what business?

[Mike8t1]

Hey all
I have been curious to see what sort of businesses ppl on this forum own or run and if you feel like indulging, earn.
I make 42k in my job, which I enjoy but I have been doing it 11yrs and the money is pretty crap I think. I guess I'm looking toward business ideas and potential income.
Thanks everyone
Michael
Ps is this the best place for this thread?

 

[Property Meister]

just a friendly piece of advice, but being sick of your day job, and wanting to do something else does not mean you can or sucessfully replace it with a business.

realistically, unless you are very talented/skilled/lucky or similar, or all of the above, you may not only work a gazillion hours, you may have zero salary for the first 12 months (or even more), some people come out $100k+ out of pocket as well,

Sorry, just being as realistic as possilbe

 

[weg]

What skills and experience do you have? What is the business you work in now? What do you think you can do in business, that may be better than what the next business person can do? Do you have an understanding of business generally, and it's risks?

PM is correct. Expect to pump money into something, to work long hours at first (and possibly for a very long time), with little pay, until it gets off the ground, keeping in mind it may never get off the ground unless you give yourself the best possible chance at succeeding (see first paragraph).

Start by looking into how existing businesses might work, ask people who own successful ones lots of questions (even your boss providing you don't plan on stealing his clients), and read lots of books outlining what to expect/it involves.

You also need to decide whether you buy an existing one, or whether you start one up yourself.

Perhaps think about working or getting some experience in the area you decide to go into, especially if you're outlaying a significant amount of money.

 

[Property Hoarde]

I own this business

www.themeshop.com.au

It earns not a lot of money as I just put up the site last week.

and i also own a small accounting practice which earn a bit more.

If you are going to start a business you have to realise that it is a lot of hard work to get going (eg the above is taking a lot of effort to get the word out) and can over take over your life.

My advise is if you are looking for a business try to find something that you can have people run and you can get away from it (it is hard to find) ie on holiday without phone calls need ec...

Or in other words in the long run you can move from working in the business to working on it.

 

[tubs]

According to the AFR the biggest growing sector is home services. Cleaning, lawn mowing, gardening etc. People don't have time to do it and are prepared to pay.

 

[Lamingtons]

^^ Very hard trying to find reliable people to provide those services.

 

[lizzie]

But the home services sector is "buying yourself a job" rather than running a business.

The biggest defination as to whether you have a job (even when self employed) or a business is "can you go away for extended periods and the business still makes money without you?"

I personally plan on mine being a business and not a job. That's probably why the startup phase is taking so darn long - and why it is hard to find a mentor amongst all the "business" people who are one man bands.

 

[RumpledElf]

We make websites, fix computers, write the occasional non-web application, do a bit of copywriting and make passive income from our own websites. I also spend a lot of time online in a help chat room that is supposed to be free but a surprising number of people are willing to pay for help. It all adds up but banks really don't like it.

Currently on our biggest website project yet, which is annoyingly bursty, says me working on it at 8pm because they need something for tomorrow morning, after waiting weeks twiddling our thumbs with nothing to do.

 

[quoll]

just a friendly piece of advice, but being sick of your day job, and wanting to do something else does not mean you can or sucessfully replace it with a business.

realistically, unless you are very talented/skilled/lucky or similar, or all of the above, you may not only work a gazillion hours, you may have zero salary for the first 12 months (or even more), some people come out $100k+ out of pocket as well,

Sorry, just being as realistic as possilbe

And they are the lucky ones, others are 600k down at the end of the exercise.

 

[quoll]

Get a business that can pay mortgage on a property

Think of stuff that can run from anywhere and then buy a property that it can use. Most business's find rent to be the major killer.

Hard giving advice with out more info from you.

Our most successful business is the IT Consulting operation. I work from home, travel to clients sites and do short term work. If you have skills a lot of occupations have contract work which is what I started doing, pays better than permanent work but has the uncertainty of 3/6/12 mth contract terms.

Just remember 80% of small business fail in the first 3 years.

 

[Aaron Sice]

my business is mainly intellectual property so its not worth that much to anyone in tbe general market.

thqt said, someone in the industry could buy my lead generation, i guess. i could sell client lists like a rent roll, but theyd have to prove themselves to be of worth to the clients to make it work, so it would really need to be someone in my industry.

i was offered $25k for my setup in 2008. i think it was a poacher offer, trying to buy leads etc but seriously anyone half in the know would realise that is a stupid low offer considering 2 years income.

my biz is in my sig.

cheers and good luck.

 

[Ace in the Hole]

OP, it seems you have a safe and secure personality type, based on your work history.
Whatever business you choose, might be best to start small from home with zero overheads.
ie, don't invest any significant amount of capital upfront to start a business.
You'll have nothing to lose then, but plenty of experience to gain.

Who knows, you could be turning over millions in a few years, someone I know did this recently starting from zero from home.

 

[lizzie]

agree it is possible to make BIG dollars - but that is the type of business where you are not restricted by the time you can spend or by you actually working in it.

That type of business is where you either leverage off other people's time, or volume of sales ... ie ... you develop and app that sells for $2 - if you sell 10,000,000 of the apps and make 50c/sale (not sure how sale of apps works but assuming you go thru a distributor like channel that take their cut) that is still a very tidy $5mil you've made.

And with that - you have only spent the time developing and selling the app. You don't have to rewrite it for every sale.

Or product ... design and develop a product that is then manufactured overseas and sold thru distributors.

Or a franchise ... where you have a store manager who runs the joint and does all the day to day work, like MacDonalds.

Or even a home services ... but you don't do the cleaning, you organise others to do the work and you take off the cream.

 

[Ace in the Hole]

agree it is possible to make BIG dollars - but that is the type of business where you are not restricted by the time you can spend or by you actually working in it.

That type of business is where you either leverage off other people's time, or volume of sales ... ie ... you develop and app that sells for $2 - if you sell 10,000,000 of the apps and make 50c/sale (not sure how sale of apps works but assuming you go thru a distributor like channel that take their cut) that is still a very tidy $5mil you've made.

This.....

Once you set up a good business with good exposure with good distribution and stock handling methods, it takes only little more work to sell $20k of product a day over selling $2k of product, at retail prices too.

 

[RumpledElf]

Selling a service by subscription also works like that. We have lots of crazy ideas, two of them are by subscription. One we were going to charge $20pm and were hoping for a couple of thousand subscribers. One I've only been working on a week I want to have three levels, free, personal ($5pm) and business ($20pm) and it doesn't take many subscribers to make rather a lot of money. The second idea has a larger potential userbase, but not a global one so it would max out at maybe 2M users and the bulk of those would be free but whatever, its not going to cost me much to set up so no harm in spending a few weeks working on it between paid gigs

The current work we're doing, if we did it fulltime all the time instead of bursty by contract, would max out at 'only' $166k between us.

 

[Brett IP]

Hey all
I have been curious to see what sort of businesses ppl on this forum own or run and if you feel like indulging, earn.
I make 42k in my job, which I enjoy but I have been doing it 11yrs and the money is pretty crap I think. I guess I'm looking toward business ideas and potential income.
Thanks everyone
Michael
Ps is this the best place for this thread?

Is there any way you can increase your salary with a different employer?

 

[MIW]

What's your passion!

Hey all
I have been curious to see what sort of businesses ppl on this forum own or run and if you feel like indulging, earn.
I make 42k in my job, which I enjoy but I have been doing it 11yrs and the money is pretty crap I think. I guess I'm looking toward business ideas and potential income.
Thanks everyone
Michael
Ps is this the best place for this thread?

Find something you love to do, do it better than most other people, and persist at it.
What's a difference between a professional golfer and an amatuer? How many golf balls the professional payer hits....
Read some books on successful people and how they got there.
It has to be your passion, hard work, providing a product/service that most people want, and at a price most people can afford. Once you answer that question than you'll be on your right way....
Other option is perhaps to retrain and get the job you would like to do, that may pay better?
Are you willing to relocate?
Heard of a lady at age 64, driving mining equipment in WA and earning $120K+. My sister's brother-in-law will do it soon too in north QLD.
One more thing, brainstorm what your interests were when you were really young (I'm not suggesting your old) that may help to spur on some ideas....Good Luck