Business challenge - £xxx 2015

[russ_a]

I've picked a certain type of affiliate website. All the ones out there at the moment for this sector are poor and don't work on mobile phones.

[Hoofy]

If you haven't got any ideas, check out Clickbank. Always wondered if you could make anything out of CB.

[condor]

A pedlar's certificate costs £12.25 and you can pedal your wares throughout the UK

[Hoofy]

Sounds like too much effort!

[illmonkey]

The ball has started moving. First item is in the bag, now to try and sell it.

Going to sort out a website, email etc shortly to give a professional feel.

[condor]

Hoofy said:

Sounds like too much effort!

One of my plans was to sell red rose buttonholes on valentines day...

[dirty boy]

I've got an idea! It's nuts!

[Hoofy]

condor said:

Hoofy said:

Sounds like too much effort!

One of my plans was to sell red rose buttonholes on valentines day...

Good luck. Presumably not door-to-door!

[Willeh85]

condor said:

A pedlar's certificate costs £12.25 and you can pedal your wares throughout the UK

This was one of my other ideas. My local football team has 30 000 stadium and is mostly full each game. My cousin an avid support and reliably informs me the drinks/food in and around the stadium are hugely expensive, so I was going to try sell some drink and snacks a little bit further away from the approved vendors along the busy routes at a cheaper price.

[condor]

I think if you plan to sell food you might need a hygiene certificate as well. You need a street traders licence if you're going to stay in one place ( ie like a stall). The point about a pedlar's certificate is that you walk around with whatever you're selling.

Hoofy said:

Good luck. Presumably not door-to-door!

I'm house sitting that day so won't be able to do it after all but thought it might give an idea to someone else A local flower-seller sells buttonholes for £5 which I thought gave a lot of scope for profit. Light to carry as well

[Willeh85]

condor said:

I think if you plan to sell food you might need a hygiene certificate as well. You need a street traders licence if you're going to stay in one place ( ie like a stall). The point about a pedlar's certificate is that you walk around with whatever you're selling.

I'll only be selling pre-packaged snacks/crisps and canned/bottled drinks so no need for a food hygiene certificate. Might need the street traders license though

[ofcorsa]

Been into magic for years, Trying to monetize my skills this year. I don't think I qualify for the challenge but I do enjoy reading this thread

[beko1987]

Salgar said:

muppetdave said:

I think he was making pretty good money at it. If I remember correctly, he was having a bit of a tough-time moneywise anyway, and the capital was the bit holding him back (buying extra stock) to grow it faster.

That sucks

Hehe, This is me!

I still do it, although sadly not as a way of making an investment, more just a supplement to my day job income!

I've probably made £1.5k this year roughly. Quite busy at the moment tbh, sold (provisionally) 2 machines before I;ve started on them.

For a rough calc of costs, I struck lucky and bought 1x DC25 and 1x DC24 for £20 at the weekend. Sadly, a previous 24 I refurbished (for £120) blew the PCB in the brushroll housing, so I swapped out the working one from saturdays machine and kept the customer happy.

So:

DC24 - Purchase price - £10
New PCB - £30 new (hopefulyl blagged a working second hand one though, but wont count that until it comes)
New post motor filter - £8

Luckily, it needs nothing else, and has come up quite well, so £48 all in so far. As I dont trust the DC24, I;m going to ebay it, similar ones on 1 day auctions unrefurbished have hit £100 recently, so I'm aiming for a £120 sale, profit of £72

DC15 - Purchase price - £10
New post motor filter - £6
New hose (as the one on it was broken unrepairably) £9

Total - £25. May facebook it, may ebay it but again, I'll aim for £120. Profit of £95

Potentially £167 profit. I did get lucky though, they all worked, and didnt need new motors etc

Someone at work gave me her old DC07 last week for £0. It refubished very well, so new tool set at £3, new post filter at £0.60 and new belts at £0.43. So £4.03 spent. Dropping it round to the new owner tomorrow lunchtime (as she lives 3 miles from work) for £60. Profit of £55.97

I should buy some bulk machines again. Circa £10 each unit, with working motors, but that means sinking £150+ and storing them. At the moment, I'm plodding along picking them up from friends, ebay, skips etc. Maybe in the summer when I can tear 3 or 4 down at a time in the garden I may. A friend normally lends me the money to do bulk buys, he did it a few times last year and gets his money back plus 10% very quickly. We went to newquay for a week last september, paid for pretty much from dyson money (I even bought 2 whilst we were there...)

Straight refurbs are good too.
Had a DC22 in, charged £90 and spent £0 on it as everything washed up well
DC25, charged £80, spent £6 on a new filter
DC07, £55 (as their easy), £2 spent on filter and belts.

It helps that I wash the pre motor filters in the washing machine 20 at a time, which normally come up like new, so can swap the maround. Machine comes in, its filter goes in the pile, a clean one comes out of the shed. Ditto hoses, I buy boxes of damaged hoses from a dyson refurbisher up in manchester, and for every 25 moses I get 18odd hoses that clean up and fix up nicely. There is a great way to wash them, and their easy to fix but I wont divulge all my secrets... needless to say I have a big stash of ready to go hoses under the bed (keeps them warm, so they dont crack in the cold)

So, it's mainly a hobby at the moment, and supplements my income. Spent £70 last week on parts to service and fix my snotter, all from dyson money. We can do a monthyl food ship frequently on dyson money, spendign money for swmbo etc and we are not as skint at the end of the month. A month without dyson money is noticable!

I;d love to set up shop properly, but I know it wouldn't work for obvious reasons, I flooded the market before crimbo and sat on refurbished machiens for a few months, their only just starting to shift now!

[beko1987]

Forgto to say, it also helps with my hobby of collecting old vacuum cleaners too!

My stepbrother had a DC26 City (the tiny one) that he used for a full bore house renovation until it almost died, then gave it to me. I refurbished it
http://manchestervacs.co.uk/DysonForum/index.php/t...
but it really wasnt fit to be sold.

Luckily, a collector who had a lovely Hoover Turbopower Boost that I was thinking of paying him £40-£50 for wanted a DC26, so we swapped!
Added bonus is that a good friend of mine is working right by mateys mums (earlier today), so he took the 26, and collected the boost! He'll pop round with it later.

If anyone needs any dyson advice, we are a friendly forum http://manchestervacs.co.uk/DysonForum/index.php

The MD of the company gives me small free bits too (as their the go to place for a stupid tiny part in a specific colour etc) for posting so much content up, so I get that bonus too!

[madmover]

SydneyBridge said:

muppetdave said:

Didn't a chap do quite well doing exactly that with Dyson's in a previous iteration of this challenge?

Ah, I knew I read it somewhere, that must have been it.
Given the price of new Dyson's, reconditioned ones must be profitable, depending on where you can get the broken ones from and for how much

We have some old dysons which are going to the tip, I'll happily do you a deal. Does that count? ;-)

[beko1987]

You near Oxford? Do the motors work? Splits in the hoses? which model are they? Some people class 4-5 year old ones as 'old sysons', makes it hard to quote for work.

Dropped off the DC07 above this morning, and the lady presents a minging DC15 Animal, asking how much for a refurb so she can give it to her daughter. We settled on £60, but I caveated a week for the job as I have some other machines in bits for now.

So that's £60 for the machine, plus another £60 as a bonus!

[tilley441]

i have a load of DC04 DC07 DC33 i am wanting to offload all untested

[Willeh85]

How is everyone getting on so after 4 months?

I'm still not in my house yet(being renovated, should be finished within weeks ) so the lawn mower refurbishing hasn't started yet this year.

Today I found some heavily discounted clothing online which I am going to resell on eBay in addition to the lawn mowers. I've already purchased my first £100 of stock so I'll list that at the weekend.

[Surfr]

Bit late to the party but interested in taking part.

Might take a look at upcycling bicycles and bike parts as I've built a fair few bikes over the years. Does using your existing tools count?

[Hoofy]

Surfr said:

Bit late to the party but interested in taking part.

Might take a look at upcycling bicycles and bike parts as I've built a fair few bikes over the years. Does using your existing tools count?

I would imagine they're not expensive so I wouldn't be too strict about using your own tools. (I suppose you could subtract the cost of the tools.)