Entrepreneurship general? Starting a business is so simple these days...

there are no manufactures of the type local to me. even if there were margin would be so much lower than if i could do it in china. Margins will be huge if i can do it in china and using amazon distribution.

>Medical
>Confectionary
>China

I am so intrigued.

If i can pull this off i will ascend out of wagecuckery. Im so desperate to get ahead but no one around me has any sense of urgency about them so im 100% alone, with no experience.

I'm a euro trying to sell tourism related stuff for Cubans. Having trouble with payment processors cuz they are all cucked to Uncle Sam, and don't wanna use dodgy malaysian/argentinian companies. Any tips?

>diabetes candy
>edible bandaids

Live Web MD; A medical platform that allows users to gain information on medical conditions or problems they are facing fast. Using smart contracts Live Web MD draws information from multiple servers to pinpoint issues a person may be facing. Using live data e.g Heart monitors, breathing monitors, temperature gauges which may be purchased from the website that are simple plug and play into smart phones and cheap. There will also be Doctors live from around the world which can assist in helping diagnose the issues you may be facing, Utilising your camera/flashlight, as well as multiple tools which will be developed in later use. Doctors will be qualified and verified using the Civic online identity verification software which will also include Doctors certificates of graduate. Not only will Doctors be included in this platform but Nurses and Biomedical graduates will have a chance at assisting individuals. This will work in the way Uber does with drivers however will be conveyed 100% online and workers will be paid accordingly. This platform will bring cheap medical assistance all over the world and will hope to donate cheap smart phones to people in third world countries in a hope to bring them into the future of medicine,

Heres one of my many ideas that I will never use. Make it a reality Jow Forums

Use one of the crypto payment processors.

yeah people can pay with crypto, but most people want to pay with Visa and Mastercard. AFAIK none of the crypto payment processors accept it.

If there isn't one that offers normie payments on the front end and crypto on the backend then you should 100% shift your focus to making that. Kek. Huge $.

legit. why has no one done this?

It needs a fuck ton of regulatory approval. Coinbase does something like this AFAIK, but they wouldn't approve me either.

>Coinbase does something like this AFAIK, but they wouldn't approve me either.

My Shopify store is using Coinbase commerce, was easy as hell to get approved. Maybe because you're in EU.

>have no skill at all that anyone would pay for
>failure in education

well shit

Perfect timing for this thread.
So, I am currently a squad boss trainee for a private firefighting contractor. Onve I get a little more experience with hot line construction, I'll make full squad boss. I make cabinets in the off season, but fire is my passion. Contractors are big business, and there's still more and more every years as the fire seasons get worse.
I've been thinking about buying an engine and tender and starting my own contract company if I can get some experience on an engine crew first.
I see three main problems to this. First, startup costs are high (the smallest engines run like 80k new, plus a lot of other required equip, probably 200k+ to really get going.) Second, as a contractor the government writes our check, and they only call out contractors when government forces don't have enough manpower so we maybe get half the work they do if we're lucky. Finally, I'm a father of 3 and my wife and I rent our primary residence so we can live close to her family.
I'm part of a trust that my grandfather set up. There's no money in it, but it does have a condo worth roughly 230k that I take full ownership of in 10 years at 40.
Theoretically, I could sell it and invest the money back into the trust, then (presumably) use that money to get started, thereby giving the trust ownership of my startup business.
Is this a feasable plan? If I had both a tender and engine, I would be able to provide a service many contractors can't.
Any business owners here with advice?

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I'm doing business in a country under US sanctions.

You can teach yourself skills. Nobody asks for a degree if you work for yourself.

whats the easiest skill for a stereotypical sperg to learn that i could use for a business?

To add to this, another problem will ne figurimg out a place to store the vehicles/ equipment. I have family and I could possibly park one or two vehicles at thier house, but ours isnt near big enough, so chances are I would need to rent a shop somewhere. That could possibly be the biggest problem unless I just started out with an engine or tender.

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Cabinetry. Work at a small custom shop for a few years, realize its one of the easier forms of carpentry to get started in, then buy your own shop.

i buy cheap cars from auctions and sell, seems to be a non-competition on my country

>Any more info on what the actual business is? Or are you just providing psychic readings? Or what?
I had a Shopify store selling "healing crystal jewelry." To market it, I started an Instagram page, and every day I would just post images of colorful crystals and meditation-related art. I didn't even make the images, just found them online and on other pages, but I did make sure to always give credit. Each picture came with some spiritual quote like "What you seek is seeking you." I eventually built this account up to 30k followers.

My main paid advertising strategy was to find bigger pages in my niche and pay them to post me on their page. One of the main pages I used had over 1M followers and they only charged $80 for a 12 hour post. Every time I did a post on that page, I'd get $600 or so in sales within the next few hours and a few hundred more the next day.

At the same time, the person I was paying was getting $80 every 12 hours. If you have a large Instagram following, people will constantly message you asking to pay you to promote them. And this person was honestly giving me a huge discount for letting me advertise to 1M for only $80, they didn't know their worth.

Once my store slowed down and I stopped focusing on it, I still posted on the Instagram every now and then. That's when the psychics started messaging me asking to promote themselves. I felt weird about it at first, then I was like fuck it. My page still only has 30k, but I charge them $20-25 for a 24 hour post. This is probably my most passive income stream. I post actual content maybe once every two weeks, and it's just stolen from other pages plus a shitty quote from google. Every other time, I'm just posting ads for psychics.

This is getting long, I'll continue in another post. And I'm gonna answer more questions as well.

I want to know what crypto you're holding

>I think a lot of you guys don't realize how easy it is
You're talking to a bunch of NEETs that only care about trading shitcoins.

I tried to make a thread about budgeting and it was just
>dont spend too much lmao!
then it died.

The main point I'm making here is that you don't need to be some hot young girl to be an "influencer" on Instagram. Just find a niche, and make a page for it. No name or face has to be associated with it. Once you get big enough, start selling shout outs. At one point I bought a shout out from a page, and the guy who runs it told me he was a 16 year old kid. Yet he's running an Instagram page and getting paid. Anyone can do this shit, and a lot of these guys started on accident, just doing these pages for fun. At the height of my experimentation with this I had:
>spiritual niche, 30k followers
>fitness niche, 5k
>weed niche, 10k
>travel niche, 3k
This whole Instagram niche influencer strategy is a great way to earn money during all the idle time you normally spend on your phone. You can even take it to the next level and open a store. Just post a lot, use hashtags, pay other pages to promote you, and your page will grow. Bots are also useful to get more likes and followers. The one I use is called Followliker. It used to be a one time fee, but I think it's a subscription now.

>chinese shit
i saw that was coming

>One of the main pages I used had over 1M followers and they only charged $80 for a 12 hour post.

Awesome, how did you find them?

>start selling shout outs.

Where?

>What kinds of videos? What kinds of clients?
Animated videos. I learned how to use After Effects, Photoshop, etc so I can make the videos all myself with a minimal budget. I have other artists I work with when necessary, though. So far I've worked with clients like law firms and healthcare providers, but I'm transitioning to tech start-ups. The cool thing about Facebook ads is you can choose which location you target. So my next big initiative is to target high-income areas only, like Silicon Valley.
I don't know much about manufacturing. All of my products have been dropshipped, print on demand by a third party, or just services. In terms of selling the product, a Shopify store would work. I don't have experience working with Amazon, but Shopify is around $30/month and is pretty much industry standard for online stores. They've got great customer service and a ton of templates and plugins.

To learn more about Facebook Ads, I'd honestly recommend YouTube. I didn't spend a dime learning about ads. I can't give you the same videos to watch that I did, because they're outdated now as Facebook has big updates to the platform every few months. But just look for info on YouTube. If someone tries selling you a course, you more than likely don't need it. There's a lot of extremely valuable Facebook Ads info available for free. Two guys that I like are Ben Malol and James Beattie. They may have courses but they have a lot of free vids too.

Anyone have any experience with startups or contacting/meeting with companies? Basically about a year ago I heard an app idea and it really blew my mind. It's a very simple thing, but it has just been completely overlooked. Anyway the guy dismissed it cuz he couldn't think a bit bigger and wasn't really an entreprenuer type of guy.

So I already have the app rough demo developed and gonna make the website as well(basically simple landing page). Both of them would be connected to clients databases for specific data.

Companies(clients I guess) could implement my app(nothing complicated) and in turn they might see more revenue/clients.

Here's the part where I get a bit nervous: how do I contact the companies? Like do I send an email saying "Hello I have this app which could benefit your company" and should you then meet with the manager or somethibg? Also is it much to ask for the companies to include my app in their ads?

The cost of running this is probably extremely low(basically the cost of database host).

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I want to start a soap company and then move into lotions and possibly shampoos. Reason being: most soaps are cucked with onions and crazy additives, margins are huge, and I could start it at home. They would be "artisan soaps". Does this seem like a dumb idea? I figure if Burts Bees could make billions I could scrape by some decent cash. My only issue is figuring out how to direct traffic to my website (likely a shopify site) as I'd like most of my sales to come from online. I dunno, I'm just spitballing here. Talk me out of this idea or not. I'm not really sure how to do "market research", although it's clear there are LOTS of people doing this online. It's mostly girly ass soap products though, I'd be aiming for both genders.

The most commonly used ones I know of are PayPal and Stripe. I'm in the US so I've never had that issue, someone who isn't in the US could probably help more.
That's actually a really cool idea.
To repeat the other user, just learn something. School is a waste of time. People talk shit about art, but art is one field where you can make a lot of money without school. Most art jobs are all about your portfolio. You could spend the next 12 months learning After Effects from YouTube and make a portfolio, then land a 60k job as a motion graphics artist. Or work as a freelancer and run ads online for your motion graphics services. This applies to many fields. Photography, video editing, vfx, graphic design, even things like writing. If you have a strong portfolio or demo reel, you're gonna get jobs. Hell, you can even be a voiceover artist and get paid $200 for a two minute voiceover. If you're not artistic, be like my friend and do physical work on houses. You may think you have nothing to offer, but there's something you can do or learn how to do.

I work in the tech commercialization industry (biotech/pharma/med device), so I can help you out.

First, be real honest with yourself whether your invention really needs a patent. Is the market size and demand large enough for you to justify spending 5 to 6 figures JUST to have a decent nationalized patent? Not to mention that won't even cover patent enforcement. Remember a patent is only as good as its enforcement and freedom to operate.

IMO, if you really want a patent, just get a provisional "cover sheet" patent, which depending on complexity of the technology should only cost a few hundred bucks to a couple grand. This will buy you 12 months of protection for you to figure out the business and market before going forward. If you decide to move forward with more, longer protection follow up the provisional patent with a PCT, which will buy you 18 months of global coverage. After that total of 30 months expires, comes the nationalization phase, where you'll be picking which countries you want protection in. It will probably cost you five figures per country. Don't even bother with protection in China; they won't honor it.

Most likely, considering you're a single person doing everything, don't bother with patent protection. Its too costly and time consuming for most inventions.

As for manufacturing in China, don't do it. They'll steal your concept and undercut you if its worthwhile. This is one reason many med device manufacturers don't patent, manufacture, or market in China.

What you should do is search for a prototyping firm near you and just sign a one way CDA with them. They'll most likely have the drafting and 3D printing capacities in house, and good domestic contacts for manufacturing.

Just my two cents.

cough

I was a FF for a while. Big money if you can get picked up, a truck usually gets anywhere from 40-80/hr and its usually 24-7. Our dept would get like 20-30k just for the truck on a 2 week stint. But you have to get listed in nims or whatever the fuck it was.

I need to end the wagecucking cycle but I don't know where to start.

>just quit job
>$10K in savings and a declining 50k in crypto
>comp sci degree but havent programmed in years
>autistic and dont want to put myself out there

wat do? i heard freelance web dev isnt profitable in the US, so thats not worth learning, and IT skills are basically useless if youre not a wagie

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Copyright your app thus far first.

If you don't have good contacts:
1)Contract out an app development firm
2)Look for business/corporate development contacts at companies you think are a good fit. Use hunter.io if their emails aren't listed
3)Create a non-confidential summary of your app to send to contacts. If their interested in hearing more, sign a one way CDA with them.
4) If you really can't find contacts, many companies have a partnering/BD submission page or email. If those fails just email [email protected] and ask to speak to business development about a business opportunity.

If anyone can be an entrepreneur, doesn't that mean that we will simply run out of things to create? How many new things do we actually need in a society. We don't need most of what we have, so how can anyone claim that entrepreneurship is a possibility for everyone? It's like Business majors being told that everyone can be a leader. Plain bullshit. I respect entrepreneurs, but don't believe that with my mindset I will be one and that I even should be one. Not because I lack the skills, but because I think most of what modern entrepreneurs do is absolute bullshit with zero real value. Just look at how many bloggers get money from blogging and advertising. Disgusting.

I think there will definetely be clients for additive free shampoons. In my country there's only one company that I've seen doing it. Other shampoons are all brands Dove, H&S etc. It will probably depend on how you market it.

>Awesome, how did you find them?
Just gotta browse Instagram, man. But I'll give you a trick. Whatever your niche is, go on Instagram and search for a relevant hashtag. For example, if you're looking for dog-related pages, just go to Instagram and search "#dogs." As you type, they'll even suggest other hashtags to use. After searching, look at the pages that pop up under "Top." These pages will usually have tons of followers. Once you find one page, you can use that one to find more. Click the down arrow next to the Follow button and it displays a row of pages similar to the one you're looking at. You can endlessly browse pages this way. Just write them down or screenshot them as you go, and you can build a list of 20 pages in like five minutes.

Buying or selling shout outs is just as simple as messaging someone. If you're buying, most big pages already have a system in place and will immediately send you a list of their rates when you message them. Some really big pages might not see your message because they get so many, so just move on to another. If you're selling, people will usually reach out to you asking to promote themselves, but you can also message them first and ask if they want to advertise.

Thanks man did you do this manually or automate it at all?

I'm a trained stonemaze myself and have access to all kind of metal toolings (professional stuff via an friend)

>I deal with a lot of "psychics" and "tarot readers."
to this esoteric retards who pay for all kind of stuid things:

Am I right if it would bring a shitton of money if I sculpt an obelisk with some "air cleaning / energy refreshing / whatever" bullshit runes.
Slap on some metal base or top and some healing cryistals around it?

Nice, not bad numbers to start. Im thinking if we had both a tender amd an engine, we could provide a quickly deployable, self- sustaining solution for getting water on fire. A team like this could prove useful in a division where resources are stretched thin, or on quick response events in difficult terrain.

To add on to that, there are also platforms dedicated to buying and selling shout outs, shoutcart.com. That was one I used every now and then back in the day, but there's probably a ton more now.
I manually search for pages. The bot just follows and likes people based on certain keywords and parameters. That makes them notice my page, and my feed looks really nice, so people will normally follow back. You can only follow a max of 7500 people on Instagram, so when I get near the limit I start unfollowing people. They don't notice. I normally set the bot to "like" up to 1000 pics per day, and follow up to 600 people per day. If you push it past this, you can get permabanned from Instagram.

Ok gotcha thanks senpai. Are you only doing the video production business now? Are you only using FB ads to target prospects for this? How do you sell new clients on this?

Lurking good thread.

I've built a website to blog about crypto and general financial advice for newbies, then gathered a few friends and started doing courses for plebs on basic shit like ROI and loan interest and babbys first stock. We plan to start offering training to sales personnel in companies so they can better understand and sell their product in terms of numbers. Don't knoe if thats gonna work yet. Raking in about 3k/mo with the current blog/course thing

Which bot?

That could work. Just make sure to "research" this stuff. It's all nonsense, but make sure what you're saying is consistent with other new age info sites out there. For example, Amethyst is supposed to help nightmares, insomnia, and improve mental clarity and intuition, while something like Tiger Eye is for bravery and strength. Then Quartz is an amplifying and cleansing stone. Kek. If one of my customers is talking to me about this stuff, I can go on and on about it like an expert. One of my highest selling products was a "7 Chakra Necklace." It contained 7 different crystals, and on the product page, I listed them all, each with its special properties and the corresponding chakra it helps open. In reality, the necklace is $2 on aliexpress, and the crystals may or may not be real.

Just be careful not to advertise any real health benefits. Don't say your product will fix a broken leg or cure a disease. Keep it vague. Say it will heal your energy or balance your chakras. Metaphysical things that can't really be tested. Shopify actually flagged my site for review once, but after an investigation, they determined that what I was selling is fine.

And like I said before, this niche is really saturated now. So make sure what you're selling is really cool and unique-looking. Some big, successful Instagram pages in this niche are @spiritnectar, @zeadsdead, @aliciacoraljewels, and @aurafy_. They're mostly selling raw crystals, or they're jewelry or accessory based. So obelisks, staffs, and prop weapons could set you apart.

Not same poster, but I use similar one. Autoinsta is one currently using or search Chrome store for alternatives.

yeah totally, will have to lurk those forums to know what is currently THE THING to sell and marketing.

I saw once a dude selling an obelisk that is supossed to remove chem-trails in a radius of 10km. Sold it for 2k€
Material was worth 100€ max. some concrete and fancy looking minerals and copper pyramide head.
Esoteric is such an easy way to make money I fell bad.

WELL ICO.

I got discharged from work and unironiclly thinking of falling for the "start a lawncare/pressure washer" business.

How realistic is it to get some decent income? I live in NorCal and see beans with lawnmowers in trailer's everywhere but realistically with good marketing is it possible to out compete them.

I offer anime girl commissions. So far I only have had two customers, and been at it for months. I charge about $10 because I figure it will help me land more customers starting out.

What are some ways to get exposure and more potential customers? I want to get on the level of someone who posts on twitter with a lot of followers and links to a successful patreon (I don't have a patreon yet)

The video production business is my main focus now. I actually just came up with the idea last month, so it's very new. But I've accomplished a lot since then. Before that, I was freelancing, browsing shit sites like Upwork to find motion graphics jobs. I realized I could charge 10x what I was charging and get a lot more clients if I just made my own site and treated myself like an agency. It just goes to show how quickly an internet-based business can get started.

I completed my last Upwork job in June. Was paid $250 to do a 3 minute lyric video. Upwork took $50. I only agreed to it because the client is a pretty famous young actor, so it's a useful connection that will hopefully pay off later. Since starting the agency this month, I just got paid $2,500 to do a 45 second animation for a law firm. Doing a good animation only takes me a week or so, and all I need is a laptop.

I'm still in the process of building the website, so I haven't started online ads yet. The beginning is tricky, because any prospective clients are going to want to see a big portfolio of sample work, which I don't have yet. I live in a big city and I've been finding local clients through word of mouth. Once I complete the projects I'm working on and finish up the site, I'm running ads. At that point, I'm not taking any jobs under $4k. That's what I love about digital marketing; the whole internet is at your disposal. If one person won't pay your rates, move to the next. Out of the billions of people who use the internet, I only need to find 5 people every month who want my services, and I'll make $20k+.

I mentioned it earlier, but I use Followliker.

>The beginning is tricky, because any prospective clients are going to want to see a big portfolio of sample work, which I don't have yet.

A lot of people on Upwork just use ripped videos to fluff their video portfolio, might be an option, at least temporarily. Good for you though btw, what's your profit like so far after paying workers? My friend did very similar thing to this on an old internet marketing forum and made a lot of $ selling them to marketers who wanted simple trailers/sales videos for their ebook pages and shit.

Bump

bump

Facebook ads work great for local small businesses like that. When I was selling jewelry, my profit margins were small. If I spent more than $15 on one customer to get a sale, it was too much. With the increased saturation of dropshipping on Facebook, that became unsustainable. The benefit of local businesses is that the value of getting a new customer is way more than that. It's up to you to determine your target cost per customer acquisition, but if you can spend $100 getting one customer and you still get a profit, you'll be more than fine. In fact, spending $100 should get you at least 8-10 clients once you know what you're doing with ads.

A lot of people are kind of exploiting this now. It's a new business model; online marketing agency. People just go on YouTube and learn to use Facebook ads, and then approach local small businesses. Plumbers, dentists, just about any business that caters to a specific area but relies on location and word of mouth advertising as opposed to digital. These online marketers will often offer a free trial to show these businesses how many customers they can bring in during a short time period. Couple of clicks, design some nice ads, and optimize the Facebook targeting so it only reaches people within a certain radius of the business. Get someone ten new customers, and they'll be more than happy to pay you a $1,500 monthly retainer to manage their digital marketing, because they have no clue those ten customers only cost you $100 to get. And when an ad campaign is running successfully, you don't even have to do anything. Just let it run and tweak it every now and then. If I wasn't going into video production, I would be going into something similar to this.

Fuck. I just typed out a long and detailed post about this, but deleted it by accident.

What marketing strategies have you already tried? I feel like I'm constantly mentioning Instagram in this thread but it really is a great tool. Liking, following, and commenting are quick, free ways to instantly get someone's attention and make them at least look at your page.

Long story short, make an Instagram. It's that simple. Buy some fake followers to get you to 1k so you're not starting from scratch. Then just post a lot and engage with the community. Like and follow people. Put on your bio that you're open for commissions. I have a bot that follows and likes people on my personal art Instagram, and I get messages from people all the time asking me to make them stuff. I almost always decline because they only wanna pay me like $50, and that's complete bullshit for any kind of video or animation work. If you're only charging $10, you'll be fine.

I am kind of a math autist and I find it very easy to play around with data and provide solutions and very accurate models. Right now I am working for a multi-billion company and I am getting paid real good and they are starting to depend on me since the derps there have no idea how to deal with data (gonna use this to my advantage). But I don't want to slave for shekelberg for the rest of my life, I want to become a freelance and open up my own data consultancy business. How easy is it to do and how bad is the red tape? I live in Germany by the way.

Yeah, a lot of people do shady shit to get their videos done. I'm actually quite passionate about video and animation though, so I legitimately enjoy the craft and I've been using the software for 5+ years. At this point, I'm just refining my style and making it more corporate and polished. Branding and high quality production are going to separate me from the companies that make these same videos for $300. Those are the companies stealing and doing all kinds of shortcuts. I'm trying to be one of the companies that makes $10k videos for Google, so everything needs to be legit and original.

I have three guys I'm working with, but it's more of a freelance relationship. I won't be paying them a fixed monthly salary, just $1k-$2k per job. Right now, the workload isn't large enough for me to bring them in yet, though. I've been doing everything myself and pocketing all the money. Once the site is done and I start running ads, which will be within the next two weeks, I'm hoping to have enough clients to require their help. I'll keep Jow Forums posted on the success (or failure) of this endeavor.

I've got some stuff to go do, but I'll check this thread again later tonight.

Do you do anything with YouTube?

you can pay an online marketing company to do that for you

This is already a thing mate. See medcredits and Hippocrates dApp.

jewtube, google, and the public library system that Andrew Carnegie setup is there for you.

I did a season of fire with a pretty decent contractor last year. Here's what I will say. Don't skimp on paying decent wages, you'll just end with a crew full of burnouts, make sure your crew is professional (overhead doesn't like cussing and untucked yellows), and my boss's biggest hurdle for his company was long term employee retention because you need a certain number of type 1 firefighter's in order to send your crews beyond your fire region (for him that was the pacific northwest, rockies, and california).
>I worked for Steelhead

fix people's computers. as long as you charge less than the geek squad, you're golden

I've seen Steelhead out there. I remember liking them. I'm a Dustbunny.

Nice, who'd you work for? I would work for them again, if I wasn't getting into forestry and don't get into trouble in Oregon again(ex girlfirend, DUI, etc.).

Make your own portfolio by making videos for fake companies, thus displaying your ability. This would be more fun as well since you can do whatever you want creatively and make it legit.

I've heard that this happens all the time in China, and that one of the few jobs white guys can get is being fake guest speakers like "here is our program manager dr. Smith who really made this thing happen!"

Dustbusters Plus. Seems like firefighters, particularly Oregonians, love getting into trouble, like ot's our sworn mission to be polar opposites to cops or something. What business you get into after fire?

What country?

pot candy. probably CBD candy.