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One of the
downsides of living on the coast as I do is the winter. Whilst I
get to see some of the best weather the UK has to offer, I also
get to see the worst. We are not even close to the main winter
months yet but I have still spent the last couple of days holed
up at home watching some spectacular storms over the sea and
'enjoying' force 8 winds battering my house! Some of the more
crazy locals chose to windsurf in the incredibly rough sea but
given that I managed to crack a rib a few weeks ago windsurfing
in next to no wind, I figured I would give it a miss :-) It
looks as though the summer sun has been and gone for another
year.....
On the plus side,
as we creep into the autumn/winter months many business owners
will be heading towards their busiest time of the year. This is
especially the case if you are in retail of some kind as the run
up to Christmas should, ideally, mean that you will be rushed
off your feet for the next two or three months.
Every year I
start to see the same signs around the end of
September/beginning of October and this year is no different:
• My wholesale
search engines start to serve noticeably more search results
each day.
• My wholesale
directory sites start to attract more visitors and members.
• I start getting
more and more emails with wholesale-related questions.
• General online
activity increases as buyers start to think about purchasing
Christmas presents and sellers start to offer suitable purchase
options.
Of course, many
retailers will have been thinking about how they will approach
the Christmas rush for months already but if you haven't, there
is still plenty of time to jump on the bandwagon and make some
cash!
eBay still offers
one of the best online opportunities for anyone wanting to start
selling stock on the Internet. When I traded on eBay my sales
during November and the beginning of December always used to
skyrocket. One of the main reasons for this was that I chose to
sell relatively low cost products (less than £20) which were
ideal for people to give as Christmas gifts. Often time I was
only making a few pounds profit on each item but because I was
able to sell so many of them, the overall profit became
substantial.
Of course, eBay
isn't your only option and indeed, you don't have to restrict
your trading to the Internet either. Going back fifteen years or
so, I worked in a large office of around 100 staff for a major
UK bank. I didn't have the luxury of the Internet back then but
that didn't stop me making a few quid at Christmas. Instead of
selling online, I would simply buy some stock and sell it to my
work colleagues - it saved them trawling around the shops and my
prices were cheaper too!
If you work with
a large number of other people, this might be a perfect way for
you to make a bit of extra money this year? Remember, the
Internet isn't the 'be all and end all' - the offline world does
still exist :-)
And if you are
keen to get started right away, forget about Christmas for a bit
and concentrate on Halloween! Fancy dress is getting bigger and
bigger in the UK and we have access to a huge fancy dress
costume supplier with superb costumes from just a few pounds
each! Last year I needed a fancy dress costume for Halloween and
left it until the last minute to order and ended up really
struggling to find something suitable as everywhere had sold
out. No doubt demand will be just as great this year so why not
take advantage of it?
If you want to
make some money from the Christmas rush, you need to start
taking action NOW! Don't let the opportunity pass you by because
it's a long time to wait until next year...
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