What is your long term game?

[t2van]

Long-term: find a way to scale my eBay business to quit my day job. The numbers don't add up just yet, but perhaps injecting some additional revenue via dropshipping could do it. If anyone is looking to JV with a legitimate eBay retail businesses with their dropshipped products, I'm open to talk.

You should look at moving your customer OFF eBay to your own platform (Store) that's the only way you will keep a revenue going and be able to scale something and protect you if the worst happens - if eBay closed tomorrow do you have a business?

If you can place a leaflet or a small coupon for the customer to use on next order if they go direct and start to drive them customers directly to you.

 

[draco02]

Was a nightmare

I can imagine

 

[fragmonkey]

You should look at moving your customer OFF eBay to your own platform (Store) that's the only way you will keep a revenue going and be able to scale something and protect you if the worst happens - if eBay closed tomorrow do you have a business?

If you can place a leaflet or a small coupon for the customer to use on next order if they go direct and start to drive them customers directly to you.

Indeed that is part of my scaling strategy. The only realistic way I can see people actually going to my site vs eBay is returning customers using a coupon, for example. PPC google ads are perhaps another way but I'm not convinced the numbers add up on that just yet. Its a competitive niche but I have a good source for product so I can compete well. Ads are very expensive in this niche. Only one way to find out I guess

 

[draco02]

personal brand
various product brands
real estate
financial investments


I agree: pillars are the key. Real Estate is just one of the big pillars.

Which else do you think to complement it?

My strategy is pretty conservative
30% into ETFs, stock market, gold/jewelry, dividend shares, P2P and much more, more or less risky investments

60% into safe investments
I dont know if this also exists outside of germany but it s called tagesgeldkonto "day money account" , u receive (at the moment sadly almost none at all tho, they even speaking about a negative amount ) a certain Interest rate on your money

10% into online businesses
(My long term plan in a nutshell is:
Gain traffic from social media --> setup a website or forum or social media page on my own --> redirect the traffic to those platforms
--> make the websites in a way that it holds people for years, how? Im not sure yet
Could be an informational forum, a place where people can connect , i will think of ideas in the future)
But what i need is a unique selling point, (I hope google translator translated that correct hahah)
compared to my competition, in order to keep the people. And I have to constantly adapt.

 

[Billy Batts]

This is my life now. Apart from the society thing - depends where you live. In the UK to be cut off from everyone is almost impossible!

Sure you can, go way up north in the highlands of Scotland

But you live self-sustaining and off-grid? Tell me more!

 

[t2van]

Indeed that is part of my scaling strategy. The only realistic way I can see people actually going to my site vs eBay is returning customers using a coupon, for example. PPC google ads are perhaps another way but I'm not convinced the numbers add up on that just yet. Its a competitive niche but I have a good source for product so I can compete well. Ads are very expensive in this niche. Only one way to find out I guess

Yes we get returning customers coming directly to us rather than eBay. Although on eBay you get free postage (from us) on the site you pay for it but then most items are cheaper than eBay and customers get a free gift with orders if they come direct rather than through that marketplace.

One you can do depending on your numbers is look to partner up with someone in a similar industry so if you sold sheds and another company sells BBQs offer to send a leaflet advertising his business with a referral code or no code but you get a fixed fee for posting out x number of flyers. This can help off set some costs with advertising THE only problem with this from experience is if the customer has a problem ordering from that company they will contact you thinking you are one and the same.

I don't PPC I do multi channel selling that drives everything back to the site. We focus heavily on off line as well because of our demographic that works but surprising in targeting magazines we get 0 return i.e if I was selling wool and advertised in a knitting magazine I get a zero return vs doing a targeted mail shot for the same cost!

 

[t2van]

Sure you can, go way up north in the highlands of Scotland

But you live self-sustaining and off-grid? Tell me more!

Yeah the wife won't travel up that way no matter how hard I push. She likes her job way too much..

Fuel is run by wood from our own wood supply. I coppice the wood so I can come back and harvest it every 5 years or so this goes in our heater which heats home (runs boiler, heater, cooking stove) no gas.

We are on a mains hook up for electric I've not found a decent way to source power all year - I've tried my own wind turbine builds but the demand with two children is way too high and we are only paying £40 a month for it - no smart meters or any of that crap.

Water we use from our own supply - we get regular visits from the water board as they don't understand how we have almost zero usage. If I can get a land sewer / filtration system built with our next house (in planning) I'll not need to bother with the water board at all.

We grow all of our own food 95% of it is home grown and grown all year (you can do it despite what most UK growers will tell you other wise) we just get some tropical fruit from the supermarket. I make bread 4 times a week. Our monthly shop comes down to around £10 a month (sounds insane) but that's not taking into account clothes etc - clothing is the biggest expense mainly wife for work and kids for school..

We get milk from local farm we trade veg supplies for.

I go on two shoots a year for red deer and muntjac, we eat a lot of game. I get pork & beef from local farmer we buy 1 cow a year butchered cost me £300 and the pigs are £110 each I can get lambs for £95 butchered but the wife does not like lamb so much. We raise our own turkey every year (although now my daughter is 10 this is a little harder - I told her not to name it anything other than Christmas but she gets attached) chickens we get eggs and meat from.

I want pigs but I'm keeping that till we build the next house.

I got no neigbhours and if it snows we are stuck. Its as close as I can get "off grid" without my kids smelling or my wife complaining. So maybe not true to the word of it, but its close enough for me

 

[addictedtolearning]

I'm an organic produce farmer who's new to IM. 31 years old. December 20, 2018, I started a Facebook page for fun, intending to eventually blog, but not really knowing much about how IM works. It's now at 9400 people (also have an 850 following on Insta), but with these new updates (is at least the reason I'm hearing about) my reach and engagement have plummeted. I'm gaining 2k followers a month, and at the same time both of those are falling. I decided to create a Facebook group and funnel people from my page to the group. My website and a few things I will be attempting to use to monetize will both be in action at the end of the week.

This forum has really opened up my eyes to the abyss that is IM. I've realized how much there is to learn, and I have yet to pick and stick to a path. I'm currently building 3 different brands slowly, all with the intention of monetizing. I guess my near term goal is to monetize and scale these. Who knows how it will go. I have a lot of IDEAS, and this place is helping me figure out how to get them in front of more eyes. Hopefully they all bring an income in. I have also been buying Crypto (BTC, Link and XRP). Between all of these I'm hoping to start making some money asap.

I guess my long-term plan would be to make money with these 3 ventures and have a nice Crypto portfolio. Hopefully these get my net worth past half a million and then I'll buy a couple of properties to rent out to college kids (I live in a small town with 1 college so these are always in demand) and do some trading. I'm fortunate enough to have a really successful trade mentor, and I've learned "secrets" and strategies that only people with decades of experience know. I've actually thought about packaging and selling these, as it could honestly turn someone into a successful trader overnight, but I'm not really sure how to market and scale selling a service.. The reason I'm not trading yet is because it doesn't make sense when you would only have a few thousand dollars and not much time behind you. If I had 6 figures, that would be a different story, but looking for 5-20% here and there on $100 or $200 isn't worth the time it takes looking for setups.

I guess if my Crypto portfolio goes nowhere and these projects all fail without making much, I pick a skill and get really good at it. I love farming and it's meaningful, but I have no benefits or retirement, and college is approaching quickly for my step kids. I told myself that if I can't crack 50k/year by age 35 I will just get a state/federal job for the security. As you can tell, though, that's not what I truly want to do, but I don't want to turn 50, or even 60 in these fields, knowing 1 major injury and I'm fucked. I don't need a lot of things, just money to travel and see all the beauty the world has to offer.

I know 50k isn't much, but I only make 23k a year, so since I'm a good spender doubling my salary would do wonders.

I've also contemplated airbnb/aggritourism on the farm I work on, so maybe that will be part of the endgame, as I know it would be super popular (I'm in upstate NY so we get a little of people from the city wanting to get away).

If I can get 6 figures for trading though, I'll be good. If not, such is life. I will at least try as hard as I can to be successful.

 

[t2van]

Hey man if your a farmer why not diversify that business? Thats what we do!!!

 

[addictedtolearning]

@t2van we're thinking about adding Airbnb and aggritourism and making this place into a really cool stay, but the problem is I'm unhappy at least 50% of the time working alongside the guy who is taking this farm over (my brother-in-law). I don't know if I could work with him long-term without killing myself to be honest. He sucks a lot of the joy out of work, and it's not healthy to constantly be in the irritated/pissed off mindset.

What other ideas did you have in mind? Marijuana?

 

[t2van]

@t2van we're thinking about adding Airbnb and aggritourism and making this place into a really cool stay, but the problem is I'm unhappy at least 50% of the time working alongside the guy who is taking this farm over (my brother-in-law). I don't know if I could work with him long-term without killing myself to be honest. He sucks a lot of the joy out of work, and it's not healthy to constantly be in the irritated/pissed off mindset.

What other ideas did you have in mind? Marijuana?

Split it so you can manage some of the land for your own thing... Well our one niche I'm not going to disclose on here but as your US based? I'll tell you via PM maybe we could link up as our brand can't launch or ship state side due to import/export laws.

Aside from that we manage wood for fuel from our own woodland and sell that, we grow for restaurants mainly high value crops - not as fancy as it sounds but we sell tons of fresh mustard to local Indian restaurants!

Next year we are getting into mushrooms, we do veg boxes (which is popular from the states as that's where I get most of my info from!), I do a private pick your own every year -we lease land to private allotments so people can grow their own as well or do what they want - one lady grows her own flowers for her flower shop.

Our other side of the business which we do online has another 2 elements to it and a 3rd which is in development..

I know a few guys who have done yurts and do well with Airbnb but id blow my brains out doing that for a living - same as I know guys who have just dug a hole, filled with water and do fishing holidays - sounds and looks great but again dealing with people that would take its tole I have a hard enough time dealing with people and veg boxes.

 

[addictedtolearning]

Split it so you can manage some of the land for your own thing... Well our one niche I'm not going to disclose on here but as your US based? I'll tell you via PM maybe we could link up as our brand can't launch or ship state side due to import/export laws.

Send me a PM!

Next year we are getting into mushrooms, we do veg boxes (which is popular from the states as that's where I get most of my info from!), I do a private pick your own every year -we lease land to private allotments so people can grow their own as well or do what they want - one lady grows her own flowers for her flower shop.

I've wanted to do mushrooms and we'll be adding the pick your own down the road. Again, the biggest issue is that I don't get along very well with the guy who will be owning the place haha. I don't think I can work with him long-term when I truly think about it...

Can't afford my own land right now, either, but maybe the long-term play is to get my own farm land and implement a bunch of these ideas. Definitely message me about the first thing (I am US based...I'm in NY)!

 

[Zenage]

automation/VA/JV

What VA & JV stand for?

 

[draco02]

What VA & JV stand for?

Va is virtual assistant

 

[fragmonkey]

What VA & JV stand for?

VA = Virtual Assistant
JV = Joint Venture

 

[KidHotel]

You need to take the money you're making to invest or create assets that will keep you afloat when your other revenue streams are cut out. For example, you should create white hat sites or subscription software that you can just slowly grow and invest your profits into so that when your black hat techniques fail, you have already been laying the groundwork. Basically, your black hat sites should only exist to fund the creation and development of your white hat, long term assets.

 

[Yellowcrow]

Get to a point where I don't have to check my wallet to help somebody.

 

[SpongeR0b]

My long term thoughts.. eventually it will all go wrong, money will be worthless.. then it'll be time for the rule of AK47.. Until that time, just enjoy life.. smile.. laugh