MattW

Ebay or some other venture. just after some experience. The wifette looks like she will be made redundant. She currently works part time term time and will find it difficult finding that sort of position.

Her take home is "pin money" so we were thinking of doing something on ebay or even an online shop and just interested in other peoples experiences.

Failing that I'll ship her off to work on the till at Asda!!

mamoon2

I run an online business selling Toys / Outdoor Toys / Kids Furniture. We have our own website and don't sell on eBay.

eBay is quite hard to make money from nowadays. You have the listing fee's, selling fee's, paypal fee's and then your postage. What is she thinking of selling? Is it something that there is a niche market for?

With your own website you need to bear in mind that it will take 12 months and money spent on search engine optimisation before you really get the google rankings you will need (i.e first page).

You could look at Google Adwords but this can be an easy way to lose money fast.

I know people who sell through Facebook, clothes / shoes / jewellery. Does she have many Facebook friends? As this could be something she could look at

Childminding can earn good money and the government pay for the course which is done at night.

MattW

Thanks for the reply. I had thought ebay was probably a dead duck. She's not thought of what she wants to do, she needs to decide and probably something of interest.

We have two of our own so child minding is out! lol

Timwinner

iTrader: (3)

Its all about the product, The benefit with eBay is you have an instant market place. You might not get the best initial return but you can start to get an audience.
Mrs Winner sells baby clothes on eBay as a hobby. She has an eBay shop and its gets the punters in. Once they are customers you can send them mail outs etc and get them to the shop URL where as mentioned above you can avoid sellers fee's etc.

There is no harm in the first instance in opening an eBay shop, It only takes 20 minutes as its a good way to test the market.

spufus

iTrader: (2)

That's not strictly true.

If you choose the right market & build the site to be as Google friendly as possible, there is no reason for you not to be very highly ranked in Google very quickly.

mamoon2

As a guide to setting up a business, it is about right. You're correct in saying you can get the rankings faster (mine took 6 months). But you need to budget for this not happening

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Blimey you lot are slipping.

By now I should have expected the following:

* A suggestion that the OP get his missus sold on ebay

and

* we need a pic of said missus to see if she can front the website

salsa-king

I've a full on line shop Neoquip and use Barclaycard for the ePDQ credit card etc payments.

It all costs

as if you want the better ratings on google etc, you will be paying.. sponsored links etc.

spufus

iTrader: (2)

I agree on costs.

However, if the site is built to be Google friendly you will keep PPC to a minimum.

bootsy

the wife found she could make alot more money doing local carboot sale and markets than ebay.and only pitch fees to worry about.plus she out of the house every sunday morning

mykp

here my nugget of info for what its worth without plugging what i do.

1st - ebay unless you selling shed loads of items with a profit margin on over 10% then its pretty pointless as with ebay fees and paypal fees then you wont have much profit. I have customers who turn over 1.6 million on ebay and they do make a profit, but not as much as they make from their own sites - but its turnover and also they get discounts from ebay and paypal.

2nd - If you use someone who knows what there doing you can get google, yahoo and the like to see your site in a few days but getting a first page ranking can take months and as with anything, the more money/time you throw at it the quicker it will get listed. (btw whats without resorting to adsense/advertising)

3rd - Setting up your own site can be done quick and easy, there are plenty of products out there but the Search Engine Optimization in these is limited.

4th - Using Google Checkout is a quick way to process credit cards, payment to google starts at 3.9% + transaction charge. Or you could use paypal. Both offer help on how to add a shopping cart/checkout system to your site.

5th - remember it costs nothing to look at the above in the first instance.


As with everything you have to speculate to accumulate unless your willing to invest time and effort into learning stuff yourself.