Start up from home - Cheap Options?

Caoimh37

Hi guys just wondering if anyone has some advice on setting up and running a small start up from home for as cheap as possible and general costs involved i.e

Biz Phone options,
Website creation and maintenance
Marketing
Public liability insurance
Biz Cards

kenbrady

Caoimh37 wrote: »

Hi guys just wondering if anyone has some advice on setting up and running a small start up from home for as cheap as possible and general costs involved i.e

1. Biz Phone options,
2. Website creation and maintenance
3. Marketing
4. Public liability insurance
5. Biz Cards

x

Caoimh37

kenbrady wrote: »

3. Who knows how do you want to market, to who

4. Depends on your profession and what you want

5. Free - €200 depending on quality and if you need design

You will never get useful advise if you ask useless generic questions, there is a 1000 possible answers to your questions because you ahve no specifics. Do some work to find out what you want first.

They were the five areas i actually wanted "general advice' on, it was more of casting a net and seeing what people would through up, to maybe happen upon something new, if I needed and wanted specifics I would have then asked.......Thanks though for your answers to questions 1 + 2, they were perhaps helpful offerings of information...

Cheers

Cianos

Caoimh37 wrote: »

Hi guys just wondering if anyone has some advice on setting up and running a small start up from home for as cheap as possible and general costs involved i.e

Biz Phone options,
Website creation and maintenance
Marketing
Public liability insurance
Biz Cards

1. I've no idea about business phone options, but nowadays there are surely a lot competitive deals on offer.

2. Look up elance.com, it allows you to post up a job and you will get a bunch of proposals from web developers who will offer very competitive rates. Browse the web for sites similar to what you would want for your own business and if it's just a basic website you need then you should definitely be able to get something online for less than €500.

3. Totally dependent on what your aims and targets are but if you give a bit more info you might get some more in depth ideas.

4. No idea

5. I've heard Poland is very cheap for any kind of print jobs.

Axwell

In the current climate im shocked at the number of recommendations from people on boards telling people to go abroad for websites or print or other services. I know people are looking for value for money but I think people should always look at their options here in Ireland and try give someone here the work before looking abroad.

Boom Boom

Caoimh37 wrote: »

Hi guys just wondering if anyone has some advice on setting up and running a small start up from home for as cheap as possible and general costs involved i.e

Hi Caoimh, Hopefully this helps

Biz Phone options, I use Blueface for phone and fax it is a voip system, it was recommended to me on boards.ie actually and I love it.
Website creation and maintenance this really depends on your profession, do you require a simple site with information or a media rich site to promote products etc
Marketing My marketing campaign to date has been networking meetings and clients referring new clients
Public liability insurance Ring them ALL or get an insurance broker to advise you again depending on your business/profession you may require other/alternative types of insurance
Biz Cards This should coincide with your marketing are you going to have a logo, theme colour, tag line and do you actually need them if you do how many are you going to use 500 a month or would 250 do you a year. Are you going to have ongoing printing needs monthly flyers etc. you might get free business cards of a printer if you can show you are going to continually use them in the future.

But to go on prices
phone and fax with blueface it's circa €200 PA
Internet I use NTL its about €360 PA
I done my own website and it cost about €70 PA plus my own time
Marketing Just my time attending networking meetings etc always free ones
Insurance mine is c. €1,000 PA
Biz cards cost me c. €100 for about 250 including design etc.

I do suggest try buying from as many Irish companies as possible

hope this hleps

DoMyBooks

As above it really depends on the quality you require and wheter your willing to get your hands dirty or not. You can get a reasonable website for very little cost but if you are selling from it can cost considerably more.

By being creative you can generally minimise most costs.

Axwell wrote: »

In the current climate im shocked at the number of recommendations from people on boards telling people to go abroad for websites or print or other services. I know people are looking for value for money but I think people should always look at their options here in Ireland and try give someone here the work before looking abroad.

Regarding the Buy Irish talk here's an interesting thought for you: If I was renting a house and I put in the advertisment 'Preference to Irish' or similar I suspect I would be slated for racism. But the whole buy Irish thing is so similar. You are choosing to give the work to an Irish person purely based on their nationality in otherwords discriminating against foreign workers.

Now personally I 'Buy Irish' where its practical but I do find the comparison above interesting.

Kinetic^

Axwell wrote: »

In the current climate im shocked at the number of recommendations from people on boards telling people to go abroad for websites or print or other services. I know people are looking for value for money but I think people should always look at their options here in Ireland and try give someone here the work before looking abroad.

A lot of industries in this country are still bloated and over priced.

Example: looking to get stuff printed up for a new business soon enough. Call printer here in Ireland and get a quote of about €250 for 2500 A5 leaflets. Go on to www.printcarrier.com and see I can get 15000 A5 leaflets done up for just over €250. That's 6 times the product compared to what I could get here.

unklerosco

Axwell wrote: »

In the current climate im shocked at the number of recommendations from people on boards telling people to go abroad for websites or print or other services. I know people are looking for value for money but I think people should always look at their options here in Ireland and try give someone here the work before looking abroad.

I agree with you there but the simple fact of the matter is its fairly hard to find good value here... I get a lot of flyers printed up, I get them done in Germany. I've yet to find a printer her that can do them for less than what I pay to have them printed and shipped from Germany. I've tried about 15 different printers here at this stage...

I'm also looking to get some custom business cards done, got a quote from a local printer. €695 ex vat. Same spec cards from the us inc vat n customs n shipping, €250!!

Again, I was looking to get custom a database done... Quoted €1500 ex vat here. Priced from the states, €400.

I've someone can get within €100 odd euro depending on the job I'll pay the extra to have the work done local but when there's a difference in price as above its just not possible...

But, I do always give Irish companies a chance and in some cases they have done there best to lower their prices and I've used them... but its fairly rare...

Axwell

As Kinetic says a lot of industries are still bloated and overpriced but I think now more than ever there are real bargains to be had here. If you ring somewhere and they are overpriced you have the chance to say to them look I can get it for x off someone else what can you do. Before now they wouldnt entertain the idea and would say that is their best price but with the current climate you will find a lot of places will reduce the price some what if you make the effort to haggle with them. A lot of places now are adding in extras or specials to try and compete. It really is the best time to be starting a business and services and rent have dropped a lot if people shop around.

bon ami

Caoimh37 wrote: »

Hi guys just wondering if anyone has some advice on setting up and running a small start up from home for as cheap as possible and general costs involved i.e

Biz Phone options,
Website creation and maintenance
Marketing
Public liability insurance
Biz Cards

Biz Phone - Use kendlebell Naas and they are great www.kbvo.ie
Website - Kro It www.kro.ie really good websites
Marketing - google adwords
Insurance - www.kindlon.ie a broker i use
biz cards - Orchard Print www.orchardprint.com a printer I use.

By the way cheap is not always best, when I see a Vistaprint bsuienss card my first impression is the bearer is a "cheap" company.

Caoimh37

Thanks guys some usefull websites to have a look at!

As for buying Irish I would really love to if possible, but as a start-up where overheads can kill a business before it even gets started, I'm afraid I will be very price sensitive and may have have to use services outside the country. But I will always try to get the best price locally and compare it to elsewhere

I'm not saying the recession is a good thing but hopefully it might help this country be more competitive!.....and then we can all buy Irish


Cheers

Evil Phil

+1 for blueface.

I've used vistaprint.ie in the past for business cards, but do shop around.

Slightly off topic I guess, but http://www.freshbooks.com/ is a simple and cheap invoicing solution if you need one. We also use Google Apps for our productivity suite (that's microsoft office) and our email solution and interanet stuff(<shamelss>More here</shamless>). They're both web-based.

Mr. Presentable

Do you need public liability insurance if operating from home and not open to public?

Kinetic^

nipplenuts wrote: »

Do you need public liability insurance if operating from home and not open to public?

If you're going on to premises of clients it's safe to have some of your own.

nellyshark

Caoimh37 wrote: »

Hi guys just wondering if anyone has some advice on setting up and running a small start up from home for as cheap as possible and general costs involved i.e

Biz Phone options,
Website creation and maintenance
Marketing
Public liability insurance
Biz Cards

Re Website creation and maintenance it really depends on what you are looking for. We would need more details to be able to to give a general cost. You have to include domain purchase, domain renewal, hosting, website design and then maintenance. You could maintain it yourself however.

Lloyd Xmas

DoMyBooks wrote: »

As above it really depends on the quality you require and wheter your willing to get your hands dirty or not. You can get a reasonable website for very little cost but if you are selling from it can cost considerably more.

By being creative you can generally minimise most costs.



Regarding the Buy Irish talk here's an interesting thought for you: If I was renting a house and I put in the advertisment 'Preference to Irish' or similar I suspect I would be slated for racism. But the whole buy Irish thing is so similar. You are choosing to give the work to an Irish person purely based on their nationality in otherwords discriminating against foreign workers.

Now personally I 'Buy Irish' where its practical but I do find the comparison above interesting.

With regard to the remark "Preference to Irish" and the suspicion raised on been branded a racist. Here's another thought - At the moment i'm in Sydney and I've seen countless advertisements for accomodation peppered with "Asians Only" or "Indians Only" and no ones gives a sh*t.
If we in Ireland think that we're getting kudos from other nationalities for being the good samaritans and snuffing out the notion of buying Irish, I can assure you we're not.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with supporting Irish owned businesses. Its time to stop pandering and mollycoddling people - Irish businesses are struggling badly at the moment, made even worse today by the announcement regarding the commercial rents and the subsequent no go on the upward only rent revisions. This is the kind of farcicle nonsense that'll ensure cash flow remains locked down for a long time to come... Apologies for going of the topic a bit, but its just an observation for anyone who can't sleep at night, racked with guilt having bought a Mars Bar from an Irish owned business as opposed to the Latvian fella next door :rolleyes: Honestly, sometimes we're our own worst enemies....

DeidraJow

Thanks for your inquiry on starting a small business. I thought I'd chime in with some resource links from Microsoft. They're trying to tailor help to the small business community and have a couple of tools / links below that might be worth checking out.

Cheers,
Deidra
The Microsoft SMB Outreach Team
v-dejow@microsoft.com
Links:
http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/hub.mspx
Microsoft Small Business Center
http://www.microsoft.com/business/bpostestdrive/demo.aspx?CR_CC=100205081&WT.srch=1&CR_SCC=100205081&WT.srch=1
Test Drive Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Lol, Can't believe microsoft have sunk to shilling. The thread was a month and a half cold. Please read the forum posting rules before posting unrelated resources to the OP's post.

fergalfrog

Ha ha I wonder if Deidra is head of direct marketing at MS and has just discovered boards?