Brainstorming and creating a business over a cup of coffee:
Hey all, I know I haven't posted much during the holiday season, but I'm back in the swing of things now. Just yesterday I had a simple idea for a business structure, and I thought I would share with you all how I was able to bring it from simple idea so working business in about 30 minutes to an hour. The steps are fairly simple, but many people are too afraid to follow through with them. Therefore, the first thing I'll do here is abolish any type of fears that you may have.
- you won't lose money unless you invest money: its very seldom that someone is sued due to a bad business structure. Its common if you start a multi million dollar behemoth and don't hire a CPA, but If you're running a sock store and someone decides that your socks aren't socky enough and sues you for it, you can only be sued for the value of the socks (better knows as a RETURN) moral of the story: accept returns and stay out of food service.
- People want to buy things from you in good faith: if you offer a money back guarantee, then people will use it IF THEY NEED TO, people don't want to be sleaze balls, especially to a small business owner, that unamiercan, I've had many products with money back guarantees, and you know how many people have leveraged this option? Zero. Don't worry about the money back, but give it to people, because they like security. Also, if someone is on the fence about a product, telling them that they can return it if they don’t like it for a full refund is usually a huge incentive.
- It's not sinful to make money easily. People should be able to start small businesses and make a couple dollars on the side guilt free if they so desire. Giving it a shot, figuring it out and letting everything fall into place as you work out the bumps is not something to be scorned for. My wife constantly hates on me for my “get rich quick schemes” which I don't understand, as I was under the impression that one had to pay money to some plaid suit wearing freak and then call a disconnected number for weeks for it to be a get rich quick scheme, but I digress. Now that I'm showing (small) returns on some of my ideas, she's little more quiet, don't worry about haters.
Now that that is off all of our chests, lets talk about the semantics of starting a small, product based business in under 30 minutes.
- Brainstorm ideas for products. Think about three different things here IN THIS ORDER: Who is my target Market, what do they want to buy, and why will they pay for it? This is very important. Start with a market you are wither a part of (the best) or you understand. A 40 year old man selling shoes for new moms that is successful is a fluke at best, don't fall for it. If you like soccer, sell soccer stuff, if you like skiing, sell skiing stuff. Then think of a product that is hard to find or of low quality and target that. Find a need and cover it.
- Test for current availability on Google. Type in as many different permutations you can think of for finding the product on Google. If the front page is filled with sites that cater to that item, forget about it. If not, continue.
- Find the product for sale from wholesalers here area few options, my favorites are on top
- Set up a free open bid for the item on eBay. This is a test bid, to see if people will pay a reasonable price for your product. Generally you want to look for a 3-5 times markup, to help with bulk payment and shipping fees (especially if its coming from china) but 2-4 can work depending on price of the product.
- Invest or divest based on interest and numbers. If the price is good, go, if not, back to step one.
- Creates a website on www.webs.com with the following parts
- product
- testimonials
- blog
- money back guarantees
- Set up payment through Paypal. Just follow the steps.
And there you have it folks, how I started a small business in my underwear on new years day. I'll have the website public after I finish testing, but it looks promising! Wish me luck.
