So, just to briefly recap from the previous post, the timeline was as follows:

Sep 2005 – we were officially informed by our Managing Director that Abus had decided after 40 years to end our sole supply agreement, and would now also supply 2 of our competitors. This had “come out of the blue” and was “completely the fault of Abus”.

              

If you are selling a product, whether that is face to face as I was for 22 years, or from a web site, a newpaper advert, etc the most important thing that you as a seller have is your integrity. Yes the product needs to be a quality one, the price needs to be acceptable, but if your potential buyer doesn’t trust you, then you don’t have a business. You may get the odd sale here and there, but this is not a formula for a successful long term business.

              

The main reason for deciding to sell the business was of course financial. If you see your business earnings dropping by almost 75% over 5 or 6 years, then it’s fair to see there is a trend appearing there. I am a great believer in keeping things simple, the simplest description I have ever seen of how to successfully sell a product is….

              

Before I get into the real aim of this blog, which is to give you a “live” or almost live commentary on my quest to make an online living starting from zero, let me firstly give you some more detailed background about my former business. This is so you can get to know me a little better and understand where I am coming from. Rather than have one long post I’ll divide this into a few parts to make it easier to read. Don’t worry – there won’t be too many parts until we get to the interesting and for you, more relevant parts.

              

I am sure that whole books have been written, web sites created about how the internet has revolutionised the business world. For me personally, the attraction is simply the one that has now virtually become a cliche – take your laptop with you to anywhere in the world, plug it in to the internet and, hopefully, earn money. The business owner is immediately connected to a worldwide market. Contrast this with a traditional type business where the entrepreneur must be located close to his potential market.

              

Welcome to this site, I hope you enjoy your stay. The word ‘blog’ is a shortened version of ‘weblog’, or if you like, a diary. This site is going to be an online recorded diary of events in my life for the next few months. So who am I and why am I doing this and why should you care about yet another blog on the internet?