Some more business opportunities May 19, 2005
Posted by Martin in : Business, Thailand , trackbackWe are on month five of a two-month project but finally I am seeing some progress on my newly revised United World Telecom 4 Me website.
The site is being hosted elsewhere by my good friends at Cablan.net until it’s completed. There’s many changes still in the pipeline so I’m not going to publish the temporary link here yet. That said the new site is looking pretty good and, although it is taking me forever checking every detail of the designers work, it is a huge improvement on the current United World Telecom 4 Me site. I’m having to do a lot of copy-writing for the site which is a great experience for me.
It may be completed in time if the Thai designer actually reads the instructions I’m giving him rather than merely pasting these instructions onto the site as part of the content! I’m optimistically expecting some version of the site up by the end of next week.
My ambitious plan is to pre-empt every question or problem a client might ever have and have answered available on the site to save me 99% of my customer service time. Other people within UWT will be linked from the site so that they can deal directly with clients and some fancy back-end stuff works out all of my administration for me. I’m looking forward to having the business work for me (and work hard).
So … my challenge now is that I’m going to need a new project or two to keep me awake and to bring some money in.
A few opportunities have presented themselves and I have created opportunities for myself too. I’m traveling into central Bangkok 4 daysa week for my Aikido classes, to play squash and also to meet friends; so going in a few hours earlier to meet people is not a problem. It’s just now a case of deciding which opportunities take my fancy, and which ones want me.
Listed in no particular order:
1) Selling Advertising on an Internet Radio Station.
Nearly a year ago I’d been speaking with the webmaster of ThaiVisa.com about possibly doing some sales work for his newly-launched Radio Bangkok station. At the time I was otherwise committed and lazy to venture into central Bangkok every day. Now I think I’d appreciate the challenge and could make some serious money with it. I submitted a proposal a few weeks ago and so far I’ve not had any positive news back.
It seems Radio Bangkok is waiting to get legal staff involved first before advertising contracts can be agreed upon. The more I’ve investigated the site though the more I doubt it’s future. There’s a lot of work needed to get the site off the ground after over a year of it being pretty inactive. The notion of ‘Pod-Casting’ whereby anybody can actually begin their own radio station (as such) in the same way that blogs have made becoming a newspaper free and accessible to the millions is going to put a lot of pressure on startup internet radio providers. I guess this prospect might fizzle out and die but I’m still curious to take things further, because there’s a lot of skills I’d enjoy developing.
2) Managing an Export Company
Apparently a friend of Kitty’s is looking to find a full-time manager for her export company. Kitty asked me to forward a resume on today. I know very little about what the lady is looking for but working in an export company would be a fantastic opportunity to learn about the industry and develop my skills. I’ve got no idea if I’ll be offered a job, nor whether I’d actually want a job which would take up most of my life but I’m curious to know a little more. I’ve not updated my C. V. for 2 years. I’ve got a feeling that I’ll be reluctant to work full-time ever again though as I value my freedom too much. I’ve only every worked part-time for my entire employable life 
3) Some More Websites
I think this is the most likely path I am going to take. Finding a good web designer and programmer is difficult however Eniko has done a great job of this site and Aaron has done some really astounding back-end work on my previous websites. The things I’m looking to do vary between the routine to the complicated but I’ve gotten quite skilled in designing exactly what I want and how to get it done (although my current United World Telecom 4 Me designers might not agree).
I don’t want to detail exactly what I am looking into right now however I found a lovely little enterprise which have done a great job creating a very simplistic site. It is called Amazing Fly Gun. Their refer-a-friend puzzle is inspirational and the copywriting , design and concept are very impressive. I’ve got no idea if these guys are making any money, they’ve got a poor Alexa rating, a PR of 4, only a handful of inbound links but lots of publicity from portal sites (presumably ones using overture). Either way I think their business is cute and perhaps I’d like to create a few small sites like theirs. The site sells novelty guns for killing flies. Click here to take a look.
Whatever happens I’m going to move away from Telecoms into a different industry. Telecom no longer excites me and in a few years VoIP will mean every makes free phone calls anyway. If I were to build a new telecom site I think I’ll have missed the boat.
I like the idea of making money from lead-generation, from selling pay-per-click or mailing list advertisements or in working as a portal. I’m new to all these ideas but now is gong to be a great time to learn. It’s likely I’ll have something started within the next 2-3 weeks.
4) Some Freelance Sales Work
I do enjoy the satisfaction I can get in making money just in using my personality and my voice. Every so often opportunities arise where I’ll happily close deals for clients or will set up qualified appointments. If any work comes available I’ll take it up for the chance to make some short-term money.
5) Teaching
Not a chance of returning to teaching any more. I mean no disrespect to my many teacher friends but the work does not give me any opportunity to develop myself in the way that I want.
6) Take an Open University course
This is a very appealing idea for me. I’d be delighted to find a credible course in e-commerce or similar. Right now I’m not so sure I can afford the cost to do this but it’s certainly floating around in my head. The beauty of the internet by it’s very nature is that it is full of information about itself. Whilst an open-university course might provide me with some discipline, I’m confident I could learn much of it myself - as i have done in the past year. Whilst it was not long ago that I was considering a masters degree nowadays I wonder if I really need a qualification to prove to other people my capabilities. I don’t really envision myself working for anybody else in the future and by just jumping in the deep end I’ve proven to myself that I can learn to swim.
7) Copy-Writing
I mean writing sales copy rather than protecting it from theft. I’m confident in my English language ability and the astronomical costs copywriters charge has meant I’m having to teach myself the fundamentals. It’s not difficult, merely a case of printing out pages from convincing web-copy and studying them. My only concern in the short-term is having the audacity to charge $250 per 500 words to clients in order to imply credibility. Quite frankly I’m not THAT egotistical - although getting into this business now is certainly a good direction to move in.
As I remember saying when I first arived in Thailand, there’s so many opportunities here, it’s merely a case of choosing which ones to focus ones time on.
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You can lead a customer to a FAQ entry, but you can’t make them read it