Coffeehouse Culture Business Opportunities Page (PC)

'Business Opportunities.' Hmmm! Sounds like a euphemism to me. Doesn't it usually mean: put your hand in your pocket and spend some money here? But on the Coffeehouse Culture Business Opportunities Page, things are different. Sure, there is plenty of opportunity for rich coffeeshop owners and similar to spend their hard-earned cash here. But there are also lots of opportunities for those with no money to make some without spending a penny. Anyone with a suitable skill to market, a service to provide, products or a brilliant idea to sell can find a place on the Coffeehouse Culture site to set their wares before the world. Below, as well as giving our rates for advertising on the site, we offer some suggestions for New Age entrepreneurs to make a little money on the Coffeehouse Culture site.

Knock, Knock, Who's There?

Introduction

However free we might feel, we are all prisoners condemned to remain for life trapped within a cell constructed by the dark forces of economics. Try as we might to free ourselves from the economic forces that define our lives, we are unable to rise above the need for money. We know that like Frank Zappa said, we are all 'victims of systems beyond our control.' And we don't like it. Who among us wants to be a marketing statistic? Who wants to be demographically defined and demeaned by their transformation into a member of a socio-economic group? Who wants to be part of the profit motive? And who wants to serve such corrupt, destructive and self-serving forces?
In truth, few of us. But what can you do? It seems that the only true freedom is in the head. But isn't that where we make all this stuff we call reality? So lets make something new. If that sounds impossible, read on.

Coffeehouse Culture has redefined commerciality for itself into a form that works. Although Coffeehouse Culture is run as a commercial venture that is not the reason for its creation. Nor does it depend on commercial success fir its continued existence. Profitability is not the objective here. It might be an effect but it is not the objective. And there you have it. Coffeehouse Culture is a commercial venture where profit is an effect rather than an objective.

That means that our principles are never compromised by the need to make money. How many commercial ventures can say that?
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Site Overview

As well as the publication which gives it its name, the Coffeehouse Culture site will have many less wordy attractions for visitors. Among these will be a number of areas in which the marketing of products and services will be an easily integrated fun component of the Coffeehouse Culture experience. Although the main commercial area of the site will be Virtual Amsterdam, the Culture Shop, which is immediately accessible through the central Home Page, will sell Coffeehouse Culture's spin-off products (paper reprints of the e-zine, posters, t-shirts and a developing range of Coffeehouse Culture-branded products) and other goods that are felt worthy of inclusion in such a 'front-of-site' location. It is, however, in Virtual Amsterdam that the most varied and exciting opportunities to sell over the web will be found. As a 3D interactive environment that engages the visitor in an enticing adventure game demanding that doors be opened and the areas behind them be explored, Virtual Amsterdam will offer many new and original ways in which to communicate with and sell to web users. Although most of the sites in Virtual Amsterdam will be occupied by single businesses, there will be a number of premises that are reserved for Coffeehouse Culture's own use or are given over to the use of small businesses offering products or services. The Culture Shop will have a front-of-screen presence and just up the street will be the Coffeehouse Culture gallery selling works by some of Amsterdam's most talented unknowns. Also well positioned on Virtual Amsterdam's main street will be the Bizarre Bazaar where small businesses will be able to occupy stall space to sell their products. Unlike the other locations in Virtual Amsterdam, spots in the Bizarre Bazaar will be made available rent-free to suitable businesses.

The opportunities for promotion and sales on the Coffeehouse Culture site are many and varied. For those with little or no capital, without the opportunity to launch themselves in the commercial world, Coffeehouse Culture will provide a site that is not only e-commerce secure but also admin-free. For those already with established businesses in the real world, Virtual Amsterdam offers the elaborate 3D environments in which interactivity is exciting and engaging. And for those who can't handle our vision of the future of the web, there is always banner advertising in the e-zine and on main pages.

Each of the main site areas and the opportunities it offers for commercial enterprise is discussed below. Straight advertising gets its own section at the bottom of the page. Before that, however, we have a few words to say about co-operative joint ventures that is a MUST READ FIRST for anyone with a small business that might be suitable for one of our many free spots.
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The Coffeehouse Culture
Co-operative Collective

One of Coffeehouse Culture's objectives is to do what it can to help the culture of consciousness flourish. For many of those who express their freedom in their lives one of the first shackles to be broken is the one that binds them to the employment ethic. Somehow living a good life seems more important than receiving a regular income. Contrary to popular opinion the majority of those who drop out of employment are not layabouts and wastrels. Without the time-consuming distractions of a full-time job ingenuity and creativity have a place to flourish. As we all know the consciousness culture is full of original, ingenious and creative thinkers and doers. Despite all this, the culture is on the whole overwhelmingly poor.

The reasons for this poverty are fairly simple. In a commercial world to market and sell effectively requires capital. And the one thing everyone lacks is capital. However, even with sufficient capital, marketing and selling are energy-intensive activities that take time that could be better spent in creating. And, finally, making money out of what you are creating requires a commitment not to creating but to marketing. And who needs that?

Through its Commercial Collective Project, Coffeehouse Culture can resolve many of the factors that hold back commercial enterprise in the consciousness culture.

For small businesses, artists, artisans, inventors, entrepreneurs and other members of this culture who are without the funds or resources to make money from their skills, Coffeehouse Culture offers a free marketing and sales interface that will involve suppliers in little more than packing and despatch. No trudging around the streets, no depressing conversations, no dreary admin.

The Commercial Collective will work like this. Within its Bizarre Bazaar, Coffeehouse Culture will help to create a stall-based interactive interface through which your wares can be seen and bought. In order to provide this service, Coffeehouse Culture will take a small percentage of each sale made through the site.

There are a number of conditions that cover this free service. Businesses and products must be suitable for the site. Those utilising the service must participate in creating their interface and make a commitment to keeping their stall updated. This is, after all, a co-operative venture. Business must have a fairly permanent base and make a commitment to stay around for a minimum period of six months. And, finally, businesses must have an internet connection and a bank account.

In order to participate in the scheme, please submit a proposal containing details of your business and a description of your products or services. If you are not sure if your business would be suitable, please read the appropriate section below where there is discussion of the types of products and services that would fit within the site.
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Virtual Amsterdam

Virtual Amsterdam is a multifaceted adventure gaming playground that aims to capture all the spirit, colour and surrealism of the real city. Based around 3D interactive environments, Virtual Amsterdam will encourage users to explore every area of the virtual city as they gather clues in a massive, engaging and varied adventure game. As in real Amsterdam, behind every door in our virtual city there will be interesting people to meet, unusual encounters and strange experiences to be had.

Along main street in Virtual Amsterdam, there will be many different environments owned by real businesses. There will also be four main sites reserved for Coffeehouse Culture's own use --- the Culture Shop, the Bizarre Bazaar, the Inner Sanctum, and Smarts, our fine art gallery. Although all these areas are commercial, each has a different ambience and character that defines the type of commercial activity that might take place within.

THE CULTURE SHOP
This is where Coffeehouse Culture will sell its own products. And, needless to say, it will be a prime site that will be featured on the splash screen and will be at the front of the starting image. From the moment Virtual Amsterdam goes onto the web, the Culture Shop will start to sell the hard copy reprints of material in the e-zine, its posters and its T-shirts and will begin to develop a range of buy-in-to order products that can be marketed under the Coffeehouse Culture logo. Acting as an agent, Coffeehouse Culture will also offer goods supplied externally through the Culture Shop. Whereas in the other commercial areas of the site suitability of product or service will be the main deciding factor for selection, within the Culture Shop the criteria will be different. External products sold in the Culture Shop will be from established suppliers who do not wish to take on their own 3D environment but warrant a 'front-of-site' presence. The Culture Shop, however, will not be a cheap option for suppliers who want prominent site positioning but do not want to spend the money to become leaseholders of their own environments; the selection process for both products and suppliers will be stringent and exacting.
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THE BIZARRE BAZAAR
This will be the main small businesses retail outlet on the site. A colourful indoor market on four floors consisting of stalls or booths selling anything that Coffeehouse Culture readers might want to buy. Within the Bazaar, visitors will find the original handmade articles that define the self-employed artisan. All the arts and crafts and more will be represented. Jewellery, t-shirts, smoking paraphernalia, footwear, clothing, posters, crystals, lights and lighting, vases and ornaments, designer decor, old books, comics, imported items from exotic places, incense and essential oils, herbs and spices, musical instruments, scarves and shawls . . . . the list of suitable products is endless. Here also users will find the inventors and suppliers of custom services like car decor, growroom equipment design, tailoring, furniture building, boat building . . . Again, the list is endless. Each stall or booth will be designed to create an interesting and attractive backdrop against which the products for sale can be alluringly displayed and will involve some level of interaction. Products will be ordered through a standardised order form interface and will be paid for by credit card through a centralised accounting system that will free suppliers from arduous administrative work. Both the order and the payment will be automatically despatched to the supplier who will be responsible for despatching the order.

This service will be free to stall holders who will pay nothing for the construction of their stall and its placement in the Bizarre Bazaar. No money up front will be required. For the interface it creates, the marketing platform it provides and to cover its administrative costs, Coffeehouse Culture will deduct between 10 and 17.5% from each payment before it is passed to the supplier. The percentage deducted will depend on the contribution (in creative terms) that stall holders make to the creation of their stalls.

The criteria for selection of suitable stall holders and the terms and conditions covering this service will be stringent. Although no financial security will be required, Coffeehouse Culture will be seeking firm assurances regarding the stability and continuity of suppliers.
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COFFEEHOUSE CULTURE INSTANT-BUSINESS TIP
No capital means no money to buy materials or buy-in products to sell-on. However, the traditional adage that you can't sell something unless you've got something to sell is no longer true. A virtual shop is not like a real shop (really?) where there needs to be real products for customers to feel, finger and fondle. All there needs to be in a virtual shop is a good photograph of the product and an informative and selling description. Therefore, provided one has a good inexpensive -- and you can't get more inexpensive than free -- medium through which to market the product (and that is where Coffeehouse Culture comes in), it is not actually necessary to have the real thing. Once your first paid-for order or orders are in, you suddenly have the money to buy your materials or to dash to your suppliers to buy the ordered product. This cunning plan works best if you manufacture what you sell. If you buy-in the product(s) on your stall, it is more problematic. The source of your product must be reliable and the product must be priced keenly for small quantities. Given these provisos, however, it is perfectly possible to start a business using the Coffeehouse Culture Bizarre Bazaar Free Service spending almost nothing up front.
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THE INNER SANCTUM
Tired after a hard day on the streets of Virtual Amsterdam? Then the place for you is our Inner Sanctum where you can relax and refresh yourself with a range of regenerative activities. For those seeking better health, here you will find the practitioners of the most ancient and most modern alternative therapies -- aroma therapy, ghandhava ved, colour therapy, feng sui and stapatyved, herbalism and crystal healing and many more -- and those who provide counselling in life skills. And for those seeking better lives here also will be the mystics and psychics who will provide you with your astrological chart, read your chicken giblets, give you a tarot reading or interpret your I Ching hexagram. If health is not your interest, then let our psychedelic screensavers drain the stresses from your system leaving you ready for new knowledge, new techniques, new evolution, available here through the many spiritual and religious organisations represented.

For those who provide individual alternative health therapies or supply the materials and authoritative advice to undertake self-treatment or supply counselling, character reading or prediction services, the Inner Sanctum is the ideal medium through which to reach clients. Operated in the same way as the Bizarre Bazaar (if you haven't read that, maybe you should), the Inner Sanctum will be the major alternative lifestyle resource on the web.
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THE STARTS MART
The one thing this culture is not short of is art and artists. In Amsterdam and throughout the whole of the culture of consciousness, creativity burns brightly. Everywhere there are painters, sculptors, illustrators, graphic designers and decorative art specialists. And many of them are actively starving for their art. The Coffeehouse Culture Starts Mart gallery is designed to give them some free support. Offering a world-wide forum in which to show and sell their works, the Smarts Mart will provide participating artists with the opportunity to make some money from their art. Artists with a backlog of work will be given their own rooms but there will be plenty of space to show one or a few works by different artists in the general rooms. The Starts Mart will be operated in the same way as the Bizarre Bazaar. Already three talented painters have been signed up for representation in the gallery.
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APPLYING FOR CO-OPERATIVE BUSINESS
AND FREE SPACES
Applying for space in one of our multi-occupation sites is easy and simple. Simply e-mail us your business proposal with photographs of your product(s), pricing and supply details and personal information including your age and background. Include a paragraph telling us why you think you should be a part of the Coffeehouse Culture site. The more information you provide, the more chance there is of your application being successful. However, Coffeehouse Culture reserves the right to refuse applications for any reason.
To apply for free billboard or poster spaces simply send details of your event or project along with any existing publicity material.
Artists wishing to apply for gallery space should send brief biographical details plus pictures of the works they wish to display.
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A Home of Your Own
Occupying a 3D Environment in Virtual Amsterdam

Although the doors leading to the multi-occupation areas of Virtual Amsterdam will be an added attraction to users, they will not be the main attraction. The core of the site will be the doors that lead into environments occupied by single businesses. Each of these will contain a fully interactive environment that is exciting, varied and engaging so that visitors stay and stay. As in the real world, occupants of Virtual Amsterdam will pay rent. But for their money they will get an environment that is written into the Virtual Amsterdam adventure game in such a way that visitors MUST open the door and explore what the environment has to offer in order to gather clues and artefacts required to play the game. What is more visitors will be impelled to return again and again. Each environment will contain clues at three or more levels. Although there will be easy to obtain clues for the first-time visitor, most clues will be hidden at deeper levels which the user will only become aware of as the game progresses. As users get into the game they will qualify for Game Tip Bonuses which will point them back again and again to locations visited previously. To play the game users will be required to register and will receive a password which will log them onto their 'Progress File'. This will contain details of the skills, knowledge and artefacts they have gathered and track their progress through the site. The Virtual Amsterdam adventure game will be extremely elaborate, complicated and almost impossibly difficult but perseverance could earn players a big prize. To encourage users to register and keep on playing, Coffeehouse Culture is hoping to offer a prize of a five-day expenses-paid visit to Amsterdam.

Until the street maps showing the virtual city have been prepared, Coffeehouse Culture is accepting reservations. These will be handled on a strict first-come-first-served basis. That means that those who reserve early will get the pick of the available premises. And our first occupant has already been signed-up. When the street maps are available cannabis-cafe, de Kuil, will have first pick of the vacant sites. Although those who reserve early will inevitably get the front-of-screen sites, Virtual Amsterdam will be constructed in such a way that every occupant gets visited again and again.

The 3D environments can be created to Coffeehouse Culture's specification by the occupants themselves or can be designed by us. The construction of sites by Coffeehouse Culture or its participation in the construction of sites by occupants is a separate cost to site rental.

To become a member of the Virtual Amsterdam community costs just fl. 600.00, $300.00 or £200 (foreign currency payments by Western Union Money Transfer or TIPA). This is a one-off payment that gets you onto the reservation list in a numbered position. No further payments will be required until the environment is ready to go on site, although a deposit may be required where occupants are constructing their own environment.

To take out your reservation, e-mail us for more details and instructions.
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Straight Advertising

ADVERTISING IN VIRTUAL AMSTERDAM
Like any city street, Virtual Amsterdam will be awash with billboards and sidewalk posters advertising all sorts of things. Some of these will be for entertainment only, just to keep things interesting and amusing for users, but many will be available to advertise real things. Billboard and poster sites in Virtual Amsterdam are a low-cost option for those who want to be seen on the site. To commercial advertisers the cost will be just a few guilders a week but many of the sites will be free. In particular, posters advertising events in Amsterdam that demonstrate that it is a 'happening' city will receive free space but anything done for a worthy cause or of particular note may qualify.

For those who want more exposure, a higher cost option is to take advertising space on the Virtual Amsterdam Entry Page or on the Splash screen. A full width banner on either of these pages costs just fl. 150.00 per month.

The cost of writing and designing billboards, posters and banners is additional.

ADVERTISING IN COFFEEHOUSE CULTURE
Like any publication, Coffeehouse Culture will accept advertising. This is a relatively low-cost option that offers excellent value --- for a small one-off payment advertisers remain forever within the pages of one or more issues of Coffeehouse Culture. The cost of a 'run of page' advertisement (we decide where your banner goes) in one issue is fl. 45.00 for a single column banner and fl. 80.00 for a full-width banner. And your banner stays on the page forever. The cost of writing and designing advertisements will be between fl. 20.00 and fl. 55.00. Advertisements in special positions (on page one, on the contents pages and on heavily featured pages) will cost fl. 85.00 and fl. 170, respectively.

Advertising is now being accepted for issue two. Space on every page is strictly limited and is allotted on a first-come-first-served basis. (No advertising space is available in the first issue which is a web version of the original paper publication. All the advertisers in the paper version who paid their advertising bills have been included free of charge in the web version. Thank you, guys! If you are a credit investigator or just like to know the worst about people, click here for a list of the naughty fellas who DIDN'T pay their bills.)

ADVERTISING ON OTHER PAGES
Advertising space is also available on other pages within the site. High-exposure banners on the Home Page cost fl. 105.00 and fl. 195.00 per month each. Although all coffeeshops and other relevant businesses with web sites will receive a free one-line link on our Links page, these can be enhanced to stand out for a one-off payment of fl. 35.00. Full width banners on the Archive pages are also available for an annual payment of fl. 45.00 (single column banner cost only fl. 25 a year).
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