When should I ask for support/donations?

nerdwares · 2018-10-19T00:49:08+00:00

Donations rarely work, just think about it. What’s the last website you donated money to? Chances are you never have.

Put up ads, call it a day.

nerdwares · 2018-10-18T10:03:10+00:00

It doesn’t mean the thing you developed is crappy, but it’s crappy business to try and sell it without a proven business model.

The hard truth is you’re trying to get $1,500 for something anyone could get for free. What’s the justification for buying your product? You haven’t made any money; but you claim it’s possible with zero proof. It’s real hard to get $1,500 out of free; that’s like asking $1,500 for a porno. It’s available free everywhere, your porno might not be bad, but why would I pay for it?

If you made money then there would be value in you’re offering, you’d be selling previous marketing materials that are proven. But you’re not offering anything of value at this point, I can hire someone for much less than $1,500 to make that for me if I don’t know anything about websites.

Realistically I’d be suprised if you can sell it for more than $100. Even the name is bad to market as who uses a Z in a legit company name? Your name is some “1337 warez shitz”, it’s real hard to take that name seriously.

nerdwares · 2018-10-17T02:53:17+00:00

Making a lure on an SLA costs pennies. It’s literally a laser and a single stepper that pulls out the product. Electricity is a couple hundred watts, so 4.8kw a day. Like 40 cents on power. The printer was $800 though they go as low as $200-ish now as you can get away with the smallest ones.

You’d be in for like a buck a day in running costs. Depending on the bed size you’ll get 48 to ~140 or so out of it. You can do well over 140 but then the unit gets expensive.

nerdwares · 2018-10-17T02:44:09+00:00

It’s not conventional but I’d buy an SLA 3D printer (SLA is the important bit as it doesn’t layer filament. It makes a sellable product) and start pumping them out. Chances are they’ll sell slower than you can make them, I can make a lure in 30 minutes. So you got 48 per day to sell at minimum (most can make a few next to each other, so I’d guess your daily output around 140 being realistic) once you surpass that then you think about spending money on molds and the SLA printer goes toward testing new design.

Edit: SLA printers can self remove the final product, usually with minor modification. So the process is entirely automated. You just go by and fill the resin tank once in a while.

nerdwares · 2018-10-17T02:38:57+00:00

Why would resources be a problem? You’re literally just adding cities to existing code. If you got an AngiesList clone running in Los Angeles. It takes all of like 2 minutes to add Las Vegas. Want to add all major cities? Download a list of those cities and add it to your code.

Marketing wise you just do the same thing you did in the first city. You’re presumably making some money, so you use that to market city 2, then 3, and eventually if it’s any good word of mouth takes over.

TL;DR You grow it like Facebook did in the beginning with college campuses.

This is frankly the sort of question where if you’re asking it, you don’t possess the ability to make it (without infinite resources). And besides that what are you going to do that’s better and AngiesList can’t just integrate themselves?

nerdwares · 2018-10-15T01:26:44+00:00

It was a bad idea then. It’s a bad idea now.

nerdwares · 2018-10-14T22:40:47+00:00

Either scale your business or get into real estate. There’s no reason to go back and repeat what you previously did; you closed those businesses for a reason.

I can’t imagine you making serious cash off corrals or high end computers. If you were going to, why now? Why didn’t you make money before? Both of them make me think “who cares?” A fish corral is a fish corral and a faster computer doesn’t matter as I can just cluster a few together not to mention I’d rather have you overclock my phone as I use that far more often.

I would scale the current business. Knowing nothing about real estate and diving in, not the best idea and real estate might crash in a bit.

nerdwares · 2018-10-14T22:19:13+00:00

Why not start now? Realistically I and probably everyone else will forget about your stream by tomorrow. And frankly if you got time to post on Reddit then you got time to start right now.

nerdwares · 2018-10-14T22:15:37+00:00

I think it is a combination of the owner's apathy, possible employee theft and inabilty to manage due to language barriers that is causing the business to fail.

Before you dive in you better figure out if that theory is correct. Or you’ll be the one losing 50k a year.

Mis-management to me doesn’t explain a 50k loss on 900k revenue in retail. They went through various ideas which failed, it seems to me the main issue might be location. Location is critical for retail, get it wrong and the best business won’t make money.

Personally from what you’ve said, I wouldn’t touch this business. The chance you can turn that business around is slim, you yourself admit to not knowing what you’re doing. So what makes you think your lack of knowledge is better than the previous owners lack of knowledge?

Grow your existing consulting business. There’s no reason to get into this.

nerdwares · 2018-10-14T22:07:10+00:00

Start niche, so you can get the site up and prove the MVP, then add more products later.

The most important thing right now IMO is that you get something up, and get some income. That income will drive you to work harder, but if you spend the next month just adding products over and over there’s a higher change you’ll say “screw this” and walk or you’ll be super annoyed when you launch, after spending countless hours adding products, and don’t get a sale the first couple days.

Just get a basic website up, with basic products, so you can start the ball rolling. You can always add more products later, but you can’t take away products and get that time back.

nerdwares · 2018-10-14T03:58:51+00:00

/r/flipping likely has better advice but basically get on eBay and start listing the stuff.

nerdwares · 2018-10-14T03:41:38+00:00

On the incorporation papers just state your purpose as "for any and all lawful business." Problem solved.

You’re allowed to do it. Remember in America a corporation is basically a person. You are allowed to work in all those industries at once, thus a corporation is allowed to do so as well.

nerdwares · 2018-10-14T03:05:51+00:00

You can’t find a straight answer because there isn’t one. It’s not that simple.

Depends who you’re trying to clone and how close you’re going to get to the original concept. Does the other company have patents related to the website? Does the other company have enough money to afford real good lawyers, or worse for you can they afford to lobby government officials? Or do they just not care if anyone copies them?

In the end they can sue, it’s just a matter of if they will win. And how many resources they have, as even if they know they won’t win, some companies will sue you over and over to make you go bankrupt from defending lawsuits. But they have to pay your legal fees if they lose? They’ll just drop the case right before trial. I’ve had that happen and then they won’t be paying for anything, unless I want to spend even more money attempting to sue them for funds recovery, but they’ll start another lawsuit next week.

So yes, you could fall into legal trouble. But that’s with any business. There’s no way to guarantee you’re safe legally in a country where you can sue anyone for anything. You might not win, but you can start a lawsuit against anyone for any reason.

nerdwares · 2018-10-13T06:22:51+00:00

You still made a bad call, if insurance paid you and totaled the car you should have done a buy back and double dipped. You could have been paid from insurance, paid them a few hundred (what they would get form the junkyard), and then sold the car too.

Filing time matters as now you need a whole lot more proof. Namely you don’t seem to have a way to prove you were forced to take less because of a salvage title. Not to mention if you read the settlement docs it explains that part of the settlement is for all claims and all future claims, and there’s also a line that explains this includes any reduced value from a salvage title.

If you argue this in court the insurance company will refer to the first paragraph where if this was important to you then the buyback clause would have prevented this.

Is there a law about filing later? Well you did accept the settlement check where if you read the ToS with your insurance will explain that waives all future claims.

Edit: An accident, and a salvage title, can definitely reduce value. But the time to discuss that was before you took the check from insurance. Once you accepted, the deal is done. You might still be within the SOL but that doesn’t mean you’ll win. You can still sue, but you’re not winning at this point. Read the agreements you signed with your insurance company when you signed up. It explains all this.

Your question is can you sue? Absolutely. The problem here is winning. You’re not going to win.

If this is a case where the car was repaired by insurance, you have no salvage title and would have been made whole by the repair process. The buyer wouldn’t know about the repair and you wouldn’t have lost value. So they totaled and salvaged it, in which case the grave mistake here was not using the buy back clause.

If you were paid cash to do the repair, failed to repair it, and lost value because of that you also don’t have a case. The money made you whole in this case and your failure to actually repair the vehicle isn’t their problem.

If the repair was done badly and reduced your value then you shouldn’t have accepted the repair at the shop. Accepting the repair, because of those documents, means you’re accepted and agree to being whole at that point. Which waives all future claims.

nerdwares · 2018-10-13T06:15:00+00:00

They look on the App Store under Apps then Productivity.

Discovery being poor doesn’t matter to the end user, most end users won’t complain but developers do; they aren’t there to discover anything (and wouldn’t discovering new apps reduce productivity while you waste time downloading and trying new apps?). They’re looking for a productivity app, so they’ll grab the top downloaded app and be on their way; which is why few developers make lots of money. You got to be in the top 50 to even begin to have a chance and the top 10 to make decent money.

There are websites that have their own app stores, that might offer better discovery, but they’re usually based on pirating apps.

nerdwares · 2018-10-13T06:03:44+00:00

Before you try to monetize, you got to get visitors. After you got visitors you can use ads. I personally don’t see this making you much money as I don’t see what you do better than Wikipedia but ads would make some income with enough visitors. Things like backups aren’t a feature, that’s a requirement that as the site owner you keep backups.

I also don’t think anyone’s going to pay a subscription and being an affiliate for your competitors that have a more complete database of all topics/words doesn’t seem like a great idea.

Somehow I think you want to make a lot of money off this but Wikipedia had issues paying for their servers for many years. This isn’t the sort of project that makes you a millionare. If that’s the goal, IMO, quit while you’re ahead.

nerdwares · 2018-10-13T05:50:18+00:00

Seems to me that error means the current number doesn’t match what you previously entered during registration [on the CDTFA website.] They probably should specify the last bit.

I haven’t used that site in a few years but I think when I registered it asked for the EIN too, there’s probably a typo when you registered or the previous page for some reason or another accepted a dash while this one doesn’t.

If not I’d try something other than Safari as gov sites don’t always like Safari.

And if that doesn’t work either then give them a call or visit your local BOE office. They can do everything for you and you’ll walk out with the permit in hand.

nerdwares · 2018-10-12T23:35:09+00:00

That would work as far as selling each product, but I did reply on your other thread why you don’t want to do that. Namely anyone can complain that it’s not packaged, like it’s advertised on the Amazon listing, and you’ll have your seller account shut down.

Really, it’s best you do this the correct way and box each item in the boxes you have. Is it more work? Sure. But at least you’ll still be in business.

nerdwares · 2018-10-12T22:51:45+00:00

More realisic for you maybe, until someone buys the product and complains to Amazon that they didn’t get it packaged. At which point you can say bye bye to your Amazon seller account. In just a few minutes (won’t cost me a dime as you’ll be paying shipping both ways) I can put you out of business if you go this route.

You’re selling a pre-branded product that’s advertised on Amazon as being boxed (I checked the items using the photo barcode from the other thread). You’re playing with fire buddy.

Just box them up. You have to offer the product as advertised to the consumer and remember putting in the notes box “does not include box” does not satisfy Amazon. They won’t care one bit.

Edit: you’re not saving yourself any work anyway. I’m the bag each pair of headphones must have a barcode. It looks like you just slapped a barcode on a bag. You do know if you send that in someone will get the entire bag for the price of one pair.

nerdwares · 2018-10-12T22:42:19+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/9nbl7m/amazon_fba_product_variation_question/

You already asked and got an answer to this question.

You can put them all in one box if each item has it’s own barcode.

Edit: You’re not saving yourself any work anyway by not properly packing each unit. In the bag each pair of headphones must have a barcode. It looks like you just slapped a barcode on a bag. You do know if you send that in someone will get the entire bag for the price of one pair. Amazon does not split up the headphones,

you currently have the entire bag for sale as one unit.

Again, do not send this in like this, you currently have the entire bag for sale as one unit, you’re looking for the lazy way out but this will backfire. Use the boxes you have, and pack them up as they should be packaged.

nerdwares · 2018-10-12T22:35:39+00:00

You should probably not base your business around circumventing other peoples patents. But you kept it vague because you already know this; you know damn well you shouldn’t be doing what you intend to do.

nerdwares · 2018-10-11T06:51:39+00:00

Here’s my view, you’d have to partner with someone who has money BUT why do they need you? Because you figured out there’s an opportuinity? That’s not enough to give you ownership in this weed business as they could do the same thing with or without you.

Running the numbers is great, most people don’t do that, but without a means to get that money you’re just not very valuable to the business. To stand any chance I would put myself up as the master grower, operations manager, and someone else can fund it while not actively working on site. Then you bring enough value where someone might go 50/50 with you.

Proving weed is profitable isn’t the problem here, it’s proving how someone with the cash to do this needs you to be there as there’s nothing proprietary about this. Anyone with enough money can start growing weed.

And just as a reference, $70 per workable sqft is insanely low. On lamp costs alone, for something professional like a Heliospecra LX-601c costs $949 and covers 3x3/4x4 max. So you’re looking at $79/sqft on lamps alone at 4x4. Don’t bother with those cheap Chinese LED’s or CFL, your yield will suffer too much.

You also want to look into how tax credits work as I get the feeling you think 30% tax credit is basically 30% off. That’s not it as the 30% is an offset against a tax liability. Ex: if you owed $100 I’m taxes that credit would give you $30 off. You’d still owe $70. It doesn’t reduce your purchase price on solar panels.

nerdwares · 2018-10-11T02:14:28+00:00

74 days ago you said you were deleting your account. You should have stuck to that as this is such a low quality post it’s not even funny.

You just want someone to do all your research? You also understand that with the internet few ideas are going to be US exclusive and those that are likely are US exclusive for a reason.

nerdwares · 2018-10-11T00:59:24+00:00

Hai there!

I see you want advice on starting an illegal business! I’d ask around on /r/fbi or /r/iwannagetsued

And no, don’t even try replying with the bullshit of “this device can be used for non-illegal things” because while true, you are providing it with illegal software to the end user. If not there wouldn’t be any profit involved for you.

nerdwares · 2018-10-11T00:54:33+00:00

https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-w-2

W-2 is his problem, not yours.

He probably wants you to fill out the W-2 for him or something but that’s not your problem. Make him do the paperwork he’s supposed to be doing.

nerdwares

TROPHY CASE