Reply to: Other Businesses?

[TheSurfer]

Anyone looking at developing apps should probably be heading over to Android Design - Welcome for UI advice.

Personally apps seem to be a market with a few big winners and a lot of losers. To me unless you know how to market an app and have the cash to launch with a proper bang its a gamble I wouldn't want to take.

If your talking developing Apps for Android or Apple mobile I agree thats a tough market for sure and too B2C focussed for my liking..

What I'm involved in......'The Google Apps Marketplace' has nothing to do with Android or mobile. It's business/education applications that are accessible via a web browser on a PC that interface with Google Apps. I know quite a few people making money in this area.

[eek]

Anyone looking at developing apps should probably be heading over to Android Design - Welcome for UI advice.

Personally apps seem to be a market with a few big winners and a lot of losers. To me unless you know how to market an app and have the cash to launch with a proper bang its a gamble I wouldn't want to take.

[TheSurfer]

Apps! That's very interesting!

It's by far the most interesting thing I've done and starting to bring in some regular side income. The Google Apps Marketplace is is an interesting ecosystem to write software for and it's getting some big traction now that companies like SAP and salesforce are there.

My App is focused on Universities and just got into it randomly when I picked up a small project at a Uni from a contact....... so interesting for me as I knew nothing about this area. Most of the paying clients have been from the US but got a couple of UK colleges signed up now so just contracting 3 days this week then on my way back over to London to meet them Fri then check out the BETT Education Technology fair at Olympia Sat.

[bluedrop]

Apps! That's very interesting!

Hi very interesting thread I'd be very keen to hear what other side businesses others on the forum have.

I'm very much with MarillionFan in that I keep coming back to contracting for the easy money. A few years ago I planned to stop contracting all together at some future point but now I plan to stay with it for part of every year. After 3 years out out of it at one point it took some readjustment to get back into it.

In terms of side businesses I've done I did what some here have thought of and started a small recruitment agency supplying staff to 2 clients I had a good relationship with as a contractor (could write a book about this experience but to summarise briefly hated every second of it but managed to sell out to my partner and the sale, paid out monthly, gives me a good side income at least until 2013).

Other things I've done: got an app in the Google Apps Marketplace which is now starting to give some income although it was a lot of work up front, both in development and sales/marketing. Also got a couple of ongoing remote support agreements and now as my focus is on developing semi-passive recurring income I'd like to start outsourcing some of this and try to get some larger deals.

[eek]

I've been working on a plan b for ages. Its a big data play pulling data from everywhere which companies can then use to identify how customers actually use their website and what steps actually occur prior to making a purchase.

The big advantage is that I can now throw an entire new set of buzzwords on my CV, hadoop, node.js, azure (pile of tulipe), aws..... so even if it goes tits up I should be quids in. And if it doesn't fail I will get a continuous revenue stream as managing the data collection systems is not for the faint hearted even without all the customisation work I and others can do.

As for why I'm mentioning this I need some more guinea pig websites to allow me to stress test the data gathering infrastructure and give me some valid data to use when creating some standard (real-time) google analytic type reports for demo purposes. Anything up to 100,000 pages a day is fine.

If you have a site and can help PM me and I won't charge you quite so much when it goes live.

[TheSurfer]

Hi very interesting thread I'd be very keen to hear what other side businesses others on the forum have.

I'm very much with MarillionFan in that I keep coming back to contracting for the easy money. A few years ago I planned to stop contracting all together at some future point but now I plan to stay with it for part of every year. After 3 years out out of it at one point it took some readjustment to get back into it.

In terms of side businesses I've done I did what some here have thought of and started a small recruitment agency supplying staff to 2 clients I had a good relationship with as a contractor (could write a book about this experience but to summarise briefly hated every second of it but managed to sell out to my partner and the sale, paid out monthly, gives me a good side income at least until 2013).

Other things I've done: got an app in the Google Apps Marketplace which is now starting to give some income although it was a lot of work up front, both in development and sales/marketing. Also got a couple of ongoing remote support agreements and now as my focus is on developing semi-passive recurring income I'd like to start outsourcing some of this and try to get some larger deals.

[DieScum]

I do stock market investing. Which has cost me an eye watering sum over the last few years. Could have had a lot of coke and hookers for that... but I think it is swings and roundabouts.

I have been dabbling at creating and selling advertising on websites. Made a massive 10 pounds on adsense this month. Then I sold a 6 month advert direct for 80 quid.

So hardly the big money but who knows where it will go. Was a buzz to generate and sign off the deal for 80 quid. It's not a lot but I made it happen out of nothing.

It's a slightly weird situation for me. As a tight arse I don't need much money to live but I need a lot to reliably generate that as a passive income without having to work. Just need one thing to drop. Maybe it will be a share romping in or maybe it will be one of my stupid schemes actually coming off.

[ChimpMaster]

£336k invested 'ie 5%' return a year against 24k a year spend would take you 25 years to burn down to zero (inflation ignored). My yearly spend would be 40k. I'm just up to generating half of that a year as passive income which means I still need to contract/work. But another 5 years or so and then it's feet up time(or something else).

MF, OK finally I think I get what you mean by 'invested burn down'. The reason I didn't understand before is because I view the investment in a different way. I see the lump sum investment as being a principal sum which is not spent and does not depreciate i.e. it is invested in income-generating assets - property being a simple example.

Let's take an example where you buy a house for £200k (let's assuming outright cash purchase for simplicity), and it brings you £10k a year rental income. That income is yours for life (assumptions & costs aside). When you die of natural causes at a ripe old age, having lived a full and wonderful life, you would have received £10k a year all those years, and still have owned the £200k house (which is very likely worth somewhat more by then). You then bequeath the asset (house) to your kids, for whom it generates £10k a year income, unless of course they sell it to go on multiple 5-star holidays.

So my point being - your £200k investment would never be burned down to zero.

[yasockie]

If you can invest that money wisely, you won't ever have to worry about a warchest because you would have income coming in to ride you through bench times.

I don't know what your burn rate is, but mine is around £2,000 a month - this covers everything for my family (incl. kids), i.e. insurances, phones, cars, food, bills, going out etc etc. I'm not sure what you mean by 'invested burn rate' but based on my burn rate and using your 14 year figure, I'd need £336k in my warchest to last that long.

As an alternative, an example would be to use that to buy property generating ~£20k a year at 6% yield. So you have an investment bringing in money pretty much forever (with associated hassle and cost of course...).

Sounds a bit too cautious - surely if you were out of work for 10 years, you would have trimmed your expenses, also the odds that neither you, your partner, nor the kids (in 14 years time, they'll be big enough, I guess?) will be able to find work is enough of a doomsday that it doesn't make sense to keep fiat money for that...

[MarillionFan]

If you can invest that money wisely, you won't ever have to worry about a warchest because you would have income coming in to ride you through bench times.

I don't know what your burn rate is, but mine is around £2,000 a month - this covers everything for my family (incl. kids), i.e. insurances, phones, cars, food, bills, going out etc etc. I'm not sure what you mean by 'invested burn rate' but based on my burn rate and using your 14 year figure, I'd need £336k in my warchest to last that long.

As an alternative, an example would be to use that to buy property generating ~£20k a year at 6% yield. So you have an investment bringing in money pretty much forever (with associated hassle and cost of course...).

£336k invested 'ie 5%' return a year against 24k a year spend would take you 25 years to burn down to zero (inflation ignored). My yearly spend would be 40k. I'm just up to generating half of that a year as passive income which means I still need to contract/work. But another 5 years or so and then it's feet up time(or something else).

[d000hg]

Interesting though that for every year I contract, I effectively save a 'year'.

Same here; maybe it's a good rule of thumb to add to the list...

[ChimpMaster]

According to my calculations my 'warchest' will now last 14 years on an invested burn down, which on a contracting life of 14 years is Ok I suppose.

But it still means I need to work.

Interesting though that for every year I contract, I effectively save a 'year'.

If you can invest that money wisely, you won't ever have to worry about a warchest because you would have income coming in to ride you through bench times.

I don't know what your burn rate is, but mine is around £2,000 a month - this covers everything for my family (incl. kids), i.e. insurances, phones, cars, food, bills, going out etc etc. I'm not sure what you mean by 'invested burn rate' but based on my burn rate and using your 14 year figure, I'd need £336k in my warchest to last that long.

As an alternative, an example would be to use that to buy property generating ~£20k a year at 6% yield. So you have an investment bringing in money pretty much forever (with associated hassle and cost of course...).

[oliverson]

According to my calculations my 'warchest' will now last 14 years on an invested burn down, which on a contracting life of 14 years is Ok I suppose.

But it still means I need to work.

Interesting though that for every year I contract, I effectively save a 'year'.

I like your style MarillionFan. I'm also of the view that contracting isn't the be all and end all. The satisfaction of working on other business ideas is far greater than contracting. But as you say, it's relatively easy money.

I also agree with NorthernLad in that you should aim to have a warchest, something I never did regrettably. It's purpose would be to ride any benchtime and also to allow you time to work on those other business ideas. It's very difficult after a long day, combined with commute, to spend the couple of hours you have remaining in the evening on other businesses. Gets harder as you get older too!

[TheFaQQer]

Risk adverse poppycock.

averse

[Waldorf]

There was something in the autumn statement about being able to invest in small companies and getting 50% tax relief, not sure if your company can do this though, might be worth a pop, as in effect you would only be risking half your money.

Tried to google it but couldn't find anything - Sure more details will come out soon.