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Working from Home – Be Your Own Boss!

For anyone who is sick of being part of ‘the system’ – working 9-5 for a company that gives you nothing like the rewards your work deserves – the idea of being your own boss makes sense. However, it’s very easy to convince yourself that you could not do anything for yourself – you could not run your own business.

The issue here is that most think of just doing what they do now online instead. For example, yes, it would be very hard to be an online mechanic who works from home. It would be hard to run a restaurant from home etc.
What you can do, though, is work from home by using your passion and knowledge to sell items. Thanks to marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Etsy we all have the chance to sell big. Vendors have the chance to make themselves really sand out on all three platform – but who would use each?

• Amazon allows you to either sell your own products or affiliate with sellers to promote their own products in return for a nice commission.

• EBay allows you to sell whatever you like, making it very easy for you to build up a greater level of business automation and to really help improve how you work and how you think about selling.

• Etsy is for creative types, great for selling everything from bespoke clothing to crafted items and accessories of all kinda.

All three, then, offer you a hugely impressive means of making a living from home. You just need to stop thinking of it as only doing what you do now for a living but doing it from home. Instead, you can use all of your passion and experience to help deliver a more customary and exciting product.

Being Your Own Boss

You can find it easier to give people a clear understanding of why they need an item. It can also make it much easier for you to make major changes to how you work. Not only do you get to choose your own hours, but you are total control of what you sell, where you sell it, and how. Of course, you need to motivate yourself to work hard, to promote yourself (or work with someone to help promote you) and you need to be ready to put up with the long-term building of foundations, but the rewards it can provide you with are simply incredible.

The best part of doing this for a living, of course, is being your own boss. It allows you to increase your own sales through an already busy trio of networks, rather than trying to build up traffic and visibility through your own website.

It also means that you can find customers across the globe, not just locally or by those who look out a company like your own. Instead of trying to compete with Amazon, eBay and Etsy by running your own little online market, why not join theirs?

Doing this can have a fundamentally positive effect on how you work, and when. If you want to be in total control of your destiny, then take your work online and start either selling your own products or find suppliers and sell their products in partnership.

Either way, you should no longer dismiss the idea of working online and selling through the trio of websites mentioned; it can be one of the single smartest decisions that you make this year!

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How to Sell at Rodeo Circuits, Craft Shows and Local Fairs

When heading to any kind of rodeo circuit, craft show or local fair you have a few interesting challenges to try overcome. Getting spotted in such a complex marketplace is, you guessed it, pretty damn tough. However, that being said, it does mean putting in the effort and the commitment to making sure that your selling actually makes sense from a logical point of view. With all of this in mind, then, let’s take a closer look at the best ways on how to sell at rodeo circuits, craft shows and local fairs with genuine success.

We touched on this a bit more on our post about showing up well at flea markets, but other tips that we can suggest to you include:

• Selling With Body Language. One of the most powerful skills that you can have is a positive, open and happy body language. At any kind of fair, show or circuit you need to be able to make people see that you are someone who really knows what they are talking about. So, give them no reason to doubt your expertise by selling with positive body language. Stand upright, maintain a friendly and positive gaze and always give people the time of day that they deserve.

• Appear Regularly. While you could have the best stall, the finest items and the most positive demeanour, a newbie will always struggle. People do not know your face and thus it can be hard to get people to trust you and your offerings. So, make sure that you take the time to come back; the more people see you, the more likely they are to give you a chance. Unfair? Yes, a little; however, it’s just the way it is, so make regular appearances and you will see a big difference.

• Provide Value. From offering a repeat customer a nice little deal to keeping items by for people, you can do a lot to help make you a go-to venue for buying from at any kind of craft show or fair. It can make a sizeable difference to how you work and will really make it easier for you to come across well; first impression count, so make sure that you are providing value in a bid to help give people an impression that you care and like helping others out.

• Post, Post, Post. We touched on this on our other post, but getting on social media and posting updates, offering discount and giving people early bird opportunities to see your latest and greatest picks can have a wonderfully positive effect on your credibility as a seller. Doing this, you are much more likely to attract people to return in the future which is obviously important. Crucially, though, such posts can draw interested parties to make more sales with.

Keeping all of this in mind, you should be much closer to fully understanding the positive nature of making sales on a marketplace. Any kind of craft show, circuit or market is going to be a hard place to get noticed – use the above, though, and that will become so much simpler!

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How to Sell at Swap Meets

When we spend time at swap meets, particularly a flea market, we often want to start thinking about making a few sales yourself. You see people selling all sorts of stuff and start remembering about all the sale-worthy stuff that you have at home waiting for someone. If you want to make the opportunity for buying and selling at a flea market possible, and you want to be a successful vendor, some very useful tips wait below.

So, what makes it easy to be good at making a profit at a flea market? What works best?
Be Variable. One of the first things you need to do is get used to dealing with various forms of payment. Some people will want to pay with cash, but plenty will want to use cards, PayPal and other such digitized transactions. Others might want to whip out a cheque and pay for it at that. We recommend that you invest in a credit card reader or a simple point of sale system to help augment your chances of payment.

• Appreciate Haggling. At a flea market, the idea of RRP is gone; what you will get is what someone is willing to pay. So, you should be more positive in terms of how you handle people wanting to haggle. Be open to reasonable offers and you can then work with the person to find a good middle ground – hoarding because you never got the right offer isn’t always the best way to be a successful flea market vendor, for sure!

• Get Graphical Designs. We recommend hiring someone to help you commission some cool signage for pointing out categories and the like at your stall. Make sure that you have an easy way to show that you are not just fly-by-night and that you have a pretty good idea about what people are looking for; sell it not just with the product, but with signage that really showcases the positives in buying what you have to offer!

• Get Online. While you are spending your time at a local flea market, you should be spending as much time as you can pre-market trying to get people to come on down. Get posting on social media and on relevant flea market pages – especially the one you are going to – about what you are offering and why people should come on down to try out your wares. A bit of extra advertisement and promotion can be very useful. Start up a social media page and let people know about specials, deals and major finds that you’ll be selling this week as a vendor!

• Stand Out. Lastly, be a vendor who stands out. Use louder colors, dress in a comical manner and just do all that you can within legality to make yourself more eye-catching to the potential customer. Better designs will really go some way in making that possible.

Take your time, look around, get inspired and use the ideas here to really sell yourself and make being a flea market vendor so much simpler!

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How to Become a Flea Market Vendor

Are you looking at becoming a flea market vendor? Then you will have very likely realized just how hard that can be to pull off in the right manner. Becoming a flea market vendor takes a lot of work and usually means putting in the effort for a long time to make it successful, but a little bit of extra hard work today could pay off for you tomorrow.

So, what kind of tips and tricks do you need to know if you are going to become a successful flea market vendor long-term?

• Appreciate the Pros. First off, take the time to know why you want to do this. Being a vendor is pretty low-cost as most of the things you need you already own. It also has very low overheads so you can avoid making this a drain on your finances for other ventures. Add in the fact it is about as flexible as you need – when you can make it, you will – and that you don’t need to make it your full-time job, and becoming a flea market vendor has many more pros than cons!

• Choosing Wisely. To start off with, though, you will need to do a bit of digging around to find local flea markets where your items would be appreciated. Many flea markets have a broad but general theme that you should look to try and conform to. If you are selling clothes, avoid going to one that is all about appliances. Choose a flea market that fits your target market and is actually permitted to sell the items that you wish to put on the market, firstly!

• Understand Legality. Another issue is that you might need to get a business license or a tax number to be a flea market vendor – it depends on where you are selling and where you are based. Our best recommendation is to go to your local flea market and see what people have to say. Most of the time, you can get the full understanding of everything from sales tax to licensing requirements without too much stress or frustration.

• Get Sorted. Now, you need to think about getting set up. Buy some great market stall equipment – tables, a tent, some protection and coverage from bad weather or the sun, a seat, a storage safe for keeping all of your takings and, if you wish, some kind of protective barrier to help make sure people cannot push up and help themselves to what they wish without any means of halting them.

• Follow the Rules. On the day when you turn up, follow the rules for times to be set up for, or be there as early as you can to get ready to make your market a success. Be there sharp for a good space as well as for enough time to make your booth as presentable as possible.

Following all of this, you should find it much easier to understand how to become a flea market vendor without too much consternation!

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SASS - Single Action Shooting Society

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