I started blogging here at families.com less than a week ago, and am just now getting around to introducing myself. I am blogging about home business topics, using my experience to generate advice that other families can use.
I started out very small, selling inexpensive items on eBay. I worked up to larger items, then expanded into having 100 or more listings at a time. My record was about 175 simultaneous listings on the site one year at Christmas time. I evolved from eBay into three other sites and sold on all four simultaneously for a couple of years. Needless to say, it was a ridiculous amount of work. My nerves, time, and patience were stretched to the limit.
In order to keep up the pace, I had to hire part time help periodically. I had to hire full time help for about six months once when I found myself drowning in work. That meant that I had to expand the business more in order to pay her and keep making a steady income. The business got so big that I ended up renting a store front and sold items in the store to walk in customers and sold the items in the back to the online ones.
The hours got longer and longer and I finally decided to find another way to go before my sanity flew away and left me. I had been doing freelance PR on the side for awhile, as well as mystery shopping. I decided to expand those ventures and wean myself off ecommerce for awhile. I have been working as a freelance writer since then, though I still keep selling on two ecommerce sites, including eBay, part time.
Freelance writing is much the same as ecommerce, really. There is searching out the work, delivering the product, and hoping for good feedback. The real difference is that there is no inventory to worry about and no shipping involved. I am enjoying the variety it provides every day, with no two projects being the same. It’s hard on a desk, though, as you can see, with so many different things going on at once.
Related blog entries:
If You Do What You Can Tolerate – The Money Will Follow… Eventually
