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Online marketplaces are good for your business

By Bobby Buys

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 10Aug2009 Word count: 440 Viewed: 444 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Consumer-to-consumer online auction sites and marketplaces are a good way to earn extra cash or start a business. It is an ideal way to star a business if you have something to sell - but lack the investment capital.

The start-up costs are very low. You need a computer, internet connection and a digital camera, and many people already have all of those. You also need to budget for packaging cost and the cost of the item to sell - and that is about it. The start-up costs are in fact so low that, if you work from home, it is difficult to distinguish the cost of your company from your own living expenses. There are no costs associated with traditional brick-and-mortar business to get you off the ground.

You do not even shoulder the costs of your own Internet presence. You don't need to worry about designing, hosting and maintaining your web site or about driving the traffic to it; the marketplace does that for you. The online marketplace handles a lot of routine ecommerce tasks for you: it provides the trading platform, the web site and the software needed to transact online. You get the best reward because you sell directly to your customers; there is no middleman to take a portion of your profits.

Once you start selling, you have at your disposal some of the business tools that in "real life" only established businesses can have - for example, you can opt to accept credit card payments from your customers, even if you are not a credit card merchant. You also have access to site-generated reports that make it easier for you to manage your bookkeeping.

You are able to reach geographically distant customers. You are not limited to selling to people who are within driving distance of your store. You can choose whether you want to sell your products locally, nationally or even internationally.

The cost of failure is so low that you can try something else the next day. And as for starting a business during times of economic downturn - that too can work to your advantage. You will be forced to exercise discipline, closely watching your bottom line, which will only make your business stronger later on, when the economic environment improves.

Even if you have a real-world shop or your own ecommerce site, it still makes business sense to establish a presence on consumer-to-consumer online trading, because that is where the buyers are. By listing your products or services on consumer-to-consumer online trading, you gain instant access to a vast base of customers, more than you are ever likely to reach in "real life".

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