Photo Credit: maubrowncow

Over the years I have followed my interests and experimented with quite a few business models along the way. Below are six of these business ventures (some are a bit odd) and the marketing lessons they have taught me.

If there’s an overall lesson to be drawn from this it would be that experimentation is the key to finding your passion and strengths in business.

Don’t be scared of trying things out, especially in the online space where the cost of failure is low and the upside potential is enormous.

The first $100 at age 10

The first entrepreneurial venture I remember was a school newspaper I started with one of my classmates. The two of us sat down in front of my computer to come up with a catchy name for the newspaper. We spent a lot of time designing the newspaper and wrote all of the articles ourselves.

I bounced around in the neighbourhood eagerly trying to convince local businesses to advertise in our newspaper. But initially my pitch was met with indifference.

After a few attempts I realized that I had to build up the value by mentioning our circulation of 100+ copies and how all of these school children would be storming their store as soon as they saw the advertisement.

After I had my pitch down I managed to sell all of our ad space. And I learned it’s hard for any adult to resist a 10-year boy with a good story.

Among the businesses were a small bike store, a crêpe restaurant and an independently owned convenience store. Half of them agreed to pay upfront, the other half wanted to see their ad in the actual newspaper before paying up.

The hard part was done. I contacted all of the local copy shops to find the best deal for our first print run. Finding a good deal was important since we had to print about 600 pages. In the end we found a shop that charged 5 cents per copy.

The next day the two of us scurried around our primary school proudly handing out the fresh prints of the newspaper. We made $100 profit on the first issue and were exhilarated.

Lesson learned: People want to buy from you if you have a good story to tell.

Selling the ultimate Hookah package on Ebay

During my high school years eBay had just gotten extremely popular. I used to spent a fair amount of time on eBay buying random items, researching and selling things I didn’t need anymore.

One day I had a chat with one of my best friends. He always had profitable ventures going on the side. Among them were things like teaching younger students math (at outrageous hourly rates), selling tour on his motorboat on the local canal and selling stuff in the local classifieds.

He invited me over to his place to smoke his new Hookah with apple tobacco. I enjoyed the mild taste and we started talking about business ideas. Soon we realized that there was a great opportunities to sell Hookahs on eBay.

We used his connections to import an initial batch of about 20 water pipes from Iran. After they had gotten clearance from customs we picked them up and immediately put them on eBay. They were selling well. A dozen successful auctions later more and more competitors started driving down the profit margins.

We called in a brainstorming session in his room. There had to be a way to compete with these guys. Finally we came up with an irresistible offer. We sold the Hookahs and gave away a package of free things with it including a choice of fruity tobacco, charcoal and some other tools.

The additional cost for us was almost negligible, yet the perceived value was enormous. The package started selling like crazy!

Lesson learned: Create an irresistible offer. Be creative and it doesn’t have to cost much more.

Hiring caricature artists from India

During my college years I studied in Upstate New York for a semester. One of the courses I picked was about entrepreneurship. All of the students were asked to work on a real business idea for the duration of the course.

During the initial rounds everyone had to present their idea and try to find people to partner up. My idea was to sell caricature drawings online, then have an artist in India draw the caricature based on a photo and send it as a digital version to the customer.

I was the only one who was excited about the idea. Most of the students were probably wondering who this exchange guy with the strong German accent was.

By the second week of the course I had found an artist in India, sold three drawings on eBay and delivered the finished drawings as digital files to the customers. I showcased the results during our weekly progress presentations.

All of a sudden everyone was interested in the idea. Hmm.

Lesson learned: 1. Proof of concept makes an idea much more valuable. 2. There’s lot of potential in outsourcing services. But you need a solid profit margin.

Full-time passive income from my college dorm

During my first year of college I started researching ways to start an online business. While doing my research I wrote down every idea I had in a black Moleskine notebook.

Digital products looked like the ideal business model to me. So during my summer break I created my first product, a guide on how to find student grants. It turned out to be immediate success and generated 4-figures every month.

I expanded the business from there by creating more products and software for various niche markets. It went on to sell more than a quarter million dollars worth of products while I was a full-time student, without any affiliates or existing email list. The business continues to make a full-time income until this day.

The key to success was generating enough ideas and putting them through an optimised testing process.

Lessons learned: Many lessons but two of the most important ones were: 1. Copywriting is incredibly important online, no matter what your product or service is. 2. It’s important to have a process to capture and nurture your ideas anywhere.

Cold calling and my first marketing clients

While still in college I became interested in consulting with businesses. I noticed that a lot of businesses were executing their online advertising strategy very poorly.

A lot of money back then and even more today is wasted by using boring ad copy, poor choice of landing pages and ineffective web design.

One day I just started cold calling businesses trying to sell them my consulting services. I didn’t have a website, business name or any credentials but after five calls I had my first client.

It was a language school and the owner had no clue what he was doing with his Adwords campaigns. I did a phone consultation with him and earned an hourly rate of $100 from it. Not bad for a college student.

Lessons learned: Pick up the phone, if you have some solid experience it’s not that difficult to find your first client. (Even if you are 20 years younger than your client like myself in this case.)