Other People's Stuff
If you really need to make money with no investment this is one way to do it. Sites like www.sellstuffonebay.com make money by taking other people’s goods and selling them for a commission. In the movie “The 40 yr old virgin“ one of the main characters had a store that did exactly this.
Believe it or not using Ebay effectively requires either skill or luck. You can develop the skills by reading about it online and experimenting yourself but for many people looking to sell one or two items this is not viable.
The great part about this business is you can start literally for free. You can sell almost anything on Ebay as we have seen from various unusual press stories. Start with some stuff in your own house that you think no-one would buy; an old pair of shoes, broken computer etc. be imaginative and see whether you can find someone who will buy.
The problem with Ebay is that once you run out of stuff you can’t sell anything, at that stage you have two choices in order to continue; start buying something cheap and selling it for a profit or start selling other people’s stuff (with their permission of course).
I would suggest taking a small percentage of the sales price and aiming to sell as much as possible. This business can be scaled fairly quickly if you can find enough people who want to use your service. The immediate number to shoot for might be 10% but you will sound a lot cheaper if you say 9% or 8%.
This entire business relies on finding stock. We suggest using the following strategies to market your services: -
Network
Website
Offline Promotion
Advertise
The best place to start is with people you know. You will be surprised how many of your friends, family and colleagues have stuff that they could sell but are too lazy to do anything with. If you tell them that you are starting a business to help other people to sell their unwanted things on Ebay and give them an idea of the kinds of things you have already sold, as well as stressing the skill in obtaining the best price it should be relatively easy to persuade them to part with all sorts of things.
As with www.sellstuffonebay.com having a website is a must for any online business. You can get people to go to the site using all sorts of strategies including writing on internet forums, writing articles for free submission article sites, and using bulletins on my space to drive traffic to your site. Make sure that you keep your site updated so that people will want to come back and see what you have been up to, carry links to current items you are trying to sell and offer information on how best to identify and sell items yourself.
Promoting offline does not have to be expensive. Ultimately you are probably looking for local people to give you things to sell, and thus you do not need expensive national advertising. Small things like handing out business cards to everyone you meet and explaining what you do will help to bring you customers. You can also write an article for your local newspaper or offer to give an interview on local radio. This is not as hard as it sounds, and there are many good books that will help you to get this kind of publicity for free.
Once you start to make money you should re-invest in advertising in local media, such as the local newspaper and on local websites such as forums or local information sites. This will bring you in more customers and ensures that you can easily be found by would be customers.
Once you have a system you can train someone else to do what you do, they gain from your advertising and promotion, and you keep a share of what they sell. The more people like this that you take on, the bigger your business will get and the less you will need to work at it.
This is a perfect starter business as it can be done part time and with almost no investment other than your time.