Self Employed OCUK'ers.

Converge

Converge

Converge

Soldato
Joined
26 Jan 2005
Posts
7,608
Hey guys,

I was just wondering how many of you are self employed and are successful enough for that to be your only job/income?

What do you do, how long have you been doing it, how many years of hard graft did it take for you to see a return?

I'm just curious, and thinking about maybe giving it a go myself in the future once the economic climate settles down more.

Sorry if the questions are general, but feel free to elaborate more or narrow things down as you see fit :)
 
I guess I should put my hand up.

Wedding videography mainly (and started with this), now also general film production and other media-related services. Return was had in 6 months, been doing it for about a year and a half.

Err... so, yeah!
 
I started my own business about 6 years ago. I started it whilst still in a full time job but phased that out after about 18 months.

I do ecommerce retail and wholesale distribution of niche products.

It has always been profitable in a small way but the last 2 years in particular have been the ones that have produced a decent salary.

What were you thinking about doing?
 
i started a cleaning business with my other half in april this year. as cleaning of houses and small commercial properties requires very little start up capital we quickly saw a return and are able to both live ok from the money we are earning so far. we do both live with our parents though so have no real out goings but we have worked out how much we expect it to cost and we'd be happy still with what we are earning, and we know it'll only get better.

starting to properly emply people now, so far been friends/family/one offs, ad it's very exciting times and very scary the thought of someone representing my business.

we expect a nice continued growth and to the point that we can quickly grow into new areas, e.g. we work with a fantastic carpet cleaner, but we'd love to do this ourselves as he ca earn more then us for 2 hours work compared to 2 of us working all day. we also have many other ideas which we'd like to start asap which require fairly low capital to start and minimal working hours so can run whilst still out there cleaning :)
 
Self employed for 2 and a half years, bascially doing the heat loss calculations and required SBEM, SAP and EPC reports for commercial and domestic properties as required by Building Control. Startup costs were reasonably high at around £10k as i had to buy various software packages and training costs were high.

Saw a return quite quickly though, as the commercial side of things was quite high paying for relatively little work, however a lot of competition has started to show so its very compeditive now.

Was going swimmingly until the credit crunch hit, really screwed me, had to let my employee go and move out of my office. Working from home now, the amount of work is picking up a lot but the cash flow is still a huge problem. I reckon in 6 months it will be back to normal. Have drastically reduced my outgoings by working from home so hopefully when it does pick up again ill be in a better position each month.

One peice of advice would be to save like a champion, i had a reasonable amount of savings but it only helps for so long.
 
IT and PC support to the general public. Been trading 5 years now but I retired from the civil service 9 years ago so it is not my main source of income but we do OK. 954 clients at the last count with a lot of word of mouth referrals and repeat business
 
4 years as a web designer/developer albeit at the smaller end of the market. It's not my main career though, more of a part time supplement to my income and it has been paying incredibly well especially in the last 12 months. :)

I'm about to look further into a new web project for a bit of a niche subject that could very well have the potential to be extremely profitable in the long term. It's all about having that lightbulb come on and grasping opportunities when they present themselves. :)
 
Draeger said:
4 years as a web designer/developer albeit at the smaller end of the market. It's not my main career though, more of a part time supplement to my income and it has been paying incredibly well especially in the last 12 months. :)

I'm about to look further into a new web project for a bit of a niche subject that could very well have the potential to be extremely profitable in the long term. It's all about having that lightbulb come on and grasping opportunities when they present themselves. :)
Click to expand...

That all sounds very exciting - can you tell us more???
 
I would rather keep the idea under my hat so to speak, until I have done a bit more groundwork and got a few things in place. :)
 
Someone once told me they'd pay a tenner if I snogged one of my mates while we were drunk, it all started from there really.

My rules are simple: No women or children. I don't do receiving and it's £100 an hour flat. Most of my business is referral, sometimes I work the street but I find the caliber of clientele drops rapidly on corners.
 
Sawell said:
Someone once told me they'd pay a tenner if I snogged one of my mates while we were drunk, it all started from there really.

My rules are simple: No women or children. I don't do receiving and it's £100 an hour flat. Most of my business is referral, sometimes I work the street but I find the caliber of clientele drops rapidly on corners.
Click to expand...

Should I be laughing? Because I am...
 
wife started in 1997, housing, we work together now with our staff, make big big bucks doing it, saw the downturn coming, adjusted to suit, back in with a bang now, bought 24 houses this year so far, with 3 left in legals before Xmas.
Would never work for anyone else again, no need to.
 
Jambo said:
I started my own business about 6 years ago. I started it whilst still in a full time job but phased that out after about 18 months.

I do ecommerce retail and wholesale distribution of niche products.

It has always been profitable in a small way but the last 2 years in particular have been the ones that have produced a decent salary.

What were you thinking about doing?
Click to expand...

What is it you sell if you don't mind me asking ? And do you sell on ebay or your own website ?

I lost my job in August and i am thinking of trying something with my redundancy money, although ebay is becoming a bit rubbish :( but it would be a start
 
Freelance Sound Engineer / Techie.

I'm a resident engineer in venue which sees quite a lot of cool up and coming and unheard of bands. I mixed an OCUK band a year or two back (Birmingham band with the video where all their kit gets brought on)

Various teching / crewing at other venues and some festival work.

I toured with Showaddywaddy last year. That was fun :)

I don't make a lot of money, but I prefer it to routine 9-5 work.
 
BENJAMIN HERBLE said:
wife started in 1997, housing, we work together now with our staff, make big big bucks doing it, saw the downturn coming, adjusted to suit, back in with a bang now, bought 24 houses this year so far, with 3 left in legals before Xmas.
Would never work for anyone else again, no need to.
Click to expand...

So you just buying at the moment; I mean would you say it isn't the best time to sell right now?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom