Letting your businesses fight it out

Before I had mentioned that we were looking for a house closer to town. “Closer to town” means “more expensive” in our case, so we’re looking to see how we can bridge the gap.

Saving money can accomplish part of it, but making more money would likely be more expedient.

If only I could decide how to do it. Here’s what I’m partially invested in doing in one capacity or another:

My day job.
This blog. The most successful of the ventures so far (thanks everyone for reading!)
A partnership in large-format printing. A friend and I bought into a 44″ printer to print giclees, game maps, banners. The machine is almost paid back now.
Screen printing. My wife had the idea of printing up original designs for baby clothes, so we invested in a screen printing machine and some supplies.
Bargain hunting and reselling online. Mostly concentrating on magazine back issues, but hey — I’m not picky.
Magazine subscriptions. I recently bought a website on eBay that is set up to sell magazine subscriptions.
Auctioneering.

Plus there are any number of other ideas that I’ve thought of but not implemented. Websites, service businesses, etc.

My day job is the only one that’s full-time. Any of the other ones by themselves could provide a nice second income — more than enough to make up the difference for the new house. But none of them are to that point yet. Now what I have to ask myself is whether I can somehow tie all of these together into one or two reasonably-sized entities while still maintaining my sanity. Or do I let them fight it out, and get rid of some of the runts?

It’s hard to let things go. Does anyone have experience with this kind of problem?

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7 Responses to “Letting your businesses fight it out”
By D on Nov 16, 2006 | Reply

Follow your gut, it will never steer you wrong. But if you would still like some input, here are my thoughts.

1. keep the day job – obvious reasons
2. Auctioneering – go with it, it is big around my small town and a great way for you to live when you decide to let go of #1.
3.The Blog – For selfish reasons I hope you keep it up.
4. The 4 in the Middle (Merchant) – I recommend a new blog. That you can display your goods and sell to a wider audience. You may even link it to other sites like this one to gain a larger crowd. Or if you have some cash flow pay for some great slots else where. This will help to feed your business or help you to decide what pieces to let go of and move on.

What ever you decide it will work out, things always work out.
Good Luck!
By moneysmartlife on Nov 17, 2006 | Reply

Here’s my take. You probably don’t have time to do all of them well, so pick one or two using the criteria below and become really good at those:

1) Which of these do you enjoy the most? You’ll put the most into the ones you feel passionate about.

2) Which have the greatest income potential? For obvious reasons.

3) Which fit best with your current skillset and personality? Leverage your life experience.

Of course, it’s easy for me to say, I’m not the one that has to make the decision. Look forward to hearing what you figure out.
By personal finance advice on Nov 17, 2006 | Reply

Choose what you like best and work your butt off to make it work. It can be done!
By Jerry on Nov 18, 2006 | Reply

Go with Large Format Printing !! Well depends what a “partnership” means. I am a Commercial Printer, but 3 years ago i bought my first 60″ large format printer for around $20,000. I paid cash for it, but my ROI was less than 6 months.

My LFP department now takes up 1/3 of my warehouse and consistsof 3 60″ HP5500 for posters , a 74″ Roland for car, a $250k 10ft grand format vutek that pumps out banners day and night and about to purchase a vutek flatbed uv printer for about 350k. Equiptment cost is high, but between my offset, digital and large-format departments, I can definitely tell you that LFP is the most profitable because of low operational costs and very high markup.

I am desperate to start e-commerce integrated with the workflow, but am having a hard time getting that started especially with a baby on the way. Goodluck.
By mbhunter on Nov 19, 2006 | Reply

Thanks all for the comments! I appreciate you taking the time to offer your advice!

I know that I’m either going to have to be smarter about these things or drop some of them.
By Jerry on Nov 23, 2006 | Reply

I forgot to mention my experience in trying to get into screen printing and actually making a profit from it.

Alot of my clients need promotional items, for instance a chain of a sports club with 190 locations across the country. They order about 50 t-shirts and 100 sports bottles per month. I outsource the promotional items to screen printer, which I pay a little lower than wholesale. I profit about $0.50 per tshirt and $0.25 per sports bottle for basically doing nothing. Purchasing the equipment would cost (and you can definitely find some cheaper) a little over $2500. After some calculation with the cost of labor and materials. I would have make a one time purchase 20,000 t-shirts in order to break even !!! This is not including equipment costs either. I did not see enough profit in this area to get into it, but if you are selling small numbers of items with a very large markup, I can see you actually making a buck or 2. jsut my 2 cents.

p.s. considering you have a 44″ printer, I’d say you have an epson. Best way to lower costs is get a bulk ink setup. It might cost you around $1000 but lowers your ink cost to under a $0.07 per sq. ft. there are also 3rd party ink manufacturers that is simple plug and play, uses same profiles too.