Make money from your hobbies (in 8 simple steps)

It is now really easy to set up your own website and make money from it. You probably won’t make a fortune, but below is a good way to get started. It’s also a great way to test your business and online marketing skills.

STEP 1: Think of a niche

You need to think of a niche that you are interested in, one that is as specific as possible, and one that has merchandise available on Amazon (you will see why later).

An example of a good niche is 70′s Detective Films. This is better than 70′s films, or detective films, because it is more precise.

6 tips on how to do successful special offers

1: People don’t want to feel cheap… they want to feel special.

Your special offers must make your customers feel special, not insulted. What you are offering should be to a specific group or person. E.g. if you put an ad in the Anglian Times, create an offer that says ‘special offers for Angling Times readers’, other examples are offers that are ‘special’ to members of a club or people attending a show… it’ll give them a feeling of exclusivity.

Magazine idea: READ

The basic idea

An a6 (or slightly bigger) monthly magazine that fits into your back pocket (or handbag) and an e-reader/ ipad/ mobile phone app.

Instead of articles the magazine is made up of short stories written by modern youthful authors – the new Bret Easton Ellises or Irvine Welshes of the world.

Case Study: Roundup 09/10

The Roundup ad made in 2009 by Flint Creative is now running again – look out for it!

This is not just a testament to how effective this ad has been, but to how effective the style of the ad, developed by Flint over a series of ads and sponsorship idents, has been.

Case Study: The Blue Chip Challenge

How Flint Creative helped Blue Chip Feed increase sales, reduce costs, increase communication with customers, get PR coverage and a whole lot more.

5 steps to set up a quick/cheap business email and website

More and more people are setting up their own businesses either as side projects or full time. Obviously we would recommend that you come to Flint for help with all your design and marketing need, but if you want to get going quickly you need to have a proper business like email address and a website. These can be set up very quickly with very very little cost by following the 5 steps below:

1) Buy your URL

Buy your URL at www.names.co.uk

This should be www.yourbusinessname.com (see http://flintcreative.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/businessnaming/ for direction on choosing your business name).

Product idea: The ClothesChair™

This is just an idea – but we think it’s a good one.

Naming your business

Thinking of a company name?

The recession, and the aftermath of a recession, is boom time for new businesses. Whether it’s people who have been made redundant setting up on their own, people who have spotted a gap in a changing market or just people who fancy a change tougher economic times can be a great benefit; rent/ machinery/ staff costs are all cheaper and there is often less competition.

Marketing Atheism

Over the last few years there has been a surge in the Marketing of Atheism, led pricipally by The God Delusion author,  Richard Dawkins.

There is a lot, as marketeers that we can learn from this.

It is a very modern, 360 degree campaign including:

10 Ways to make Social Media Marketing easy

Social media is arguably the biggest leap forward in the marketing world in 2009 – it is certainly the most cost-effective leap forward.

The 10 tips below are all free and all things that you should be doing to make social media marketing easy.

However, these only tell you how to communicate, not what to communicate – these tips will help, but what you say is most important.