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Original poster

do any of you run an internet based business?

22 replies

micegg · 30/12/2007 19:16

I am tentaviely looking into starting my own internet based business. I am thinking along the lines of something to

I am tentatively planning to start a business. I am thinking along the lines of maternity wear and baby products, etc.I know there is quite a bit out there aleady but I am thinking of trying to find the smaller labels. My main reason being that I have an idea in my head what I would like to buy but struggle to find it. It will therefore be the type of website I have always wanted to find.

Are any of you running internet based businesses? How did you start? Did you have experience in the items you are selling, where do you get the items from, etc. I would eventually like as shop but think an internet based business will be better whilst the DCs are young and I try and set myself up.

OP posts:

Original poster

micegg · 30/12/2007 19:17

Woops. I think DD has been at the space bar whilst I was making dinner

OP posts:

hunkermunker · 30/12/2007 19:18

I'm not, but I'd like to, so am watching this with interest. Particularly interested in the technical side of it - how to build site, where to host it, etc.

Twinklemegan · 30/12/2007 23:32

Bumping this - I'm interested too.

FlameNFurter · 30/12/2007 23:34

Go see www.mumzmall.co.uk and get yeself a free shop. It is a chance to test the waters, see if you like etc without spending out on hosting etc. Oodles of support

Twinklemegan · 30/12/2007 23:42

Thanks for the link . Can I just ask before I settle down for a good look, if you set up a shop through them, can it only be accessed via their homepage, or can you advertise it elsewhere and link directly. And how about getting your shop rated on search engines etc.?

FlameNFurter · 30/12/2007 23:43

You can advertise it wherever you like - you must have their ads on there if it is a free shop, but they aren't obtrusive.

Search engine ratings etc - you just do it all yourself.

cadeLaideInAManger · 30/12/2007 23:51

I have a retail site, set up (after 8 years trading in a "bricks and mortar" shop) by my very clever dp.
So yes, we did have a lot of experience in retail before we started. The technical side of it is incredibly complex, SEO is a "black art" and your only chance of success is a good listing on Google. You will find that no-one will tell you how to achieve this, dp has put in many, many hours and I don't understand a word of it!

Lauriefairycake · 30/12/2007 23:59

My friends design websites for internet based businesses - they set it up so you can take paypal or other ways of payments - make it easy so you can update it yourself ( no technical knowledge required) . They make sure that your site appears in google, yahoo etc by inputting the words that search most commonly so it always comes up

I used to work for him - lovely fella - reasonably priced sites too - think they have them from £199 - I'm going to get him to do one for my counselling business

www.nextgenerationwebsites.co.uk

HTH

cadeLaideInAManger · 31/12/2007 00:08

Lauriefairycake; "They make sure that your site appears in google, yahoo etc by inputting the words that search most commonly so it always comes up"

Take it from one who knows, it is waaay, way more complex than that. You can pay people for SEO (search engine optimisation)but you will never be guaranteed a result, and if your website doesn't appear in search results you don't get orders. You can also have a "paid-for" listing but this can cost loads and needs to be worded very carefully to get results.

Lauriefairycake · 31/12/2007 00:30

I used to work in IT so I know how it works - was just explaining it for ease for others

yes, they do seo and all the sites I have visited that they have designed appear in the top ten of yahoo, google etc

And I'm very much hoping mine will too

SantaBabyBeenAnAwfulGoodGirl · 31/12/2007 00:47

yes i used to have a shop and then started a website i have had it for a number of years

if you google party bag toys it is always on the first page somewhere

i am a genius

cadeLaideInAManger · 31/12/2007 10:43

Morning micegg!, reading last night's posts I realise too much wine and mince pies made me churlish and not at all helpful.

Regarding where you buy the stuff a good place to start is the trade shows, the big ones are at NEC, Earls Court, Olympia etc. A good one for you would be Premier Kids, (NEC end of Jan).Also you can have great fun "spying" in other people's shops, look at labels, make a note of details, get home and google, ring them up and say you'd like to sell their stuff. Most of the smaller companies have a minimum order of £300ish.
Good Luck!

Oh, and Santababy, you are indeed a genius!

SantaBabyBeenAnAwfulGoodGirl · 31/12/2007 10:45

the simplest form of seo is good relevant content not rocket science

cadeLaideInAManger · 31/12/2007 10:54

Lauriefairycake, I promise I am sober and have taken my cleverdick hat off now but your friend's own website doesn't do very well in a google search at all.
It is a great looking site but I'm just trying to demonstrate that seo is an area often overlooked by those starting out and its importance can't be emphasised enough.

micegg, there are short courses available, might be worth researching that.

chocolateteapot · 31/12/2007 11:00

I have an internet business which is 2 years old tomorrow. DS was just over two when I started it. I started it as DH became pretty ill and I thought he might be too ill to work and decided I needed to get off my backside and do something.

Built a site myself using Blue Voda which is a free internet building thing and photos from istockphoto.com. I was able to set it up to take payments via Paypal. Had no experience of building a site before so a miracle anything got up there but it did. I had sold on Ebay for a few months before hand so new there was demand for one of my items but the rest were a gamble.

I approached companies direct to see who would supply me wholesale and took it from there. I've been lucky in that DH got very interested when he actually saw some money going into the Paypal account and took the site on as a project (he's a programmer so found it easy to learn how to do it). He's built me an admin section that automatically does invoices for me that have address labels on them and does stock control. He's also spent hours looking at the web marketing stuff so we do now show up on the first page of google for some of our items. My initial costs were about £15 for photos and £35 for hosting, then stock.

It has been much much harder work than I ever imgained and to be honest DS has ended up being a bit neglected at times. Finally I have got to the stage where I can pay myself a regular monthly wage which makes a big difference to our family budget. But I would have got a lot more if I had gone back to my old job and sales are down since the credit crunch news began, so who knows what next year will bring. I'm sure if I work out the hours .I have put in then I have been earning about 10p an hour!

FlameNFurter · 31/12/2007 11:32

In honour of LGN's birthday, I think we need a link!

Little Green Nursery

Aitch · 31/12/2007 11:42

ooooh, nice. what's worldpay? dh uses paypal and i can't help thinking they're useless...

PeachyHasAFiggyPudInTheOven · 31/12/2007 11:49

Dh has an internet business, part e-bay absed. It's currently a secondary to a full time job but the idea is to supplement us a bit when he goes to Uni in 2 yeras time, and then to turn it FulltTime. He sells DJ equipment and lighting supplies- he had loads of experience of this as a hobby and is something of an electronics geek, so buys a lot of faulty products etc and repairs them. When I graduate we might go into sensory room equipmenta s well, as a lot of it is shared technology and having 2 special needs children we have some idea of what people need in that way.

Eventually he's like a premises, after he graduates. Nothing huge- no point- small repair worksop in the village close to the post opffice would be ideal.

It seems to be working well, his turnover doubl;es each ear and we get a lot of repeat custom as he's extremely fastidious about customer service etc. The beauty of doing it this slowly is that we are now getting good pictures of trends and downturns in the trade- eg you can clear loads of stock Christmas day because all the DJ's blow up their systems the night before, but January after the first week is dead. It's also our current version of a retirement plan, as one of our boys won't be likely to leave home and we shall need extra income. The eldest has milder Sn but a talent for electronics, so we're hoping that he'd be able to join the business one day as we can cope with his HFA but not all eemployers could.

PeachyHasAFiggyPudInTheOven · 31/12/2007 11:51

(oh Dh was a programmer once which helped a lot with the IT side of it)

Enid · 31/12/2007 11:53

most new internet mail order businesses fail due to problems with supply/fulfilment btw

please give the warehousing and delivery side of your business a long hard look...

Pickie · 31/12/2007 12:01

I have an internet based business. Same story as choc teapot really. I started when on mat leave of DS and used it as a 'hobby' as we didnt really needed the money.

then DH had near fatal accident and still not working (unlikely to return to FT employment) so I took business further and is now a ltd company and turnover is steadily going up plus we have 2 exclusive UK distributorships.

Very hard work and I find the working from home bit very difficult (DC still very young though)but take it step by step. Contacting business link is a good idea, free and usually they can point you in the right direction. Starting on Ebay or Amazon is also a good starting point before either doing your own or have one built. (I done both and wished I started with having one done for me!)

Hope it goes all well for you!

pollypumpkin · 31/12/2007 16:36

my internet business usually comes up on page 1 or 2 of google if you put in 'childrens curtains' or 'childrens bedrooms'. It took quite some time for that to happen though - a few months I think. I get ALL my custom through google and it doesn't cost a thing - I tried pay-per-click for a bit and it didn't really work for me, although it's something to consider if you have good advice on how to do it effectively.
I am not techy at all, and pay a bit over the odds for my hosting but it's worth it to me because they do a lot more than some people (e.g. one2one) and you always get a human being on the phone when you have a problem!

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