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Freedom Plus Responsibility Equals Independence #liberty
I believe that one of the reasons so few people prize Liberty anymore is because they do not know what it is. They equate Liberty with “getting what they want without working for it” instead of “the freedom to choose to prosper without the help or permission of anyone else”.
There is a huge difference between the two concepts. We saw a BBC production on the Titanic recently. In it a maid said, “So in America everyone eats from porcelain and drinks from crystal?” The immigrant she was speaking to replied, “No, but in America there is at least the hope that they might.”. (This may be slightly misquoted, but the essence is there – I was unable to find an exact quote.)
Early immigrants understood that if you wanted to “eat from porcelain”, you had to work to do so. What they wanted was the OPPORTUNITY.
They did not want someone to hand them a finished product. They knew that if someone did that, it would be someone ELSE’S idea of what they needed, not THEIR idea. When you are restricted to accepting what someone else thinks you need, you are not free, you are a slave.
The more the government does for us, the fewer choices we have. If the government provides housing for us, then we have to accept their idea of what we need. Take a look at Low Income Housing, and see if it is all you want for the rest of your life.
If the government provides food for us, then we must accept what they deem is appropriate for our food, and we must accept the amount of food that they deem appropriate. Food stamp recipients receive the amount the government dictates, and can only spend it on things the government specifies for it.
If the government provides healthcare, then we must accept them dictating what conditions can be treated, how they can be treated, and even who is eligible for treatment. We have surrendered our right to choose what we prefer, by giving someone else the responsibility of providing it.
You cannot have true Freedom without Responsibility. You must be willing to take responsibility for your own:
- Housing
- Food
- Healthcare
- State of Wellbeing (not being “offended” by what others say)
- Relation with your Neighbors (not asking for laws to forbid them doing things you do not like)
- Employment
- Children’s Education
- Phone Bill
- Product safety – we use common sense rather than expecting the government to make sure it is all safe.
- Community and charitable giving.
- And yes, even things such as Disability, Retirement, Insurance and other “safety nets” that we think we cannot do without.
If you want true freedom, you have to step up and do the work. When someone else provides for you, whether it is the government or someone else, THEY decide, you do not. If you go to a Soup Kitchen for a meal, they will hand you a meal. You don’t get to decide what you’ll have for dinner that night, they decide that. Any help you receive from anyone is based on their determination of your needs, not your own.
The early immigrants had had enough of that. Someone else had made the decisions for them long enough. How sad for their posterity, that they are so willing to give it all away, for the hope of the ease of having someone else do the work so they don’t have to.
The real irony of it all is, that as soon as you are enslaved, you realize that not only is the government making the choices for you, YOU are still having to do the work. Eventually, the money runs out. When it does, the eligibility standards tighten and tighten, and pretty soon everyone is impoverished, and everyone is slaving for the government, to feed the fat hog that takes its portion from the top before anything is disbursed to the starving masses.
Equality never meant that everyone had the same things. All it meant is that anyone who chose to work had the same potential of having more, and of deciding for themselves what they did with what they earned.
It did not then, nor does it now mean Equal THINGS.
It just means Equal CHOICE, and Equal RESPONSIBILITY.
When we have the Freedom to choose, and the Responsibility for our own life, then we are truly a free people. If we do not understand that, we will never comprehend the value of Liberty.
Honestly Losing the Sale
What would you rather have: A person to whom you never sold anything, speaking well of you, or a person to whom you DID sell something speaking badly of you?
Today a prospective customer emailed wanting kefir grains. He said he thought the best option would be some fresh grains and some dried grains. He then said he was in Germany, serving in the military, and would need them shipped Priority through an APO.
I could do that. We always ship fresh grains Priority. But I ship them Priority to speed the delivery. Kefir grains are a live thing. They require food to live. We put them in milk each night, and they thrive through the night to the next day, when we drain off the spent milk (it is now very low on food for them, but high in probiotics for us), and replace it with new. As the grains grow, we give them more milk until we divide the grains and lower the amount again. Over and over we do this, to keep them fed and happy and growing and healthy.
When we ship them, they are a lot like baby ducklings. They can survive a day or two in the mail, but they cannot survive many days. Kefir degrades in quality day by day, and after 5-6 days, there really isn’t anything but a stinking pile of goo left, which may or may not be revivable using the most aggressive resuscitation methods.
When you ship through an APO, it goes Priority to the receiving station in the US, where the military then transports it to the duty station. A process of six days or more.
I explained this to the customer. I also pointed him to our shopping cart for the grains (he had seen the ad for them on another site which did not point to the cart).
He emailed back shortly with a few more questions, and thanks for explaining that to him. He decided to order the dried grains, and said he’d also like some other products which he found on the site with the cart.
I lost a sale of milk kefir grains. Had I not explained, he may have still chose to purchase other products from us as well, or not. I had no way of knowing what he’d do when I told him about the shipping issue. He did decide to order the other grains from me.
There have been many times when a customer has asked to make purchases and I’ve told them that what I was selling might not be the best option for them. It comes down to one simple principle:
- I would rather have someone out there who did not buy from me who has a good opinion of me, than someone to whom I sold something dishonestly that has a bad opinion of me.
There are enough things in business that you CAN’T fully control which will leave you with dissatisfied customers, there is no need to make it worse by a poor choice.
Honesty up front about the limitations of what you sell will more often increase trust than give a bad opinion of you to the customer.
Today was a cool experience. It doesn’t always come back and reward you immediately. It is sure nice though, when it does!
Sell Your Strengths
In close to 15 years of small business startup consulting, I have noticed many patterns that are repeated over and over. You get a feel for success – who will do it and who will not, and what kinds of things work, and which are not likely to do so. Much of what I teach, I repeat over and over, in different ways, just trying to help people center themselves on principles that are honest and solid. The get-rich-quick mentality is hard to subdue in most people (even myself), and the lure of the exotic often pulls people from what they KNOW, to what they do not, with the hope that maybe what they do not know will prove better than what they do know.
So… here I go again. You’ve probably heard much of this before from me if you’ve ever heard me talk about starting a business. I keep repeating it for those who do not know – because they outnumber the people who do!
So… first off… the get rich quick thing. The rules are the same today as they always were, from time immemorial. The internet has not changed the rules, it has only increased the type of scams available.
- Trust your gut. If something sounds too good to be true, it is. Don’t let greed overpower common sense, don’t ever tell yourself “It is only $29.95, if it ends up being a fraud I haven’t lost much.” If you lose $29.95 that is money you could have used for something real.
- If you don’t walk away feeling like they answered ALL of your questions, don’t buy. If you can’t get hold of a real person, who will admit that there are people who should NOT do it, don’t buy.
- If it is presented on a long page with miles of text and “testimonials”, don’t buy. This is the traditional method used by scammers, half-scammers, and other people who know it does not work, but want your money enough that they’ll do it anyway.
- If it is a “system” don’t buy. It won’t work. Ever.
Now that we’ve cleared that out of the way, please don’t email me and tell me you’ve found a great new system you want me to check out “just in case”. It isn’t real either.
So what do you do? The people who do best do NOT go outside themselves to find a business that works. They go INSIDE themselves. They don’t work someone else’s system, they build their own product or service based on their own skills, strengths, and desires. DON’T let someone else place THEIR idea inside your head. Find your own. It is probably already inside you, and you are probably already moving in that direction.
- The best businesses are built on skills already possessed. It does not mean you don’t learn new things. It just means that you start with your existing strengths and build on those.
- The lowest cost businesses are those built on materials and resources already in hand. If you work with what you’ve already got, it is far less expensive than if you try to buy into something.
- Don’t let the “glamor” of someone else’s presentation of their life make you think that making or selling what you’ve always dabbled in has less success potential than their exaggerated representations. Most lives presented online are illusions (even mine), because nobody EVER shows the whole picture. They only show part of it. Even if they did show all of it, you would filter it through your own comprehension and still come out with something different than what their life really is. Don’t get caught up in peer envy. It can keep you from seeing the potential in yourself.
Brainstorm with a friend, or run it by a pro who knows the shoestring startup arena. Brainstorming has great power – nobody will tell you just the thing you need to do, they’ll all be busy telling you what THEY’D do. But their ideas generate a kind of energy in your brain and help you think outside yourself, which helps you hit on the right idea for yourself.
More and more of us are going to need to resort to generating income for ourselves, instead of relying on others to provide jobs for us. There are endless ways to do it, and endless choices. If you want to do it, go find the thing that is right for you.
Finding the Answer in Cottage Industry
Cottage Industry, as defined for purposes of this post, includes any kind of home manufacturing – where materials of one kind are turned into a product of another kind. This includes making parts, assembling parts into another product, making crafts, doing needlework, etc. It can be as complex as machining, and as simple as crocheted dishcloths.
This article is long, but it does explain something very cool. Something that our Nation is really ready for.
I believe in the power of the individual to create something better than a monster corporation can create it. I have long believed that the solution in hard economic times, for people who need employment that is rewarding and lucrative, is in the home, not in the factory or city. For the impatient, the fastest way to get predictable income, is to become an employee of someone else. But then you are also somewhat enslaved – you are subject to the rules, whims, and employment vagaries of someone else.
I love independence a bit too much to love employment. I’ve worked jobs, and done so well. But I don’t like it. I’d rather have ownership. I’d rather produce a homemade product that has character than work in a factory producing carefully calculated and electronically machined items that are stamped out at hundreds per second.
There is absolutely a place for the assembly line. But there is also a place and time to break free from it. I haven’t drawn any firm conclusions yet about the shape this will take with us. I’m still revolving the options around in my mind, but I have determined on a few things that I think are worth sharing.
I had always thought that if I invented something that I could make at home, eventually we’d reach the point where we had to contract with a manufacturing company for parts to be custom molded and milled, in order to keep costs affordable and in order to produce enough, fast enough. I’ve changed my mind on that. I think there may be a better way, and a better market to tap.
Most of our manufacturing has gone to China. This is a result of the mentality of having to reduce and reduce and reduce the costs of production to accommodate an ever increasing supply chain, and the costs attendant with it, coupled with increases in operational costs due to Unions and Taxes. The US is handicapped in the manufacturing sector, and is now dependent upon overseas suppliers, and the unpredictability that goes with it. That isn’t a good thing.
“Buy America” is NOT the answer.
“Build America” IS the answer.
So here is a potential business model – one we are working as I write this:
- Design something unique. Find a way to make it yourself.
- At first, you are going to spend quite a bit of time making each item, possibly using make-do equipment or tools. They can get better as you go, but be careful! Once you move to “commercial” production materials, costs increase exponentially. If you set a goal of NOT going into debt, you’ll be able to avoid that trap.
- Perfect the process for making it. Write down the steps. Get it worked out so that you can teach someone else how to do it.
- Assemble a materials kit – everything you need to make the item you are making. Create a training kit as well. If it is simple, and based on common skills, you can skip the next step. If the processes or tools require special knowledge or skills, you’ll need the next step.
- Hold a training camp. DON’T charge for it. DO pre-screen attendees for suitability. Train them in how to make the item you need, and train them in meeting your quality standards.
- From the attendees, select one or two to do a pilot program. Rent equipment to them for a low fee (do NOT look at this as a moneymaking opportunity – sales of your product is where your money comes from!). Sign a contract with them that they ONLY manufacture the item for YOUR company. Have a deposit on any rented equipment so you get it back if they quit. Agree on a set output per week or month. Pay them well enough for them to make a nice income if they do it fast and accurately. THEY pay for materials – you may supply them, but they pay for them (this is also NOT a money-making opportunity for you, you sell them to them at cost, or tell them where to get approved materials). They are sub-contractors, NOT employees. They own their own business, and manufacture something for you.
- Add more trained subcontractors as needed. Hold periodic training camps to train new prospects.
Now, there are people who will be terrified at this idea. They will feel that in doing this, they’ll be giving up their proprietary rights to someone else.
Don’t be so paranoid! Is there a risk that one of these hotshots will take the training and then go copycat? Of course! But they are going to do that anyway! Most people who are dishonest copycats don’t have the motivation to see it through – they think that having a hot product is enough. It is not! They are usually bad at marketing and actually competing with an established business. Most people whom you train will rather sell to you for a predictable income than to want to take on the marketing, additional costs, and additional time and hassle of direct selling the product, even if they can make more from each sale. That extra money is hard won!
If you watch, you’ll get a feel for those who are content with a predictable income stream, and those who have a more entrepreneurial spirit in them. They are usually easy to differentiate.
The potential here is that long term, you can be the means of not only keeping YOUR business in the country, but of helping dozens of small businesses get a firm foothold, while it benefits the growth of your own business. Your business stays comfortably small, but gains the income benefits of a much larger business.
So how can you do this affordably? There are a couple of keys to it:
- Setting your pricing for YOUR production at the start – in other words, base your sale price on what it costs you to manufacture when you start out – don’t decrease and decrease it if your costs go down, you may go broke without realizing it, and you eliminate the room for paying someone else, and get into a trap. As you go along, your production costs will drop as you learn to work faster and as you refine your processes – this is good, it means that you will be able to “split the difference”, and pay someone else less than it cost you to start, but a bit more than it cost you doing it yourself at your fastest. Don’t get sucked in by greed either – having to have it all. Share your bounty, enough is enough.
- Setting a fair price per hour for YOUR labor. Count that into your production costs, so you don’t run off feeling like you can’t subcontract because now your parts are going to cost twice as much (when all you are counting is the cost of materials).
- Pay a fair price to your subcontractors. This is tricky. You pay them BY THE PART, not by the hour. The faster they work, the more they make. So work out how many you were making per hour when you were in about the middle of the speed range, and base what you pay them on that. If they can make $15 per hour working at a moderate pace, they can probably make twice that once they learn to work really fast. If they choose not to work fast, that is their choice, you are not responsible for that choice. Just make sure that you provide a reasonable opportunity for good earnings. If you do, you’ll never lack for subcontractors.
There is plenty of room for this kind of business model. This is how things were done traditionally, and it worked for thousands of years. Our society has NOT outgrown it with the advent of assembly line production. You can take advantage of that in your business, by batch processing at specific stages and contracting single stage production tasks out to different individuals.
Think of what you can accomplish this way:
You can have a home business without having to “move up” to a factory. You can retain all those wonderful advantages of a home business.
You can provide those advantages to other people, and enrich our society by doing so – keeping parents in the home with their young children, giving opportunities to people who have been dropped from the job market but who are still good workers, and by encouraging independence and true performance based compensation.
You can get the government out of your business more than you can if you have employees. It is far more economical to run a business without employees than with. EVERYBODY benefits more in this kind of scenario.
You eliminate the supply chain from the cost equation. Most items double the price at multiple points along the distribution chain – raw material, shipped, refined material, shipped, manufactured part, shipped, distribution center, shipped, wholesaler, shipped, retailer, shipped, you. When you manufacture your own parts, you eliminate a LOT of steps and shipping, and markups. Maybe you have to pay twice as much to your subcontractors for the part as you would from a manufacturer, but at the same time, you are direct selling to your customers, so you can afford to do that and still make good money, whereas if you sold to the distribution center, you’d be making far less from it. Of course you also have marketing and other tasks, but overall, it is a win-win situation. You and your subcontractors take the place of multiple steps along the way, so you and your subcontractors can share the profit that those steps would normally siphon off. This assumes that you are purchasing refined goods to manufacture yourself.
This concept was originally discussed with a friend of mine who makes hair bows. An alternative to Direct Sales Companies, for other people to own a business and really profit well. I believe that this is what many people really want. They really just want a job to do at home that they can get paid for.
From the customer perspective, I also see that there is a growing market of people who would rather purchase a hand manufactured item with imperfections and irregularities than a more perfect looking one that has been imported from China.
Bigger isn’t better. Smaller is the trend that will save our nation economically.
Our company is now offering Cottage Industry Consulting.
Businesses You Can Start for Less than $50
Not once will you ever see me recommend buying one of those online systems that promises that you’ll make thousands each month. That is because packaged business “systems” simply do not work. What DOES work, is good old fashioned products or services. New twists on old ideas work fine, but the heart of it all is WORK. The less money you put in, the more WORK you have to put in.
Now that we got that out of the way, yes, there are things you can do for less than $50. But you are going to have to rely more on things you have on hand, recycled and repurposed items, and items scrounged at yard sales and swap meets, smart balancing of resources, and gaining the creative edge.
The following business options may not be terribly original. What is original is the way that you get started on a frugal budget. Not by investing hundreds or thousands in equipment and inventory, but by buying only what you need to get started, using workarounds and imperfect methods to get going. Once you get some cash coming in you can make things better.
Before I outline some of the options, I need to say that there are some concepts that make it work, or not work, which have to accompany the product.
- Smart spending. Don’t spend on anything that won’t increase your profits. A piece of equipment that makes things faster or more convenient for you than an old tin can and wooden spoon isn’t going to increase your profits. It will just cost you before you can afford it.
- Do the Math. If you have to buy small amounts to start, you are going to pay more for supplies, ingredients, and resale items. Make sure you can charge enough to actually make a profit at the prices you’ll have to pay to start. If you can’t, then you’ll have to save up a bit longer to get to the point of buying larger bulk. Taking a lower profit to start is fine. Getting in the hole is not!
- Turning Disadvantage to Advantage. Find the positive side to the imperfections. For example, if you use PayPal because you can’t afford another merchant account, then present that to your customers as a security advantage: “We use PayPal for your security. We never see your sensitive financial information, and you are protected by Buyer Protection.” This is perfectly true – you are just helping the customer focus on the advantage instead of the disadvantage. If something looks handmade, make handmade the selling point. If you can’t provide automation of everything in the order process, be personally accessible instead.
- Don’t enter a saturated market with the same old thing unless you have a really advantageous twist on it.
- Expect to work hard, and get your ducks in a row before you make a dime, and expect to be discouraged and feel like giving up at least a few times. That’s just business.
- You’ll need a printer to print your own business cards, and you’ll need some kind of web presence. You’ll have to get yourself known, and learn how to do that without annoying the socks off of everybody by shoving it in their face. These are things you can do, and learn.
- Don’t expect to do it all on your computer. Especially if you have a physical product. Expect to get out and shake hands, show up at farmer’s markets or business showcases. Expect to have to BE THERE a lot.
- Keep the recession in mind. People will still spend on small indulgences, practical necessities, sustainability and preparedness supplies, items to start or increase business income, frugality items (things to help them save money), and eco-conscious items (especially frugal ones). It probably isn’t the time to launch a new line of luxury teddy bears.
- The cheapest way to start a new product line or business is to piggy back it onto something else you are already doing. Hobbies, or existing product lines. You’ve already got supplies and materials.
- Avoid baby items, food preparation, herbal or cosmetic items, and other items with a high regulatory burden. They are prohibitively costly for budget startups.
- Don’t invest in a lot of inventory of supplies or resale items until you are certain they will sell. Keep your initial investment low, make a sample of several items and take pictures, then order or make on demand. Work out a way to get them out quickly after the customer orders. Make sure and tell them that the item is supplied on demand, and that there is an extra week of waiting for that. Accumulate inventory little by little according to highest demand.
Ok, so what kind of product or service can you do for less than $50? A surprising number of things, especially if you already have a bit of software on hand, such as Photo Editing software.
- Candles… but wait! What did I just say about entering a saturated market? True, it is. But it is a popular enough one that candles often sell because of WHERE they are, as much as who is selling them. There is also still room for creative ideas – shaped tea lights, creative molded scented candles, painted candles, and other awesome and wondrous creations. You can get 5 lbs of wax for about $25. The shipping is gonna cost you more than half of the price, so don’t compare prices without comparing shipping! You can also go to yard sales and get used candles for a quarter apiece, and recycle the wax. Be careful about scents if you do that! You won’t be able to know what kind of wax they are made from either, which may or may not be important. Scent and dye cost about $5 to get in the door for each. Wicking will cost you another couple of bucks. You can use a clean tin can and pot of water for a double boiler, and an old wooden spoon. There are all kinds of creative molding ideas online, or you can use recycled glass jars, obtained from yard sales, second hand shops, or scrounged up around your house.
- Other things with wax. Pinecone firestarters, furniture polish, emergency heat, dyed arts and crafts that use wax to prevent certain areas from being dyed. Google any of these things and you can find ways to make them.
- Fabric, yarn, and thread crafts. These can be sold on a custom order basis, or made and put onto a mall like Etsy. eBay probably is not the best venue for hand-made items, they tend to sell for pennies on the dollar, and you usually barely make the cost of materials. You can often find usable fabrics through second hand stores and at yard sales. Don’t overlook sheets and curtains as potential fabrics that can be obtained cheap. Patterns can be found free online, and equipment is often cheap through yard sales, estate sales, and second hand shops, or eBay.
- Pinecone Bird feeders and ornaments, or other types of hanging objects. Again, Google them, you’ll find ideas. Natural items seem to sell really well right now.
- Fold Up Solar Ovens. Can be made from recycled cardboard, you only pay for glue and foil. Do a quality job, and you can sell them for about $8-10. Make some nice instruction sheets to go with them. They sell great at gun shows. This is an eco-conscious product, a preparedness product, and an outdoors camping and hiking product.
- Self-Publish. If you can do the writing, editing, and typography (making the layout look nice) yourself, and if you can create a reasonable cover design, you can self-publish through a Print On Demand company with no financial investment other than the cost of a book proof. If you are e-publishing, it won’t even cost you that. You’ll have to get out and hawk the book – it won’t sell itself. But you’d have to do that with anything else too! How-to books, novels, specialty cookbooks, all kinds of options here.
- Rabbits. Assuming you can build a cage from materials on hand or salvaged items (our first cages were built from recycled chicken wire, refrigerator shelves for the bottoms, and some OSB and 2X4s that we had on hand, much of it salvaged). You can purchase meat rabbits for about $10 each. A buck and a doe will do to start – be aware though, that you do need a cage for each of them. Rabbit feed is about $15, for 50 lbs. Rabbits can also eat a lot of leftover and scrap fresh veggies, grass, clover, and many kinds of weeds. They are eaters of greens, just introduce new foods slowly, and you can feed them from mostly fresh foods in the spring, summer, and fall. Grass is important – if you give them grass you won’t need much hay (make hay available to them at all times during the winter, and as nesting material). You’ll have to keep them for a few months before they are old enough to breed, so feeding is a major issue (meat rabbits are sold at about 9-12 weeks, and they are not ready to breed until around 5-8 months). A single bag of feed can last anywhere between a month and a half, and four months, depending on how much else you are feeding them. Options for selling them depends on the breed, and what you are selling them for. If you are raising meat rabbits to sell, reducing the cost of feeding them is important, and ample home crops can really make that affordable. Other breeds may be more lucrative, but you’ll need breeding stock – which is more expensive for other breeds, and you’ll have to breed them more carefully. New Zealand and Californians are two of the most affordable startup stock. We recommend Californians. They seem more hardy, and have a distinctive hefty muscling structure and lighter bones that is dominant in most crosses (meaning that you’ll get those advantages even if you breed a Californian to a mutt).
- Wood Pallet Furniture. Again, plenty of designs online, and pallets are often available on Craigslist to come and pick up. The wood is usable most of the time. It can be used weathered, or sanded down (lightly to show grain or heavily to pretty it up). If you already have tools on hand, you’ll just need nails or screws. Be creative about your design, to come up with simple ways to make things that sell well. Simple things often sell better than difficult ones, because the price is more affordable. There’s a place for complex items selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars, but to start, keep it simple, and make quick things that sell fast so you can get cash flow going. Campy looking things and rustic items really go over well with Pallet items, but there are also some amazing things made with pallet lumber cleaned up, sanded, finished and polished and looking spanking new. Pallets can be made into trendy urban farm items also – chicken coops, beehives, hutches, planter boxes, raised beds, fencing, feeders, and more.
- Creative Plantings. Either as a service, or as ready to go planters. Again, you use recycled items and cheap items found at yard sales and second hand shops. Pallet Planters, gutter planters (made from leftover gutters), creative pots and containers – old shoes, anything that can be hung with plants stuck in them. Vertical gardens especially are very popular right now, and if you can supply cute and original items with a hanger on the back and a plant already in them and thriving, people will buy them locally. You’ll have to get out to Farmer’s markets, and talk to local stores that might carry them. If you start the seeds yourself, you are only in for the cost of the seeds and potting mix ($15 should do it if you are frugal). If you have a flair for it, you can probably find things around your house to get started, but failing that, go out yard saling with a $5 bill in your pocket, with a goal of coming home with some amazing stuff. Old boots still make charming planters…
- Green crops from the farm. Ok, so what if you have nothing more than a house or apartment in town? There is a creative market for a few items that you can grow in that environment. Wheatgrass, microgreens, sprouts, potted herbs, and other crops may be grown in very small spaces. The key to this one is two things: Selling at Farmer’s Markets is one option. A Route is another – build up a clientele to whom you make regular deliveries. This will work best if it is a natural outgrowth of sales at a Farmer’s Market. Ask each purchaser “Would you like to have this delivered to you on a regular basis?” Or make a brochure and hand it around, make it available when you sell your homegrown items. Any of these items can be started with little more than trays (or a homemade sprouter), potting soil for microgreens or wheatgrass, and some zip baggies to package microgreens or sprouts. Wheatgrass sells in the tray. A 6X6″ tray sells for around $4 in the grocery stores. There’s room for competition there!
Ideas are a dime a dozen, there are SO many things you can do that can be started cheaply. You may wonder why I’m pushing real products, instead of internet stuff. Experience. My most successful clients in more than a dozen years of working with small online businesses, were the ones with a real product or service. They didn’t have AdSense websites (though I had a few winners there back in the day when they paid more than a penny a click), they didn’t sell “reports”, they didn’t sell Internet Marketing garbage, and while a few (myself included) made a few dollars on the side through affiliate marketing, not one ever made a fortune at it, or even a living at it.
These hard working people were consultants, graphic designers, coaches, gift retailers, personal care manufacturers, musicians and artists. People with real skills, real products and services. Unique things that lasted.
Statistically, this is the most successful type of business to start. Direct Sales and MLM have a success rate that hovers right around 1%, and that is for the “good” ones! Standard product sales or service businesses have a success rate of 50% or better (as measured by how many are still in business after 5 years, which is not always an accurate measurement of success). By smart planning, and consistent follow through, you can increase those odds significantly.
Research it out, do the math, and write up a specific task list to get going. None of it is easy. But some things really do work!
Our company is now offering Cottage Industry Consulting, and can help you develop a business plan on a budget.
Nothing But What You’re Wearing… Then What?
What if you woke tomorrow with nothing but what you have on? For the sake of functionality, let’s assume you went to sleep in your jeans and t-shirt (no, we aren’t going to get into whether it is appropriate to go out in public wearing your pajamas – it isn’t about that!). What if your job was gone, you had no computer, no car, no bike, no spare clothes, no food, nothing that you’ve accumulated or worked for. Your bank accounts have a zero balance, and while you do have your wallet, you do not have any other personal documents. You do NOT have your cell phone. You can’t GET a cell phone, because you have no money.
Oh… and your credit is destroyed.
You may think that this would not happen, but there are situations, less remote than you think, which can put you in exactly that situation.
What do you have left?
How do you recover?
And how in the WORLD do you prepare for that kind of disaster?
You have some VERY valuable assets left, but they aren’t the kind that most people think of when they consider how to prepare for potential catastrophe.
- Your faith. You are going to need a lot. The more you build now, the better. Get your relationship with God together. You are going to need Him.
- Attitude. If you have persevered in your life, and made a practice of not giving up, it will serve you well. Practicing facing challenges and practicing constructive problem solving, will stand you in good stead.
- Your loved ones. Well, let’s face it. You are going to lose some of them when disaster strikes. Some people just can’t handle it – they have to blame someone, and blaming you is easiest, because that relieves them of the responsibility of helping you. But half of them or more will gather round to lift you up, and help you as best they can. It won’t be much – such a disaster is more than anyone can fix for you. But strengthen the relationships with those closest to you – disaster either breaks a relationship, or strengthens it, and that largely depends on how healthy the relationship is to start with, and how committed the individuals are to each other. If your primary relationships are in trouble, repair them now – it is part of being prepared.
- Your skills. The skills that can help you may be widely varied – good job hunting and interview skills, good trade skills that can be applied to self-employment, good bartering skills, good salvaging skills, good work ethic, willingness to work hard at whatever honorable work you can, the ability to make the most of anything you are given (canning and cooking skills, mending skills, mechanical skills,etc) – it is harder to obtain working things than to obtain non-working things, and if you can repair things, you have a distinct advantage. Other skills can help also – frugality, gardening, hunting, being able to entertain yourself free, even basic skills like riding a bike.
Probably the easiest thing in that bunch to improve, are skills. There is always someone to teach you, or a book to help you learn. The other things are more individualized, and perhaps not as easy to pin down, but just as important.
The political climate we live in makes the potential for this kind of situation more of a real risk. When we consider what we would do if we were left with nothing that we think of as being “survival” items, it brings us back to having to depend upon others, and upon ourselves and God. In that respect, it is not a bad thing – no one can recover from such a thing on their own, and there is no shame in accepting help from genuine need.
We know too, that when we are prepared for less devastating disasters, with food storage, some wise self-sufficiency items, water, etc, then we are better able to share and help others who are in a situation where they cannot possibly meet their own needs. Helping others in need is truly a blessing to those who can give to victims of fire, flood, false imprisonment, crop failure, job loss, catastrophic illness, or other disasters that can affect anyone at any time.
Keep preparing for those things which would require you to have a food storage, or to live without electricity, or gather your own food from the wild. But prepare to have that taken away also – and think about what you’d need if it was taken away. Think about what you need within yourself – because THAT is what you take with you no matter what happens.
UPDATE: Our book on growing food from scraps and groceries is now available for download! Get The Scavenger’s Garden: Growing Food from Groceries and Scraps from Amazon for Kindle, or from our Firelight Heritage Farm Books website. If you have to start over with nothing, this book teaches you how to grow a garden without spending money for the garden.
10 Unusual Businesses to Start for Under $100
I’ve been researching business startup concepts and options, and working with business startups for more than 12 years. And just when I think I’ve seen it all, something else pops into view, and shows me that there is a market for things you’d never think there as a market for! So I’ll share some of those things with you.
No, I’m not going to hand you some stupid business system. If you want one of those, what you really want is to get scammed. I’ve got something better in mind. But it assumes that you have some drive, creativity, and the ability to get online and research how to do things, and then SIMPLIFY the instructions on how to do things.
These overviews do not include things like business license, ink and paper for printing your business cards, or the cost of having someone else build a website for you. I’m going to assume that if you are really on a shoestring budget, that you are going to have to do those things yourself, and use existing supplies – and I’m going to assume you do have some simple tools and a few things lurking around that you can repurpose – most people do.
Most of these are probably things you’ve never thought of… and a few are probably things you’ve heard of, but have not thought about in the way that really works for a shoestring startup.
- Butterflies and Moths. Yup. there’s a market for butterflies and moths. There are increasing regulations about importing them, and shipping them across state lines if they are alive, but it is still a fairly easy proposition. You can get cocoons, or eggs. You can even capture live specimens and start that way, as long as you make sure it is legal where you are capturing them. You can raise them in containers – plastic storage containers or glass jars – indoors, or in remay sleeves on trees out of doors. Products range from eggs and cocoons, to instructions, to supplies, to mounted specimens, or crafts made with specimens.
- Snails. Now, personally, I find snails to be rather repugnant. Like slugs, only in a cuter box. Still not my thing, and I can’t imagine actually eating one! Nonetheless, snails are a booming business in many cities, and there is usually insufficient local supply to meet the need. With snails, you MUST think local – and you have to buy or gather starter snails that are known edible, and that are legal in your area. Forget shipping them across state lines – there’s a huge regulatory burden. But growing them and delivering them locally is pretty simple, and it does not take much to get started – initial containment and starter stock is fairly inexpensive. Really, all you need are two snails in the right mood… they can be very prolific!
- Mushrooms. Not THAT kind of mushrooms! Gourmet, edible, medicinal. THOSE mushrooms! Nothing illegal, doing illegal things in your business is never a good idea! So… what kinds of mushrooms? Do some research. See which ones are selling for good prices. You can get started with a few bins, some compost, (alternately, use a kit), and a spot where you can keep temperatures within a warm or cool range. Growing mushrooms is not actually as complicated as it sounds, a sterile environment is not even needed, if you are just smart about keeping things tidy. Just don’t expect to make a fortune growing Shiitake or Portobello mushrooms! The markets are saturated, don’t bother. Grow something that has a solid demand, but which is underproduced, and you’ll do much better. You can sell fresh mushrooms (farmer’s markets, or shipped), dried mushrooms, gourmet mushroom products, pickled mushrooms, mushroom grow-kits, mushroom spawn, mushroom growing instructions, etc.
- Food Molds. Oh, NOT the fuzzy kind… the SHAPED kind. Like people use for chocolate, or marzipan. This takes some talent… Buy a block of paraffin. Carve a 3-D design in it. Something that would look good as a cookie, a chocolate, or a cake decoration. Buy some food grade silicone mold putty. Use that to create the mold. Sell the molds. Make more. Costs about $10 for enough paraffin (or other carvable wax) to make 6-10 mold designs. Costs about $40 for a mold maker’s starter kit, or about $15 for enough putty to make 20-30 molds of about 1″x2″x1/2″ in size. Larger molds, fewer of them, but higher price. Look at what people WANT to shape things like, that you can’t buy at Wal-Mart (seriously, go into the party and bridal area, where they keep the cake decorating stuff – if you can buy the molds in a plastic sheet of a dozen molds, don’t bother!). Do unique and trendy stuff. If you have a flair for carving, and a flair for style, this can be very lucrative.
- eBaying Junk. Ok, not junk, precisely, but garage sale and salvage items. You have to have a bit of talent for knowing what people really want here, but I’ve seen this work for many people. I’ve seen a LOT of people FAIL with eBay also. Because they don’t understand that eBay is a BUYER’S market for common things, and a SELLER’S market for rare and desirable things. Your first step is to search on eBay, in the Completed Auctions (under Advanced Search), to see what the things you’d be interested in selling, are actually selling for! A lot of them aren’t going to be selling at all – dozens of auctions, no buyers. Scratch those items. Look for the ones that EVERY listing sells, for a price from which you know you can profit. Go with your interests – you’ll keep the information in your head better that you need to keep there. Then go salvaging and yard saling, and digging through the second hand shops, for stuff that is underpriced, and salable. The potentials are really good IF you can find a type of product that you have access to, which sells well. What NEVER works with eBay, is those “drop ship companies” that tell you that you can sell their overpriced oh-so-common product, which you will pay more for than you’d pay for something better at Wal-Mart, and which no customer in their right mind is going to pay you a reasonable mark-up to take off your hands. That never works. eBay depends upon uniqueness, and desirability. If you can get that, you’ll have a moneymaker on your hands.
- Hatching Eggs. Ok, so the startup cost for this is debatable – depends on how you get the chickens, and whether you already have containment for them or materials to build containment. But you may have enough resources to be able to do this. If you already have chickens, you can generally just add a good rooster – hatching eggs are far more lucrative than eggs for eating. You can sell edible eggs for around $2-3 per dozen, depending on quality. Hatching eggs go for $1-2 EACH. Heck, they even sell for $1 apiece on eBay! You just need to make sure that you either have breeds segregated so they do not cross-breed, or list them as crossbred chickens. Keep good chickens also, and get the marginal ones out of the breeding pool so you can say with assurance that you are selling good quality stock. If you are planning on getting chickens with the hope for earning a little cash on the side, it is worth knowing that hatching eggs sell for more.
- Meal Planning. There are a number of ways to do this. Weekly menus and shopping lists, or “Prepare Ahead” Recipe and instruction booklets. For Prepare Ahead meals, a recipe book, in PDF downloadable form, for a specific number of meals which can be prepared ahead, and frozen for on-demand quick-fix the following week. Combine ingredient prep – for example, if four of six meals take sauteed onions, combine all into a single chop and cook operation. Shopping lists are also a matter of combining things. An Excel spreadsheet makes a nice way to track the shopping, and estimate costs – you can create a self-calculating spreadsheet, with places to put in the number of items, the average cost of the item, which calculates the total for that item, and then adds up the total for all items. Take pictures of the prepared food (in the freezer containers, and again fully cooked and on the plate), write down all the recipes and combination preparation instructions, the shopping list, and average prep time. If you can keep the prep time to half a day or less, and the meals tasty, healthy, and not too costly, people will be interested. Works best to target a special needs segment – people most likely to do this are those who cannot eat supermarket prepared foods. For weekly menus, meal prep times of 30 minutes or less sell best.
- Auto Detailing. No need for a brick and mortar shop. Operate a mobile business – carry your vacuum cleaner, rags and polish with you, and make house and office calls. Busy people love it when the service comes to them. Now, auto-detailing is one of those things that attracts a lot of fly-by-nighters who think it is an easy way to make a buck. It isn’t. You have to do a good job and go the extra mile to keep paying people coming back (or asking you to come back!). So learn to do a good job, and KEEP doing a good job. At $100 a pop, the potentials are good for a great income.
- Oddball Themed Online Store. There are tons of oddball and quirky things that you can assemble together in an online store. Look through eBay again. Only this time, look for what ISN’T selling well on eBay, but which WOULD sell if you had a bunch of items of that same kind together. You aren’t looking for really common stuff. You’re looking for stuff that a LOT of people have extra laying around, but which a lot of OTHER people really don’t think to go to eBay to get, or don’t know what it might be called on eBay. Your store can become the place to find it all. This will work best if there aren’t a ton of other stores specializing in the niche you discover.
- Printable Posters. This is one I’d have NEVER thought would sell, but it does. Pictures, borders, nice fonts, and motivational or humorous quotes, in PDF format for self-printing. Remember when you make these that most printers have a 1/2″ margin that won’t get printed around the edge. Also, the key to reading text over a photo is contrast – bold text often reads better, and putting a drop shadow behind white text, or a glow behind black text can make it stand out and improve readability when you have an image with a lot of distraction behind the text. Also, putting the text in a box, or with an opacity layer behind it can look classy and make the text readable. Elegant embellishments are easy to do using decoration fonts. Images for this kind of thing can be purchased through places like Big Stock Photo, or through clipart or photo collections from Dover Books. There are other places that sell licensed images also. You’ll need a photo editing program, like PhotoShop Elements, and you’ll need to make sure you use high resolution images (look it up if you don’t know what it means). Holiday quotes, seasonal thoughts, learning tools, classic political quotes, or scriptures. Watch what trends on FaceBook, and sell things with a similar mood. Make it look good enough that people want to pay for it. Sell with instant download for $1-2 each.
If you start a shoestring business, you’ll expect the first revenue that you get to go back into the business, and the next dribbles to put a hefty percentage of the profit back into the business, for quite a while. But all of these options allow you to start on a shoestring, and get to the point of profit much sooner than you would if you went into debt to start up.
No business is FAST to start, but with these ideas, you can be profiting within months instead of years, and possibly even sooner than that. Go out there and look for the unusual, and think about how you can simplify it enough to get in the door for under $100. You’ll be surprised at what is possible.
UPDATE: Our book Starting a Mushroom Growing Business on a Shoestring is now available from Amazon for Kindle, and in PDF format through our Firelight Heritage Farm Books website.
Our company is now offering Cottage Industry Consulting and can help you develop a plan for a successful business on a shoestring.
The Art of Inventing
I can invent things a whole lot easier than I can manufacture them. In a way, inventing is the easy part. Taking an invention from an idea in your head, to something you can actually USE, is quite a bit trickier.
I don’t know anyone who hasn’t at one time said, “What we really need is a (insert thing) that (insert function), instead of this old clunky thing!”. Most people KNOW what the invention SHOULD be. But most people can’t get from what they HAVE, to what they really WANT.
The tricky part, is PARTS. When you have invented a thing that nobody has invented before, the parts may not exist. I mean, if nobody knows what a doohicky is, then they really aren’t going to be out there manufacturing pulley wheels and gasket seals for doohickies that they don’t even know exist.
So where parts are concerned, you have to think about FUNCTION, not the NAME of the thing. What I mean is, if you need a gasket for a certain size lid, you may not be able to find a gasket for that lid in stores that sell lids. But somewhere, someone probably makes a gasket that size, if you can determine the size accurately, and the thickness you need. Instant thingamabob for your doohicky.
So think about function – shape, and size, texture, and other properties. What could work? What can you make that might work? What can you easily obtain that you can alter that might work?
Ideally, we all think about the perfect thing, made in a special way. But manufacturing custom parts is very costly. You won’t even get in the door for less than the price of the average house (before the recession!).
Whittling a piece of wood, drilling a hole in an existing part, using two parts together in a new way, or taking parts meant for one purpose and using them in a way that is totally foreign to the original intention isn’t actually hard. What is hard, is finding exactly what you need. Simplify the idea, and think about what you can do in a simple backyard shop with simple tools.
When searching for parts, you can search online, but if you do, you are limited to what you think of searching for by name. You may miss something that would work.
If you walk through a large hardware or fastener store, and just take your time you may have better success at finding something unexpected that will do the job – never do this when you are in a hurry! Go through, aisle by aisle, and just LOOK. As you do, you’ll get ideas. And you might just spot the thing you need. It might not be precisely what you had in mind, but maybe it will work anyway.
Now, some people just don’t have the drive or energy to bother. Other people though, may be natural entrepreneurs, and the idea of creating something new, that fits a need, is intriguing, even exciting, because if you can MAKE it, you can SELL it.
If you are one of those people, then the next time you find yourself saying, “There’s gotta be a better way to do that!”, figure out how to do it! Then go find a way to make it happen.
It may just be the next safety pin or duct tape.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find a tubular shaped metal thing with one open end, that is cheap, and which can be altered to become… something else!
Our company is now offering Cottage Industry Consulting, including product development services.
Letting Pandora Out of the Box
Guest post by Kevin (Laura’s husband)
I grew up with a strong foundation in music. I played in band throughout junior high, high school, and college. I actually have a degree in Music Education. I love listening to music. At home, in the car, in the bathroom, where ever. Sometimes it drives my wife nuts. But silence, especially for a prolonged span of time, drives me nuts – unless I’m up in the woods. (I managed to survive a week up at Scout camp without a radio or iPod, and I’ve been up in the mountains hunting deer and elk. While working at Camp for a whole summer, we could watch movies on the computers, and listen to iTunes, so I had some respite from squirrel chitters and bird song.) I’ve been trying to tell my wife for years that I think better when music is playing. She is only recently realizing that I’ve got one of those anomalies in my brain that needs music to get it jump started. I’ve been trying to tell her that for years, but her brain works best in quiet, so her assumption was understandable.
I am always on the lookout for how to pump music from somewhere. A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a reference to the Pandora web site. “Free internet radio” it said. “Great!”, I said. On Pandora, you can create “radio stations” and it will pick “similar” tracks to what you originally put in. For instance, if you tell it Mozart, it will play Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and similar other artists. If you create another radio station and start it with Glenn Miller, you will hear Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, and other Big Band leaders. Yes, it does contemporary too.
Laura and I like to play “spiritual” music during business hours. We work from home, and it keeps us in a better “frame of mind” towards each other, and the internet frustrations, if we have music playing. So I started a station using the name Janice Kapp Perry. For a while we got similar artists like April Meservey, Mindy Gledhill. But a couple of days ago, I was only half-way paying attention, and I definitely heard some Country music. I love country music, but I didn’t want it on that station. I looked, and saw that it was a semi-religious tune by Tracy Lawrence, so I marked that I liked it. Pretty soon, I kept hearing more Country artists. At first a couple of similarly “religious” tunes, but then we got a “drinking” song. I think there was some kind of mention of bar tramps, too. I marked it that I didn’t like it. Then Pandora started adding Enya and Sissel to my Religious radio station. I like the music these ladies produce, but I didn’t want it on my “spiritual” radio station. As a matter of fact, I had already created a station specifically for Sissel, Enya, Celtic Woman, and all of their other “New Age” sisters.
So I deleted my religious station, and tried to start over. I kept putting in names of the spiritual artists that I liked, but it wouldn’t start with those artists. It would immediately start playing Sissel or Enya. After several attempts I finally gave up.
What we think happened is that I had marked that I liked Sissel, Enya, Tracy Lawrence, Charlotte Church, Diamond Rio, and it wasn’t following the original parameters anymore. Pandora searches for similar “qualities” in artists, and makes it’s choices from there. You can only tell a computer so much before the limited qualities of brain-like function give up the pretense that it can handle anything that differs from the parameters that it’s been given.
On my Sissel Radio, I had marked a bunch of artists that I liked. On my Spiritual radio, I had marked artists that liked there. I had a radio station for Broadway musicals, and pretty soon Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole started showing up there, because I had marked that I liked them on certain show tunes. But I think Pandora was getting confused, because my “parameters” didn’t fit it’s parameters. I expanded my choices because of my personal likes and dislikes. I was outside of Pandora’s box, and it was getting confused.
The point being that if you stick to Pandora’s pre-defined categories, then you and they will get along just fine.
The “Tumbs Up” and “Tumbs Down” buttons work just fine, when controlling what you want to hear on your radio station as a whole. But if you decide that you don’t want to hear “Boot Scoot Boogie” just after your cat died, and you give it a “Thumbs Down” then you will never hear it again.
One other negative. You can’t just “leave it alone”. I don’t know how long it takes for this feature to kick in. I have been seeing to other tasks in the house when Pandora decides to quit. If you don’t click on something every once in a while, the music will stop and you will get this window that asks if you are listening. If you click that you are still listening, it will keep going from where it left off.
I think that Pandora is a handy way to get radio over the internet, and have some degree over customization, but it needs more options for a listener to “truly” optimize their listening experience.
It will be interesting to see if Pandora’s options improve over the next few years, or if some “hot shot” company will come from out of no-where and pull the rug out from under them.
Finding a Product that Sells on a Shoestring
Finding a profitable niche is even more important when you are starting a business or new product line on a shoestring. You haven’t got time or money to waste, so you need to be able to determine in advance when you’ve got a hot item that will sell itself if people know about it.
It is not difficult to find suppliers who will give you a reasonable price on hundreds of an item at a time. It is much more difficult to find suppliers who will sell you two or ten at a time. Or one. At least, who will do so at a price you can afford to pay and still have room to make a profit. Expect to purchase for 50-75% of the resale price if you want to make a profit without running yourself into the ground. For many product types, that can be hard to find. For many of the product types that you can find at those prices, nobody wants them because they are saturated markets.
So how do you find products you can sell at a profit, that people actually want to buy? Well, there isn’t a simple answer, because each market area varies, but there are some ideas that can help you find what works within your arena.
- Make do. When you are looking for a new product, you probably won’t be able to go out and find a manufacturer to make something just for you. Find something that can be used in the same manner, and sell that instead, or something that you can easily modify. If you are smart about it, you can get by until you can afford to have something custom made. If there is competition in the market, you’ll have to offer a significantly lower price if yours has a built in inconvenience or detraction, but if you can still come out at a profit, there is a market niche for that.
- Simplify. Look for the simpler ways of doing things, not the complicated ways. If you make a thing, make sure you can do it fast enough to profit from it at the price you can sell it for. Make sure you can repeatedly get low cost materials to make it so the cost of production does not eat up your profits. Keep things as simple as you possibly can to start with. If something is too complex, brainstorm easier ways to do it. This is how inventions come about!
- Get creative. Don’t just look at what a product was designed to do. Look at how it can be used and niched to fill a need. There are actually a lot of raw products out there which can be adapted to various uses, and just by changing the label, you have a salable product without having to significantly remake the item. If you know a particular item might sell, think about how you can make it using existing low cost supplies. When searching for supplies, get creative in how you search, as well. Many supply items go by many names, and are classed under multiple categories. A polished round wooden piece with a hole in the middle may be classed as a “wooden wheel”, a “wood donut bead”, a “wooden circle”, or a “wood round”. It might be found on jewelry sites, toy making sites, craft sites, woodworking sites, or wholesale import parts supply sites.
- Dropship. Drop shipping means that the supplier ships it direct from their warehouse to your customer. Blind drop shipping means they put YOU as the reseller, not themselves. Either way can work, though if it is NOT blind drop shipped, you will need to note on your sales page that the item is “shipped direct from the manufacturer”. Finding drop shipping companies is NOT simple. People think they can source them by searching for “dropship merchandise” or something like that. Nope! That gets you a bunch of scam companies that have no unique product, who overcharge you, and who could care less about the success of your business. The best way to find drop ship companies is to go find a product you really like, or have a use for and know you can sell, and see if they drop ship. Many do that do not publish that fact. Many mom and pop companies will drop ship if you explain what you want, and many will go out of their way to blind drop ship for you as well. The rule is, find a drop shipper based on the PRODUCT search, not based on a search for drop shippers, if you want to find a good one. Remember, when you choose to drop ship, you lower your operational costs, you do not have to worry about carrying inventory, and you spend only a few minutes processing an order to make your profit. But you rely on the supply company for YOUR reputation. You also have to make sure you pass on accurate shipping costs, which can be difficult if you carry items from more than one supplier. It can be a good place to start when you are needing to get product moving on a shoestring.
- Be flexible. Many people get an idea in their heads, and if it does not work exactly how they wanted it to, they bail. So maybe you decide to sell 3 armed widgets, and all you get are requests for 4 armed widgets. If you can supply 4 armed widgets, and that is where the demand is, by all means, adjust your dream and go with what is needed! Don’t get so stuck on doing what you want that you forget to pay attention to what the customer wants. Most new businesses start out with different concepts than they end up with – because certain things you do not know until you try them, and when you do, it is only smart to learn and adapt, even if it doesn’t seem to be quite what you thought it would be. Follow the opportunities, and don’t get discouraged over the seeming failures – they aren’t failures, they are learning experiences.
- Try a new angle. There are more saturated markets out there than you can shake a stick at. Often the difference between being another of the numbers, and a wild success is the way in which you approach the product and marketing. Come at it from a fresh angle. Put a spin on it that makes it more desirable – most saturated markets are saturated because the item IS popular, there are just more people trying to capitalize on it than there are customers who want to buy from a new source. Humor, kindness, color, decoration, attitude. All of those things make the product YOU sell more desirable than the product someone else sells, even if it is functionally identical.
- Level the competitive field. When you are a small business trying to compete against a big business, you need to offer something desirable that they CANNOT offer. Look at the business model of the competitor. Find the weakness. Maybe they don’t have an easy way to contact a real person. Maybe they cater to a 20 something crowd, and ignore the older customers. Maybe they offer automated product delivery that could be personalized. Look for a thing that they can’t change without losing what makes them distinctive. Offer THAT along with the product. Your competition can’t touch that – and even if your store is not as professional looking as theirs, and even if your product is a little more inconvenient to get, if it meets the needs of people who are NOT being served by the big competitor(s), you’ve got a chance to grow around them.
- Add value. Sometimes if you can’t find a product to resell that you can get at a true wholesale price, you may be able to add value to it. It isn’t really that hard, it can be very simple. Sell it in a bundle, sell it with a decoration added, sell it with better instructions or personally accessible help. Add value somewhere that makes it worth paying more for, or which makes it a separate product type.
- Brainstorm. Get together in a group of business people – I don’t mean the ones that wear suits and think the only way to do business is according to the SBA. I mean other small business owners who have done similar shoestring startups. Make sure they are people who are following their dream – then you don’t have to worry about them sealing YOUR dream (you won’t want your competition in the brain trust, as a general rule). Discuss ways to improve value, niche a product, and source a wholesale product or drop-ship product. Often the synergy of two, three, or four people is enough to spark some ideas. Generally, they won’t tell you the thing you need to do to make your business work – but something they say will spark your creativity and help you get past a hurdle. There is great power in brainstorming.
You absolutely need to avoid selling products which are carried by every discount department store in the country. Nobody wants to buy those for the price you’d have to charge, plus shipping.
You’ve got to do better than that! And you can!
Our company is now offering Cottage Industry Consulting to help you get started right.
Quick and Dirty Market Research for a Salable Product
You’ve got an idea, and you want to know if it will fly. Or you have heard that you can make money doing something, and you want to find out whether you actually CAN make money at it. This is the quick and dirty method of researching a market to find out of people are buying at a price from which you can make a profit.
1. Go to eBay, and do a search for your product. IMPORTANT… search Completed Auctions (under Advanced Search). That way you know what SOLD, not what people were dreaming it would sell for (either high, or low!). This tells you when a thing is so hot people want it at any price, and when a market is so overloaded that 90% of the auctions are unsold, and the other 10% are selling well below cost. eBay won’t work for everything – it is a flop for services so you can’t research them that way. They also forbid the sale of many things, so you’ll have to look elsewhere if they forbid the sale of the thing you need to research.
2. If you hit on a winner, where things are either selling well, or at least not selling badly, then do some more research. Go to Google, and find out what people are selling it for off eBay. eBay typically offers a skewed vision of the marketplace – ultra low prices for saturated markets, ultra high prices for hard to get items. Neither is a good guideline for how YOU should price your items. So find out the range that real people are selling the item for. This will also tell you how saturated the ordinary marketplace happens to be – if you have tons of shops out there, and the first page is littered with Amazon.com ads, then the item is well supplied online – which means you’ll have a lot of competition (not a reason not to dive in, but it will be potentially more difficult to get rolling). Get a good idea of the price range, and aim somewhere for the middle, or high middle – but make sure you can justify your price! If you charge high, make sure you’ve got a selling point that is wanted so bad that people feel it is worth the extra money.
Now, once you’ve done that, you have some numbers to work with. You have some important data that you can take to the calculator.
Figure the cost of materials or wholesale cost of the item.
Estimate or average the time it takes for you to produce an item you make yourself.
Do some math to figure profit per item, and see whether you can make enough to justify the time you put in.
Do two sets of calculations: One for eBay “liquidations” (to move product fast if you get in a situation where you need to move some out), and one for regular every day sales from a non-auction online presence. It is important that you do both of these, so you know whether you can move surplus through eBay or not, and how much it will cost you if you do. Remember that eBay does have some fees involved, so don’t forget to estimate that as well.
For some types of businesses, you need a customer when the product is ready. This is true of many perishable or live items. eBay may be a way to move some of them when you don’t have an established customer base, but you’ll usually get a lower price (often 50% or less).
If you are examining ways to make money, a little research before you dive in can tell you whether you are getting good info from someone who genuinely knows their stuff and really wants to help people earn, or whether you are just hearing hype and empty get rich quick promises from someone who is either unethical or ignorant (and the marketplace is DEFINITELY saturated with both of those!).
A little bit of homework can save you a lot of grief.
Best wishes as you venture forth!
Our company is now offering Cottage Industry Consulting, and a variety of market and marketing assessment services.
Kids and Food
The uproar in the 70s about kids not knowing that milk came from a cow, instead of from a carton at the store, is nothing compared to the ignorance kids have about food now. Most do not know what vegetables look like in their natural state – not even common ones.
This is because their food is not coming even from the produce aisle. It means that most kids are getting food served up to them from boxes and cans, put on a plate in an unrecognizable form.
Most kids have never picked fresh food from a garden, have never gathered an egg from a henhouse, nor carried a bucket of warm milk in from the barn. And it isn’t a good thing that they’ve never done these things.
They’ve missed out not only on some of the best work and family experiences of childhood, but of life.
Gardening doesn't have to be that hard! No matter where you live, no matter how difficult your circumstances, you CAN grow a successful garden.
Life from the Garden: Grow Your Own Food Anywhere Practical and low cost options for container gardening, sprouting, small yards, edible landscaping, winter gardening, shady yards, and help for people who are getting started too late. Plenty of tips to simplify, save on work and expense.
