My girl wants to start a startup selling home accessories for

>>1510775
the first thing to expect is failure.
retail is pathetic, you need massive sales volume to turn a profit you can live off of.

if you do get massive volume for some weird reason you can expect most of your income after expenses to go to taxes. (2/3 of you income is standard in the US if you make more than about $60k). This is because employers pay half of their employees' taxes, and being self employed you pay both the employee tax and the employer tax. So your taxes are doubled.

On the plus side as far as taxes go, you can deduct some pretty crazy business expenses from your income. So your business may very well end up paying for part or all of your house, vehicles, meals out, vacations, exercise equipment, utilities, furniture, etc.

however you actually need to be making that kind of money before your business can spend it.

then of course once you finally get that far your competitors will have noticed you and reacted by either lowering their prices and driving you out of business, stealing your product ideas and advertising them better than you, suing you out of business for no particular reason, or buying you out. If you're smart you'll take the buy out.

if that day comes.
it probably won't
because retail to the public is pathetic.

>>1510859
Ok, then what should I do to make money? How do other startups succeed then?

>>1510859
>2/3 of you income
sorry, that's closer to 1/2. I don't know what I was thinking.

self-employment tax in the US is 15%, so you take your regular tax rate (probably about 15-30% depending on income) and add 15 to it. So an upper middle class self employed person is likely to pay about 45% directly to taxes.

>>1510865
>what should I do to make money?
any work done for a bank or an insurance company pays nicely.
>How do other startups succeed then?
well they usually don't.
the ones that do are usually:
1. started by someone that's owned businesses in that field many times before
2. backed by huge amounts of cash

>>1510865
also I didn't say you shouldn't try, just don't be hurt when it fails.

at least with that your losses won't be any big deal. And potentially you can learn a lot from doing it. Mostly you're going to learn that the internet is yuge, and advertising on it is both expensive and unproductive.