Anyone own an online business?

[juzlookzfazt]

Just speculating ideas and possibilities for now, but I was curious to know if any of you folks own an e-business? If so..what do you sell? how did you start? how much money did you have to start? hardships? etc etc

FWIW..rambling on about your experience would help me lmao.

 

[KaNolton]

Really? No one?

I'm kind of interested in this myself.

 

[jzepp]

Have been wanting to start a home based business also but have been scammed many times. I would like to know also about any success stories.

 

[Eds01Lightning]

No such thing! They are all scams!!

 

[capnkirk52]

No such thing! They are all scams!!

+1

If you are a good salesman you could start up your own home based scamming business.

Paypal me $19.95 and I'll email the plans to you!!! :beer:

 

[stangin99]

I used to have a legit one when I was 16-ish. Ran an online paintball retail store for maybe a year at the most.

Biggest problem was coming up with money to make an initial order from distributors. Back then there were not a lot of online stores so the paintball distributors wanted photos of the store, square footage, and a large initial order. Sometimes I swung it, sometimes I just didn't use a distributor.

Because I was young and into paintball, I ended up spending most of my profits on buying gear for myself and supplied my team(we were locally sponsored as well) with gear.

After I graduated I seriously looked into re-opening it, but there are a LOT more online stores now then when I did it. The market is flooded and I would think that I would need to actually purchase stock to make my prices competitive.


Unless you're talking about those ads you hear on tv/radio about selling electronics, then no I have no experience with those shoddy things.

 

[greenstang1313]

I've been looking at starting something like this as well, not sure what I want to do yet though. If your interested in possibly making money in the porn industry shoot a PM to Rochard, he can give you some tips. He's a stand up guy and will probably be happy to give you some pointers.

 

[ModMike1572]

Pretty much everything online has been exploited. Theres really not much you can start at this point. Finding vendors and suppliers is the hard part. Many of them require huge first time orders (some of mine want atleast 15k for your first order). I was lucky enough to get into it at the right time, and I get true wholesale prices.
And even if you landed some good suppliers, getting people to your store is the next big challenge. You can have the best prices online, but if you dont SEO your site properly, no one will see it. It could cost big money for advertising if you are starting from scratch. There's nothing wrong with investing in an already established business if you have some money laying around. The contacts are already there, the traffic to the store is already there. Its the same as running a store in a fixed location, minus all the huge expenses. On my stores, I pay for merchant accounts, domain names, hosting/store fees, vendor supplies, site maitenence etc....
You want to make sure you get into the right "niche" business with little competition. That way when people search for your products, they find you. Everyone thinks they can go on Ebay and sell electronics. That doesnt work. lol
One of the niches I'm in is motorcycle stunting parts. We pretty much dominate the search engines for various stunting part search terms. I have no complaints, we do very well, and are looking to expand this summer.

Oh, and about having money to start, if you do decide to purchase an already established business, you dont have to have a fortune to start. Theres nothing wrong with financing with a down payment, and most business owners including myself will do it over a set amount of time.

 

[juzlookzfazt]

I've been looking at starting something like this as well, not sure what I want to do yet though. If your interested in possibly making money in the porn industry shoot a PM to Rochard, he can give you some tips. He's a stand up guy and will probably be happy to give you some pointers.

I was hoping to start off small then eventually, and hopefully become bigger. I'd have hopes of going so big that I may call it my full time job, but I don't want to be telling people that my full time job is porn related lmao. Although it wouldn't be that hard to get started. I assume a decent camera, video recorder, some people, a couple of legal-related paperwork, and such lol. I contemplated it but my friend may actually do this lmfao! Thanks for the advice though!

Pretty much everything online has been exploited. Theres really not much you can start at this point. Finding vendors and suppliers is the hard part. Many of them require huge first time orders (some of mine want atleast 15k for your first order). I was lucky enough to get into it at the right time, and I get true wholesale prices.
And even if you landed some good suppliers, getting people to your store is the next big challenge. You can have the best prices online, but if you dont SEO your site properly, no one will see it. It could cost big money for advertising if you are starting from scratch. There's nothing wrong with investing in an already established business if you have some money laying around. The contacts are already there, the traffic to the store is already there. Its the same as running a store in a fixed location, minus all the huge expenses. On my stores, I pay for merchant accounts, domain names, hosting/store fees, vendor supplies, site maitenence etc....
You want to make sure you get into the right "niche" business with little competition. That way when people search for your products, they find you. Everyone thinks they can go on Ebay and sell electronics. That doesnt work. lol
One of the niches I'm in is motorcycle stunting parts. We pretty much dominate the search engines for various stunting part search terms. I have no complaints, we do very well, and are looking to expand this summer.

Oh, and about having money to start, if you do decide to purchase an already established business, you dont have to have a fortune to start. Theres nothing wrong with financing with a down payment, and most business owners including myself will do it over a set amount of time.

Yeah I noticed the market saturation portion of the difficulty lol. I would assume you would require a vast knowledge base of the industry you are about to enter. Thanks for the insight!

Keep em coming SVT-P!

 

[greenstang1313]

I was hoping to start off small then eventually, and hopefully become bigger. I'd have hopes of going so big that I may call it my full time job, but I don't want to be telling people that my full time job is porn related lmao. Although it wouldn't be that hard to get started. I assume a decent camera, video recorder, some people, a couple of legal-related paperwork, and such lol. I contemplated it but my friend may actually do this lmfao! Thanks for the advice though!

Well actually you wouldn't have to do any filming or photographing (unfortunately:lol1, you would just be setting up a website that advertises other porn sites and when people sign up for those sites through your site you get a commision. The way he explained it to me, it didn't sound all that difficult.

 

[juzlookzfazt]

Well actually you wouldn't have to do any filming or photographing (unfortunately:lol1, you would just be setting up a website that advertises other porn sites and when people sign up for those sites through your site you get a commision. The way he explained it to me, it didn't sound all that difficult.

Oooh! My friend is doing something very similar to that! I'll inquire about this..particular..choice..of uhh..business *looks around* ..it may uhh..raise interest ...and possibly..benefit..certain people ..such as myself. :coolman: