Hello all, i have been on these forums for around a year now and feel that finally i have some value to add /give back to everyone here. Around 5 months ago I decided to take some much needed action. Before this I had been itching to get going but everything seemed like it was holding me back lack of cash, work commitments etc etc etc... so i decided to invest a small amount of money to feed the crave and to "get going" also to get some experience dealing with manufacturers/wholesalers for when the "big idea" came along. The highlight of this to the people reading is that I have only ever invested £250 of my money into this so for anyone thinking they have not got the funds available ... you have. youve just take the plunge and see what happens.
So.. I began by selecting my niche and exploring products on Alibaba that i could buy for re-sale. After juggling a few products about I had decided on a product and was ready to message the manufacturers.
the first manufacturer got back to me and required a MOQ 300 which meant the total investment required was around £700... out of budget
the second manufacturer got back to me and again MOQ 300.. thinking this would be a usual pattern i then asked for a reduced amount of 100 and the price per unit sky rocketed and would mean very little profit gained per sale ...out of budget
the third manufacturer got back to me and I was able to order 100 units and had offered me 25 units of 4 different colours at a brilliant price! ... order placed
Whilst the order was being made I decided to get a social media feed going to drum up some interest in the target area , build up a site, get my listings ready for ebay , created my logo as i was branding the product, ordered my packaging so everything was ready for when the products arrived!
The day had come and my products had arrived, i opened the box and took them out... what a load of sh*t! they were awful (in my opinion) and were not fit for purpose. now i had 100 units that i thought were worthless and pretty much was ready to throw the towel in. however, after much consideration i decided to plan what i could do to improve what i had in front of me . so set about experimenting with different ways to iron out my products problems and eventually found that i could make the product re-sellable through an alteration although it would cost me around 5 minutes of extra time per sale. not happy that i had to do this I contacted the supplier on alibaba and managed to get a Skype call to him and explained the problems he fought his corner but eventually gave in and issued a $100 refund ( £250 investment down to £170 aprox.)
they were ready to sell! listings were up on ebay , website launched and social media feeds going. A whole week passed... absolutely nothing. i expected sales within the first day.. and after a week of no sales, crappy quality products and weakened motivation I was ready to quit. honest truth the next day I was going to remove the listings but finally a sale! it was the best feeling . total cost of a unit (including fees) £3.56 and i had just sold one for £13.99 with a profit of £10 i felt like i won the lottery .
after this I was getting sales every now and then but was still driven to keep going. I was also anticipating what reaction the customer would have about the product but they were loving the product which gave me more confidence. my main stream of sales came through eBay with only one sale through my website which had only been advertised through twitter.
after a month i had sold enough to order another 100 units and realising that the current supplier was my only choice we were able to iron the previous problems however other problems arose and he took ages to send them to me around, 2 months in fact, probably pissed that i had returned to him after asking for a partial refund on my first order and my orders were still only small. at this point i felt as though i was missing out of sales as 2 of my listing were out of stock but lesson learnt and i set my self an estimated re-stock date for future orders.
after 2 months i had sold all 100 units and made £1100 off the back of my £170 investment. with this money I brought a new product out and kept topping up old stock from the same supplier and the time taken to receive the products decreased because i was now investing more money.
anyway, at this point I was now sitting on top of ebay and all 5 products were in the top ten at least, so i decided to open an ebay shop to maintain my top spots . I also started exploring other sale sites and listed products on amazon and etsy. coming from the UK etsy was a great place for me to list and i sold £300 in 30 days to mainly american customers however others from belgium, france, costa rica and more. amazon took time to get going but after 2 months i managed to appear within the top 2 pages and finally made a sale after playing around with key words I'm hoping to improve this within the next year and produce matching sales to that of ebay.
a few months on I am now turning over £800 a month comfortably and re-investing every penny back into the business . my main targets are to hit £2000 a month by next year and maybe even quit my job in a year or two but time will tell although i am very confident i will reach this.
i know its not a multi million pound business progress thread but to anyone who has bothered to read this it really doesnt take £5000+ initial investment to get going.
So.. I began by selecting my niche and exploring products on Alibaba that i could buy for re-sale. After juggling a few products about I had decided on a product and was ready to message the manufacturers.
the first manufacturer got back to me and required a MOQ 300 which meant the total investment required was around £700... out of budget
the second manufacturer got back to me and again MOQ 300.. thinking this would be a usual pattern i then asked for a reduced amount of 100 and the price per unit sky rocketed and would mean very little profit gained per sale ...out of budget
the third manufacturer got back to me and I was able to order 100 units and had offered me 25 units of 4 different colours at a brilliant price! ... order placed
Whilst the order was being made I decided to get a social media feed going to drum up some interest in the target area , build up a site, get my listings ready for ebay , created my logo as i was branding the product, ordered my packaging so everything was ready for when the products arrived!
The day had come and my products had arrived, i opened the box and took them out... what a load of sh*t! they were awful (in my opinion) and were not fit for purpose. now i had 100 units that i thought were worthless and pretty much was ready to throw the towel in. however, after much consideration i decided to plan what i could do to improve what i had in front of me . so set about experimenting with different ways to iron out my products problems and eventually found that i could make the product re-sellable through an alteration although it would cost me around 5 minutes of extra time per sale. not happy that i had to do this I contacted the supplier on alibaba and managed to get a Skype call to him and explained the problems he fought his corner but eventually gave in and issued a $100 refund ( £250 investment down to £170 aprox.)
they were ready to sell! listings were up on ebay , website launched and social media feeds going. A whole week passed... absolutely nothing. i expected sales within the first day.. and after a week of no sales, crappy quality products and weakened motivation I was ready to quit. honest truth the next day I was going to remove the listings but finally a sale! it was the best feeling . total cost of a unit (including fees) £3.56 and i had just sold one for £13.99 with a profit of £10 i felt like i won the lottery .
after this I was getting sales every now and then but was still driven to keep going. I was also anticipating what reaction the customer would have about the product but they were loving the product which gave me more confidence. my main stream of sales came through eBay with only one sale through my website which had only been advertised through twitter.
after a month i had sold enough to order another 100 units and realising that the current supplier was my only choice we were able to iron the previous problems however other problems arose and he took ages to send them to me around, 2 months in fact, probably pissed that i had returned to him after asking for a partial refund on my first order and my orders were still only small. at this point i felt as though i was missing out of sales as 2 of my listing were out of stock but lesson learnt and i set my self an estimated re-stock date for future orders.
after 2 months i had sold all 100 units and made £1100 off the back of my £170 investment. with this money I brought a new product out and kept topping up old stock from the same supplier and the time taken to receive the products decreased because i was now investing more money.
anyway, at this point I was now sitting on top of ebay and all 5 products were in the top ten at least, so i decided to open an ebay shop to maintain my top spots . I also started exploring other sale sites and listed products on amazon and etsy. coming from the UK etsy was a great place for me to list and i sold £300 in 30 days to mainly american customers however others from belgium, france, costa rica and more. amazon took time to get going but after 2 months i managed to appear within the top 2 pages and finally made a sale after playing around with key words I'm hoping to improve this within the next year and produce matching sales to that of ebay.
a few months on I am now turning over £800 a month comfortably and re-investing every penny back into the business . my main targets are to hit £2000 a month by next year and maybe even quit my job in a year or two but time will tell although i am very confident i will reach this.
i know its not a multi million pound business progress thread but to anyone who has bothered to read this it really doesnt take £5000+ initial investment to get going.
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