New business start up

Ladku5001

Hi All,

Ive been viewing this site for a while but this is my 1st post, please be gentle...;)

I am planning to start up a small business/consultancy(?) teaching classes to people who want to learn how to make money online - intially would focus on selling on eBay but also branching out into building websites, online marketing and charging for these services outside the classes. I initially will concentrate on local area and surrounding - hopefully there are enough people that sign up to the classes

I was hoping that you good knowledgeable folk could advise on whether this is idea is any good? Any advice on how to go about starting up? Offer any contacts or links to conduct further research?
Your thoughts would be very much appreciated - thanks in advance

pitkin2020

Its not something I would use, it reminds me too much of the ebooks you see on ebay, "How to make £££££'s online, become a millionaire" yet the author is selling it as an ebook for 99p lol.

Best of luck

hareng

Same sentiments here, the place has been riddled with these sort of get rich quick sales pitches for over 10 years.

steve1980

What's your experience? I assume that you have amassed a small fortune using ebay and designing websites?

Absolute non starter in my view.

paddyrg

You may be brilliant flogging stuff and a top designer making real money from sites, but the market is full of idiots (and I use the term generously) who go on a weekend motivational course 'make money online' then think they know it. All because they can use a template in Wordpress, then they don't find much design work recycling templates, so they start running seminars for making money online...

So you may be great, but you are in an effective pyramid market of bottom-feeder idiots and will be drowned out. See how many SEO Consultants there are, I will bet you nearly all of them have never touched a line of HTML in their life, and have no idea how web servers work, or why metatags are worthless, but the carry on mantras as a religion. They see a quick buck doing wavey-hand smoke and mirrors. Keep clear of that market, at best you will struggle for oxygen over the get-rich-quick gob!!!!!s!

jexygirl

As has been said, for you to be reasonably "credible" whatever that amounts to atm, and "sell" your classes, I assume you have experience and are a multi millionaire or such like as a result of what you will teach, and want to share your experience...
Think fairy job mother for a job / Sarah Beeny for property renovation advice / Ruth Watson for country house rescuing advice - if you get my point.
As well as be a total guru on website building, advertising, or whatever else you feel you have the knowledge of which you wish to share, at a price.
To sell a product, you need a "product" and if you are the product, then, with all due respect, you need to be good enough to sell.
Jex

Ladku5001

Thanks for the replies so far people.

I think people have got me wrong (maybe i should have described my idea in more detail) just to make things clear to some, i am not a multi millionaire nor have I small fortune!

I also do not think that this idea will make me lots of money - im quite happy to put in a bit of effort to make a small amount of money to add to my other revenue streams.

What i do have is good experience of selling on eBay and also online marketing and website building.

I do not intend to con people into thinking that i can show them how to make millions from the internet, what i will be doing is to show people how they can make a small income from various means using the net.

Most people are in a position that a few hundred pounds a month extra in addition to their full time salary would help.

Are there any positive folk on here who would be able to advise what i need to do/consider to set up this little venture?

texranger

it is still the same thing as i make £££ a month why dont you, so i will show you.

its the same as web hosting offers on ebay, too many think because they have got an alpha reseller package or master reseller package for a few ££ a month/year they can now advertise themselves as a webhost and make ££. i remember one such host. he was offering a MR account for £5 for 3 years. i send him a couple of simple questions 1) do you offer dedicated IPs and 2) what DNS setting do you use for custom nameservers and the reply i got back 1) what is a dedicated IP and 2) not sure what you mean by DNS. i just asked these out of curiosity as i have my own servers and have run a hosting business since 1999 but like to test these so called ebay hosts.

Joannag_2

I wonder if there is a market for helping people sell online who are not confident on the web - know I have to list things for my parents...is this a more realistic idea?

pitkin2020

I don't believe anyone said you were out to con anyone but by the sounds of it you are basically wanting to do exactly the same as this,
http://www.e-global.com/training_svcs/seminars/SellingoneBayIntroduction.htm

The thing is there are loads of these type of things happening all the time and usually for free so i can't see how you will make money from. There are also plenty of resources on the net. IIRC business were doing an ebay course for free ages ago which basically covered well the basics lol.

The type of people you will be marketing will be the non internet type really, who in all likelyhood are only going to want to sell the odd thing for a few quid here and there but want to know how to do it on ebay. They aren't going to want to pay £100 or even £50 to learn this as for the few quid they intend to earn its not worth it. After you have taken out the cost of venue you would either need to mass market (100+ ) people to keep the costs low or charge a lot more with less people.

The people who are likely to pay extra are those who want to sell big, already have an idea and a basic understanding of ebay but want to sell in volume. If your not an experienced powerseller what you can offer that they can't already get off from plenty of ebay gurus blogs and forums.

This idea was in its peak around 4 or 5 years when ebay was getting big and everyone wanted to sell on there but weren't sure how to do, someone who had sold something once on there would give you a 2-3 hour rundown how to do it, its just so easy. The speaker got paid (lets say) £10 a head per seminar, 100 people a seminar a nice total there!! and a tidy profit. Those people who attended the seminar were filled with confidence and promptly returned home to empty the loft, shed, garage and most of the house and making little money along the way.

Horace

I think you need to do a lot more research, is there a market for what you are offering, how can I benefit? how much will it cost me? why should I use you to help me sell stuff on the internet? is it something that I could do myself without having to use a third party? All these are valid questions.

Making money from the internet isnt difficult...anyone can do it.

I am sorry if you think that people are being negative, we're not we are trying to make you think and do more research (dont just ask family and friends because they will only tell you what you want to hear).