All posts in Business Ideas

Where Good Ideas Come From

by Ades on June 28, 2011 in Business Ideas with 9 Comments

Next Wave is Mobile Internet

by Ades on November 24, 2009 in Business Ideas with 25 Comments

If you are still planning to create that “Make Money Online” blog of yours, you are probably too late… Now is not the time to create make money online blogs…

Instead why don’t you think about riding the next wave? That is – Mobile Internet.

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What can you do for the upcoming wave of Mobile Internet? Many things, some of the things you can do are;

developing mobile applications or ask others to develop it for you (for iPhone, Android, Symbian…etc),
developing app-store solutions (create your own getjar.com)
developing mobile phone services
manufacturing your own smart-phone :)

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Above screenshots were taken from this report by MorganStanley.

10GUI could be the end for mouse

by Ades on October 19, 2009 in Business Ideas with 21 Comments

What do you think? Could this new concept 10GUI replace the long-lived mouse that we have so much grown accustomed to? But 10GUI proposes some great ideas, especially the ability to use all your fingers on the multi-touch screen. That means you won’t be restricted to one pointer (of the mouse) which can only do one thing at a time. Watch.

What do you think? Could you use something like this in your daily life? What are the disadvantages that you see with this kind of device?

Windows 7 – Time to Make Money

by Ades on May 30, 2009 in Business Ideas, Make Money with 35 Comments

Microsoft is releasing yet again new operating system Windows 7 sometime in October this year. That means there is a huge opportunity to make money for everyone especially for bloggers, since most of them are good in setting up websites, doing basic SEO and promoting it on the net.

So how would you make money around Windows 7? The possibilities are many. You could setup a tech forum for Windows 7, or make a wallpaper site, or tips & tricks site, or Windows 7 hacks site etc – all of which are very popular segments for previous versions of Windows OS; XP and Vista.

Tell me more…

The idea is simple, basically you are going to use first mover advantage and try to be the authority website in your niche, to make your site popular and high traffic. And then put up some ads (adsense etc) and enjoy the fruits. Or sell the site and get a huge pay for it. Continue reading →

Facebooks comments replacing WordPress comments soon?

by Ades on February 21, 2009 in Blogging Tips, Business Ideas, Online Advertising, SEO & Promotion with 18 Comments

With Facebook’s new commenting widget you can put comments box on any page and allow people to comment using their facebook login. Great thing is that, the comments will appear on their own profiles just like any other notification message in the Facebook.

Do you know what that means to you as a blogger? It means a great opportunity to promote your blog on the facebook for free. Imagine 20 people commented on your blog and these 20 comments appeared on their own facebook profile and seen by their network of friends. E.g “Adam commented on AdesBlog saying….” Obviously there will be people who click on the link and come to your blog.

Mmhh… I think I have to sit and figure out how to replace my wordpress comments with this facebook comments widget. If you find a way how to do it, do let me know. Because it needs to correspond to every post on your blog accordingly. I am not sure if that is possible. It would be better if facebook team could come up with wp plugin for replacing wp comments.

The widget does support comments from people who do not have facebook accounts. So that’s great too. It means you won’t lose anything.

Here is a video by facebook engineers on how to setup this comments widget on your site, (might be little techie for beginners):

For more info you can go to here, developer wiki or forums.

Business Based on Trust (offline), and some updates

by Ades on May 26, 2008 in Business Ideas, Islam with 22 Comments

For the past few days I have been busy with my MBA, this is what happens when you are part-time student. End of semester comes, and boom* you are suddenly busier than any professor in the university. Anyway, I have managed to submit all my term-papers and I am done with half of my presentations. So, I have some time to blog now.

By the way, first week of june I will be having my final exams. Therefore I need some guest bloggers, if you want to get your post on this blog. Send your best unpublished articles to my email at abdylas(%)gmail(.)com. Please note that only high quality articles will be published. If you do not hear from me confirming that your article is accepted and will be published on this blog. Then, it means that your article has been rejected, unfortunately.

Business Based on Trust

Ok, now to the main article. While I was busy doing my term-papers and preparing for presentations, spending most of my time in the university campus. Something interesting caught my eye and I thought I would share it with you guys so I took few pictures with my phone. It’s a bottled water business (see pic below). The company sells bottled water in the campus for 0.50 cents per bottle.

The unique thing about this business is; 1) there is no sales personnel 2) they do not employ any *high security* vending machines for dispensing bottled water and 3) payment is left to customers’ conscience.

While it’s not something extraordinary but it’s refreshing to see businesses operating based on trust, especially in the university campus. Because you know how crazy the students can be, right? But as you can see not with IIUM (International Islamic University Malaysia).

Here is another rack I saw while I was heading to another side of the campus for my breakfast.

I have asked few students about this bottled water business and they said the business has been around for some time. Well, that only tells us that it’s not only possible to operate business based on trust but it’s also possible to make money with it (provided that the community has high morals and strong iman).

IDEA: Image that contains built-in links

by Ades on April 25, 2008 in Business Ideas with 13 Comments

Digital Images (for the web) have come a long way, there are many different formats in use at the moment (eg: gif, jpg, png and tiff). But there hasn’t really been any significant advancement since the founding of GIF format (see right) in 1987 which supports animation unlike other formats. Most of the later advancements mainly focused on image quality and compression, rather than coming up with something new.

New Idea

I have a new idea. How about images that are able to contain hyperlinks in them? Don’t you think that would be cool? Just like GIF format that allows animation within the same image, this new format would be able to contain the link within the image itself. Advantages would be many:

Good bye <a href=” for banners – with this new image format, you would create banners with built-in links in them. So, when you want to advertise, sending your banner only would be sufficient. You would just say “here is my banner, put it up on your site, the link is already inside”.
Photographer’s could protect their images – photographers could insert their website’s URL in their photos. So, if their photo is distributed or copied by other websites, users would always find their way to the original photographer who took the photo by clicking on the image.
Hotlinking would be partially solved – hotlinking is when people link to the images on your server from their sites. This means everytime someone views their page and the image is shown, you lose bandwidth, because the image resides on your server.
By implementing a link on your images, this problem of hotlinking would be partially solved. Because currently when someone links to your images, the normal user won’t know on which server the image resides, unless he/she looks at the code.

But when you insert a link in the image, user’s mouse pointer would change to “hand” (ready to click) when he/she “mouse overs” over the image. Of course, many of these thieves (hotlinkers) wouldn’t want their readers to click away and go to your website. Therefore, this would discourage them from linking to your images directly. Result: hotlinking problem solved!

These are the main advantages that I could think of. Probably there would be many other advantages (and uses for this). So, anyone want to work on this project? If you do, don’t forget to credit me for the idea huh?! ;)

Anyway, what is your thoughts on this? Do you think it would be good? Do you think there would be any negative sides for this?

P.S For the image format, we could use .ade extension ;)

Make money with MySpace Open Platform, now

by Ades on February 6, 2008 in Business Ideas, Make Money with 12 Comments

Remember I have blogged about Facebook and how people (especially programmers) were making huge money with Facebook’s Open Platform? Well, if you were late for the Facebook wave, here comes another facebook myspace logo one – this time it’s MySpace Wave!

MySpace has opened its platform. It’s still in “sandbox” stage and it’s expected to be public next month. During this sandbox phase, the apps you create will be limited to three installs only. This limitation allows you to test your applications in a live environment before the platform goes public.

What is MDP? The MySpace Developer Platform (MDP) allows developers to create applications that interact with MySpace members and their social data. With MDP you will be able to create compelling new products that integrate directly into MySpace pages and get exposure to millions of people around the world.

How to make money?

The easiest way to make money is to try to replicate the success stories on Facebook. If you have been using Facebook you know well about programs like Top Friends, Fun Wall, Super Wall, Super Poke! etc. If it worked on Facebook, it probably will work on MySpace too.

So what are you waiting for? Start your engines! You have about one month to come up with a nice application if you want to gain the first-mover advantage.

Source: Google News

Have blog, but have other online businesses too

by Ades on November 30, 2007 in Advice to Businesses, Articles, Business Ideas, Personal with 45 Comments

If you notice, many successful bloggers do not rely on blogging alone for generating money on internet. In fact, their blogs are usually the secondary source of income for them.

This applies to myself as well (not that I am a successful blogger). My primary source of income comes from my long time online business, which has been around since 1999 (acquired its own domain name in late 2002). I started this website as a hobby in my university years, providing free tutorials on photoshop, dreamweaver, css, php… etc. But after some time it became popular and was driving thousands of visitors every month.

After my degree, when I was working in Web Design field, I added free website templates to my website. This too attracted a lot of visitors. After all, who doesn’t love free stuff right?

Traffic and free stuff brings business

By now, I was getting a lot of requests to design websites. Initially, I did a lot of freelancing (not all listed in portfolio). It did bring quite substantial amount of income, but it also involved a lot of hard work on my part. So, to reduce my workload, I introduced ready website templates to my website. This took huge workload off my shoulders. Because, now people who were looking for web design were purchasing my website templates directly, instead of hiring me for custom design. As a result, I had more free time for other things.

So, with my free time I decided to make my own products. Latest being the color picker tool that was launched in early 2006.

By now my hobby site that started humbly in 1999, was making money from many sources, including advertising (i.e text links, publisher programs, affiliate programs etc.) If it was not for my free tutorials, I wouldn’t be where I am now – doing what I like most, staying at home and creating my own projects and products. Of course blogging has been part of my everyday life for the past 2 years now.

Lessons learned

Here are some of the lessons that I can bring to your attention from my life, work and entrepreneurial experience so far.

Have more than one online business – if you have only a blog as your online income generator, try to open few more businesses. If you are not sure what kind of business you can do online, there are tons of ideas on Amazon. Just make some research and pick few ideas to work on.
Pursue your hobby – just keep doing what you love i.e your hobby. You never know what it might bring you in the future.
For example, I graduated with a degree in ICT, majoring in Databases. But I ended up working in the field of Web Design. And now most of my income comes from web design related things. Not bad for a hobby that brings money, huh? If I had abandoned my interest in web design then, I wouldn’t be where I am now.
Turn services into products – if you can, try to turn your service into a product. This way you can put your business on auto-pilot! As a result, you will have more free time for your new projects. For example, I have turned my web design service into a product, which is website template.
Give away things for free – by giving away things for free you benefit both parties; the community, and yourself. I gave away tutorials (my knowledge) and website templates for free without knowing that they would one day bring me enough money to be self-employed. Leo Babauta has a good article on this too, read here.
Make your own products – sure you can make a lot of money by selling someone else’s products. But why not reverse the situation? You could easily become the party that provides the affiliate program. This way others would sell your products, and you would get the larger share of the profit.
There is nothing more satisfying than selling your own products. Moreover, investing in your own products is a long-term strategy, which could very well secure your profitability for a long time to come. You have no programming skills? No problem, there are thousands of people who has. Just invest some of your time and money, and you can have your own product in no time.
Act on your ideas and thoughts – Don’t read all the popular business books and bestsellers just for the sake of reading only (So that you can say “I read that book”). Because knowledge that is not acted upon, is no better than not having that knowledge at all. Unfortunately, many of us simply don’t take that first step to make our ideas and thoughts a reality, to turn our ideas into a potential business that could sustain us (possibly for the rest of our lives). So if you are not gonna act, don’t waste your money on books. Instead you could collect that money and hire someone to do some project for you.

I hope you will find some of these tips useful. Please do share your own tips that have made a difference in your life or business.

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Leverage Facebook by creating apps for it, make huge money!

by Ades on October 30, 2007 in Business Ideas, Make Money with 5 Comments

Most of you must be already using Facebook and the ones who are not using it, surely have heard about it, probably got few invitations from your friends too. But you must be still resisting to join it. Well, it’s up to you to join it or not.

I am not going to talk about how great Facebook is in this topic, rather I will be talking about, how you could leverage Facebook’s huge network of user-base to your own advantage, and that is:

to use it as a free promotion tool for your blog,
and to make huge amounts of money

How you can do that? Non programmers won’t like this – you can do that by developing some interesting applications for Facebook. If you are not a web programmer, you could still hire someone to develop your application. Not necessarily you have to code it yourself. It’s the idea that counts here, not programming skills.

Every day 1000 programmers are joining the Platform

In the middle of 2007, Facebook has opened its platform dubbed F8 for the 3rd party application integration.

Within short period of time (less than a month) there were already 40,000 developers who have joined the program i.e every day about 1000 programmers were joining. Currently there are more than 168,000 developers evaluating the platform.

Yes, that’s a lot of programmers! But as I said, it’s the idea that counts. So if you have a great idea for an application, you could still beat these programmers.

What applications are popular?

Adonomics tracks the applications used in Facebook. According to Adonomics, the following 10 applications are the most popular.

According to the same source, there are 6,905 apps on Facebook as of today. These applications were used 24,835,874 times in the last 24 hours and have a combined valuation of $381,921,686.

How to make money with applications?

When you create an application that is popular and used by many users on Facebook, you could do wonders with it. Since you are the creator of the application, you will have control on what to display inside the application. That means you could place an AdSense ad inside it for example. Or you could sell direct sponsorship ads.

For example, TopFriends is used by over 2 million users. And according to Adonomics, it’s valued at over 29 million dollars! Selling it for a million would be more than enough for an ordinary developer.

Ok, ok… how do I start creating Facebook apps?

Calm down… if you want to start creating your own Facebook application. Here is a tutorial that will teach you the basics. Don’t forget to check Facebook’s own Developer’s Area too. Lastly, here is a tutorial on developing a Facebook platform application with Ruby On Rails. Good luck with your application development! And don’t forget to donate some to AdesBlog if you become millionaire! ;)

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Guy Kawasaki and AudioComments idea

by Ades on October 27, 2007 in Business Ideas, Personal with No comments

Last time I had proposed to VCs to take Audio-Comments to the next level, to make it public, to make it possible to integrate to WordPress blogs through plugins, widgets etc.

Regarding this, I had contacted few people, one of them being Guy Kawasaki. Frankly, I didn’t expect him to reply, because he is a very busy man. However he did reply. He wrote:

Ades,

Depends. I barely have time to read all the comments. I for sure donâ€™t want to listen to them. But people who are looking for more interaction might love it.

Guy
http://truemors.com/

Unfortunately, as you can see above, he wasn’t interested in the idea. But nevertheless, it was nice of him to reply and comment on the idea. My respects to him.