I want my user name changed

Originally Posted by hhmoore

Then they keep the user name they registered....but please stop with the silly/lame excuse. If you don't want to pay $25, don't. The whole money being tight, lousy economy line is a load of crap. It's $25 dollars - a fraction of the cost of animals people are buying...and, if you've got a business name but can't afford $25 to advertise it, how are you going to afford the cost of doing business?

You don't understand do you? I'm 17, currently unemployed, all the money I have goes to taking care of the animals. I just don't have $25 right now. Maybe Lucille is right. I don't need to worry about the name. This isn't worth it.

I'll be honest about it, if I were considering dealing with someone trying to portray themselves as a business, and they were lamenting the fact that $25 is a lot of money to them, I would simply run the other way. How are you going to afford all the expenses necessary to run your business successfully? You need shipping supplies, maintenance for your animals, etc., etc. And if anyone thinks they can do well in this industry without spending some coin for advertising, they are in for a very rude awakening.

Maybe you just need to step back and realize that you are nowhere near being ready to be a business. My suggestion to you would be to just treat it like a fun hobby and stop looking at the dollar signs. Those $$ are not nearly as easy to grab as you may think. Otherwise we're going to be reading about you on the BOI when you figure out you HAVE to cut too many corners in how you do "business".

My opinion is that you are just on the wrong road with the way you are starting out with this.

Originally Posted by kernel

You don't understand do you? I'm 17, currently unemployed, all the money I have goes to taking care of the animals. I just don't have $25 right now. Maybe Lucille is right. I don't need to worry about the name. This isn't worth it.

Maybe what you could do for now is put your business name as your signature. That way it would show up under your posts (where my blog address is on this post), until you have made a few sales and can become a contributing member?

Or edit your status so that it reads your business name instead of "Registered user"

I'm not the one that doesn't understand, lol.

Caleb, what is this business you decided to call PWSerpents? There's more to this than choosing a name, you know

Originally Posted by kernel

You don't understand do you? I'm 17, currently unemployed, all the money I have goes to taking care of the animals. I just don't have $25 right now. Maybe Lucille is right. I don't need to worry about the name. This isn't worth it.

Kernel, I went over to cornsnakes.com and looked at your posts there. Saw that you were wanting a snake for sale over there and could not afford it right now.

It is OK to start out young and not have a lot of cash. But the single most important thing you can do right now is cultivate friendships. If you ask right, people will mentor you and teach you. If you don't have $25 to spend that is OK. It isn't OK to obsess over it or to imply that a membership is too costly when actually it might just be the best bargain in the reptile world.
Chill out.
Maybe do some yard work or something to earn money, Magnolia has some pretty well heeled residents.
Rome wasn't built in a day. For sure, don't burn your bridges by trying to go faster than you can manage right now. Enjoy your snakes and enjoy the people here, and learn all you can.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

I'll be honest about it, if I were considering dealing with someone trying to portray themselves as a business, and they were lamenting the fact that $25 is a lot of money to them, I would simply run the other way. How are you going to afford all the expenses necessary to run your business successfully? You need shipping supplies, maintenance for your animals, etc., etc. And if anyone thinks they can do well in this industry without spending some coin for advertising, they are in for a very rude awakening.

Maybe you just need to step back and realize that you are nowhere near being ready to be a business. My suggestion to you would be to just treat it like a fun hobby and stop looking at the dollar signs. Those $$ are not nearly as easy to grab as you may think. Otherwise we're going to be reading about you on the BOI when you figure out you HAVE to cut too many corners in how you do "business".

My opinion is that you are just on the wrong road with the way you are starting out with this.

You just made my point. I have allot of expenses and I'm losing money. I have money, but I have to buy materials for snake racks, I have to buy care supplies (rodent bill is killing me). I'm getting along, but I can't spend money on this kind of stuff until I'm making some money. If you decide to change and if not, fine. I'm not continuing this discussion.

Originally Posted by kernel

You just made my point. I have allot of expenses and I'm losing money. I have money, but I have to buy materials for snake racks, I have to buy care supplies (rodent bill is killing me). I'm getting along, but I can't spend money on this kind of stuff until I'm making some money. If you decide to change and if not, fine. I'm not continuing this discussion.

Unfortunately, if you have gotten into this thinking you were going to make money, it is my opinion that you don't realize just how far away you are from that goal. Can you afford to operate in the red for several years?

No, I am not going to change my mind about my policy. It would certainly be interesting, I guess, to have a loophole in that policy whereby anyone who isn't making money as a business could be exempted and get whatever they want for free. I believe that MOST people doing this are not making any money when they consider actual expenses. Heck, I started breeding corn snakes as a hobby around 1978. I didn't come up with "SerpenCo" as a business name till 1985. And I'll bet I wasn't operating in the black till around 1991 or so when I decided to go full time at it and increase the NUMBERS I would be able to produce. Yeah you can make a goodly amount of GROSS receipts breeding reptiles, but your expense tend to keep pace and overwhelm any profits you may try to realize. Heck, we used to have rodent chow and bedding material delivered every two weeks and was costing me about $1,500 a month. It would have brought tears to your eyes to get the electric bills I had to pay. To this day I still wonder if the amount of effort expended was worth the final result.

So all I can say, is good luck to you on your venture.

You lose money before you make money.....

The 25 bucks is nothing. I would spend twice that for a table at a show for 7 hours. Here it is for a year if I am not mistaken.

So..... if you take the 25.00 and break it down to around 6 cents a day? I put more then that in my coin jar every night.

Again you are not going to earn a ton of money right off the bat. You have to spend money to make it. Just the name of the game.

Hi Rich! Hope all is well

It probably doesn't even end up being 25, if you are really a biz there are some expenses that you can deduct.

Just quit school and get a job so you can pay the $25.