While this idea alone could easily encompass many other idea’s as a lead up to this, it is still an idea of it’s own. Albeit one that may take a little while to be able to participate in, as if you are following the rules specifically you would not be able to bring in anything that you already own and would additionally only be able to buy the items to sell with money from your project.

This should not be a stopper for you though as an idea to use once you have a small amount of money built up. Or in putting in some time to help others, by selling their items at a small commission.

ART AND CRAFT MARKETS

Maybe you have a hobby that you make jewelery, or you enjoy knitting or some sort of wood work. All of these can often be found at the art and craft markets and many people want to try and find that something that is a little different to give as a gift. Just find a local market and take a walk around and you will find that there are many options that you can pursue, and undertake to make some money for your project.

GENERAL MARKETS

There are some markets that do not limit what you can sell, in these type of markets you will find a mix of everything, plants for the garden, arts and crafts trash and treasure, and any number of other different things. These type of markets provide the most scope to choose something to sell that you have a interest in and hopefully will find people visiting these markets that will also have an interest in what you are offering.

TRASH AND TREASURE

These markets often are also seen as car boot sales or any number of other things that are often put on by charities to raise a little money by selling a spot for you to setup. The general type of items that get sold is something that is second hand and not wanted any more, but may be something wanted by another. This does not mean you have to start clearing out all your stuff there are many people that could not be bothered participating in this type of even but just want to get rid of the stuff so much they will give it away to you to sell, or ask just a small amount for it.

WHAT YOU MAY NEED

Most markets don’t provide anything but the space in the fee you pay for having the stall, so there may be some things that you need to bring along. Tressel tables are a good way to display your goods, also a chair for sitting on. Unless you are fairly sure of getting a good shady spot you may also want to bring an umbrella or a portable gazbo to put up for cover. For small fees some market organizers will rent you these items on the day, but if you already have them you may as well bring your own.

FINAL WORDS

Depending on your product and where the markets you attend are, there is some potential to make some good seed money here for much bigger and great projects within your doubling project. I wouldn’t expect to make it to a million dollars just on this idea, but don’t discount the ideas that can add some solid working capital to your project.

Selling on ebay is something that has been going on for quite some time, and i have seen people saying that it is over done, or is not working for them. While this may be true to some extent i think that it entirely depends on how you sell your product and believe that there is still some potential here.

Your initial focus needs to be on finding a product that you can sell. It really needs to be something that is not going to be big or cumbersome to deliver, and also something that may be potentially easy to get hold of more in case your product is popular and you want to sell some more. So small thing’s like jewellery, bags, watches, or anything that is small and unique, may be a potential winner, also clothing as this is fairly easy to post.

Once you have found a few product idea’s have a look at what the competition is like already on ebay. You need to see that someone is not offering the exact same product for less then you were thinking and also that there is not an alternative item that will compete with yours which may be better.

Once you have established that you are not going to have any comeptition that is to fierce, or to difficult to compete with. It is time to get started, you have a product and you have the market place so test the waters and see how you go. As long as you are making a couple of dollars and not spending a lot of time doing so then you are going to more then likely be ahead and adding money into your doubling project.

I actually thought i had found the perfect one just this week, however when you have someone trying to sell you something that has potentially good profit and supposedly almost no competition. It does start to hit home that maybe they are either not sharing all the facts or maybe choosing to omit some. I suppose it could have been worse i could have spent the $12,000 on the machine being sold (which may have had some potential to make money), just not as great a potential as i was being led to believe.

Really the amount of time that i have put into investigating some of the businesses that i have looked at over the last 12 months, i think there must have been something i could have better used my time on. In some respects if i did not have to work another job it would have been kind of helpful. However how do you have money to invest in a business if you are not earning it from somewhere. Admittedly this is probably the last problem i should have. The businesses i am looking at i could easily afford to finance.

That must be any number of other ways that it is possible to make money on a consistent basis, for this type of project. I mean real avenues that are going to show a reasonable return on investment with out just spending a huge amount of time for the equivalent of less then minimum wage per hour.  Even anything at an hourly rate, while $20+ per hour may be good money, it would take an amazingly long time to reach the end of this project. Although i do realize that the actual point in this is working through multiple different businesses, or ways of making money to cumulatively reach the target. So maybe some low income ideas may be of benefit initially to make a solid capital base.

My biggest stopping block is actually making something happen. In reality while i may not have the cash on hand i have had the finance available to about step 22 for over 2 years and still have not actually made anything major happen, just little stuff here and there, which at the end of the day has purely been a few dollars here and there. As i am sure you can probably guess this obviously has not got me very far and at some points even had me going backwards, which is really far from an ideal situation to be in.

Anyway i am going to start from now putting a focus on finding solution’s to the problem of how to increase the money in this project so that i can get to a point where i am making money from making investments of money rather then investments of time.

For the purposes of this project, i am working on step 7 which as previously discussed i think is rubbish, because seriously how do you start a project working for coins or to find coins, and take that the a million dollars. While i do understand the points to be made….. It is probably better to read my previous post about this. Taking the step to putting Dollars alone into this project is where i am at.

I am considering bending one of the rules a little, and adding some of the unused product from my business to the project, in general this is stuff that has value that i can sell, which is just been sitting around gathering dust for a good couple of years. I have long ago written off the value of the this in my personal life, as being non cash assets that may cost more to get rid of then originally cost. I think there is possibly the potential for around $2000 in this area, which i may as well put into this project, as anything else.

Additionally i am going to make a much more concerted effort to build a website to garner adsense income, or other affiliate program income. While this is income that i realize i will have to work for (while some consider this potentially passive income. I do very much so realize that this is very far from the truth. This is one false assumption that i think far to many people come across online. Oh i can set up an online website with adsense and watch the money roll in. You have to put in time to write content (or pay someone to), you have to promote the site (or pay someone to), and keep more fresh content coming. Maybe just maybe if you spend enough time and build a big enough community the site may start to take a little bit of a autopilot, however this takes a lot of time, which i dont have. So i am going to choose to spend just a little time consistently building a site and adding to it and promoting it. With the idea to as quickly as possible get some income that i can use to pay someone else to do it.

Anyway for the time being enough talk, maybe i just need to get to work and do something about it. The kind of ironic thing is, if i included what investments i already have before i started this project i would be a lot closer. Oh well, it never hurts to try and earn more money.

The only excuse that i will actually use is that i do not want to drop my ability to trivial pursuit’s of mere cents. While there are many different avenues that i could have pursued to make a few dollars here and there, in the form which many other people have taken, such as collecting can’s or attempting to sell junk i find on the footpath on ebay. I feel that following this path would have done absolutely nothing for  me to learn anything let alone have done anything but  add  $10-$20 to my efforts, and have taken much much more time, then i can gain in other worthwhile pursuit’s.

While i can understand that a good portion of doing this whole program is to build experience’s and to gain new perspective’s in thinking differently. For me this is not going to be gained through lowering my standard’s. Now i will also admit that i have not done anything of a higher level to gain this income either. In all honesty i let this whole idea go by the wayside completely, While i could use work, or any number of other things as an excuse i wont i have been deep in thought about this really. Primarily because while i did change the original rules, and i did even drop some steps, and make the doubling happen quicker through the steps, i really am at a stretch consdering, there must be an easier way to get started, what is the point of trying to scrounge up 5 cents here and a dollar there.

While i do not hold any grudges to anyone willing to learn all the lessons that could be learned from this project, I feel that at the basic bottom level of this project the initial lessons are lessons that i have been taught many time’s before. These lessons are some of the most basic lessons of money yet they are the ones that many many people overlook over and over again. I will share with you one of the most important lessons that i myself learn’t long before this project was even in my mind.

Protect your capital.

If you have no capital then what will you use to make more capital. This is enforced by one of the rules within this project, which says “When you achieve a new step you may remove the money that is above the amount needed to move to the next step but anything else must be left in the project and used to move to the following step”. This rule in it self promotes maintaining capital, and not using capital for anything apart from adding more value to your business, or other enterprise.

This lesson was something i discovered a long time ago, which gave me a great chance to build additional money before i ever came across this project, primarily because of another lesson i will discuss at a later time which is the “lesson of compounding”

Although i am sitting on just $2.05 i have had an idea on something that may be able to provide an on going passive income, even from this early point. Currently it is possible to purchase a .info domain name for just 99cents, which when combined with some sort of free hosting should provide the ability to host a website, with advertising. Correctly made with good content and advertising positioned this should make a small income to help get through the next few steps.

Once a large stake is available this could be easily added to with more sites, at different domains. To provide quite a large assortment of income streams. This is something that i will look at a little later however i think start with one will provide a good steady stream of income.

The thing that has got me the most the amount of time people are sending compared to there progress.  There are just so many people that i seem to find at or around step 15-19 in their blogs which in the original challenge steps equates to between $80 and $2500, with the highest achiever working in another currency but converted back to approx $3800. Which by no means is something to be proud of in the upper end, however most of these participants that i have read about seem to have been working on this for anything up to 2 years.

Which really gets me wondering is there some key point that makes this so difficult to use money to make money. For example i can understand in the early stages should be easy which most people seem to get past easy enough, the first few stages can easily be passed by finding just a few coins. Even up to Step 9 or around $5 depending on your starting point is easy enough to come up with finding coins, it may take a month or two but you will get there. Then the next 2 or 3 steps should take not much more then 1 or 2 trades Maybe even less if you are really a keen trader and can manage to really buy low and sell really high.

Even beyond these first few low $ steps should be easy to pass with some smart buying. Really how much do you really need to purchase for a product like Jewelery. Buying the parts to make some fashion jewelery off ebay, and then spending a little time to put some pieces together and then either resell on Ebay or at a local market, it should be relatively easy to make the money back that you spent plus a good profit, maybe even more then double your investment.  Then getting into steps where you are dealing with $1000+ should become even easier to find products that can be bought low and sold high for quick profits in flipping product.

I just cannot understand how it can be so difficult to to increase a starting amount of money, through how ever many transactions it may take. I think maybe to many people are looking to actually make the double in one big transaction or at the other end just inch there way there slowly. Where the better method to maybe employee would be to aim to extend the capital or stake at a rate relative to the stake that is to be doubled. Either way i think i will have to make an effort to get there and see just how difficult it actually is to do before making a definite conclusion either way.