My Internet Business Review: Where To Sell On The Internet
Before you start your own site, selling things, it's worth your while to take a look at the established selling services out there. They can be a good place to "get your feet wet" as it were, and start selling things before investing a lot of time and effort into your own site. A lot of businesses never "graduate past them", and you shouldn't feel obligated to do so with your business.
My internet business recommends that you start out small. There are three major venues for selling things on the internet before you take the plunge on your own web shop: eBay, Amazon Shops and Caf Press. We're going to explore all three to give you a baseline for comparison.
The easiest one to get into, assuming you have a means of generating graphics, is Caf Press. You upload your artwork, set up the shop, and select what products it'll be on, ranging from tee shirts, to coffee mugs, to calendars - even intimate apparel. (Yes, we have seen "Just Do IT?" thongs) The flip side is that Caf Press charges a pretty premium; they handle all the manufacturing for you, so you don't have to cover inventory. So you're not making much per sale unless you can command a premium. Still, if you're an artist and lazy, they're a good way to make some money off of your artwork.
eBay offers several options, including having your own eCommerce store, or even a custom auction site. You can personalize it to suit your own business, and there's a lot of flexibility in setting the sale price, descriptions and pictures, even shipping options. eBay's primary strength is the user community; everything on eBay has been tested repeatedly, and there's extensive documentation that's very good to work from. Do avoid any service that offers to "list things for you" on eBay. It's easy enough to figure out how to do it on your own.
My internet business reviews Etsy as a similar site to eBay, but it focuses on handmade things. Etsy charges smaller listing fees than eBay does, but has a smaller clientele. That said, Etsy's clientele is looking for handmade things, and it has a comparable set of options for setting your own custom web shop. Etsy has a few more search options than eBay does, like a color search wheel, even a geolocator. The aim for Etsy is to be the online equivalent of a crafts fair.
So, now that you've picked a sales venue, what next? First, save any item descriptions for things you'll regularly have in stock in a text file or word processing file. It allows you to cut and paste whenever a new item shows up. Next is to figure out what you're going to sell - the most common choice is to buy items at wholesale (or as remaindered goods) and sell lots on eBay. You'll need to do some research to find a supplier (and a good price) and to research what your sales niche is.
The third option is to sell information or services. If you like to do research on particular subjects, you can put it together in the form of eBooks, magazines, pamphlets, advertising, or software. This saves people much time and money by not having to do research. If you can initially invest some time the profits will come. These options are highly recommended in my internet business Review.
A variation on buy wholesale and sell direct is to find something that's locally available and sell it for more money on eBay nationwide. This is a surprisingly effective avenue for all kinds of things, from rubber floor mats for automobiles to satellite dishes. Look for something that's being liquidated locally and work from there.
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About the Author
Come visit My Internet Business to learn more methods to increase clicks to your sites. Trisha Frauenhofer is an online marketing expert who enjoys sharing her most powerful online secrets.
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