Businesses for sale

Examples of this type of listing can be found at the following sites:

http://www.businessesforsale.com

http://www.daltonsbusiness.com

http://www.bizbuysell.com

Check eBay Listings
Still struggling!  Look at eBay auction listings paying particular interest to any auctions that attract high volumes of visits and/or high numbers of bids. Busy auctions obviously suggest that the product is sought after and will therefore sell well if you can find a regular and decent supply of that product. 

Local Businesses
Look around you; everything you see, apart from the general flora and forna, is for sale. If it is sold then there must be a market for it! I often look for inspiration from local trades people, businesses in my locality that do a good local trade but lack the knowledge and desire to take their product / service onto the internet. Often relationships can be built with these businesses where, if you can build an internet market for their product, they will hold the stock and in some cases complete the fulfillment of the sale. For example, I discovered a business that manufactured and sold handmade ceramic tiles. I was able to negotiate a deal with the business owner where I received a 33% discount on their product range and when I made an internet sale I provided them with the customer and order information and they would complete the sales process. As it was my site that took the money from the customer the business owner raised a monthly invoice for all completed orders. After expenses my business made 25% on sales and held no stock and provided no fulfillment. We no longer run this operation as we were able to sell the website to the owner of the ceramic tile business after approximately 18 months on-line. We made good profits in the interim and finished up with a generous lump sum when we sold the website on. 

For further ideas, a lot can be learned from searching the top-500 sites and looking at the movers and shakers lists on Alexa. You can also use Alexa to analyze competitors and potential markets for traffic-trends to indicate how profitable particular product lines might be.

http://www.internetretailer.com/, which despite the similarity in the domain name is not associated with us, is another excellent source of information. If you are looking for proof that internet sales are on the increase, look no further. They also provide regular articles that provide some invaluable market sector analysis, which is great for helping to choose new and exciting product lines.

Technorati Tags: business planning, Product Selection, Product Sourcing

Consider the following criteria when deciding what product or service you are going to sell.

• Market – who are your customers and do they use the internet? If you plan to sell your product on the internet you need to establish if your product is well searched and ultimately purchased through the medium.  (This factor is becoming less crucial as most products are now being searched and sourced through the medium so regardless of your product you should ultimately be considering some form of internet promotion)
• Demand – how much do people spend on average on the product/service?
• Competition – who are your competitors and how can you create a competitive edge?
• Supply – is there a regular supply of the product and where and who are you going to purchase it from?
• Shipping – in relation to it’s size and weight, how easy is your product to deliver?
• Support – how technical is the product and will your customers require after sales support? If so, will they be prepared to pay for it?
• Profit – what is your profit margin? Is the difference between cost and sales price large enough to make it a viable project?
• Perceived Value – is the customers perception of what the product is worth similar to the sales price of your item?
• Costs – consider all the costs that you will incur bringing your product to market and ultimately fulfilling customer orders.

Apart from the profitability, the single most important factor when choosing your product is: how and where you are going to market it, if people are not looking for it where you are advertising it, you won’t sell anything!  In the marketing posts we will discuss the techniques required to ascertain if your product is well searched.  We will also look at search marketing (SEM) and try to discover how to pick up targeted traffic for as little money as possible.

Technorati Tags: Product Selection