Dear Friend of Coffee News. Here’s introductory information on the Coffee News opportunity in South Africa.

Here’s most of the information that you will need today.

If you need more information then please use the contact form.

The cash flow scenario is not included and is available when you contact Coffee News South Africa.

Many people want to know what Coffee News looks like. This is what it looks like. Printed on both sides. Click to enlarge it.

Below the sample  copy of Coffee News please find a video on Coffee News and various documents that you can read on the Coffee News opportunity.

Coffee News Video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rrU6kcQZ4A

Download now or preview on posterous

3FOLD BROCHURE.pdf (734 KB)

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BASICS_OF_A_COFFEE_NEWS.doc (31 KB)

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cafe_flipchart.pdf (493 KB)

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Coffee News Basics.doc (29 KB)

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CN Manual Intro For New Enq.doc (86 KB)

Posted via email from The Fisherman’s Secret

Image by be OH be via Flickr

Allow me to recap:

You know that Coffee News is a small business opportunity allowing work from home moms, dads and others to publish a weekly one-page newspaper. This newspaper is distributed to local or community restaurants. The content consists of ‘news to amuse’ and takes less than 8 minutes to read. On the left, right, front and back page edges of the paper are 32 business-card sized ads where local businesses promote their business.

Currently more than 8 million people read this newspaper across the world every week. This is a significant publication with a reach stretching 52 countries.

My questions:

Are we utilizing the true power of Coffee News?

Why not add value to this amazing publication?

This is my suggestion:

1. Create a reason for readers to subscribe to an online newsletter via a blog
2. In addition to the paper version publish a shortened e-version with different news.
3. Create Google Adwords like ads for the local advertisers and publish it on the edges of the e-newsletter.

Just think about the opportunity:

• We have a captive audience having fun getting a Coffee News newsletter weekly.
• We have small business advertisers who get more exposure
• Coffee News marketing agencies can add more value to their sales pack.

What are the negatives?

Let me know what you think…..

Let’s consider the new process (see diagram):

1. You have identified the target population you want to attract to your business.
2. You have designed a two step advertisement that invites people to your website to get the free report. (See Get Your FREE Report in the green box). Your ad is designed to attract people who are interested in your product but not ready to spend money yet. Instead of allowing them to pass-by you give them an opportunity to make  a small commitment that will not cost them money. They have to give you their name and email address in order to get the free gift. 
3. As soon as they give you their contact details you can cultivate them in your cultivation pool; you can now send them regular free tips giving them advice on your product/service until they are ready to take out the money and buy.

In order to use the cultivation pool you need to:

1. Agree that all people reading your ads are not ready to spend money today and that they must be brought into your cultivation pool.
2. Design all your promotional material so that it invites potential clients to your cultivation pool.
3. Create a blog/newsletter/auto-responder but you can also do it manually with a fax or answer machine.
4. Create free gifts, free reports and e-tips that you can publish on your blog from where it can be sent to your clients and potential clients.

May you cultivate those people who want to do business with you but who are not ready today. Because if you do they will not end up with your opposition.

Regards

Johan Horak

P.S. Coffee News South Africa local marketers provide a fully inclusive marketing solution for small businesses. Contact us today if  you want to take control of your marketing efforts using these ideas. Not only will we help you with the design of two step ads we will also create your cultivation pool and teach you how to use it.

P.P.S. Do you like cold calling? If you do then you are one of a few. If you don’t like cold calling then read how the cultivating pool (two step marketing) can help you become more effective when you cold calling.

Let’s look at the traditional advertising cycle and see how it relates to a fishing net.

The traditional-advertising cycle used by most small businesses follow the same cycle. Basically they pay for an advert without thinking about the mentality of their potential customer.

Today I will discuss the traditional advertising cycle and then, in a follow up post, I will look at a multi-step-marketing cycle as an alternative to the outdated traditional advertising cycle.

Diagram: You get 10 000 people called the target population, only a 1000 read the advertisement, 100 like what you have advertised and become a wanter. Only 10 decide to buy but when it get’s to taking out the money only one have the guts to actually to take out the purse and pay for it. Every time during these stages the potential client is returned to the target population. Never is there a place were relationships are cultivated. In the next post I will look at the cultivation cycle then I will just focus on the cultivation cycle.

I believe that traditional small-business advertisers make a fundamental mistake because they assume there’s only three (to four) advertising stages.

Let’s consider the traditional advertising stages:

1. Out there is a mass of people (population) and some of them (target population) may be interested in the product being advertised. Let’s assume that only 10% of the target population see the advert. (The other skip the ad because it was not well structured to draw them in).
2. Then we get the wanters; those who read the advertisement. They want the product. They may not want it today but they want it. This stage is over looked by traditional advertisers. These wanters may want to buy today, others may want what is advertised but may not have the money today or need some time before they spend the money. Other wanters are at this moment gathering info on your product. Traditional small business advertisers ignored this stage and allow these people to become part of the general population again.
3. A small percentage of the ‘wanters’ will take out their purse and buy what’s on offer and then they become a ‘payer’. They give you money. The other may not yet trust the offer and become a expensive non-entity.
4. I have also included a stage that I call “Post Payer.” This stage is also not considered during traditional marketing. It’s included here to show you that in traditional advertising the ‘post payer’ also becomes part of the general population.

Every time traditional business people advertise using this model they recreate the fishing experience.

They spend expensive money to attract the same people over and over again. They attract people that they are willing drop through the holes again. These holes allow potential paying clients, who read their ad, to get away. It’s like putting bait out and hoping to catch many fishes with a large eyed net.

Our initial net was caste to 10 000 people but we only caught one. This gives the advertiser 0.01% success.

When you plan on catching fish with the correct net and various cultivating tanks you will be able to increase your success rate by 1000 times.

Well, maybe only a 100 times.

But I will take a 100 times anytime.

Because:

Let’s assume you are small business person advertising;

• You have an advertising budget of 1000 per month
• You measure your response and get a 100 new clients every month
• Then for the same amount you’ll get 1000 new clients with the new marketing proposal.

Do you agree?

Have fun

How can you sell advertising with an off line marketing medium, like Coffee News, if your advertisers cannot measure the response they get? You may ask if it’s your job to teach them or even your job to worry about it…… because they advertise all over the show and they don’t measure anywhere.

I suppose nothing stops you from selling your services even if your advertisers don’t measure response. But when your advertisers start asking questions about distribution and poor response rates then it means they want out. They want to stop paying you. And it’s all because they have no way of knowing how to measure – and you have not told them how to measure either.

Before we get to the list of possible off line advertising measuring tools lets have a look at a few loop holes. Loops that are difficult to track off line.

When you measure off line advertising response rates you have many people who could potentially bypass any of the measuring control points, listed below. It’s therefore critical to create a measuring system that caters for this. 

How Do You Improve the Confidence And Integrity of the Measurement?

Well, this is a complicated story, which we only will touch now, but will discuss in detail in another post. The summary has two angles;

1. Give the responder (person reacting to the ad) a compelling reason to reveal the source where she saw the advertisement. This can be done by offering a free gift in exchange for the revelation (sounds like a line from a soapy). 
2. Have a system in place to collect the data, analyse that data and present the data in a useful form. 

Here’s A List of Ideas to Measure off Line Marketing Response Rates:

1. Generic Phone Number: This is a radical idea. Or should I say an idea to be expanded on by a marketing mind who wants to become the marketing hub for a community. You advertise a central (call centre) phone number on all ads. Depending on the size of your advertising business you receive the calls yourself or you ship it out to a professional call centre. When you get the call you do the entire ad source checking, and provide the caller number to the advertiser who will follow-up. This can be an added benefit service to your advertisers and if you package it well you may even get a premium rate. Read this story on becoming Yellow Pages for your community.
2. Fake Extension: Your advertiser includes a non existing telephone extension on the ad that relates to a specific advert or publication. The caller does not know this but the person answering the phone makes a note of the advertising referral.
3. Bogus Name: You advertise “Call Gerty for the special”, again  Gerty does not exist.  One suggestion from previous experience is using a contact name that helps the advertiser remember which source the lead came from. For instance for Newspapers you could use "Nate", for TV advertising you could use "Teresa", for magazines you could use "Molly" and for Coffee News you can use Cathy. That way there are less data errors because the first letter of the name helps people remember.
4. Promotional Code: Try using a promo code when people contact the advertiser. Example: "Mention Coffee News to receive X". Then use different promotion codes for different ads.  
5. Coupons: If you use coupons, put a coupon code in small print at the bottom. Same idea as above, count up the coupons which have different codes for different ads. If you do direct people to a website: Give different web addresses for different ads and then replicate the page you want the person to land on at that address. Ex: www.yourwebsite.com /coffeenews.html. Using your web analytics (Google Analytics is an excellent free option and highly recommended) you can get an idea of the response for each ad. This works well for print advertising, but also can be used in many different vehicles.  
6. Online Tags: Again, if you are using Google Analytics or a similar software and sending out any electronic communications, you can "tag" the links by hyper linking a URL which sends data as to the source, medium, and ad version. Check out Roirevolution’s analytics URL builder for an easy tool which will help you build the tags.
7. Questionnaires: If you use any customer response forms or customer service questionnaires: (Which can also benefit any e-mail marketing campaigns by helping to generate your e-mail lists.) Include a question on how they heard about your business. This is a tried and tested method: 
   • Train your first point(s) of contact to ask. I have seen this be incredibly effective, but it depends on the situation. Also, remember the follow up, if possible survey past contacts for customer service, and remember to include how they heard about you. Not as good as getting the info at point of contact, but can give an additional data point.
   • In the end however, the data is only as good as the analysis. A few suggestions:  Enter all of this information together in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. Personally, I really like Salesforce.com, but there are plenty options out there and even some good free open source solutions. At minimum, excel will do in a pinch. [For another simple and effective tool consider a blog with an integrated and automated newsletter.] 
   • Data is only as good as how you use it. Many people use data for reporting, but really successful marketers use data for optimization. i.e. Where do I put my ad spend? What copy worked and why? If I A/B split test headline 1 and headline 2, what works better? etc.
   • Be careful about data integrity. It is important to be honest with how accurate your data is… the worst thing that can come about is to have bad data direct your marketing efforts.

I sincerely hope that you found this post useful. If you did, please leave a comment and if you want to add to the list feel free to do so.

I want to thank one of my friends Nicholas DeGraff at Linked for his contribution to this article. Nicholas DeGraff is the Marketing Manager, Pacific Business Centers. He provided me with the great ideas; 3 to 7. 

Have fun

Johan Horak

Author: Johan Horak is the South Africa owner of www.SA.CoffeeNews-4u.com a small business opportunity publishing a newspaper in local neighbourhoods. They also provide a marketing consultancy and training service for business who wants to adopt online marketing techniques. Tel: 0860 COFFEE (0860 26 33 33)

One of the Coffee News Publisher received an email from an advertiser wanting to stop his ad in Coffee News.

The Coffee News Publisher:

I received the following from a computer repair company that started with me on April 3, using a version of the “Computers gone bad” ad that is in the ad exchange:

Martin,

The Advertiser:

I writing this letter to cancel my advertiser agreement, once the 4 months are up.  I signed the contract on 3/20/09, according to my paperwork. Although we get a few calls here or there, it’s just not worth the $160 a month (that’s my base rate for this edition). Most of the calls are just people asking for prices. So far (editors note – in just 5 weeks!) we only had two customers that brought in their computers. It seems most of the customers are from referrals and repeat customers. So on that wise (sic), after my 4 months are up, I no longer want to continue the advertising.

Signed by one of the owners.

The Coffee News Publisher:

I intend to go see this customer. My thoughts are that after only 5 weeks, they have had several calls and 2 sales. The sales should result in additional referrals and repeat business. I tell every advertiser that they may not get any response for 8-12 weeks at least. This looks like great response to me, considering they are a new advertiser, using an ad that is just starting to brand them. As to the calls, I would like to know how many is “a few calls here or there”.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but it looks to me like their ad is working well for them and that things are only going to get better. What other things might you suggest I say to them? I would appreciate anyone’s thoughts on this one.

Best Regards,

My Answer:

The Coffee News publisher is correct in saying that 2 sales in 5 weeks are not bad depending on the conversion cost or rather the long term income projected for each customer. The problems that I see are:

• Most businesses don’t know the long term the projected income per customer. If this advertiser gets two customers at $160 or $80 per customer and the long term profit per customer is $400 then the ad cost is not an issue. And we have not even calculated the referrals that a happy new client can bring this business.
• Many businesses are oblivious to the cultivation of relationships. They ignore the people they are doing business with, the people they have done business with and they have no way of creating trusting relationships with people who only make inquiries. 
• Most businesses advertise today and then expect the kiss on the first date.
• Most sellers of advertising, like Coffee News publishers, have no idea how to educate advertisers, how to lower advertisers inflated expectations regarding advertising response rates.
• Most off line advertisers cannot measure their response rates and therefore have no clue what their real response rate is. Their best measure of success is the wasteful number of copies distributed. 

I Believe We Can Learn Lots from Internet Marketing

Let’s compare the online approach with the traditional off line marketing approach.

• Online: The expert online marketers know that people are first searching for information. Therefore visitors arrive at their website, read but are not ready to buy and they move to the next website.

• Off Line: The same happens with the off line business. People see an ad and then phone to ask for more information. Again they are not ready to buy. They move on and then buy later when they are ready. From someone else?

• Online: The marketers quickly realised that potential paying clients get info from their website and then disappear. When the visitor has collected all the information he might purchase from the next guy. To improve their success rate online marketers only give you some of the information and then get you to exchange your name and email for more information. To entice potential clients the online marketers exchange free gifts (information) for the permission to educate them via blog/newsletter. This allows them to inform and then create a trusting relationship.

• Off Line: Let’s look at the computer guy, above, he provides info on costs but have no way of educating the potential client. He did not use the opportunity to ask for the name and email address to send the costs via email and then regular free computer tips via a blog/newsletter. Therefore the off line guy wasted money advertising because he does not have an automated tool to convert a potential customer into a paying customer.

• Online: As soon as person on the pre-sales newsletter decides to purchase he gets transferred to product/service newsletter dedicated to her purchase.

• Off Line: Most off line businesses have no way of cultivating relationships with people who bought from them. For example; as a Coffee News publisher you have potential advertisers, paying advertisers and past advertisers.

• Online guys talk about traffic and how many visitors convert into subscribers and then spenders.

• Off Line: Contacts need to be categorised, added to a relationship marketing tool and the conversions measured. (Off line businesses have the following different contacts; contacts interested in what’s on offer but not ready to buy, contacts already paying for a service/product and contacts who stopped paying for a product/service).

• Off Line: The Kiss On The First Date Mentality

The computer guy thinks he can advertise, get the girl responding to his ad today and get the kiss on the first date.
He’s smoking his socks. Ask me.

Our problem as off line marketers publishers are that we do not educate our users.

 
Coffee News publishers sell the ads/service/ to advertisers who think they know what advertising is all about. Some of them think that when they advertise people will immediately start running in to their shop and start queuing up for the kiss. It took a long time for me to get my first kiss. The first time I tried I got a smack. It’s only after I gave and gave and gave; did the girl trust me and I got my long awaited kiss ;-)

My Proposed Solution can be found here: 

What I did not include at the link above:

• If you advertise find a way to measure all responses.
• If you are selling advertising educate your advertisers and show them how to measure response.
• Decide how may many new paying customers (give the life of a customer) is enough to pay for the ad.
• Make it easy for people, who want to do business with you, to stick to you. And automate the process. 

It takes time before people part with money; they need to know you, like you and trust you. And we can do it with the right approach. Give them gifts (information) and then ask them for the kiss.

Image by publicenergy via Flickr

My dad used to say, “It’s the framers eye that keeps the cow fat.”

Meaning you must have your finger on the pulse. This is where I believe a program like QuickBooks is the answer to the success or failure of a small business. You cannot run a business without being in control. You need to weigh the business, measure and drive it from a cockpit and that cockpit can be QuickBooks.

Let me share with you why I decided to investigate QuickBooks:

• Our South African small business opportunity, Coffee News, sells advertising space to small to medium neighbourhood businesses. The ad rates are calculated on a weekly basis. And the advertiser can pay monthly or weekly for periods of more than thirteen weeks. A serious time waster is the time spend collecting advertising payments.
• And then when paid in cash, it disappears before it’s recorded. Well, not in all cases but it’s easy to just spend cash in hand.
• At the end of the month you have no idea what happened to all the collected payments.
• Also, the re-sale of a small business depends on a proven record to establish the value of the business.
• The professional will keep strict records of income and expenses.
• Experienced business people will tell you that keeping records and paying your taxes is better than not knowing whether you are successful or not. 

There is more than 1 100 Coffee News businesses worldwide therefore making it easy to do research on the pros and cons of QuickBooks:

This is what they had to say:

1. “I find it to be a great tool for keeping my accounts organized and doing my bookkeeping & billing, and ability to take credit cards too. It is great that I know what the current status of my business is at all times- but I also find that I am spending at least 1/2 a day per week reconciling”.
2. “My husband does my books and he only spends about 15 minutes a night doing them. We then send just a flash drive to the accountant who makes sure we did it right. Just do it each day when you are making your list of to do things for the next day.” [I suggest spending 15 minutes everyday rather than once a week]
3. “I find it to be a great tool for keeping my accounts organized and doing my bookkeeping & billing, and ability to take credit cards too.” [QuickBooks can take not only credit cards but you have many debit options and that’s what I suggest it for South African Small Business]

How Easy Is It To Get The Hang Of Quick Books? 

This is what our Coffee News experts had to say:

“Might be worth taking a Quick Books class… They are pretty reasonably priced by Quick Books Pros in your area. Reconciling is simple and takes minutes to do on your QuickBooks.  Once you perfect the program… like anything else… it will save you money and time and you’ll be the expert!  You can find the Quick Books pros in your area on the Intuit website I believe.  HMMMMM…Maybe you could barter a lesson or two and book her for an ad?”

Some Will Tell You That You Need To Focus On Your Business

“Keep Coffee News enjoyable and farm this out. If you love accounting then by all means do this. Also, think about the extra time and energy and motivation you will have to sell the additional ads to make up for the cost of the accounting service.” [There’s a lot of truth in this statement and many people will agree but others will tell you that you need to be very disciplined and most small business owners I came across need a cash flow cockpit and the time it takes to update QuickBooks is nothing compared to the time wasted collecting money].

Another Coffee News Licensee:

“I will say there is something to be said about doing the books yourself to see where the money is going, QuickBooks gives very good reporting that can give you several snapshots and trends of your business.”

For Small Businesses, Like Coffee News South Africa, I propose:

1. Get QuickBooks Pro. The last time I looked it was R2490.
2. Get training if needed and set-up your structure.
3. Get advertisers to agree to a debit order via the bank or their credit card.
4. Offer them a small discount and extra value.
5. Make the debit order open ended.

Let’s watch the cow become healthy and fat. Measure, weigh and tweak the levers that will make you a success.

Why Am I Sharing This Risky Ideas With You?

With all the changes, in South Africa and around the world, more and more people are taking the risk by starting their own small businesses. And taking this risk can be liberating for some and debilitating for others . Today I am talking to the others. It’s important that people, who consider a small business, be aware of the risks.

Why Did I Decide To Take A Risk?

As I grew up I was told to get something behind my name before I start a business. This is what I did and I got involved with corporate; the guys who pay you regularly but just enough to keep you quiet, they give you a pension and a company car. You think you have all the security. Unfortunately; while there you cannot see through the illusion.

There’s freedom in starting a small home based business and therefore taking risks.

Let’s consider a few risks when you start your own small business like Coffee News South Africa.

• Lack of financial security: You will not be receiving a regular salary each month and your small business income will initially be smaller in comparison to what you received in your corporate job. This can change depending on your tenacity and drive. Today some of the largest and most profitable businesses were first small home based businesses. Therefore reward is always in direct proportion to risk.
• Do You Have Enough Cash To Take You Through The Start Up? No business will ever be successful if you do not have the cash to survive the first couple of months. In order to do that you need to carefully consider your own cash flow forecast before you start.
• You Are Solely Responsible For Your Own Time: This may seem like fun but when the going gets tuff you are on your own. The tuff times are directly proportional to the time (discipline) you spend working towards your goals. Discipline becomes your second name. Unfortunately many home based business operators become Mrs. Comfortable. And it’s easy to become comfortable; remember you are at home. We have noticed that friends pop in unannounced and stay because they can’t relate us running a business being at home.
• Not Setting Goals Is The Downfall Of Many Home Based Businesses: Decide today if you have enough time, can create a schedule, set goals and stick to it no matter what. If you cannot then don’t even consider a home-based small business. However, if you are willing and able to set your goals and work towards them, then having control of your own time is an incredible advantage. Because you will have more freedom to do the things you would never have done working for your boss in the so called secure job.
• Isolated From Your Social Network: Starting a small home based business requires you to be sociable but you are not forced to. This is the danger, even for seasoned pros. The real problem comes when you are shy or over conservative. Most of the small businesses I know depend on social interaction and you have no choice but to allot a significant portion of your time to socialise with contacts and to meet new (business) people. If you start spending more time behind the computer than out there your business will suffer.

As I said; this advice is not shared to discourage you from taking the small business plunge! Life is all about risks but you need to be aware of them. Being aware prepares you with knowledge allowing you to compare your own ability, personality and skills against the risk factors before you get involved.  It’s also important that you start a small business that has a proven record .

Unfortunately most people won’t take risks and then end up thinking of what may have been. I want you to consider the list and decide how you intend to overcome these obstacles in your path to freedom.

Like anything else, any work from home opportunity comes with pros and cons. All you need to do is decide what you really want in life; do you want to travel to work and face the boss daily or do you want to earn income working from home? Then focus on you goals because it will motivate and move you closer and closer to be successful at your home based business while enjoying the benefits and the liberation it brings.

Regards

Johan Horak

P.S. Here’s a list you can use to plan the start up of your home based business .

LEE

Initial excitement accompanied by nervousness, anticipation and hope of having a great lifestyle and / or making heaps of money. A solid foundation needs to be laid at this stage to ensure future growth.

FEE

Growing awareness and sensitivity to profitability issues,when writing out regular licensee fee cheques. Level of satisfaction starts to drop of and apprehension of business potential creeps in. Open communication between licensee and support net work is needed.

ME

Success is attributed to licensee hard work and initiative. If not going well the licensor and the business system is often blamed and criticised. Clarification of activity and obligations from both parties is often required here.

FREE

As confidence grows in the business, independence starts to assert itself. The genuine value of the system is often questioned here e.g,value of system,branding and back up services etc. and deviation from proven systems becomes tempting.

SEE

Importance of system and branding value is acknowledged. Realisation of the competitive edge gained by not doing “own thing.” More open minded,inquisitive and empathetic.

W E

The real power of licensing kicks in here. Realisation that a business relationship must be worked at. Licensees make ideas and assistance freely available to other licensees.

“Profitable Partnerships” is a book by Greg Nathan which details these aspects in great detail.

For more information and a slightly different South African flavour have a look at here.

Image by eyesplash Mikul via Flickr

It can be risky to start a South African home based business because you never know if the product or service will be in demand, you also don’t know if you have the ability to push through on your own. It’s never easy. And the success rate will obviously be lower if you are not street wise.

Using the word street wise is a mouthful; it implies that you are naive. An online dictionary defines naive as flows:

Having or showing a lack of experience, judgment, or information; credulous: She’s so naive she believes everything she reads.

My suggestion is that you only consider a proven home based business concept. Ensure that your investment is small and that your return is high with potential to grow.

I believe that starting your South African home based business with a naive attitude is the reason for failure because you are responsible for your decisions.

As a family we were involved, in an expensive franchise in South Africa. We were franchisees for many years and saw many naive people fail in a so called low risk franchise.

This reminds me of an article that I came across stating that only 5% of franchises fail compared to 50% and more % of businesses that are not part of a franchise.

This I believe is a lot of bull;

A lot more franchises fail in the first year but they are not recorded as failures because the franchisor takes these businesses over or sell them on to other established franchisees.

I remember two franchisees that worked all their life at a large corporate. They resigned, clubbed their pension together and bonded their homes to purchase this expensive franchise.

They were nice guys but naive. Very naive.

When I met them a month after they started they were already in deep trouble. Their business was located in the wrong area, they were buying expensive and faulty stock from dealers who saw their naivety. Sad to say they lost it all.

Again: Go for a small investment with high returns and potential for growth.

Let’s compare two South African business opportunities (I’ll call one the Expensive Franchise):

Franchise	Coffee news	Expensive Franchise
Investment	R35 000	R1 000 000
Potential Monthly Income	R18 000	R90 000
Time before you get your money back	Two months	Ten months
To make R90 000 per month	You need 5 Coffee News franchises	You need one expensive franchise
To make R90 000/m you need to invest	R175 000 (The cost of  5 Coffee News  See **Note)	R1 000 000

* Note: These figures are based on a successful business. The income depends on the skills and ability of the owner. Although there are Coffee News owners that run 10 and more Coffee News editions we don’t recommend you start the 2nd and 3rd before you have a proven track record.

** Note: The first Coffee News edition is R35 000 (excl. VAT) The second  R20 000 (excl. VAT). I have used R35 000 for the calculation. Therefore 5 Coffee News editions will only cost R115 000 and not R175 000.

You can see from the table above that:

• To make R90 000 you need to invest nearly six times more money than with Coffee News.
• You can potentially recover your start up cost in two months compared to 10 months for the expensive franchise.

What are the other pros and cons starting a South African Home Based business compared to an expensive franchise?

• The risk is obviously higher with the more expensive business opportunity. 
• With Coffee News you don’t need to rob the bank and sell all the family jewels to start the business.
• With Coffee News you don’t have high volumes of stock.
• You don’t have people and staff stealing your stock. You have no stock.
• With Coffee News you don’t have to worry about staff and labour laws/regulations.
• The expensive franchise needs long trading hours.
• Coffee News is a home based business.
• I am not saying that at the end of the day you will make as much money as with the expensive franchise but you will not owe the bank your pension and your home if you are not successful.
• With Coffee News you’ll have freedom and time for family, friends and hobbies.

Coffee News is a nice home based business with relatively low risk, high return and potential for growth. And on top of that people running Coffee News enjoy the social- and the local nature of this unique South African home based business