WATSON
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Registered: 16th Jun 05
Location: Fife, Scotland
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Now hopefully this is posted in the right section wasn’t sure if it should be in geeks section or not but what the hell this will do for the now 
Now lets get down do business, Me and a mate has really been thinking about business ideas and other ideas as there's nothing job wise going about these days  , I have come up with my own idea and I’ve left him to do what he wants as he’s already in the business with his own food store and garage but wanting to open something else
Now my idea was start up a body jewellery business, Start with selling on ebay make a professional website up then if all is 100% and money starts to roll in then i think about opening a small shop up on the local high street or somewhere that would work,
Now there’s no sort of thing like this in my area, our family tattoo studios ( 2 shops) do sell body jewellery and it sells really well  but as some might know we have bought a shop and house out in Ibiza and the plan is to move out over there, Now i will be staying here for the first few years to make sure everything works well out in Ibiza as we don’t want to move out and leave everything behind then nothing works out over there and we have to come back to nothing 
Now you might start to think what’s the point in doing this body jewellery here if I will be going in a few years time, well if everything goes well with me here i shall be staying!
So what i want to know is, what’s the ins and outs of doing this? do i need talk to certain people? ect or could i just set up and away i go?
[Edited on 04-04-2008 by WATSON]
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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How you gonna market this?
The key thing with any web company, is not making the website or getting the stock to sell... that's all easy, but it's making people aware you exist and actually getting them to buy from you rather than someone else.
Basically until you get your site marketted it'll get no hits... probably only google bots trawelling lol.
This is what costs money, unless you are clever or do it gradually.
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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p.s. you have to realise the web is a saturated market. Pretty much anything and everything has been done to death already and generally most of the successful ones, just were lucky or had serious financial backing or were first to set up a site for that market.
Youtube big site, but was making massive million of pound losses... got bought by google... but there's thousands of other video sites out there, most probably are making a loss.
Facebook, actually had initial $500,000 investment, then further $12,000,000 before it even left the havard campus idea. Most people don't know that.
Despite this, there are thousands of other less sucessful social networking sites, and imo facebook will be going in the trash can for something else in a year or two.
I know your site is small and not really relevant in the scheme of things, but I'm just warning you of the difficulties of internet businesses.
Generally a lot of people 'not in the know' think it's easy to do and that things like 'facebook' were sucessful because it was built, not due to the financial backing / luck / viral spreading factor.
[Edited on 02-04-2008 by Paul_J]
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=body+jewellery&meta=
I rest my case really...
simple search on google and look at the potential competition to your site. What makes your site unique compared to these other sites? why are people going to buy at your site?
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WATSON
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Registered: 16th Jun 05
Location: Fife, Scotland
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Hmm i see what ur saying, I have had alook on ebay and could possibley sell cheaper than most on that first page, Might have to give this another think
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WATSON
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Registered: 16th Jun 05
Location: Fife, Scotland
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Oh i also forgot to say aswell that will be body jewellery/nail stuff tattoo ink ect
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Cosmo
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
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TBH Im in no fit state to really comment on this but will have plenty to say in the morning, maybe even a Paul J essay style post.
Even still though....Facebook is probably a really bad example, considering it wasnt an original idea and the owners are currently being taken to court as its alleged they ripped off another students idea. So that kind of goes against what you say with regards to the internet being saturated (for ANY idea, which is 99% true factually, but doesnt mean even the most common of ideas cant be made to work) and rather backs up the idea of ripping off someone elses idea and making it work.
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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yeh but that was my point cosmo, facebook was nothing original. There's millions of sites like facebook, and only a couple have been a success and the one's that were, generally wern't bedroom made with no financial investment.
to be honest, I wish i had just googled this in the first place
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=body+jewellery&meta=
Fucking ram packed full of competitor sites.
I say, try to sell on ebay and see what happens. I don't see why you can't use ebay to sell 100% ... it's more likely people who are looking for 'body jewellery' will find your stuff through ebay, than you having a standalone site imo.
[Edited on 02-04-2008 by Paul_J]
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WATSON
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Registered: 16th Jun 05
Location: Fife, Scotland
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Was going to sell on ebay aswell as doing a website 
I could well poss be a supply for other tattoo studios around my area ect aswell if all is good
Going to talk things through with my mate tomorrow
I have been doing alot of search and thinking and i may aswell give it a bash
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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yeh sure have your own website too, but don't spend a lot on it...
Initially you have far more chance of getting sales by having a ebay shop.
106 parts is similar
http://www.106parts.co.uk/
Started out (and still mainly) trades through an ebay shop.
106 parts ebay shop
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/106parts_W0QQ_trksidZp1638.m118.l1247
tho there's probably less online shops that solely sell 106 parts, so it's a bit different.
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Dan
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Registered: 22nd Apr 02
Location: Gorleston on Sea, Norfolk
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You will have some serious competition from our new member doldy. He has ebay under lock and key for this kind of thing. I think he will be starting wholesale soon, so might be worth a shout
Adult GiftsClick here to vist us
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deano87
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Registered: 21st Oct 06
Location: Bedfordshire Drives: Ford Fiesta
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Paul_J - what do you do at Uni? Seems you know your Marketing stuff. . .
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Kyle T
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Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
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quote:
Originally posted by deano87
Paul_J - what do you do at Uni? Seems you know your Marketing stuff. . .
He knows at least an essay worth of information about everything, didn't you know?
Lotus Elise 111R
Impreza WRX STi
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WATSON
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Registered: 16th Jun 05
Location: Fife, Scotland
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quote:
Originally posted by Dan
You will have some serious competition from our new member doldy. He has ebay under lock and key for this kind of thing. I think he will be starting wholesale soon, so might be worth a shout
Thanks, Will drop him a u2u soon
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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quote:
Originally posted by deano87
Paul_J - what do you do at Uni? Seems you know your Marketing stuff. . .
I do applied computer science. (computer science with a year in industry)
Nearly finished 
I used to do all the business studies and stuff at school / 6th form etc.
But basically, over the years I've grown up with the internet and had / have the ability to make many of these dot com genius idea's... Except you realise it's not about the idea, or even producing the thing... a lot of it is purely luck and getting it known / viewed.
Why some things spread across the internet and some things don't are essentially a mystery.
For example the 'Pa Pa falling on rolling road' video recently. That did the circulations across all the forums i read and came back for many a repost. It wasn't particularly special or funny (imo), a slight chuckle perhaps, but as a result it had loads of views as people spread it around. But some videos get posted up on here, that are equally funny / more funny - but yet never get spread in the same way... Also generally as soon as you get your web idea / web site on the media (radio / tv / news etc) you're guarenteed success as it boosts the value of your advertising on your site and gains you a audience.
Essentially most web sites (especially gimmicky ones) just get a initial load of people (usually spread through friends / website posts), if the content is not 100% (i.e. site is under construction), the site is shit, or there's nothing worth returning for, then these initial people will never go back. Even if you post another link later in the same forums or whatever saying "Check out my site now, it's even better" they'll already think 'i've visited that, it's shit' - so make sure you only launch it when it's 100%...
The next is the hardest for most sites... with no content / users new people won't really want to bother joining or visiting... it's a chicken and egg situation, you need people to keep your site alive and attract more people, but people won't come unless people are there or there is content. This is typical of a lot of car forums that are small, ukde, maidenheadcarclub etc... they rarely have posts and thus most people stop checking them at all...
after this phase you may have some people visiting and you may get the numbers of people growing if there is content worth returing for (normal websites are hard to maintain to keep adding content to for this, but community's like CS generate their own content, so giving the control for user created content is always a good idea as it allows your site to stay alive without you having to work)... now either it'll fizzle out and die, or just keep growing gradually aka corsasport size.
However, there is a phenomena of websites randomly snowballing and growing seriously rapidly... A perfect example of this is 'the million dollar pixel site'.
Now this site, on paper of concept, is utter shite. I'm going to set up a completely blank website. Nothing on it to see, no visitors or traffic. I want YOU to pay me $1 per pixel for a image / advert you can place anywhere on the page. (10*10 block = $100 ) ...
Now in all honesty, who in their right mind would pay someone $100 for a tiny 10 * 10 pixel block of a page no one is viewing (ps 10 x 10 is about size of one of these smilies ). No one would, it's a fucking dumb idea, it's like me selling you bags of air. However, it was such an utterly dumb concept and interesting one (that the bloke aimed to make $1,000,000 from the page being filled up) ... that people on forums passed it around, and through social networking sites and then the media jumped on the band wagon announcing it on radio...
Before you know it, the sites having millions of hits... Now millions of hits = worth advertising yourself on this page. Therefore people starting paying for adverts, the bloke was up to around $200,000 and the media circus truely took it over, with now television coverage, many websites covering it and once again it being truely reposted and reposted across all forums.
Boom... within a few days the site had so many hits and within a short amount of time he hit the $1,000,000 marker! From such a dumb idea, it was pure luck that the site achieved this.
At the same time other people tried to recreate the sucess with their own stupid pixel selling sites, but the idea was done, no one cared any more, the media wouldn't be covering one of these other sites as it's an unoriginal idea... result none of these copy cat sites made any money.
The bloke who started the original site (probably with some financial investment) started another site called million dollar pixel lotto or some shite, where people bought pixels for $2, $1 of which would go into a lotto fund... at the point it reaches $1,000,000 1 person who had bought a pixel would win the million... the whole site flopped. Reason, it just didn't get picked up by the media like his old site and basically wasn't 'lucky' like it was before.
Viral marketting (through the internet, social networking, email and communities) is a powerful tool - however it's hard to control and use effectively... Essentially it's all about getting the public to do the hard work for you, to spread the word, but getting them to do it is half random luck and half cunning.
If I post up saying 'I have a website please view it and tell your mates' - some of you nice folk might view it, and may spread the word. But because i'm almost begging you to do it for me, a lot of people would feel like 'fuck off, I'm not doing your dirty work'.
However if i made a post saying 'Haha! look at this, it's funnier than steve's face' - most would probably view it out of curiousity and if found it funny, possibly tell their mates / pass it onto anothe forum.
Tho, generally posts on forums are weighted by who posts them, if Steve posts something in off day most will probably view it, but if a new member no one has heard of posts up a link to a website no one will give a shit.
It's a tricky thing to get right, I have my own theories of how you could kick something off into a snow ball, but the original idea has to be unique enough to catch the people to want to spread the word.
I've got a couple of web ideas that i'm gonna do once i've finished uni (as I've not had the time), I don't expect them to be a success, but it'll be interesting to see what happens with them, if i can get any of them to snow ball at all
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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^^ NOW THAT'S AN ESSAY
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RyanSxi
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Registered: 26th Jul 06
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Paul_J strikes again. Interesting read tho
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Cosmo
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
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FPMSL, Paul that even beats the last copy and paste essay record set in 1999.
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Ally
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Registered: 2nd Jul 03
Location: Pontypool Drives: a Skoda
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i sold body jewellery in my store and it did ok, but you have to either be buying from the wholesaler for pennies, or be selling each piece for a decent amount to make it worth your while.
I moved from body jewellery, to jewellery and now we have a corsetry shop which is doing well
body jewellery - not worth it
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drax
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Registered: 5th Feb 05
Location: Sittingbourne, Kent
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I dont think the profit from that kind of thing would be enough to make anything, not enough to make even surely
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Ian
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Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
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Problem you have with the web is that everything is bought on price. Unless you can differentiate your product sufficiently you've no market unless you are the cheapest.
Cheapest usually means your margins are small, which means you're not making much. I would imagine that marketplace is already at the stage whereby it's staffed by people in bedrooms trading for little to no on-cost. You can't expect to compete with that.
You would either need something completely new, unique and radical or an economy of scale so large you would be warehousing the gear and delivering it yourself in a fleet of vans. Anything else would barely compete with minimum wage in any job anywhere else.
You can't go in with no infrastructure and expect to win. Any big success story has either had massive investment in infrastructure (ie. all big trader names, all big social networks) or an infrastructure so damn simple it would never work twice (ie. million pixel).
I'm slightly more enchanted in this direction but I've a feeling you would make more money and work less making a web site discussing it rather than selling it. No idea quite how you monetise that though. It's not hamburgers at car shows.
[Edited on 03-04-2008 by Ian]
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WATSON
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Registered: 16th Jun 05
Location: Fife, Scotland
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Had a long think about this and we are going give things ago
Now all i need to do is think of a name to name the website and ebay shop  anyone have any ideas?
If everything goes wrong then we have 2 shops 3rd shop opens soon so that everything can be sold in anyway so its not like al be out of pocket
any ideas on names? I thought bodyart but some one already as them but sites dont work 
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WATSON
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Registered: 16th Jun 05
Location: Fife, Scotland
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no ideas anyone? 
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WATSON
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Registered: 16th Jun 05
Location: Fife, Scotland
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styleddesign
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Colin
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Registered: 4th Apr 02
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Randy Watson's Studs Ltd
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