| Car Boot
Sales: Have a look around your
house and loft. Is there a load of stuff that you
don't want anymore? Try not to be too sentimental
about this and do not dismiss stuff as 'rubbish'
- you could earn several hundred doing a few car
boot sales with it.
Old
videos and CDs are popular items and you can
fetch £2 or £3 for them. Books are quite good
sellers too (though check Amazon Marketplace
below first - you could probably get more for
them there unless very tatty) - asking prices
seem to be around 50p for paperbacks and £1 for
hardcovers. Toys are popular too - children will
lead their parents over to your stall! Hideous
(very) clocks, pictures, vases and ornaments will
sell fast and people may even fight over them! If
you grow plants these will sell also at around
50p each.
Obviously
you make more money at the bigger regular car
boot sales especially if you are willing to brave
the cold. Summer weather means you will have a
lot of competition. Watch out for the large group
of resellers (sometimes fondly referred to as
vultures) who will descend on your boot as soon
as it is opened - it is good to have someone with
you - one of you to unload and one to watch the
clientelle!
Amazon
Marketplace is a good way to sell
off your unwanted books, videos, CDs etc. It is
fairly easy to sign up for and Amazon handle the
payments for you (taking a percentage and fee for
the trouble of course!).
Making
Money from Your Website:
This
is possible but it takes a lot of work initially
if it's going to take off. You may build a
beautiful website but unfortunately the 'if you
build it they will come' thing doesn't work here!
Getting listed in the main search engines is
important - especially the DMOZ (listing
is free but make sure you choose the most
specific category for your site) as this will
ensure you get into the Google Directory. You
will need to get lots of other sites linking to
you to rank well in searches - we do have a 'readers sites' section on our links page -
if you have a site let us know! A great webhost
is oneandone.co.uk who sell
domains cheaply (free website addresses do not do so well in the search engines), have hosting packages starting
at about £2 a month though for about £5 you can
have as many domains as you like hosted on the
same package - they also have a free
website-creator so even if you don't know html
you can build a good site. There is also B-one below who are the cheapest in Europe at the moment.
There
are one or two other ways to have a small website
without being able to build one (but these will
still need heavily promoting to do much):
CafePress
(based in America but ship everywhere) will
create an online store for you free and they
manufacture and send everything too - you design
the logos and pictures to go on the t-shirts,
mugs, mousemats...
Then
there is Eshirt.it - slightly different European
company where you can design your own t-shirt.
You can also sign up as an associate and then
open a 'gadget shop' selling your designs.
|
