What is possible, on a low budget?

Hello,

Well I left college about 4 months ago, please note college isn't like what college is in the USA and doesn't really give you a huge advantage in the job market like it does in the USA you have to go to university for that to get the big advantage. Anyway to cut a long story short, been unemployed for around 4 months now and have applied for around 30 jobs with no luck so looking to start something small. It would be online based of course and more in to the e-commerce side of things. But what is there to offer, I am also looking for non high valued items to sell as I wouldn't like to receive a charge back on my credit card processor for a $1000 item but low valued items would be feasible. I am not going to say the exact amount I have for start up but it is around £2000 and I am from the UK. So throw me some ideas guys, I have plenty of room for storage so could run something easily from home and would be dedicated. Please do not say "Gold Shops" as the market here on Sythe is flooded with highly trusted sellers and the profit margins on mills is very minimal so just throw me some ideas guys.

Fendle.

 

Hi, i know this is completely off topic, but could i ask what you studied where you studied and what you got. I'm in the UK too and im not too sure on going to Uni, to be in debt and not have a job.

 

Finance (BTEC) got a B in that was so easy and pretty cool to do.
IT got a B in that also.

Was doing Media also but don't do it unless you really want to go in to that sort of stuff, its really time consuming and I ended up dropping it 2 months in. Left college with pretty good results to be fair.

 

Your best bet is buying from wholesale items straight from manufactures in china.

Mostly going to be electronic items and then you can sell them on eBay for a profit. Although, you would make a bigger profit by selling the items locally through craigslist or other sites like craigslist.

 

To be honest you should go out and keep trying to look for a Job, 4 months is a long time to have gone to waste.You should keep checking online, or alternately you could go to the job centre i'm sure they'll sort you out with something. I'm at college now. At first i had high hopes for Uni my first year of college I was doing A-levels but decided to drop out for BTEC and the Job I want does not involve me to go into university. Not worth all the debt.

 

Wow, this thread is a blast from the past haha. Well its more like 6 months now but yea, I applied for too many jobs I can't keep track lol.

 

^ This. I've been looking into it the past few days, but, honestly, i'm just too lazy. I already have a job an don't really need the money.

There's a few sites out there that you can buy stuff direct from the manufacturers from, for instance "Alibaba" and "Ioffer"- Although just be careful who you're buying from, make sure you read the feedback from other buyers.

Just make sure, if you're buying anything, that its something you can actually re-sell for profit, and don't forget about postage costs.

 

You can find things cheap from wholesalers.

Buy things like Nike wristbands, headbands and soccer gear. And sell them on the UK Ebay, you can buy things like that for 50c/ea including shipping, and you won't have trouble selling 5$ a pop.

 

The thing from wholesalers can get you in trouble if you advertise them as nike, because they're never genuine.

 

Go with screen protectors?

 

Or you can buy fakes with brand names like nyke, registered differently WITH VERY SIMILAR LOGOS.

 

it would depend on what kind of experience you have but i know that custom controller stores do AMAZING business especially if you know what you are doing and can work your way around a controller and make it look sexy as fuck.

So you could buy per say, 50.00 xbox controllers at 60.00 a pop and then order parts off an ebay seller for real cheap and get bumpers, buttons, joysticks, ps3 joysticks, and paint, and you could make quite a hefty penny if you could get good at something like that because people are always looking for cool unique items like that.

 

^ I like that idea, there's good profit. You buy the controller for ~60, and the battery pack goes for 30-40$.

 

I'm jjjjjj

 

Honestly, I little business I started up is iPhone cases. Almost everyone has an iPhone nowadays, and everyones wants a cool case to go with it. On eBay, cases are relatively cheap and you can sell them at a higher price around campus or to your friends. The cases come from Hong Kong and take a bit of time for shipping but its worth it. Just browse through the cases, and find one at a good price and sell it for more.
For example, this case is 5 dollars and looks pretty nice.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pen-Hybrid-...0?pt=PDA_Accessories&var=&hash=item5650a4f94c
You can possibly sell it at 10 dollars depending on who the person is and sell it with the stylus. Just start at the bottom and move your way on up.

 

Apparently, nobody here has the the vaguest idea how e-commerce/drop-shipping works.

Finding a good, RELIABLE drop-shipper is beyond difficult as it is. There's more scammers that claim they can drop-ship than there are people on Sythe or any other RWT forum claiming you can make "EZ BILZ" by buying their guide or whatever. Especially if you are looking for a drop-shipper that is niche specific, then good luck. But let's say you manage to get lucky and found somebody legitimate and is delivering you the goods. Okay, now let's look at shipping costs.

"Oh, you need 4 pairs of Jordans that cost $45 each? That'll be an addition $85 for shipping please."

It's beyond expensive to get something shipped in from China/India. This is only worth it if you're dealing with bulk. But now that you have your items in stock, your drop-shipper delivered, and you paid for the products...what about the actual quality? Are the $45 Jordans you bought real, or are they a "factory variant"? I don't believe Ebay allows fakes to be sold, but I know for sure that if you try to sell a fake off as real and a customer complains, BAM. Ebay immediately shuts down your account and locks your PayPal. I've also heard of cases where they start refunding literally anyone who claims a refund for your product as well.

However, if you manage to bypass all of the above problems of:
- Finding a drop-shipper
- Being able to afford the shipping fees
- Got good products
- Starting to get decent feedback on Ebay

But wait! If you start selling over "x" amount of items through Ebay, they lock your PayPal or your Ebay account for suspicious activity and then you're not allowed to withdraw anything unless you go through a VERY tedious (or so I've heard) confirmation process to prove you are who you actually claim to be and that you aren't money laundering.

But of course, there are many people who do Ebay and makes a lot of money. Just don't assume it's just as easy to "drop ship a bunch of items from China and then sell them for easy cash".

Now, for the above e-commerce site, how do you plan on driving traffic to your site? I know people who pay over $1,000/month for SEO just to keep their products listed on Google on the first page. Plus, you would either need to:

A) Find a web developer who can set up Magento/Open cart

or

B) Be REALLY damn good at web design

Plus, it costs a couple hundred dollars just to buy the license for a custom e-commerce site. If you go down the Magento route though, I believe it's much cheaper although I don't really remember. Your best bet would be to get a web designer who specializes in building Magento sites, it's the cheapest method I believe. There ARE other methods to get traffic to your e-commerce site though without having to use SEO/PPC but nobody is going to share you those methods for free (if at all...).

But anyway, yeah. Just throwing my opinion in there. It's kind of annoying how everyone assumes it's so damn easy to sell random bullshit on Ebay and easily make a few hundred dollars.

 

Fendle,

http://www.sythe.org/assets-investm...siness-easily-started-small-amounts-cash.html

This could work for you? Where are you based in the UK? Do you drive? You're not going to become rich quick using the method, but it does work.

It brings in much higher revenue than dole and the plus side would mean you don't have to inform the dept work and pensions regards a change in employment.

//// EDIT

Just to agree with a previous post, Phone cases are immensely high profit. The problem with it is you have far to much competition online.... If you sell a fronted retail store you stand good stead of making extreme profits providing you have a background in mobile technology.

 

Thanks for the reply mate, pretty awesome little technique you got going there.

 

No problems pal, I've got numerous little techniques, I find fingers in pies (excuse the expression) pays the bills and some. I'll keep posting little techniques on what i do every now and then but that method you don't really need much to start up. I put an Add in my local paper and linked my FB group, Most towns / cities have a "for sale or swop in manchester" (example) and you can keep an eye out for bargains. It's really easy providing you have a bit of money. Once people get to know you're doing it you get plenty of business word of mouth as well

 

Did anyone mention drop shipments? I think they just said wholesaler.

There is plenty of good opensource e-commerce software.

SEO is basically a science; it isn't hidden, and if you do some digging you can find good and reliable methods.

It honestly isn't hard to make some extra cash on ebay. What's difficult is starting any substantial business on ebay.