canalnoob

I've had a client who had villas in spain before and was getting clients for £100 or so each, I set up facebook or google ads. On facebook I can target by age like 30-50 year olds with a family who earn over 40k a year etc. Or take everyone who likes another companies page and send a ad at them. Hopefully the boat itself picks me up a few bookings too just by traveling through big cities with my website details on I assume sites like the following are affiliate sites that take 10-15% of the sale price too. They should get a lot of bookings: www.waterwaysholidays.com I agree a lot of people won't want a 12 birth boat but I'm sure theres still a big enough market for it. I might be completely wrong anyway, don't actually really need the full 50 weeks booked either, 40 or so would be enough

Nice one, where thats moored is £3k per month, not that bad, maybe they'd charge more for a hire boat though

I'm hoping the 12k maintenance will cover most of this? But can afford for it to be a bit more. Diesel they'll have to pay for.

When the canal shuts? Yeah I'd put it on airbnb and leave it parked somewhere. Need to look into this but don't see why they wouldn't allow it if I'm allowed to hire it out anyway

should of gave it a go, you're a engineer aswell, thats the part I'm clueless with. Just hope me knowing how to advertise well goes in my favour. Confident I can have it close to fully booked for the above figures but if I'm way out and others are right then I'll jack it in after a year and take the 5-10k or so loss on the head

Yeah ofcourse. As I said I know it might be a failure anyway. Just wanted to do it for a while and doing it while I have a boat half ready is the best chance

Probably a lot aren't but I expect theres still enough who would want one. 2 Families going away together or something. I used to go away with my granparents as a kid, 7-8 of us

Nah, It did say they take 10-15 working days to reply, think its been about 8. Sorry for sounding so rude again before again btw, just was expecting the 101 reasons why not to start a narrow boat business lol

If registering for vat is beneficial then the business will be a failure anyway. Obviously theres a lot that can be reclaimed but not as much as giving away 1/6th of your turnover (if its successful anyway). The boat I'm looking at is 12-13 years old but it has a 1 year old engine and 3 year bsc certificate. I'm going to have it repainted which I'd want to have done anyway. Its a 12 birth boat. I'm hoping to rent it out for: 10 weeks at a average of £1500=£15,000 20 weeks at a average of between £1000-1250=£20,000-25,000 20 weeks at around 750 per week=15,000. I may just have it on airbnb for some of this time I'll be happy with anything over £35k in the first year. Advertising is the part I'm good at, I assume the big websites that have lots of hire companies boats on are affiliate sites, I'll make my boat the cheapest for anything above a 8 birth boat and I assume they take 10-15% of the sale. Then I'll use pay per click ads from google and facebook. Thats what my main business does, hoping to get customers for between £100-150 each. This is what my main business is paid to do for other businesses. In the second year I should get more word of mouth bookings and returning customers hopefully. I'll have to learn how to do some of the maintenance and do hand over myself at the start but if its successful and I get 2 boats then hopefully I can someone £150-200 each week to do it for me. If anything goes wrong then I'll pay for it to be fixed and pay someone to do call outs. Hoping that maintence costs and depreciation are around £12k or less per year. License just under £2k insurance around £2k Someone to do call outs, no idea but hopefully less than £1k advertising costs £5-10k Mooring £2-5k Hoping long term costs will be £20-25k and income £45-50k but anything over £10k profit I'd be have with in the first year

Well honestly if I can only rent it out for 12-15 weeks then it wouldn't be viable atall. I personally really disagree. I think they'd be charging a lot less than £1200 per week if they couldn't get many bookings in april/september sort of months but I'll have to find out

I've been doing/am doing research. I've read 100s of threads on here but in all honesty there isn't much point in my discussing any sort of business plan when you all seem to think the highest possible turnover I could hope to achieve is £25k per year. Already said I don't particularly mind people discussing it, Internet marketing rarely involves using the phone? I already phoned 3 yesterday and no surprise ended up talking to someone who has no idea about stuff like that and I'm still half waiting on a reply from CRT regarding potentially mooring it with them as it says they 'may allow it' for one boat on their website. I get bad anxiety and don't particularly like ringing people up when I sound like a clueless ***. 'Hi I've got no boat yet but any chance I can moor my future hire boat with you?'. Hense me asking on here, wasn't sure if people who work/own marinas may be on here also.

Yeah I'd rather start it with 1 so its not so much risk. Thats what I was meaning by the 'low risk high reward', if I can show one boat is profitable then its easy to scale up, just get more boats. Also don't need to register for VAT if I stay under £83k per year turnover to start with

Where are you seeing this? Having a quick look on 'waterwaysholidays.com' now and I can't find a single 8 birth boat week below £1000 from April-September even on the cheapest possible available boat and booking a year in advance... The average per week for those 6 months for the cheapest 8 birth boat possible would probably be around 13-1400. Was planning on renting it out for more than 25 weeks too. Better not add I'd try sticking it on airbnb in the winter too, oops

As I said I don't mind people giving their advice, I even clicked the little green arrow to most. Just didn't like someone replying with: 'don't bother' 'if you don't mind losing money' Do those not seem like troll posts to you? I even clicked the little green arrow for him also once he said he meant no offense. I didn't say its 'low risk high reward', I said its 'low risk with potential high reward', theres a very big difference. I'm well aware theres a decent chance it will completely fail but with me having my own internet marketing company I think I'm in as good of a position as anyone else wanting to start one. Its low risk because I'm getting a boat that already has a safety certificate regardless, the extra money I spend will be way below £5k even if I get zero customers. Clearly rubbing people up the wrong way here which was kind of expected so apologies if I caused offense, if you read what I actually put though I didn't tell people not to give their opinions atall as I said above

Why are you even posting? Its called risk:reward. The risk is low, the potential reward is high so I'll take the chance. I posted a question, I didn't ask for opinions on it. If people want to give their advice thats cool but really not interested in reading your stupid troll posts