Sell things on the internet? I know what you’re thinking. Great idea. Who hasn’t thought of that? How about not wasting my time with old ideas? This isn’t 1999. Everyone knows you can make money selling things on the internet.
Well, I’ll tell you this is a bit of a catch-all category that will cover almost everything. Because with most of these business ideas in this book you will want some sort of presence on the internet and want to make sales there. The point of this section is to help you generate some new ideas about what to sell and how best to sell it.
The most obvious place to start is to look around your home. Do you have extra things you are trying to get rid of? Books, old baseball cards, furniture, electronics, art, or something else? Collect what you don’t want anymore. Do an inventory of what you are trying to get rid of. Search on the internet and see what they are selling for and where they are selling.
You can set up a free seller account on Amazon to sell books at Seller Central. If you have a large amount of books to get rid of, you might want to consider upgrading to a pro account. Competition is fairly heavy there. Some volume sellers practically give the books away. They make pennies per transaction, but sell enough to make it worth their time. They have pro accounts so don’t get hit with big fees per sale, but instead they pay a flat monthly rate.
Ebay is a great place to unload old comic books and baseball cards. Research first what they are going for. Set a reserve place if you are concerned. I have had better luck, though, by never setting a reserve price and starting the bidding at .99 cents, regardless of the item. That gets early bidders in there thinking that they might get a great deal. When other bidders see a lot of interest in the item they too become interested. The interest feeds off itself. I also time my auctions to end late on Friday or Saturday nights. My feeling there is that many bidders will be sitting around drinking at a bar or club when their phone will vibrate to let them know the auction is near closing. Drunk people are more willing to spend money without as much worry about the consequence. And they can’t come back later and try to get out of it just because they were intoxicated. That’s their problem.
Also, make sure that you describe your item properly. Think about all the keywords that you want to use. Years ago I used to be able to buy some coins for far lower than the market value because the uninformed sellers left out the word “silver” in their ads for certain coins that I was interested in. They lost everyone who was searching for silver bullion. Sadly, I have not found sellers recently making that same mistake.
Etsy is a good place to sell any craft items that you may have. There seems to be no limit to the odd and different things on there.
Craigslist is one of my favorite sites. Lots of people are scared of the site due to people like “The Craig’s List Killer” and “The Craig’s List Rapist”. This is all rather silly. You can meet people anywhere who might later rape and/or kill you. Plenty of people who have meet other people at bars or even in churches who later did bad things to them. But no one speaks of “The Bar Rapist” or “The Church Killer”. Why? Well, because it is all just a media creation to keep people reading or watching. Don’t let that scare you off from using the technology. Plenty of good people buy and sell on Craigslist with no problems. It is great because it is free. And if the buyer is local you can meet and take cash. Use basic common sense, of course. But then you should always do that.
A pretty easy thing to do, but is rarely done by individuals, is to create your own internet store. That way you can still sell your products all over the world, but without having to pay big commissions. This requires some level of experience with web creation, but not much.
You need to buy a domain that reflects what you are selling in the name. That will make it easier to find you on search engines.
Next, find a hosting company. Search around and find out what places have the best deals and reputations.
You can easily install a storefront script for free. I prefer OsCommerce, but feel free to look into other options.
You can accept payment through Paypal, Google Checkout, or even Bitcoins (more on them later).
If you are selling from your own personal site, it is important to understand Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. You want to have lots of content on your site. This gives the search engines more to index and makes it more likely that people will find your site. Start a blog on your site and update it on a regular basis. Also, try to get friends to link to your site. And setup Facebook and Twitter ‘like buttons’ on your page and encourage your friends to click on them. All of this increases your page rank with the search engines and thus makes it more likely that your page will pop-up when someone searches for what you are selling.
It is vital, whether selling on your own or through a site like Ebay or Amazon, to have a good social network. Set up accounts at Twitter and Facebook. Friend everyone that you know. Friend everyone you think you should know. Don’t badger your friends with constant updates about your business. Talk about your life and about interesting things. On occasion, remind them that you are selling something. But try not to look like you are pushing them to buy. Also, never come off as desperate, in business or anything else. Trust me, that will just make you more desperate.
Now, after you sold off the items around your home, you need to get more things to sell if you are going to continue with your internet business. If you are selling books, then look for charity book sales. Your local Rotary Club, or similar group, might do this as a fundraiser. They collect the books as donations and resell them for a very cheap price. This is a great place to stock up on inventory. Also, look around for estate sales and yard sales for good deals. Sometimes people give away decent stuff for free on Craigslist. Also, don’t be afraid to be a picker. The success of shows like American Pickers has increased the interest in this practice. Just make sure that you are polite and not aggressive when you approach home owners asking if you can inspect their property to buy things. Many people will still be skeptical of you, especially if you don’t have a camera crew with you. They might think you are up to something illegal. But don’t let that deter you from making money and having fun.
The sky is really the limit on what you can buy and resell on the internet. Just don’t start too big or get into buying and selling items that you don’t know much about. Go with what you know. At the same time, slowly start to experiment with selling new things.
