Starting a venue for sales on the internet can be a daunting experience if you’re just looking at technical requirements. You need a server, a certificate, a merchant services vendor, tested and trusted security and on top of that, you need something to sell! Putting all the pieces together can be a lot of work.

There are two my internet business sales options we’re going to review – eBay (which you’ve probably heard of) and Etsy. Both give a venue for you to sell to qualified buyers, and both have their ins and outs, including ways to automate product loading. Understand that we’re not endorsing either of them – just providing a conduit of information for you to make an informed decision from.

eBay is the second most widely known sales site on the Internet, after Amazon.com. It has millions of visitors each and every day, and uses the “auction” mechanism to keep people coming back. From the perspective of someone selling products on the internet, it has an easy setup procedure, and you can start or stop at any time. If you don’t like it, you haven’t sunk a lot of money into it to get it running.

eBay offers several options, including having your own eCommerce store, or even a custom auction site. You can personalize it to suit your own business, and there’s a lot of flexibility in setting the sale price, descriptions and pictures, even shipping options. eBay’s primary strength is the user community; everything on eBay has been tested repeatedly, and there’s extensive documentation that’s very good to work from. Do avoid any service that offers to “list things for you” on eBay. It’s easy enough to figure out how to do it on your own.

Once you figure out what you want to buy, make sure it is selling and check out the competition. You can research similar products that are on eBay and read the customer reviews. These customer reviews are also another advantage to using eBay as a precursor to your own webpage. You can later state your rating and quote some customer reviews that you received from eBay.

So, now that you’ve picked a sales venue, what next? First, save any item descriptions for things you’ll regularly have in stock in a text file or word processing file. It allows you to cut and paste whenever a new item shows up. Next is to figure out what you’re going to sell – the most common choice is to buy items at wholesale (or as remaindered goods) and sell lots on eBay. You’ll need to do some research to find a supplier (and a good price) and to research what your sales niche is.

The third option is to sell information or services. If you like to do research on particular subjects, you can put it together in the form of eBooks, magazines, pamphlets, advertising, or software. This saves people much time and money by not having to do research. If you can initially invest some time the profits will come. These options are highly recommended in my internet business Review.

A variation on buy wholesale and sell direct is to find something that’s locally available and sell it for more money on eBay nationwide. This is a surprisingly effective avenue for all kinds of things, from rubber floor mats for automobiles to satellite dishes. Look for something that’s being liquidated locally and work from there.