Starting A Part-Time Internet Business

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Starting a part-time internet business is an excellent way to test the waters and find out if you have what it takes to run a business without risking too much. If you are thinking of starting a business, I would strongly urge you to take the part-time route first. Many successful full-time businesses began this way, and have made their owners a lot of money, and continue to do so.

The transition from part-time business to full-time is not that great. Once you have established yourself in your chosen market you will have all the systems in place to make that step up. Even if you decide to remain part-time, you will have an excellent source of income, which will insulate you from the insecurities of your full-time job.

Don’t underestimate the power of a part-time business to build you wealth and create an extra income independent of your full-time job.  There’s many advantages of starting a part-time business. The purpose of this article is to point them out to you and encourage you to take the step into business and create some wealth for you and your family. Here’s just a few of the advantages of a part-time business.

Low Investment

The first advantage of a part-time internet business is the low cost of starting one. You will already have the main equipment necessary like a computer and printer. You can start a part-time internet business for a few hundred pounds. Compare this to the pre-internet days when starting a business involved a major outlay of money and time. A few years ago, I started a part-time business selling second hand computers. This involved me giving my weekends up and traveling round the country to computer markets. I had to load my car up with computers, drive for a few hours, unload them all and stand there all-day. Usually to reload them all back into my car and return home with nothing to show for it.

I had to invest money into the computers, which meant I had a lot of money tied up. There was also the cost of getting onto the markets and the traveling expense. It was a huge investment of time, energy and money. I stopped doing it after a while because it just wasn’t worth it. I started my internet ecommerce business with a hundred pounds and reinvested all the profits to build it up. I now make more money in a week sitting in front of my computer than I made all the time I was selling computers.

Few Expenses

The expenses of a part-time business are low. Apart from a computer, a printer and a good internet connection you’ll need stationery and a log design. And packing materials if you are going to open an online shop. All of which you can buy cheaply. Once your business starts to build up momentum it will become self-financing, paying its own way.

Gain Experience

Experience cannot be bought or taught, it has to be learned. You can read all the reports and books available on trading but until you step into the market, with your own business you cannot build experience. The experience you will get from launching your own part-time business is a real live university course in business. Every move you make will have a consequence. The market will respond to everything you do or fail to do. A year of running your own business will provide you with more real life knowledge than ten years of studying business from someone who may never have run one. With experience, comes confidence and if you do decide to take your business full-time you will be equipped to do so.

Test Your Ideas

You may think you’ve got a great idea, your wife may agree, your mother may be all for it but the only way to test it is to take it to the market. You can use the market to test your ideas out and fine-tune them on a part-time basis. If the market doesn’t like the idea it’s a simple matter of dropping it without having wasted too much of your time and money. A part-time internet business offers you the opportunity to do this.

Extra Money

We can all do with some extra money and a part-time business is a good way to generate an extra income that isn’t dependent on your job. Even an extra hundred a month is a welcome addition to a budget. You can reinvest this in your business and watch it grow into a money-generating machine. Once your business becomes established and starts to grow it will create money giving you a surplus to spend or invest.

Learn New Things

No matter what your business knowledge is, starting a business will increase it. You will have to learn new skills on the fly. Marketing, SEO, stock management, budgeting and bookkeeping to name just a few of the skills you will need to master to succeed.

Test Yourself

Do you have what it takes? Can you remain cool under pressure? Can you continue to think logically when your plans aren’t working? Can you remain positive and continue to formulate plans when nothing seems to be working? Can you rally yourself to charge forward when you’ve taken a battering in the market? You’ll find the answers to all this and more about yourself if you plunge yourself into the market with an idea or some products. You will fail in some things, it’s unavoidable, we all have and we all do, it’s how experience is gained. Each failure will bring you back stronger and wiser than before.

When you triumph though the failures will, all dissolve. When you make a plan and drive it to completion against the forces that are against you, you will experience a great sense of personal achievement, a boost in your self-confidence and your self-esteem will reach new levels.

All these things can be achieved by starting a part-time internet business for little cost. If it’s something you’ve being thinking about, then stop thinking and act. You’re better and more capable than you think you are; you’re braver than you think you are, you know more than you think you do, you are already programmed with everything you need to succeed. All you have to do is take the first step.

Timing Is Everything

Best Time To List your Auctions on Ebay

Timing is crucial in selling. As in everything else, get the timing right and your chances of selling increase. Most people will bid on auctions in the last hour. They will surf Ebay looking for bargains so you need to take this into account when listing your auctions. It’s no good having an auction that ends at three-o-clock in the morning. If someone bids on your auction they want to go to bed knowing they have won it. I’ve experimented with this and can tell you from my experience that auctions that end in the early hours are not as successful as an auction that ends earlier.

You should spend some time listing your items so they end at the optimum time for buyers searching Ebay. You need to get your product under the noses of your potential customers. you can’t do this by just listing your items in a haphazard way. Develop a listing stratergy and your chances of making sales will increase.

The best time to end an auction is Sunday evening. Research has shown this to be the optimum time for sellers to be surfing ebay looking for a last minute bargain. Between seven and eleven is the time to end your auctions for maximum sales exposure. good strategic listing is crucial to timing your auction to end at the right time to enhance your chance of a sale.

You have a choice when you list your auction to list for 1,3,5,7 or 10 days. The longer you list your item for the greater the exposure to sellers. Obvious, I know, but just because something is obvious doesn’t mean we shouldn’t investigate it to see how we can manipulate it to our advantage. The length of time you choose is also important because it will determine when your auction ends. The basic theory is the longer the listing the better. The longer its active the more people will see it and hopefully bid on it.

Listing for ten days is my prefered option. I want maximum exposure for my products. I will place things on auction that I’m not particular bothered whether they sell or not. My stratergy is to get people to see my auctions and lead them into my shop. They may not be interested in what I’m auctioning but they may buy something from my shop. this is a stratergy that works. If I sell the items I’m auctioning that’s a bonus.

Using an auction of a shorter duration also has its advantages if you use it correctly. Using a short term auction implies urgency. If you push the sense of urgency in your sales page this will reinforce it. There’s also a school of thought that says using a 10 day option is pointless because the bidding frenzy always occures towards the end of an auction. by using a 10 day auction you are just delaying this bidding frenzy. This is a good argument and has a lot of truth in it. If you want to kick off the bidding as soon as possible then go for the short term auction. My stratergy of using auctions to pull people into my shop requires that I get the maximium exposure so the 10 day auction is best for this.

Short term auctions have their advantages. you need to work out which stratergy is best for the products you are selling. A one day auction for example is ideal if you were selling concert tickets, or tickets to some other event. Putting these up in a one day auction close to the even can generate that all important bidding frenzy that every seller wants to create.

Which auction duration works best for you will depend on your own circumstances. Once you gain that all valuable experience you will be ablke to decide on which type of auction listing is best for your lifestyle and the products you sell. If you are listing a lot of products then it may be best to stagger them so they don’t all end at the same time. On the other hand you may prefer this, so you can deal with all the postage at the same time. it’s really up to you. Many people have a regimented routine, they may list religiously on one day only. I stagger my listings. I don’t like to be suddenly swammped, I prefer a more leisurely work load. I’ve also got a website which brings in sales at any time so I take that into consideration.

Good Auction Days

Sunday

This is the best day to end an auction. Sunday evening between seven and eleven. The kids will be in bed, the washing up done and the parents will be relaxing either watching tv or surfing Ebay looking for that bargain. Bank holidays are the exception and things drop off in summer as people enjoy the evening sun. As a rule though Sunday is the best day to end an auction

Monday

This is a good day, not as good as Sunday but not bad. A ten day auction will span two weekends and if you time it right end on Monday.

Wednsday

Forget this day! Avoid ending your auctions on wednsday, it’s the middle of the week, people are tired and stressed from work, surfing Ebay to buy something is the last thing on their minds. I even sell less from my shop and website on Wednsday, in fact i see it as a day off.

Listing your items at the right time for the right duration will enhance your sales. get this right and you will sell more. Other factors come into play of course. I mentioned generally that wednsday is a bad day to end auctions on, that doesn’t mean no one buys on wednsday. The products you sell may do well on wednsdays. The above advice is taken from my own experience and research and is generally correct buth there’s always exceptions. The best way to decide which day and listing duration is best for you is by experimenting. Take a note of the day you have listed your product and the interest you get for it. List it another day and time and compare notes. A little experimenting will soon reveal the best stratergy for your products and lifestyle. Just bear in mind that listing at the right time is an art. Timing is everything.
Until next time.

How To Research Whether A Product Will Sell On Ebay

EBay has some fantastic built in tools, which if used correctly are excellent market research for the product you are thinking of selling. Before deciding to invest in a product to resell on EBay it’s common sense to check a number of things about that product. For example, is the market already saturated? How much can I hope to get for this product? You need to find out what buyers are prepared to pay for the product you are selling. If you’re hoping to sell an item for £100.00 but they are selling on eBay for £80.00 then you need to rethink your strategy.

So, how do we find out what a specific product is selling for? It’s really simple; we use the eBay search function. Let’s say I want to sell a Blackberry Pearl 8120 mobile phone. I’ve found a place where I can purchase them for a reasonable price and I need to know what I could expect to sell them for on EBay. How do I find out?

Just follow me here: first go to the eBay search function and click on “advanced search”. This will open up the advanced search page. The first thing you will notice is that it has so many more choices than the standard search page.

I will enter my product description. Be specific here. I am looking for a Blackberry Pearl 8120 so that is exactly what I will type. In the “in this category” field on the drop down menu, I will put mobile and home phones.

Further, down you will see a field titled “search including” Under this is a box labelled “completed listings” tick this box. The completed listings box will show me all the finished listings for my item, this is the information I want to know. This is where I will discover what people are paying for this particular phone.

As you can see, there are many other options on this page to narrow the search down. For this demonstration, however I will leave it as it is and click search. And Hey Presto! I get the first of many pages showing me how much the phone is selling for and the dates when they were sold. Included in this page are accessories as well as the phone. I don’t want to know about these so I will click “mobile phones” on the side of the page. This removes everything except the phones and I have instant factual research right in front of my eyes.

I can see how many phones have been sold. These are shown in green, and I can see what failed to sell, displayed in red. This is crucial information. I can now spend an hour going through the selling prices of the phones. I would use a spreadsheet to input this in. from that I can establish an average selling price.

I can see the highest selling price. I can also compare the way each seller has listed his or her item and what success it has brought. Again, this is crucial information. I can look at the phones that did not sell and ask myself why? Did the seller over price the phone? Was it because of poor presentation? Questions I need to answer.

After a few hours of research, I will have collected valuable information about this product. Crucial information, which will have answered some essential questions like:

How much can I expect to sell this product for?

What’s the average selling price?

How should I present this product?

What’s the best format to list it under?

What price is too high?

Is the market saturated?

Can I hope to make a profit?

This simple piece of research will answer all these questions for you. From here, I can make an informed decision about whether I should venture into this market or not.

Being successful on eBay is not simply about picking something up and putting it up for sale. If you want to make money, you need to be professional. You need to research your market. This will save you money in the end and you will avoid costly mistakes. If you put an item on EBay for sale and no one buys it, you will have to pay relisting fees. Constant relisting can soon run up fees. By some good research, you can avoid this situation.