Author Topic: Who here has started a successful online business?  (Read 3330 times)

intotherealworld

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Who here has started a successful online business?
« on: September 15, 2016, 04:44:47 AM »
Anyone here have a successful online business?

I would love to hear your story, challenges and things you're proud of. Also how much it earns if you're happy to share!

intotherealworld

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Re: Who here has started a successful online business?
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2016, 12:00:07 AM »
anyone?

swick

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Re: Who here has started a successful online business?
« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2016, 10:55:48 AM »
MOD NOTE: Because OP asked specifically, I'm going to exempt this thread from our usual self-promo rules.  Feel free to share your successes and a link to your website. 

CowboyAndIndian

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Re: Who here has started a successful online business?
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2016, 11:59:18 AM »
Anyone here have a successful online business?

I would love to hear your story, challenges and things you're proud of. Also how much it earns if you're happy to share!

Ok, this one will be a downer.

I started an online web store with a friend (ex-friend now, I suppose). He had a wine store and I built the online store. Everything was hunky-dory and we had first year sales of $500k. If it had worked out, I could have been making minimum of $50k/year with max. 30 minutes of work every day. The intial setup took 6 months of labor (8 hours per day).

The bad news was my partner was extremely bad at fulfulling orders. It got to such a point that sales started dropping off.
Right now,we are on a death-dive. Trying to sell the site if possible.

So, my advice to you is to pick your partner very carefully!



swick

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Re: Who here has started a successful online business?
« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2016, 12:20:21 PM »
Anyone here have a successful online business?

I would love to hear your story, challenges and things you're proud of. Also how much it earns if you're happy to share!

Ok, this one will be a downer.

I started an online web store with a friend (ex-friend now, I suppose). He had a wine store and I built the online store. Everything was hunky-dory and we had first year sales of $500k. If it had worked out, I could have been making minimum of $50k/year with max. 30 minutes of work every day. The intial setup took 6 months of labor (8 hours per day).

The bad news was my partner was extremely bad at fulfulling orders. It got to such a point that sales started dropping off.
Right now,we are on a death-dive. Trying to sell the site if possible.

So, my advice to you is to pick your partner very carefully!

Could your partner bring in extra help/employees to handle the order fulfillment? Or bring in a consultant to help streamline your processes? Seems like such a neat idea and a shame that something so small could derail you - I'm sure there is stuff going on in the background, but, still.

KarefulKactus15

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Re: Who here has started a successful online business?
« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2016, 12:36:10 PM »
Anyone here have a successful online business?

I would love to hear your story, challenges and things you're proud of. Also how much it earns if you're happy to share!

Ok, this one will be a downer.

I started an online web store with a friend (ex-friend now, I suppose). He had a wine store and I built the online store. Everything was hunky-dory and we had first year sales of $500k. If it had worked out, I could have been making minimum of $50k/year with max. 30 minutes of work every day. The intial setup took 6 months of labor (8 hours per day).

The bad news was my partner was extremely bad at fulfulling orders. It got to such a point that sales started dropping off.
Right now,we are on a death-dive. Trying to sell the site if possible.

So, my advice to you is to pick your partner very carefully!

You have 500K in sales and one person is bringing the whole thing down?    Id have a hard time watching that if I was in your shoes.

protostache

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Re: Who here has started a successful online business?
« Reply #6 on: September 17, 2016, 12:41:05 PM »
My businesses (recently I spun publishing off into its own entity) have brought in over $400k since 2013. I work almost entirely online, but mostly I am a consultant for other businesses instead of selling something via some ecommerce site.

CowboyAndIndian

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Re: Who here has started a successful online business?
« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2016, 02:10:56 PM »
You have 500K in sales and one person is bringing the whole thing down?    Id have a hard time watching that if I was in your shoes.

Yeah, been a bad time living thru it !

Now trying to sell the web site...

CowboyAndIndian

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Re: Who here has started a successful online business?
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2016, 02:56:30 PM »

..
The bad news was my partner was extremely bad at fulfulling orders. It got to such a point that sales started dropping off.
Right now,we are on a death-dive. Trying to sell the site if possible.

So, my advice to you is to pick your partner very carefully!

Could your partner bring in extra help/employees to handle the order fulfillment? Or bring in a consultant to help streamline your processes? Seems like such a neat idea and a shame that something so small could derail you - I'm sure there is stuff going on in the background, but, still.

The expectations for an online business are that the products ship immediately, or at most a day after the orders are recieved. Initially, he complained about not finding suitable employees and would let fulfillment go for a week or 10 days. This means that repeat orders (which is the lowest cost to acquire a sale) would not happen. Later on this went on to 15 to 20 days. Now I see orders in the system which are over an month old (which means they are dead, the credit hold placed on the credit card is gone in 30 days, we cannot charge the card)

I built the tools for him to know what to order, which orders dneeded to be handled etc. but he did not use any of them. Really do not know what happened.

Not really sure what happened to him, why he was walking away from $50k/year. (In the wine business, 10 to 12 orders a day translates to about $1M in sales and about $100k in profits).