Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Should you pay for the opportunity?

A lot of people are supplementing their entrepreneurial dreams with side sales such as Avon, Mia Bella candles, Noah’s Ark, etc. Sometimes these products can be a nice accompaniment to your business, such as, offering Noah’s Ark stuffed animals with a Bounce House business. Many of the sales programs are absolutely free to join, and others charge a small fee, so you may wonder if the fee-based programs are legitimate or worth your while.

I’m usually always preaching that you shouldn’t have to pay anything to make money, and that’s mostly true, especially when it comes to job applications or business opportunities – but I have to admit that its not ALWAYS true. You have to be smart, use your best discretion, and research. There actually ARE times when a small, reasonable fee is justified.

Someone just recently reminded me of a work at home company for which I briefly worked a few years ago, where I would process telephone orders for those As Seen On TV items and other infomercials. I sat in the comfort of my home and the company routed the phone calls to my telephone, and I made decent money doing it, but initially, I had to pay a small fee for the background check. I forget how much, something between $15 and $30, not much at all, and I made that back a hundred fold in a couple of months. In that case, I only paid for the company’s expense in doing the background check and giving me access to not only their copyrighted training materials, but also their database of corporate clients – a risky step on their part when you consider that I could have copied down that database and went off and started my own company. From what I heard, a few people actually attempted that very thing.

With some of the distributor and independent sales companies, they require that you purchase some sort of starter kit of samples that you will use to call on your leads. Even though you may have joined as someone else’s downline and they stand to gain a small commission off of your purchase, don’t let that stop you from examining the program more closely. Some of the programs, IN MY OPINION, are just way too overpriced and prohibitive to you getting started or making any profit of your own. I’ve seen some where the starter kits are upwards of $300 or more, then you make a paltry 10-15% per sale, on hard to move items, so you are more likely to end up stuck with a bunch of samples you don’t need, and out of hard earned money. But I do think that companies are justified in asking for something REASONABLE upfront, because not only does this help separate the serious, ambitious people from the ones who will just waste time and not put any effort into their business, but they are also giving you discount purchasing privileges to their inventory and access to their business materials. You pay a yearly membership fee to shop in certain warehouse clubs, well these companies are allowing you to purchase their products at deep discounts, and if it were just open sesame and everyone could become a distributor with no commitment, you could easily join, buy up their inventory at a discount, and then quit and resell the stuff on your own.

So don’t discount the company just because they require upfront money. Research the company thoroughly, see what other distributors are saying about them – do you find forums filled with unhappy sales agents? What are their complaints? Were they not able to turn a profit? No support from the organization? Do they feel that they were ripped off?

What are you getting for your membership fee? Is it a nice product package? Does it have resale value? Check out eBay also to see if others are selling/buying this package in case you quit the business and need to get rid of it.

Find several forums of other sales agents and mingle with them BEFORE you join. See what they are saying about the company. Don’t forget to check the BBB website for both your state and the US.

Is it a product that you have tried, love, and believe in? You can’t sell something you have no knowledge of or experience with, and definitely not something you have no passion for. Your love for the product will shine through in your sales pitch, so your sample kit will also allow you to formulate a clear opinion about the products. And if you’re a fan, the money you spent on the kit won’t be a waste because you can use it yourself or give it as gifts!

Monday, November 5, 2007

Really Broke Entrepreneurs TV?

It was suggested to me, so I've been really bouncing around the idea of Really Broke Entrepreneurs Television, but since an actual television show would cost me several thousand dollars, even on public access, the natural choice would be none other than YouTube. It would be so easy - and free. I already have the ideas and format laid out, and as usual, I've developed the whole program in my mind, but the reality is that right now, I just can't make the time commitment. However, YouTube is a excellent tool for all entrepreneurs to use for their business, especially broke ones - because its free! I think its time we start harnessing the power of this fabulous service and use it for good.

Think about how many times each week or even each day you are either emailed a link to a You Tube video you just "must see", or how many websites you visit where they have highlighted a particular Video of the Day to share with their visitors. It could be a funny video or a clip of an actual newsworthy event, but videos tend to spread as fast as email chain letters. And with YouTube serving at least 100 million videos per day, I can't even imagine what that translates into in terms of actual visitors. You only need a small percentage of that to view your offering, and like it, and then share it with their friends.

Everything is popping up on YouTube these days and I'm really interested in how its gone from just a fun, social site to a serious business tool. Major companies are using it to promote their own products by uploading videos or commercials targeted to the YouTube crowd. What's been most exciting to me is the way bloggers have taken to creating video blogs to accompany their entries so you can share a more personal audience with your favorite blogger. One great example is low carb diet expert Jimmy Moore, who now does regular videos of himself (and wife Christine) preparing low carb meals or conducting an interview with another person of interest to his readers. It adds yet another dimension to the entire blogging experience and broadens your overall exposure and reach!

Did I mention that YouTube is free? Of course, they're not the only free video sharing site around, but right now they've got a lead over the others because they're the first and the most well known, and they currently have the largest number of users. I've seen some video sites where you can't comment or vote on the videos, so the experience is pretty much one-sided, but at YouTube, not only can you get feedback from the viewers but you can include links to your site and other information about yourself and your business that will help drive viewers from YouTube to your own website.

I suggested to a cake decorating friend that she set up a YouTube channel and show videos of herself creating some of her artistry, then discuss techniques and interesting stories from behind the scenes of this growing industry. I thought it would be a great way to build an audience and get exposure for her business, especially since she plans to ship her fake cakes all over the world. She hasn't put my idea into action yet, but a quick search on YouTube uncovered many others who had the same idea, and one in particular has had over 45,000 views of their cake decorating tips.

So how can you use this in your business? The same way you would use a blog. If you're selling a product, create some videos that show you demonstrating the product, or put together your own mini infomercial of others using your product and giving testimonials. Dress up your video with background music, graphics, and opening and closing credits. If you need help with this, don't hesitate to enlist the aid of the nearest teenager with a video camera - which, these days, should be just a stone's throw away! You can easily edit your video with Windows Movie Maker, a free program included with Windows.

You can also make video commercials for your service business, or create a commercial to drive traffic to your website. Have fun with it and come up with some creative ways to use this in your business. Think of it as having the keys to your local television station - and you can go on the air and do whatever you want to do without worrying about how much this is going to eat into your budget.

I'm really liking the idea of Broke Entrepreneur TV. I can just see myself interviewing local successful entrepreneurs for their backstory on how they started with next to nothing, and having them give tips to my viewing audience. Maybe even take some questions ahead of time by email. It could be a lot of fun as well!

If video doesn't interest you, next time, we'll look at how you can use podcasts to effectively market your business.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Wait...Backup...Now, Go!


You'd think I would have learned to practice what I've preached all these years - I'm always telling people to back up their data, purchase an external hard drive or backup system, or just burn it to CDs - but somehow I neglected to backup my own. As fate would have it, my computer crashed a couple of weeks ago and took several gigs of not just data but my precious years of mp3s! Actually, I'm not sure which loss hurts me the most, the data, or my music! Oh, but the story gets better, shortly after the desktop computer crashed, forcing me to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows, my laptop also shut down on me and just refused to boot up again, even with the power cord plugged in. Searching online for possible answers, it seems the problem with the laptop could be the power supply, which is going to run me at least $150, in addition to the new battery pack that it already needed, that's another $150.

My laptop had all of the same software as my desktop, and also a separate collection of several thousand mp3s, but I can't access any of that until I shell out some money. I'm working again on the desktop PC but I haven't reinstalled any software because I'm hoping to get the data professionally recovered, and reinstalling any software or saving files will overwrite what still resides on the hard drive. So I'm working bare bones right now.

I figured this was a perfect time to remind everyone to BACK THAT THANG UP! lol Don't end up nearly in a heap of tears as I was. You would have thought a relative died, who knew one could be so attached to files???? As time goes by with no recovery, I'm starting to let go of it in my mind, a little bit at a time. With every day, I find myself thinking, well, I could possibly recreate/rewrite/redownload that, but while I could maybe survive without what I lost, my kids had some things on that computer that they are pretty hurt about and I would feel bad at not at least attempting to recover their things.

Professional data recovery is no joke either. I'm looking at prices ranging from $150 to as high as $800, depending on the amount of data to be recovered. What I'm leaning toward right now is purchasing two replacement computers, one desktop and one laptop, and then letting them both go to the shop, so I'm not under a crunch to get them out.

Here's the thing though, this PC actually crashed on me about three years ago, and I found this wonderful program called Easeus Data Recovery for less than $100. I was skeptical at first but I tried the trial and I got excited when during the initial scan I could SEE my missing data flashing past me on the screen, so obviously everything was still there. This must be how criminals are caught - you never completely ERASE anything from your computer! Even if I were to overwrite it by rebuilding the system right now, let me commit a crime and CSI could still get my files back! Anyway, I sprung for the software and ran it with my heart caught in my throat - and it WORKED. Just beautifully. It took a couple of hours to complete but I think it recovered close to 100% of my files. About 20% of them were dumped into a folder called Raw Files because the software couldn't identify them, but I could easily see what they were and I just needed to sit and rename them all.

You would think I had learned my lesson then, right? I should have ran out and bought a backup system three years ago, but that kept getting pushed to the bottom of list of To Dos, Not wanting to spare the $150 bucks - and the price on external hard drives has dropped tremendously, along with everything else, so now I can get a 500 gig USB hard drive for as low as $130. Still, you can't put a price on something like this, I should have paid for the external drive years ago, and I wouldn't be here now.

Anyway, I pulled out my Easeus software, which I kept on a flash drive because you can't recover from the same drive from which you run the program - but it keeps getting to a point in the recovery where it freezes and then restarts itself. I wrote to technical support - excellent and prompt, by the way, and they want me to send screen shots and logs, so hopefully they will have a solution and not tell me that the disk is damaged and I'll have to take it in to a professional. I'm hoping to avoid that, but if I can't, I'll stop fighting it and drop it off somewhere.

I still recommend the Easeus software because it does work, they have excellent support and free upgrades, for about $86. Also, the external or portable hard drives are so cheap that you absolutely need one so you can just unplug it from your computer and take it to another system and keep working. My plan is to install both my software and save my files to the external, because its a pain to reinstall and reconfigure all of those, but at the very least, get one and keep your files on it, because software is always replaceable, data is not.

The absolute cheapest option for saving data only is a 2 GB flash drive for about $25, or 1 GB for even less. I carry around a couple of 512MB drives and they hold a LOT of files, but you may need a few of them if you're going to store mp3s on them. However, as I said, they're the cheapest option, even if you have to purchase one 2GB drive a month and keep them organized, anything is better than nothing. It can be a pain, however, to remember to unplug them wherever you use them, because I've encountered and read about problems with the USB ports from leaving them plugged in, and I've often left mine plugged in at work accidentally.

Burning to data CDs might actually be cheaper, and again, something is better than nothing, but I would try to avoid this because its time consuming and the CDs can be scratched and damaged unless you're extraordinarily careful with them. Speaking of cds, with all of this technological progress, when is someone going to come out with scratch-free CD-Rs????

Oh, I put up the Joomla blogsticker because I have article about Open Source software that I have to rewrite (sigh), but I'll try to get that one up this weekend.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Are you throwing your ideas away?

I'm so sorry for the delay in updating, but I got sidetracked by a beauty called Joomla. Why didn't someone tell me about this before? I've spent hundreds of dollars and hours on software and training to do what Joomla does for me effortlessly, but at the same time, if web development continues to progress in this direction, there won't be much need for designers. Programmers maybe, but only for tweaking because the design work is progressively being simplified into push button interfaces that a 12 year old could navigate. I don't know if that's good or bad, considering I owe more in student loans than I'm currently earning - and then Joomla comes along and says, degrees? Ha!! Just click here and it'll all be fine....

I don't want to harp too much on this because its been a hot story lately and everyone's covered it. But there's still people that I speak with who haven't heard of Ashley Qualls and amazing story of how she turned $8 into a million dollar website - all before the age of 17. Go to FastCompany for a great profile on young Ashley, and then check out doshdosh's analysis on her entrepreneurial and internet strategies. In a nutshell, Ashley was a typical teenager using MySpace where she was creating layouts for her friends. The layouts were so popular, that she put together a website to upload them and allow others to use them for free. Word spread quickly and traffic literally exploded until Ashley had to face the fact that she had unwittingly created a monster - that monster that most of us dream about creating, one that would even best Oprah.com in Google rankings.

What Ashley did with Whateverlife.com wasn't complicated. She took a simple idea, something she loved doing and imagined others would love to, and she acted on it. The rest is history. And she did it all with merely $8 for her domain name. She says that she has not spent one dime on advertising, and she originally afforded her webhosting by providing web design services for the company. This is a most incredible example of what a broke entrepreneur can accomplish with little or nothing.

How many ideas have you had that you passed on? How many did you believe in for a day or so, and then either convince yourself that it would never work, or you listened to others who laughed at it and told you not to quit your day job?

One of the most amazing things about the internet is how it opened up the opportunity for virtually any and everyone to TRY. Anything. For less than the cost of a tank of gas, you can purchase a domain name, secure webhosting, launch your business and as they say, see if it flies. Of course, you'd have to apply some marketing and SEO techniques to generate traffic, but you will have taken the steps to make it happen, and not just dream about it.

I carry a composition book around with me where I jot down my ideas all day. No matter how impossible the thought or how undeveloped, I write it down and review it later. Sometimes I scratch them out, sometimes I combine them with others and go in an entirely different direction, but I'm dedicated to not letting any more ideas just slip through my fingertips. I was in the habit of grabbing domain names whenever the thought crossed my mind and it was available, so at one point I had collected nearly 50 that I was simply holding on to. Finally, I decided to let some expire. Now the smart thing to do would have been to AUCTION them off to the highest bidder, but this was one of those times I just wasn't thinking clearly. One of them I dropped was leaveawish.com, which I originally planned to develop as a site where people could post their wishes and have an anonymous benefactor help them out by either donating to their cause or supplying them with other necessary resources. Out of curiousity I later went back to check to see if I could renew leaveawish, and found to my dismay that it was now owned by some megamillion dollar ebusiness investment firm. I was literally nauseous thinking that if they wanted that name, it must be worth something, and I had passed it off, putting it right into their hands.

That's when I purchased the composition book and I've been writing in it ever since. When I read stories like Ashley's, it reminds me of all of the simple ideas that I've thrown away for lack of time or motivation. It's not always the money that keeps success from just within our reach - sometimes its just us and our lack of action. It was Helen Keller who first said, "Ideas without action are worthless", so today, I'm instituting the first principle to follow for all Broke Entrepreneurs - TAKE ACTION. Whatever you're thinking of, take at least one step per day towards making it happen. Even if that first step is buying a composition book. Oh, and a nice pen. Something about nice new pens just make you want to write - don't you agree?

Monday, September 24, 2007

Burning Questions: Broke Entrepreneur Q&A, #2

I'm back with another Q&A, this time from Claire, who asks:

"What is an Entrepreneur, is it just somebody out to make lots of money? Or is it a more creative thing? How would you define it?"

There are many ways to define an entrepreneur. Certainly, the financial exploits are a large part, if not always the number one desired goal of any entrepreneurial pursuit. But I tend to think that entrepreneurism conveys a much deeper meaning than just profit, because for most people it fulfills a deeper need to be in control, to be in charge of their own destiny, and/or create a change or impact the world in some manner.

Entrepreneurs share a lot of the common characteristics of trailblazers, inventors, and philanthropists, and are most often a bit of each wrapped into one. While the ultimate goal is of course financial success, the lack thereof doesn't stop the pursuit, because a person who is committed to entrepreneurism will just move on to another challenge, undaunted by any previous failures, stopping just a moment to brush off his or her shoulders and then set pen to paper to begin again.

And this is all just my take on it, I'm sure others may see it differently, and that's the whole point - I think you have the ability to define yourself as an entrepreneur if you feel so moved, and no one can legitimately dispute that because no one can argue what your plans are or what your dreams are, regardless of what you may be doing today. Personally, I'm forever off on a chase, feverishly writing down plans, drawing layouts and charts for the way things SHOULD work if I just do A, B, or C. In my mind, I'm an entrepreneur, albeit, a broke entrepreneur, but to others that have no idea what I have planned, if I was to state that I consider myself an entrepreneur, they would immediately wonder, where is the money? Where is the business and the success? Because that's what it comes down to for everybody looking in - only results speak to them. But for the entrepreneur, real results may be years away - and its the constant pursuit of those results that define the entrepreneur.

Wikipedia has a great entry on the word Entrepreneur, which lists personality characteristics as written in 1986 by John G. Burch in Business Horizons. I won't quote them all here, I encourage you to follow the link and read the list in its entirety, but the ones that most spoke to me were:

Nurturing quality: Willing to take charge of, and watch over a venture until it can stand alone.

Reward orientation: Desire to achieve, work hard, and take responsibility, but also with a commensurate desire to be rewarded handsomely for their efforts; rewards can be in forms other than money, such as recognition and respect.

Optimism: Live by the philosophy that this is the best of times, and that anything is possible.

I can identify with each of these. I'm often approached by family and friends with a business idea, and while they may only have developed the shell of the plan, I will take it and run with it, and by the time we speak again I've designed their logo, threw up a starter website, researched the market and even drafted a business plan! And I have no financial interest in their project whatsoever, I just want it to work for them, and I may be a bit of a control freak too, lol. So I hand it all over, expecting them to be as excited for themselves as I am already for them, but they've already either discarded the idea or put it on the back burner. At any rate, I've extended myself as much as I could and I'm still only a phone call away. I do it because its fun, it excites me, and I've planted the seeds they brought me - whether or not they water them, that's up to them at that point, but I've enjoyed myself being a part of it!

That's also why I do this blog. It's certainly not for profit - but I won't turn my nose up at it either! I'm no fool! But I do it because I love the whole process and I want to stretch the possibilities, even if I'm not the one in the driver's seat. If I can deliver information to you that can help you get over a hurdle and move your plans forward, then it is all worth every minute I spend on this.

Readers, what do you think defines an entrepreneur? I'd love to hear your interpretations.

Thanks so much for your question, Claire! I hope my answer was at least somewhere close to what you had in mind!

Please visit Claire's blog, A Little Piece of Me, and check out her gorgeous photography and random thoughts.

If you have any questions for me, please send them to denise@brokeentrepreneurs.com and I'll include them in a future Q&A!

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Creating a (free) buzz with Yahoo Answers

Ruck at Cashtactics.net has written a fantastic, free, downloadable eBook that describes his system for using Yahoo Answers to generate traffic and sales for his business. I've read it, and I think he covers some great points overall, and I also appreciate that he cautions about using the service for spam and just mindless blanketing of your advertising. I worry about people reading his advice and taking it to the extreme and doing just that, but I'm certain that Yahoo has - or will have - a system in place to deal with such as necessary. BTW, Cashtactics is an awesome blog that I highly recommend for internet marketing advice, he definitely knows of what he speaks!

A lot of people either aren't aware of Yahoo Answers, or maybe know of it but never spent any real time there. Let me tell you, it's very addictive and if you're not careful, you can get stuck there for hours. It's a different kind of social networking, less for the soul than for the brain. Basically, people ask questions, and people answer questions. In a nutshell. It's totally free with a Yahoo account, and the beauty in this for you, the broke entrepreneur, is that if you're smart (and I know you are!), you can easily become an authority on your industry (or any other topic you choose) and spread your knowledge throughout the Yahoo Answers community, while helping people with their concerns, and advertising your business, website or blog at the same time - totally free. It's a wonderful thing.

It's the perfect hangout for Resident Smartypants such as myself who sometimes have all of the answers - and yet other times I have nothing but questions! Ruck tells you how to take it a bit further by applying some little known SEO tricks to the process and turning it into a virtual marketing goldmine. Play it right though, and even a little bit of participation will reap big rewards.

Yahoo Answers might prove to be so habit-forming that you won't even notice that you're actually doing promotion because you're having so much fun. Download and read Cashtactics eBook, read the rules at Yahoo Answers, then jump in and make it work for you. Just remember to be helpful and focused at all times, don't spam or inject your link where its not wanted, and keep in mind that there is no need to dig for opportunities to promote, there are literally hundreds of thousands of questions waiting to be answered at all times, so you're certain to find one that requires your type of expertise!

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Joining the "You Comment, I Follow" Movement

Yes, I'm joining, so that's why I have one of the cool logos!

What it is, for those unfamiliar, is that I've edited my blog layout to remove the No Follow tags, so that search engines will follow links in the comments that are left here by the readers. I highly encourage comments and I welcome linkbacks to your blogs or websites. If its relevant, it can do nothing but share more information and add to the resources I like to provide. If its spam, then I will of course remove it. I don't see it being a problem unless I get bombarded and I would have to switch to moderation, which I really don't like to do, so lets hope it leads to good things.

To learn more, and have it explained much better than I could, please click here!

Diary of an eBay Store, Part 1

I'm the type of person that has to do things RIGHT. And I don't just mean, "okay, it's good now" type of RIGHT, I mean, nitpicking analistic (is that even a word?) nearly obsessive perfectionist type of RIGHT. As a result, it takes me long to do things than it should - but when I do it, it's RIGHT. You can imagine that that has its advantages and disadvantages.

This eBay store challenge has turned into one of those RIGHT things. I've done so much research into this that I think I've earned a degree. Matter of fact, there does exist eBay University, for whatever its worth.

I wanted, first of all, to read about what real eBay store owners were thinking, doing, complaining about, so I could bring those experiences into my own process. That's important, you don't go into anything with just your own dreams and visions - you need to tap into the pulse of the current consumers and the people behind the wheel. I hung out in the eBay forums, where you can find Discussion boards on every topic from Buyer/Seller complaints to Technical issues to locating collectibles worldwide. I'd venture to say that pretty much ANY question you might have about eBay is answered in these forums, and if you don't find an answer - ask the question and you're guaranteed to get a response within minutes. In addition to the discussion boards, there's now eBay blogs, which operate somewhat similar to other blogs except you can direct link them to your auctions. So in effect, you can blog about your store and your auctions, drop articles and reviews on your own inventory, and then send them quickly to your store to make the purchase. Love. It. Very nice upgrade.

Having already been an eBay member for some seven years now, I'd used the boards in the past, but there's always something new to learn there, especially if you're running active auctions because you can be alerted about potential scammers or buyers to watch out for. It's also good to read about the most common complaints regarding eBay services such as the eBay stores, and see what the other store owners are experiencing. I noticed that people often close their stores and reopen them at later dates - and this is important, because you don't want to feel that you've gotten into something that you can't get out of. Which, if you sign up with some other ecommerce solutions, you're signing up and paying for a year in advance and you may have to haggle over refunds or discontinuing billing. The eBay store is a monthly fee, and as long as you cancel before your new billing cycle, there seems to be very few issues with closing the account. If you decide to reopen later, just return to the link, reactivate, and reopen as usual. Sellers seem to do this if sales are low and they don't want to pay the associated fees if there's no revenue, makes perfect sense, and its great that you can easily back in and out of this without feeling like you bought a car.

What I really should have done, ideally, was spend 3-6 months collecting the Hot items files and analyzing them for obvious trends, so I would really be able to target my best potential for sales. You can't come to any conclusions off of one report, or two, and three will only get you close to the truth. Just because something is selling big in July, doesn't mean it will still be hot in August. And if you look at the reports during the Christmas season, you will see totally different products at the top of the list, as well as if you look during the summer months as opposed to the winter. So if you want to do this RIGHT, I suggest you take your time, pull the Hot Items reports for at least 2-3 months and take a look at how the top sellers fluctuate. You will notice some things may always be in the Hot list, such as children's clothing, designer clothing in particular, and certain electronics will always be steady sellers, such as computer peripherals and portable audio players. Collectibles climb higher on the list as you near the holiday season, as well as jewelry, and arts and craft supplies. This is only what I've discerned from past experience, the discussions in the forum, and old reports. My idea of, 'let's just open an eBay store' would have been fine if all you wanted was an eBay store, but if you want an eBay store that actually makes a profit, then you'll want to do the research first.

I see so many stores selling the SAME products, at nearly the SAME prices, and some of the items they have for sale, you have to wonder - what gave them the idea that this would sell? Of course, there's always a buyer for something that most other people wouldn't look twice at, but when you're putting your time and energy into a storefront, you want to turn a regular profit, not just move one or two items a month. If you spend some time looking at what other sellers are having success with, and what they're losing money and time on, you can avoid those problems with your own store.

I should note that there are a few requirements that you need to meet in order to qualify for an eBay store, but they are rather simple. You need to be an eBay Seller, with a feedback score of at least 20. This requires that you verify your identity by providing your home address and phone number, as well as credit card and banking information. This goes a long way to protect your buyers and help establish your credibility as a seller, but, as you know, on the internet, there's always people who find a way around the system. You also need to open a Paypal account, if you haven't already, and that account must be verified and in good standing, meaning, Paypal has ran the necessary checks to ensure your account is legitimate and you are qualified to accept payments.

In Part 2, I will wrap up the process of opening the store, but also cover inventory, deciding whether to dropship or resale wholesale products, and how to determine true wholesale suppliers.

Coming up, I have a personal profile of a real live Broke Entrepreneur! This is my first of several profiles of people who successfully built their businesses using their own resources and funding, while living paycheck to paycheck! First up is a woman who turned her passion for unique handbags into a small creative business of handmade fashionable bags and accessories, and sells them both through her website and other offline methods.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Always Be Selling!

Promoting Your Online Business - Offline

Often, I'm asked what can people do to market their business BESIDES the internet? After I pick my jaw up off the floor - because we know there's nothing besides the internet, right? :) But really, you can't be online all the time (I know, I've tried), and a lot of people don't have access to broadband or high speed internet, so their marketing activities may be curtailed a bit by such limitations. However, to be successful in any type of business, you have to Always Be Selling - whether you're pushing a product, or offering a service - Always Be Selling, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your online banner ads and link campaigns may work for you while you sleep, but there's another component of marketing that you shouldn't miss out on - the offline promotion of online businesses.

Recently, a local dating website launched and placed little white signs at nearly every street corner in this area. You couldn't miss them and you couldn't help your eyes being drawn to them as you sat at the traffic lights waiting to proceed. They were really simple signs with just their web address printed in black ink on bright white card stock, but their URL was burned into my brain for weeks after. At one point, they all disappeared, and then they would pop up again - I'm guessing that they violated an ordinance about public displays and they were ordered to remove them. But in true guerilla marketing fashion, it was worth the risk in their minds, because the impact that the signs made in that short time outweighed whatever fees they may have had to pay, and the fees were most certainly less than that same amount of exposure would have cost them in the traditional methods of advertising. I'm certainly not advocating that anyone break the law, but as a Marketing major, I admit to being impressed at how quickly they covered and concentrated their market, and that likely translated into hundreds of new customers.

What this means for you, is that you should do it the legal way - find out what your local ordinances are regarding posting signs and if possible, go to a print shop and have a batch of weatherproof flyers and durable yard signs made up that announce your website. (If you print the flyers yourself, purchase clear plastic covers to encase them in before you post them outside, they'll last longer!) Make sure the words are clear and visible to a person passing by in a car, so that they don't have to squint to read it and risk an accident. I've spotted a number of signs on telephone poles as I'm driving by, and they look interesting, but the print is too small for me to read, so I miss the message. Take both walkers and drivers into consideration when putting together this type of marketing blitz.

Business cards are still a valuable marketing tool because you have the opportunity to market to everyone, not just those with a computer. Not only can you hand them to people you encounter throughout the day, but you can stick them on store bulletin boards (I'm one of those that actually read those), include them in mailers, and even drop them at restaurants and diners to win free meals AND have your card prominently displayed for a week or two. Strive to move beyond the plain, static black and white cards. There are so many options for business cards that will really WOW your audience by presentation alone, so be creative and go for high impact color, designs, and even humor, where appropriate - and be sure to put your URL and email on the card. Don't let your card get tossed in a purse or a desk drawer, make it a card that people want to look at, keep around and share with others.

Think about how many hours per day you spend in your car - how many people do you think read your license plate in one day? It's a natural habit of both drivers and passengers to read the back of your car when they're behind you on the road, that's how bumper stickers were born, but that information likely doesn't stick, its just their eyes automatically scanning the back of your car and taking in that little bit of useless data. I think one of the coolest products to take advantage of that advertising space on the back of your car is the I.D. It! Plate. These sleek gold or chrome letters spell out your company name and/or website, and they are very classy and sophisticated looking, much less gaudy than those magnetic vinyl signs that look like you're driving a fleet car. I love the mystery of these because they emblazon your website in the viewer's mind and then they've got to get to a computer to see who and what it all means. Check out I.D. It! Plates - they're under $50 and delivery is FREE.

Another tip for offline promotions is to be aware of opportunities to donate within your community - its a great way to give back and at the same time, get a little bit of publicity for your business. Be on the alert for schools or churches seeking donations for projects - usually they will ask for either money or items purchased in the form of gift cards, or toy drives, etc. They usually publish the names of the donors and there you have achieved a double bonus of goodwill and exposure, at very little cost.

If you sell a hands-on product and your town has trade centers, otherwise known as flea markets or swap meets, inquire about pricing for booths, tables or tents. Often, the space on the parking lot is free or deeply discounted if you supply and set up your own tent. Rates for booths will vary, but locally, one of the trade centers rents booths inside the air conditioned building for as low as $15 per day, and they are only open Friday through Sunday. This is ideal if you know you will sell enough product to justify the cost. With thousands of visitors daily, you are almost guaranteed to find it worth your while. I know a lot of people that sell Stuff a Friend kits or candles, and they get a very good return on their small investment in the booth. Even if you don't have an actual product, consider setting up an Information Booth to distribute promotional materials that advertise your services. Set your booth up to be appealing and offer something that will attract the passerbys so you can get your materials in their hands - refreshments are generally a good bet!

Along those same lines, check out citywide or school sponsored craft shows or Mom2Mom sales, if you have a product that will interest that audience. Table rentals for these events is always very reasonable, somewhere around $20-30, and again, you've got a steady stream of people whose eyes will land on your product or information. Be sure to have an adequate supply of advertising materials and handouts so you don't have to close your station early because of a lack of supplies.

One note here though - I've seen in a few forums where people suggest that if you don't want to sit in the booth or tent all day, toss yours or a neighbor's kid a few dollars and have them babysit the operation. I can't express to you strongly enough what a BAD idea this is. If I stop at your booth and some kid tells me they're just sitting in for you and they know nothing about the business, I won't come back. Ever. You don't want to lose customers by not having enough respect for your business to provide a knowledgeable representative. Put up an "Out to Lunch" or "Back In a Minute" sign, if necessary to take a break, but represent your company properly at all times.

These are just a few of the ways you can create buzz for your online business by working it offline. I'm sure you will be able to pinpoint many more once you are tuned into looking for opportunities when you step away from your computer. Remember, Always Be Selling!

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Coming Soon: The Diary of an eBay Store

Just a quick update - I'm almost ready to start putting up the posts on my experience with opening and building an eBay store. I had planned to put up the first one today, but I haven't edited it yet and I need to make sure it's correct before I publish it. Then a colleague of mine passed me a tip on yet another online store possibility, so now I have to review that one and include it in the series. I had no idea that so many of these opportunities existed!

In the meantime, you can now sign up to get updates delivered to your email! Use the Subscribe Now button on the lower right, its quick and easy, and no spam, just feeds directly from Really, Really, Broke Entrepreneurs.

And thanks to everyone for the terrific feedback and suggestions for how I can improve the site. I read everything, positive or negative, and I appreciate your interest in taking the time to contact me. It helps me develop topics for future entries, so keep it coming! To reach me, use denise@brokeentrepreneurs.com, or simply leave a comment.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Burning Questions: Broke Entrepreneur Q&A

This is the first of several Q&A entries I'm going to post, based on questions I've received on the topic of being a broke entrepreneur.

Up first is a question from Broke Entrepreneur reader, Brian:

It's been brought up before, but what's the best/most effective sort of free advertising around? I mean really free: $0.00 USD!

Of course there are many ways to market your business, but as a broke entrepreneur, you have to think both creatively and efficiently, so you maximize your efforts while minimizing your cost. Traditional advertising outlets, such as newspaper, radio and television, are very expensive yet still do the best job of reaching segments of your core audience, but they do not have the reach of the internet. Whether your business is an online store or a lawn service company, you can widen your market - or deepen your customer base with today's free internet tools.

Right now - and I say that because things are always changing, evolving - but right now, the best marketing tool for a broke entrepreneur is a blog, much like this one. Unlike websites that require a professional designer and/or knowledge of coding, a domain name and website, and then a marketing campaign on top of it - most blogs are free, take only minutes to create, and some portion of your marketing is already built in. The current climate is such that audiences are very receptive to blogs and savvy business owners are using their blogs as entry points to the total package, such as the company website or an online store.

A blog is perfect to introduce your product or service first, and then use regular entries to highlight and discuss specific topics to which you want to draw attention. Cleverly written articles and product profiles will keep your readers visiting often; ensuring it is fresh and dynamic will give you favor with the search engines, and later you can link off from your blog to a professional website and/or ecommerce store.

For instance, a colleague of mine makes dolls as a hobby, and a while back she had an active website but never found the type of traffic that she needed to keep it viable. If she were to try it again with a blog, she could write articles about locating the best deals on dollmaking supplies, or using environmentally-friendly products in dollmaking, and she could upload videos of herself in the work room creating a doll, and also include a link to her online store. In addition to building an audience of regular readers who will grow to respect and actively seek out her advice, many of them will naturally click to visit her eBay store and make a purchase. Her cost for marketing and promotion? ZERO.

The unique thing about blogs when compared to websites is also the proliferation of blog directories, social bookmarking sites and RSS data feed services. You will still need to submit to the search engines (or use one of many free submission services), and you have literally hundreds of blog listing sites at your disposal, where you can list your blog and connect with new readers and potential clients. Registration with social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Technorati allow your readers to easily share your blog with thousands of others with just a click, which give you an even bigger audience as your articles become "favorited" and acquire high ratings.

Two of the most popular free blogs are Blogger and Wordpress, but a quick Google search will yield hundreds more that offer various features and degrees of affordability. If you're thinking of starting a blog, visit a few of them and look around to see which one will fit your needs.

So that's my choice for the best marketing tool for any business. That is, until something better comes along!

Thank you for your question, Brian.

Please visit Brian's blogs, Starting a Small Business Without Losing My Mind , and Apathetic Lemming of the North, a blog about, well, blogging!

If you have any questions for me, please send them to denise@brokeentrepreneurs.com and I'll include them in a future Q&A!

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Freebies (and cheapies)!

I searched for and compiled a short list of freebies - useful things that could help you with business marketing and development. There's a lot of free "junk" out there, so I tried to only list things that were really, truly, free, or the cost was negligible, for instance, a small shipping fee. Be aware though, that anything free, will likely want your email or home address for future advertisements - they have to get SOMETHING out of the deal.

Don't forget to download the totally free eBooks listed in the right column, including the Really, Really Broke Entrepreneurs ebook which contains detailed information on the basics of starting a business. In addition, the other books cover everything from search engine optimization to personal motivation strategies that help you stay focused on your goals.

Books & Magazines
Home Business - Free one year subscription to this dynamic publication covering all of the important facets of running a home business, including franchising opportunities, startup and financing advice, and much, much more.

Black Enterprise Magazine - Complimentary one year subscription to the premier publication of industry profiles, success strategies and the keys to entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneur Business Book Bundles - Entrepreneur magazine is offering free business book bundles, you pay only S&H. There are two bundles of 10 books each, one is Start & Run Your Business, and the other is Manage & Grow Your Business. Shipping is $39, but for 10 books with a retail value of nearly $200, that's less than $4 each for such titles as Writing Killer Sales Proposals, Stay Out of Court, and Powertools for Women in Business. Order a bundle and share it with a fellow entrepreneur.

Marketing
PR.com - Big businesses send out press releases - why don't you? A great way to get the word out about your company, special promotions, position changes and more. PR.com offers free press releases for your business promotions, and they do all of the work to distribute the information throughout media outlets.

Free Business Ads - This classified ads site is totally free for any business ad for up to 14 days. They do a high amount of traffic and even their rates for extended and upgraded ads are extremely reasonable starting at $6.95 for 14 days.

Promotional Products
Business Cards - I am asked about these free business cards all the time, they're high quality and look just like any other set of business cards - until you flip them over and see the Vista Print logo on the back. To their credit, their ad on the free cards is very lightly colored and not very gaudy, so its not as bad as one might think. I would pay the additional cost to have their line removed, BUT if you really can't afford it but still need business cards right away, then these will do just fine. You can store your information and return later for reorders without the ads on back.

Magnets - While not free, I included these because of the option to order such a small quantity, as low as 25. Most promotional items require you to order at least 50-100, and Vista Print offers 25 magnets for only $12.99, plus an additional $5 to upload your own logo. That's a small price to pay for something you can give to your valued clients that will keep your company name in full view for a long time.

Software
Remote Link Checker - a free, downloadable application that will scan your html pages and verify the links are valid. While Dreamweaver has this feature built in, if you use another program, you may not have the same capability. Very handy.

Agreement Builder - This free software download contains a huge vault of contract templates that you may require to execute with your clients. Simply edit the contracts as needed, and print.

Logo Creator - Another great free application that enables you to design a logo for your business.

Fonts - I'm always surprised that more people I run into, aren't aware of Coffeecup's vault of free fonts. They literally have everything here, and its all free. The only annoying part is that you have to enter your email address because each one is delivered by email. But I've had an account with them for years and I can tell you that they don't spam you or bother you with unnecessary emails. While you're at the site, take a look at their other free software - not trial software, but free, scaled down versions of the full featured applications. Still worth a try.

Web Development
Domain Names - I'm a GoDaddy regular but I found this company that beats their price. For only $2.99, you can get a .info domain, and .com domains are only $5.95, that's $3 less than most places, including GoDaddy. You don't get the free email, but I do like their control panel and their quick customer service. It's an option to save a few dollars, no biggie, but it all adds up!

Website Hosting - I never recommend free hosting packaging, in fact, I'd encourage you to just wait until you could afford a good business host rather than go with a free site. However, if both time and cost are an issue, I choose this company for a free website, because there are NO ads on your site and you get FTP access, which is uncommon for a free site. You won't get any advanced features but it will work until you can upgrade later to a full featured web host.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Diary of an eBay store

As a fellow broke entrepreneur, when I write entries for this blog, I’m also researching the information for myself as well as trying to help others. I wouldn’t suggest anything for another person to do, if I wouldn’t do it myself, however, I might offer resources that are valuable to someone else, but they may be out my own price range. As long as they fall within what I consider affordable for those in my target audience, then I’ll write about it.

Thus, my previous entry about the eBay stores really stayed on my mind long after I posted it. As I said, I have bought and sold on eBay since around 2000, but I never opened an actual store, and during my research to bring the information here, I started considering if it was something I could actually do. I also wondered if there were other means of getting products for the store besides the one or two I’d mentioned? In the process of delving deeper into it for a follow up entry, I found an array of options for opening online stores for little or no cost, including stores complete with drop shipping and click and drag interfaces, and other wholesale resources with which you can stock your eBay store at prices low enough to still provide you with a wide profit margin. I picked up quite an education on the whole niche industry, from how to spot a middle man who is draining your profits, to questions you should ask to ensure that you are dealing with a legitimate supplier source.

So in addition to everything else I’ve got going on, I’m so intrigued by the whole eBay shop thing that I’m going to open one. I’ll document all of my steps so if you’re hesitant at all about jumping in, you can follow along and see how it goes for me. I’m putting together a series of entries that will show you all of the alternatives for getting started with an ecommerce store for very little money or even free. I’ll also show you various options for both purchasing wholesale products and dropshipping, as well as the pros and cons of each method.

I’m really excited about doing this and I hope we all learn from it – if anyone wants to take the journey with me and open their stores at the same time, I invite you to discuss it here and we’ll compare notes and help each other along the way.

I’m still compiling the notes for the introduction of the series, and then I plan to get started with the shop within the next week or so. Stay tuned!

Monday, August 27, 2007

Sleep it off

Recently, I was knee deep into developing what will be one of my biggest web
projects ever. All day long, I was thinking in code, seeing lines and lines of script whenever I blinked for more than a second, and when I did manage to sleep at night, I was practically dreaming of solutions and processes that I needed to put into action the next morning. On the off chance that I was not in front of my computer, I would attempt to watch a movie and find myself staring at the tv screen but instead seeing my pc monitor in front of me while I worked over some design issue in my head. I was completely and totally immersed in my project and that’s literally all I could think about. It was nothing for me to sit down at the computer and pass 6-8 hours straight without stopping to eat or even use the bathroom. This was an even bigger feat considering I’d done it with a family going on with their lives behind my chair.

After one particularly grueling and frustrating day spent at my keyboard, I stood up and immediately buckled to the ground in pain – my knees and legs had locked up from stiffness and cramps shot up my thighs! I had put in a marathon 10 hours of work on the site and had barely taken a break. I remember phones and doorbells ringing, my kids trying to get my attention, but I was so focused on doing a perfect job that I effectively blocked all of that out. I’m always amazed at how I can work nonstop on my own projects but it absolutely destroys me to stay at my job for eight full hours. When you work for yourself, its so much easier to commit yourself to perfection no matter what the cost, you work feverishly and don’t clock-watch, because you are the boss and if the company succeeds you are able to reap the full benefits of that success and not just the little bit that’s parcelled out to you in your paycheck.

Thus, we put ourselves in the position to burn out a lot faster than if we were working for someone else. Many entrepreneurs have a tendency to go into their own businesses with all guns blazing, so to speak, and before you know it, you’re working 16 – 20 hours a day and just dragging yourself to bed in the twilight of the morning. You may think its all okay because its YOURS but remember, one of the reasons you started your own business was to have freedom from long hours and stressful deadlines, and to enjoy more time with your family. If you find that you’ve just recreated your former workplace in your den, then its time to stop and take a breather. It’s okay to take a day off – in fact, its necessary. When you work nonstop on a tedious project, after a while all of the information just bottlenecks in your brain stem somewhere and very little useful data is getting through. How many times have you reluctantly forced yourself to “sleep on” a problem and when you returned to it, you had a renewed sense of energy and vision, and your issue was suddenly quite simple?

Burnout is a real concern for entrepreneurs because, unlike in a traditional job, you’re trying to meet your own extremely high expectations and there’s no holiday from that. Be proud that you have such a high work ethic and have been blessed enough to be able to pursue your passion. But remember to celebrate your freedom by enjoying time off and relaxation. Leave breathing room in your projects for you to take a break and think away from the computer or desk. Take notes, if you will, from the comfort of your bed or in the wicker chair in your backyard. Then put the notes aside and go smell the flowers!! Learn not to feel guilty about leaving work behind for a moment. When you return to your work, you will find fresh ideas and a transformed approach to your work.

Believe that you will do your BEST work when you are healthy, rested and recharged.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Does anyone NOT know about eBay?

As far back as I can remember, my big sister had closets and closets full of designer clothes. When she was a teenager, the local malls weren't good enough for her - she had to finagle ways for her and her friends to travel to other cities to shop the malls with the fancier stores, and bring back things that others in her school had only seen in magazines. Today, although she's a more settled and practical wife and mother, she still has several closets full of clothing that are either unique, vintage or cutting edge fashion. She can still sniff out a designer deal from miles away, but somehow she's managed to hold on to at least a closet's worth of items from as far back as twenty years ago. It's always fun to visit and go through her things and laugh at how some of them are back in style and selling for hundreds of dollars today.


So naturally, everytime she comes to me and asks how she can make some extra money, my fingers start itching to set her up an eBay store. She would be the perfect candidate, she has tons of inventory that she is looking to sell, she wants a part time income that she can operate from home, and she has expert knowledge on her product. At around $17 per month, she could easily clear out her closets over time and make a nice nest egg in the process, as well as build up a steady clientele for the next phase of her store - wholesaling designer clothing and accessories. I've been off and running with her plans for years now, but I can't get her to cosign. She's not comfortable enough to go online and set it up herself, and we live hundreds of miles apart so its rather difficult for me to supervise the complete setup and operation of the store for her. The plan at this point calls for me to vacation there and spend the time taking photos of her items, setting up her store, and training her on the complete process of taking orders and shipping. So my dream for her is on hold right now.

But over the years, I have convinced at least twenty people to become eBay sellers. It's so easy and almost guaranteed to bring you some amount of success, that it should be a high school elective. It speaks to the most basic consumer principle - selling and buying. Even my 8 year old has been an eBay seller (through me) since he was around 4, when he discovered he could sell his unwanted toys and Yu Gi Oh cards there and make a little money, he's been hooked ever since. Although the problem with his sales is that he would conveniently ignore the part about eBay fees coming out of his profit, so I always ended up losing in those deals! Now that he's older, whenever he wants to sell something, I make sure to explain the small print so that he understands and not think there is no price to pay for every dollar earned.

There are two distinct types of sellers on eBay, those that just like to sell casually, maybe things around the house or things they've found at yard sales; and those that have turned it into a business and are Powersellers or operate eBay stores. I love that there are opportunities for everyone to make it whatever they choose. You can start small and grow, you can focus on a niche market or become a virtual flea market of your own, you totally control your business and target.

It's such a simple process although it can be intimidating if you're not a regular user of the site. If you're interested in giving it a try, I would suggest you just spend some time hanging out there searching for things, reading feedback ratings, learning to identify the difference between the good sellers and the ones you want to avoid. Equally important, learn to identify the reliable buyers and the ones who just might leave you holding the bag. Browse the eBay forums and read some of the questions and answers there from both beginners and experienced users.

Then, if you like what you see, set up an account and make your first bid/purchase. It's been years since I opened my account but its still absolutely free to register and bid on items. Get familiar with the way it all works, go through a few small auctions and see how easy and addictive it can be. I often find myself searching on eBay for things I know I can get in the stores but I get a certain thrill out of bidding and winning it online.

In case you just want to establish a consistent side income by selling, your regular eBay account will work fine, you don't need to set up anything differently. When you want to buy, you buy, and when you want to sell, you just sell, there's no special configurations or upgrades you need to make. Lots of people do very well just shopping deep discount stores, warehouses or even garage and estate sales, and then offer the items on eBay for a nice profit. Remember, an item widely available
in your area may be a rare find in another state or even overseas, so don't assume that it would be worthless - the entire world is eBaying at this point so it opens up a wealth of otherwise unreachable consumers. Another relative of mine goes to thrift stores and buys clothing and purses, then resells them on eBay for sometimes double what she paid - if you shop at the right times (delivery days), and in the right areas (look for thrift stores located near more affluent communities) you can get incredible bargains.

As I said earlier, the eBay stores are a very reasonable monthly fee of around $15. Having a store, as opposed to just selling from your account, allows you to manage your business, well, like a business. It has all sorts of inventory, accounting and management tools that help you with invoicing and shipping, as well as marketing. The eBay store identity also gives you a little more validity as a seller, and it allows you to build and design your presence into something that entices the buyer and turns them into a repeat customer. Not only that, you can purchase a domain name and direct it to your eBay store, then submit to the search engines so you can boost your rankings and ensure maximum exposure for your auctions.

I think when you approach eBay like a true business and not just as a way to clear out your attic, you really have the potential to turn it into a serious stream of income. People are leaving their full time jobs and concentrating solely on their eBay stores, and as with anything else, when you have the ability to devote yourself fully, the growth is unlimited. Those stories about people making well over six figures yearly are real and the income is attainable - if you choose your products carefully and market them the same way you would market any other enterprise. Powersellers don't just list their items, go to sleep and wake up to thousands of dollars in their Paypal accounts. They use various promotion and advertising methods to market their stores, as well as search engine optimization techniques to ensure that they appear in your searches just like any other website. With millions of sellers on eBay, you need to stand out in the crowd, or else your Widget store is just another store selling widgets. Derek Gehl, the internet marketing guru, has a comprehensive cd course that examines the insider secrets to making huge profits on eBay. Now, generally, I take these types of announcements with a grain of salt, but his course is highly recommended by Roger Zimmerman of Pickaguru.com, and he's not an affiliate of any kind so he has a completely unbiased opinion. Derek is well respected as being an expert and for developing quality products and not just junk that you can find elsewhere on the internet, so if you're interested in looking at this further, I would suggest reviewing his product to help you get started.

What a lot of people don't know is that eBay maintains a guide to the most popular searches on the site, and its absolutely free and available here. Download that and browse to get an idea of what people are looking for - that should help you hone in on what YOU should be selling. It's updated monthly, so be sure to check for a new one each month to see how the trends may have changed.

If the whole shop/resale tactic isn't for you, you might want to explore product sourcing and/or drop shipping. Product sourcing is a way of purchasing bulk inventory of the products and then reselling them. But the trick to this is to get an account with the manufacturing source - and they're not just opening their doors to everybody, or else everybody would be doing it! There are a lot of places online that claim to be direct sources for inventory, but if you investigate further, you'll find that these are still middle men who are making money off of selling the product to you, so you are still paying more than you need to. What you need is a direct link to the company that makes the product so its from their assembly lines to YOU, and there are only a few legitimate methods to obtaining such an account. Those methods are explained in the free eBook download here.

The book also discusses drop shipping, which is totally wonderful because you don't have to carry or stock any product! When you run an auction for an item that will be drop shipped, you have to be able to rely on the drop shipper to pick up the ball and complete the order in a timely fashion, and hopefully seamlessly so the customer doesn't even know that it has come from a different source. Again, the key is finding a reliable company that will work with you and maintain the quality of customer service that you need to provide. Drop shipping is one of the best ways to get started with your eBay business because it requires no upfront money to purchase inventory, all you need are your sources and your eBay account. Expect to pay a small but reasonable amount for access to your source catalog - but its well worth it when you are getting unlimited, authentic drop shipping accounts and not just some email leads that go nowhere.

For more information, please check out the sources above and see if eBay could be a low cost solution for you to get started!

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Young and Broke

Thanks, Amanda, from the Young and Broke blog, for linking to Really, Really, Broke Entrepreneurs! Her blog has a lot of really good common sense articles and advice that are interesting reads for everyone, regardless of age!

Monday, August 20, 2007

I don't see myself here...

At the nail salon recently, I browsed through the stacks of magazines in the waiting area, and the February issue of Essence caught my eye. On the cover was the headline, The Million Dollar Black Woman: 3 Real Women Give You Secrets for Building Wealth. Intrigued, I flipped quickly to that section, already plotting in the back of my mind how I was going to quietly tear out the pages and sneak them into my purse. Unfortunately, I didn't have to commit that minor offense that day because the article didn't speak to me at all. Don't get me wrong, they were great inspirational segments about truly awesome women who are either already millionaires or on their way to becoming one very soon. But how they got there, the paths they took, the tools they had at their disposal were all foreign to me.

The first entrepreneur featured was Tiffany Pointer of Atlanta, who bought her first condominium at the age of 22. She didn't have a lot of money, according to the story, but her FICO score of between 760-850 qualified her for 100% financing. When she sold the property a mere two years later, she pocketed a $70,000 profit and the rest is pretty much history. That infusion of money allowed her to pay off all debts and make several other real estate purchases. Nice.

The next woman was Erica McGeachy-Crenshaw of New Jersey who bought a home inspection franchise with a stock market nest egg and donations from family to come up with the required $40,000 startup, as well as financing obtained by having excellent credit. What I did appreciate from her story was that she bought her first stock at the age of 16 by investing $1000 she'd earned from a part time job. This is an important lesson for teenagers that its never too early to start planning for your future. Today, her company is worth over half a million dollars.

The third and last profile belonged to Ann Marie Hall-Sparks of Chicago, who used a variety of tax-deferred investment vehicles to build a stock portfolio worth over $2 million. It wasn't very specific on what moves she took to get to this point, but it did mention that in addition to her already burgeoning portfolio, she began investing 80% of her money into riskier stocks and mutual funds, and 20% in bonds, so she took a very aggressive route towards building her wealth and it paid off handsomely.

Their stories didn't help me on MY journey to becoming a success, because at this point in my life, I can't go backwards. Their profiles will be wonderfully inspiring though for a young person just starting out, but for me, and many others like me, we have to approach it from a different angle. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way poo-pooing their incredible achievements or what lessons we can learn from them, I'm just being real here - where I am today, being told about a franchise opportunity with $40k startup fees or real estate cash profits that can be flipped into an empire - that does nothing for me right now. Show me how to turn $100 into $500 within the next couple of months, and then I'll flip the $500 into $1000, and then I'll see where I can take it. Actually, if I had an extra $1000 right now, I'd probably encourage my teenage son to purchase an inflatable bounce house and get him started in a little side business.

The sidebar lists six ways to make your first million, among them was to work on your credit, save regularly, and eliminate debt. All very good advice in the long run but overall, pretty typical of what you see everywhere. This is why I enjoy pulling together information for this site, because I like to show that even though you don't have stock investments or perfect credit, you can still realize true entrepreneurship and get started with the bare essentials. You have to start somewhere, why sit around waiting for everything to be perfect, for all of the ducks to be in a row? Being an entrepreneur is what's in your soul, not what's in your portfolio or your bank account. Start with what you have and accomplish what you can TODAY.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Start an Inflatable Rental Business


In the spirit of broke entrepreneurs, I'm going to highlight some business ideas in which you could get started for the lowest cost.

A few years ago, I was looking for an inflatable for my son's home birthday party. I had the hardest time finding one that was located close enough to not elicit ridiculous delivery fees, until a friend of mine tipped me that her nail tech owned an inflatable that she rented on weekends at really good rates. The story was that the woman and her husband purchased it for their own kids, but started getting requests from neighbors to use it, so they decided to begin renting it at prices that evidently blew away the competition. Well, my party was a huge success, everybody wanted to know where I got the inflatable and how much I’d paid, so I referred them to the owner, and I know of at least three of those people who have rented from her since.

Fast forward to this year - bounce house rental businesses are literally everywhere! Yet, there's still plenty of opportunity in this field for startups because there never seem to be enough availability. The problem is, each rental is generally for a minimum of 4 hours, and if its for a kid's party, you're only looking at a rental period of perhaps from 9 - 7 give or take a couple of hours. So you've got a maximum of maybe three rentals daily, not including the amount of time it takes you to deliver and setup, take down and deliver to your next location. That could add as much as an hour between rentals. That's why there's still plenty of room for more inflatable rental providers because they are so popular during the warm months that you could almost guarantee rentals every weekend with all of the birthday and graduation parties, church and school events, business promotions - the possibilities are endless. You could even start an inflatable rental network among your competitors so that you can call each other to help with bookings.

As for the cost - if you look for brand new inflatables, you're looking at upwards of $3,000. But there’s always a bunch of them on eBay in the range of $300 and up - they are used, often liquidations, out of season models, etc, but as long as they're durable and reliable, and you get some sort of warranty on the condition, these are perfect for you to launch your business. I discovered that they design these with different styles each year, so although The Simpsons might be the hot design right now, a person wanting an inflatable is not likely to cancel their party because all they could get was a plain red and blue style. You can't go wrong with the standard kid-friendly colors, and as you land more bookings and increase your profit, you can add other styles to your inventory as you find them at reasonable prices.

They also come in different sizes, so starting out, you may have to get one of the smaller sizes as opposed to the super megadeluxe model, again, when you're 4 years old, they're all huge! My local daycare had a grand opening and they rented several of the smaller inflatables and had them all over the playground. They were less intimidating to the toddlers and preschoolers, and they were able to have enough available for everyone to get a turn. So don't overlook the value of having at least 1-2 of the smaller models for events such as this.

Look for quality, durability and warranty, and try to get a partner to go in with you so you will have a little more to spend on your first bounce house. If you both could put up $400-500, you could easily pick up a great inflatable and start taking orders almost immediately. It's actually preferable that you have another person to go with you to do setup and take down, so this is an ideal business for two - or more, as your business grows. It is best to have a small truck or trailer available to haul the inflatables around, but if you do not have one you can use, you can rent the trailers from a moving company. This would cut into your costs, so you'll want to try to purchase your own as soon as possible, or try to maximize your rentals by booking as often and as far in advance as permissible.

For instance, ask the rental company about a deal or discount if you book and pay for four consecutive weekends at once! Then check out auctions, liquidations and used equipment sales for an old but good quality trailer you can pick up cheaply and maybe even fix up and decorate with your business logos and signs.

Don't forget to hang signs or banners on the inflatable while its being rented, so neighbors and passerbys will be able to clearly see who provided this service, and when they need to rent, they will remember to call for you. The newer models have built in business card holders right near the opening, but you can create your own little pocket to hold your business cards and stick it in a visible area so the party guests can conveniently take a card.

Besides a bright and cheery website and colorful business cards, make sure you do a targeted campaign to local schools, daycare centers and churches, who might call you for social events; or businesses who would rent an inflatable for a special sale or grand opening. Be sure to get listed in the many Moonwalk Directories both online and offline, because renters tend to seek businesses that are located near them and can deliver to them quickly.

Depending on where you're located, these types of businesses do most of their bookings in the warmer weather, but don't close up shop just because its cold outside, make yourself available to places with the capability to have it indoors - this is where your smaller bounce houses would be most desired, so don't do away with those just because you've earned enough to upgrade to the larger models.

Let's look at a reasonable model of what you could expect to earn in this business. With most people booking for four hour blocks at an average of $80, you could potentially fill 3 gigs on both Saturday and Sunday, so that's 6 bookings for the weekend for a total of $480. Working like this every weekend would get you an average of $1920 for the month, lets say during the summer months of June, July, August, and most of September. You've already made back your investment with the first month, so after that, its all profit. And this is working with just ONE bounce house.

The next month, search for a deal on a second bounce house, maybe a nearly new model featuring some popular cartoon character - so now you can double your bookings. Or, what I would do is just work as much as I could the first year with one, to gauge the market and really get a handle on whether or not this is going to work for me - then purchase additional inflatables during the "off" months from other businesses who may either be closing or just reshuffling their inventory. Then you'll be prepared for an even bigger season the following year as you launch with new products, more advertising, and more experience.

There will be legalities involved such as rental agreements and liability insurance, but the cost of this should factor nicely into your profit margin. You don’t want to skimp on these areas because you are providing a service with which someone could potentially be injured, so having a well executed agreement and proper coverage keeps everyone safe. I found a few places online with great information about getting started – these are just links that I grabbed for convenience but I have no knowledge or experience with any of these companies to specifically endorse them.

International Moonwalks Rentals Directory – this is not only a directory, but for $20, you can download a package of business documents for running your own rental business

Association of Inflatable Rental Company Operators - this appears to be the premiere source of information for inflatable rental companies, great, in-depth info here. Especially worth reading is about checking insurance requirements for your state.

Buy Inflatable Things - what I did like about this site was the abundance of free newsletters and great photos. You can get an idea of what kinds of products are out there - then you can go and find them cheaper!

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

With the China toy recalls....

...I'm thinking, this might be a GREAT time for some enterprising toy developers in the US to push their American-made marketing campaigns! Especially with Christmas just around the corner. If you've got a product that you can put together with your own resources, think about ramping up your promotion and see if you can get a few seed orders to start with. Push the "safety" aspects of it!