How to Start

Over

101

Self-Employment Businesses

How to Start

Over

101

Self-Employment

Businesses

Bonus Section: Over 101 of the Largest Wholesalers of Discount Merchandise for Retail Stores, Swapmeets & Flea Market Vendors!

By

Vince Stead

E-BookTime, LLC Montgomery, Alabama

How to Start Over 101 Self-Employment Businesses

Copyright © 2006 by Vince Stead

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

ISBN: 1-59824-292-X

First Edition

Published August 2006

E-BookTime, LLC

6598 Pumpkin Road

Montgomery, AL 36108

www.e-booktime.com

Introduction

This book is intended to give you some good ideas for starting your own business and working for yourself. One of the best ways to use this book, is to use some of these ideas to make up your own idea! As with any business you start, you should check all local and state laws before you invest your hard earned money into any new business endeavor.

A lot of these businesses can turn into really good businesses, for the person that has a dream of turning a small business into a very large business. You can do it if you think you can do it, just make a mental vision of yourself doing what you would like to do. If you can envision it, and you think you would enjoy it, go for it! You’re way more likely to succeed if you do something you really enjoy!

You will need to get and obtain certain items in order to run a proper business, like a fictitious business name, business license, resell permit, in some cases, a health department license, and more. So be sure to check all requirements for the business you want to start.

If you own, or would like to start a retail store, or even something smaller like a swap meet booth or flea market booth, you would be wise to contact some of the companies in this book, and ask them for a current catalog and price list. Most of these companies cater to small and large customers alike, but there is enough information here, to fill any store to the brim with new quality discount merchandise! It pays to spend some time doing searches on the internet to find some trade shows you can attend, pertaining to the lines of items you would like to sell. It also pays to shop around.

It’s not as hard as you think to import your own items these days. With the new global economy, it’s only natural to want to be more in control of your products and get the best possible price for it that you can!

1. Driving Instructor

You can make good money, by teaching others how to operate a car safely, and teaching new drivers the rules of the road. By being a driving instructor, you can be your own boss, and working for yourself, teaching others how to drive, and turn a fun business, into a nice full or part time job. Check with your local department of motorcycle vehicles to see the requirements for becoming a driving instructor in your area.

After becoming an instructor, make sure you put your advertising right on your auto with a sign, so new customers can call you when they see you out driving on the road. Also, make and pass out flyers at local high schools, sports fields, movie theaters, malls, and anywhere else teenagers and others will most likely see your flier, since teenagers will be your biggest customer base. Also, newly arrived citizens that need to learn to drive will be good for your business, advertise in local newspapers of different languages. You can set up appointments and plan driving lessons in advance, and later, you can grow your business and have other instructors giving lessons for you while you get a percentage of each of their businesses.

2. Garage Sale Shopping Business

You can make good part time or full time money from scouting out garage sale finds to get items for various purposes. First you might find a valuable treasure that only you could admire, and that is a find in itself. To find something you did not even plan on looking for, those are usually the best finds. It’s good to have several places where you can get rid of some of the stuff that you have now found.

Books are great for the Internet, sites like Half.com and Amazon.com sell really nicely, videos and DVDs sell very well there also. There are many thrift store type furniture stores that buy old desks and dressers to fix them up and resell them. There are always those nice finds when you get something for a few dollars you know will sell on ebay for ten times what you paid for it, sometimes. Keep an eye out for CD’s and rare albums, you can get a lot of money sometimes for the right collectors album, from record stores that like to buy stuff.

By far, the person that usually gets the best deal at a garage sale is the person who ends up buying the whole garage sale! These people can make a lot of money by taking everything there is, usually for a pretty cheap negotiated price, and the cheaper the better! The best way to liquidate everything fast is to take it to your local swap meet or flea market, and start selling early in the morning for the best prices you can get on your items. Then, towards the end of the day, have a $2 sell. You sell everything for $2. You can yell out as people walk by, over and over again, since there are usually new customers always walking by. People begin to buy more stuff because they the cheap prices. Then later, you yell out, everything for $1 each, then the more people will be buying and getting the items, after you sell a lot more items, you can have a .25 cent sale, this will get most of your items gone quickly, and you will have a lot of customers.

You need to talk loudly or yell just like a hawker on the sidewalk trying to sell their wares. After the rush is over, and you want to end the day, you have a free sale. Everything is for free, that will eliminate the entire load and what you paid for the original garage sale should of netted you a profit and you won’t have to take anything back with you and you will be done with that load.

3. Recycling Service

You to can make money in the recycling business! Imagine, all the soda cans, beer cans and bottles, customers have purchased from all the stores everywhere. Then, all those cans and bottles are taken to the bigger, local recycler, who buys it from however brings them, and that could be you. Then again, they are taken to another larger recycler that deals only in tractor trailer loads, and then they finally make their way back to the manufactures, that usually turn them back into soda cans again.

You can profit from the point of the consumer, to the point of the recycler, by offering to take the soda cans to your own recycler. If you shop around, you will find many different prices for recycling materials, so it pays to shop around to get the best price you can. You can get recycling materials virtually for free, from homeowners who have a little bit each week. You can donate 15% of the proceeds of their recyclables to a worthy cause, and it is best to pick one so they know which one it is, and by all means contribute exactly that amount you said you would. The cause you pick to donate to will surely appreciate the 15%, of all your hard work you donate to them in their name, and everybody gets a nice service.

Make up, and pass out flyers in a nice neighborhood to notify them of your new service that helps others. You could include your own recycling bags later on, with your name on the side, to help generate more business for you later on. You could do something like, “The Property of”: and then your business name details, and that will help others see what is going on and want to join in. You can grow this business as big as you want it to be, or just keep it a part time business. Recycling is here to stay, and it is the right thing to do, environmentally and business wise.

4. Dog Breeding

By far, one of the most enjoyable and rewarding businesses is dog breeding! You have a chance to play with lots of puppies, and then you sell them before they get big and you do it again. You basically have 3 types of dogs. Mixed breeds, or mutt dogs as some like to call them. These types of dogs are usually given away free sometimes or for just a little bit of money.

Then you have your purebred dogs, or at least that is what the owners tell people when they buy a puppy from them. The owners say they are pure breed, by that, meaning both the mom and, are of the same breed, and you can usually tell just by looking, if there is another breed mixed in and they are not pure breed dogs. These dogs sell for various prices if you look thru your local newspaper for puppies for sale.

Then you have your best quality, which is usually AKC, for the American Kennel Club, with means you are getting exactly the kind of dog you are paying for. The puppy will come with a registration number and certificated, and include all the information about your puppy. Also included, for extra fees, are the family tree for any of the dogs you own. Some things to think about, big dogs need, and take a lot of space, and eat lots of dog food! Some dogs have health problems, while other dogs are more prone to accidents or eye problems, than other dogs. Also, the price of a dog matters.

Dogs usually have puppies on average, twice a year. They are pregnant for 2 month, and then raise their pups for roughly up to 2 months before they leave the home, and go home with new owners. Some breeds have just a couple of puppies, while some have up to a dozen or more in each litter. It is best to buy your dogs as puppies, so that you can raise them and train them to be a vital part of your family.

Just the joy of watching all those puppies bounce and jump around, and watching them playing with their mother, will make you fall in love with this business. And, the neat thing is, you can sell the puppies too. That is the nice side of it, you get to play with them, and you can make money selling them. Some people will have 1 male, and then maybe several females of the same breed’ Generally, females sell for more than males, because there is more a demand for female puppies.

If you would just like to have just 1 female dog, you can also use another dog as the sperm donor. Generally the stud fee is either the choice of 1 puppy, or the price of 1 puppy. Make sure you have a super nice place for your dogs to live, rest and play. They should have good shelter, plenty of water, and the right amount of food. Good exercise is essential to a dog’s good health. You will really enjoy raising dogs!

After you get more experienced with your dog breeding, you can apply to the pet board of trade. That is the place where pet shops buy their puppies from. Usually it is just like an auction, the breeders list their puppies for sale, and the pet shops bid on the pets they want to buy and sell, as long as you are an approved seller, you can sell on the pet board of trade, to pet shop owners that need puppies on a regular basis.

5. Holiday Service Decorations

If you enjoy hanging decorations and decorating for the holidays, you will really enjoy starting your own Holiday Service Decorations Service. You could get repeat customers for each of the holidays, with Christmas being the busiest. Some people love to decorate their homes, but may be to old, disabled, busy, or just plain tired, to climb up the ladder and do it themselves. Lots of homes like to decorated for the holidays by putting up Christmas lights, snowmen, Santa clauses, reindeer and all the other decorations that make the holiday season so cheery and bright!

You could have small signs made up and place them at intersections. You could make up a flier and send it to housing assoccisons, retirement communities, and more. You can put fliers up in grocery stores, markets, gyms, and more. You should have signs on your vehicle stating your holiday decoration services. Decorating someone else’s home for the holidays might just put that extra bounce into your step when you get paid for doing it.

6. Vending Route

Some people can make a lot of money in the vending route business! When I was a kid, my father used to rent some floor space in his building, to an older gentleman that was in the vending business. As a kid, he would give me a big bag of candy, that he would bring back from filling his machines, I thought he was the greatest!

Years later, my father told me his name, and said he had made a lot of money in the bubble gum and peanut vending route business, with barber shops, drug stores, and places like that. He had built up a nice route in 3 states that he and an employee would go to and handle. This gentleman had an airplane and a pilots license, he had a vacation home in Florida, and he worked for several weeks at a time, servicing his machines, Then he vacationed for several weeks at a time, while his machines were silently selling for him, and it was time to fill and empty them again.

The longer a machine sits with candy for sale, the more it will sell, and the more money it should make you. If you had 15 machines and went to each one once a week, you would not be making that much, if on the other hand, you had 150 machines and went to them once a month, your work would be cut down, and each machine would have time to make more money!

I’ve heard, the trick to the vending business, is to have machines that cost as cheap as you can get them. You should have a product with name brand recognition, such as m & m’s, cashew peanuts, etc… and in the long run, you will make more money if you leave the machines sit. You have to make sure they are in well established business, that will not go out of business before you get a chance to come back to empty all the money from the machine.

Losing an expensive machine, would be costly to any operation. A cheap mass produced machine, with a high demand name brand item, with a good profit margin, should be the key to staying in business for the long haul. A nice route is more valuable then 50 machines sitting in boxes. Buying or selling a vending route, can be a quick way to get into the business, but look for the best possible deal and then make an even better offer for the whole route, you just might get it!

7. Senior Citizen Events Service

You can start your own business and make money helping others have a good time, and have a good time yourself doing it! As the population of baby boomers grows, and more of our population becomes older as time goes by. There are millions of folks 55 and older that have a lot of energy, desire, time and money, to do many things still! Some of the retirement communities that allow only people 55 and older to live their, have some of the most active seniors, with all kinds of wants and needs, and if you can fulfill that market, you can make some money doing it.

Find a way to fulfill this need, with either day trips, bus tours, cruises, vacation scheduling help, or even bingo, and you can set up various outings, where someone will win a big grand prize! You could arrange with local tour operators who are already in business. Find out their prices for certain day trips, and then negotiate for even a better price, so that you can make even more profit. You could make up your own flyers, and offer the same trips, but market it differently than the tour operators do, by going directly to places older folks like to be. You can try places like mobile home parks, senior citizens centers, hospitals, churches, etc…

8. Mobile Massage Service

If you’ve never tried a massage before, you need to. After you have a massage, you will understand why others get massages on a regular basis, to keep the body feeling great. Now who does not enjoy the benefits of a healthy massage! The mobile massage service could provide you with an excellent source of income, and a job that involves meeting lots of new people.

Once you have advertised your business, and have built up some customers, you will get lots of repeat business for people that will want a massage on a regular basis. The best advantage of someone coming to you with a massage is, that you can find people that are only in town for a few days, or they spend a lot of time at their office and it is inconvenient for them to get away. You would need to know the laws for your area regarding massage services, also small courses are always offered in local magazines and newspapers to help you get starting on a job that could become very rewarding and lucrative at the same time for the right person!

You can also look online by doing a search for massage schools, and start from there. You should include signs on your vehicle with a telephone number, and with a recorded message, that could also be your sales pitch when they call.

9. Catering Service

You don’t have to be the fanciest chef in town to offer a simple catering menu to people who need food, and we all need food! You could be more extravagant, people love that, but you can also work up to that later on in your business. If you can cook decently, and you can learn to follow cooking directions from cookbooks, then you can do anything then. Think of a work crew that is working, not really being able to leave their job site for a sit down lunch in a nice restaurant, but a “roach coach” as they are sometimes referred to in the construction business. A mobile truck usually with the same items, Pepsi, Doritos, etc… but how many of those guys would love to have a good home cooked meal if they could get one.

You could figure up how much it costs to prepare a certain set of menu items, for an example, you could have a calendar for each day of the week, Monday’s could be turkey with all the trimmings menu day, Tuesday’s could be pot roast and all the trimmings, Wednesday could be pork chops and all the trimmings etc. You could wrap everything in paper plates, tin foil, include plastic utensils, because that meal right there would be better than any truck could make it. You could offer the same items and have a really reasonable price. Make sure you check with you local health department and local laws covering all your responsibilities.

For the fancier chef, you could upscale all your menu items with steak, lobster, filet mignon, etc…and offer the same service but only with more class and higher prices. You could be on your way to making a fortune in the catering business, but more important, you should really enjoy doing it, and then you will succeed.

10. Rooftop Advertising

Rooftop advertising might be just the business opportunity you’re looking for! The business of rooftop advertising might include rooftop inflatables like hot air balloons, spheres, price tags, fan blowing type characters, and more. The best way to start out in this business would be to get a lighted, fan blown hot air balloon with some basic banners like “Grand Opening” or “50% off sale” etc… The idea is to rent your advertising balloon out for several days or weeks at a time.

You would go out and install your advertising balloon on a roof top or parking lot, usually tying it down securely so it does not blow away or anyone get hurt. Leaving it there for the amount of time you agreed to rent it out for. You should require half down payment when you install the advertising balloon, and then half when you come to take it down.

There are many great places to get business for your rooftop advertising business. You can look in the newspaper for factious business name listings, these are excellent prospects for you, since they are just beginning their business, and you need to let them know how to get more customers to notice them with your advertising items. You should obtain a new business list and target the new grand opening stores with a nice flyer you can mail out to them.

You should always have a sign on your car, to help promote your business. Some fun rooftop advertising items are the hot air balloon witch is the most common type of roof top balloon you would see on a new grand opening store. There are helium blimps, spheres, rockets and other type of helium inflatables that you can fill up and send up in the air on tether strings, and they can be seen from far away. Helium is something you should expand into after you get going with your business.

Lots of businesses do not see the need in buying their own rooftop balloon, because in most states, a grand opening should be no longer than 30 days in length. So they see the benefit of renting one, compared to the cost of buying one, and only using it one time, can be a costly advertising mistake on the storeowner’s part. So most of your rentals will be for the weekend, or the whole week, or up to 30 days at a time. You should be able to climb ladders and go up and own on store building roofs for this business. Nice outdoor work.

11. Mobile Pet Washing

If you like animals of all kinds, you will probably do pretty good in a mobile pet washing business of your own! Some people live in apartments or condominiums and it’s hard for them to wash their pets. Others just don’t have the time, or their dog is too big, or they are just too old to wash their pets anymore. You would only need to have your own shampoos, brushes, towels, buckets and you’re on your way to owning your own mobile pet washing business.

You should have signs, and advertise on your vehicle. Pass out flyers in your neighborhood, hang some of your fliers in local grocery stores, laundry mats, apartment complexes and more. Soon, you should have a steady supply of pets to wash. If you live more in the country, you could also include horse washing as horses need to be washed also. You could charge more for horses, as they are so much more to wash. If you have some quality cleaning products, and have a good way with animals, you might enjoy this type of business for yourself.

The best form of advertising is to buy a 2-stall horse trailer and put your sign on the sides and back. Parking your trailer at just one rodeo or horse-riding event, should get your business noticed fast and your phone ringing! You can also attend some local dog shows and pass out flyers their as well. Feed stores usually have free animals for sale magazines, you can pick some up for free and see if you business will fit into there publications, as well as local newspapers.

12. Mobile DJ

If you love to listen and play music, you might enjoy starting a career as a mobile Disc Jockey. Mobile DJ’s travel to different locations and set up their music equipment and play songs for parties like weddings, 16^th birthdays, family reunions, holiday parties, and all sorts of other events. If you can pick and play the right kind of music for the various different kinds of parties, you could be a mobile DJ.

Most people want to hear their favorite songs while being able to ask the DJ for requests. If someone requests all oldies music, you would only need to supply each song, you might want a little bit more experience before you go out to the hip hop crowd and start trying to spin records and talented little things like that to pull that off. A mobile DJ that talks a lot, and takes over the show, that could be a really great thing, if you have a very good sense of humor, that helps a lot also.

You can start out as a mobile DJ, by having a lot of music and equipment to play it on. Later, you can work on your act to make your show more appealing to everyone, until you go as high as you want to go in this business, radio, television, there is no limit if you have talent! The best way to advertise is to have a sign on your car, pass out flyers to coffee shops, taverns, rental halls, and corporate business offices. Have plenty of advertising flyers when you do your first gig, because if people hear you, they might hire you for their next party!

13. Kid’s Birthday Party Decorating Service

With a mobile kid’s birthday party decorating service, you could offer people who will be throwing a party for their children, a service that could save them time and money. If you have all the decorations, banners, signs, balloons, games, prizes, and more…. You could save parents a lot of headache and time, and offer them a service they could really use. This is a service most parents would easily pay for, if you had several theme party selections to choose from, like, pirate birthdays, cowboy birthdays, Barbie birthdays, etc… You could have a flyer made up with your business name on it, include one price for all decorations, and then include prices for items that will not be returned to you, i.e., piñatas, paper cups and napkins, items that are thrown away.

You could turn your kids party planning business into a nice business and work for yourself doing it. Also, always check out dollar stores for plenty of inexpensive decorations and cards, door prizes, and novelties, you can save a bunch. They are known to have quality inexpensive party decorations for smaller budgets. You should plan games like treasure hunts, pin the tail on the teacher, bobbing for apples, that one will never get old for kids to watch other kids stick their head in the water, if you’re the hip party planner, other kids will tell their parents they want you to be at their party, word of mouth is the best advertising.

14. Fun Jump Rentals

The fun jump rental business can be as much fun, and as profitable as you want to grow it and make it! For most fun jump rental service businesses, the items needed would include inflatables for jumping and bouncing. Some with slides, that go easily up and down, with portable air blowers to keep them inflated. Kid’s parties would probably be your biggest customer base. You would want to have a nice flyer made up that you can pass out at all parties. You should include some nice signs on your car. You should pass out flyers at birthday parties, kid’s day care centers. You can post flyers at parks and playgrounds, and just about anywhere you can get a good response from parents.

You can target grand openings, children’s stores, pumpkin and Christmas tree parking lot sales, schools, day care centers and other places. You might want to mail a flyer to would be party planners, catering services, clown services, anyone that also interacts with kids, and parties are a prime spot for you to pass out some of your flyers, because they might know somebody, who knows somebody, and your business will grow. You could have others out there someday, placing your fun jump rentals for you while you collect the money and profit!

15. Pet Transportation Service

If you like taking care of, and being around pets, and especially other peoples pets, you could make a good living setting up your own pet transportation service, and building up a regular customer list of pets that need a ride to the groomers, a or a trip to the veterinarian. You could also offer to spend some quality playtime with their animals. Something as basic as fetching with someone’s pet might be all that is required.

If you can make up a flyer with your new business name, and add some services to a list on your flyer, you could pass or mail these out to local veterinarians, animal doctors, pet hospitals and more. You could attend some local dog shows, and place flyers under all the car windshields, since there are going to be a lot of dog owners their. You can do basic transportation and transporting of dogs and cats in car carriers for pets. You could also offer and have right on the spot all the equipment necessary to offer a bath, thus adding to your pet transportation service success.

There is a business of moving horses from one location to another. Some people have horses, but no trailer to move the horse with. You can buy your own horse trailer and offer horse transportation, usually from the horse’s home, to doctor’s office, or if someone buys or sells a horse, they need it to be moved also. Some rental companies like U-haul for example, rent horse trailers that you can rent if you only need a horse trailer on occasion, that would save you money until you bought one.

16. Mobile Photography

If you like to take photos, and you can learn, or know more than the average person about taking pictures, than you could start your own mobile photography service business. You could easily go to your local library and check out several books on taking photos yourself. You would be starting on your way to becoming an expert, after reading all the books you can get your hands on. Just because the average person, would never read, even one photography book, and you will learn so much more than the average Joe on the street.

When you can get the equipment necessary to take quality photos, you can make up a flyer and offer your services to wedding chapels, jewelry stores, tuxedo rentals shops, schools, mobile DJ’s and more. You should include a sign on your auto, so others can call you for an appointment. You should have nice flyers made up that you can pass around at each of your photography sessions. You can offer other businesses a commission or flat rate for any new business that they can send your way.

17. Mobile Dry Cleaning Service

You can start your own mobile dry cleaning service business, and work for yourself, part time, or full time. You do not need to own your own dry cleaning store, to make money in the dry cleaning business. There are plenty of dry cleaning stores, all around town. You can work out a deal with one, or several of them, and let them know you are starting your own mobile dry cleaning service. You will be picking up customers dry cleaning, from their offices, businesses, stores, and homes, and you will be bringing it in for cleaning, and you want a discount rate for quantity orders, you will be bringing them.

You could make up a flier, and contact business with lots of employees, let them know you are out front from such and such a time, and you take, and receive their laundry, at those times. You could set up your own route, and work where you want to work at. You could spend the morning out picking up the laundry orders. Then, in the afternoons, you could drop it all off, and take the rest of the day off.

18. Restaurant Hood & Screen Cleaning Service

You can start your own mobile restaurant hood & screen cleaning service business. Many restaurants, bakeries, food stores, markets, etc… have stainless steel hoods and screens that collect and trap the grease, and need to be cleaned on a regular basis. Once you get an account, you can get new customers and grow your regular customer base. With regular intervals of cleaning required, to get them working again to their best ability and cleanliness.

Most of the hoods are over services like hot fryers, grills, ovens and stoves. The screens are usually the kind you can take out, and either take to a car wash or use a high pressure washer to clean the screens right on the spot so you can get the job done faster. This service is a service almost all fast food and other types of food stores need on a continual basis. You could make up a flyer and drop one off at every place you know that has a hood system inside. You would need basis cleaning supplies like grease cleaner, and rags to clean the hood areas that suck up to the screens usually. The screens with grease will be the dirtiest, but those are usually removable and you take them to be steam cleaned.

If you had a trailer with a steam machine right one the trailer, you could clean them right on the spot. For just starting out, and to save you money in the beginning, you can use a self-service car wash, with high pressure and hot water, for the same effect until you can purchase your own high-pressure washer for.

19. Gift Basket Consignment

You can be your own boss, and still make a lot of money in the gift basket business. One particular business that is very successful and has many employees, is a gift basket operator business that helps other businesses grow. Example, a business buys a gift basket from you, to be sent to another business, as a thank you for doing business with them. The gift basket will really stand out, because it is so rare.

Each gift basket could have a giant size bottle of alcohol, soft drink, or any giant size item that will stand out. Some bottles could be as tall as 2 feet tall to make them stand out, surrounded by other business trinkets that a whole group of people would enjoy. You could include enough drinks and food items to really let someone know they mean thank you, and the place getting the gift basket could have a nice party. For companies like lawyer firms, doctor’s office, real estate firms, etc, or anything were you need to stand out, you would not mind paying for several hundred dollars to well over a thousand dollars for some pretty sophisticated gift baskets! Who would not love getting a gift basket that big!

You could do theme gift baskets, for holiday occasions, sports gift baskets, business gift baskets, etc. You could offer some of your gift baskets on consignment to area stores, that you think they would sell good in. They could get a percentage from you for each gift basket they sell. You could have a chain of stores selling your gift baskets and make a ton of money.

You could offer a delivery service for your gift basket also. For a shorter or smaller budget, you could make up several nice gift baskets, take some digital photos and have them printed in color. You could use them as, or displays to pass out to stores, instead of the actual gift baskets. For each gift basket they sell for you, and you ship for them, you could give them a percentage of each sale. You should have nice signs made up that you can put on your automobile, to get extra orders. There is still a lot of money to be made with gift baskets for the right niche markets!

20. Amazon.com & Half.com Selling

Selling on Amazon.com and Half.com can be very profitable, if you have some good items you like to sell, like videos, DVDs, books, video games, and even general merchandise. These companies usually take 15% of the selling price as their profit, and you get the rest. You go to their website, and type in either the name of the item you are selling, or you can also type in the UPC numbers or the ISBN numbers for items.

You can sell new, used, and collectibles for many of your items. If you have a used DVD for example, you would type in the name or UPC code and that movie would pop up on your computer screen. You would list yours for sale, and then you would list it in the condition it is in, new, like new, very good, good, and acceptable.

You can sell for any price you would like to, and the site will also recommend a selling price you could sell for. It is better to sell your items for the price you need. You can charge a few pennies less than the same condition movie that someone else might have up for sale. You usually have to be the cheapest to have people buy your items quicker. The more items you have up for sale, the more money you will make. If you have 100 items up for sell, and sell 10% of them, you have sold 10 items. If you have 10,000 up for sale, and you sell 10% of them, you have sold 1,000 items, and that would be a much better business for you!

You can shop at garage sales and swap meets for used books, movies, DVDs, CDs, Playstation, X-box, Nintendo games, and more items. You could easily find lots of bargains to build up your inventory and business from swap meets, flea markets, garage sales, pawnshops and more. Some movies sell for up to $100 each, while others sell for several dollars each. Some collectibles can go really high! Books, DVDs, videos, and video games are all excellent selling items, and are relatively easy for most people to get used.

Most of these items can be mailed media mail, for the cheapest postage rates. You can do this at night, since you don’t really need to go inside the post office, you can drop off your orders at the drive thru drop office mail boxes at most post offices. The companies usually deposit your money into your bank account every 15 days. There service is nice, and the are very good at what they do! You can set up a business like that very easy and do it any hours you like.

21. Ebay Selling

Selling on ebay can bring in lots of money for you, and you can work your own hours. There are thousands of people who sell full time on ebay, and make nice incomes from doing it! You can buy and sell new or used items on ebay. You can get items from garage sales, swap meets, flea markets, friends and family. If you have the know how, or talent, you can make your items to sell. You can buy and sell brand new items, and sell them over and over again.

Ebay is an auction service website with millions of customers. You pay them a listing fee, so that you can list your items for sell. They are the biggest auction site, and you will get the best price usually from ebay, for your items. The benefits of selling brand new items is one, after you take your pictures and list items for sell, you keep one, of each item up for sell, just like you would stock a store.

If you have 50 products your selling, it’s best to have one of each product up for sale. Ebay also has ebay stores, where you can list all your items for show, and sell and list them for just pennies a day. You can showcase a lot of your items, if you have lots to sell. The benefits of selling on ebay is they have such a big customer base. Even if you have the oddest, most weird thing or things to sell, there usually is someone out their, that has a use for it. Airplanes, clothing, furniture, toys, music, and every other thing you can imagine, has probably been for sell on ebay at one time or another. You can do completed auction searches, to do research to see what you can kinda expect for your item to sell for. Some of the ebay stores that are out in shopping malls now, have to first do a completed auction search to see if your product or item is valuable enough for them to sell it for you.

The best deal about selling on ebay yourself is, you control everything. There is a rating system, so if you sell good, others can tell others about you, and you can sell even more. Do a bad job of selling, and they also can see that. It helps to do the best job you can. With ebay, they have there own credit card accepting system, called paypal, that is really easy to do, and increases your sales tremendously. A lot of small mom and pop stores sell their inventory on ebay to supplement their brick and mortar sales, and to help increase profits. Some have even closed their stores, and committed themselves to selling on ebay full time. This might just be the thing for you you’ve been looking for to be your own boss, and work your own hours!

22. Ebay Brick & Mortar Stores Selling

You can start your own business selling thru brick and mortar ebay stores that have set up business recently in lots of malls everywhere. If you don’t have the desire, or don’t think you have the know how, or computer skills, to sell your items yourself on ebay, or don’t have a credit card to sign up with them, don’t worry!

There are stores popping up all over America that will take your items from you, do research to figure out how much they think your item can sell for, photograph your item, write up a good sales description. They will list your item for sale on ebay for you, they will collect the money from the winning bidder, and pack and ship your item for you. After the action is over, and the winning bidder has paid and received the item, the ebay store will send you a check for your money. Generally most stores will take your item if it has a value of $30 or more, and they charge roughly about 30% of the total selling price for their part. Now this is the perfect opportunity for someone to have the store sell your item for you, if your item sells well for over $30, and then you can sell the same item over and over again.

You can also go to garage sales, swap meets, flea markets, etc. and find those items you can get a good price on, i.e.…golf clubs, designer clothing, DVD players, and other items you find that sell good on ebay. You can let the store do all the work for you, and you can spend your time out hunting for items that you can sell and get checks coming in everyday to you. You can have several ebay stores selling items for you at the same time. No two ebay stores are the same, one store might have a better reputation, more numbers by their name, and just do a better job, so try several stores.

23. Website Sales

You can start your own business, and make good money with your own website, if you do it right. It’s not as easy as getting your website built, and then submitting it to the search engines and then bam, you have a million customers at your website buying stuff! If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it! The good news is, if you target your customers just right, and have a nice looking, functional, and shopping cart friendly, easy to navigate website, you should have a good chance at making good sales.

You would want to submit your website to all the free search engines, especially the big ones like yahoo, google, MSN, AOL and more. There are tons of smaller, less heard of, search engines you can submit to also. Google wasn’t always as big as it is today. You will need Meta tags somewhere in your website to be able to get picked up by the search engines, so that is very important for spiders, as they are called, to find you. Some smaller, cheap rate website builders, do not offer this sometimes, so be sure to ask, or you could be wasting lots of money.

If your website sells golf items for instance, you might want to do some advertising in golf magazines for your website. You would also want to join the latest craze of sponsored advertising thru the major search engines, they show the free searches, and then they have other places close by that show the sponsored searches along them that you pay for. You pay a certain amount for click thru’s, and pick out keywords that people use to type in there own searches when they are searching on the internet for something. You want to use keywords that you think they might type in, to look for something. When someone does a search with the keywords you picked out, your site pops up, along side other sites. If someone clicks on your site, you get charged a certain amount of money, this is really good advertising and the search engines have been making a lot of money off of this type of advertising instead of just the free search engine results.

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