Are you thinking about buying time or at least something close to it - Minutesforsale allows companies and individuals to buy time for every minute of the day.
So basically this is how it works - You pay a small one off fee and get your will website displayed on the Minutesforsale homepage for the amount of time purchased.
Meet Jason Ting, the 20 year old founder behind the project, Jason is currently studying at the London School of Economics.
Hi Jason, How are you doing, great to have you on YHP?
I am great thank you, though it’s mainly down to the sun being out right now. It’s great to be on YHP, thanks for having me.
Could you quickly give us some background information about yourself?
Sure thing. My name is Jason Ting, I'm 20 years old and I've lived in London all my life. I'm half Chinese hence my awesome surname, and why I look half Chinese. I have numerous interests which include sports (football and gym more specifically, but really its an endless list), reading, cooking (I can make quite the dessert), movies, restaurants... You get the picture. Oh and I'm a massive fan of American Pie.
Tell me how you got into business? Were you exposed to entrepreneurship as a child?
Well both my eldest brother and my father are self-employed, so I've always been surrounded by people who work for themselves to fit the lifestyle they like. So really for a long time I've felt I could try and do something different with my life, something that I could call my own to push as far as I can. As well as that I am currently studying at the London School of Economics, so I continue to be in an environment that is business orientated.
So tell me about Minutesforsale and how the idea came about?
Well I found myself surrounded by mates who were busy doing part-time jobs to make their way through university, or to help pay off their student loan. And so I thought now was as good a time as any to try and create a unique way of paying mine off. I wanted to create something that had never been done before. Having been flooded with advertising my whole life it made sense to start thinking about possible ideas in that field. In the end I thought of time, and from there I challenged myself to sell something almost unsellable that no one had tried before.
What is Minutesforsale and how does it work? What are you trying to solve?
Minutesforsale is a website that I have created and the basic concept of the website is that I’m trying to sell time. I know, it sounds strange just hearing it. But basically I am allowing companies and individuals to buy every minute of the day. Every minute of every hour.
They pay just a small one off fee and I will display their website on my homepage at that exact time, every single day. I’m not just displaying their advert, but their actual website in full, for one minute a day. They also get a permanent link in the timetable page where people can click on any time of day and see who has purchased it.
How have you been able to fund the business?
Well it didn’t cost too much to start up. Just the web hosting and things like that. I had enough saved up to cover those things. I learnt to code the website for free online. So thankfully my costs have been quite minimal.
What is your business model?
When I started, I had the price at a one off fee of £10 per minute. With every hour sold, I am increasing the price slowly. So after every 60 minutes sold, the price goes up. It will keep going up every hour until all the minutes are gone.
A nice added feature I have is that once all the minutes have sold out, people will then be able to re-sell their advertising spot if they wish to do so. Imagine you purchase a minute now, where the current price is £20, and by the time the last hour sells, the price is £240 we’ll say as an example.
You can then sell your minute for £240 to someone else, and you will get your initial fee of £20 back, plus half of the difference as profit. So for the £20 minute you bought, you will get back £130 if you sold later on.
It’s not my intention to have people selling all their minutes, but it’s a nice added bonus and maintains value in the spot they purchased.
What has been your most memorable moment so far?
Well being the fan of page 3 that I am, it has got to be getting a big article written about me on page 3 of a newspaper!
What can we be expecting from your company in 2012?
Well so far I’ve sold just under two hours in a couple of weeks. With a little more exposure and more people becoming aware of my site, I’m hoping to sell out every minute of time in 2012. That would be a great achievement, but there’s a long way to go yet.
