selling from home

Are you hoping to start selling from home? What if you do not have handmade, used or value-added products of your own? If this is the case then there are many other options available to you. You may want to consider investing in a kit business or a franchise . Either option allows you to start selling from home and yet still receive the support of a pre-exisiting business with well established systems. These options also help to give your business credibility as the products are better known.

You may find it artistically and financially fulfilling creating items and selling them from home. With the advances in the internet and the introduction of drop ship manufacturing - it is easy for many people to design and sell their own products with little effort or capital investment. The best part of this new era is that most of the websites listed below offer full services from marketing to payment collection to drop shipping - making it easy to quickly start selling from home!!!

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1. eBay or Kijiji - online marketplaces to sell all goods
eBay is the premier online marketplace for selling from home - locally, nationally and globally. I have used eBay to buy things many times and have sold with it a few times. Kijiji is eBay's free alternative to online auctions - it is an electronic classifieds board. There are a few different forms of eBay businesses:
A. Selling your own used items.
B. Selling other people's used items on commission or consignment.
C. Resell consumer products at a mark-up. Many people will buy low costs items and re-sell them for more. There are many reasons why this works.
- some items are not available around the world;
- some items are not available in particular lots sizes (ie. you could buy items only available in bulk and then sell them individually);
- items can be modified slightly (ie. painted, wrapped, sorted, etc...) and sold for more money; and
- items can be purchased separately then sold in kits, gift baskets, or complimentary packages.
D. Sell your own goods.

2. Etsy - online marketplace to sell homemade goods
Etsy is an online marketplace for buying & selling homemade or vintage items. Like eBay this service takes care of the listing, marketing, ordering and money transfer for you. You simply need to make the item and then ship it to the purchaser. They have a great help section that not only teachs you how to use their site they also cover: setting you prices, marketing, how-to craft guides and many, many other items. One of my (many) talented cousins has used this service ( see Gina's shop here ). Keep an eye out for her owners talk page about her experiences using Etsy - COMING SOON!!

3. Cafepress - online marketplace that allows users to apply their designs to customizable merchandise.
CafePress.com is an online marketplace with millions of members who have created over 150 million unique products on customizable merchandise ranging from apparel, home and office accessories to music and data CDs and books to prints, posters and cards. With this service you are able to upload graphic designs, logos, sayings, pictures, texts, music and more. Your creative designs are then paired with CafePress.com's customizable merchandise. These custom items (logo'd T-shirts, your pictures on postcards, etc...) are then marketed on CafePress.com. The site takes care of marketing, ordering, money transfer, manufacturing and drop shipping your items - to allow you to seamlessly sell products from home. Another one of my gifted cousins has used this service ( see Pam's shop here ). Keep an eye out for her owners talk article about her experiences using CafePress - COMING SOON!!

In it's own words "Lulu is not a publisher. It�s a digital marketplace". Lulu provides tools to format your digital content, market it, print or burn it and distribute it. I have not used this service and do not know anyone who has - however it has won awards and the buzz about it is great. Whether you want to use lulu for vanity publishing or small publishing you can take advantage of their print and ship on demand platform. This allows you to start selling from home without maintaining an inventory and prepaying for volume book publications.

Of course if you want to "go it alone" selling from home - you can stick to more traditional ways to advertise the products that you are selling from home, for example: listing yourself in the yellow pages or on directory websites and community bulletin boards; signs and vehicle wraps; distribution of flyers, business cards, mailers, magnets, pens, brochures, dvds, cds or photos; cold calls; business website; home parties and open houses; community events; and trade shows and conventions.

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