May 16, 2008

My Internet Business Review: Where To Sell On The Internet

by Trisha Frauenhofer

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.

eBay is the second most widely known sales site on the Internet, after Amazon.com. It has millions of visitors each and every day, and uses the "auction" mechanism to keep people coming back. From the perspective of someone selling products on the internet, it has an easy setup procedure, and you can start or stop at any time. If you don't like it, you haven't sunk a lot of money into it to get it running.

First thing to do is decide what you are going to sell. If you haven't decided what you want to sell, here are a few options that are highly recommended in my internet business Review. One option is to purchase things wholesale and then sell them at a higher price on an auction. To do well at this, you will need to find the best supplier for what you want to sell and make sure you know what your niche is.

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.

eBay is more labor intensive than Amazon, but the percentages that they take out are less. eBay has moderately high listing fees, so keep that in mind when planning your sales patterns. eBay is the ideal forum for selling things you buy locally, or retailing something you buy at wholesale. By the time you've outgrown an eBay shop, you'll be well set on setting up your own eCommerce site.

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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