bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

A simple business hack if you are a bit bored this week.

1) Jump on Alibaba.com.  Find five products you are interested in importing.  Contact each of the suppliers and order a some samples of each.

2) Setup a cheap local adwords campaign for the products you have sourced.  Point them towards a quick page of info about the product (collect emails of interest).

3) Finally once the products arrive, test one of the samples, sell the other on Ebay (or your local equivalent). You should be able to easily sell it for more than the total cost of both units, often making a tidy profit.

(Note: You can stop here, the next step is if you want to build a small business out of it.)

4) Review your adwords / traffic of your test websites.  Which has gained the most interest? Use that data to sell to a local retailer or setup a niche online store selling them.

5) Begin systemising, once you have sold a few start building some systems to automate sales and distribution.  Often you can get dropshippping (manufacturer ships direct to consumer).

Give it a go, have a bit of fun, I have done this every now and again made some good dollars but at the very least you’ll learn something.

(Passionate about local products? Do the reverse help a local manufacturer get their details on Alibaba and help them sell to the world.)

Tags: 12 hour startup, microbusinesses, monday ideas post

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 5:53 pm.