New Enterprise Allowance scheme - My story

TrueBlue1965

dktreesea wrote: »

Have you thought of having a stall at a garden show? The recent Gardening Scotland show was massive. So busy. From what I saw the stalls were all doing a roaring trade. Not sure what jewellery and gardening have in common, but clearly something, because one of the ladies there with a stall told me she was doing better than at Christmas. The ones with garden related items were doing really well. I don't think the people shopping at the show were in a thrifty mood. Mind you, to own a garden anywhere around Edinburgh you would need to be quite well heeled. You don't need to have your own debit card/credit card terminal. You can hire one at the show. I assume other shows work on much the same basis as the one up here.

I'm sure a lot of the customers there bought partly because they were captivated by the beauty all around them. Quality and gardening seem to go together. I saw some stunning hand made things. There was one guy there selling furniture made from planks like are used in scaffolding. £400 or thereabouts a pop and he wasn't short of customers.

Yes, dktreesea. Thats what I need investment for. We are talking £700-£1,000 per show in fee,s. So, its a big gamble for a small business with only £2,500 capital to cover those up front costs and to manufacture plenty of stock. I have a few shows to target in my area plus the main trade show in September. The September show usually has the main buyers from the garden centre chains and they have millions to spend for those with the right products.

As you suggest, there is a lot of money on offer at these shows for the right products. Its a captive audiance of like minded people who are looking for new ideas/products for their gardens. Garden centres are not just pots and flowers these days. Food, gifts, cloths and much much more is all part of the modern garden centre experience. Out-door living is a multi billion pound industry these days and people dont mind paying a high price for what they want. Key thing is being seen or you dont sell. Word in the ear of those who offer loans for those on NEA/Start-Up. Take a look at the product as well as the bsiness plan. Then back the business with enough money to make the business a success without having to go cap-in-hand for a second time after struggling for 6 months!

I,ve looked at Amazon Marketplace, tomterm8 but i,ve not tried selling on their yet. I see Amazon as still having the same issues for a new seller as with e-bay. Unless your an established seller with a very high ranking. Your going to struggle to sell in a very competitive area because your products are never going to be seen. 5,000 listing in my area of sales on e-bay at the moment and similar on Amazon! I can have the best product and at a cheaper price but if they are never seen. They will never sell. E-bay auctions have atleast give me a small window of opportunity when my listings have hit the front page of the listings shortly before the auction ends. In that small window of opportunity im able to make good sales. There really should be a workshop available about e-bay and Amazon sales for those doing NEA.

Andy2013, your ok. You just have a different experience of NEA to me and a different set of skills.

tomterm8

TrueBlue1965 wrote: »

I,ve looked at Amazon Marketplace, tomterm8 but i,ve not tried selling on their yet. I see Amazon as still having the same issues for a new seller as with e-bay. Unless your an established seller with a very high ranking. Your going to struggle to sell in a very competitive area because your products are never going to be seen. 5,000 listing in my area of sales on e-bay at the moment and similar on Amazon! I can have the best product and at a cheaper price but if they are never seen. They will never sell. E-bay auctions have atleast give me a small window of opportunity when my listings have hit the front page of the listings shortly before the auction ends. In that small window of opportunity im able to make good sales. There really should be a workshop available about e-bay and Amazon sales for those doing NEA.
.

My approach isn't, necessarily, to go for the most competitive (and, admittedly, lucrative!) phrases.

I'm in a very different industry than you, admittedly, I'm producing computer help guides. There are some hugely competitive topic areas out there such as say a book on how to use Microsoft word. (maybe not 5000 competitors, but once you've got more than 20 people ahead of you in the search you're doomed anyway) which I just don't touch.

But then again, there are entire topic areas that are empty of competition. For example there's a program called pogio which is project management software with over a million paid users... but no one's written any books on it at all!

(I can say that on this thread because I really doubt anyone's got the skills necessary to write the user guide and publish it on here, and I have a list of other more lucrative topics that could keep me busy for years)

Now... I don't know much about your field, but say it were garden tools.

If you go for garden tools on Amazon marketplace there are hundreds of thousands of competitors, if you go for hand garden tools there are tens of thousands, if you go for scythes there are 6. If you go for scythe snathes, there is only one competitor in wood and one in metal. That competitor offers a English style snathe. If you offer an Austrian style snathe you'd be the only person doing it on Amazon UK. Check for other keywords such as scythe handle which is searched for more frequently according to the google keyword tool.

Now... that's one product. Maybe it would sell five things a month. Maybe not. I don't know. It's not guaranteed, but it's likely that you'd not make a lot of money from it each month. On the other hand once you've got the listing up you only deal with orders when they happen, and you're working on listing the next product...

Maybe thinking about it, a scythe wet stone holder. You'd be able to get into contact the reseller of scythes in the uk and offer to sell them through his website.

dktreesea

TrueBlue1965 wrote: »

Yes, dktreesea. Thats what I need investment for. We are talking £700-£1,000 per show in fee,s. So, its a big gamble for a small business with only £2,500 capital to cover those up front costs and to manufacture plenty of stock. I have a few shows to target in my area plus the main trade show in September. The September show usually has the main buyers from the garden centre chains and they have millions to spend for those with the right products.

As you suggest, there is a lot of money on offer at these shows for the right products. Its a captive audiance of like minded people who are looking for new ideas/products for their gardens. Garden centres are not just pots and flowers these days. Food, gifts, cloths and much much more is all part of the modern garden centre experience. Out-door living is a multi billion pound industry these days and people dont mind paying a high price for what they want. Key thing is being seen or you dont sell. Word in the ear of those who offer loans for those on NEA/Start-Up. Take a look at the product as well as the bsiness plan. Then back the business with enough money to make the business a success without having to go cap-in-hand for a second time after struggling for 6 months!

I,ve looked at Amazon Marketplace, tomterm8 but i,ve not tried selling on their yet. I see Amazon as still having the same issues for a new seller as with e-bay. Unless your an established seller with a very high ranking. Your going to struggle to sell in a very competitive area because your products are never going to be seen. 5,000 listing in my area of sales on e-bay at the moment and similar on Amazon! I can have the best product and at a cheaper price but if they are never seen. They will never sell. E-bay auctions have atleast give me a small window of opportunity when my listings have hit the front page of the listings shortly before the auction ends. In that small window of opportunity im able to make good sales. There really should be a workshop available about e-bay and Amazon sales for those doing NEA.

Andy2013, your ok. You just have a different experience of NEA to me and a different set of skills.

How about expanding your range to include a few high quality day to day gardening items? Even if you only sold one or two a week, it would generate awareness of your business and may direct a few customers towards your own website, where you could have full on displays of the manufactured items you really want to sell?

In the computer sales industry, you do find sellers who have things like memory and blank CDs/ DVDs for sale even though there's so little profit in both nowadays they are not really worth the effort. But by having items like this on marketplaces like Amazon and Ebay they get some cash flow, a little bit of profit and exposure for the items they really want to sell, like motherboards, top quality disk drives and graphics cards. Their aim is to get PC builders to their website. They will sell these items directly through Amazon and EBay just for the exposure, but they don't want the second and third sales going through these marketplaces because they have to give away so much of their profit to use them.

dktreesea

tomterm8 wrote: »

My approach isn't, necessarily, to go for the most competitive (and, admittedly, lucrative!) phrases.

I'm in a very different industry than you, admittedly, I'm producing computer help guides. There are some hugely competitive topic areas out there such as say a book on how to use Microsoft word. (maybe not 5000 competitors, but once you've got more than 20 people ahead of you in the search you're doomed anyway) which I just don't touch.

But then again, there are entire topic areas that are empty of competition. For example there's a program called pogio which is project management software with over a million paid users... but no one's written any books on it at all!

(I can say that on this thread because I really doubt anyone's got the skills necessary to write the user guide and publish it on here, and I have a list of other more lucrative topics that could keep me busy for years)

Now... I don't know much about your field, but say it were garden tools.

If you go for garden tools on Amazon marketplace there are hundreds of thousands of competitors, if you go for hand garden tools there are tens of thousands, if you go for scythes there are 6. If you go for scythe snathes, there is only one competitor in wood and one in metal. That competitor offers a English style snathe. If you offer an Austrian style snathe you'd be the only person doing it on Amazon UK. Check for other keywords such as scythe handle which is searched for more frequently according to the google keyword tool.

Now... that's one produce. Maybe it would sell five things a month. I don't know. It's not guaranteed, but it's likely that you'd not make a lot of money from it each month. On the other hand once you've got the listing up you only deal with orders when they happen, and you're working on listing the next product...

Maybe thinking about it, a scythe wet stone holder. You'd be able to get into contact the reseller of scythes in the uk and offer to sell them through his website.

Could you expand into mobile phone help guides? The information available online about how to use the latest Blackberry Q10 is rubbish. It must be the least intuitive phone ever invented. Blackberry used to be good.:( There doesn't even see to be good videos on youtube on how to use it, much less a half decent manual.

I suppose part of the problem with having a phone hardly anyone has, as opposed to something like an iphone, is that places like youtube only pay around 60p per 1,000 hits. More if you have advertising?

Place2print

Hi all i have some major updates regarding the NEA scheme firstly the original loan provider has now stopped there partnership with the scheme and will not be providing any loans secondly Start up loans company is now the new provider to the scheme.

So what does this mean? Start up loans now credit check EVERY applicant and has requested further information from all applicants going forward this has made NEA come out with a new business plan template with 2 added sections "risk assessment" and "exit strategy" the Exit strategy is the interesting part they want you to explain how you will pay the money back if something happens (unforeseen circumstances) if this is in anyway doubted they will not offer the loan at all.

Alittle about my journey so far i have been on the scheme from April this year attended 3 of 3 meetings with my mentor had a solid business plan which keeps getting looked at each meeting with ridiculous changes to be made for the next appointment in 2 weeks e.g adding my business name to financials yeahh as if that will take 2 weeks lol


SUMMARY
1 lender is now refusing to lend new lender has stepped in with credit checks and risk assessments LOTS of people getting declined loans.

CONCLUSION
If you already have the money to crack on with your business just do it i needed upgraded equipment to produce a product i can sell

Another long winded ponzi government scheme that was not well thought out and is going to be non existent by 2015.

Andy2013

One way I attract customers on eBay and amazon is to have a few low priced items that make a very small profit, maybe just a break even, something to get there attention and then there is the possibility of them viewing and buying other times from the shop.

Years ago I tried to sell mobile phone accessories on eBay and the margins were awful, 30p mark-up , thousands of competitors and barely a sale a day.

With eBay a lot of sellers buy in bulk from abroad getting the stock very cheap , at times I couldn't even buy it at the price they were selling it for.

Needless to say it didn't last long but I learnt quickly that low mark up items need to be shifted by the billion to make any cash.

That said customers trust eBay and amazon more so than a personal website and over a 7 day listing I can get 400-500 views per item , something my website never got near to.

Place2print

If anyone would like the new May 2014 business plan template sent to them or would like to discuss the NEA scheme with me please feel free to PM me.

TrueBlue1965

Andy2013, if I get 50 views on an e-bay listing. Im doing well and the item is usually sold at my asking price. So, my issues is visability and being very low in the rankings.

Place2print, I think you or the NEA/Start-Up Loans providers are mixing things up over the NEA loan. The NEA loan is different and has very different terms and conditions. If your business plan and cash flow is excepted and signed off. Them, you will get your NEA loan. Start-Up Loan Company also do loans for those on NEA. However, the terms and conditions mean that you have to show proof of sales. Credit checks ect are another sticking point for those after a Start-Up Loan.

I went though all of this confussion in October before the new NEA providers of the higher NEA loan was known. Business Financial Solutions (North-West) took over as the higher NEA loan provider in my area. They now offer NEA loans and Start-Up Loans. I was talking to them yesterday about getting a higher loan A Start-Up loan! Nothing had changed. NEA loans are still available unless things have changed in the last 24 hours. You just have to be very specific about which loan it is that your after and dont allow them to get mixed up between the two schemes. You want the NEA loan and not a Start-Up Loan!!!

As for exit strategy. A £2,500 loan paid back over 3 years. 1st year its £12.53 per months. 2nd and 3rd year. Its £110.81 per month for 24 months. Its less than £25 per week. If your business goes under. You will pay the loan back out of JSA/benefits or from gaining paid employment!

The NEA business plan templates are all different depending on the scheme/area/provider. As an example. My providers business plan is acredited and is 20 pages long. Part of the process is attending 6 workshops. If you dont attend. You will struggle to have the business plan signed off. Other NEA providers seem to except something much simpler that covers a few pages of A4 and no workshops or the offer of a mentor.

Andy2013

Hey listen 50 views is still really good, remember if the price is right and the product is required you only ever need 1 view to sell the item.

If your getting 50 views per item give or take a few then actually I would say that your getting pretty good coverage , buyers are seeing your listings .

If those views are not turning into sales then maybe there is something else that needs adjusting, the high competition is never going to be easy to avoid in any business, you need a unique selling point.

tomterm8

dktreesea wrote: »

Could you expand into mobile phone help guides? T... is that places like youtube only pay around 60p per 1,000 hits. More if you have advertising?

It's hard to make money on youtube.

(It's relatively easier to make money writing books. There is much less competition, and you get 70% of the cover price on an ebook, maybe 15-25% of the cover price on a print book depending on distribution method. You can sell the books throughout America, europe, and through itunes the world)

Really not sure about expanding into mobile phone help guides... I think it's a great idea, but you'd need to get an agreement with blackberry in order to do it and my company would have to be more established before I think I could make
the agreement. (There are copyright and intellectual property implications with screenshots of commercial programs and hardware)