Want to buy :)

[Andrew]

How much traffic does the site get? Uniques etc.

Agree with others above. Unless it has a regular revenue stream generated from what you are buying it can't really be seen as a business. If there is no real turnover work out a price for the equipment and how much it would cost to get a similar site if you are happy with it. Templates might add a bit on but not much.

[JSR]

I would tend to disagree with some of your comments...

Most sublimation businesses have small turnovers as usually you are producing small numbers. If you are fortunate enough to print large quantities they are screen printed or produced in China etc or make up part of a larger printing or other business.

Therefore most sublimation printers produce gifts so returning customers are usually only making small purchases.

As for designs I know that these are mainly unique in design and are not on Ebay or produced by Paul who I believe is on this Forum. Not many sublimation business have an online shop that you can choose from a range of designs, atleast none that I can find.

In my opinion it takes time to build a website and any designs which inturn must carry a cost.

If you're only buying a website and some second-hand hardware with some templates then you can roughly work out for yourself how much you should be spending. If these things are worth £500 then you should pay £500. That's easy.

But if you're buying it in terms of it being a business, then you need to look at the revenue stream - and that doesn't mean an unsubstantiated claim that the seller made "£500 profit per month". If they can prove they made £500 profit per month then they're not going to sell the business to you for £500 - they probably wouldn't even sell it for ten times that.

If you're buying a successful business then there can be a huge chasm between what the business is worth and what the hardware is worth - the cost of the hardware/website/templates may be insignficant compared to the value of the business. If it's less successful then the business may be worth no more than the hardware. But in either case, you need to know the value of the business you're buying before you can make an informed choice on whether it's worth the asking price.

Most hobby start ups only ever breakeven or earn only small profits for a massive effort. I would love to hear from anyone that earns a good living and by good I mean £25K after deductions such as Tax and N.I only working a 40-50 hr week and from just sublimation!

I would imagine that the vast majority of us (myself included) would not claim that our businesses are producing £25k profit per year but then, we're not trying to sell our business to you. And if we were, we'd look at our books, work out the value of the business based on profit and turnover, and price the business accordingly.

It's not how much our businesses are worth that's important, it's how much the business is worth that you're buying.

[mrs maggot]

we have friends in a differnet industry who bought a "business" someone was selling, they looked at the excel spreadsheet turnover figures, looked at the website, and thought wow what a good deal. the excel figures - were just that figures, i think put together with a few glasses of wine, and the website, very impressive had no real traffic on it. they were stung to the tune of 5K they now have the same business, but a different name, website, and a set of books that actully mean something and although they are slowly starting to make a profit, it will take a while to recover the 5K even the stock they bought (in addition to the 5K) was overvalued, and they have now set up accounts with companies and are buying their stock at far less than the stock they bought with the business at a supposedly discounted amount, they were naive to the extreme, they wanted to get into a business as soon as they could, and took this person at their word.

Simple thing to check have you done a search of keywords, does the site come up ? ie mug printing ***town or whatever it is its selling ?? if you cant find it by putting in details, how will others have done.

[John G]

Very niave going off a set of excell spreadsheets - I would have to see a lot more than that to part with 5K

[JSR]

we have friends in a differnet industry who bought a "business" someone was selling, they looked at the excel spreadsheet turnover figures, looked at the website, and thought wow what a good deal. the excel figures - were just that figures, i think put together with a few glasses of wine, and the website, very impressive had no real traffic on it. they were stung to the tune of 5K they now have the same business, but a different name, website, and a set of books that actully mean something and although they are slowly starting to make a profit, it will take a while to recover the 5K even the stock they bought (in addition to the 5K) was overvalued, and they have now set up accounts with companies and are buying their stock at far less than the stock they bought with the business at a supposedly discounted amount, they were naive to the extreme, they wanted to get into a business as soon as they could, and took this person at their word.

Yes, you're right there. The phrase "the books" should be taken to mean "complete with invoices so you can check them".

[Karen.]

If I were selling a business that had a genuine profit value to it it would come complete with a set of several years worth of audited accounts for any potential buyer to look at and to be available for their accountant to look through as well. If it doesn' come with this then I would not trust anything claimed regarding profits and would be looking at buying as equipment, stock and website value alone.

[mrs maggot]

look at 80% of people on here, they are doing this as a sideline, so there are probably no "audited" books to show anyone, just a nice profitable "hobby" - put that into anyother business medium and i can see how they got sucked into it, everything LOOKED 100% It would be easy for someone to advertise a profitable slideline business, to show a set of "books" and take in someone niave by getting into the hype of it, every machine seller on ebay tells you there are "massive" profits to be made by sublimination and printing, unfortuantley at the moment with more people looking at was of suplimenting their income, or using redundancy money to invest in a business are not always thinking clearly

[John G]

I'm afraid even if it is a side line you still have to have the means to declare your profits to the inland revenue. If your already employed, and you buy something to resell, its classed as a second income - you need to keep acurate books even if its not your main job, just incase.

[bms]

you need to keep acurate books even if its not your main job, just incase.

Urmmmm.... wonder how many ebayers do just that

[John G]

I didn't say you HAD to declare it - just that you had the means to declare it, if and when asked.