My Story So Far

Having spent 19 years working as a joiner/carpenter both wokshop and site based, having long days, often cold and wet on site, cold mornings in workshops or very hot and sweaty days cooped up in wokshops with the air filled with choking inducing dust and nauseating noise I realised it was time to get out! The internet was for many a way to make money without leaving the home. The first thing to try like everyone else was ebay. Selling any old unwanted or unused items or tat we had laying around the house was the introduction to the running of an ebay account. I sold the larger workshop machinery I had as I had at this time stopped working for myself and took employment with a joinery firm in the area spending 9 hours a day in a converted cowshed for a workshop. The money from my own machinery was used to buy screenprinting equipment for tee shirt printing. Graphics and art was what I wanted to do when I left school originally, that and make music..
I left school 19 years ago to go to art college to do graphic design but I took a brief summer job with my uncle doing joinery which stupidly made me come to the conclusion that I should get a trade to fall back on in case I was unable to get a job once I left art college. hmmmm that bad decision resulted in me not going to art college but spending 19years working as a joiner/carpenter either employed or for myself.
Anyway, I digress, I bought screenprinting equipment, opened up an Ebay shop called vandal-designs selling my own hand printed tee shirts. Ebay is a great spring board, but their fees can eat nicely into your profits so the next step is to have your own website. So thats what Idid. http://www.vandaldesigns.co.uk/ was born. I was now begining to see the potential of the internet. With Ebay i was selling tee shirts worldwide from my own home. Every tee shirt posted had a small brochure/leaflet with other tee designs on it directing people to our website hoping they would buy from there. The reason was that there were no Ebay fees to pay, the tee shirt prices were less on the website too so everyone was a winner. Strangely though, past customers bought more from us via Ebay even though they had our leaflet and the prices on our site http://www.vandaldesigns.co.uk/ were cheaper!
The thing that really started to sink is this... when I was self employed as a joiner/carpenter, I had a van that like all vehicles needed road Tax and insurance, I had a workshop that cost me rent and business rates. I also needed public & product liability insurance in case I somehow accidentally injured or killed someone with my work. My monthly costs were adding up... The workshop rent and rates alone were around £240 a month (that was the middle sized workshop I rented in my 19 years in the trade). Thats a staggering £2880 a year without the other costs, before I have even started to work. Then there is also machinery costs, electric costs and here in the good old UK we even have to pay for rain water to run off of our property even if your workshop is below another so you do not even have a roof. And may I also moan that unlike the council tax which pays towards the rubbish being taken away from your house, business rates, the business equivallent does not acctually do anything! We still needed to pay for our business waste to be taken away adding to my monthly overhead bills.
With the internet, a cheap website like http://www.vandaldesigns.co.uk/ and http://www.andiroo.co.uk/ cost me around £50 a year each! The domain name is around £8 for two years if it is a co.uk name and £8 for one year if it is a .com... The hosting of the site is less than £2.50 a month. That's it! fortunately for me, I Have a great close friend who owns a hosting company, http://www.lincwebhosting.co.uk/ who helped me set things up. Give it a look, he is very reliable and friendly, and his knowledge about the internet and computers makes DATA from Star Trek look like a ZX Spectrum.
So, the internet wins hands down on overhead costs, and for reaching a larger target audiance. 500 million people living in the English speaking nations, countless others speak English as a second language, 6 billion people living on planet Earth. How can we not make money online? Unlike my dad who owned a corner shop for over 30 years, I dont need to buy loads of stock and wait for the local people to come to me and Only the local or people who are just in the area passing. The WORLD wibe web is in reality my OYSTER!
Andi