posted
I run a small business. I provide internet stations for cafes and hotels. Patrons can walk up, swipe their credit card or insert cash, then go online. They work in the way of pay phones. The pricing plan:
3 dollars buys 20 minutes, $5 for 40 minutes, and $10 for 90 minutes. One does not need to use the minutes consecutive. You'll be issued a code so that you can come back and use the minutes at a later date.
I use 17" inch flat screen monitors, and the experience is pleasant for the customer.
I'm thinking about trying to get the machines into employee break-rooms, laundry mats, and maybe bars. One of my vendors is a bar right now, and the machine barely breaks even, but maybe I picked the wrong bar. Since I don't myself go to bars, they are unknown quantities to me.
All of these trials cost time and capital, and somehow, my credit is mediocre. It's not bad, it's just mediocre and I don't have wealthy family members, a house or a car, so securing capital constitutes most of my worries.
____
Who else runs a small business? And what are your issues?
posted
I don't know if you'll get the kind of business you need to make a profit at a bar. Most people I know don't go to bars looking for internet access.
Laundramats are a good idea.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Laundramats are good, anywhere people are stuck for a period of time and would like to wile that time away online.
I don't think you'll get much purchase with employee break rooms. For one thing, most employees in offices have internet access at their desk, for another, I doubt the business owner wants to encourage his employees to spend even more time in the break room.
Think of places where people have to wait. Bus terminals? Airports? Hospital waiting areas?
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I thought about hospital waiting rooms, but I worried about germs. Now that I think about it, people don't mind reading magazines that have been touched by sick people.
Bus Terminals and Airports get you with paper work. *sigh* There is nothing like spending yourself on on the paperwork necessary, only to be denied by someone who probably didn't read your RFP, know who you are, or think they already have a service. (I spend an incredible amount of effort differentiating my service from Wi-fi. I also provide wi-fi for free, if the vendor wants it, but the money is made off of the stations.)
I wasn't thinking about office break rooms as much as say, Home Depot, Costco, or Target. The superstores with a zillion employees, none of whom have internet access at work. Or even the Macy's or Sears. The only people who have internet access at those places are the managers. The problem is that they are the ones making the decisions, and most of the time, they don't care about employee morale. Maybe I can go through the HR department, but HR managers are a mixed bag. Sometimes I have to hold my nose when I talk to those folks.
quote:I wasn't thinking about office break rooms as much as say, Home Depot or Target. The superstores with a zillion employees, none of whom have internet access at work.
I get you. But again, you have to get past the supervisor who says to himself or herself "If I let him put these things in the break room my employees are going to be back here on the internet when they're supposed to be working."
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
The laundromat is a great idea, but if you want to install your stations in them you'll need to find a way to "harden" them. They're going to take a lot of abuse from bored little kids, including spilled drinks and such.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: I thought about hospital waiting rooms, but I worried about germs. Now that I think about it, people don't mind reading magazines that have been touched by sick people.
LOL, I just had to take a friend of mine to an "infectious disease" doctor--and after spending half an hour in the waiting room reading a magazine there I suddenly got very squicked out. But I'll bet there would be many, many people who would use them in hospital waiting areas. I can just see people researching whatever disease or procedure applies to their loved one in the hospital. So if you can get past the bureaucracy . . .
I agree that laundromats sound like an excellent bet. But is there a way you can protect your station? Just seems like they are generally open late at night and unsupervised; I would think that vandalism/robbery could be problems.
Good luck, and keep asking around, because it sounds to me like there are definitely opportunities out there and you will find them.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:But again, you have to get past the supervisor who says to himself or herself "If I let him put these things in the break room my employees are going to be back here on the internet when they're supposed to be working.
Yep. If I talk to the owner, I can appeal to the sense that the Vendor recieves a share of the revenue from the computer station. If I talk to a supervisor, he/she isn't going to care about that stream of revenue and is going to be given to say "No."
So the trick is going to be talking to as few supervisors as possible before talking to some who has the authority to say "Yes." Or I can go through the Unions/HR people and circumvent the supervisors that way. ____
With the laundry places, I'll have to build a fort, so it looks like those old school Mrs. Pacman games.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I am a freelance writer and editor, and seem to have found a specialized niche for myself doing genealogy/personal history-type projects.
My issues are that I am incredibly disorganized and undisciplined and I will do other things (like Hatracking) for hours on end rather than working. I love calling my time my own--was going crazy in the office world for years--but I'm not so good at it. I don't have a lot of expenses right now and I can get by on my income, but I do need to be making more in order to have some savings and retirement.
I am sure that marketing will become an issue. But somehow, miraculously, I have had enough clients just by word of mouth since I started this a couple of years ago to keep me going.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
As an HR guy, lets talk about that break room again. If your contract calls for a 15 minute break morning and pm plus a half hour for lunch, which is pretty standard, when are you going to use your $10 for 90 minutes? And, if you find a way, then when are you going to take your "necessary breaks"? You are being paid to work.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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If you have left over minutes, you'll be issued a code the first time you log out. You can enter the code to use those left over minutes at any time. You can use ten minutes a day for nine days, if you want.
When I worked at an 240 person grocery store, most of the time, I just wanted to check my email really quickly to see if I received anything from my girlfriend- if I needed to pick up anything before I left the store- or to see if my paychecks were deposited.
quote:Good luck, and keep asking around, because it sounds to me like there are definitely opportunities out there and you will find them.
I'm usually slow to talk about it, because the main reason I'm not making more money is that I have a hard time securing capital. If I could just walk into a bank and get a 15,000 dollar loan, I'd already be in laundry mats. Instead of having a diagram of what the security fort would look like, I'd already have a prototype. I could also be more aggressive about the bigger markest. But all of the ways of improving my credit take time and money. The business is in the black, so now I wait, and hope I don't get sick.
These stations are going to be ubiquitous in 30 years. They already are in parts of Europe and Asia. The person who gets the Starbuck, Barnes and Noble, and Borders contracts, to put the internet stations into their cafes, is going to be a multi-millionaire. If I had a half-million dollars, or even credit for 50,000, I would have a decent shot at being that person. But I don't. Those are the breaks. Its not some huge tragedy, but the simple truth is the lack of capital is what is keeping me out. It's not that I'm completely powerless. I could quit the business, get another job, get hitched to a working working woman, buy a house, and in two years, I'd have a enough credit to approach the bigger stores, but I'd lose my writing in the mornings, cut out of school, not to mention, I'd have to find a 9-5 job that agrees with my disposition, and a 5-9 girl who is similarly disposed, and I'm choosing not to go that route.
Uprooted,
It sounds like a nice job. I figure if you can get by now and be saving a little bit every month, you are doing okay.
posted
I'm thinking of starting a small business with a few friends. I designed a Mac kiosk where I currently work and that would be one product we would offer. Our kiosks would be demo kiosks, not pay kiosks. We would target museums and art exhibit places.
Self marketing is a concern. I've been reading books and some say that you may end up spending half of your time marketing. Which would mean you would have to charge double or triple per hour what you would normally work if you had a full time job in order to make ends meet.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
We looked into kiosk development for tradeshows and such, and considered internet stations as a way to add to our market base for them. We ended up not doing them for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure how deep the market is for stand-alone internet kiosks.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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1) Stay away from bars. They, like lawyers, are notorious for not paying their bills. (Sorry Dag, but getting money out of law firms is almost as difficult as getting it out of bars, hotels, and restaurants)
2) Consider Malls. Sure a couple of people are very busy shopping in the family, but others are bored.
3) Sports Arena's are a possibility, but they will want a great big piece of the pie.
4) Gyms? To be used between reps?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I've used one of those kind of internet stations at hotels -- like last year when I was in D.C. It was great.
Sounds like you have some great ideas.
On a side note - yesterday I heard from someone who gave rave reviews to the new "Quickbooks Simple Start" software program, which is Intuit's newest idea for small start-up business' accounting software (for those who don't have tons of inventory). I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to take a look. Often full version Quickbooks has more features than many start-ups need, so this could be a good offering by that company.
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