4 ms·

My wife runs a small little shop in the creative space too: the margins can be quite high for nice, high quality stuff and customers are easy to draw in for mul

My wife runs a small little shop in the creative space too: the margins can be quite high for nice, high quality stuff and customers are easy to draw in for multiple purchases. (also it helps I do the tech side of things and there is so much open source, free or cheap stuff available tech-wise)

throwawaylalala 8y ago
The danger here is that it's easy to get sucked into doing tech stuff, and not focusing on directly revenue generating things. I see so many people spinning their wheels with "free" things when low cost subscriptions would save them hours and hours and hours of effort.
- joelhaasnoot 8y ago
  We use Woocommerce and have definitely bought a few plugins. A lot of them are free however and quite good.
bluedino 8y ago
A friend of mine's wife started a very high margin business selling scrapbook grabbags on eBay. She'd buy up clearance items and local craft/hobby stores, and bundle them up to sell on eBay. She made enough money that after two months, PayPal came along and froze her accounts, cutting her cashflow off, effectively killing the business.
- JackFr 8y ago
  > She made enough money that after two months, PayPal came along and froze her accounts What does that mean?
  - lobotryas 8y ago
    It means that PayPal (incorrectly) suspected her of fraud and took her money (froze her accounts). If this all sounds weird to you then you should search for more info because PayPal loves screwing over sellers on their platform. Alternatively, she could have had a wrong account type (personal instead of business), but my charitable assumption is that GP took care of that.
    - JackFr 8y ago
      > PayPal loves screwing over sellers on their platform That makes no sense. I think a more sensible take is that PayPal's AML/KYC process is a little too coarse-grained and poorly implemented.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- joelhaasnoot 8y ago
  Yeah, there's definitely risks, but with quite low running costs and bootstrapped/free inventory there's not much risk.

throwawaylalala 8y ago

The danger here is that it's easy to get sucked into doing tech stuff, and not focusing on directly revenue generating things. I see so many people spinning their wheels with "free" things when low cost subscriptions would save them hours and hours and hours of effort.

joelhaasnoot 8y ago
We use Woocommerce and have definitely bought a few plugins. A lot of them are free however and quite good.

bluedino 8y ago

A friend of mine's wife started a very high margin business selling scrapbook grabbags on eBay. She'd buy up clearance items and local craft/hobby stores, and bundle them up to sell on eBay. She made enough money that after two months, PayPal came along and froze her accounts, cutting her cashflow off, effectively killing the business.

JackFr 8y ago
> She made enough money that after two months, PayPal came along and froze her accounts What does that mean?
- lobotryas 8y ago
  It means that PayPal (incorrectly) suspected her of fraud and took her money (froze her accounts). If this all sounds weird to you then you should search for more info because PayPal loves screwing over sellers on their platform. Alternatively, she could have had a wrong account type (personal instead of business), but my charitable assumption is that GP took care of that.
  - JackFr 8y ago
    > PayPal loves screwing over sellers on their platform That makes no sense. I think a more sensible take is that PayPal's AML/KYC process is a little too coarse-grained and poorly implemented.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
joelhaasnoot 8y ago
Yeah, there's definitely risks, but with quite low running costs and bootstrapped/free inventory there's not much risk.