Dwayne – You seem kind of like a guru on the online shopping stuff. My husband and I want to try and make some extra money by doing something online. We both have jobs but we figure we can spend about 3 hours on each weeknight and one weekend day to make a go of selling something on the net. We have a few hundred (maybe $500) to put into it. Can you suggest anything? We see the wholesale and dropship ads all over. Does that work?.

Answer:

Howdy Kelly;

Okay that is a great dream and a nice nest egg to start with. First you’re not going to replace your day job any time soon with a $500 investment, but with a little elbow grease and several weekends you can parlay that into something that will pay a car note and maybe create some mad money to boot.

First while I urge you to look into wholesale and dropship options, don’t just leap into anything just because of a sales pitch. Remember that landing page sales copy can be very persuasive and is designed to separate you from your money before you have time to carefully consider. So look into these options then come back and ask for any further advice once you find one you like.

Also consider novelty. Suppliers for novelty items like sexy panties and gag gifts are also an option.

Wholesale or Dropship products:

These are fun. There are aggregators like Doba and Simplix who you pay a fee to and they give you access to many ‘so-called’ wholesale products. Be careful because they are usually closer to 25% off retail so not really wholesale.You can also look into getting individual products and specializing once you find a good wholesale source. For example you can look are and select say, wholesale sunglasses to get started. Setting up a specialty stand at a flea market or the corner of a busy parking lot can make you more in a weekend than a year of eBaying the junk at Doba.

Remember that a lot of other folks are out there trying to make a few extra bucks on the web. If you take a moment to think and talk about differential marketing (how you can be different from everyone else) it can pay off tons.

We want to hear how it goes so please write back.

Thanks again;

Dwayne

But like we talked about earlier, there are still some great ways to make money out there. You can do it on the Internet or you can do it in your home town. For example, one of the coolest ways you can self-employ yourself and work part time while job hunting (if you must) is to set up as a booth, kiosk, or roadside vendor. It’s cheap to get started and you can make some great money.

One very nice company to work with is Moda Sunglasses. They provide nice packs with assortments of high quality wholesale sunglasses you can order and resell for a great markup and still have room to give excellent prices. Check out their site and see the styles and prices and do some thinking about how you could set up to sell these locally or even at online auctions.

Anyway, the world is changing and unless we figure out how to employ ourselves instead of running around trying to fight for the latest crappy job available things are only gonna get worse.