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MenuHow do I start a successful business for a beginner with a low budget? Buying wholesale then reselling? What products to start with and where to sell?
I have buying wholesale iPhone cases and tried to sell them on ebay but none sold at all. I am looking for something else to start off with to buy and sell to make some profit.
Answers
Budget is definitely important for a successful business, but it is not everything! As a young entrepreneur, I started a similar business earlier in my career selling eyeglasses on eBay. I created an eBay store, worked on advertising, and was fortunate with my results. I would love to speak with you about starting a website and marketing effectively to consumers with a very small budget. The biggest recommendation I can provide is to test different services at a low budget to see what works. Rather than spending thousands of dollars on a marketing agency, there are many services that can help your iPhone case business in marketing effectively. Feel free to reach out to me!
First lesson, validate your market first. Start with small experiments in selling and marketing before you take on bigger deals. Start with first base before you try for a home run. There is no magic answer - if there were, there would be tons of very rich people which may not make sense. Start doing smart experiments - research, go to conventions, get online, interview people in different markets, look at the trending stats on google and youtube.
Budget is important but not a 100% essential ingredient for a startup. You should consider employing some of the lean methodologies if you want to optimize on the budget you have .
Startups which deal with information management typically require intellectual capability more than financial muscle. So you can consider starting an internet related startup.
Similarly selling on-line helps you to minimize the marketing costs as you can reach out to initial critical mass using various social media channels/forums to get going.
I would love to have a call with detailed guidance on each of the sub-questions.
You may want to consider a dropship business where you don't need to buy inventory at all and have suppliers shipping directly to your end customer.
Before you spend any money on inventory, survey your target market and build up demand. Be creative in designing an engaging campaign that allows you to "presell" purchase orders (simply taking a poll on who actually would be a paying customer). Give these individuals a discount, which in terms of your cost basis is simply the price of the risk reduction when you go and make your first inventory purchase.
Once you've acquired enough demand, negotiate your purchase price with the suppliers and arbitrate the sales with those who expressed interest.
You'll be cutting into your margin, but you will be reducing your capital risk, and "bootstrapping" your market demand + cashflow for future runs.
Have you spent any time to learn about coywriting? My best guess is that leaning some basic copywriting techniques will help you to sell whatever you eventually decide to start selling.
Whatever you do, first ask yourself "what are my strengths". Do not just follow some friends which do good money on this or that. Everybody has his / her own strengths and talents.
If it is ok with trade, then you have to do marketing research:
- which product
- target group
- market price
- production cost
Do this for all products you have in mind. It is difficult but worth.
The difference between the market price and production cost will tell you whether to go or shift to another.
all the best
Val
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Should I hire a bookkeeper? (what does one do exactly?)
NIcole is right. When I first started my business I thought I was saving money by doing my own bookkeeping. It took me much longer than it would take a bookkeeper - all time that I was not spending on marketing or billable activities. And in the end I made errors which made the initial work of the bookkeeper longer. I now have a consistent routine. My bookkeeper picks up all my material monthly and does my books in less than 2 hours. Very worthwhile.RL
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How do i handle gift certificates when buying a business?
Great question, this is something that can be handled with a proper deal structure involving some vendor financing. I recently did a video about this very topic for one of my YouTube followers. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/hWm4ZQxWlEw You basically make the vendor's outstanding gift certificates a 'currency' which can be used by the buyer to repay the vendor loan. It's a net-sum game for the seller since he's already received the cash without having to provide the goods or services. Hope this helps. Feel free to schedule a call anytime you have a question about business transactions. DavidDC
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How do I sell iPhone cases and make a profit out of them?
Selling any product including "iPhone cases" on websites with high competition like Ebay is surely not an easy mission. There are hundreds of sellers on Ebay and other websites who are already selling cases. If you need to get some sales, you need at least one of the following: 1. High reputation, reviews or feedbacks on the website that you are selling on. 2. The product that you are selling must be unique in some way or simply not found anywhere else. 3. If your products are featured at your own website, then that website of yours must be ranked properly online and marketed decently around social media networks. In your case, a possible approach would be to create your own website to sell your products on or work as an affiliate marketer for other big sellers in exchange for commissions. Depending on your budget, you need to draw the right plan around. If you have a good budget to invest in your business, then creating a website for yourself is a must. Otherwise, you need to rely on other websites and seek to provide unique or special products to get an edge around. Hope that helps!RZ
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Business partner I want to bring on will invest more money than me, but will be less involved in operations, how do I split the company?
Cash money should be treated separately than sweat equity. There are practical reasons for this namely that sweat equity should always be granted in conjunction with a vesting agreement (standard in tech is 4 year but in other sectors, 3 is often the standard) but that cash money should not be subjected to vesting. Typically, if you're at the idea stage, the valuation of the actual cash going in (again for software) is anywhere between $300,000 and $1m (pre-money). If you're operating in any other type of industry, valuations would be much lower at the earliest stage. The best way to calculate sweat equity (in my experience) is to use this calculator as a guide: http://foundrs.com/. If you message me privately (via Clarity) with some more info on what the business is, I can tell you whether I would be helpful to you in a call.TW
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I have my own shopify store and sell wholesale. How do I encourage customers to buy from me rather than my stockists?
We sell both through the retail chain and direct on our website. The only way to encourage customers to buy from you rather than your stockists is to provide more value than your retailers. The advantage you have as a manufacturer is your intense knowledge for your products. Educate your customers on exactly why your products are the perfect fit and show them how the product would function in their lives. Make the process easy, delivery quick, customer service awesome, and build a unique connection with your customer by telling your story. The one thing you WILL NOT want to do is under cut your stockists on price. Stick to your MSRP and encourage your stockists to abide by that as well. Take price out of equation and rather than thinking of "how can I cut price to move more products," think "how can I add more value to this product to move more products." Hope this helps!EB
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