by Tony Catalano

Created on: December 02, 2009

Now starting a small business and selling things may be conceptually simple but there are all kinds of obvious problems that come about. For the average person start-up costs are an issue, however there is a way about everything.

To start, if you have some kind of grand idea that will cost thousands upon thousands of dollars my suggestion is stop. Build up. You have to do some bootstrapping. Maximize what little money you have and find clever ways to downsize your operation. Say you wanted to start a jazz club where people could sit and dine and listen to some music. Well the facility alone will cost thousands so we already have a problem. Perhaps try finding a community center which you could rent or otherwise make use of, maybe have a small membership fee, and you might even be able to find some musicians for cheap or even free (college students).

A great relatively simple idea that you can try regardless if you are interested in the business or not is vending machines. The upstart is the cost of the machine and the food to stock it more or less. A good strategy is to find a place beforehand that might consider allowing you to rent the space for maybe $100-$300 a month, or a cut of the profits. There are all sorts of places. Try high schools, colleges, maybe pizza places, really there are a ton of establishments. Make or find a list of most or every business in your town and the surrounding areas and one by one cross them off until you have a list of potential locations. Approach the proprietor and see if he'd be interested. A great site to buy candy from is http://www.metrocandy.com/ They have a pretty varied stock, so you could venture to put some unconventional things in there.

Never stock up excessively, you're going to have to gauge the success of your information in it's limited form before going full force. When selling back things you bought wholesale you have to take into account how much you're going to mark it up. You can start with a lower mark-up and perhaps increase when you have a customer base, or go with an average amount and decrease to encourage expansion. The options are long and obvious, what it amounts to on your part is actual research and finding out about these sort of things. As long as you're malleable and willing to compromise your idea for later use, or size it down creatively, there is opportunity out there.

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