Greetings Future Entrepreneurs!

This is a rough guide that you can use to provide yourself with some opportunity in the future. Before I get into all the things one can do let me open this by prefacing with what this article is not. This is not a get rich quick scheme, this will take time, effort, and failure to achieve successfully. This is not for the lazy, unambitious, or unmotivated. This will require effort on your part and you will get back what you put in and if you have nothing to give you will also have nothing to receive. This is going to take a little heart. You will need to learn to take criticism if you can't already, and you will also need to be able to identify useful hints from general opinions. 

This article is for someone who is stuck in a job they despise and have no way out. This is for someone who is looking for another way but not sure how to get there. This is for someone who would rather work for themselves much rather than go make someone else money. This is for someone who wants to take control of their life. This is for someone who never thought of life outside of a job. If you have a little hustle in your blood you have potential to be really successful with this. You do not need to be the smartest entrepreneur ever to make money, but you do need to pay attention to the things you do and what the market has to say about them. This is oriented towards the person that can make their own product but this can apply to people who want to resale as well. To already established entrepreneurs the things described here will be day one stuff to you but I encourage those who have insights into getting established in other markets to share your perspective as well like I'm going to do here. Everyone in the marketplace benefits when more people are allowed to participate and earn money.

Now days most people are programmed with the mindset that they absolutely have to have a job and you have to go to a good school to get one and if you don't you are fucked. That has been the largest piece of shit mainstream society has tried to sell me next to "Believe what the government says and mock anyone who doesn't." Because most people follow this mold, entrepreneurship is not something typically considered by an individual.  It's uncertain, scary, and gives no guarantee. Luckily for you, there is no need to take any ridiculous risks. And you can do this while you have your job, the goal here is to make your own job for yourself on the side until it grows enough to be able to sustain a living wage for you.

Getting Started:

First you will need a product or service or both. Are you good at crafts? Can you make things? Are you good at art? Do you work well with your hands? Do you have a hobby you can monetize? Do you know of a thing that's not a thing in your area and feel like it needs to be? Is there another product/service in the market that you can outperform? In order to sell, you need to sell something. There is much knowledge out there on how to make a good decision on what to sell and the more you know about the market in regards to that thing, the better the chance you have at being successful in that market provided you can meet the requirements necessary to be successful in that market. If you have the ability to ascertain whether or not you have the resources available to you, (or those which you can work towards reasonably) obviously that will be a powerful factor in determining the decision of whether or not a particular product/service is worth your time. I do however have a couple directions one could look in if they are interested in vending something.

"Buy low, sell high."

As the saying goes you will want to purchase things that are cheaper than retail. Its really nice if you can produce your own product for the materials cost plus labor rather than purchase a finished product for resale. If you can offer a product/service of good quality and do so at better prices than your competitors, that gives you more room to make yourself stick out in the marketplace in a positive way. If your cost to produce a given thing is lower than what that same product is to purchase at wholesale, this allows you to be more competitive with your pricing and it can give you an opportunity to garner more sales. Now if producing your thing isn't reasonable for you and you have to purchase it from another party that is fine. But investigate your source, you want to be sure that you can grow and not worry about running out of your thing, and keep it readily available.  The faster you can turn over your inventory, the more you are rewarded with profit to invest back into your operation. Now if you file business paperwork and register with the IRS and get yourself a federal tax ID, you can gain access to wholesale products at prices that the general public doesn't have access to. You can open a business account at a bank and you can sign up for various services to process credit card payments.

"Getting seen, making sales."

Now you have found a thing, It's time to make some money. Etsy and Ebay are great places to start. This will give you two E-stores and allow you to find out what people think about your product. If you aren't making sales you need to try to find out why. Is your price too high? Is the product presented poorly? Are you marketing in the correct category? Do people dislike your product? Do you have a poor product? This is where your market research on your thing will pay off. If you studied your market and looked at the other products in your category being offered you will know what makes a quality product, you will know what makes a "good" price. You will know how products are being marketed in your category. You will know what customers expect as you will see that people are willing to pay X dollars for product of quality Y. If you did your homework you should be making sales. Now this doesn't mean that money will begin to fall from the sky, but sufficient research will allow you to at least get your feet wet. Encourage customer feedback. If you fuck up, your customers will be more than happy to tell you about it. If they are satisfied with your thing they will continue to purchase it from you.  I have suggested Ebay and Etsy because they have their own market community. You don't have to worry about advertising to drive traffic to your sales posts like you would if you made a website although Etsy lets you promote your posts if you want to. This stage is really about testing the viability of your thing. If you aren't making any money then you shouldn't be out a whole lot and you now know what won't move.

Now depending on the time of year that you start, you may have lots of marketing activity going on around you. Now that we have the internet making some sales, let's get out in the market. Get yourself business cards and something like a square reader for your phone, once you have that taken care of you can accept cash and CC payment at the market. At minimum you will need a fold out table, a table cloth, a chair, visual aids for to help with explaining your thing. Your thing/inventory can be a visual aid too. You will want to get a 10x10 canopy so you can vend outdoor events and have protection from the elements. It will help to have a banner as well so people can see who you are. There are all kinds of events and trade shows going on most of the year. Take advantage of these. There is almost always some kind of fee to vend but it comes with the territory. The more time in advance you plan the better, then you don't have to worry about the shows being sold out and you can plan appropriately. Start with something cheap and simple. Do the local farmer's market if you can vend your thing there. Look for expos that don't cost very much to get into. Any arts and crafts show that you can get into is good. As soon as you can secure a table/booth in your price range, you will get direct feedback from the market on your thing. People can tell you what they do or don't like about your thing. If you aren't attracting any attention just politely ask passerby's for their opinion and take notes. The more people you ask the better. If you get consistent critiques about a certain aspect(s) of your thing, then you know you have more work to do.

Getting Serious:

After some time and some work, you have been improving your thing and making some sales. If you can optimize your production and meet the demands of your sales you can grow in this phase. You can go from a few internet sales on the side to becoming an active vendor. Expect your internet sales and vending sales to perform like social media. First you make your "account" making a small splash while doing so. But then you add friends over time and you increase activity. Doing good business will allow you to have good customers, and you can build a following that way. When you are doing it right you can take on more shows, higher quality shows with higher turnouts. The better the show the more expensive the booth, (usually) but when the time comes you could have yourself a very profitable show. You will have to keep at it but you can keep your business rolling until your are confident you can make substantial sales. If you become a regular at events, it will give you a consistent opportunity at market space. Anytime you have active sales space available to you you can be learning about what you are doing and how that translates to sales and what is effective and not effective for making sales. You can also be learning about other products by trying new or similar things. This will require several things. You will have to be very knowledgeable about your thing and effective at describing it to others. You will need to have a good quality thing at a fair price. You will have to provide courteous prompt service. Process internet orders quickly. Resolve issues intelligently in a customer service fashion. If you have all these things accomplished you will be proficient at making sales and will have a solid understanding of the market you are in and will be able to compete effectively. 

 The Future:

If you have made it this far you are quite the accomplished entrepreneur with your thing. You may not know everything there is to know out there but you understand your thing and how to make money off of it. Now you know how to monetize ideas successfully. You know how to truly gauge the effectiveness of your efforts directly through sales in online and live markets. The intent of this article was to give someone the idea of how to start their own business and have real potential starting from working at someone else's business. There is much more to know about all aspects than what I describe here such as taxes and city, county, state, and federal law ect. From doing events one could rent a mall kiosk and make enough money from there over time to get into a retail storefront. Perhaps it would be best to just try to get the thing into retail stores. Maybe your model will allow you to do both. You would want to get yourself a real website if you can consider a storefront, then you will get to get into advertising  so you can drive traffic to that sales outlet while tying in your social media. There will be much more reading to do. Most of the stuff I mention in the earlier portions of this article can be figured out with a google search or a quick read of some basic entrepreneurial books. Going to a job is easy. You show up, go on autopilot, do the things, and leave only to do it again the next day. This obviously requires much more work. But it is also much more rewarding than your job. Chances are you get paid the same nomatter how good or bad you do unless you damage some property in which case your revenue stream can end or at least have funds diverted. If you go to an expo and really do well you will have more funds than before to reinvest into your operation. If you put in extra effort you can earn more, or improve something, or learn something.