my business idea

[Ryanpurkess]

I am a student and i am dying to have a succesful business, Money does not mean too much to me at the moment i just want the business to work. I really like advertising. I have an idea of creating a website where people can advertise their property, cars and businesses. I will be severley undercutting all my rivals. Any advice given about how i should go about this would be very very much appreciated. My IT skills are OK but i only have FrontPage as web design software. Thank you for reading.

[RockLinks]

I would say focus on college, when you get through college then maybe you could set this venture up. You shouldn't let this affect your college work as when you come out of college you will need something to fall back on.

[Rob Holmes]

I think theres better options - it's dealing with too smaller bucks - that means you'll have to work it while doing college.

I'll give you an opportunity if you like..

We do reseller hosting accounts for as low as £10 per month.

You should be able to split it and sell it to 10 people/businesses for £10 a month each - except you bill annually ;)

If you can sell to 10 people a month for £120 a month each you net over £1000 a month for 10 sales.

Do it again for the next 11 months and this time next year you'll be billing them again and you'd have created a residual income of over £1000 a month within a year. We do ALL the technical running of the server. You are free to sell!

Sound good?

I'm not saying it's very easy but it's not too difficult either!

Rob

[SillyJokes]

Complete college, especially the maths course.

Severely undercutting your competitors is not necessarily the way to make money. They are the price they are for a reason.

You may be able to undercut them while you are small, are not paying vat, have no overheads and work for nothing but as your business grows so do the costs which may make very cheap prices unviable.

Also unless you can make your offering very credible indeed people are more likely to spend more money with an established business than less with a scruffy one.

I admire your spirit however and with an attitude like that you are certain to succeed. Just make sure the figures always add up and not just in the short term.

[WSC-Will]

Focus on college, but don't give up on your ideas.

There may well be a lot more to setting up this business than you realise and competing on price alone is much of a selling point. Get on with college, but also start learning more about what's involved in running a business. Just because your IT skills might not be up to scratch, it doesn't mean you can't pay someone to take care of that aspect for you.

If you're undercutting your rivals then this concept already exists and you already have competition. Better to come up with a niche where you don't have much competition.

Oh, and if you do come up with a 'killer' idea don't announce it on a public forum. :wink:

[profitxchange]

Get thru College. There is no point in starting a business by going straight into a price war. You will never make money at it.

If you are really good at marketing/advertising let me know - can give you business idea in PM (does this forum have the facility. )

[ian69]

Given that craigslist.com does free adverts, how will you compete by undercutting? Also, if your IT skills are just OK and you only have FrontPage, how will people pay you?

[VeryMark]

College first - generally in life it's one of those things that is difficult to go back and do later, and college has other benefits, like giving you a wider appreciation of the world, as well as better technical skills.

But whatever you do, it should be something you are motivated to do - not just because it's the "right" thing.

[tollyboy]

DO NOT sell primarily on price. There's always some guy who can always under cut you.

Remember how the Sun and Mirror newspapers had a crazy price war a year or two ago? The Sun won becuse it was part of a bigger media empire than the Mirror and could sustain bigger losses for longer.

Always compete on things such as quality, response times, innovation, customer service, design, distribution and so on.

[VeryMark]

John Ruskin said: "There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who
consider price only are this man's lawful prey."