Four Click Freedom

In the end I am selling ad space for coupons.  Yes this actually makes money.  Clients actually buy space in newspapers and websites to put money saving discounts which actually lower the costs of their products to attract customers.

But when I start talking to local restaurants and stores and say you need to pay me to make you a Clickboard and pay for the space on the websites it will be posted, and make some sort of discount for the customer (and rent the portable receipt printing machine); well that begins to sound like a long shot.

The machines I will probably have to give to them, or like in the conversation I had last night, find a way to get rid of them and use something else.  Not only that try to find a way to get rid of the card.  Yes I want to do this, but the fact remains that although most stores already have their static discount cards for themselves, their cards don’t do what mine do; connect ads on the Internet to the users purchase.

So my model is probably not going to make money, at least not enough to pay for the machines.  And that is a big thing to think about.  How much online advertising can I give to a store that purchases the machine.  $400 dollars is quite a lot of advertising and also quite a big sale to sell to a small restaurant or store.  Although the machines are an easy way to prove my model works.  I need a simpler method.  Without the machine I’m afraid my idea is still long in advance.

Next option: create apps for phones that could bluetooth information to store computers and give the stores the software to run in the background.  Paperless transactions would be nice, but small shop owners may be wary of this type of coupon redemption.

So now, do I prove the model works, or do I proceed to the next step?

Great news, I think I am going to be able to do the Clickboards.net locally here in Tianjin.  This new portable receipt printer that I found makes everything happen.  Basically as long as their is a computer in the restaurant this will work.  And from what I found there always is.

The printer is programmable and every individual one you can upload the store logos and id for the printer onto it.  Then by simply having linked to the computer through IrDA, Bluetooth, Infra-Red, or WLAN the coupons from Clickboards.net can be printed for the store at the store.

Currently I am thinking all discounts that the user has for the store will all be printed and then they will have to select at the table or check out which ones they want to use.  The store keeps the copy of the used coupon(s) and the user takes the rest home with him.  He can re-enter the coupons back onto his profile when he gets home with the pin number for the coupon.

But better yet, this portable printer has the option of coming with a magnetic card and smart card reader.

Brilliant