New Georgia Business Idea – Ebook Cover Designer

As I covered yesterday, there is going to be – and is now – an ebook revolution. One niche you might look at starting a business in is the graphical arts business as a result of these new changes in the book publishing realm.

Every ebook needs a cover. Not just any cover, a great cover, because it is competing against all the amateur covers that exist.

I know one ebook author that pays his designer $300 per cover for his books. This guy is selling over 20,000 ebooks per month just on Amazon.com. Not bad, right? $300 for the 20 books he has cost him $6000. He makes $30,000+ per month. Do you think he’s worried about the cost? No, me neither.

I’m not saying that everyone will pay $300 per cover, but, there are other numbers in there that make it reasonable. What if you charged $100? I think that’s a fair price, and what I would be willing to pay for a custom cover for my ebooks.

I’m not very good at graphics design – but, I can whip out a cover in about 2 hours. If I’m making a great cover (my idea of great) I can do it in about 3 hours. As a graphics expert – you can probably cut that down to one hour.

What is one hour of your time worth? $100 sounds about right, yes?

Keep in mind you might not be booked solid with work – so, $100 would be enough to give you something meaningful for the effort.

There’s something else you might do… value add on top of producing covers for the author… you could offer to also format the graphics and other images – so they conform to specifications that Kindle, Nook, and other ereaders require or prefer. Manipulating images so they look good on an ereader is not what most authors do best. You could offer for $150 to do their cover and all their graphics (up to 10), for that set price and I think you could find work doing so.

You’ll never know until you try.

If you are going to start your own graphics business – don’t forget to incorporate in Georgia here at this site by clicking one of the links to do so…

Best of luck to you!

New Georgia Business Idea – Ebook Editor

The ebook revolution is coming – some say it’s already here. Ok, I say that too – it’s here. There are more ebooks sold at Amazon.com than there are paperback books. That’s saying something.

Ebooks are the start of something amazing… now people are able to carry around 2500 books in their ereader… they could never carry even 25 books around all the time with them before. Ebooks can be had in an instant. The Amazon Kindle ereader allows connecting to the internet through WIFI and downloading ebooks in just a couple of minutes – on virtually whatever topic you want. How did you do it before? Go online and order a book to come in the mail in 3 days? Drive to Barnes & Noble and search through books one by one until you found one that was interesting?

With the ebook revolution is coming a WHOLE lot of new writers to the field that are not being edited at all. The editing process is getting skipped in many cases – and ebook quality, just doesn’t compare to edited paperbooks. There is coming a time when book editors are going to enjoy a resurgence as writers realize – they still need you.

If you might consider yourself an editor – this could be the best time to get into the field – ever. There are thousands of new books coming out each day – just on Amazon. Add all the other ebook retailers to the mix – and there are many books that need an editor to be considered of sufficient quality for readers to enjoy.

The ebook editing process might look different than the old paperback editing process. Maybe todays editors don’t need to read every line – and make sure the book makes sense. Maybe a new editing process will evolve where ebook writers just have someone proof the major things like spelling, use of the words, and grammar. Maybe editors will start formatting books for best results when displayed on the Kindle, Nook, iPad, or other readers.

It’s an exciting time to get your foot in the door and start building up a reputation as an ebook editor. There will be a lot of work in the years to come. Maybe more than you can handle yourself and you will need to find some help (employees).

Start your business, but do it the right way – incorporate your new Georgia business with the forms above.

Good luck to you!

New Georgia Business Idea – Android Programmer

Google has come out with a new operating system (OS) for notebook computers – and, all mobile devices really. Developers, programmers that build applications to run on Android are going to be in demand for a long time.

The typical route of becoming a developer for an operating system is to go to college and get a bachelors of science degree in computer science. This is what most people do – but, not what you really need to do. If you can learn programming from a book, from an online tutorial, from a friend – you can become an Android programmer just the same. Big companies like to hire programmers with a good school (university) background, but many companies don’t care at all if you have a degree – just whether you can program.

As an Android programmer you can run your own business. You can hire employees, or work on your own. You can work as a consultant – incorporating yourself and working on a straight payment basis (corp to corp).

Being a programmer you can work anywhere in the world that has a decent internet connection.

Besides good money, there are many reasons people become programmers. Android is an up and coming OS and there will be many jobs available for a long time as more hardware companies (Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba) start putting it on their computers instead of Windows OS.

Can you sit in a room and listen to music with the lights low for 5-10 hours a day 5-6 days a week? This job might be for you!

If you decide to be a programmer – do incorporate your Georgia business as soon as possible to reap the benefits incorporation gives.

And Good luck to you!

New Georgia Business Idea – Domain Broker

If you fancy yourself a wheeler and dealer you might look at this online business as an ideal way to go – and the ultimate business to start in Georgia – or, really anywhere you choose.

Buying and selling domain names. Not entire websites, but just domain names – can be very profitable, and you can come out way ahead if you have a creative brainstorming process and are good at choosing names you buy.

There are many domains that are still available, and there are some good investments out there. If you buy a domain straight from the registrar – Godaddy.com, for instance, you can get one for a little over $8. Even if you sell it for $30, despite whatever you did to get the domain, you would still make a small profit. It is hard to find domains that are available, but, not impossible.

You’ll undoubtedly find that other domains are already owned by someone – and you’ll find yourself contacting them to see if you can get the domain from them for a reasonable price. What is reasonable is what you both come up with. Buying and selling domains can be a tricky business. You may start out and not be any good, but you’ll quickly learn. Or, you might be great already and really have a knack for valuing the domains.

There are many ways to value a domain, some include:

Shorter domains are more valuable. Inc.com is more valuable than incorporation.com, if we’re only looking at domain name length.

Domains with keywords in them – like incorporation.com, is highly valuable because it is the ONLY word in the domain. It’s like the starting point for all other domains in this niche. Google and other search engines give it more weight.

Is anyone typing the domain into their browser? If yes, the domain has more value.

Was there already a successful website at the domain in the past? If yes, it could have more value.

As you become a better trader you’ll understand many factors that go into giving a domain value – and you’ll be able to run a successful business because of your knowledge. Or, you won’t. It’s pretty much that the people that make it in this business learn key points that give them a profit on more domains than not. It’s sort of a game, but then many business owners love games. Look at how many people play the Forex market!

If you choose this business, dont’ forget to incorporate in Georgia for maximum protection of your personal assets. Please investigate what all incorporation does to help you and your business.

Good luck to you!

New Georgia Business Idea – Job Recruiter

One online business you might start is a head-hunting company. What I mean is, of course, job recruiter. You can become a matchmaker between those that need jobs and those that have jobs – and take a commission off successful placements.

Usually how it it works is that a head-hunter becomes very familiar with companies that regularly hire workers. Usually these are large companies with a constant demand for new employees. Ideally a recruiter will work out an exclusive agreement with the employer to provide all their employees. This is akin to outsourcing the human resources department in a company, and something that many employers find attractive as an option.

A typical commission on a job placement might give the recruiter $1,000 for the placement and first two days of work and $1,000 per month for the next 3 months the employee remains with the company. This ensures that the recruiter didn’t just sign up anyone and is scamming the employer with employees that will quit after a day or two.

There are many subjects you can focus on as a recruiter. Some are focused on tech jobs, programmers especially, others are focused on nurses, or managers. The higher the annual salary of a worker – the higher the commission. $10,000 commissions are not unheard of – and it can go much higher than that.

If you have excellent phone skills and you enjoy working with people looking for jobs – a new Georgia recruiting business might be just what you should begin.

Before you get too far with your idea – incorporate in Georgia – here on this site on the forms pages with links above. Incorporation is smart and, we feel, essential in this day of easy litigation.

Good luck to you!

New Georgia Business Idea – Job Portal

You might think all the job websites that will ever be created, or be successful, have already been done. You’d be wrong.

There are still opportunities in this niche – and they are lucrative opportunities. You’re going to have to put your mind to it – and decide to topple the competition – if there is any, but if that’s what you need to do – you CAN do it.

Craigslist.org (CL) came out about a decade ago (I’m not looking it up – let’s just say a decade! lol) Seems like I’ve used it at least that long, probably longer. Craigslist was successful for a while, but you know what? It isn’t all that anymore. They have no editors that read through ads – and so spam is rife. They rely on their community of readers to police the ads. That doesn’t work so well. It’s not efficient, it isn’t even according to the rules CL itself setup. Any 2 persons can flag an ad and have it stop running. I’ve had this happen half a dozen times. It’s very aggravating. As a result, I use CL as a last resort.

Could you develop something like CL?

I think you could duplicate it, and make it better for about $20,000 initial costs. As your visitors increased you’d need to update your servers, but really – that would be your main cost for a while.

Or, you might go smaller. SnowShovelingJobs.com. Grasscuttingjobs.com. Nobody has these domains as of today – take them, a gift. Why not have a national site listing these jobs and workers? Surely that would work on some level – right? Have both of them. Have “LemonadeStandJobs.com” and others. On a national level there might be something to them. Who’s to say unless you look into it and give it a shot if it seems doable?

Be creative with the job website you create, or, go head to head with someone that is already established. Either way, the reward when you win will be substantial if you target the right niche. Job sites are easy to monetize and usually last a very long time. Few competitors get into it because they think – “Oh, they’re already in that space…”

There are so many things that companies do wrong though – even if they’re already in the space. Find a niche that you can do BETTER and give it a concerted effort!

And, incorporate your Georgia business! We offer Georgia incorporation forms right here on the site in case you haven’t noticed…

Good luck to you!

New Georgia Business Idea – Membership Site

One thing we’re going to be doing over the next couple of months is building a new membership site. We’re not sure what the topic is going to be yet, but the model we want to use is the membership site because it’s such a powerful way to build a website, business, and put money in your pockets.

Membership sites can be focused on many topics – and don’t take this short list to be all-inclusive:

• Money Making Guru
• A Sport with private, moderated forums where you can interact with others at a high level
• A site where video is released often – and has great value.
• A site that promises secrecy, privacy from the public – not found in search engines.
• A training site – something is being taught

A membership site gets income from primarily – one source – your members paying  a recurring monthly fee. You can restructure payments however you want, but a monthly recurring payment of between $3 and $49 works well. I have a friend that built an online greeting card site back in 2000. Soon he had giant traffic and decided to offer some premium card sending ability for just $2.99 per month. Doesn’t sound like much, right? He had over 100,000 people sign up to do it. Now, how does $300,000+ per month sound? Right, the model has power in numbers! The numbers dwindled over time as more greeting card sites cropped up – but, as of last year he still had 20,000 subscribers at $2.99 per month.

On the other side you can charge $2,000 a month or a few hundred dollars a month and focus on just a handful of members. Some marketing gurus say to target 100 people to sign up for your monthly membership site. Charge what you need to make if 100 signed up. So, if you want to make $50,000 per month you’d charge $500 per month. You’d need to make sure you were providing $500 (or more) in value each month so people kept up their recurring payments – and you’d be set – making $600,000 per year.

To me the $2.99 sounds easier, and, once the greeting card premium service was set up – programmed by the web developers for a thousand dollars or so – it ran itself. My friend did nothing from that point on. He did hire a customer service girl to work the email responses to people that wrote in. He paid her $20,000 per year. He made 3.6 million per year and paid out $20,000 for customer service and another $24,000 on servers at Rackspace.com. Not bad net, right?

If you’re looking for a Georgia business to start and you haven’t considered a membership site… start looking into it. I think you’ll like what you find. Once you figure out what niche you’ll target, don’t forget to incorporate your Georgia business and reap the benefits.

Good luck to you!

New Georgia Business Idea – Online Directory

We’re well into a series on new ideas for Georgia businesses, and most of them focus on businesses you can start online.

Creating an online directory at first might not seem like a business to you. Let me explain how it all works.

There are portals to information about a specific topic all over the web. Business.com has links to businesses across the USA. Alltop.com has different directory pages for very diverse subjects. What both sites have in common is their quest for traffic – visitors, to come to their respective websites and interact with it somehow. Clicks, pageviews, filling out forms. All of it counts and means something to the owner of the site.

Creating a directory about a subject that has a lot of interest can make you money – and even develop into a business before too long, if you’re diligent and work hard to make it work. Sit in front of your computer for a few hours each day and work on your site – in time you will have something. There is no magic wand to wave, just your fingers to get going on the keyboard!

So – you set up a directory of businesses with similar products and services and provide access to it on the internet. The usual pay-model is that general listings are free. Premium listings – which show at the top of the results – are paid. You might also offer product photos or videos for another fee. Typical registration fees for premium business listings range from $29 to a few hundred dollars. The better business bureau in Florida charges $600 per year. Is it worth that much? It IS. If you build a quality directory, people will also find it “worth it” and join. Personally we’ve joined dozens of directories over the years – some of them provide good value and we re-register yearly. Others don’t.

Be one of the directories that offer value and you’ll have a business that virtually runs itself over time.

Another way to monetize your new Georgia business directory is to take advertising – graphics or text. You could even put Google’s Adsense ads on your site. Sign up as an affiliate at Clickbank or Commissionjunction.com and sell other people’s offers on your directory website.

There are many ways to monetize your site once you have it up and running. First and foremost is to get enough traffic to make it all worthwhile. Traffic means money…

Incorporating your Georgia business is very important, before you get going. Incorporation offers a number of benefits, but foremost it gives you some protection by putting a corporate entity between you and the public. Someone finding reason to sue you – must sue the company, and that puts a layer of protection over your personal assets like house, cars, savings.

Good luck to you!

New Georgia Business Idea – Online Forum

If you’re looking for something part-time to add to your income stream, or maybe you’re even looking for the ONE online venture that is going to be your sole occupation and take you through retirement… an online forum just might be what you’re looking for.

The best forums seem to use vbulletin as the software behind their success. The software is infinitely configurable, and fairly easy to to install and moderate on your own until your traffic grows a lot.

There is magic behind the use of a forum as your new Georgia business. Let me explain…

Forums start out slow. They all do. Most forum owners post their own questions and answers for a while until the forum gets started on its own. They enlist friends and anybody with half and interest – to post on the forum. They might even pay people to post there.

A forum is like a snowball rolling down a slight incline gathering size and strength. Once your forum reaches “critical mass” and has a hundred posts or more per day coming in – you are going to be in a cozy position before long. Popular forums with traffic – many visitors reading the posts, mean money in your pockets. You can run your own products for sale in ads on your forum, or, just run Google Adsense ads – either of which will give you enough to live on when your traffic has reached high enough levels.

Forums are great for another reason… the more posts and responses to posts you have, the more the search engines are going to take note. Search engines spider through all the pages of forums and index them. If your forum has 100 new topics per day – that’s 100 new pages of content that is created in one day. Add to that – the responses that come to the posts – and new content is being continually added in a forum – which Google absolutely loves.

Here’s a secret… the more you can keep your forum focused on a profitable niche – the more you are going to reap. Keep replies to posts on topic and the keyword density for your forum will stay high and do better in Google. You know there are some forums with millions of pages of content – and Google indexes them too. If you have a forum on a small niche – but one that is popular with people – you too will have success.

Starting a forum on a website hardly seems like a genuine Georgia business – right? But,that is part of its magic. You moderate it for a while and then hire others to do it for you.

Though creating an online forum doesn’t seem like a business, if it’s making you money – you’ll be better off incorporating as soon as possible. Incorporate here at Start Georgia Business (.com) and reap another benefit… less worries about the legality of your business… less worry about litigation.

Good luck to you!

New Georgia Business Idea – Freelancer

There are MANY areas you can freelance in, and if you can do it online – without leaving the comfort of your home – why not?

Three of the primary freelancing sites are: Guru.com, Odesk.com, and freelance.com.

You can list your services there and bid on job openings posted by employers that need someone to do a job, or even a piece of a job. Renaming files – might be a job someone posts. They just don’t have either the time or the expertise to do it – so they offer some money for freelancers to do it for them. Literally, some of the jobs are that easy.

Of course there are involved jobs like “build a database for a dating site”. Things that will take you a week or more of work, and are priced accordingly. As a freelancer you can bid what you will do the job for – and others also bid. The lowest bid does not always win. Employers can sometimes see through low bids for what they are, and hire the freelancer they are more confident can handle the job.

There are a TON of people from Asia, and other countries that are bidding on the same jobs as you on these freelance sites – for things that need to be done online. They can do it very cheaply. Can you offer something they can’t? There are still freelancers from the USA and even Georgia companies doing well in the freelance market. You’ll need to scour the boards I mentioned and see when jobs pop up that are appropriate for you. There are people making over $100K per year on freelance.com – I know one myself.

You can join one of these sites and within minutes have secured a job – there are MANY jobs to choose from by bidding. There are also niche-specific freelance boards that you can find. Search Google for your niche and “freelance” or “freelancer” or “job auction” and see if you can find something that fits more specifically, what you do.

Don’t forget to incorporate your new Georgia business! Incorporation protects you to a greater degree in the case of lawsuits… lenders take you more seriously. Some tax advantages can also result. It just makes GOOD sense to incorporate in Georgia.

Good luck to you!

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