Have hit the 'wall'

[emlad123]

Hi,

Having been made redundant recently I have decided that working for myself and building my own small business is now something I want to pursue and focus my efforts on. I am looking to start an ecommerce business on a shoestring (£250 or so), and my initial expectations are to be able to realise a turnover of about a few hundred pounds per month profit to start. Just to be clear, I am not looking for ideas, but would be fantastic to get others' experiences who perhaps were in a similar position having spent time looking at products etc but hitting a 'wall' in terms of inspiration/decisions.
I desperately want to make a start and just achieve that initial impetus. Thanks.

 

[james_firmsites]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum and good luck with your new venture.

Setting up an ecommerce site for £250 is hard but not impossible. There are lots out there like me that charge monthly, or DIY sites like Shopify if you really are on a shoe string.

Key thing is to get really good detailed listings for your products, give people enough info that they want to buy not just a small pic and a price.

Photography is key and there are loads of tips on how to get good product photography.

Make sure you think about payment and shipping, fastest way most people use is paypal for payment then either weight or flat shipping.

Are you able to share what you will be selling so people can give you more detailed advice?

 

[emlad123]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum and good luck with your new venture.

Setting up an ecommerce site for £250 is hard but not impossible. There are lots out there like me that charge monthly, or DIY sites like Shopify if you really are on a shoe string.

Key thing is to get really good detailed listings for your products, give people enough info that they want to buy not just a small pic and a price.

Photography is key and there are loads of tips on how to get good product photography.

Make sure you think about payment and shipping, fastest way most people use is paypal for payment then either weight or flat shipping.

Are you able to share what you will be selling so people can give you more detailed advice?

Hi, many thanks for the reply. The 'wall' being hit refers mainly to the lack of product ideas despite having looked at a lot of different research on the web. Perhaps there is just too much information/products available?
The shoestring initial budget is set aside for initial product purchasing as already have a domain and hosting set up but obviously just waiting to populate it with stock, photos, etc.

 

[Nochexman]

I desperately want to make a start and just achieve that initial impetus. Thanks.

Identify what your strengths are; what do you know about? Is there a business idea in something that you are already involved in or enjoy?

 

[james_firmsites]

Wow that is very small, not to dampen your spirits, if your plan is essentially to be a reseller. Ie buy £250 of X product and sell for £500. Most products have fairly small margins unless you buy in volume .

Have you thought of doing up-cycle work? Or repackaging. Both can be big money spinners. What did you do before if you dont mind me asking?

 

[emlad123]

Wow that is very small, not to dampen your spirits, if your plan is essentially to be a reseller. Ie buy £250 of X product and sell for £500. Most products have fairly small margins unless you buy in volume .

Have you thought of doing up-cycle work? Or repackaging. Both can be big money spinners. What did you do before if you dont mind me asking?

My main experience is in the public sector although have worked in customer service and engineering sales. The limited initial capital is reflected in the modest initial revenue expectations I have, I guess it is more a case of getting that initial impetus going and then focusing on building on that. The energy, drive and enthusiasm is all there...absolutely certain of that. Again with up cycling and repackaging its the same problem in getting that one, single idea and running with it.

 

[Iconic Autographs]

If it was so easily to set up a website and 'clear' a few hundred a month everyone would be doing it.....
Personally I don't think you have thought this through properly.

 

[james_firmsites]

I would make a list of your skills and abilities along nochexman's idea and see what you come up with, perhaps services are better than products for you. For that budget you will be unlikely to do enough volume any time soon to make a business.

 

[emlad123]

If it was so easily to set up a website and 'clear' a few hundred a month everyone would be doing it.....
Personally I don't think you have thought this through properly.

Sorry, I didn't want to come across as though...' why is this not happening, it should be so easy'. To be fair I have spent a great deal of time researching ideas, reading and interacting with different forums and groups, analysing my strengths and weaknesses, focusing and refocusing my efforts. I have put a basic foundation in place in order to initiate a business structure (domain name, hosting account, Opencart/ Magento/ CSS/ HTML e-learning courses, online business structure/tax/NI learning courses with HMRC, profit/loss/general bookkeeping e-learning courses). I don't believe I am going into this with my eyes closed and hoping for the best!

 

[Nochexman]

I have put a basic foundation in place in order to initiate a business structure (domain name, hosting account, Opencart/ Magento/ CSS/ HTML e-learning courses, online business structure/tax/NI learning courses with HMRC, profit/loss/general bookkeeping e-learning courses). I don't believe I am going into this with my eyes closed and hoping for the best!

Unfortunately, the real tough bit is marketing and then sales. Getting to the nub of what you are going to offer is the most important piece of foundation that you need to lay. Asking for that kind of 'general' help on an anonymous online forum is unlikely to deliver you the answer you really need. Not meaning to sound negative, but you need to work out what it is that makes 'you' so different / important!

 

[Iconic Autographs]

Yes but the biggest hurdle you have is 'what' to sell?
That's the hard bit, that's the key, until you have that everything else is immaterial , you can research do this do that but without a product you are dead.
Think about it, on your budget/expenditure what can you sell and make a decent profit, you either have to sell in volume or a niche product at a hefty price.
What to sell is the key.....good luck.

 

[FutureM]

You already have a domain but don't know what to sell? I would have thought that happens the other way round?
This sounds like it will be a hard journey. You will find it hard to find a product or niche that isn't already full of choice for the consumers but that doesn't mean you can't be successful. Are you going to build the website yourself?

 

[IanG]

would be fantastic to get others' experiences who perhaps were in a similar position ...
I desperately want to make a start and just achieve that initial impetus.

Took redundancy from a career in education in August 2011.

Now have a few interests which pay me about the same but I generally manage my own time.

Impetus came when I ran out of money.

My advice would be spend the redundancy money as quickly as possible, wisely if you can.

And if you're getting in to e-commerce, make sure you like photographing things and filling in forms.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

STOP!

Do not waste any money on this, at least until you know what you want to do. I speak to to many people who ask me - I want to start a business but do not know what to do - this is where you are. If you do not know what to sell, but know you want to open a shop, you have got it totally wrong.

Normally, people have a product and want to sell.

Please be very careful on how you proceed - maybe running your own business is not right for you!

 

[Nochexman]

...My advice would be spend the redundancy money as quickly as possible...

IanG this advice seems really curious to me - why would you recommend spending redundancy money as quickly as possible?

 

[IanG]

Firstly I'm being entirely facetious, so bear that in mind.

Secondly, two reasons.

While you've got redundancy money in the bank, there is far less of a motivation to earn money. I faffed about for months planning and wondering, when I should have been working and earning.

The money spent quickly on larger purchases may put the resultant company a better position. Better machinery, better signage, better web presence, better premises, whatever it is. Better prices on larger quantities of stock etc. etc. There's a business case for each one, be that more efficient operations, better positioning in the marketplace in terms of customer expectation, lower costs, you could make the case all day long.

For me, and this is entirely my own advice based on my own life, but the OP is using words like pursue, looking, start and initial and that's just a nice way of saying I'm living off the payout and will have nothing to show for it when the time comes to actually need some capital.

 

[Solomon14]

It depends on the person but I'm sort of with Ian.

Even a relatively large amount of money can dissapear fast if you don't allocate it well. If you're not used to having tens of thousands in the bank it's easy to go through it and use it on living expenses and just general purchases.

The best thing I learned to combat this was asset allocation. Dividing up large sums of money and not living off a whole sum.

If you have nothing to invest in right now you should set up a seperate savings account and put a percentage of the redundancy in there to save for capital and investment. Try not to touch it at all if you can help it. Only spend the money in that account on assets and investments.

 

[alexdigital]

You need to find a product or service to sell first! Even if it's as an affiliate for someone else.

You are approaching this from the wrong angle as others have warned.

I suggest you consider something you like and have an interest in, it'll make working on the business much more fun..

 

[IanG]

I suggest you consider something you like and have an interest in,

I suggest something with good margins and limited competition.

I'd also approach affiliation with caution. If you have loads of traffic already then sound, if not then you'll be throwing money at Adwords in the hope some of it will come back. That's even more scary than importing a container. At least you've a vague idea someone knows you want the stuff that's in the container.

 

[alexdigital]

I suggest something with good margins and limited competition.

I'd also approach affiliation with caution. If you have loads of traffic already then sound, if not then you'll be throwing money at Adwords in the hope some of it will come back. That's even more scary than importing a container. At least you've a vague idea someone knows you want the stuff that's in the container.

AdWords is not the only way to get traffic. I earn affiliate commission from Youtube videos which are found organically on Google search..

 

[IanG]

For video views or does that refer people on to making a purchase?

I'm after getting in to video stuff, got loads of jobs on cars I could film, get the advert revenue whilst plugging my own tools and parts.

As usually - no impetus so it hasn't happened.

 

[alexdigital]

The bulk is from recommending products in my videos and offering discount coupons which relate the sale back to me. I also use affiliate links in the annotations..

The revenue from the ads, via adsense, is small in comparison.

 

[IanG]

Yeah, was going to say, the video view stuff I thought you would need a lot of.

 

[MidlandFoodService]

Now i hate to join the negative club here, even though i am an incredibly negative person but here's my view.

Stop and rethink the whole thing.

With £250 all you can do is take orders from customers, buy the few items you need then send to customer and receive payment, then start all over again. So all you are is a middle man.

Even if you found a great up and coming product and spoke to the inventor/manufacturer or whoever has the rights to it they will not take you seriously unless you are prepared to chuck some money at them or at least place a large order on sale/return. But for this you will need premises which you can't get with £250 and even if you did manage to get premises for that price then you would be skint.

If and when you get a good idea which you genuinely believe in, throw some money at it and go with it.

Also look at it this way, 'entrepreneurs' in recent years have throw tens of thousands of pounds at eCommerce sites hoping to make a small fortune and ended up not making enough to pay the hosting fees.

If it was possible to make a few hundred a month from a £250 investment then i would invest £25'000 today and earn thousands a month.

Sorry for completely slating your idea and possibly upsetting you a little but we all just saved you £250.

Now here's some real advice, at current you don't have a clue what to offer or sell, don't sit there trying to force an idea as it won't work. Let an idea come naturally. Those are the best ideas.

Best of luck.
Kind Regards
A Very Tired Poster

 

[Solomon14]

I have to disagree with the above. I started a business with a $200 order. It was all I had. I sold that inside a week and reinvested every penny I made. I kept reinvesting the profit. If I had the above mindset I wouldn't have even tried. Maybe it's more cautious it is than negative to be honest. Sometimes you have to risk it and try.

My business survived for 10 years. It made a steady 6 figure turnover for most of that time and remained in profit the whole time. I didn't account for the money well during the first year. I had no accountant and no idea how much I made. I just kept putting the money back in. The second year I did employ an accountant. I turned over 70k and made 25k profit in the second year. All from a $200 order and reinvesting the profit. If I took money out of it from the start it wouldn't have worked. The only reason it worked was that I had a good equasion for figuring out my bottom line and I reinvested every penny of profit for a silly amount of time.

Starting with such a low amount of money.. if you're not in a position to reinvest heavily for as long as it takes.. then it might not work. It is possible but it isn't easy. I dived into the deep end without much thought and no plan apart from buy for x+y sell for x+y+z.. then reinvest everything and repeat.

 

[Iconic Autographs]

^^^^^^^^^^^^
Its not the amount of investment that's the stumbling block its the 'idea'
Ten pound, ten thousand, no product or service in place equates to no business.
Product or service first, THEN proceed with everything else.

 

[AlexPallex]

emlad123,

Everyone's got to start somewhere, it's perfectly possible to start with £250 just bear in mind that your expectation of growth has to be in line with this. It will limit what you can do if this is your total budget for everything. This kind of budget is more suited to dropshipping and selling on the marketplaces (eBay/Amazon), however this is also the most competitive route because of the low barriers to entry.

I would look at self-building your own website and gaining traffic and sales by becoming an authority within a niche sector. I'd echo others here when they say you need an idea first however an idea of what to sell isn't the holy grail as others may state - you can start with anything that makes a profit. Sell all of your own unwanted gear on eBay first to gauge if you can see yourself doing it long term and to provide some extra startup money. Check out the tutorials at UnderstandingE to see if you can handle building your own site. After those couple of steps, have a good think about what you're interested in, whether it be wood burning stoves or radio antennas, and choose a niche to specialise in. There are loads of resources online about what makes a good niche so start googling, it helps if your interested but it's not essential. Realistically anyone can become an 'expert' in their field of ecommerce simply by regurgitating online content into knowledge articles, buying guides etc. If a buyer feels adequately advised by your knowledgeable website then they're more likely to buy or revisit.

Let us know how you get on and ignore the naysayers, IMO I think some of the other posters have missed the goal of your initial post. £250 and some of your time is an adequate risk to take. If it doesn't work for you then you'll have learnt some stuff and won't have lost a great deal. Good luck!