Advice On Starting A Business - But What Kind Of Business To Start?
posted on 09/24/2009
You Want To Start A Business - But What Kind Of Business To Start?
You've got very little money, no prospects, and the only way forward is to start your own business. But what kind of business?
Whatever you want to do, you have things to learn about. That does not mean formal study. It means finding out how to make things work, how to do unfamiliar tasks. When you have formed a clear idea of your ideal business, you can work out a series of "stepping stones" towards getting to your ideal business goal.
You don't get going by sitting there thinking about it. You have to do something that makes money as well.
To make a start - look at selling things on eBay. Buying items to sell on eBay is a "cottage industry". People look for items to sell in charity shops / thrift shops, car boot sales / yard sales, and at local auctions, then market them to the best of their abilities.
There are other people already doing this, but you can still find things to sell if you are prepared to learn a little about what is worth buying by looking at things already for sale on eBay.
Before you can sign up to eBay, you need to have a bank account and credit card. Some people will find these things "hard to get" - if you are young and/or unemployed, a credit card can be very hard to get! There are firms that specialize in giving cards to people with poor credit records, like Vanquis, but getting a card from a Credit Union is probably the best way if you are in this situation. One "dodge" is to set up a joint account with a grandparent or elderly relative, and trade on eBay using their details, although you control the account via the web (works as long as that relative doesn't rob the account). You tell the bank that the account is a precaution, to make things simpler if the relative can't cope in later life. It needs to be a separate account, you don't want to go to grandad's regular bank, or they will try to change the existing account.
When I first started out buying things to sell on eBay I often wished I could phone home, get someone to perform a computer search, then ring me back to tell me if I could buy with confidence, try to haggle the price down, or ignore an item. You could try this - or get one of those modern thingummyjigs with mobile web access - but it is better in the long run to learn what to buy and what to avoid.
There is a mountain of free information on the www on making cash through eBay. A lot of the time, you just need to seek it out by searching - and searching in the right way. If you have found a document with some relevance to what you seek, you can use the phrases and terms in that document as search terms, to get closer to the information you really need. You don't need to pay for info to get started. When you have learned a bit about eBay trading, you will be able to judge what you need to go further.
In the plan, eBay selling is the "first step" towards making some money for your "real business start". You might go on to buying things wholesale to sell on eBay, or making more cash by selling things at car boot sales, or holding occasional yard sales. These can be your next "stepping stones".
You need to be making a profit of at least 40% of your original purchase price after deducting costs when you sell things on eBay. If you sell direct to people, you don't have to pack the items up and post them - so you can make money from things that would not make an acceptable profit on eBay.
Talking of postage and packing, in the UK the cheap way to send large and heavy items is to use the parcel services advertised on eBay. Sometimes you can make money from buying things that others ignore as "too heavy to post", by using those services.
If you don't make money to start with on eBay, remember that people are wary of new sellers. All your successful sales count towards your reputation, so if they do not make money, they improve your feedback, which will make it easier for you to sell things in the future. Selling small things cheaply to start with will make it easier to sell more valuable things for a fair price in the future. Don't be discouraged, as long as you don't lose money you are moving forwards.
Don't take money out of your business, except in cases of emergency, until you can see that it is on a sound footing. Usually that means "don't dip into the capital for at least two years". I knew a man who was a genius at car boot selling. He would go to a sale with a carful of stuff, and come back with an empty car and £150. Then he would use the money to "treat the family" for a week, and it would be gone - he didn't have a plan. He did have the same old boring job for years.
On the other hand, don't try to be too stingy. If you can see that a new telephone would help your business, go for it. Just don't spend everything on that phone, or you will be back to square one, looking for cheap things to make money from.
Whatever you do, you have to learn about things and work hard to set up your business. As you go along, things you do to make money get easier as they get more familiar to you. Then you can look at other ways to make money - your next "stepping stones". A suggestion -
I know some people who make money from building websites for themselves, selling products through affiliate schemes and geting money from advertising. These are people with very basic website building skills and low level writing abilities. They pay people to build their sites and write articles for them. Their skills are in the techniques needed to get the sites to "pop up" in search results, so they get traffic from search engines. This is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Even if you have trouble writing articles, you can learn the skills needed to put a site together, without having to know all the "ins and outs" of the business.
With a little knowledge you can get things done - but mostly, you need a little knowledge to make sure you are not being overcharged for goods and services. If you can learn about this sort of thing quickly, and write your own articles, this could be your first "stepping stone" - but you could still make cash on the side using eBay.
When you establish a way of making money, you often find that you can see other avenues of generating cash stemming from your activities. Don't be surprised if your stepping stones change as you go along, but keep planning your future activities and work hard. Planning and hard work are the keys to success.
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