A Service Business You Can Start This Week

and the reason why no one is reading your writing online

Today’s estimated read time: 3 minutes and 21 seconds

1. Business idea of the Week: Food Waste Collection Service

$240 billion.

Thats the amount of food wasted every year in the US. This breaks down to roughly $2,000 or 240 pounds per household each year.

In this survey, 72% of Americans said they do not compost their food, but 67% would like to.

There’s our customer demand!

The Idea: A food waste collection service that makes households feel better about their food waste, and creates compost to sell to farmers. Money can be made on both sides of this business. Charge households a monthly fee to collect their food waste, and sell the compost to landscapers, farmers, and nurseries.

I pay around $30 per month for my recycling service, which is separate from my trash service.

Why do I pay that? Because I want to feel like I’m doing the right thing for the environment, and my trash is being re-used for something new.

You can charge households $15-30/month to collection their food waste, which can then be sold to farmers or nurseries for $9-$13 per cubic yard.

How to get started: This is idea can be bootstrapped, and started right in your neighborhood. You can offer a composting bin, along with a weekly or monthly collection service.

Example of indoor composting bin

Example of outdoor composting bin

Start by advertising locally with flyers, Facebook, or even door-to-door sales. Your pitch can sound something like this: “We help your neighbors cut down their food waste by 90% every month. We do this by collecting their food waste once a month, and compost it into nutrient rich soil for local farmers. Are you interested in reducing your food waste by 90% every month?”

Once you have a few customers in a neighborhood, you should have an easier time signing up new customers through word of mouth, and customer reviews.

You will likely need to invest in a truck to collect the waste and location to store it once you get a few customers, but you can start with your car and a backyard to start out with.

Here’s the 3 things I really like about this business:

1) Monthly recurring revenue from house holds

2) Selling the waste to farmers as a second revenue stream

3) You’re helping the environment and have an awesome story to tell.

Let me know your thoughts!

Sources: https://coopeduplife.com/composting-statistics/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanabandoim/2020/01/26/the-shocking-amount-of-food-us-households-waste-every-year/?sh=83340387dc8e

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/national-waste--recycling-association-survey-finds-most-americans-would-compost-if-it-was-more-convenient-in-their-community-239232261.html

2. Why No One is Reading Your Writing

I came across this stat yesterday… and I’m still thinking about it.

“8 out of 10 people only read headlines”

This is a scary fact to realize when you put so much time into the actual meat and bones of your writing. You can spend hours writing a blog or article that never gets read because your headline sucks.

So whats the solution? Some writers recommend spending 50% of the total time it takes to write your post, just on writing your headline. This seems like a lot, but when you realize it’s one of the most important parts of your entire post, it makes a lot of sense.

Here’s two actionable tips:

1. Write down 5 different versions of your headline. Google synonyms for words in your headline to find alternatives. This will give you options, and narrow down your favorites.

2. Once you have multiple headlines written out, be super honest with yourself about which one you would click on first. Or ask a friend which one they would click.

After all, the quality of your content doesn’t matter if you can’t get anyone to read it.

3. $625 Million was Stolen, and No One Noticed

The biggest crypto hack ever happened last week, and no one noticed for almost a week.

So what happened? Axie Infinity, a popular crypto game, got $625 million stolen from their “bank account”. (In crypto, bank accounts don’t actually exist, but thats an easy way to think about it.)

Axie Infinity uses a a block chain called “Ronin” to run their game. In order to transfer money from the Ronin chain, you have to get “signatures” from keys in order to verify a transaction, and “sign off” on the transfer.

So the hacker got ahold of 5 of the 9 keys on the Ronin chain, which allowed them to “sign off” on the transaction to pull out $625 million.

But just like the couple that stole billions in Bitcoin that I wrote about, the stolen crypto can be tracked on the blockchain. So if this stolen crypto is transferred to an exchange and withdrawn, we’ll be able to see exactly who withdrew it.

With $625 million of stolen funds floating around, this story is far from over. Now the question is…. when does the Netflix doc come out?