How to sell your products online?

Written by Nowshade Kabir


E-commerce is gaining pace! Research firm eMarketer predicts that 2003 will see online sales reaching US $58.2 billion excluding travel. According to Forrester Research, another reputable research company, business to consumer e-commerce will hit US $230 billion byrepparttar year 2008. While offline retail sales are staggering and will continue to do so in near term, online retail sales will show a hefty 19 percent consecutive year over year growth! And byrepparttar 105043 same year, two third of all US households will buy some kind of products and services online. In 2003 alone 97 million consumers will make some kind of purchases throughrepparttar 105044 Internet.

If you are selling products and services offline, you should seriously consider hopping on torepparttar 105045 e-commerce bandwagon, or risk loosing significant portion of your business to your more proactive competitors!

Is it difficult to start selling products or services online?

May be, inrepparttar 105046 beginning of Internet era, this was a daunting task, but today, with proper planning it is fairly easy.

- Chooserepparttar 105047 products or services that are viable to sell overrepparttar 105048 Internet

- Build an online presence

- Create an online product catalog

- Choose payment methods

- Promote

Select products or services to sell

Although, some products are easier to sell online, contrary to popular believe, most ofrepparttar 105049 products and services are, actually, marketable onrepparttar 105050 Internet. At present, books, electronics, information and travel related products are selling better online. But, that does not mean that there is no room for other products or services. As a matter of fact, you can sell just about anything overrepparttar 105051 Internet! It depends more onrepparttar 105052 market segment you choose, and how good you are in marketing. As you know, traditional items that you can get in nearest grocery store were not doing very well onrepparttar 105053 Internet. However, that is going to change very soon! According to Forrester Research many of today’s slow categories are poised to significant growth as oppose to early online sales leaders like travel and electronics, which will experience market maturity and slower growth. Prediction is:

Food and beverage category will grow at a rate of 49 percent, reaching $18.2 billion by 2007. The home products category will grow by 42 percent over five years, from $7.3 billion in 2002 to $42.0 billion in 2007. Flowers, cards, and gifts will grow by 41 percent, from $951 million in 2002 to $5.3 billion in 2007.

That’s not all! Byrepparttar 105054 year 2008, today’s best selling product – books will have a mere 3 percent share of total business to consumer online sales.

So, if your products and services can generate offline sales there should not be any problem in selling these items online.

Build online presence

You can choose to build an e-commerce website either yourself by hiring required experts, i.e. web programmers or by appointing a website developing company to dorepparttar 105055 job for you. In both ofrepparttar 105056 cases, you have to be prepared to spend a significant amount of money. E-commerce site is a very broad terminology! Depending on you demand, it can cost you from a modest US $800 to any where over a million US dollar! That’s not all! You have to be prepared to spare considerable time on it, as well. Writingrepparttar 105057 technical scope, choosing repparttar 105058 appropriate design for your site and creating proper content for your site will take a lot of your time. And there is no guarantee that you will do everything right!

4 Reasons to Work for Yourself

Written by Arthur Cooper


4 Reasons to Work for Yourself By Arthur Cooper (c) Copyright 2003

Almost everybody working as a paid employee of someone else must at some time or another wished they were their own boss. Nearly everyone at some time or another thinks that they could run things better if they were in charge. Whether in a shop, in an office, in a factory, - wherever – most people at some point think about becoming self employed.

For many it is just a passing thought, and they remain perfectly happy working as employees. Some of course rise to high positions of responsibility within companies owned by other individuals or by public shareholders.

For others it becomes a real obsession and they makerepparttar break and go off to run their own businesses with greater or lesser degrees of success. They are fulfilling their dream.

Still more, though, continue to dream and to wish but never take action. They never makerepparttar 105042 break. If you are still wavering, here are just some ofrepparttar 105043 reasons to consider why you might prefer to work for yourself.

1.Freedom and Responsibility

As your own boss you are free to do as you like. Nobody is there to order you to do what you don’t want to do. No-one will tell you to arrive early or work late. You won’t have to dorepparttar 105044 menial and routine tasks that need doing if you don’t want to. You won’t have to be nice to unpleasant customers if you don’t want to. You have total freedom to do as you want.

But of courserepparttar 105045 other side ofrepparttar 105046 coin is responsibility. It comes withrepparttar 105047 freedom. You are free not to do certain tasks, but it is you that is responsible forrepparttar 105048 consequences. You choose. Nobody forces you. You decide what is worth doing and what is not. And once you have that freedom of action it is surprising what you will happily do that you would not have done before.

Why do so many self employed people work long hours and sometimes do apparently menial tasks without complaint? It is not just because they are struggling to make ends meet. Many very successful self employed people continue to do these things. It is becauserepparttar 105049 whole game has changed for them. They enjoyrepparttar 105050 challenge of building their businesses. They see that what they do now will benefit them later. They take pride in what they are doing. The same task becomes so much more satisfying when working for themselves.

2.Money

Yes. This can be a real motivator. Very few people achieve real wealth by working for someone else.

Certainly you can earn a very good salary indeed in some companies and achieve a high material standard of living. Atrepparttar 105051 very top of big enterprises financial rewards can be large. Nevertheless,repparttar 105052 really big jackpots are hit by men and women who start up their own businesses.

But lets be realistic. The big jackpots andrepparttar 105053 huge fortunes are few. Most of those who run their own concerns will never be amongstrepparttar 105054 super rich. Some may never achieve more than a very modest living. But make no mistake, money is there to be made andrepparttar 105055 chances of making it working in your own business are far more than if you are working for someone else. It isrepparttar 105056 same old story. Risk and reward. If you takerepparttar 105057 risk you have a chance of gettingrepparttar 105058 rewards. If you don’t takerepparttar 105059 risk you don’t get that chance.

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