Gone are
days when a woman had to choose a career or her family. The Internet has changed everything! Now any woman can run her own successful online business while staying home with her children.Imagine! You arise in morning while children are still asleep. Starting that pot of coffee, you start your computer. You have SALES! You begin processing of sales that came in overnight by way of your company’s website. That’s right! YOUR company. As children stir, you set your computer to “standby”, make their breakfast, and see them off safely to school. You’re also there when they get home from school.
How can you live that dream? There are three key factors for you to be a successful online business owner and stay at home mom. They are determination, profitable products, and marketing skills. Do you have what it takes? Let’s see.
Determination
Of three critical components, only “determination” can’t be taught. Not everyone is suited to be an astronaut or a truck driver. And, not everyone is suited to run one’s own business. Determination is a single-minded drive that moves one beyond minor setbacks of learning curve. If you tend to start but never finish projects, an online business is not for you.
An online business takes staying power, much like motherhood. You can do anything you set your mind to and win. You are tackling most difficult job in world right now – motherhood. So, how do you find profitable products for your home-based business?
Profitable Products
Many people have tried their hand at online sales through eBay. Maybe you have too. After many unsuccessful attempts at finding products they can sell for a profit, they give up. Finding profitable products can be learned but there are tricks of trade.
Knowing this, many people get sucked into paying some “eBay guru” thousands of dollars to do it for them. Unfortunately, they find out quickly that they have to find products themselves. An individual who wants their own online business needs to find their own products. But how?
Depending upon your financial situation, there are six proven ways to find profitable products to sell online. They start with those requiring no investment and end with those requiring thousands of dollars of investment capital. Regardless of price of product, higher investment, lower unit cost of products. The lower unit cost of products, higher profit margin. The higher profit margin, more money company makes.
Many people attempt to start an online sales business at bottom of product acquisition food chain, with dropshipping. Dropshipping requires little or no initial investment. With dropshipping, you sell someone else’s product. When you sell product, you pay supplier to drop-ship product to your customer with fee coming out of your profits. Typically, profit associated with dropshipping is very small or non-existent.
A better alternative for those people with little money to invest is consignment selling. Consignment selling is where you sell someone else’s product, but you collect a fee of between 10% and 25% of final sale price. Sounds good, right? It is but it takes a person who is a real self-starter and can negotiate with people. Family, friends, neighbors, local crafters, local businesses without a web presence are all candidates for consignment sales.
With your profits from consignment sales, you can move on to acquiring bulk and surplus products. Working with surplus brokers requires some initiative and internet surfing skills. There are hundreds of surplus brokers on internet. Choosing right one is a problem and requires some research skills. However, profit margins are higher on surplus goods than other two techniques discussed above. For instance, a Janome Memory Craft sewing machine was acquired at surplus for $99.00 and sold on eBay for $430.00, a very nice profit.
