Does it ever end? I've been involved with Internet-based home businesses for some time and I continue to be exposed to a seemingly endless barrage of offers (all costing me money, of course) claiming to be "the secret" for making a fantastic income, in a very short time, and with very little effort involved.

I must admit that I may have a slightly self-serving reason for addressing this topic. My articles are published on my home-based business websites for purpose of trying to give prospective team members a true sense of what is really involved with starting and developing a successful home based business. The self-serving part, I suppose, is that I want people joining my team to have straight scoop going in so that we don't waste each other's time. I admit to being selfish in this regard (I don't want to waste time working with people that have unrealistic expectations), but it is also very efficient for both parties involved, so it is not a totally one-way thing.

Now, back to topic at hand. There's no magic here, folks. Once you have selected home business that you are going to pursue, there are no substitutes for time and effort in developing your business. A dream of being an "overnight success" is just that, a dream.

Sometime he does really well and sells something for $100 that only cost him $10. Of course he does not always make such spectacular profit margins as that but generally he does pretty well. In fact these days, like many thousands of other people he makes his main living from selling through eBay.

In fact there is only one problem, he is spending more time and working harder than he did in his former “regular” job. He is up early to get best bargains at flea market, then when he gets them home he has to research and write up item description and take a photograph. Doing this for a couple hundred products every week doesn’t leave my pal much spare time. When I met him at a party other week he was really looking tired and depressed.

“OK I am my own boss but it is like being on a treadmill, if I stop money stops. I think I might be better getting a regular job again”.

The outcome was that I agreed to take a look at his business to see if there was anything that I could suggest that would help him.

When I started to look at his operation two things struck me at once. He was not aiming at any specific market. He was just going out and buying whatever was available so in one week he might buy some books, children’s games, some DVDs and office machinery. This might be fine if you are treating eBay as a hobby but not if it is your business.

Whenever you read about any form of online selling words “niche market” will quickly appear. There is a good reason for this, if as a small trader you want to succeed you must target specific niches. It makes sense to find an easily targeted niche because they will be far more profitable in long term than trying to sell to world.

The second mistake my friend was making was that all his sales were one off and rarely did a customer make more than one sale. This was not because of any bad products or service just fact that someone buying a fishing rod almost certainly would not be interested in a foot spa or whatever else my pal was offering following week.

These days more and more people are realising that eBay should not be your single method of selling but part of a fully integrated marketing plan. EBay offers you one of cheapest and easiest ways to build up a highly targeted opt in mailing list and as everyone will tell you money is in list. But very few people take advantage of this.