Start a business with free products, no inventory costs, and 100% margin.
Millions of people overlook the obvious when they are starting a
web-based business, but there are millions of people searching for
almost everything on the web.
Take for instance one new up and coming internet business,
CuriousCountryCreations.com. The owner, a student at the time in
Information Technology, was given an assignment. The project came from
his web programming class. The challenge was this: build a website to
sell something, anything, on the internet. Although it was just a
school project, Mike took it a step farther and looked at it as an
opportunity to make some money.
While he worked on the basic structure of a website that included a
shopping cart checkout system he contemplated what in the world he
could possibly sell. As a poor college student what could he
sell? He needed to find a product that didn't cost much. Mike
searched online and talked to a lot of people trying to find a product
to sell.
A friend told him about a person that sold a tumbleweed on Ebay. The idea belonged on Jay Leno's comedy bit "Found it on Ebay" but it had merit. Coming from a part of the country where tumbleweeds are so prevalent the thought of someone actually buying a tumbleweed was ludicrous. Sure enough, someone had actually purchased a tumbleweed on Ebay, and for being a dried up dirty weed it wasn't cheap. The person had purchased the common tumbleweed for a whopping twenty five dollars. For a free and accessible product, that is an excellent profit margin- 100%. It was perfect for a student who couldn't store a lot of products in a small apartment. Just go get the tumbleweeds as you need to ship them. Add Shipping and handling fees and a new business is born. The best part was sell one and you break even, sell two and you are in the black.
Michael did some more internet research and found that people search
for tumbleweeds and tumbleweeds for sale every day and with an idea
like selling tumbleweeds you can imagine how much competition there is
for the market.
If you are trying to start an internet business don't overlook the
obvious products or ideas. Do something that is familiar, interesting,
or easily accessible to you. The internet is such a huge marketplace
with an extremely diverse customer base. Anyone can find a niche and
build a profitable small business. Everyone is, or can become, an
expert on something.
Mike unknowingly stepped into a market that already existed and was
able to make it a profitable business from the start (including plenty
of laughs along the way). Once the first tumbleweeds traveled across
the country, courtesy of curiouscountrycreations.com and UPS, Mike was
forming ideas for more products. Homemade candles were an experiment,
dirt bags (aka desert mud), wheat stalks, Idaho potatoes, cattails. All
natural and easily accessible products that he had never thought of
as money-making ideas, but they turned out to be successful. Don't
be afraid to constantly modify products and the way that you word the
content-- through research, trial and error the web-based business can
expand and become more and more profitable.
Biography: Mike Rigby, is the owner of CuriousCountryCreations.com.
Entrepreneur of products like: Tumbleweeds, Wheat Sheaves, Infant Headbands, Snowball Kit,
and Unique Christmas Gifts.