For many people, their first experience of working online involves selling products on eBay. This was how I got started back in 1998 and I know countless other people that have done same.

However, it is important to remember that eBay is not 'be all and end all' - there is a much bigger online world out there. My reason for mentioning this is that I have spoken to three people this week who each make a decent full or part-time income on eBay but who are fed up with it and looking to move in other directions.

Having sold on eBay myself, I can understand why sellers do get tired/bored/frustrated with auction site - it is highly competitive and it takes an incredible amount of hard work to succeed. In addition, it is normally case that more successful you become, harder you have to work. Listing auctions, handling customer enquiries, packing, shipping, sourcing/buying stock, keeping up with feedback, monitoring competition - selling on eBay is a tough job and it is no wonder that after working in this way for a few years, many people wish they were back in land of employed!!

Don't get me wrong, there is good money to be made on eBay for anyone willing to put effort in and many people enjoy trading on this huge auction site. But it isn't for everyone.

Having spoken to numerous eBay sellers in past, it seems to me that of ones that don't enjoy working on eBay, particular task that they enjoy least is packing and shipping of products. Funnily enough, this is exactly bit of trading that I grew to dislike too.

Quite often small business owners will ask me to reveal most powerful marketing strategy I have seen. I can say without hesitation that most powerful marketing strategy has little to do with advertising, direct mail, web sites, referrals or blogs.

No, before any of those things will really have any impact on your business you’ve got to uncover and communicate a way in which your business in different from every other business that says they do what you do. You’ve got to get out of commodity business. You’ve got to stake your claim on a simple idea or position in mind of your prospective clients.

Here’s what I mean. I have a client that provides custom computer programming. Essentially, they use programming languages to build custom applications for businesses. What they do is often hard to explain and even harder to put a price on, making it difficult for a prospective client to compare different companies. As a way to differentiate their business, they have begun to offer something they call Perfect Coaching. Perfect Coaching is a unique blend of training and programming and, here’s key, no one else in their business is offering anything like it. Prospects like sound of it and are asking to know more. It’s too early to tell but I suspect this point of difference will open a lot of doors for them.

Ways to differentiate

Let’s look at a number of tried and true ways to claim a unique point of difference.

Product – Can you offer a product that is so unique or even trendy that your business is associated with that offering? Or, can you extend a product and offer a valuable service to make product more useful to customer.

Service – Same goes for a service. Many times this can be packaging of a service as a product. Consulting is often delivered on an hourly basis. Packaging a consulting engagement based on an outcome, with defined deliverables and fixed package price is a very effective way to differentiate a service offering. Don’t forget to give service a powerful name!

Market Niche – Carve out an industry or two and become most dominant player serving that industry. A really nice bonus to this approach is you can usually raise your prices dramatically when you specialize in this manner.

Offer – Can you become known by an offer you make? I know an accountant that offer his tax preparation clients a 100% refund on their preparation fee when they refer four new clients. They are 100% refund tax guys.