Plan B Suggestions

[HankWangford]

Anyone got a good plan B idea, something small that will make say £500-£1000 a month initially? Preferably a website as I can do it myself (with help from Graphic Designer friends). I've looked on a few suppliers sites but not sure what's best.

why not just invest 1k a month into shares, after a couple of years youll have a nice portfolio and you can start playing for bigger sums

[gingerjedi]

I've thought about selling tat on fleebay... how hard can it be? You just need the right value items, not so cheap that you're forever stuffing envelopes/parcels but not so expensive that you risk losing big time when something goes wrong, so I guess your looking at about £30-50 profit per transaction.

I have a mate who buys and sells old collectable tins and he is making about £500 per month with very little effort, but then you've got to know the market for something like that.

[cityboy]

Plan B? you guys all aiming too low. You should be looking for Plan C!!!!!

[Euro-commuter]

Plan B should be how you can improve plan A.

HTH

Quite so. If you can't make Plan A work, what makes you think that B would be better?

[Diestl]

Thanks for all the great ideas.

[chicane]

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to build an ecommerce site for free though.

Think of the time you'd spend on your "free" e-commerce site and cost it up in either:

- Lost time with family and friends
- Lost revenue performed doing web development work for clients

It's never as simple as it first appears.

[lukemg]

Got to get the market working for you instead of the other way round. Knock your 7k ISA allowance in shares each year. Spread it around various unit trusts investing across the globe at the big companies, fidelity, jupiter etc and don't forget a portion in the lowest charging tracker you can find (low costs can make these an excellent choice). Hold your nerve - these are 5 year minimum investments, don't sweat over the dips etc. Been doing this since 97 - through the boom of 2000 and the susequent crash - they are averaging 12% annual return (range between 2 and 26%) AND they are tax free - on capital gains and income AND you don't even put them on your tax return making life easy all round !
Use a broker like Hargreaves-Lansdowne who negotiate big reductions on initial fund purchases and return some of the annual fees they receive.
No BTL grief, doesn't take up all your spare time.
Start as young as you can do this for 10 years, reinvesting any growth/income and you are laughing.
Get rich slowly ! Anyone trying to play the market on individual shares will be very lucky to do well. More likely they will be like any gambler who can't wait to tell you about the wins and keeps the losses very quiet.
Witness the hysteria about tech shares - everyone you met telling you how much this share had gone up. After they crashed - not a word from anyone, too embarassed.
HTH

[n5gooner]

think of the price of stock, then think what you loose when it goes down in value, think of the storage space you need, what if people use bad CC.

ebay works if your carful, a few years ago I was buying computer equipment and selling it on ebay, I did this for two year as plan B and made about 80k !! but it is a lot of work, and the prices of stuff now mean If I did it now I may make about 10k !!!

I'm soon to be investing 250k into 3 laundretts, 1 flower shop and 7 flats (that go above the shops), this little lot will net me about 80k PA, and should help to pay off my larger buy to let investments in Highbury and Bromley. Once that is done I'll be dropping back on the contracting....

N5Gooner in been there done that mode, and going back for more!

[Cliphead]

I sell eCommerce sites in my spare time.

[XLMonkey]

Good advice, luke. My addition: find something that you enjoy doing, then find a way of getting paid for doing it. Plan B is so much easier if you would choose to do it even if you didn't have to. Mate of mine built up quite a nice little sideline in freelance photography that way - key was that he loved it to begin with, so he was getting paid to have fun.