Baby Steps

Another week of site work over, tired and frustrated. We have all been there!

A whole weekend to relax and maybe a couple of beers, Smashing.

As usual, it was not to be,
My youngest daughter (13 at the time) wanted some help with aschool project.
Soldering up a timer to make sure you brush your teeth long enough!

Several hours in, the board was soldered, de-soldered, re-soldered, changed and updated. Still not quite as she wanted.

Out with the solderless breadboard and prototype it up first this time.

This led to a fully working circuit in less than half an hour, and she had made MANY changes.

Long story short, we put some bits together, and created a prototyping kit, which went off to school with her on Monday.

When I got back home on Monday night, she was even more excited, Can I make my friends a kit?

When we had made a dozen, I got to thinking maybe..... just maybe......

Baby steps, baby steps

We offered the Kit on ebay, and hoped we might sell 50. That would cover the outlay (okay, not quite, but you get the idea). I have used ebay on and off to buy components for my projects, and it can be a good place to buy, certainly cheaper than the High Street Stores.

It took a week before the first Kit sold.

This is the kit


I was working full-time, and trying to figure out how to use ebay on my evenings, for the first 4 months I was working 16 hours a day, 6 hours just on ebay. Market research, responding to questions, listing new product, trying to work out margins, oh yes.. and assembling the kits
It was worth it though, ebay was generating an income, OVER £20 a week! sigh :(
The first "books" were printed on an old bubble jet

Don't make these mistakes;

• Poor pictures
• Shoddy description
• No real idea about the market
• No choice or product variety

Gradually, the listings became better, customers started to notice, and we started to get some sales. The big change came when I decided to take it seriously. To buy stock, I sold a coin collection (not on ebay) and I suddenly had a thousand pounds to play with.
Oh.. and we got the booklets printed professionally

A thousand pounds does not buy much stock. I had to make the few components stretch to a good few listings, and then re-invest the money coming in straight away.

There are couple of tips to selling I would like to share with you

1. Get your volume up. Even if you sell at or near break even, you need to have a lot of traffic
2. Keep your price as low as you can. It is cut throat, and you must have the traffic
3. Aim for Top Rated Seller
1. Respond quickly to customers
2. Dispatch quickly. the same day if possible
3. Be Accurate with your discription
4. Treat all your customers as if they were the most precious commodity, They ARE
4. Do expect to be tired, frustrated and poor, at least for a while

The corner stone of what I am trying to achieve has been built on customer service.
Its 18 months now since that first kit, so where are we?

I have given up the day job, and sell on-line full time. We are ebay Top Rated Sellers. I have 3 part-time staff. Our ebay feedback is 13,000+ at 100% and we send out an average of 60-100 parcels a day.

we have our own website www.mallinson-electrical.com and regularly supply to schools and business as well as hobbyists. We are working on a free web resource for circuits you can try We have followers on Twitter  and Facebook
All in all things are going well, and I am really glad I switched.
This blog will be used to keep an online diary of what it is to be an online seller and what I do

And the kit? WE have now sold over 5000, and expect to sell that many again in the next 6 months