It is a scientific fact that poor people don't have a lot of money. They start the week with very little; they spend most of that "very little" on lottery tickets and cigarettes; they end the week with very, very little. This financial drain is transacted mostly via a magic amulet: The Pound Coin.

Pound coins keep the squalid high streets of inner-city Britain alive. They clatter from dirty, Matalan, denim pockets into the guts of fruit machines; they are shakily pushed across convenience store counters, one by one, in exchange for cans of super-strength lager; they fund the hamburger habits of literally billions of povertons.

The pound coin; the word "pound"; the £ symbol. They stimulate a Pavlovian buying reflex in poor people. And, as an entrepreneur who has already mastered the art of selling fried chicken, nail extensions and God, you can apply your talent for spotting a profitable high-street hovel and take advantage of this Povertonian reflex. In short: open up a "pound shop".

The unavoidable logic of the Regal-smoking, dole-sucker runs thus: "That shop sells all sorts of crap for a pound; I have some pounds in my pocket; I will buy all sorts of crap." Tapping into this thought process is the key to clawing back some of your income tax.

As with all successful low-end retail operations, you need a shop front that can lure the blurry-tattooed, pushchair-pushing, burger-munchers away from the daily booze-and-fags run to Budgens. To this end, you need four ingredients: clumsy wording, pound signs, tattiness and tackiness.

Understandably you're itching to siphon off some of those grubby nuggets from the average fake Louis Vuitton purse. But stay seated for a spot of competitor analysis.

• Bright colours can be a very useful tool for hypnotising penniless passers-by. But make sure the shop looks dirty enough or they won't feel comfortable entering.
• You can't go wrong if you keep your brand simple, urgent and to the point. The bright red of the "Pound Store" wording jumps out from the white backdrop and strangles the average, illiterate poverton into submission.
• Turning an E into a £ is a stroke of genius. Not only does it allow the cheap, tattiness of your shop to creep into the underclass unconscious, but it also saves you a few pence on sign costs.
• Befuddling the handful of neurons that makes up an average Essex brain is a good tactic: long sign + many colours + lots of £ signs = confused tat-purchaser.
• The Zen simplicity of the sign atop this Hackney hovel deviates from the rules slightly. But that can be a good thing. The philosophical musings will, one imagines, draw people in to ask the proprietor what the fuck he's talking about and why he has chosen shit and piss as the foundation for his corporate colour scheme.
• Chant the mantra: not very cheap and not very cheerful. Notice the ad hoc addition of the plus sign to indicate that the products inside will cost nothing like a mere pound. This is a common way of increasing your margins while pretending that the potential price rises are the fault of inflation.
• Remember: the customer always has a choice. But apparently not the choice to pay just one pound. The shifty plus signs lurk amidst the gaily dancing pounds to ensure that the Trade Descriptions Act (1968) is obeyed. Clever.
• Ambiguity is your friend. Are you offering goods that cost a pound in addition to a discount? Perhaps. The unspeakables will certainly stumble in, only to find a shop full of light bulbs that cost five pounds each.
• What if the povertons seem to be ignoring your discount? Turn it into a big discount.
• Push the graphical boat out if you will. There's nothing like a golden circle to remind hopeless consumers about the talismanic status of the pound coin.
• Smash the punter in the face with a big green word. And it works, too. This shop is so popular that people have been stealing pieces of the sign as mementoes.
• When all of your competitors are putting the squeeze on the benefit bastards by "plussing" up to the hilt, you can startle the market by moving in the opposite direction. God knows what they sell in there, but people will probably buy it.
• A hand-painted fascia can give your outlet a personal air. And the sinister coin shape lurking behind the list of items on sale is a consumer psychologist's wet dream.
• The £s all over the shutter of Pound World distract the stumbler-by from the plus in the sign. This is a technique you might like to try. But don't blow it by displaying a fucking great £4.99 price tag in the window.
• A very expensive backlit sign will suggest that your shop is part of a reputable chain (just like Argos and LIDL). For that, you may well be trusted.
• You don't spend money here; you save it. And it's not any old store, either; it's a "super" store. Genius at work.
• The less you say, the more you can get away with. Moneylesses will assume they can find something for a pound here, but they won't be able to. Ttruth-stretching is the new truth-stretching.
• A dancing pound sign and a dancing pound-E. Yes please. All this jiving friendliness helps the helpless forget that they are spending themselves to shit.
• Here's another rule I've just made up: If you have an Irish name like "Danny" and adopt green as your brand colour, the superstitious, lottery-addicted poor will come flocking. Buying a couple of plugs for a pound will surely bring them some of that well-known "Oirish" luck.
• Adding an ampersand to your sign means nothing. But it's worth a shot. It might inspire povertons to come in and ask you what you're on about.
• Occupying the bottom rung of the ladder isn't necessarily a bad strategy. The shift from pounds to pence in this shop name is actually very "new wave"; it will strike a chord with cheapskates and early adopters alike.
• If you repeat your proposition ad nauseam, it has more chance of becoming lodged in an ill-tended poor-brain. Especially if the proposition increases in size.
• There are so many letters missing in this sign that the pound-shopper has to stop and stare to work out what it says. By that stage they are hooked.
• If lesser-used ASCII characters are on special offer at your local signwriter's, grab a handful. A confusing shop sign is the equivalent of blindfolding a Poor, spinning him round and pushing him in the direction of a cash register with a cry of "put your hand in your pocket please".

The tour of pound shops is over. You are now armed with enough knowledge to rob from the poor and give to yourself.

Have you seen better? Can you do better? Have you done better? These are questions you might wish to debate with nobody@badgas.co.uk (preferably by means of photography).