Enterprise Nation

A journalist calls to ask how long it takes to make a profit when starting out in business. ‘It depends on the business’ replies Emma Jones ‘but I’d say it’s perfectly possible to turn a profit within the week.’ Here’s the feature to discover if Emma got her facts right.

Let’s take a business

This feature will not apply to all businesses but let’s take the example of someone providing goods and services to consumers (a craft business) and someone offering professional services (a book-keeper.)  This is how they each become profitable by week end.

Example 1: The craft business

Monday

• Make item with cost of raw materials being £5.50
• Photograph item with family camera, ensuring professional/high quality presentation 

Tuesday

• Upload profile and photo to 3 craft sites which levy a small charge (or free) for listing and exercise a sales commission. Sites such as:

Etsy.com – listing fee of 20 cents per item and 3.5% sales commission
MISI.co.uk – listing fee of 20p per item and 3% sales commission
Coriandr.com - listing fee of 20p per item and 2.5% sales commission

Wednesday

• Promote product via Twitter and Facebook. Include a link to the shop so people can click and buy
• Send an email to friends and family (personal, as opposed to group email) to announce the product and, again, with a link 

Thursday

• Upload pictures of your product to Flickr so the large audience there can see it too
• If you have a webcam, make a short recording of you making products and upload to YouTube
• Call local stores and boutiques to ask if they would consider selling your stock 

Friday

You’ve attracted interest and made a sale! Sales price is £25.99

Cost of making sale:

Raw materials: £5.50

Listing fee: 20p

Sales commission: 78p

Marketing & promotion: zero cost but your time

Profit for the week: £19.51

Example 2: The book keeper

Monday

• Start a blog using free blogging platforms such as blogger.com or wordpress.com – with helpful posts on book-keeping technique, this will help you be seen as an expert in your field
• Promote blog via Twitter
• Produce business cards. A pack of 50 cards can be bought for £12.99 from Moo.com 

Tuesday

• Attend local networking event
• Post in online business forums with helpful book-keeping advice 

Wednesday

• Approach small business sites with an article for them to upload that will interest & assist readers (include a link back to your blog so people can make contact)

Thursday

• Call local accountancy practice to ask if they require outsourced book-keeping

Friday

• Secure first client! Contract to carry out book-keeping for local home business at rate of £50 per month.

Cost of making sale:

Business cards: £12.99

Promotion and networking: zero cost but your time

Profit in first month: £37.01

Doing the sums

The beauty of both these examples is that all this promotion and sales generating activity can be done by ‘Working 5 to 9’ ie it’s possible to keep hold of the day job and build your business (and profit) by working nights and weekends.

The secret is in keeping costs low (by being home based and making the mot of free social media tools) and focusing on making that first sale. In which case, it’s perfectly possible to realise profit in just five days. What’s stopping you? Get that business started!  - Emma Jones

NB. This feature is based on user accessing a home/shared/library PC or laptop so costs of IT equipment are not included.