diamonddigger870
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The Business Lounge

Sun May 26, 2019 1:36 am

I work in IT, but lately I have been looking into options for businesses to start and side hustles for extra cash.

I've recently just finished reading CA$HVERTISING: How to Use More than 100 Secrets of Ad-Agency Psychology to Make Big Money Selling Anything to Anyone https://www.amazon.com/dp/1601630328/re ... 6CbX205M91

Currently, I am reading Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071373586/re ... 6CbX9E6Q4Z. It's a pretty interesting read detailing exactly how to get into the minds of your potential customers, and to best position your product/service in the marketplace.

Anyone else reading anything interesting relating to business? Or making any recent strides in hitting their business or side hustle related goals?

Ludwig
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Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 2:28 am

Re: The Business Lounge

Sun May 26, 2019 3:17 pm

I'll second Cashvertising as it is an excellent book with some great copywriting information. Another one I really like is Influence by Robert Cialdini. These two books were instrumental in the launch of my business and I have been able to build on that with more traditional methods ever since.

diamonddigger870
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Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 1:06 am

Re: The Business Lounge

Sun May 26, 2019 3:45 pm

Influence and Pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini are definitely both on my to read list. Robert Ciladini's work was mentioned in both Cashvertising and Positioning, and I've seen Scott Adams, who is knowledgeable about persuasion recommend these books as well.

Currently, I have an small online side hustle, and I have been reading these books to see if there is a better way to reach potential customers using sales techniques from experts to generate more income.

How difficult was it for you to successfully determine the specifics of your niche? I think that's where I'm struggling the most, I mean I know who my niche is generally, but I don't understand their psychological profile enough to design effective ad campaigns to reach them, and make the sale.

Ludwig
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Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 2:28 am

Re: The Business Lounge

Sun May 26, 2019 5:56 pm

My niche was easy to target because it's an established industry. Targeting my demographic has already been done, I just need to outmarket my competition. That comes down to better copy and presentation and a bigger marketing budget. This is also my full time gig so I live and breathe it all day every day. As far as determining your psychological profile I would start with some simple basics such as gender, age range, and income level. I would treat that as the "macro" and look to dig into the details from there so you can maximize your marketing spend, which may simply be your time if you are just getting something off the ground.

diamonddigger870
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Re: The Business Lounge

Mon May 27, 2019 12:02 pm

Thanks for the advice Ludwig. I appreciate it. I'll outline the basics of my niche and get more specific from there.

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The Father
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Re: The Business Lounge

Tue May 28, 2019 2:08 am

This is an excellent idea for a lounge, DD.
"Banh mi" is a great sandwich. "Ban everyone who disagrees with me" is the mark of a power-hungry moderator.

diamonddigger870
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Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 1:06 am

Re: The Business Lounge

Fri Jun 07, 2019 12:56 pm

I haven't got around to working on designing ads, and figuring how to nail down my target audience for a while. I did reread a bit of Ca$hvertising, and remembered that there is a section in the book detailing how to target your audience, which mentions an approach similar to the one that Ludwig described above.

My attention and energy has been lately been taken up by this coding bootcamp that I attend: https://lambdaschool.com/. I attend their part time web development course, and it's been an intense and educational experience so far.

The school is free until they help you get a job, and has successfully trained people who come in as high school graduates to become competent and well payed software engineers/data scientists/mobile developers/web developers by the end of their curriculum. I'm enrolled in their part time program, which lasts for 18 months Monday through Friday. (including a couple of months where they can assist with you job placement).

Web development is very lucrative from what I hear, and enrolling in a course like this will refresh my general software development skills. If I keep my software development skills fresh, and further learn how to be able to build software that's something that I could easily translate to different fields of development if I wanted to.

I'm very much into the idea of working for myself, and I'm working towards making that goal happen by picking up different skills. I'm trying not to do too much at a time, but both software development and sales are interesting to me, and I would like to sharpen my skills in both of them.

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