Taking Stock

It’s the end of the tax year and time to take stock. I’m pleased to say that I’ve met virtually all of my objectives business for the year and achieved the income I sought from my part-time business. My objective, as I’ve mentioned before, is to build enough money to retire early and comfortably on. Something that it’s getting harder and harder to do if you work in the private sector. At the beginning of the year I raised the bar for my game forcing myself to work smarter in order to achieve it. By setting goals that took me out of the comfort zone I was forced to work out ways to achieve them. Setting goals high is a great driver to achievement. Today my business is chugging along comfortably at a level that a year ago I was operating way below.

I am now in the process of setting higher targets and further goals to drive me along to higher levels of achievement for the comming year. My initial goal of building a retirement income is being achieved little by little but I’m also enjoying a fantastic side effect of a strong feeling of self achievement. Of having a powerful purpose in my life. This is even better than making the money for my retirement which is just becoming a side show to the fun I’m having with my business.

I feel like I’ve decoupled myself from the dependancy of my small private pension, that I’m no longer dependant on what happens to it. I have my financial future in my own hands for once and I’m enjoying the feeling. There’s still a long way to go but I’m looking forward to the journey.

Not everything I’ve done over the year has worked. I attempted to add card making products to my inventory early last year and this has proved to be a bad choice. The items are very slow selling with low profit margins so I’m in the process of discontinuing them. I intend to auction the stock I’ve got on ebay later. On the plus side I introduced models slowly to my hobbies section and these are proving popular so I intend to increase my stock of these and make them regular items bringing in another income source

I’m also considering doing some weekend markets, maybe every other weekend over the summer to generate more income. I have to get the balance right, I’ve got my business running now in such a way that it doesn’t take up much of my time and I have plenty of slack I could take up any time but I don’t want to get to the stage where it’s consuming all my time, that would defeat the objective of building an extra income to enjoy a better lifestyle.

My website has come into play after months of promotion. Getting a website going takes time and effort but it’s the way to go once you are established. I love the feeling of selling from my site because I have no costs to pay. no Ebay grabbing large chunks of my hard earned, it all comes to me. Another advantage of having a website is that people tend to buy multiple items. they will browse the site adding items to their basket so I usually get multiple orders from the site.

,/br>

I promote my site with articles, writing articles and submitting them to article directories is a great way to build backlinks and thus traffic to your site. Traffic is king, without it selling is impossible. like having an empty shop. so promoting the website is a daily task. I haven’t been as zealous about this as I should be over the last few months but I’m back on track now, determined to write at least one article a day. Getting a website should be your long term goal because it frees you from Ebay.

I’m still happy on Ebay though. It’s a great way of getting people to your site. They buy one thing off you on Ebay and you have the chance to get another customer to your website and hopefully keep them comming back. I use Ebay not just to sell but to market my business at the same time.

I’ve learned a lot over the last year, gained experience that can only be achieved through throwing yourself into the battle and start trading. I’ve made mistakes and taken the consequences on the chin then brushed myself off and moved on, wiser and stronger. I was talking to a work collegue a few weeks ago. He’s been making plans to start an Ebay business now for narly two years. So far he hasn’t sold an item, there’s always some reason why he’s going to start it later rather than now. his latest excuse is that Ebay is slow in summer. I asked him how he knew that> He said everyone knows that. I told him my best month last year was in September and that it’s not neccessarily true, his products may sell all the year round, it depends on the products.

He shrugged and said he’ll start in winter. He won’t. He’s afraid to take that leap. That leap of faith. You can plan and plan but it’s all pointless unless you take action and start. I’ve never been a great planner. I set goals and have targets but I don’t sit down and write detailed plans. I don’t believe you can predict what the market will do, how your product will fare, there’s too many variables comming into play at any one time. The best plan is to start trading and deal confidently with any situation that arises. Trust in your ability to do this. You are stronger, wiser and tougher than you realise. We all are. So if you’re thinking of joining the thousands of people successfully making another income online then here’s my advice. Set some goals then start the adventure. You won’t regret it.