Advice on SOA

Triggles

Just out of curiosity, what is the average price for these perfumes you are selling? How much do you buy them for, and how much do you sell them for? On average? And how much are you selling per month? This gives us a more accurate view of how busy you actually are.

Because I have to say, for someone who claims he is working full time and only getting paid part time, you have an awful lot of free time to go cycling and walking and into town and such. The average person who works full time (on a normal 9-5 job) doesn't have this kind of time on their hands - and they don't have the concern about being bored - as generally they are working during the work week, and then catching up on household stuff and maybe an outing on the weekend. You make the business sound like a lot of work, but unless you have astronomical numbers, it seems a bit magnified, IFSWIM.

JohnD76

cycloneuk wrote: »

I also have a website and sell on Amazon, not just eBay. I have done a lot of SEO work on the website and am waiting for search engine positions to improve. It is a very competitive field so can be a slow process.

I agree with the previous business but i do have a lot of seo knowledge and managed to get top positions for a number of large gambling keywords which contributed greatly to the success of that business.

How about trying to use your SEO skills to help other business improve their search positions on a consultancy basis?

Triggles

I think your biggest obstacle, however, is that while you used to make a lot of money, YOU NO LONGER ARE!!! And the sooner you adjust to that and accept that you need to learn to live within your means, the better off you'll be. Right now you're fighting to continue living large without actually having the cash to back it up, as you don't want to give anything up.

MyLastFiver

cycloneuk wrote: »

I have worked in a food processing factory and had to manage an entire production line and also Hotpoint making washing machines which were both very demanding jobs. I'm not scared of hard work, running a business isn't easy.

I manage the accounts, website, ebay shop, ordering new supplies, packing and dispatch and dealing with customers. I do this all on my own and while business as been slow i think i can make it work.

The better the ecommony becomes then hopefully people will start splashing out on luxories like perfume a again.

OK very last post from me, I promise. I just want to help you see the bigger picture.

I ran an Ebay business too. You don't need to be at home 24/7. Ordering stock? That's a phone call or two. Accounts? That's a spreadsheet which takes a second to update. And forgive me but if you aren't doing them properly, which is a large part of your problem. Website? Once it's up, it's up. Yes you need to update it but again it isn't time consuming. Dealing with customers? "Thank you for your order - your perfume will be in the post in the morning." Packaging orders? You can do this in the evening. I grant you, even with Turbolister, getting your items onto Ebay is time-consuming. So I did this on a Saturday morning.

What you do is not a full-time job.

After a while I realised I was selling in an saturated market. You are too. I realised that, hour-for-hour, I wasn't making enough to make it worthwhile. Neither are you. So I sold the remainder of my stock in a job lot and recouped most of my outlay. I don't know all the ins and outs of your business, but with respect, from an outsider's perspective you are fooling yourself.

By persisting full time with this business, you also have the opportunity cost of the money you could have made by doing something else with your time.

"The economy might pick up."

Have you heard the news this week? 2 million of your target market are going to have even less per month than they did before due to tax credit cuts. Debt crisis in Spain = Eurozone bailout. Double-dip fears for house prices. BP not paying dividends = everyone's pensions suffer. Huge job cuts in the public sector. Inflation at 5%. If you are waiting for consumer demand for luxury goods to rise, you will have a long wait.

Bear this in mind. It is costing you a huge amount of money just to have all those boxes of perfume sitting in your garage, because while they are sitting there, they are not repaying the interest on the debts you incured to buy them. Even when you sell them, in a good month you are still only just about repaying that interest. Ebay sellers call sellers such as you "busy fools", because they generate a lot of activity but don't make any money.

You have some options:

Get a market stall/car boot stall to shift your stock at lower costs-per-unit than Ebay/Paypal/your webmaster charges to sell online.

Find a unique selling point that drives people to buy from you rather than one of your many competitors, many of whom have much lower costs than yours.

Sell your stock as a job lot to get some of that debt paid down, then either take on paid work or look for another business idea which exploits a gap in the market, rather than jumps into a market where a few big sellers already have the business sewn up.

Run your business part time and get some salaried work to pay the bills.


I do realise that you are selling your home for somewhere cheaper, and the profit will pay off your debts, but this doesn't change the fact that you are persisting in a line of activity that, for the reasons given above, do not make you enough money to live. The profit from your house could be invested to send your kids to uni, or fund your retirement, or give your wife some treats or whatever, however in your current mindset, I fear that by persisting in your current ways it will just be used to fund this nice life you have created for yourself, in which you get to stay at home and twiddle around on your computer rather than actually go out and create value with your labour for the benefit of your family.

JohnD76

Triggles wrote: »

I think your biggest obstacle, however, is that while you used to make a lot of money, YOU NO LONGER ARE!!! And the sooner you adjust to that and accept that you need to learn to live within your means, the better off you'll be. Right now you're fighting to continue living large without actually having the cash to back it up, as you don't want to give anything up.

This is exactly what I am thinking too, just hope Cyclone sees this before too much debt is acrued and it is too late.

Cyclone, have you spoken to your wife about how she feels? You mention she is somewhat unhappy, have you asked her why and what can be done about it?

cycloneuk

I pack the days orders at 3pm and then take them to the PO, one of my USP's is that all orders before 3pm go the same day. At the moment i get around 10 orders per day on average with a profit of around £3.00 for ebay/amazon orders and £5 for website orders.

I could cut what i do down to 4 hours a day, i spend the rest of the time doing seo and chatting on forums. I only go into town after i have finished work around 4pm so i should be able to walk/cycle or do whatever i please surely.

Websites need a lot more work than the odd update. I don't feel i have a lavish lifestyle, i don't own cars, go out for meals all the time and have expensive holidays. I have Sky which is on a cheap package, surely some of the people could get rid of the broadband who have made suggestions in this thread.

I do have a plan b in place should i choose to pull out the perfume business, a whole new line of products that are in demand and i could save a lot of costs each month.

tbourner

cycloneuk wrote: »

I have Sky which is on a cheap package, surely some of the people could get rid of the broadband who have made suggestions in this thread.

People here will comment on EVERYTHING that you could save money on. If there are 1 or 2 that you think you can't change then fine, but you can't just stay the way your are on all of them!

You've changed the Sky package? Which I think is good, if in a few months you're no better off you may consider changing down again or getting rid completely.
Most of the comments seem to be around shopping though, and your comments do appear to be very stubborn and full of weak excuses.

cycloneuk

tbourner wrote: »

People here will comment on EVERYTHING that you could save money on. If there are 1 or 2 that you think you can't change then fine, but you can't just stay the way your are on all of them!

You've changed the Sky package? Which I think is good, if in a few months you're no better off you may consider changing down again or getting rid completely.
Most of the comments seem to be around shopping though, and your comments do appear to be very stubborn and full of weak excuses.

If in 6 months my circumstances havn't improved then i would consider ditching it for the time being, but i'm confident i could get another reduced rate for a further 6 months.

I would love a bundle deal to get sky/broadband and phone togeather but my exchange isn't unbundled.

JohnD76

cycloneuk wrote: »

I do have a plan b in place should i choose to pull out the perfume business, a whole new line of products that are in demand and i could save a lot of costs each month.

Cyclone,

Can you not instigate Plan B now and run in parallel with Plan A?

Are you sure Plan B will work and what are the setup costs? Or do you just need a new website?

Can Plan B products be sold through for existing E-Commerce sites as is? Therefore minimising setup costs?

patchwork_cat

I too had an ebay business that made £3000 per year and I classed this as part time. It definately could take as much as I was prepared to throw at it, but not for any more money. One of the keys I found was to be organised, you only have to do your listing once for each item and then keep re listing it. The most time consuming part once the listings were on was research and packing oh and dealing with Post office missings! ( I think we had someone dodgy somewhere in our sorting office as we had a lot of losses). I came to the conclusion about 2 years ago that it just was not worth the effort and gave up and that one of the worst things was the accounts for the tax when my profit was only that measly sum I still needed the same tax return as if I made 10X that amount.