I'm planning opening a pasty shop - what are the profit expectations?

fc123

PasturesNew wrote: »

That'd be mates rates. It's £25/hour for simple back-linking and up to £50 for my full brain to turn on

.

Excellent....those rates sound more like it...I was worried you may be doing it for £2 plus a crisp sandwich.:o

PasturesNew

fc123 wrote: »

You know what? I will take you up on that as we are sorting out new website at the mo....it's driving me nuts as got to do photo stuff first.

It's looking OK though so far.

I will PM you in a week or 2..I never know what to write really but I am quite good at alt words or meta words or whatever they are called.

I won't be here too much over the next couple of weeks as stuff to do...but thanks so much...it's now on my 'to do' list.

Oh and I am going to post you some antioxidants too...will PM you nearer the time.
Got to go to bed now....night.;)

If you need some feedback on those hidden bits of the website, give me a shout, pleased to jot down some thoughts.

I can drive you some slow traffic, with a high PR value (back link to it) ... and generally slip some promotions in.

I also have another sneaky/nifty idea when you're up and running, which you'll approve of as it's not dodgy.

Anything I can do to help, I'm kind of driven by the buzz and not the money - which is why I never have any

Oh - and if you want to be number one in Google ... I can do that for you too. It's no trouble. I'm number one for so many pages/sites I own ... it's not always rocket science and sometimes it's surprisingly quick.

dopester

fc123 wrote: »

Also..I can't respond to Dopestar about the OGGy story as both links freeze my PC and one had a dodgy window pop up. Anyone got a virus free link? I meant to say the other night but got distracted waffling about myself...you know how it is?:o

This one?

freewebs.com/disenfranchised

I'm using Firefox with the noscript plugin so don't get pop-ups and limit risks of anything nasty, but I would never deliberately post a link that didn't look safe.

The freewebs site does look safe, as it just a set platform from a community website group, with a limited number of functions where people can easy build basic-ish websites.

Looking to make a free website? Use our easy website builder to create a personal, group, or small business website. Share your hobby with the world, your wedding plans with friends and family. Tell the tale of your latest trip via a travel blog. Create a family forum where relatives can post their stories, photos and videos. Raise funds for your favorite cause.

Just opening the freewebs/disenfranchised/ in Internet Explorer 8, I see the website creator has embedded a stupid girly pop music track with the website.

The website creator is clearly as silly with his idea of making a webpage with music, as he was with opening an OGGY in Preston. I have strong objections to websites forcing music to load in a browser on a vistor's visit (but it isn't dangerous.. Yahoo Geocities made it easy to do similar).

The music track will probably cause issues on some browsers, stopping the page loading correctly, or a browser freeze.. - in Internet Explorer on visiting his page, I had a pop-up to do with MIME types for quicktime (for the music).. causing some website visitors to not continue, which just shows how stupid it is to try and load music on all hits - but the website is harmless overall.

PasturesNew

dopester wrote: »

freewebs.com/disenfranchised

Good read. Kept me quiet for 45 minutes

dopester

PasturesNew wrote: »

Another thing that I find hides the reality of a business is seemingly successful women in shiny businesses. If you dig deep you find that they never needed the money to live on, so could just build up the business over a few years due to one of:
- their husband was bringing in enough and this was just a sideline that took off, but they were at all the business lunches etc and wearing good clothes because it wasn't their main/only income but pocket-money
- similar, but they built up the business slowly over a few years, not needing to make a profit because they had a base income of benefits, so could reinvest all the money back in the business so it grew and didn't show a profit.

It's rare to find people who actually started from nothing, no money, no backing, no family business, no helping hand and made a full-time business out of it single-handed. Most of those I've seen on the telly "I started from nothing" didn't really as somewhere there was somebody paying their way.

I was reading about one of these types earlier.. she bought a clothes shop on a whim without even telling her footballer husband. Now they seem to be in some major cashflow difficulties, although the article has since been trimmed down for some reason. The clothes shop bit removed, the nursing home investment removed, the repeated buying and selling of properties removed, their business of redevelopment and design of swanky star homes removed.

What you're saying though isn't just true for women. Perhaps lots of people who've come into money one way or the other, finding it easier to set up something that takes their fancy - without the graft or creativity or expertise - possibly running it at a loss.

I've got time for businesses which don't lavish the profits on themselves each year, but reinvest. Just draw a basic income after costs. Providing they don't over-extend to the point where such continued investment comes back to crush them. Harry Ramsden (fish and chips) I used to be told used that model, of reinvesting the main part of their profits to fund expansion for growth.

There are some brilliant business-people, male and female, who've risen through their own good work and made positive investment decisions. The lady who set up Pet-Plan when it was an independent business didn't seem to come from wealth. I think she pocketed something like £80m when the business was sold onto a main insurer.

dopester

dopester wrote: »

There are some brilliant business-people, male and female, who've risen through their own good work and made positive investment decisions. The lady who set up Pet-Plan when it was an independent business didn't seem to come from wealth. I think she pocketed something like £80m when the business was sold onto a main insurer.

Oops. I just checked my old paper archive of financial articles (with educational side) I've kept from years gone by (a bit geeky). Got the numbers wrong, not £80m, but £16.66 million. I'm only giving one example where women, and men, can do ok from modest beginnings, through their own intelligence/hard-work/investment. Pet-Plan woman found a niche for her business idea back in 1976, and really went for it.

The Main on Sunday, July 6, 1997

1. Patsy Bloom. £16.66m
Animal insurance entrepreneur, 56
Previous year: £352,000

The Public's obsession with their pets has made Patsy Bloom's fortune.

She earned £16.66 million last year through Pet Plan, an insurance company for animals which she set up in 1976 after complaining to a friend about high vets' bills for treating her dog.

Pet owners pay £155 per year to insure a dog, or £245 for a horse, reaping healthy profits for Bloom, who feels that her feminine instincts helped turn her idea into a multi-million pound business.

In May last year, Cornhill insurance paid Bloom and her business partner David Simpson £32 million for the company. Bloom's share was 51 percent. In addition she took home £345,000 in dividends and salary. She remains a non-executive director of Pet Plan.

'I've done two clever things in my life,' she says. 'One was to start my own company; the second was to sell it while I'm young enough to enjoy myself.'

Her yellow and black outfit doesn't do anything for her though. She should visit fc and buy some decent gear. Yellow and black are nature's mix of colours for warning / danger. Bees, wasps, snakes, other animals imitating those colours in hope to scare off predators. It also triggers "danger" signals in the human mind, which is why many hazard signs use yellow and black combo.

PasturesNew

dopester wrote: »

Oops. I just checked my old paper archive of financial articles (with educational side) I've kept from years gone by (a bit geeky). Got the numbers wrong, not £80m, but £16.66 million. I'm only giving one example where women, and men, can do ok from modest beginnings, through their own intelligence/hard-work/investment. Pet-Plan woman found a niche for her business idea back in 1976, and really went for it.

The Main on Sunday, July 6, 1997





Her yellow and black outfit doesn't do anything for her though. She should visit fc and buy some decent gear. Yellow and black are nature's mix of colours for warning / danger. Bees, wasps, snakes, other animals imitating those colours in hope to scare off predators. It also triggers "danger" signals in the human mind, which is why many hazard signs use yellow and black combo.

One can always find "the exception", but overall, it's not possible for everybody/anybody to do it.

My elusive piece of missing jigsaw is the niche. So many pet/kid niches that have been filled ... which they only found because they had pets/kids.

The question I always wonder is: "So how did you pay the rent and feed yourself for the first 1-36 months while you were starting up...?" That was always my issue. I had to go to work every day, full-time, to be able to put the roof over my head and pay the bills. With no money left over and no borrowing capacity, all the ideas I had needed investment and the ability to be available during working hours. Remember, the internet and mobile phones are a new thing. Years ago you needed real money to be able to advertise and you needed a landline phone that you answered... or, find a business that could run on an answerphone.

I could never find the right mix of: no stock, no investment, can be operated outside of working hours... that interested me.

PasturesNew

Right, Patsy's startup story: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UL2D5QqOLhoC&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=%22patsy+bloom%22+%22pet+plan%22+started&source=bl&ots=Hq96mxfqcq&sig=XS5I0GxWmf6otkqlLKVHHFqK9jA&hl=en&ei=RSYAS4HaEtKs4Qbu4cztCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22patsy%20bloom%22%20%22pet%20plan%22%20started&f=false

Her first partnership, she borrowed £250 from her father. That was in 1977. So, borrowed money. And she was earning £4000 (good wages for 1977, I was on the equivalent of full-time £1800 at the time). So she borrowed 3.3 weeks' salary to start an insurance company ... can't see that happening now

Early days were spent in her going out and cold calling/hard selling the service. That's always been "the magic skill" in my book ... being able to just go out, knock on a door and flog something. I've tried hard sales, I'm !!!!!! at it. I tried double glazing, cavity wall insulation, health insurance. I just never had that killer closing instinct.

Also, her parents owned three sweet shops (Jewish), so the whole business/money-making thing was in the culture right from the start.
Reading the first 2-3 pages of that book, she was brought up in an environment where people run businesses, mixed with people that run businesses, other people's businesses were discussed ... and then she borrowed the money from a supportive father (who was in business).

beaujolais-nouveau

PasturesNew wrote: »

Another thing that I find hides the reality of a business is seemingly successful women in shiny businesses. If you dig deep you find that they never needed the money to live on, so could just build up the business over a few years due to one of: ...

Yes, you are right. (I wrote just "so true" at first but apparently comments have to be at least 10 characters long.)

Cleaver

dopester wrote: »

Her yellow and black outfit doesn't do anything for her though. She should visit fc and buy some decent gear. Yellow and black are nature's mix of colours for warning / danger. Bees, wasps, snakes, other animals imitating those colours in hope to scare off predators. It also triggers "danger" signals in the human mind, which is why many hazard signs use yellow and black combo.

I love facts like this, brilliant stuff. You only live down the road from me Dopester. If I buy you a pint will you tell me lots of useful and interesting stuff like this?

dopester wrote: »

I just checked my old paper archive of financial articles (with educational side) I've kept from years gone by (a bit geeky).

On second thought...