I had a few ideas but my biggest problem is I don’t spend money so everything other people spend money on sounds stupid.
For a family of 4 we spent $750 in non discretionary spending last year. So I can never imagine enough people will actually buy anything.
My sister bought a glow forge laser cut and made $40k selling stuff the 1st year but she has yet to make anything I would spend money on and not consider useless junk.
I used to work in a repair store and could buy broken game systems by the stack for $15, repair them, mod them, then sell them. But how many people are really looking to buy a modded game system? I could print and paint minis but again how many people can sustain that? I could make bird houses but what’s the market for $50 hand made bird house when Amazon has $15 houses?
I've tried my hand at several small businesses and one thing I can tell you is get very good at marketing yourself online. If you can't do that, you will never succeed even if your product is a legit golden goose. So, for every hour and dollar you spend on your product spend 10 on your marketing . Create milestones, hone your ad copy, develop various reach out methods, etc. You may still fail but at least you'll have the best chance.
Thanks for the effort post good anon. That is one thing my sister really did. She pays for advertising and does at least 1 vendor table a week sometimes up to 3.
I can do taxes but no clue how to get clients. Maybe my best thing is just start doing paid ads offering tax service.
>Maybe my best thing is just start doing paid ads offering tax service.
So, one other thing: be careful what you spend. FB and other ad services make it very very easy to spend a lot and get nothing for it (surprise!). Which is why you need to spend most of your time testing and honing what techniques will be most effective for your type of business. Maybe email marketing is better, maybe ads, maybe vendor booths. Just be prepared to spend most of your time and money discovering what does and doesn't work, your product is completely secondary. Depending on the results you do or don't get, it may be worth it to just pay a firm to handle your marketing for you. They know what will get you traffic and know what to stay away from so you don't get your email domain blacklisted or your advertising account shut down, for example. Anyway, now you know. Glad you found it useful
NTA, greatest ad of all time is jones' big ass truck rental and storage. I don't even have to do research on techniques
For shit like finances or anything tax related I'd steer clear of online advertising, too many pajeet scammers floating around have poisoned that well.
This may sound boomerish but try ad spots on local radio stations. Depending on the market it can be relatively cheap and depending on the time slot you've a captive audience when people are commuting to and from work.
This anon gets it more than you think. 25yo women with a single cricut make $3k monthly selling low quality artsy shit with custom stickers on it. Not because it’s a good product but because they know how to market it well. While artisan wood or metal workers making durable and actually useful stuff can’t find a buyer because “$200 is too much for a chair”: they just can’t market their products as well on Instagram/Pinterest/TikTok/whatever the kids use these days.
I have sold birdhouses but found out that literally nobody cares about the durability of a birdhouse since you can get a new one for $15 if it breaks. You want to sell custom birdhouses that blend in with the style of the house/yard they will be put in. I sold about 50 and I think most people who bought one didn’t care if there would ever be a bird in them they just liked the idea of owning a bespoke birdhouse
I have a job now and make stuff that I actually like in my free time instead of living off making stuff that I hated but sold
>Selling manufactured products
Competing with the bugs is impossible. Sell a service instead. Pick a subject where it's very difficult to detect fraud, such as human resources counselor or interior designer. After some experience it won't even be fraud.
>Buy a laptop
>Get a remote job with benefits
You're welcome
Also, I sell shit to wealthy folks I would never buy
You have to profile your customer and they're [spoiler]not like you [spoiler]
>just get a work from home job, champ!
>you gotta hit the web, look them right in the FaceTime and give them a firm handshake emoji
>It's just that easy, you're just lazy!
I think you just need to change your thinking a bit. Say your goal is to make a million in sales with your 50$ birdhouses. That's 20k birdhouses sold. I don't know where you live, but let's say the US. With the current population of 330 million, you'd need to appeal to %0.006 of the population. And that's ignoring repeat customers. There's probably more dudes out there into wiener and ball torture. I think you can make something more appealing than that.
I'm kind of on the same journey. I took a hobby I've been doing for years, and with recent advances in tech and my CAD ability, I found a niche. It's been 8 months and this is the first month I've covered my web hosting fee. Regardless of what you do, it likely wont be an immediate success and could take a few years to build up a steady business.
I do like the birdhouse idea tho. You could build up an entire catalog of different styles, have your sister laser out some gingerbreading for victorian style houses. There's 100 different types you could do. Believe it or not there are people who will still pay for quality, so who cares about the $15 garbage product, you're making something better. You can sell it amazon too.