I was reading this article and I couldn’t help but agree that in order to stay in business, you have to be financially healthy. It’s not a receive-spend mentality that will make you succeed. It’s more like the receive-roll-into-business-save mentality that will keep you in business for a long time.

I remember a friend who started a small convenience store. He had lots of capital in the beginning and he bought all the merchandise and stocked the store up to the ceiling. It was a great investment and since the store is located on a busy street, a lot of street traffic will help propel his business to great heights. However, although sales were great in the first few months - he was taking in the money and spending it because sales were great. He didn’t even think of setting the capital aside that will be needed to re-stock his store. He just spent it without any vision for the future.

The store closed within a year. Lesson? read on…

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Popularity: 10% [?]

Kids get into everything, and we know that. They are kids after all. Most of the time, they get cuts and bruises and first aid kits are really vital in homes. If you’re looking to get into business in healthcare, one possible business you might be interested in is in medical supplies. I have a friend in California who concentrated his business around health care supplies for hospitals and he made a lot of cash.

Wound Care Products, most specially for households are a necessity. It’s not a luxury. All families should have betadine solution, bandages, sponges and wound-dressing kits. These are specially important if you have kids. Online companies offer these items and they come with free shipping. Why not? Besides, you will feel safer if you have these things available in your home. Things could be worse without them. Business advice? Look into health care.

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Much of my success on eBay was the early lesson that I learned while selling my DVD and CD collection. It was by chance that I realized the successful process. If you are looking to sell on eBay and expect to receive high returns immediately, you are more likely to get discouraged if no one puts a bid on your items. And why is that? You may be pricing your items too high for the common eBay user. Most of the people that log on to eBay are expecting bargain prices and therefore, they are bound to look for “great prices” or “great buys” while browsing through items. When I started, I didn’t care if my CD or DVD sold for a dollar. I just wanted to get rid of them. I listed all of the items with a starting bid of .01 cent. That got a lot of attention and my items received more bids than the same CD or DVD with a starting price higher than a penny.

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Popularity: 26% [?]

eBay is the leader among online auction sites. They generate millions of traffic worldwide. In addition to their U.S. site, they have localized eBay in 30 countries. eBay owns Paypal and Skype as well.

The genius behind eBay was Pierre Omidyar. It was started back on September 3, 1995 and the very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. To his surprise, Pierre contacted the buyer to make sure that he understood that the laser pointer is broken. The response, “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.” Big AHA moment!! The well-publicized start of eBay selling PEZ dispensers is really a fabrication. The site was supposed to be named Echobay.com as a part of the Echo Bay Technology group of companies. However, the name Echobay was already taken by a mining company so Pierre decided to shorten it and thus, the famous online auction came to be known as eBay.

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Popularity: 59% [?]

It isn’t enough that you find your niche and expect to be successful in selling your items on eBay. For example, you may realize that you can knit multi-colored socks and you can be very good at it. You may be the best person who can create multi-colored socks. The question is: Is there a market for it?

In my case, it was purely accidental that I found my niche by listing items that I already owned. I found out what fetched the highest price and what didn’t sell from my CD and DVD collection. The DVDs that I concentrated in buying and selling at a later time, were the ones that belonged to a specific genre because I found that there was a high-demand for it. Even with the specific genre, collectors would also put a cap on the purchase price and the profit margin could be limited in that way.

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Popularity: 58% [?]

As Netrepreneurs, you have to constantly keep your eye open regarding new possibilities. It would be nice if we could all get passive income from royalties and advertisements right? But that’s not the way it works - at least in the beginning. Just like any other occupation, you have to prove yourself first; then watch the money come in. You can’t demand a salary without your experience correct? Same with growing your online business.

I’ve done business before the internet even exploded. I sold men and women’s clothing door-to-door during my off hours. I found a wholesaler in New York that gave me the chance to start my business under consignment and it worked. He trusted me, I made sure he wasn’t disappointed and the business partnership was born. I did quite well in that business but I thought to myself, why can’t I not do this online? Why can’t I just list these clothes and sell them online and then ship it out?!

I opened an online website. Starting from scratch, I had to go and create it on Geocities. You may remember those funky web pages on Geocities? One of them was mine. I tried to promote my products and visited every other site I could find to create traffic. The online business didn’t take off. Why? There is no traffic. It’s like opening a store in a small town somewhere, in the middle of the fields where no means of transportation exists to get to you. That’s what happened.

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Popularity: 38% [?]