Starting a small home business

I haven't personally. But a friend of mine did and she found an established web-based retail business to buy. It was something that she was interested in and she didn't have all the hard work of setting it up, plus she inherited all the customers so it had more chance of success.

I'd like to import some baby products and sell online

As soon as I get more in they go really quick!

For online business the best things I found was getting word out there. Do reciprocal linking (where on a links page you advertise their business and they do the same on theirs) with other business and get listed on search engines and all the NZ business directories like finda. If you sell anything eco friendly then there are eco business directories (and surprisingly I get a lot of hits from these). Those are all free advertising options but there's lots of really good places to advertise but they cost... like ohbaby and magazines etc but it all depends how much you want to pay to get the word out there.

But having a good easy to use website is a must. I'm a big online buyer and if a website is hard to use I don't buy from them lol

Investigate having credit card as an option to pay as well. I got asked if I took cc's in the beginning and I didn't and it lost me some sales in the early days. But it does cost to have that option but it's worth it

Edited by kebakat

I used to have my own little business, but sold it when Oli was about 4 months old, as I just couldnt give it the love and attention it needed! Some things to consider -

Can the product be bought anywhere else in NZ / Online - if it can, then you will be competing with someone else, mainly on price. This isnt a huge problem, but will eat into your profits, and can also make it harder to get business if the other places are already established brands / sites.

How much time will it really take? Factor in website maintenance, packaging up the products to post, trips to the post office etc (one of the reasons I found my business hard, was that the product was heavy and carrying boxes to the post office to post whilst trying to manage a baby in a capsule was just too tough!)

How much space will you need to store the product?

Will it get busy at christmas / other specific times of the year - can you cope with the extra work?

How will you repsond to orders when you are on holiday - will someone else do it?

Sorry - I dont mean to sound negative, but I think that there are some "truths" of running your own business that a lot of people dont think about!

Good Luck!

 

Thanks SimSam, I'll give that all some thought too!