Coppock

Hi everyone, I was wondering how many of you on here run your own business in Oz or the UK?

What do you do and what would be your best advice for anyone looking at starting up in Oz or the UK?

Jen

harrip

Hi Jen

I started my web development business in the UK in 1998 and then moved to Australia in 2001 and have kept it running ever since. I now focus on web hosting using servers in the UK, Australia and USA.

My advice for anyone starting up is to be tenacious and just keep at it and keep your clients happy. I sense most businesses fail because people run out of enthusiasm (and cash) just before things are about to get exciting.

BudBrain

Congrats harrip - that's a very competitive market

I own a few websites and a very small website design/seo firm. My advice would simply be work smarter and harder than your competition.

Carbery

We have owned a newsagency on the Gold Coast for nearly 4 years, before our move from UK in Oct 2005 we owned a large newsagency in Bournemouth for 18 years - retail in Australia is much more 'independent' friendly than corporate dominated UK. Our business has grown in the last 4 years with the help of a store relocation and our shopping centre doubling in size. We are now planning a second shop next year.
Downsides of retail in my opinion - rents & leases are hard to negotiate and expensive, landlords rules are very strict and change on a whim but location is everything and its important to get the right tenancy, staff wages, red tape and form filling also take a lot of time.
We are lucky as we have a 'territory' which we own and any other business that wants to sell newspapers and magazines have to become a subagent of ours (even large supermarkets) with our business taking 50% of their profit. All this plus a lotto agency (Aussies are obsessed with lotto) makes our business very busy and profitable.
Anyone moving over here to buy a retail business can do a lot worse than look at buying a newsagency.

Coppock

Lol, getting all the web guru's here

I've been running my own UK business for 3 years, it started with just graphic design but now specialises in web design and SEO.

I guess my advice would be simply to "persist", there's countless challenges and there will always be problems, but tackling each one head on and learning to enjoy them makes you and the business stronger.

Where abouts are you guys based?
We're hoping to move to the Gold Coast possibly for next Christmas, i have to do some research first to see if the business would be better off in Brisbane, Sunshine Coast or possibly Sydney, but the Gold Coast is where i've always had my heart set - just need to check out how it would compare work wise to ye ol' Wrexham!

Jen

Coppock

Wow, it sounds like you're doing really well! It's great that they have the territory idea in place, I can imagine it's really hard when you're competing against supermarkets etc in the uk, but by getting a percentage I think that's brilliant.

How are you finding the Gold coast? I got married there 2 years ago and want to move back there, but to be honest I'm not too fussy lol

Jen

Carbery

Gold Coast suits us fine - great lifestyle, lots of variety (beaches, hinterland, Brissie only an hour away), an area that is still growing so businesses grow as well, I could go on!
great for kids too, but one major gripe - the lack of public transport which makes us taxi drivers evenings and weekends.

aussiedreamer

Hi There

I'm on the sunshone coast and own a Day Spa, always looking for a decent web designer/host.

When i bought the business we inherited a web design.host company locally that ships all the stuff out to india, the service is shocking and last week the site went down for 4 days and i pay $300 per annum for the privelige for what i'm not quite sure.

I'm sure you could all do really well out here.

Jane

roaringmouse

Sounds anti-competitive to me.

Coppock

Thanks for the heads up!
I was looking at search numbers, and although it looks like there's more work to be had in Melbourne and possibly Sydney... nah the gold coast wins in my mind
I can always set up virtual offices or mini branches in those cities when over there!

We're very competitive, and as an idea we provide dedicated hosting for £35 per year. The server is UK based but i'm still not convinced server location makes any difference to search engine rankings (unless anyone has any evidence to show me lol).

Brochure websites with a content mangement system and a years free hosting are £295. Interactive features, on-site SEO and ecommerce stores tend to bump the price up, but we rarely go over £1000 so I think we're still extremely cheap... i just need to do more research about competition prices over there.......

We're also relaunching our site next week because we've been upgrading the web design service to offer more visually stimulating sites, and we're creating a .com.au to start promoting our services in Oz ready for the move! All exciting

Jen

harrip

Are you sure that is 12 months dedicated hosting for £35? I think it is more likely to be shared hosting on a dedicated server for that investment.

Coppock

Well it's sharing part of our dedicated server, we don't actively promote the hosting as a rule and normally keep it for existing clients or people requesting to us direct,
but yep - £35 to be on part of our dedicated server... we don't restrict sites on size or bandwidth etc as most clients are just small businesses with brochure sites, so they don't take up too much space and power

Jen

BudBrain

The location makes no difference to rankings, a bad 'neighbourhood' however - can make a difference.

Geelong Gent

One of my companies is a chain of data centres offering high density and co location services. We just don't go down with triple redundancy on power and comms. If we ever did no one would be around too care

Coppock

Lol, luckily there's nothing bad on there
Just lots of random businesses from oven cleaning to sky diving!

Jen