If you are skilled in crafting, sewing or cooking you may decide to make and sell home décor, accessories, jewelry or edible items. If you have an eye for bargains you may be interested in buying and re-selling antiques or other items. If you enjoy working with a network of business owners and socially interacting with your customers, you may consider becoming a consultant for an existing home-based direct sales company.
What makes a home product really good: Convenience. Your product makes life easier for your customers Portability. It ships easily. That also usually means it’s easier to manufacture. Cost. It doesn’t take an arm and a leg to manufacture. Try to get your margins at or above 50%. [1] X Research source What makes a home product not so good: Overly mechanical and liability-prone. If your product demands super high quality standards or puts you at a liability, stay away. No mechanical drills. Imported by big retailers. If the product you’re trying to sell at home already is being sold at Walmart, don’t expect much. Trademarks. Unless you want to spend all your profit fighting legal battles with huge corporations, stay away from items that are protected under trademark.
The size of the market is effectively how much money people are spending today on whatever product you’re selling. You can usually research market size online by consulting market studies, journals, and government reports. [2] X Research source The bigger the market size, the bigger the market opportunity. How competitive a given market is should be a big consideration in your choosing to step into it. If there are a lot of players vying for a piece of the pie, your job is going to be very hard. If there are not as many players vying for a piece of the pie, you’re going to have an opportunity to make more money.
You can get the best wholesale prices by shopping around. Reach out to several possible suppliers (with a junk email, unless you love spam; or by telephone) and ask them about getting a tester sample of whatever it is you’re ordering. A tester will let you determine the quality of the product you’re ordering. Be sure to ask about the minimum order, as well. If you need to buy 1,000 sets of dish drying racks in order to get the deal, it may not be a great investment, especially if you’re just starting out. If you are joining a direct sales company, get signed up on its website or through another consultant and order your starter kit of inventory.
Say, for example, that you order 100 vegetable peelers wholesale, stick your name on them, and then sell them with a 100% markup. That’s not necessarily a bad idea if you can get swift sales. But what if the vegetable peelers dissolve under hot water, and a week into your new sales venture, you’ve got dozens of angry customers whose dishwashers have been ruined by the peeler? If you had tested them, you’d know they weren’t a good product. If you hadn’t tested them, you’d be giving refunds, losing money and having your brand take a hit.
This also makes things a whole lot easier come tax season, when you need to be exact about what expenses you had and how much you were paid. Link a PayPal account to your business bank account in order to make online transactions more efficient.
You may choose to hire an accountant or bookkeeper to track these records for you.
Order business cards and distribute them to everyone you know or meet. Create business pages on social media sites and invite your friends and family to follow you. Encourage them to invite others, and make frequent status updates to keep your followers up to date on your business. If you joined a direct-sales company, review your materials for promotional ideas customized for your brand of products.
The advantages: Lower startup costs. [3] X Research source You don’t have to pay nearly as much for an online domain as you do for a retail store. Listing items on eBay is relatively cheap. Farther reach. Even if you’re in New York, you can reach customers from all over the world. Seamless marketing and convenience. Market online, and allow customers to buy with a click or two from the comfort of their living room. The disadvantages: Security issues. Credit card or other payment information can be breached, making for angry customers. [4] X Research source Difficulty and time associated with delivering goods. It may be difficult and take weeks to ship a product to Tanzania, for example.
It’s becoming increasingly easy to build your own sales channel online. Many online services now exist, like Shopify, that let you pay for someone else to build and maintain your sales tools for you. The less commission you need to give eBay on each sale, the more money stays in your own pocket.
Cycle the feedback you get into making your products even better. Iterate on bad designs, negative interactions, or product flaws. Remember that the customer is always right, even when they aren’t. It’s one of the hardest parts of doing business, but it’s one of the oldest rules in the book. If you treat your customers like undeserving bums, they’ll feel like that. And while that may feel good after a brutal exchange, it certainly doesn’t pad the wallet.
Negotiate better prices from wholesale. As you buy more in bulk, your power to negotiate goes up. Don’t be afraid to use it! The wholesalers want your business. Look for recurring revenue sources. Think about ways you can ensure repeat business. Could email, snail mail, a subscription pack, or something else creative get you return business? Ask for help, or outsource. Could a few more pairs of hands and legs help you deliver more packages and increase the sales you make? Especially if you’re only selling part-time, constant trips to the post office and regular time sunk into payment processing could be eating away at your profitability.
