply learnt if I take no action I basically don't get closer to my goals - shocker...

moving forward but too slowly

2010-03-17T22:43:00.000Z

OK so I have sold a hat on zazzle to someone in AUS and got a larger amount of money - £1.30, previous sale to someone in the US only yielded 0.79p; so quite a significant difference, I have found a few bits of money on the way and home from work (2p and 1p) on separate occasions and lastly I have created quite a few more products on zazzle as it appears to have started to yield some income, yesterday I sold a newly designed mug and also got a referral fee - I think because I directed them to my zazzle shop so gained a whopping £1.12 for the mug and £2.09 for the referral, so I didn't make the March target of £64 on 15/3/2010, but at least I am now above the February target of £32 - see leader board to the left.

Over the weekend I created a number of zazzle products based on Indian English - hope this isn't seen as a bad thing, I have been working with some offshore partners and some fun phrases have come up, that I thought over people would appreciate!

today's target - 4 days over £30

2010-03-11T11:00:00.001Z

Thinking about the double your challenge and my lack of activity of the last 3 or 4 months, I guess the key for me at the moment is 2 things that equate to the same principle.

The challenge or any other endeavour can only really be achieved by consistent daily motivated action towards your end goal, it's probably so obvious that I missed it, the outcome of daily action is self fulfilling momentum, I.e. if you are consistently moving forward all the time, it's difficult to not reach or surpass your initial goal, and the investment of time and energy gives you a platform for further action.

So time and management of it becomes or paramount importance, so what have I been upto, that was more important than the challenge to myself and others over 6 months ago?

Well 2 things have come into my life that I wasn't expecting in the slightest

I became addicted to singing, last year I went on a free 7 week voice training course, run by a local barbershop chorus, I became immediately engrossed, they just happen to be one of the top ten UK chorus's, I went through the course and gave a performance to friends and family at the end, I was completely hooked, I have since passed my audition and joined the chorus and am now an official barbershop'er. The time commitment for this is around 3 hours singing on a Thursday night, then as we are training a big conference in may some weekend sessions, plus once I have learned the full repertoire, which can take a couple of years, there are the numerous 'sing-outs' and charity events that the chorus attends.
In a daze 'cause I found god! I know it sounds glib, but it's true, I have been on the under current of a spiritual journey for the last few years now, and am going to get Christened in May along with my children. the reverend that is going to christen me recommended I go on an Alpha course to explore my faith fully, this is currently going on and taking up Tuesday nights (7:30 - 10pm) plus one Saturday morning in the near future, I have also attended church a few times but this is trick as I normally look after the children at the weekend to give me wife a bit of a break. Also I have started a plan to read the bible within 1 year, so this is taking up the majority of my train journeys.

To some extent these are simply excuses, but what it means is I have had very little to no time to focus on the challenge; and if I am to carry on pursuing monthly and the yearly targets this is precisely the point where I have to have consistent focus and daily action.

Fwd: What is the best way to teach creative problem solving and the entrepreneurial spirit?

2010-03-10T08:38:00.000Z

Ian Hopkinson wrote:

Hi Roger

It is an interesting thought, one that has cropped up in conversations recently...

My personal view is that whilst we can learn, i.e. we can all improve our business skills through study and experience, there is something that sets entrepreneurs apart. The entrepreneurial skill is in part derived from:

- Intelligence
- Attitude to risk
- Personality
- Ability to befriend
- etc

This is by no means an exhaustive list. My main reflection is that the skills are soft skills which you are usually born with and are then to some degree shaped as you grow up, yes you can have coaching and try to learn how to befriend people...

It doesn't mean that every entrepreneur is successful and the theory that you are testing "commercially focused problem solving can be learnt and tested in the real world with a simple context" I agree with. There will be different levels of success depending on the decisions made by each participant.

Just because you have the soft skills (and everything else required) doesn't mean you have the desire to want to be an entrepreneur.

One major point is that contacts (helpful ones) is a big factor to any success...

Would be interested to hear the outcome of your study...

Cheers

Ian

Question Details:
--------------------
What is the best way to teach creative problem solving and the entrepreneurial spirit?

Are some people simply born with the required skills? Can the skills be taught? What role does real life experience play in a good entrepreneur?

I have started a challenge/game, where I am testing theory that commercially focused problem solving can be learnt and tested in the real world with a simple context (start with £1 of your own money and double it every month, consistently for 1 year, to end up with over £4k). If you are interested or know someone that this would suit, please forward on the link http://doubleyourmoneychallenge.blogspot.com where you/they can sign up and give it a go, no email registration required, just honesty, willingness and the time to give it a try.

Thanks
Roger

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First Zazzle Sale! + £5 won on gifted scratch card

2010-02-15T07:36:00.000Z

Just when I was thinking that this would be the first target I would miss and I have been pondering on what I should write about it; last night I collected £5 from a scratch card my parents had bought me and this morning I got an email from zazzle - my first sale! - money to me $1.20 or GBP 0.79p

Right that's it - I'm selling shortbread today! Let's see how much more momentum I can get...

testing testing 1.. 2.. 3..

2010-01-31T22:03:00.000Z

just testing connectivity between my blog and my twitter account via twitterfeed.com, seems like a good idea!

This morning at London Bridge, Money and man urinating found

2010-01-25T22:26:00.000Z

This morning on my way to work because of the rain I went a slightly different way out of the station, walking up onto the central bridge to exit via a more covered platform, as about to turn to go down the stairs I noticed a scrunched up piece of paper on the floor, looked like it might be money, I was hoping! Much to my surprise it was £5.00, pleased with my find; hoping it might reinvigorate my doubling challenge I turned down the stairs only to observe a man urinating on the stairs, I turned away as if I hadn't noticed and carried on walking, excuse the pun but it slightly dampened my spirit.

Although I am now the only one still ahead of target even without today's find, the months have been flying by, the £8 and £16 target came and gone extremely quickly, and for sometime I have been spending too much time reflecting and being busy with the rest of my life and not enough doubling action, some time ago I bought 99p's worth, or 11 packets of shortbread to sell again at work, again at 20p per 2 fingers that should have returned £11.00, but haven't got around to selling them - lame! One guy, at work, did ask if I had any more and I sold him 2 for £1 - he insisted - I will give him the other 8 for 'free'.

With the 15th February £32.00 target approaching quickly I need to get moving again and sharp-ish! Need to sell off the shortbread and with the £5 today I should be nearly there!

Magic moola, well almost

2010-01-14T09:27:00.002Z

Awhile back when I was looking at the 30DC I set up a google alert, which is basically an email to you per day of a google search result on your given keywords, the difference between this and a standard google search is that the alert contain new finds, found in the last 24 hours, my keywords were "Double your Money".

It sometimes returns some interesting results, but most of the time it returns the same kind of drivel over and over again, a number of results about forex trading - make £400 in 10 minutes with our no brainer rules - is this possible - who knows? Something about a famous sports player moving from one club/team to another. Another being witty about the best way to double your money being to fold it over and put it back in your pocket and even more witty about a way of doubling your money in 54321 years. As I said mostly crud.

But recently it mentioned something that caught my eye, a web site that paid you for playing online games, not too arduous moola.com - each player starts with 1p paid for by advertisers paying for you to watch a commercial before the each game begins, if you win you immediatly double your money; by winning the other players money, if you lose the game you reset back to 1p. You play players at the same monetary level as yourself, and you can cashout at any point, so 28 wins in a row?? 1 million dollars...

Unfortunately on further inspection it is only available to US and Canadian citizens, coming from the UK this doesn't help my journey whatsoever, for doublers over there why wouldn't you give it a go?

Get money for tweeting

2009-12-19T06:18:00.000Z

Just found Sponsored Tweets, looks as though I may get $1 per tweet? let's give it a try and see what happens...

Thomas and the dazzling zazzle machine...

2009-12-15T09:02:00.002Z

Just noticed Thomas has updated the transactions in the double you money spreadsheet, and has made over $4 in zazzle sales, great work! Via his triathlon inspired slogans! You are the man...

Unfortunately, I haven't made any sales as of yet, maybe mesh trucker caps aren't the best product for Christmas?? It is pretty cold here in the UK, maybe a thick jumper/sweater would have done better.

I haven't got the leader board to update automatically in the online version yet, although I do have this working excel, I will manually update the leader board tonight and try to get the auto-updating one working online tonight as well.

Not very impressed and don't think it can be done

2009-12-10T10:58:00.004Z

Went to a Christmas party last night and was chatting with one of the managers from work who is intrigued by my challenge.

Every time she sees me, she asks how much am I up to now, and whenever I say an amount she is always unimpressed. In her own words "I like results" and "getting from £1 to £18 isn't particularly impressive."

But basically last night was saying how she didn't think I would be able to go from 2k to 4k in the last month and would probably find the last few months difficult too. Although no wager was placed - we shook on a bet - that I wouldn't reach my 1 year target, I confidently took the bet - I will go to £4k...

I think the point is - doubling your money at any amount is not impressive... IT'S INCREDIBLE!

For anyone that normally has any form of job that isn't about growing something for themselves is but swapping a large majority of their time directly for a value of money placed upon either justly or unjustly (over or under valuing your time) - is a system of exchange - you help build a better company in exchange for your time and an amount of money. Doubling comes from a completely different mind set or paradigm.

The difficultly of an amount is purely within the realms of how hard do you think something is. Much like when Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, a great achievement in itself, the first man recorded to break through a perceived human limit, no one could quite achieve it before he did it - I wonder how many it can't be done conversations happened before that point in time, 10, 100, 1000, 1 million?? But shortly after a number of people did it. What happened? Why did people that couldn't do it previously start to think that they could just because someone else had.

It is the easiest thing in the world to nay say, it takes no energy from the speaker, when people around you make attempts to move out of where you currently are vacating together, what does that to the naysayer, that there is something wrong with where they are, that's obviously preposterous, and would required energy to consider let alone attempt something like that for yourself. It's far easier to say nay - It can't be done! Then if for any reason the person expending all the energy and learning all the lessons fails, again with no effort they can say those reassuring words "I told you so!" - It's beautiful!. Robert Kiyosaki in one of his Rich Dad Poor Dad books talks about the "Hawaiian Black Crabs" - described in more detail in the link.

I love naysayers, why? because it means you have got something right, you are not stagnant, you are challenging people around you by challenging yourself and taking some action.

Like the runners following Roger Bannister: Are there examples of people/companies that make £2000 in one month, examples of people/companies that make £500,000 in one month, 5 million per month - all a resounding - Yes - absolutely!

Yes it can and will be done by not just me but many others doublers also!

DYMC Blog widget stripping and simplified layout

2009-12-09T08:07:00.000Z

Since watching the Kevin Rose video, I have added a Leaderboard for the people taking part in the challenge, I have also started to take a look at how many 'features'/widgets I had installed on this blog. After getting Firefox PageSpeed Addon, I realised just how slow my page was coming down.

I have made a number of changes and simplifications to this blog layout.

Including simple tab browsing, from http://www.tabsgenerator.com at the top rather than the DYMV Links LHN widget which was taking up important first hit real estate on my site.

I had already removed the amazon affliate banner at the bottom.

I have now removed the facebook connect widget, simplified the Other Doublers, no images and last post snippets. I have also removed the zazzle side bar widget and put it as a seperate post to link from via the tabs.

I have also moved my sprinklepenny badge upto the top of the page, to wear my badge proudly just incase regular viewers want to start helping out my challenge by signing up with them.

DYMC Zazzle Shop

2009-12-08T23:46:00.003Z

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Google Adsense Payments

2009-12-08T00:32:00.001Z

Just checked and I have now received payment of £9.58 from Google Adsense advertising for the first 3 months (Sept - Nov 2009) from the hopefully reasonably subtly blog Ads, I have decided to include this in my challenge total as it is directly related.

I have entered it as a transaction - this puts me at the top of the Leaderboard, ahead of "Essex Girl" and means I am still around 1 month ahead of target, my own initial acceleration appears to have been eaten up by time, need to take more actions to move forward...

'Busiest day' for online shopping

2009-12-07T12:00:00.003Z

Apparently today has been predicted to be the busiest online shopping, day, enough time for delivery pre-Xmas - get lastminute items ordered quick!

see

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7770338.stm

fingers crossed zazzle shop - work your long tail magic!

Kevin Rose Video and new DYMC Leaderboard

2009-12-02T05:31:00.004Z

After watching the following video from Kevin Rose of Digg

Taking your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose from Carsonified on Vimeo.

I decided to add a new Leaderboard to the lefthand bar on the blog, this is based on the transactions people enter, so please keep this uptodate.

Also after watching the video, starting to think what features I can strip from the page as it is certainly getting heavy, I have already removed an amazon affliate banner at the bottom of the page, think I really need tabs across the top of the page with the DYMC Links + blog + Leaderboard at the top of the page to clean stuff up.

Thirty Day Challenge - My experience so far

2009-11-28T08:00:00.004Z

The Thirty Day Challenge - What is it all about?

The basic idea is to build an online business and within 30 days you should have made your first £, $ etc or 10. If I can make £1-10 in thirty days this will really help me out in my double your money challenge. By following the simple steps outlined each day, which is supported by a selection of media and recommended tools. The media includes daily emails which call you to action and link to the materials, videos which you can download or watch online and PDF transcripts of the video content, it's in bite size chunks and is aimed at the non-technical. The online business appears, from what I have seen so far targeted at people that will write blogs, which will make money through affiliate programmes. The videos cover a daily intro, some videos on what and how you are expected to achieve that day and a positive psychology video on moving forward.

What does this have to do with your DYMC?

I was looking at this as another income stream to add to my double your money challenge, so I don't want to spend any of my hard doubled dosh on anything at the moment that isn't going to directly return on the investment. So I have had to tweak my approach to the designed root through the 30DC programme. The initial supporting tools run on a free trial version for 40 days, and presumably by the time you get to that point you can see you have made some money, the wordpress version is wordpress direct, which is tied into the other recommended tools and the hosting is very cheap, not sure on the exact costs of these but it does appear to be minimal.

More about 30DC content

The Videos - which you can download via the thirty day challenge podcast without registering cover, internet tools and sites like twitter, facebook, google (samurai, traffic bug etc., see video names below:-

#002 - Keeping Up To Date Using Twit.mp4
#003 - Twitter, Signing Up and Getti.mp4
#004 - Setting Up Your Twitter Profi.mp4
#005 - Introducing Seesmic Desktop.mp4
#006 - Using Seesmic Desktop.mp4
#010 - An Optional Firefox Plugin.mp4
#011 - Getting A Google Account.mp4
#012 - How To Use YouTube.mp4
#013 - Installing And Using iTunes.mp4
#014 - Kiva And The Thirty Day Chall.mp4
#015 - Facebook and the 30DC - Part.mp4
#016 - Facebook and the 30DC - Part.mp4
#017 - Facebook and the 30DC - Part.mp4
#018 - Using Google Analytics.mp4
#019 - Using Google Alerts In The 30.mp4
#020 - Using Google Docs In The 30DC.mp4
#021 - Using Skype For 30DC Teams.mp4
#022 - Building Links For Our Sites.mp4
#023 - Downloading Files From 30DC.mp4
#024 - Using Google Groups For Teams.mp4
#025 - The 30DC Forum.mp4
#026 - Google Reader Part One.mp4
#027 - Google Reader Part Two.mp4
#028 - Google Reader Part Three.mp4
#029 - The 30DC Facebook App.mp4
#030 - 30DC Meetups.mp4
#031 - Using Jing For Screenshots.mp4
#032 - Installing Market Samurai.mp4
#033 - Market Samurai Overview.mp4
#034 - Mindset and Introducing Karl.mp4
#035 - Setting Expectations For The.mp4
#036 - 30DC Day 01 Introduction.mp4
#037 - 30DC - Symphony Of Four Parts.mp4
#038 - Mindset Series - Procrastinat.mp4
#039 - Findng a Niche Part 1.mp4
#040 - Findng a Niche Part 2.mp4
#041 - Findng a Niche Part 3.mp4
#042 - 30DC Day 02 Introduction.mp4
#043 - 30DC Day 02 - What Is A Marke.mp4
#044 - 30DC Day 02 - Intro To Market.mp4
#045 - 30DC Day 02 - Theme Keywords.mp4
#046 - 30DC Day 02 - Category Keywor.mp4
#047 - 30DC Day 02 - Phrase Vs Broad.mp4
#048 - 30DC Mindset - Embracing Chan.mp4
#049 - 30DC Day 03 Introduction.mp4
#050 - 30DC Day 03 - Introduction To.mp4
#051 - 30DC Day 03 - The SEO Matrix.mp4
#052 - 30DC Mindset - Limiting Thoug.mp4
#053 - 30DC Day 04 - Introduction.mp4
#054 - 30DC Day 04 - The Monetizatio.mp4
#055 - 30DC Day 04 - Finding Affilia.mp4
#056 - 30DC Day 04 - Adwords Adverti.mp4
#057 - 30DC Day 04 - Affiliate Progr.mp4
#058 - 30DC Mindset - Money Programs.mp4
#059 - 30DC Day 05 - Introduction.mp4
#060 - 30DC Day 05 - The Find Conten.mp4
#061 - 30DC Day 05 - Researching Con.mp4
#062 - 30DC Day 05 - Writing Unique.mp4
#063 - 30DC Day 05 - Find A Unique D.mp4
#064 - 30DC Day 05 - Acquire A Domai.mp4
#065 - 30DC Mindset - Say Yes More.mp4
#066 - 30DC Day 06 - Introduction.mp4
#067 - 30DC Day 06 - Introduction To.mp4
#068 - 30DC Day 06 - Install A Wordp.mp4
#069 - 30DC Day 06 - Your First Word.mp4
#070 - 30DC Day 06 - Upgrade Your Wo.mp4
#071 - 30DC Mindset - Intention Sets.mp4
#072 - 30DC Day 07 - Introduction.mp4
#073 - 30DC Day 07 - Installing Goog.mp4
#074 - 30DC Day 07 - Creating An Ad.mp4
#075 - 30DC Day 07 - WPD Pretty Link.mp4
#076 - 30DC Day 07 - Add A Pretty Li.mp4
#077 - 30DC Mindset - Fear.mp4
#078 - 30DC Day 08 - Introduction.mp4
#079 - 30DC Day 08 - Indexing And Ra.mp4
#080 - 30DC Day 08 - Introducing Tra.mp4
#081 - 30DC Day 08 - Using Traffic B.mp4
#082 - 30DC Day 09 - Introduction.mp4
#083 - 30DC Day 09 - Introducing Ran.mp4
#084 - 30DC Day 09 - Using Rank Trac.mp4
#085 - 30DC Day 10 - Introduction.mp4
#086 - 30DC Day 10 - Ezine Articles.mp4
#087 - 30DC Day 10 - Scribd.mp4
#088 - 30DC Day 11 - Introduction.mp4
#089 - 30DC Day 11 - Squidoo.mp4
#090 - 30DC Day 11 - HubPages.mp4
#091 - 30DC Day 12 - Introduction.mp4
#092 - 30DC Day 12 - Assessing Your.mp4
#093 - 30DC Day 12 - Publish Content.mp4
#094 - 30DC Day 12 - Using The Publi.mp4
#095 - 30DC Mindset - Self Pity.mp4
#096 - 30DC Day 13 - Introduction.mp4
#097 - 30DC Day 13 - Wordpress.com.mp4
#098 - 30DC Day 13 - Blogger Part 1.mp4
#099 - 30DC Day 13 - Blogger Part 2.mp4
#100 - 30DC Day 14 - Introduction.mp4
#101 - 30DC Day 14 - Weebly.mp4
#102 - 30DC Day 14 - Facebook Fan Pa.mp4
#103 - 30DC Day 15 - Introduction.mp4
#104 - 30DC Day 15 - Propeller.mp4
#105 - 30DC Day 15 - Micro Blogging.mp4
#106 - 30DC Day 15 - Micro Blogging.mp4
#107 - 30DC Day 15 - Micro Blogging.mp4
#108 - 30DC Day 15 - Google Reader A.mp4
#109 - 30DC Day 16 - Introduction.mp4
#110 - 30DC Day 16 - Kiva.mp4
#111 - 30DC Mindset - Boosting Your.mp4
#112 - 30DC Day 17 - Introduction.mp4
#113 - 30DC Day 17 - Assessing Traff.mp4
#114 - 30DC Day 18 - Introduction.mp4
#115 - 30DC Day 18 - Getting More Tr.mp4
#116 - 30DC Day 18 - The Pareto Prin.mp4
#117 - 30DC Day 19 - Introduction.mp4
#118 - 30DC Day 19 - Introducing Goo.mp4
#119 - 30DC Day 19 - Setting Up Goog.mp4
#120 - 30DC Day 19 - Google Adwords.mp4
#121 - 30DC Day 20 - Introduction.mp4
#122 - 30DC Day 20 - Split Testing A.mp4
#123 - 30DC Day 20 - Adding Keywords.mp4
#124 - 30DC Day 21 - Introduction.mp4
#124 - 30DC Day 32 - Webinar Recordi.mp4
#125 - 30DC Day 21 - Google's Qualit.mp4
#125 - 30DC Day 32 - 30DC Plus Intro.mp4
#126 - 30DC Day 21 - Adwords Managem.mp4
#127 - 30DC Day 22 - Introduction.mp4
#128 - 30DC Day 22 - Content Network.mp4
#129 - 30DC Day 22 - Yahoo Bing And.mp4
#130 - 30DC Day 22 - Adwords Calcula.mp4
#131 - 30DC Day 23 - Introduction.mp4
#132 - 30DC Day 23 - Ed And Michelle.mp3
#133 - 30DC Day 23 - What Would They.mp4
#134 - 30DC Day 24 - Introduction.mp4
#135 - 30DC Day 24 - Go, No Go_.mp3
#136 - 30DC Day 25 - Introduction.mp4
#137 - 30DC Day 25 - Google Adsense.mp4
#138 - 30DC Day 25 - Dynamic Ads 1.mp4
#138 - 30DC Day 25 - Dynamic Ads.mp4
#139 - 30DC Day 25 - Sell Your Blog.mp4
#140 - 30DC Day 25 - Manage Your Blo.mp4
#141 - 30DC Day 26 - Introduction.mp4
#142 - 30DC Day 26 - Google Analytic.mp4
#143 - 30DC Day 26 - Market Samurai.mp4
#144 - 30DC Day 27 - Introduction.mp4
#145 - 30DC Day 27 - Market Samurai.mp4
#146 - 30DC Day 27 - Backlink Opport.mp4
#147 - 30DC Day 27 - Pingbacks.mp4
#148 - 30DC Day 27 - Competitor Back.mp4
#149 - 30DC Day 28 - Introduction.mp4
#150 - 30DC Day 28 - Authority Backl.mp4
#151 - 30DC Day 29 - Introduction.mp4
#152 - 30DC Day 29 - Mistakes Market.mp3
#153 - 30DC Day 29 - The Ultimate Tr.mp4
#154 - 30DC Day 30 - Introduction.mp4
#155 - 30DC Day 30 - Where To From H.mp4
#156 - 30DC Day 30 - Leveraging The.mp4
#157 - 30DC Day 31 - Introduction.mp4
#158 - 30DC Day 31 - The End Of The.mp4

Status update

OK, so I am running a day or two behind in the thirty day challenge videos http://www. thirtydaychallenge.com, caught right up at one point through the week but have fallen behind again. Think I should be on day 10 today, but I am still around day 7-8.

So far, I have used the Market Samurai to pick my micro-niche, starting from the market of gambling, investigating keywords, finding a niche - gambling strategy and the further niche of horse racing betting systems which came up with a reasonable level of search traffic and not massive competition (largely green in the below image). MS also provides you a way of sourcing content from around the web which is a great asset for bloggers

Here is what I have so far:-

http://horseracingbettingsystems.wordpress.com/

I decided to go with a free hosted blog which I will have to work around some things (like copy and paste) but more seriously, SEO and other integration points will potentially be impacted by not using wordpressdirect, but I feel I have to take this hit to make it a no cost stream. Also I may want to go wider than the recommended affiliate schemes; the ones from the bookmaker sites, from what I have seen, are sometimes very attractive.

Thirty Day Challenge

2009-11-23T15:50:00.000Z

Last week I signed up for the Thirty Day Challenge !

There is no charge for awesomeness! haha! Great strap line...

Getting the daily emails, need to try to keep up with them, downloaded all the podcast video's over the weekend - hopefully you catch up quickly by watching them on the train

Another resource from Erica

2009-11-23T15:47:00.001Z

These are 20 real ideas on how to make money online, they are possibly a bit too job'y for the challenge, bit if you are allowed to use your free time to contribute some of these might be a good way to go!

http://www.erica.biz/2009/make-money-online-fast/

Good Luck!

Inspirational Resources??

2009-11-22T09:28:00.002Z

Just discovered a few articles that may be of interest to the doublers in all of us

how to start a business with no money

and

entrepreneurs is extreme frugality a waste of time

both by "Erica Douglass. After selling my online business at age 26 for $1,100,000.00" - might be worth a read...

A Musical Interlude

2009-11-21T10:34:00.002Z

I was thinking a 'mix tape idea' for a site, then found most music video's are on youtube anyway and you can create and share 'playlists', here is my first attempt at a ut video 'mix tape' - hope you like it!

Does a mix tape have to be made for someone in particular? hmm

Where has month two gone, going ???

2009-11-02T19:45:00.001Z

OK so this month of the challenge appears to be rapidly disappearing!

We are already a couple of days past the halfway mark and I still don't feel as though I have contributed much this month and without hearing too much from the other participants I am left wondering is it just me or has some of the buzz of month 1 starting to wane?

I hope people are still with me.

Make me think of one of my favourite Winston Church quotes

"Success is going from failure to failure with no loss enthusiasm."

I have recently sold some items that I had around the house, and had my first real attempt at selling stuff on ebay, I was thinking about some or all of the proceeds towards the challenge, but that doesn't really make any sense as it doesn't involve the previous seed money at all and isn't any of my creative effort - although an interesting experience in itself - I'm not going to include the funds from these sales in the challenge. One thing it did make me realise is for some items I have no concept of value or the interest that will be produced for particular items - we sold a dolls pram and some real prams, and the toy version drew significantly more interest and a higher price - I was completely clueless about its value.

I have setup a number of products on zazzle and submitted my store to google and uploaded the products to google base so they are appearing on google shopping in the UK. Much to my amusement appearing top for a little while on google organic search for the phrase 'spank me big boy'! Thou my product descriptions weren't particularly well thought through and are glib at best.

Last time I checked I hadn't made any sales as of yet, but it's another stream that I can add products to every now and then without too much effort and see if it produces any sales over the coming year. Makes me wonder how many of zazzle shop's purchases are from the designers?

Think tomorrow I'll pop in with another round of shortbread to sell. Hopefully will be just as successful as last time!

The only other thing I have planned for this month was another gambling test. I was thinking from lasts months experiment with gambling leaving me reflecting on the saying - the house always wins - which is really the side of the equation I want to be on, what if I used a site like betfair where you can play both sides and mimic odds provided on a single event for eventualities that a big successful bookies would offer, shouldn't I always win to the same extent?

making the most of your time????

2009-10-27T12:23:00.001Z

Saw this the other day - Friends To Rent - quite an interesting new concept from those wonderful Germans. What would you offer to do with a complete stranger and how much would you charge for it, dodgy activities aside, makes you think about different activities and trying to place some monetary value on you and them...

How much would you charge for what you do normally but have someone else tag along?

Also, saw some adverts in the metro news paper for extras in both standard and not so standard films music video's etc. Again never having done anything like that before would be interesting to give it ago, not sure even what the time commitments would be.

Just found an interesting article from the times online site about being an extra @ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/consumer_affairs/article2109976.ece

Retail run up to christmas

2009-10-26T09:30:00.001Z

With Christmas coming up shortly, it may well be worth looking at using a retail model this month, with - ok I am just going to make these numbers up! 80% of the yearly retail volumes being made in the holiday season; it would seem wise catch part of this wave for the challenge.

Obviously with a lot of people doing their Xmas shopping online, online markets such as ebay and amazon should have a good level of eye fall at the moment, products aimed at children should do well, and boot fairs always have a few stalls where young families have a clear out, hmmmm.... seems like I am giving people ideas...

I haven't heard much from the other challenge participants - come on all, let me know what you are up to for month 2, or how you are catching up from month 1.

My Zazzle Day

2009-10-24T22:49:00.001+01:00

OK, so 33 products later; in just one day:-

My Zazzle Shop

I'm all Zazzled out...

Month 2 may go with a zazzle

2009-10-24T11:26:00.000+01:00

I have just created my own zazzle shop - see link and left hand bar - my products, I will make 15% of the proceeds, If I can just create lots of products/content - It might get interesting, If I sell just a couple of products I should be able to make the month 2 target.

I have created a few caps this morning, thinking about more content - what sells, humour? text only, or do you think it has to contain an image? hmmm... lot's to play with here...

DYMC - From £2 to £4 and things to come

2009-10-21T22:51:00.001+01:00

So we are now 6 days into month 2 of the challenge and no posts as of yet, have I lost momentum - maybe, no I don't think I have, it just takes quite a bit of effort to post every day, or even every other day.

Also, I think I have been affected by the challenge itself. I noticed some money in an account the other day (more than £200) and I started to think I should be trying to double that - having twice as much as that available to me would be very cool, in or out of the challenge's official timelines and targets. Which is literally a first for me, don't get me wrong I have invested before, saved before and once even created a saving mechanism from my consumerism, but that's probably for another time.

What's interesting is when seeing an amount in account normally I might think about a rough budget I am loosely trying to keep or what I might buy with that, doubling it has never really crossed my mind before, which thinking about now seems strange to me, why haven't I?

Another interesting element of larger amounts, starts to ask the questions -

Intrinsically who are you?
What can you create?
Can you sell? and in which settings/markets?

Also

What kind of price points of items should you target (for buying and selling)?
What other strategies scale into any amounts? Gambling?

I have been looking at targeting items between the target seed price and up to the seed price divided by 6, to try to narrow the search down and keep the buying and selling pair events to an achievable target.

Also I have been thinking about where to find items, a wholesaler like Costco's, setting up as a drop shipping seller? Finding stock from liquidation companies, returned and refurbished goods.

Last day of Stage 1

2009-10-14T07:10:00.000+01:00

Today is the final day of stage 1!

If you haven't doubled your £1 seed yet, you still have a full day - get hustling quick! Good Luck!

Please make sure all transactions are recorded, so I can publish a clear view of where we all are individually and as a group.

I will update the overall standings in the spreadsheet and summarise eash participants approach.

Adding SprinklePenny to your blogger.com site

2009-10-12T19:17:00.008+01:00

The stanard sprinklepenny instructions are as the below link; they assume you have the ability to upload files to your server, which you don't if you have a www.blogger.com/blogspot.com blog site.

Standard instructions are as follows from http://www.sprinklepenny.com/badges/badge - you'll need a logon to see these!

OK so you get stuck at step 1, as you can't upload the script, and your probably not sure where the .gif will go.

Stage 1 - update your blogger template

So ignore the image for now, download the sprinklepenny.js file; this has your SP 'publisherId' which is important to you! open this file and copy the contents.

On your blogger account:-

Goto 'Layout' tab

go to

Then select 'Edit HTML'

goto the bottom of the template code (Just above the < / body > tag and add

the code as instructed in step 2 of the standard instructions.

then add a new set of script tags and paste the contents of the .js file within 'script/javascript' tags.

amending the '&' symbols to '& amp ;' (without the spaces) within the 'script' tags, otherwise your template will NOT save correctly.

Stage 1 complete!

Stage 2 - now add the badge

save these changes, then goto, 'Page Elements' tab

Select 'Add a Gadget'

and select 'HTML/JavaScript'

now add the div, as instructed in the standard instructions step 4, but amend the image to the sprinklepenny version, i.e.

http://sprinklepenny.com/images/ajax-loader.gif.

Hopefully now you should be good to go, save and preview your blog again and you should see the sprinklepenny logo

Aggressive acceleration?? Is it the right way to go?

2009-10-09T21:37:00.001+01:00

I was having a chat earlier on in the week with one of my work-mates.
About my front loading or ahead of target approach and he mentioned something that has struck a chord with me.

I am perfectly happy for the participants in the challenge to accumulate as fast as they can, much as I was doing before this little chat. But it doesn't make sense for me to do so, when writing this blog, I am doing it in the context of the here and now and if I am ahead of target; by however many targets, it doesn't make for much empathy to the other participants and the current months seed and target amounts and the type of approach required for that stage in the challenge.

I heard a saying once that "a herd of buffalo travel only as fast as the slowest buffalo in the pack", Am I quoting comedy cowboy films, anyway I think it resonates quite well with my current situation.

Also, I could get lazy if too far ahead, like children's story - the hare and the tortoise, my lead could quickly become short lived if I do get lazy at any point.

So, what to do now? I have been thinking about making the challenge more than simply money accumulation/multiplying, and have been thinking about charity, giving away the 'overhang' could bring the two of these things together.

You might think this is a crazy, why throw away any gain you have made? or pointless, the amounts are so small - what's the point? thing to do.

It means I can still, and will be even more motivated to aggressively attack each target, but still within the context of the previous months seed amount.
In terms of the law of attraction, this action sends out a powerful message to the universe that I truly believe in the abundance of resources and due to this I will be even further rewarded than I would have been if I hadn't given this excess away, purely because of this belief. That would be interesting to test, not sure how I would do it in a controlled way?

It then raises another question, of which charity to support? There are so many good causes to back. Would the amounts be too small to setup a charitable trust? This would be the way to go to support different good causes. I'll have a little investigate about what is involved to set one up!

piece of cake for sale, yesterday I turned 0.94p into £5.20

2009-10-07T13:46:00.000+01:00

So yesterday was another big day for my challenge.

I went looking for more shortbread, but it looks as though either none were in stock in my local shop or they have been discontinued? interesting....

So I went back to my plan B and bought 2 sponge cakes for 0.46p each, cut them into 6 slices and marketed them for 50p/a slice, after a few hours with only a few sold I then dropped the price down to 40p a slice.

So I sold 4 pieces at 50p and 8 pieces at 40p. Not as good a return as the shortbread but still very good.

This took my retail project; from the original 27p spent on shortbread to over £8 now. With the two events.

Money, Money, Money.... Money!

Strangely although this wasn't as much of a mark up as the shortbread, I didn't get the feeling as was giving the same level of value for the price... Maybe the 50p was moving too close to local market values; or the product itself wasn't quite as good.

I like win/win/win situations if at all possible, not sure if yesterday was one; even thou I managed to sell all the pieces and make a good profit; not sure if my friends/customers were getting a real 'win'...

Cake Here - All Gone!

The Importance of Time Management

2009-10-03T09:46:00.003+01:00

OK so as I was saying in big money little money post; it may be a good idea to to create as many e = buying and selling events as is possible, but maybe you need to look beyond the current months challenge.

I think the key to achieving the larger goals, is to be a 'swot' and front load as much doubling of your money as possible; this creates more e's later on when the target seem further and further away.

Brian Tracy - a great author, in his book Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time: Easy Read Comfort Edition talks about doing the things that need to be done, especially the items that aren't fun or just down right nasty; get them out of the way and move on, sometimes on a daily basis; it's the best way to keep moving forward; and to be in the continual habit of constantly moving forward. The items you are not looking forward to are the ones that are all too easy to procrastinate on...

I have been thinking about the idea of moving the doubling forward; what affectively this does is allows me/us to stay in a comfort zone for longer; within the same context - same type/sizes of products (do more of the same, just more often and as quickly as possible). There is definitely something to be said for doing something well and sticking to it... hmmm...

I need to do another round of shortbread this week! didn't get around to it last week.

Maybe I'll force myself to not do the same thing/product each month to keep learning and looking out for new opportunities as the targets grow

My Cheaper Goods from Thomas

2009-09-30T22:46:00.002+01:00

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

2009-09-30T21:10:00.001+01:00

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??

2009-09-29T22:32:00.004+01:00

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

2009-09-28T11:40:00.007+01:00

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:

Constitutional luck, that is, luck with factors that cannot be changed. Place of birth and genetic constitution are typical examples.
Circumstantial luck - with factors that are haphazardly brought on. Accidents and epidemics are typical examples.
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

2009-09-24T23:48:00.002+01:00

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!

2009-09-24T23:46:00.000+01:00

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%

2009-09-24T08:35:00.003+01:00

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

2009-09-22T19:27:00.000+01:00

I have finally past two major milestones:-

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.
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

2009-09-21T23:14:00.004+01:00

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?

2009-09-21T11:12:00.001+01:00

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

2009-09-19T11:22:00.002+01:00

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)

2009-09-17T16:06:00.000+01:00

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

2009-09-17T08:35:00.002+01:00

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

Challenge - Day 1

2009-09-15T09:30:00.006+01:00

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

2009-09-14T14:52:00.001+01:00

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!

2009-09-14T13:47:00.000+01:00

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

2009-09-14T08:02:00.003+01:00

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

2009-09-10T14:07:00.000+01:00

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

2009-09-10T11:17:00.000+01:00

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

2009-09-09T18:24:00.001+01:00

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...

2009-09-08T17:25:00.001+01:00

TDV gave me a pound

Originality Sledgehammer

2009-09-08T05:40:00.002+01:00

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???

2009-09-07T11:14:00.004+01:00

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

Can it be done?
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

2009-09-06T13:43:00.001+01:00

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

2009-09-04T18:55:00.004+01:00

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?