J. Money, thanks for the kind words my friend and for the constant encouragement to get my ideas onto “paper” for the world to see. 2016 is going to be a big year. Stay tuned.

Hey Scott, thanks for the kinds words and I’m glad you found the post inspiring.

Don’t dream of one day… make that day today! Start with something small that has very little money risked. Validate your idea and, if it works, scale it.

Keep an eye on my blog (J Money linked to it below) in 2016 as there might be a lot more coming soon.

Thanks again for reading and the nice comment.

It was a mix of SIM card sizes. Thanks for reading and for the comment.

Glad you’re enjoying our blogs!

Here’s Brent’s: http://vosa.com

Maybe you can convince him to start blogging more as he’s FULL of genius ideas – especially in entrepreneurship – but his time is always being eaten up by them… which of course is a good problem to have :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Thanks for your awesome guest post. Your entrepreneurial spirit is so inspiring and I can only dream of one day doing something equally as cool! Selling SIM cards from a shoebox; who would have thought it?!

Do you have your own site? I would love to find out if you have any other stories which are equally as inspiring!

All the best,

Scott

p.s. I’m a huge fan of yours too Jay! I particularly liked your piece about Acorn and other such companies. I can’t wait for them to start operating in the UK!

Sabine, thanks for the comment and for reading my post. I want to stress that you don’t need some amazing new idea to make money on a side hustle. In fact, almost everything that people are doing has been done before.

I encourage you to try to think a little differently. My favorite ways to come up with idea on how to make money are:

1. How can I add value to that product/service?
2. What can that product/service be combined with to add benefits to the customer?

Using the SIM card example above, there were TONS of people selling SIM cards and everyone was offering the same thing. 95% of theses sales were international sales so by detailing my vast international shipping experience I made more sales. More initial sales gave me more customers to them sell by add-on product of the pre-paid credits.

Another example would be Dollar Shave Club. Razors have been around for a long long long time. There is nothing new about selling razors to me. What Dollar Shave Club did was: (1) make the experience of shopping for a razor run with a great viral video. (2) They made their business model a recurring revenue model where they send you the replacement razor blades rather than you having to go to the store to buy them. This is an added benefit to men who are buying razors because they don’t have to leave their house to get blades and they’ll never run out because they get replacement blades shipped to their house every month. By being a little creating with the delivery of the razors, Dollar Shave Club did around $60 million in revenue 2014.

My last example is Jonny Cupcakes and their packaging. They sell T-shirts but their brick and mortar stores look just like bakeries. Then they package their shirts in very creative ways rather than the standard plastic bag like every other T-shirt company out there. Check out some of these awesome images: http://bit.ly/1OnzPti. They’ve created a unique experience around shopping and buying t-shirts and they sell like crazy!

So, I encourage you to start trying to look at things with a different angle. What can you do to make the buyer’s experience better? What can you do to add value to the product? What two (or more products) can you combine to make a bundled offer that makes it easier for the customer to buy from you rather than three different places?

Trying to find something “new” to make and sell is really hard.

I’m here for further discussion if you’d like.

If you phone is unlocked then it should work with any SIM card. I would just go to the local convenience store where you can usually buy a pay-as-you-go package with a SIM card. Sometimes you’ll need to buy the SIM card before you get to where you’re going and (obviously) eBay is a great place to buy one. Hope this helps.

I stumbled upon your article for the entrepreneurial advice, but I have a side-question. I too, am traveling to Europe and my Sprint service has crazy international fees for data, particularly. I did some research on buying a sim card, but I’m not sure if it will work on my locked iPhone 4s. Do you have any advice or resources that can guide me?

Thanks!
Dominique