wantrepreneur no more!

[happybhoy]

Like many guys on here I've always known that one day I was gonna be an entrepreneur and for the last few years I've just kinda been waiting for that big idea to come to me.
I just graduated in the summer and its looking likely that I'm gonna have a good job starting this year.I know having a job isn't very fastlane but I think it'll be beneficial to my personal development.
The potential job offer isn't stopping me from starting my own business though, so I started this thread to push myself along and ask for advice in the process.

I started providing a little repair service over the last few weeks as a side/seed business to address the yearning to start my own business and earn a little extra dough to invest in any other ideas I had.
Reading TMF totally changed my business mindset. I always seem to come up with ideas which are really just creating a job for myself rather than a scalable business. Now with my new mindset I'm in the process of fastlaning my repair service up.
I am doing this by creating a website and providing a mail in repair service to the whole of the UK. Also to add more revenue potential I will be using third party repair companies and taking a referral/lead generation fee.

The first bit of advice I'm looking for is in relation to my referral service and how I should charge it out. Which one of these three methods of working is best?

1. Customer pays me the full cost of the service through my eccomerce site. I then arrange for the third party repair and forward the money to the 3rd party minus my cut when the customer is happy. The benefits would be the 3rd party gets a committed lead and the customer gets the most convenient service available. The downside would be increased accounting time.
2. The customer pays a "deposit" which is really just my referral fee on my site I then arrange the repair and they settle the rest of the bill themselves. This would be great for me as its the most passive but I'm not sure if customers would be happy with thus way of working and the 3rd party wouldn't have a fully committed lead.
3.the customer pays the the 3rd party directly after the repair but I only arrange the repair after the 3rd party pay me my referral fee. Less accounting but the 3rd party doesn't have a committed lead.

Which one would you chose? Or any other suggestions?

 

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[Actionary]

1. Customer pays me the full cost of the service through my eccomerce site. I then arrange for the third party repair and forward the money to the 3rd party minus my cut when the customer is happy. The benefits would be the 3rd party gets a committed lead and the customer gets the most convenient service available. The downside would be increased accounting time.
2. The customer pays a "deposit" which is really just my referral fee on my site I then arrange the repair and they settle the rest of the bill themselves. This would be great for me as its the most passive but I'm not sure if customers would be happy with thus way of working and the 3rd party wouldn't have a fully committed lead.
3.the customer pays the the 3rd party directly after the repair but I only arrange the repair after the 3rd party pay me my referral fee. Less accounting but the 3rd party doesn't have a committed lead.

#3: this turns you into being a worker for the 3rd party ( a commission based salesperson - you lose CONTROL if they dont want to boogey with you anymore - and you lose face with return customers. [why would they want a middleman])
#2: its about the same as #2, where you are reducing your control, and losing pull with customers.
#1 is the best option. -

What about the accounting work?

You should know already that you will have to keep good books of sales anyway. trying to make the customer pay you a referral fee (non-covertly) will not result in a lot of sales.

HIRE someone to keep the books. A simple google spreadsheet or exccel doc can do this. There are tons of Virtual assistants that can help you with this, and if you are not comfortable with that, you could hire locally.

TL:dR; fulfill the CENTS, forget the REST.

 

[happybhoy]

Number one is my preffered method. The other two were just ideas to make it more automated. Paying out monthly or even weekly, if I can, is hardly a big deal.
Right now I need to be attractive to repair men to get them to sign up.

 

[happybhoy]

Starting to have doubts about my idea. I'm not confident in my website and I was dissapointed in how keywords relating to this are performing.
One positive I have is that I'm finding it very easy to sign up third party repair companies, so at least I know I'm filling a need on their part. Now I just need to try and get customers to buy through my website.
I'm going to test my idea by doing an AdWords campaign focusing on 10 cities and see how I get on. I'll probably be back in a week with some data and a load of questions.

 

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[happybhoy]

First 24 hours testing my idea with AdWords. I put in a high bid and focused on three cities with a combined population of 2m+ and have had 1 click with 6 impressions.... Mind is already wandering.

 

[Chaseb731]

Take a look at likwid's thread. You'll see a point where he was wanting to quit, but he pushed through. Now look at him. Push through it and get a solid test round in.

 

[curran]

Maybe outsource technical parts of the website seo and adwords and even design of the website if the funds allow it.

Anyhow I really like the Idea of the business, I wouldn't worry about returning customers or being the middleman, I can definitly see the potential for getting repeat business.

Also love the profiler hon the bhoys!

 

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[happybhoy]

Hail hail.
I'll stick with it.

 

[stevethe bungee]

Hmm interesting, i think it could work well if set up properly. on a large scale this could be big but you need reliable guys doing the repairs and they need to hold the responsibility for any comebacks.

 

[happybhoy]

It turned out I had been reading the figures wrong. I thought they were real time but they were actually from the previous day, which only ran from two hours as I set it up in the evening. Figures for yesterday are a bit better.
I'm gonna try one of the no money down methods to see if I can get that elusive first order. Just keep tinkering until I find the winning formula.

 

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[happybhoy]

The last two days have been two days of solid procrastination. I've just been waiting to see how my AdWords campaign was performing and after a few tweeks here and there I can't get it to work.
The problem I'm having is that by trying to target specific areas I'm having to battle the people on google places and the guys at the top of the organic search as well as the local paid traffic. The cost per click just doesn't make paid traffic viable and I don't want to have to do SEO to get to the top of the listings in every area I'm targeting. For all I would be making on passing on jobs, I just don't think its worth it.

So, I've decided on a little change of direction. I'm gonna focus on my mail-in service and create a sales funnel around it. I'm going to target people searching "xxxxxx repair". I'm currently making a little " basics of xxxxxx repair" e-guide which I'm going to advertise and give it away on a landing page and capture peoples e-mail.
The idea of the e-guide is it will allow people to decide whether they can do the repair themselves or not. If they can I'm going to supply them the parts via drop ship, for the time being. If they don't think they can do it, they can send it in to me.
The e-guide will mean i also have a mailing list where I can try and sell other relevant products.
Let's see if I can actually get someone to me.