Stumble upon a neat business idea (Free love concept) - Comments and advice is greatly appreciated

**joshlim.718** · 05-07-2008 11:24 AM

Hello everyone,

I'm Josh, 28 from Indonesia. I recently stumbled upon gpamedia.com . In a nutshell GPA Media provides ads supported notebooks to students free of charge at the start of each semester.

The ads will serve as a divider for each subject, the notebook is designed to fit in 5 subject.

I'm very interested in establishing a similar concept here in my country Indonesia and would like to have a discussion here on the pro and cons of this business idea (so if anyone is interested can start it as well with the information here)

Please drop in and comment on the business idea, hopefully leaving advices for anyone whose interested in starting a similar business concept.

Best regards,
Josh

**FUN-GUYZ!** · 05-07-2008 03:16 PM

Hi Josh!

I see that 26 people have viewed your post, but nobody wanted to help you...how rude!

I have seen this idea done in several different areas; mostly at trade shows. Sponsors of the trade show purchase sponsorship packages, each package contains several "perks" for buying that package...i.e., banners, speaking positions, door prize sponsors, and in this case, notebook dividers.

I think the idea is a good one, however, it may be difficult to find sponsors suitable for students. Almost every credit card company out there would be interested in your idea, but you may run into trouble with the school because there have been issues with predetory lending practices that target students.

Other target sponsors could include;

-Computer companies
-Large employers (example: provide notebooks to the finance department of a large, well known finance school...with advertisments from Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, etc)
-Insurance companies
-Banks (banks love to bring in new students, especially young doctors/lawyers/etc)
-Car companies

Hope this helps!

Jason

**warrensway** · 05-07-2008 05:40 PM

It would be hard to implement the company for one. You have to find how you will make money. I think the idea is great you just need to figure everything out first.

**PrivateerNation** · 05-07-2008 06:20 PM

Josh,

The idea sounds like it could work. The big thing is you are going to have to contact people to advertise. I just had a guy on my mastermind group spend 6 months building a local yellowpages site. It was beautiful! Then he realized, "I gotta sell ads to get paid." He tried doing some cold calling which he didn't like. He tried hiring others to do cold calling. That didn't work. He was going to do direct mail but couldn't come up with the money. Ended up dropping the project.

So it sounds good. But figure out how you are going to contact your customers and get paid first =) If you need any help with that I'm building a mastermind group made up of young entrepreneurs for the entrepreneurial nation I launched. Right now I'm looking for good people more than I am interested in charging membership dues. If you like the sound of having a mastermind group to help you build your dream check out privateernation.com. If you like what you see contact me and we'll talk about how I can best be of help to you.

Have fun and congrats on the idea,

Al "Namaste" Faustino

**Tjohnson** · 05-07-2008 09:19 PM

this company does it also ABS Notebooks

here is the article

ABS Notebooks

Last summer we wrote about FreeHand Advertising and its initiative to give free, ad-supported notepaper to college students, and now ABS Notebooks is going a step further and handing out whole notebooks instead.

The Shadow Notebook is a five-subject notebook that gets cobranded with participating colleges and universities across the US and distributed by the school at the start of each semester. The university's logo appears on the cover, and pages of school-related maps and information get included within. Thirteen four-colour, full-page advertisements, meanwhile, act as subject dividers in each notebook, giving advertisers the means to engage students while they are a captive audience in the learning environment. Students, naturally, carry the notebooks with them throughout the day over the course of the semester, which from the advertiser's perspective amounts to 96 impressions over a four-month period, ABS says. So far, about 700,000 notebooks have been distributed to college students at campuses nationwide.

College students spend some USD 198 billion per year, according to Harris Interactive, so it's no wonder advertisers are going to new lengths to reach them. We've now seen free photocopies, free printing, free notepaper, free phone calls and now free notebooks—it all goes to show, there's no such thing as too much free love!

its good if you can find people who want to advertise in it

**ken@shadow** · 05-07-2008 11:53 PM

Hey all,

Thought I'd introduce myself -- I'm Ken from ABS Notebooks (the company mentioned above).

There's nothing I'd like to do more than help young entrepreneurs, so if anyone has any specific questions about notebook media and the business model, feel free to reach out and ask away.

One of the most important parts to being an entrepreneur is having a great mentor -- and while I can't say I'll be that guy.. I'll definitely help out where I can.

..and Josh, I spent a few months living in Indonesia (surf trip). What a life.

Cheers.
Ken

ABS Notebooks
(it's not letting me post any urls, but my email is kh at absnotebooks dot com)

**joshlim.718** · 05-08-2008 01:08 AM

Thank you so much everyone for the great responses and comments!

Yes the challenge would be pitching the idea to advertisers, especially in my country where majority of business owners are still going through traditional advertising method such as magazine, newspaper and tv commercials.

Prior to this I was actually considering implementing the idea of Tadacopy (tadacopy.com/) but after analyzing the idea for a short while aside from the huge cost of renting/buying photocopy machines it also faces the problem of reaching only a small range of target audience/students (Not all students goes to the library or make photocopies), duplication of advertisements etc.

Back to the topic, I really believe this business idea is really practical and effective. Kudos to Ken and people at Shadow in coming up with the concept and executing it successfully!

Thank you so much Ken for dropping by and offer to provide any help I/we might have, I'm writing an email to you currently.. Hope to hear from you soon!