When is the right time to start a business?

**ladyguru** · 07-05-2007 10:02 PM

I have a few questions for you guys

I'm just wondering when is the right time to start a business? And is there a good business to start with little or $0 investment?

Hope to hear back from everyone

**akula** · 07-05-2007 10:20 PM

good questions

there is only one good time

this time are the moments after you've completed surveying your prospects and signing contracts for delivery

if you are starting your business at any other time, you're starting it at a bad time

**Unreal030** · 07-05-2007 10:23 PM

Anytime is a good time to start a business in regards to age, as far as money or your personal situation.... It mostly depends on what kind of business. A lemonade stand when your 10 years old is in fact a business.

There aren't a whole ton of businesses that require $0 investment, those that require little usually return little until there is more growth in your business.

That is unless you want to go the way of making money off of internet ads on your site/blog whatever, however, in most cases those are criticized as not being businesses or their owners as not being entrepreneurs and I personally think they are mostly a waste of time.

If you want a good starter business I would suggest surfing the web for ideas or starting a business where there is little overhead or risk of losing money. A good example of this is selling something by taking orders for it, but not actually purchasing the item until the order has been made, so that you are in the clear to pay for the expense purchasing said item.

You could mark up the prices from that of what you purchased them from the manufacturer, which is what most retail stores do, they mark up the prices, and that is how they make up their profit, anywhere all the way to 300% depending on what the good is. Either that or you could keep it at base price to help compete and charge for delivery. Again this would depend on what exactly it is you are doing.

However Akula is correct that you shouldn't just jump in and start. Find your demographic (in lamens terms that means your target market) = Age range, Sex, specific interest, if they tend to live in city/suburbs/country, their average income, what have you, and then do more research on them so that you can fit your business to take care of the specific service or to get them to want to buy your product, and so you can advertise effectively towards them.

And of course, with Akula's second point, if there is any transportation of goods or supplies or deliveries that need to be taken care of contact those people you would be doing business with and get all of that ironed out before you open up shop.

Basically, have a business plan before you open up your business. There are many places on the web that tell you how to write a business plan, try entrepreneur.com

**radreality** · 07-05-2007 10:28 PM

the right time is now. If you wait till you're ready, you have wasted a lot of valuable learning time. Just jump in and learn along the way. If you are dealing with $0 or very little money, you won't lose much if you fail.

when you have $0 to work with, you have to be pretty creative when it comes to marketing and normal operating expenses. There are several types of websites you can start for $0, but you can improve your odds quite a bit by putting a few dollars into getting a unique domain name and website layout.

______________________________
Robert Falk
Business Developer / Investor
Self Help & Success Forum

**radreality** · 07-05-2007 10:33 PM

on another note, don't be afraid to fail. As humans, we learn more from failures than we do success. So just try something and learn as much as you can.

A couple other posters said that you shouldn't jump right in. Thats true for a seasoned entrepreneur. But when you are starting out, you often don't know how to do all the research you need to do. You will learn the most by just jumping in and gaining the knowledge along the way.

______________________________
Robert Falk
Business Developer / Investor
Self Help & Success Forum

**Paint and Air Sportz** · 07-05-2007 10:48 PM

It takes money to make real money 95% of the time. Just rememeber that.

**Unreal030** · 07-05-2007 10:55 PM

Originally Posted by radreality

on another note, don't be afraid to fail. As humans, we learn more from failures than we do success. So just try something and learn as much as you can.

A couple other posters said that you shouldn't jump right in. Thats true for a seasoned entrepreneur. But when you are starting out, you often don't know how to do all the research you need to do. You will learn the most by just jumping in and gaining the knowledge along the way.

This is true and I suppose I should have clarified myself. I agree that such things would be more necessary for a seasoned entrepreneur however I think regardless you should at least have a business plan as it will help greatly and anyone can make one.

Paint & Air is also correct.

It takes money to make money most of the time. The question is do you want to play it safe or take the risks to make more money faster with the possibility of losing your roll of the dice.

**DBeavers** · 07-06-2007 08:17 AM

Lady Guru,

I have a checklist on my site that you can use to evaluate any bizopps or "business in a box" that you decide to investigate. No list of criteria will be perfect, but than again, no business idea or opportunity is perfect for everyone.

Not only will your target market of customers impact your options, but also your locations. Many business are strictly available in in their home country, as expanding across country borders is too expensive to consider. So, your geographic location may have a big impact of what choices are available to you.

The information you omitted could have more impact on your options than the $0 capital you have or want to limit. I sell for Kaeser & Blair, and they offer a $0 start-up option, but may not be available to you, as they are only seeking dealers in the U.S. As mentioned by a previous response, this is one of those companies that allow people to sell for them, and they handle all the credit, billing, etc, paying commissions to the dealers for the orders they place.

Other than the US limitation, there are no territory restrictions, and the opportunity can be pursued online, offline, or both. The opportunity is in the field of promotional advertising - a $19 Billion industry. It only takes a small piece of a niche market to generate a good volume of business that can earn you an above average income.

Regardless of your location an business preferences, feel free to use the business checklist on my site to evaluate any business opportunity you might want to pursue -

http://www.CuttingEdgeAdvertising.com/perfect.htm

Dennis Bevers
BASSCO, Inc.

**jwstans** · 07-06-2007 01:26 PM

I found a Market America, Unfranchise buisness.

Start up is $500.00-1500.00

www.marketamerica.com/jeffstans

**Lianghaochen** · 07-06-2007 02:49 PM

If you are looking for a business with 0 investment with huge return, you can try to rob someone...j/k
But seriously, if you want to start a business with little investment, you should try providing some kind of service from home, this way you don't have to deal with inventory and u can reduce overhead cost to almost 0. I guess drop-shipping is an example?

**syia** · 07-06-2007 07:01 PM

I share with you my experience, I have always WAIT for the right time and right amount of money to start. In the end, I waste of.. 2 years.. $300 just to buy several domains, hosting plans that I never use because I WAIT

**Unreal030** · 07-06-2007 09:12 PM

Well the thing is you need to plan and wait...because more often then not you will get yourself in trouble otherwise. However, if it is a low investment business like you want then thats probably a non issue. The pitfall that many people have when they plan wait is that they over plan and over wait which seems to be what Syia did. That is one of the hard parts, finding out when is the right time in your preparation.

**ceo77** · 07-08-2007 11:20 AM

Originally Posted by ladyguru

I have a few questions for you guys

I'm just wondering when is the right time to start a business? And is there a good business to start with little or $0 investment?

Hope to hear back from everyone

The first thing you need to do is find out what kind of business you want to start. It has to be something that you're willing to stick with during bad times as well, other wise you will eventually give up.

**godspower** · 07-09-2007 09:10 AM

Originally Posted by ladyguru

I have a few questions for you guys

I'm just wondering when is the right time to start a business? And is there a good business to start with little or $0 investment?

Hope to hear back from everyone

The right time is now or never. LET this be your approach.

Yes you can start an info business with less than $100. PM me if serious.

Forget $0 investment. There is nothing like that. If you do not spend $, you will still spend time which is still $.

**mattonline** · 07-09-2007 09:20 AM

It takes money to make real money 95% of the time. Just rememeber that.

for me it isn't i started say a couple of years ago, at the age of 14 (managed to get my self a free reseller hosting, which i still have today) started selling hosting and moved on to other things and now managed to build up a portfolio worth around 3000-4000 sterlin today, not a great amount for a couple years work lol, but im still building and hopfully it will be worth a little more in the future, and i do put in minimal work on some of my things (websites)

Best thing to do for the future with little money is buy domains - develop websites on them - gain traffic and sell them later on