Everyone knows that there are plenty of online jobs and work-at-home jobs for technical services, but there are jobs for non-technicals, too!
SALES:
Are you hoping to start selling from home? What if you don’t have your own handmade, used, or value-added products? If this is the case, then there are many other options available to you. You may want to consider investing in a kit business or franchise. Either option allows you to start selling from home and still be supported by a pre-existing business with well-established systems. These options also help give your business credibility as the products are more well known.
business kit
These businesses are ideal for people who don’t have the time (stay-at-home parents) or comfort to jump into self-employment without a well-established business concept and support system. These kits offer everything from products to sell to marketing materials, business forms, and advice. HOWEVER, you should be comfortable selling and contacting your friends and family and complete strangers to purchase items directly from you. You also need to host a lot of “house parties” to make money on the low margins that many of these companies offer. People who are successful with these businesses make their money by recruiting many other people to their “sales teams.” If you are comfortable with this, these businesses can be great. Additionally, most kit-based direct resale businesses require the seller to travel and host or host product parties. It’s important that people realize this before they spend the money to buy your starter kit (usually between $0 and $500).
TIP: Starter kits are changed periodically to include samples of new or different products. Many companies also put their kits up for sale once or twice a year. If you’re not in a rush to get started, check the company’s website frequently for these changes.
franchises
A franchise is a business where the “franchisor” licenses the proven methods and trademarks of their business to the “franchisee” for a fee and a percentage of gross monthly sales. The franchisor often makes available various tangible and intangible assets, such as national or international advertising, training, and other support services. Agreements typically last from five to twenty years, and early cancellations or terminations of most contracts have serious consequences for franchisees.
With advances in the Internet and the introduction of direct manufacturing, it is easy for many people to design and sell their own products with little effort or capital investment. The best part of this new era is that most of the websites listed below offer full services, from marketing to collecting payments to drop shipping, making it easy to start selling quickly from home!
1. eBay or Kijiji – online markets to sell all products
eBay is the leading online marketplace for selling from home, locally, nationally, and globally. I have used eBay to buy things many times and have sold a few times. Kijiji is eBay’s free alternative to online auctions – it’s an electronic classifieds bulletin board. There are a few different forms of eBay business:
A. Sell your own used items.
B. Sell other people’s used items on commission or consignment.
C. Resell consumer products at a premium. Lots of people will buy low cost items and resell them for more. There are many reasons why this works.
– some items are not available worldwide;
– some items are not available in particular lot sizes (ie you can buy only available items in bulk and then sell them individually);
– Items can be slightly modified (ie painted, wrapped, sorted, etc.) and sold for more money; and
– Items can be purchased separately and then sold in kits, gift baskets, or amenity packs.
D. Sell your own assets.
2.Etsy – online marketplace to sell homemade products
Etsy is an online marketplace for buying and selling vintage or homemade items. Like eBay, this service takes care of the listing, marketing, ordering, and money transfer for you. You simply need to make the item and then ship it to the buyer. They have a great help section that not only teaches you how to use their site, but also covers: pricing, marketing, how-to guides, and many, many other articles.
3. Cafepress – online marketplace that allows users to apply their designs to customizable products.
CafePress.com is an online marketplace with millions of members who have created over 150 million unique items in customizable products ranging from apparel, home and office accessories to music and data CDs, books, prints, posters and cards. With this service you can upload graphic designs, logos, sayings, images, texts, music and more. Your creative designs are then paired with customizable CafePress.com merchandise. These personalized items (logo t-shirts, your images on postcards, etc.) are marketed on CafePress.com. The site handles the merchandising, ordering, money transfer, manufacturing and drop shipping for your items, allowing you to seamlessly sell products from home.
4. Lulu – online, by requiring the sale of your books, videos, CDs, DVDs, calendars, reports and more.
In their own words, “Lulu is not a publisher. It’s a digital marketplace.” Lulu provides tools to format your digital content, market it, print or burn it, and distribute it. I have not used this service and I don’t know anyone who has; however, it has won awards and the enthusiasm about it is great. Whether you want to use lulu for vanity posts or small posts, you can take advantage of their print-and-ship-on-demand platform. This allows you to start selling from home without maintaining inventory and paying upfront for volume book publications.
SERVICES:
Service businesses generally fall into one of the following categories:
Small Business Consulting: Provide expert advice to clients in your area of expertise (face-to-face or online).
Telecommuting: Working for clients exclusively from home.
Infoentrepreneur: Provide free information on a website. Money is earned through advertising, affiliate links, and by attracting customers to your other business ventures. Take a look at one of the most successful infopreneur platforms in the world SBI or read about my experience using SBI here.
Leading generation: Generation of sales leads, contacts and customer lists for companies.
Other services: Provide other services to customers.
There are many services out there to help people who want to create home-based businesses that provide services. Some examples of such services are:
A.oDesk.com
oDesk is a lot like eBay for IT services: It allows service buyers to post tech jobs online. Service providers can bid on jobs. Once the buyer has selected the service provider and the work has been completed, both buyers and service providers have the opportunity to provide feedback to each other, again similar to eBay. oDesk also makes it easy to exchange money for services performed.
b.elance.com
Elance provides an opportunity for everyone to find a job and do what they love. Individuals and businesses join Elance and create their online profile to instantly connect with businesses seeking their expertise. The Elance platform is a comprehensive solution for working on demand. Elance lists jobs in the following fields: web and programming; design and multimedia; write and translate; administrative support; Sales and Marketing; finance and management; legal and engineering and manufacturing.
C.Guru.com
Guru.com is the world’s largest online marketplace for freelance talent. Through its free service, employers find the best freelance and contract talent locally, nationally or globally. Created in August 2000, Guru.com’s web-based marketplace directly connects businesses with over 100,000 active freelance profiles specializing in over 160 professional categories including: Website Design, Programming, Graphic Design , business consulting and administrative support. Employers looking for professional experience post their projects or employment contracts on Guru.com for free. Professional job seekers register as free members (Basic) or as subscribing members (Guru). In addition, employers and professionals can take advantage of Guru.com’s SafePay Escrow and Dispute Resolution services, which greatly reduce transaction risks.
D.DoMyStuff.com
DoMyStuff.com allows you to post a task you need to do (ANYTHING like: pick up the dry cleaners, mow the lawn, make dinner, install software, walk the dog) and then people or businesses in your area will bid on it. proposal. .
E. Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing marketplace that enables computer programs to coordinate the use of human intelligence to deliver services that computers cannot. . Job posters, publishing tasks such as choosing the best among several photographs of a store, writing product descriptions or identifying artists on music CDs. Workers can then navigate existing tasks and complete them for a monetary payment.
Whatever you decide to try, it’s essential to research it. Talk to people who have started similar ventures, if possible try to shadow this person for a day and see what it is like to work in this area. This will give you a better idea of what you’re getting into and allow you to network with other business people and become familiar with how a successful person runs this business.
GOOD LUCK!!