Experiment? Vinyl decals!

Today is the big day! (Technically last night was the big night I guess)  The vinyl cutter has arrived and is now setup in our home office!  The good news is that the setup was very straight forward...the bad newstuff is that I had no idea how to use it or the software that it came with...It was time to do some research!

You may or may not already know that I absolutely love Youtube!  I have never had a problem finding videos to teach me exactly what I need to know; which is just what I did for vinyl cutting.

Once I did some basic research (I'm not going to lie, I rushed through some basic videos so that I could get on to the good stuff...)

This is what I ended up with:

I have to say that for my first go at it, I'm pretty excited about the results!  Any tips that might help?  Let me know!

A new Income stream!

Today is a pretty exciting day!  We have decided to branch out and add another stream of income to the E-commerce side!  Would you like to know what it is??  OK, you twisted my arm, I’m going to spill it!  We purchased a vinyl decal cutter!  Obviously, I don’t plan on getting rich with vinyl decals but anything that we make from it will certainly help the bottom line.  The goal is to offer some Jeep, some other Auto related items as well as full custom decals!  I ordered it all today, so I should be seeing it next week!  When I get it set up in my office I will do an office set up picture to let you all see what I am working with!

The Ebay Experiment 1st quarter results

Sales Report 1/1/16-3/31/16

I decided that I would include quarterly “progress reports” on the blog to show how things are going.  January and February I basically took off completely to revamp the Ebay store/listings/etc…  Overall I feel great about the quarter, and April is already heading in the right direction.  March is when I began some drop shipping, as well as came up with two of my own products that accounted for much of those sales!

SALES SUMMARY_SALES
Session	Jan-16	Feb-16	Mar-16
Sales	$0.00	$56.33	$2,128.16
Month-to-month sales growth	0.00%	5633.00%	3678.00%
Ended listings	0	2	35
Ended items	0	2	223
Sold items	0	2	58
Sold items %	0.00%	100.00%	14.30%
Average sale price per item	$0.00	$28.17	$36.69
Total buyers	0	2	56
Total unique buyers	0	2	56
Repeat buyers %	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
SALES SUMMARY_FEES
eBay
Fees
Insertion fees	$0.00	$0.00	$1.00
Listing feature fees	$0.00	$0.00	$1.00
Final value fees	$0.00	$5.63	$198.91
Subscription fees	$0.00	$0.00	$22.70
Subtotal	$0.00	$5.63	$223.61
Credits
Store referral credits	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00
Unpaid Item final value fee credits	$0.00	$5.00	$5.10
Other credits	$0.00	$0.63	$0.00
Subtotal	$0.00	$5.63	$5.10
Net eBay fees	$0.00	$0.00	$218.51
Net eBay fees as % of sales	0.00%	0.00%	10.30%
PayPal
Fees	$0.00	$0.48	$80.03
Credits	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00
Net PayPal fees	$0.00	$0.48	$80.03
Net PayPal fees as % sales	0.00%	0.90%	3.80%
eBay & PayPal
Net eBay and PayPal fees	$0.00	$0.48	$298.54
SALES SUMMARY_UNPAID ITEMS
Unpaid Item reminders sent	0	1	1
Final Value Fee claims requested	0	1	1
Unpaid Items reported as % of sold items	0.00%	50.00%	1.70%

Jeep Wrangler Grill T Shirt Project

Figured I would share a link to the T shirt campaign that I am currently working on!  This is a pretty cool (yet very basic) design , and I really like it!

Jeep Wrangler Grill Teespring

Low (or no) budget business startup part 3; keep it simple!

If you have not read part 1: Low (or no) budget business startup part 1

And part 2: Low (or no) budget business startup Part 2

I would suggest starting there.  Part three is going to be handled today, and this one is titled “Keep it simple!”  The overall premise of this low (or no) budget business startup guide is to show you that you can get up and running for very little (if any) money out of pocket.  I am not saying that this no budget business would be sustainable throughout all time, but at least you can get running to build some capital. 

Keeping it basic means exactly what it sounds like; don’t overdo it!  We are going to be keeping our outlay of cash at the beginning as minimal as possible, and sometimes we are going to have to cut some corners for the short term!  IF you plan on focusing on online selling (ecommerce) to get you started, I would highly recommend looking in to drop shipping.  I am actually writing a drop shipping guide as well, but unfortunately that is not ready for your eyes yet!  Drop shipping is pretty simple, the basic premise is:

-Sell an item (you do not have this item on hand)

-Receive payment for the item

-Purchase the item from your drop shipper of choice

-They ship the product to your customer

-Happy customer=profit! (you hope)

I have seen plenty of people try to start with this method and fail, for various reasons.  Some of the most common reasons are:

-Try to compete on price point right out of the gate.  You need to know your profit margins, to know what to list your item for.  If you are trying to keep up with Company ABC (who is doing $1 million in revenue) from a price perspective, its just not going to happen.  They make it in volume, and heavier wholesale discounts.  This will not work for you, and you will just end up losing money and being out of the game before you even started.  My goal here is to price myself somewhere in the middle of the road for the products that I offer.  I am typically not the least expensive and I am never the most expensive.  I find that to be a pretty sweet spot for my business model.

-Sell the wrong products.  This is a tough one, and there is definitely a learning curve.  My personal favorite sales platform is Ebay, which gives you some great tools to find what is selling, and how much it is selling for.  I have seen new business owners load listings with 1000’s of products, buy tons of equipment,  and spend all of the money in the world to look big and play with the big boys, only to fail because they don’t end up selling.  Do your research!

Keep your over head low!

-Don’t go out and buy the best laptop in the world; use your personal laptop or buy an inexpensive one to get you started.

-Don’t buy 1,000’s of dollars of inventory before you know what you will sell, and at what rate it will sell.

-You do not need to subscribe to the latest and greatest software programs to get started, keep it simple and there are plenty of free programs out there that work just fine!

-Treat this as an actual business!  

Low (or no) budget business startup part 2, get the wheels turning

Oh thank goodness you came back!  This post is part 2 of my “Low (or no) budget business startup” series.  If you missed part 1 (how dare you!)  You can get caught up here:
Low (or no) budget business startup part 1

Basically the goal of this series is to show you that you can start and run a business on an almost non-existent operating budget and still come out on top (hopefully).  This is not one of those blogs that is going to brag about how much money you can make if you buy my book and follow my steps (although I am working on a pretty great book right now…) this blog is really about showing you my journey, with all of its ups and downs and show you that it can be done!
Today’s post is called “get the wheels” turning.  That is my entire goal today, just to get you thinking of what you could create and build.  You don’t need to have a million dollar idea to get going; you just need an idea that works.  A perfect example of this is the first item that I started selling when I started my real Ebay business: http://www.ebay.com/itm/262382215401?item=262382215401&viewitem=&vxp=mtr
Not much to look at right?  Very inexpensive as well, tough to become a millionaire $5.49 at a time (before fees and shipping)  the reality is, this is a great product!  High profit margins, low cost of goods, and high demand….why are these in high demand and how did I come up with the idea to sell them?  I own a Jeep (actually I have owned many Jeeps) and when I lifted my Jeep and bought new, bigger tires I realized that my spare tire was pretty much useless.  I wanted to remove it, but when I did there were three holes left behind that I couldn’t leave open.  I figured that they must sell plugs for it, but after a ton of searching I really could not find many options.  AHA!  Found a need, found a product to fit the need and then started selling them.  Sometimes, it really is the simple!
My homework for you today is to get your wheels turning.  Think outside the box a little bit and work on a few ideas to solve a problem that you have faced.  Let me know what you figure out and make sure to read Part 3 here: Low (or no) budget business startup Part 3

Low (or no) budget business startup part 1 INTRO

Starting your business on a low (or no) budget part 1….intro

When most people think about starting a business they picture a brand new office and office furniture, a new computer, a staff full of highly skilled people, all of the latest technology and thousands of whatever widget they plan on selling.  Truth is, that would be great.  It really would, but most businesses don’t start like this.  When I set out to start up my Ebay business: 603 Hobby I knew that I needed to bootstrap that pig to the max!  My business is an experiment, and for this scientist I also need to continue my day job (I’m not actually a scientist, but I do have a day job)  This series of blog posts will break down how I started off with very little money and grew my business to millions in revenue!  Ok, back to reality; my business was established in January of this year, and to be honest I did absolutely nothing with it until March.  Ouch….on to the part where I said millions in revenue…well that is a bit of a stretch as well….for the month of March I ended up at about $2,200 in sales, which to me is really not bad at all.  Enough of my blabbing, let’s get to the good (or not so good, you be the judge) stuff!
Starting a business on a shoestring budget is certainly not for the weak at heart!  It takes a can do attitude (as well as a full time job lol) to get it off the ground.  Obviously, you need to make sure to check with your state offices to learn about registering your business before you get up and running.  Here in NH it is as simple as going online to the state site, paying a few bucks and voila!  Now, before you run to your laptop and create your new business, you might want to give some thought to your business name, as well as what you are actually going to do!
Now that we have the “legal” garbage out of the way; what the hell are we going to go into business to do?  Everybody has an opinion on how to start up a business and get business ideas….my advice is this: do something profitable and scalable  Plenty of people recommend turning your hobby into a business or just focusing on something you know or currently do.  I don’t 100% disagree with that, but I feel that there are better ideas.  Start with something scalable and profitable, then once that is running like a top go ahead and branch out!  At that point you have income from your first business and can afford to have some fun!

Thats it for the intro post...The great news is that you can read the next posts here:

Low (or no) budget Business startup part 2

Low (or no) budget Business startup part 3