Tayo Solagbade’s
Performance Improvement IDEAS
(PI Squared) Newsletter
Monday 15th August 2016
NB: This PI Squared newsletter will be published weekly, on Mondays, in place of the Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, starting from today – 15th February 2016. I’m reinventing my Monday newsletter content and theme, to accommodate my vision of serving the growing audience of serious minded individuals and organizations reaching out to me, with information, education. news and research findings designed to help them do what they do better.
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PII 027: Make Money Selling Spreadsheet Workbooks You Use
The key to making money is finding a solution to problems that others around us are prepared to pay us profitably for.
If you know how to go about it, you CAN make good money selling the Workbooks you build for use in your work as a business user of MS Excel, or indeed any other spreadsheet application.
I say this as one who has done just that for well over a decade and (as I explain below, I have come across many other experts in various fields of endeavour who do the same.
If there is any area of endeavour packed with potentially limitless profitable problem solving opportunities, it is that of Data Recording, Analysis/Trending and Report generating for timely and Accurate Decision Making.
We are today, in a fast changing technology driven world, whose evolution is greatly dependent on access to and accurate/timely interpretation of data.
Think about it for a moment, and you’ll see that it’s true. Everywhere you turn, “data” is being collected, reviewed, analyzed, trended and presented. Sports, Business, Education, Entertainment, Religion, Politics/Government etc!
Anyone who is able to create a useful system for helping people tasked with responsibilities for routine data handling and report generation for decision making stands a good chance of making money selling such solutions to them.
But s/he needs to learn HOW to do it.
I argue that an important foundation on which to build any such solution are spreadsheets. And my preferred platform is Microsoft Excel – because it remains by far the best reporting application on the market.
Last night, I sent out the first podcast/audio version of my Excel-VB Automation Tutorial to members of my Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation Club.
And it was on this same theme: Make Money Selling Spreadsheet Workbooks You Use
My purpose is open business users’ eyes to a possible goldmine of opportunities existing in form of the spreadsheet templates they routinely use to deliver value to their employers and/or clients.
The podcast I recorded was however sent to my club members via Whatsapp, in a deliberate effort to bring the club members into my Whatsapp network, where I’ve been actively supporting clients in/out of Africa (especially those in the UK, Ghana, Nigeria) since April 2016.
Join my MS Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation Club [Introductory Videos You Need to Watch]
I’ve found the Whatsapp platform exceptionally versatile in delivering varied forms of support to those I serve!
Click here to request the Whatsapp audio, by sending me your Whatsapp number and other details via the form at the bottom of the page that appears.
Think about what you do with MS Excel, for your employer or clients in the formal work you do.
Chances are good that if you’re reasonably competent in the use of MS Excel, and have been doing that work for a reasonable period of time, colleagues or co-workers who do what you do may find them your Workbooks useful templates they can adapt to their needs.
Some common examples of purposes to which spreadsheets are applied include:
- Preparing Pay slips
I’ve visited many forums and met various people who were in search of a template spreadsheet format they could simply modify with their personal or company information and plug data into, in order to generate needed Salaries Schedules and Pay slips, with Income Tax payments for each employee.
The basic version of my Automated Pay slip Generator app has been on sale since 2007, when I first built it for Lagos based medium sized hospital’s accounts department, who still use it till this day.
If you work use MS Excel to generate pay slips for employees or clients’ staff, that workbook you use can be customized as a template you can sell to earn passive income “as is” – without a single line of code – believe me!
- Preparing Cash Book Income/Expense Summaries
I’ve built 3 different types of Automated Excel-VB driven Cash Books for accountants in different organizations, based on their specifications. This told me there is great potential for money making in this area, for any competent accountant who chooses to use the ideas I propose for adoption in this article.
Considering the fact that I did not study Accountancy, and have no formal training in that field, it goes without saying that my ability to sell the Automated Cash Books I’ve built to new clients is proof that those with training in that field can do so much more, if they learn to use Excel-VB like I do.
But even with what they already know, without any coding whatsoever, the workbooks I’ve seen some of them use, if properly formatted and structured for use as templates, can be sold for good money.
Many CPAs in developed societies build and sell such workbooks with little or no code for download and use by buyers looking for simple, easy to use solutions. YOU can start from there!
- Preparing Tax Summaries
I know tax/audit consultants who complain of slowdown in business. Their clients are unable to pay for the traditional big budget audit projects of the past. What I always ask them is: Why not look at creating customizable template versions of the workbooks you use to generate the tax reports for your clients, then build data entry spreadsheets to feed those spreadsheets, which you can then sell to your clients, and train them to post data into.
By the end of the month or year, you could then come over to generate reports, for a smaller fee. So you would make money selling the workbooks, and/or helping to generate the tax reports. But it would cost the client much less, than the conventional work you do. The best part is that you’d be able to serve more clients, and earn passive income.
Note that I’ve used mainly examples relevant to financial reporting. However, the point I’m making here applies to virtually every other field in which data handling and report generation is done.
The range of apps (see examples below) I’ve built for clients in various markets illustrates this point perfectly.
1. Automated Church Records Manager
- Clients Contacts/Records Manager
- Membership Records Manager
- Hotel, Restaurant & Bars Manager
- Clinic Records Manager
- Pure Water Business Manager
- Manufacturing Business Manager
- Supermarket Business Manager
Click here to visit a page where you can click links to watch videos of the apps listed above in use
Manufacturing organizations in particular will find the “Usage Rates Tracking and Variable Cost Analysis” spreadsheet applications (like those I develop – see screenshots below) invaluable for more efficient reporting.
The above report formats for product costing and Key Performance Indicator auto-generation were adapted from those I’d been involved in creating for a different organisation in the past. You can do the same – and get to a point where you end up with a generic customizable workbook you can sell to clients. See Excel-VB Automation Can Boost Employee Productivity in Your Company [Hint: Custom Manufacturing Business Manager App Built for a Lagos-Nigeria based SME]
Serious Minded Business Users ALWAYS Value Problem-Solvers
That’s a known fact – which is why they readily pay to hire such persons, or buy the solutions they create.
Such people never wants to go through the hassle of re-inventing the wheel e.g. building spreadsheet tables daily weekly, or monthly to handle data, when a ready-to-use format with formulas already correctly inputted, in a print-ready arrangement is available to be had.
Except they are unaware of its existence!
Little wonder, that some websites feature simple workbooks on sale for significant sums. A quick Google search will reveal ready examples you can relate to.
Note that this is an area of opportunity for which the potential demand in almost limitless. You can literally create your own market, by focusing on a niche you identify, to meet the needs of people you deduce are NOT being attended to adequately or satisfactorily.
If you can study your target marketplace and identify the preferred format used in most organizations, you can adapt the one you have to cater for any unique features they have and offer them for sale.
Abundant elbow room exists for multiple solution providers in this kind of market, as your CREATIVITY in adapting your solution to meet the client’s needs is what will determine your success or otherwise.
Like I tell my clients, this has been the key to my success in selling customizable spreadsheet solutions in my primary target market (Africa). And I’ve quietly held back from putting all I offer into the first generation of apps I’ve offered to buyers.
Instead, I continue to study my users and the feedback they give me, towards building what I aim to be a new generation of apps designed to overwhelm users with so much powerful value, that will make them industry standard.
In other words, what I’m asking you to do, is what I have been doing for YEARS, and which I continue to do, even though at a higher level of competence.
It therefore goes without saying that I can help anyone interested in learning to do the same -which is why I launched my Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation Club.
Join my MS Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation Club [Introductory Videos You Need to Watch]
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