It has officially been one month (and a few weeks) since I opened Shop TBPD! As someone who considers my blog a business, I’ve owned a business for a while, but owning a shop is completely different. Being able to say that I am a shop owner is a great accomplishment that I’m extremely proud of and will forever be proud of.

Despite being proud of my accomplishment, being a new business owner is not a joke in the slightest! I shared my first week as a business owner, where things turned out pretty well! However it’s always tough and go, especially when you’re new to the shop owner world, so let’s see how my first month went overall, my personal pros and cons, and a few tips that I’ve already learned from my short experience.

My Overall Experience

Overall, my experience with being a shop owner so far has been a mix of wonderful and stressful. I’m sure all of the business owners would probably nod their heads in agreement with this feeling. My first week was so great and beyond what I expected! I never thought that I would receive the number of purchases that I did, and not only that, but go beyond my sale goal! It was such a shocker to me, and although I knew that I won’t receive those kinds of sales often, it’s still very hard to have my site basically collecting dust because there have been no sales after the first two weeks. The very unfortunate part about not having sales is that, as a beginner, a lot of the money made (if not all of it) is used to go back into the business for more products. It’s a little bit hard to provide more products when the money needed to purchase the products isn’t being made. At the end of the day, I know that it takes time (and a lot of work) to end up where I want to be with my shop and everything else that I’m doing. The first month is rough, but I’ll do my best to keep pushing forward!

Pros And Cons Of Being A New Business Owner

There are some pros and cons to everything in life, and that doesn’t exclude being a brand new business owner. Here are my personal pros and cons of being the “new guy in town” in the business world so far!

Pros

• The excitement to start
• Community support
• That “first sale feeling”
• Being your own boss
• The feeling of accomplishment for starting

Cons

• Possibly not making any sales
• Having to constantly promote
• The feeling of not being good enough
• Needing help but not being able to afford it
• Income instability

Things I Wish I Did Or Changed When Starting

Despite only being a month in, there are a few things that I wish I did differently or better before starting. Here are just a few things and why.

I wish I had more money saved up first. Although I did have a decent amount of money saved up, I wish I had a little more so that I could afford a variety of products. I currently only have mugs on the site, which is great, but not a fan favorite for everyone. I will never be able to please everyone no matter how many products I have in my store but to be able to start with more than just mugs would be nice also.

Tip: Save up as much as you can before leaving your current form of income. The more money saved up the better!

I would’ve gone with different mugs. I love the mugs that I’m currently selling, but I do realize that glass mugs are what’s popular at the moment (including with me as well). This makes it a little harder to sell the ceramic mugs, which is making it harder to make money to put towards other items. Once I’m out of my ceramic mugs, I may start to only sell glass mugs, because I do love those as well.

Tip: Sell whatever it is you’d like to sell. Don’t just go with what’s popular. However, out of the products you have, go with what people would like to see most. Maybe even do a poll to see which products they would like to see next!

I wish I didn’t over purchase inventory. I had an Easter sale on my shop which included new mug drops and I wanted to make sure that I had enough mugs for the sale, so I purchased an extra amount for both sizes. Unfortunately, the sale didn’t do as well as I thought and now I’m stuck with a lot of extra mugs. I definitely would’ve just stuck with what I had or ordered a lesser amount. I’m hoping for a sudden spike in sales so that these mugs can go and I can clear out these boxes!

Tip: Be careful with the amount of inventory. You’re just starting and there may be a possibility that you’re not going to make the number of sales you would like. It’s good to not run out, but it’s better that you don’t have a stock of products sitting and taking up space.

I wish I did more promoting/marketing. I’m terrible at promoting and have always been, which is no surprise as to why I haven’t done the best with my shop. I said that I would keep all of my shop socials updated frequently, but it has been a bit of a struggle. I can say that this most definitely could have played a part in me not making any more sales. I also wish that I would’ve pre-made a bunch of content for the shop to ease the workload.

Tip: Prep, prep, prep! Promote, promote, promote! Promotion and marketing is the biggest way you’ll draw in your customers. When you’re first starting, you should be promoting every single day and letting people know that you’re here with something they need (even if they don’t know they need it yet)!

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Being a new shop owner or even just new in anything you do is never easy. You won’t always come out with a sale and things are certainly going to start off a little rocky as you form a solid consumer base. My first week may have started off amazingly but my month overall just wasn’t what I had hoped, and that’s okay! My next update will be at six months and I have better hopes for what’s to come!

What advice would you give a new business owner? Do you have a business of your own?