eCommerce/Working From Home Ideas?

[Fury]

Hi,

I've been an industrial painter for years, but I'm wanting to do something different for work. I have a good desktop computer, a laptop, and $2000-4000 as an initial investment. I have enough money to survive for two months without lifting a finger, so I can say I have two months of free time, 16 hours a day.

I have no real experience in business, but I have the money, I have the time, and I'm willing to learn. Now all I need is the direction. I met someone who briefly talked about doing advertising offers on Facebook for other companies and getting paid for people giving their e-mail address, but I don't remember the websites he was talking about. That seemed like a good lead, so I'm just waiting to hear back from him. I considered trading stocks and Forex, but I want to do something a little less risky.

Could anyone maybe point me in a good direction?

[Harold Mansfield]

Hi Fury. Understand that my comments are just me being straight forward and not meant to discourage you, but to give you a better sense of the reality about "working from home". First off, the fact that you can work from home just means that's where your office is. Stay clear of ANYTHING that targets you by telling you that you can "make money from home".
They are all scams that tell you want you want to hear.


Hi,

I've been an industrial painter for years, but I'm wanting to do something different for work. I have a good desktop computer, a laptop, and $2000-4000 as an initial investment. I have enough money to survive for two months without lifting a finger, so I can say I have two months of free time, 16 hours a day.

I have no real experience in business, but I have the money,
No you don't. That's not enough money to just quit your day job, get into something new, and magically start surviving right away.


I have the time, and I'm willing to learn. Now all I need is the direction.
Time and motivation are good things. You will need them, and patience.

First things first: You need to learn a marketable skill. Working for yourself isn't about just finding something, it's about having a marketable skill that you can get people to pay you tod do. Anything that takes no experience or special training can obviously be done by anyone, so how much could it actually pay?

You first need to start narrowing in on your interests. What do you like to do? What have you always wanted to learn more about? What skills do you already have that you can draw on?


I met someone who briefly talked about doing advertising offers on Facebook for other companies and getting paid for people giving their e-mail address, but I don't remember the websites he was talking about. That seemed like a good lead, so I'm just waiting to hear back from him.

Sounds like every other "make money from home" scam. There is money in lead generation, but you need to know something about marketing. People don't just give up their emails, and companies want targeted leads. This is not an area I would suggest looking at as if it's an easy holy grail of riches to get into.



I considered trading stocks and Forex, but I want to do something a little less risky.Could anyone maybe point me in a good direction?
Um, yeah. If you know nothing about trading stocks or Forex you will lose all your money pretty quickly. It's not as easy as it looks on TV and $2k-$4k isn't exactly the kind of bankroll that you can create a residual income with.

Start at the beginning. What do you want to do or learn how to do? Not because it sounds easy, or because someone told you there was money in it, something that you are genuinely interested in and think you could turn it into a business or service that people will pay for?

[Fury]

I think what my friend was referring to was dropshipping, which I've been reading about. The idea seems pretty clear; set up an online store, advertise, and sell through a third party supplier. Does anyone have anything good or bad to say about that?

[turboguy]

Um, yeah. If you know nothing about trading stocks or Forex you will lose all your money pretty quickly.

Actually it is a little worse than that. Someone can have a really good idea what they are doing and lose all their money. When I run into someone wanting to get rich quick day trading or swing trading stocks I usually just suggest they go on Google and do a search for "Do day traders really lose money?" The reliable sources on Google (such as Forbes Magazine) will all pretty much say that 95% of day traders lose money. Only 1% really make any real money and nearly everyone either loses all their money or all they can stand losing pretty quickly. Investing in stocks can be a great thing but usually when someone wants to get rich quick they end up getting poor quick.

[Harold Mansfield]

I think what my friend was referring to was dropshipping, which I've been reading about. The idea seems pretty clear; set up an online store, advertise, and sell through a third party supplier. Does anyone have anything good or bad to say about that?

It's not that it can't work, it's just that it's one of the first things people trip over when they start thinking about doing something online. Set up a site, put someone elses products on it, run some ads, get a percentage of sales, rake in the dough. How hard can it be?

It's very hard. You won't get anywhere selling other people's products unless you are a well funded start up retailer, are exclusive retailer or distributor of some hot new thing.
Whatever knick-knacks you plan on selling you first need to figure out how you're going to rise above all the ecommerce sites already out there..some probably selling the exact same thing.

2nd, building an ecommerce site means knowing something about design, copy writing, sales and marketing at the very least.

"No problem, I'll just hire someone".

Great. There goes your $2-$4k and you haven't even purchased anything else you need. Like ads..which is another thing to learn.

Also, if you don't know anything about what you're building, you won't hire the right person for the job because you won't know what to look for. When you DO know what you're doing, you spend less on things because you don't have to pay someone for every single thing.

9 times out of 10, anything, and I mean anything that you jump into without learning as much as you can about that business is going to fail. "Online" is very, very hard and you're 10 years behind in the learning curve.

That being said, of course you can learn things today much easier than you could just 5 years ago. There are online courses available for just about everything, and free info is everywhere. The more you learn, the more you'll know where or how to learn more, and each thing can lead you to things and opportunities that you never even knew existed.

Starting any new business is an uphill battle. Starting one without any clue how any of it works is going to fail. Going into anything with the expectation that it's going to be fairly easy is also destined to fail.

It doesn't matter what you pick or start up. You're still going to have to learn how to do it.

The good news is that you can learn it. You can learn it all. Look around this forum, most of us had to learn the thing that we're doing in some form or another. And then we had to learn how to make it a business and how to run that business. So it's obviously doable. You just need to be realistic about how hard it is, and then double that. If you're not scared, then you don't fully understand it.

You need the real fear to motivate you to leave as few stones unturned as possible and to have the motivation to roll with the punches when it doesn't immediately go as planned.

[SumpinSpecial]

Hi Fury! First, I'll introduce myself as someone who started an online shop that works primarily through selling dropship merchandise. More on that in a second... First I want to say that Harold knows his stuff, and has helped me in the past (and still). I agree with nearly everything he says.

Okay, so here's my experience selling dropship:

Lots of people start dropshipping ecommerce stores, usually selling cheap Chinese commodity products, thinking that they can make money by selling at volume. That rarely works. RARELY. Cheap crap does sell, but the margins are still slim and you will get a reputation for selling cheap crap. In my opinion that's not a recipe for success, unless you have experience in volume sales. I urge you not to fall for that trap, and don't listen to the millions of stories out there where people claim you can make tons of money selling commodity merchandise.

Also, ignore stories from people who claim to have launched an online store (selling anything) and made $$$,$$$ in the first month (or whatever short timeline). Even my own platform publishes those in their blog and it drives me crazy. They are in direct contradiction with the tons of platform user forum postings that say they launched a shop and haven't sold a penny in 6 months, so "help, what am I doing wrong?" I'm convinced that those blog articles are manufactured.

I launched my shop in Feb 2016 with an initial investment of $7000. I'm using Shopify as a platform, which I really love. It allows you to build a fully-functional, professional looking online shop quickly, with nearly no programming in a matter of a week or three (depending how good you are with using computers). You do still need to learn marketing, copy writing, general business practices, how to source products and lots of other things. My shop is not yet profitable, but doing gradually better over time. My hope is that it's profitable in 3 - 5 years. I'm not going to quit my day job until the shop is profitable enough to replace most of my day job salary. I worked on a business plan prior to launch and last December I did a "lessons learned" review of it, and drafted a new one with better forecasts and a refined understanding of what I can accomplish. (The first plan was practically a dart-board throw in terms of financial forecasts.)

Specific to drop-shipping, I strongly recommend that (after refining your business concept with a business plan) you identify a specific market niche and then search for quality suppliers for those specific product lines. Even after launch, expect to refine your product lines by dropping suppliers and finding new ones. Striving for excellence is the recipe for success.

The way I found suppliers was simply Google searches. I also found them by doing competitive research, which is counter-intuitive, but works. When I do my yearly business plans, I work back and forth between the competitive analysis, market analysis, and simply watching for cool pet products that I see on Facebook and etc. to find new suppliers and new places to market my shop. I found it a fun exercise even though I suspect a lot of people find it tedious.

I should also add that the only reason I'm using drop-ship is because I operate the shop from my home and have limited space for inventory. My hope is to grow my sales enough to be able to afford rent/lease for a small warehouse, and then I'll switch from dropshipping to 100% wholesale buying and maintain my own inventory. That will also allow me to improve my appearance of quality by controlling things like shipping and the unboxing experience.

Hope all this helps!

[turboguy]

I do think everyone is giving you good advice which will keep you from making a big mistake. The things that people promote as a get rich quick scheme are usually things that the way they really make their money is to get others to waste theirs by investing in the business they are hyping.

I am a great believer in the benefits of having your own business. I haven't held a real job (working for someone else) since I was 21. Over those years I have started a few businesses. Some did well, some didn't. You learn from your mistakes. If you decide to go ahead with the drop ship business I would suggest you don't quit your day job. You probably won't make money for a long time if ever.

I had a marketing business for a long time but always wanted to have a manufacturing business. All the time I was in the marketing business I kept thinking about what product I would like to manufacture. I kicked around a lot of ideas and then one day a customer gave me an idea that turned out to be the first product we manufactured. Well, I can't say it was successful. It was well received and very innovative but hard to make a buck. Then I got a second idea, very revolutionary but it too wasn't as successful as I hoped. Our third product turned out to be a winner. Starting a business is usually trial and error. You need to think about what you can do better and to learn from your mistakes. I am sure someone somewhere started a business without making a mistake but making mistakes can be the best learning experience.

Even if I go way back to my first business, the marketing business. I was a manufacturer's Rep and first started in with my Dad who died not all that long after we started. We originally started off selling Lawn and Garden Equipment (mowers, tractors, chain saws and the like, Marine equipment (boats, motors etc) and camping equipment. We had a background in Farm and Lawn and Garden and starting in we did not want to get back into the Farm Equipment sector. So, where did I end up. Yep, Farm Equipment along with some lawn and garden. We dropped the camping and boating after a few years. Sometimes when you start a business you will end up some place far different that what you expect.

I commend you for wanting to start your own business and hope you don't give up on the idea. I think you need to spend more time thinking about the kind of business you want. You many find something very profitable that works much better so kick ideas around for a while. Perhaps something like a mobile car washing service, or house painting since you have a background in painting might be a far better idea but sooner or later the right idea will pop up.

[Fulcrum]

I'm curious about the typical drop shipping business. What would be considered a typical gross margin or commission on sales (cheap consumer goods vs specialized quality)?

[SumpinSpecial]

For the ones I work with, there's no commission. They're set up exactly like buying wholesale except that they ship directly to my customers for me. Some tack on a per-order fee and some don't. Another benefit to dropshipping is that you get the benefit of the distributor's volume discounts with shipping companies like Fedex, UPS, etc. I do have one supplier who made me get my own UPS account to use, which sucks because I don't get volume discount on it. But I think they're small and/or new.

Not a direct answer to your question, Fulcrum, but maybe it helps? I would say it's about even with wholesale, deduct the fee and add the shipping discount.

[Harold Mansfield]

Fury, here's the timeline of a typical, first time out, uninformed, web based start up.

1. All my friends say this is a great idea. We're going to change the world. All we need is 1% of the total market share and we're rich!
2. Let's make everything pretty, come up with a cool slogan, and order awesome business cards.
3. Sole Proprietorship? LLC? What about taxes? How do I lessen my tax burden?
4. Website? Sure, let's just get something cheap up to see if it makes any money first, before we invest in it fully.
5. Opening day. Get ready to fill all the orders.
6. Why don't I have any traffic? How come no one is buying? Where are all the people? Why can't people see how great this is?
7. Panic.

Once you get to #7 it's a turning point. You either buckle down and realize where you made your mistakes, what you need to learn, and commit to actually learning how to make this thing work. Or you continue to panic, start dumping time and money into quick fixes because you hadn't planned on not making any money, so you'll try anything because bills are due and you can't wait...until you eventually fizz out, depressed, angry, broke and further behind on the bills than before.

There's your glimpse into the future. Now that you know what's going to happen, you can take steps to lessen it's impact..maybe even avoid some common mistakes.

[Fulcrum]

Not a direct answer to your question, Fulcrum, but maybe it helps? I would say it's about even with wholesale, deduct the fee and add the shipping discount.

Probably about as direct as I'd be if I was in your position.:cool:

At the risk of going off topic, the main reason I ask is that I'm seeing distributors demanding they carry no inventory (JIT/Lean knockoff) while still receiving a 40-60% discount from MSRP. I've received anywhere from 5-50% as long as I first buy the product and then resell.

As a manufacturer (15-20% of my overall sales) I don't see the added benefit of another layer between myself and the end user. If a distributor chooses to use drop shippers, that's up to them but it should come out of their profit and not mine (did I mention many of these distributors refuse to carry inventory, want 90+ day payment terms, and for my price to go down so they can maintain their margin) as well as keep some product on the shelf; anything less and they're really not much more than a glorified sales rep deserving of 10-15% and not a "full" wholesale discount.

[SumpinSpecial]

Yeah, I'm with you on that. Each step on the supply chain adds their margin to the downstream step, not upstream. I don't understand charging the manufacturer for the privilege of distributing his products.

As a manufacturer, you're on the other end of the supply chain from me, so I was answering as a retailer who works with distributors on a drop-ship basis. I don't understand why they want you to buy and the resell the product - are you referring to your own products that you manufacture?

[shrinkme]

I would probably start with something you are familiar with. You would want your own product, if possible, either a physical product or service. It could also be a digital product like a PDF book on something you know well. Set off in a direction and learn as you go. Be prepared for some failure. Good luck!

[Parthiban]

Hi Fury,

I would like to appreciate your decision to own your business. That's a good decision but you need to prepare yourself emotionally and financially before you take such a decision. Robert Kiyosaki, the well-known financial advisor and writer of the book Rich dad Poor dad says the best thing is to be in your own business. But it takes a lot of time and effort and you go through the emotional roller-coaster many times before you become successful in your venture. I can confidently say so because I have gone through it.
I was working for the Govt and like you wanted to do some thing different, started a few businesses which I would say were not bad, but the bottom-line was not positve enough compared to the income from job. I had time under my control but my life-style was dropping, since in a job many of your expenses are taken care by your employer but in your own business you have to earn it.

Finally, I was lucky to see an opportunity which seemed great and though I was skeptical I started it and pursued. One good thing I did was I didn't quit my job till I broke-even, that took 4 years and I quit my job in 2006. Since then I have never been to a job.

So my suggestion based on my wisdom is that

1. Never quit your job until you have a strong foot-hold of what you're going to do.
2. Find a mentor, a person who is already successful in the field.
3. Learn the skills that is necessary for the trade, because your business will never make you rich, but your business skills will definitely do.
4. Get into an association of like-minded people.
5. Create a business plan

If you're serious about becoming successful, remember there is no short-cut to success.

Good luck...

[Timur.k.a]

Hi!

It seems that you have everything to open your own store on some e-commerce platform or build your own web - site.And promote it for sure.At least,i would start from this.I can prompt you some manufacturers,who won't ask you to pay for their goods.You can just post their product on your web-site and get a percent from order.

[Lets Web Now]

Hi Fury.

I think it’s wise to just start something small and learn as you go. Then change up as you start to figure things out.

My first thought is to try incorporate your expertise in industrial painting. For example, review tools and products related to industrial painting in a personal blog and recommend products to purchase. Overtime, If the blog gets good traffic, you can turn it into an amazon affiliate store, or sell banner space to companies in the business of industrial painting.

If you have time on your hands, I think it’s a good idea to dive a little bit into making youtube tutorial videos (related to industrial painting or things you are passionate about) and promote your experience on social media. It doesn’t have to be related to industrial painting but that just what comes to mind, at least when I was reading your post. If you have other topics you are passionate about, that is where I would start.

[SocMediaMaven]

$2k - $4k may seem like plenty to start....it's not! I'm certain you've read about those "overnight successes" who did it with no experience, no talent, no time, and no thinking. It's tempting, I know.

I beg of you to build your income (preferably residual and semi-passive) to surpass your working income, then make a decision. You'll be MUCH less stressed in the long run.

[Harold Mansfield]

Thought of this thread today.

I used to play with Adsense years ago, and never closed my account, I just stopped doing it. Was cleaning up some old accounts and email addresses and logged into my old account to see that I've had a standing balance of about $97.30 just sitting there. Since the payout threshold is $100, I figured what the hell. I'll toss a few ad blocks on a blog post that gets decent traffic and cash in my 100 bucks, right?

Yeah....after a few weeks of the bottom of the barrel, spammy ads I finally started getting related ads displayed from Sprint, and Century Link who are apparently only paying 2 cents a click to be on my website. Good deal for them.

So I spread the love and put an ad block on my next highest read post hoping to speed up the process. A month later, on blog post that get about 350-500 reads a day combined, I still haven't made $2.70. I'm actually at $99.98 as I write this and it will probably take a week to make that last 2 cents.

That story is why trying to make money online sucks and all the decks are stacked against you from the start. It's hard. It takes a while to learn it and even longer to start having success and even longer to climb into the top 10% of people who actually make a comfortable living at internet marketing. Not weeks. Years. There is no shortcut to the learning. You can't pay anyone to skip over it or you'll just waste money on the wrong things and the people who talk the best game.
Do not quit your day job.

Now here's a comparison: In a year you can learn to code well enough to get a job making over $50k a year. In that same year you WILL NOT learn enough about ecommerce and internet marketing to make anywhere near $50k.

Now granted, I just threw a couple of ad blocks up. I'm not tweaking, gauging, tracking, choosing high paying content to write about, or creating new content everyday. But it's not unreasonable to think that putting an adblock on an article that gets a couple hundred visitors a day would make you $3 in under a month. Right?

Just my 2 cents (pun intended)

[SumpinSpecial]

Yeah, I've now done one month of Google Adwords advertising (last year) and about two months of Facebook ads for my shop (Feb and March) and gotten no sales as a result. I've been taking my shop (rather, a subset of it) on the road and vending at local pet fairs and expos. That has been bringing me sales. Working my personal network has also brought me sales and is starting to result in some word of mouth sales also. I'm getting more comfortable with introducing myself to strangers and building a business network in the local community.

I'm convinced that while you CAN operate an online business, you can NOT expect it to succeed by only online advertising. Face time and networking is really critical still, in this day and age.

Fury, you still here? I would love to hear an update from you. I hope we haven't discouraged you, but just helped to refine your business idea. I would love to know if you've tried a market test or two like we suggested and how it went. I think you CAN succeed with the idea, just that it won't be a "get rich quick". (Because there is no such thing.)

[Harold Mansfield]

I'm convinced that while you CAN operate an online business, you can NOT expect it to succeed by only online advertising. Face time and networking is really critical still, in this day and age.
YES!!! ^^^This! This! A thousand times THIS!^^^

Online marketing can and does work. But as PART of an overall marketing and advertising strategy. Not the whole thing. And you have to put just as much care, professionalism, design, copywriter, and knowledge into it as every other kind of marketing for your business. It's an art.

[WarrenD]

People talk about drop shipping like it's the easiest thing in the world. It's undeniable that certain elements of it have gotten easier. Like for instance you can now just get a ready made e-commerce platform & the suppliers ship directly to the customer so you don't have to bother about inventory. But the hardest (and most expensive part is customer acquisition. Google Adwords rates used to be 10 cents a click a decade ago. Now they're at an average of $ 2-3. If you do the math & assume a 3% conversion rate then for every conversion you'll need around 30 clicks, which means $ 60-90 spent on advertising out of your commission! So the product you're selling needs to be a very high value product to make this work & most people find it hard to do so.

[Skydog]

I really would have chosen something before quitting your job. 2 to 3 months isn't enough to learn an entirely new skill and earn enough to live off it. You would have to get incredibly luck. Even so, I wish you all the best. Good luck!

[maeng]

Hello Fury. You seems to be in a very stable position. If I had the amount like you do, here is what I would do.

I would buy a Hosting and Domain which will cost you around $70- $100/year. A CRM software which will cost you from $20-$100/month. Addtional expense will be there but I don't recommend spending more than $300 on fancy tools. And then collect prospect leads for the targeted niche. My plan is to focus on website reconstruction and mobile optimization as I already have list of website that need serious re-touch (I already have around 100 leads).
I will connect my prospect through email and Phone. I expect my email to convert at around 5%-10% as they focus on really specific problem that is wasting lot of profit for business owner means couple of sales will pay all my bills. But for you it won't be the same as I am hoping you haven't done your research yet.

I am just waiting to get started. You may ask why wait? Well, I don't have money to buy basic tools right now.:mad: I will start as soon as I find partners.

Hope this help a little.