The Showroom Startup pt 2

[SDRonEbay]

So here I am, needing capital, needing suppliers, needing customers, needing pretty much everything so I can hold my head up high and say proudly I run a business not just I own a business. The difference is any idiot can own a business but it takes a special idiot to run a business. Especially since you're, theoretically, gonna lose money your first quarter.

I figured it'd be better if it was someone elses money. So I get my business plan all polished up, add some color, a PowerPoint presentation, nice little handouts...spit shine my Italiano's and head to the banks. You know, I've stared down the barrel of several guns, I've been on the business end of knives, bats, pipes...I've even wrestled a few small Korean cars but none of it scared me. I was a great big 330 lb wuss when I got to these bankers. I mean, I wasn't scared of my proposal. Heck that thing is airtight. I was afraid of the obvious...a startup business' credit is only as good as the business owner's credit. My student loan people pretty much know they're gonna have to pull that $50 a month from my cold, dying hands. As for everything else, well, there's not much else. A couple of paid off credit cards, medical bills and everything else on there is ancient. So I figured my good looks would be enough. Sadly, it was not. After a few weeks of that (the whole time still peddling Nissan's to the country folk) I said screw their money. I'll fund this business on my own.

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LMFAO!!! Needless to say I spent a lot of time online looking into grants, investors, federal money, cash loans...anything I could get my hands on. I gave up selling to take some banking courses so I could get an inside track on these 'bankers'...evil little trolls. So from that scavenger hunt I actually pulled out some great information. I'm very open to sharing some of them with you guys. I got e-books on grants, e-books on internet businesses, e-books on e-books. Lots of stuff. And some of it very useful to my plan.

I chose a hosting company. After unsuccessfully trying to locate some folks who will remain nameless, I decided to go with GoDaddy.com (I hope that's not considered spam) They're pretty good. The site templates they have are rather generic and sometimes not user friendly but overall I give them a C+. Their services are pretty good and their publish time is excellent. I make changes to my site daily with all then sponsors and ads I'm getting in and I haven't missed a beat yet. Plus, above all else, they are inexpensive. Since I'm backing this gig I've got to save money everywhere I can. Of course the site is only a small part to this puzzle. There's marketing, linking, tracking, searching...things that generate business in other words. GoDaddy does not offer a great deal of these services so I've gone out on my own to do this. So far I'm on a bunch of no name search engines and not very high up on the main engines. But there are services out there that you can go to to fix that as well. Most of them cost money so I'm looking for the cheapies and the freebies. They're out there as well. You just got to look.

So, I've given up on investors (partially) I've got hosting company picked out, picking up advertisers and sponsors, finally got a list of suppliers, shipping accounts...what's next? Find out next time on...

The Showroom Startup

[SDRonEbay]

These are some of those e-books I told you about. There yours for free.

[SDRonEbay]

Of course I paid for them.

[SDRonEbay]

I don't know how many more times I could go through them.

[SDRonEbay]

Gotta couple more. If you want em email me. I feel like a post whore.

[DAEDALUS]

Thanks so much for sharing your experience as you step through it Jayson. Wisdom without risk for the rest of us.

[SDRonEbay]

Wisdom without risk for the rest of us.

What can I say, I love pain.