Setting Up A Home Based Business Selling Goods On The Internet

If you want to start a home based business then selling goods on the Internet might be the ideal answer for you.


There are several ways you can go with a home based Internet marketing business. People make money on the Internet by selling their own products and services, or by selling other peoples through affiliate marketing programs or via drop-shippers.




Selling Physical Goods Online Is A Great Way To Start


Despite the attractions of affiliate marketing, selling physical goods on the Internet is actually one of the easiest ways to actually turn a profit if you have the right kind of product.


Some people make their own products and sell them on online auctions or on garage sale sites such as Tripleclicks.com. They sell products such as clothes, fashion goods, jewelry and accessories, hand crafted cards, woodcraft items, toys, games, handy inventions and so on.


No Product Of Your Own?


But what if you don't have a product of your own to sell, don't despair. If you live in a place that has special or regional products unavailable elsewhere then you could offer those on the Internet. In this case, you would buy either from local shops or from the manufacturers and resell the goods online.


Selling goods on auction sites is a convenient way to test the market. If the item sells quickly and if you can make a good profit then you will want to repeat the process and also set up a website of your own to sell from.


Setting Up A Website Is Cheap To Do


Setting up a website is not expensive nowadays. Web hosting costs less than $7 a month, and a domain name costs around $10 a year.


Finally, set up an account with an online transaction service such as PayPal, AlertPay or MoneyBookers so that you will be able to add "Buy Now" buttons to your site.


Free Publicity For Your Business 


The next step will be to start marketing your goods. The good news here is that on the Internet this can be done either free of charge or on a shoestring budget.


You can promote your website by setting up a blog and posting articles about your products and related topics on it. Write articles and post them to online article directories.


When orders start to come in you will of course have to fulfill them promptly. You may find yourself getting very busy as you will need to contact your customers to update them on their order status, pack and post the orders, and either make or purchase new stocks of items and packaging materials.


In short, you will have set up a successful home based business on the Internet.


If you want some free advice about how to set up your own online business, drop me a line and I will reply to you in person (not via an automated e-mail).


David Hurley
Best Internet Marketing Strategies

Case Study: Building An Online Business From Scratch With No Budget

A good friend of mine, Roland Petrov, recently opened a shop called "Tea and Treasure" in Coupeville, WA, together with his sister. Roland is a tea connoisseur and his side of the shop sells a wide range of exotic teas from all over the world.

A couple of months ago I proposed to make Roland a website free of charge so that he could take his business onto the Internet and he promptly took me up on the offer. Tea is an ideal product for Internet selling as it is so easy to pack and post to customers all over the world.

So far the only expense has been setting up a webhosting account with Thinkhost.com, my webhost of choice and one that I am happy to recommend to clients and friends alike.

The first thing I did was to set up a basic no-frills website as a place where he could get the word out about his shop and products. It took just a couple of hours to set up the initial site. We then added some basic information and did a little bit of keyword work for SEO purposes.

The website was quickly allocated a ranking of over 13,000,000 by Alexa.com, but once I had installed a Wordpress blog and asked Roland to start pumping out blog posts the website quickly climbed the rankings and currently sits at 933,535.

There was a mini crisis when Roland received his first sales inquiry via email. A guy claimed to want to order some tea. At this stage the site had no merchant cart or payment method on it. Payment was by cheque. The guy turned out to be a scammer who claimed to want to make a big order but "needed help" in processing the money. Yeah, right! His "request" was flatly refused and he was turned away.

The next thing I did was to invite Roland to join the free Ecommerce Associates programme run by SFI. This immediately exposed Roland's products to a wider market and it will also enable other people to market Roland's products and earn a commission on each product they sell.

A couple of days ago Roland upgraded his Paypal account to merchant status. Last night and this morning I uploaded a whole bunch of Paypal buttons to his website so that now he can offer virtually his whole range of teas for sale on the Internet.

To check out our progress with Roland's website and buy yourself some exotic tea, visit ExoticTeaStore.com

If you have a business you would like to promote online but don't know where to start, drop me a line. I am looking for just a handful of people to help get started each month. Or click here to find out more details about my free business website service.

David Hurley
Free Business Websites