money Archives - Arsham Mirshah

#1 – Riches Are In The Niches

Make sure your website or business caters to a niche market.

Service or product, just make sure you’re serving a niche.

Why? – Easy: it’s easier to #winning (for the future: that was a Charlie Sheen joke).

Do you want to compete with GE, Microsoft, or Home Depot? No, you want to compete with a few companies that you can easily differentiate yourself from.. or better yet, you want to compete with… NO ONE (Blue Ocean Strategy)!

Long story short: It’s easy to gain (or create) market share and differentiate yourself in a niche.

#2 – Monetization

Have you thought about your monetization strategy? You gotta love when someone pitches a business or website idea and you ask: “How are you going to make money?” … crickets chirp … “that’s just lovely.”

I participated in Startup Baltimore (where people with ideas and skills meet to bring an idea to life in one weekend’s time) – half the ideas hadn’t even thought of how to monetize their idea… that blew me away.

Don’t get me wrong, you don’t HAVE to make money — you can provide a service that betters the world (or community) and operate as a non profit company – that’s fine too.

The Most Important Part of Monetization

Actually, you don’t REALLY have to know EXACTLY what your monetization strategy is up front (I might get yelled at for saying that).

Monetization strategy is definitely very important… but two sound concepts (or focuses) always apply and if you do them both right, the money will always follow:

Traffic First: Retail, service, online, product… doesn’t matter. All businesses or websites need to start with traffic & gain a following. Without people digging what you have, you have nothing. If you’re starting a website, get traffic to the site first, make that your only focus… then you can always monetize the traffic later!
(Why do you think Facebook, Twitter, and these other websites are worth so much when they don’t make ANYTHING close to their valuation in revenue (let alone profit (yes, parentheses within parentheses within parentheses, you like it)) … it’s because of their potential (because they have TRAFFIC and a FOLLOWING))

And to get that traffic or follow… you need to always provide value. Value makes the world go round. No one likes the guy who takes but never gives (if you don’t know that guy, you’re him). If you’re providing serious value, or have an awesome product, you will earn traffic & a following, and a loyal one at that! Brand loyalty is hard to accurately value, but anyone in business or marketing will tell you it’s extremely important. Add value, make the world a better place 🙂

SO that’s it, that’s all I have for starting a website or business and making money. Just a quick disclaimer:

The ideas in this post are breifly explained and come form my experience. I’m not the most successful person in the world (yet, #winning), but I think the ideas are pretty solid for anything getting started with a business or a website.

Please discuss and add your thoughts for the use of everyone reading.

Cheers, -Arsham

This is a long overdue post which I would love to get some opinions and comments on…

I’ll make it nice, short, and to the point:

The main idea is this:

Getting great deals, shopping during sales, or buying the generic version of something is all well and good…

BUT, there are certain things that you should spend your money (or splurge) on.

What are these things you ask? – Well, they could vary from person to person, but let’s get a little general and talk about criteria:

Something you spend a lot of time in, on, or doing
Something that directly effects your health (either body or mind)

Don’t have the money to buy the high-quality product … learn how to use credit wisely.

That being said, here are 3 examples of things you should spend your money on.

1. Shoes.

Think about it, you spend over 12 hours a day in shoes.

Maybe you switch shoes during the day, or wear different shoes on different days with different outfits… whatever, all your shoes should be top-notch.

Why? – Oh, just a couple reasons:

Your feet are important – they support the rest of your body — bad shoes = feet problems which is 🙁
Style, baby! – Shoes can make or break an outfit, and if you’ve heard the saying “first impression is the most important one”, you’re gonna want some nice shoes, k?

So get some nice shoes… and while you’re shopping, throw down on some…

2. Clothes

Again, you spend 2/3 of your day in clothes (unless you do porn or live in a nudist colony).

Similar to shoes, style is important, if you want to make a good impression.

Believe me, I do my best to detach and “not care” about what other people think of me… but when it comes to business or trying to find a mate (yeah, I just said that) – you gotta look good… am I right or what?

Plus, I find that when you dress nice, you feel better about yourself and want to perform better.

For instance, when I work in my pajamas (it’s happened several times), I’m definitely not as productive or sharp as when I’m dressed, well, sharp!

Dress good, feel good… trust me.

I’ll even go shopping with my mom from time to time (great way to spend time with your mom btw)… she has great taste and knows how to make me look good.

Cool, so you’re clothed 2/3 of the day, and the 1/3 you’re sleeping, on a…

3. Bed

This one might lends itself to criteria #2 (health) more so than #1 –

Have you ever heard about people “waking up on the wrong side of the bed” or having “neck pains” from sleeping wrong?

Yeah, you don’t want that.

Get a nice bed.

You spend a third of your time sleeping, might as well do it comfortably, right?

Plus, it’s bad for your back otherwise.

And don’t act like putting sheets on the bed is hard, because it’s not, ok? 🙂

Other Things To Spurge On

Following the 2 criteria above, you could argue to spend your money on several different things…

If you’re a body builder: buy organic foods and high class protein… not the cheap stuff. Of course, you should always look at the nutrition facts.

If you’re an outside sales person, you probably drive a lot — get a nice, quality, reliable car.

If you’re a model: buy top-notch make up — you don’t want the cheap stuff ruining that pretty face.

Alright, you get the point… What do you spend your money on?

Tag: money

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