DIRECT SALES BUSINESS
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If you are in the direct sales business, you are selling either your own personal product or someone else's.

Selling Someone Else's Product

If you are selling other company’s products directly, you will want to first explore the Internet to find out what product areas are most popular at the current time. Finding out what’s “hot” is relatively easy. You can go to Amazon.com and look at their hot seller's listings, Froogle.com (actually Google.com/products) list of 25 recently searched product areas, or go to third company processors like Clickbank.com and see the most popular product listings. Companies like Clickbank handle all the basic financial aspects (collecting money from purchasers and paying the company and affiliate commissions) of web-based companies. After researching basic areas, then use special software to further explore the popularity and competition of the many elements of a selected product area. The special softwares are found under the subjects of Niche Finder and/or Search Engine Optimization categories. (See section on Search Engine Optimization).

Soft Products
Many persons are making a living selling other person’s downloadable e-books, software or reports. There are directories on the web where authors have written anything from 10-page short reports to several hundred-page complete e-books, and either sell them or give them away. Some will even allow the person who downloads their writing to change the authorship to that of the downloader. These latter articles will have references inside to the original author’s other products. The same thing applies to authors of software programs. It is a wide-open system, where good writing on hot topics and how-to-tutorials. If you like to do research on an area and write articles, you can do very well.

Hard Products
If you are selling someone else’s hard products directly, you must explore the world of wholesalers and manufacturers or publishers. It is extremely important to buy at the lowest possible price. The best purchase price you can get is from a liquidator because they buy their products from manufacturer’s overruns, special prices for a percentage of manufacturer’s production, retail stores going out of business and wholesaler clearance sales. Those prices are like 5 to 10 percent of retail prices. As an example in California, the store, “Trader Joes,” purchased the entire production of a vineyard for cash, enabling the sale of very good wine for $2.00 a bottle.

The problem is that there are many so-called wholesalers who are actually discount retailers and their markdown is insufficient to give you the margin you need to make a real profit. A true wholesaler will offer products discounted at 40 to 50 percent of the normal retail price. So, when a “wholesaler” is selling at discounts less than 40%, scratch them off your list.

As stated above, the best place to start is at the liquidators, because they can have a 100% or 200% mark-up and you will be buying at 10% to 20% of retail prices. If you can’t find your product there, then contact manufacturers directly. I once talked to a vice president of a popular clothing line, and he told me that they always over-produce in case their products get an unexpected rush of sales. With products left over, they give steep discounts to cash buyers (usually those merchants that sell at flea markets). This means some manufacturers are willing to sell you products at steep discounts, close to liquidator prices, for small quantity purchases. It never hurts to ask!

If your product choice is an expensive item, like high-cost wrist-watches or jewelry, you may find your best discount contacting a retail store owner. The store’s discount on high-priced items changes significantly from the manufacturer even from ordering an extra product or two. So you approach the retailer to buy two or more from him at his regular discount price, which means he orders that many more lowering his costs per item and also gets to make a profit selling to you at his regular discount price, but you’ve received an excellent deal!

There has been a great increase in “wholesalers” who will drop-ship products you sell, relieving you of the stowage and direct mailing costs. This rise was based on overselling the E-Bay auction game. Unfortunately, their discounts aren’t usually that great. In addition, they may go out-of-stock on something you’ve just sold. If you decide to go that way, make sure you talk to their customers to check them out.

Selling Your Own Products