Business Plus Baby

eBay first launched way back in 1995, and since then it has flourished to become the leading online auction sites in the world. No matter where you are from or what you do, the chances are that you have bought or sold something on the eBay website. But have you ever thought about starting your own eBay business? We take a look at why eBay is a great platform to start a business and how you can go about creating your first eBay business account.

Why is Ebay a Good Platform to Start a Business?

eBay is such an amazing place to start up a business because you require very little start up to get it up and running, and your stick will be immediately presented to millions of people. Unlike having your own website store, on eBay you won’t have to do much marketing as eBay already has a huge audience of buyers. eBay is also free to sign up to, while special business packages are available depending on your needs and how much you sell on a monthly basis.

It’s also extremely easy to use, and you won’t have to go and learn how to develop a website or have a customer support team in order to start your business. eBay offer a huge selection of tools to help you to create detailed listings so that you can sell your products on the platform. They also have a great support team who are on hand to answer any questions that you may have, or resolve any issues that you are facing with customers.

What You Need to Start Your eBay Business

You need very little to be able to start up your first business on eBay. What you do need is a WiFi connection as well as a laptop or desktop computer (your eBay account can also be accessed via a smartphone or tablet). You will also need a PayPal account to be able to receive payments from customers. A PayPal account is free to set-up and will only take a matter of minutes. You will need a valid bank card to link to your Paypal account if you wish to withdraw your eBay earnings to your personal or business accounts.

What are the Benefits of Doing So?

A benefit of starting up an eBay business account is that you can make a decent living while working from home. In fact, if you choose to drop ship items on eBay then you will actually be able to work from anywhere in the world! Many people choose to start an eBay business in order to make some additional income around their existing job. It’s so easy to create an account and to get up and running too. You can also choose to create a business centered around selling products that you actually love. No matter if you want to sell an antique letter tray or handmade candles, there is a good marketplace for it on eBay. Good luck!

Some businesses and sole traders think that as long as there’s a desk, productive work can be done. While this is true to an extent, the working environment actually plays an enormous amount in how much a worker and a team actually gets done. So many factors can distract, from noise and privacy concerns to comfort and the pleasantness of the workspace. It may also be designed inefficiently, with obstacles in the way of productive team working and collaboration.

With all of these things in mind, isn’t it time you re-evaluated your workspace?

Fully open plan isn’t always best

Many offices have been moving towards open plan office designs, with the aim of encouraging employees to collaborate. However, so many of the UK’s open plan offices are not properly optimised. They could actually end up decreasing productivity. This is because while team building, collaboration and socialisation are very positive things, workers also need privacy. They also like to be able to personalise spaces to some degree, which just isn’t possible in a fully open plan, hot-desking environment.

Job needs

Many people working in open plan offices will be doing very different work to their colleagues and this could be disruptive. For example, they could be concentrating on a writing task while a neighbouring colleague is on a customer service call. These two activities conflict with each other, and the workspace should be able to accommodate everyone and help each individual to concentrate. The most productive offices are those which can design and create individual workspaces based on the demands and requirements of the job, not the hierarchy within a business (i.e. the boss gets a private office and everyone else is in cubicles).

Flexible collaboration

A cleverly designed office space, whether open plan or not, is one which makes collaboration easy. You shouldn’t have to book a meeting room to work together as a team, you should simply be able to grab a coffee and move to a different part of the room.  Many businesses call in a specialist to achieve this fine balance between team working and privacy. Experts in smart space thinking such as Penkeths can ensure that a workspace is tailored to the way a particular business works, improving concentration, productivity and also worker happiness.

Variety is key to maintaining a versatile business that can keep up with the pace of its competitors and the demands of the modern world. Many different kinds of spaces, breakout areas and desking layouts gives employees more choice on how and where to work. This can improve morale, as well as boosting engagement throughout the company.

Greenery, natural light and morale

Whether you work in an office or in your own workspace at home, you should never underestimate the importance of natural elements such as plants, greenery and lots of sunlight. These are automatic morale-boosters, which make you feel more positive and alert. This nearly always equates to greater productivity.

Many people believe that the launch is the hardest aspect of running a business, especially if you’re setting up from scratch. It’s true that this can be tricky and hard to navigate, but this is only the beginning. The true challenge is growing your business and taking it to the next level. In order to do this, you have to monitor and reflect constantly. You have to find ways to simplify and streamline each aspect to maximize your time and profits.

Technology

Technology can take away a lot of your headaches, especially when it comes to saving time. For example, if your company deals with data, significant time and resources are often spent collating, cleaning, consolidating, filtering and restructuring. However, data ingestion tools can do this for you, handling large volumes on a continuous basis.

There are many tools readily available to fulfill all manner of processes. And if you can’t find an off-the-shelf solution, it’s worth looking into a bespoke application.

Outsourcing

Many small businesses start with the owner working in the business. This is fine in the early stages, but it is not conducive to growth. If you are spending all your time completing day-to-day tasks, you won’t have time available to grow the business and take it to the next level. There are many solutions for this, including employing more staff. However, this may not be feasible or financially viable in the early stages. It may be more cost-effective if you outsource some of your work. We live in a service environment so you can outsource most aspects of day-to-day processes. For example, if you don’t have time to market your business properly or manage social media, etc. find someone who can do this for you. You may not need someone to work on a full-time basis, just a day a week, etc. and so outsourcing is ideal. Or, you could look for a solution part way between this, by automating your social media posts.

If you’re a slave to your phone and email, this is another area that could be delegated elsewhere. Consider setting up a virtual reception service to take your phone calls and channel them to the correct person. Messages can be taken if you’re not around or are too busy to respond. And if you need something a little more than telephone answering, a virtual assistant can ease the burden. The advantage is that you don’t have to take on a member of staff and everything that entails. The work is completed by a professional freeing you up to work in other areas.

Stop And Reassess

It’s worth taking some time to go through all of the processes and map out what each member of staff completes each day. Involve everyone in this process and ask for feedback. You may find there are lots of areas that can be streamlined, simplified or outsourced. A company that runs efficiently and makes the most of its resources will maximize time and profits. Perhaps more importantly, it will provide additional time for you to work on progression and growth.

What are your five tips for small business success?

I’ve been asked by Fundera  for my top five tips for small business success so I thought I’d share them! If you don’t know my story, I started out here at Business Plus Baby back in 2009 when my second baby arrived and after a slow few years (that’s business-wise, my home life with two kids born 15 months apart was manic!) I eventually began making video courses. These days I make done-for-you courses at TotallyCourses.com and also record voiceovers.

Here are my five top tips:

1. Start building an email list from the beginning. This is SO important because a list is where you’ll make your online sales. You can sell on social media, but a list is far, far more effective. It’s not quite as simple as I’ve made that sound, of course. You need to nurture your list and build relationships with your subscribers by sending them useful information – it can’t all be sales messages. But start your list now, email regularly and the rest you can learn as you go along.
2. Start selling to your list right from the beginning. Otherwise your susbcribers come to expect only free information and many will unsubscribe further down the line when you start selling. If you don’t have a product yet, review products that you use and love, then include an affiliate link.
3. Sell what people want to buy. I see so many small businesses trying to sell what they love to make. If you’re lucky you’ll find people who want to buy what you make, but there are no guarantees there will be a connection between the two. You can save a lot of heartache by doing some research and then experimenting by buying or making a small amount of stock and seeing if that sells before committing yourself to your business idea.
4. All my tips have been about selling, which is a little different to much of the advice out there which seems to be all about finding your passion, doing what you love and releasing your money blocks! But I’ve found that selling is at the heart of a successful business and you have to get over any nervousness or ickniness you have about it as early as you can. No sales = no business. I’m not a natural sales person AT ALL, I had to work on this a lot and I still have a long way to go. But selling your product is really all about finding a solution to clients’ problems, or showing them something they are going to fall in love with. If you do it well it shouldn’t feel pushy or icky because you’ll have found a good fit before you even begin.
5. Enjoy it! Yes there will be times when you wonder why you got yourself into all of this and you will have to work hard. But if you enjoy it most of the time then you’ll go that extra mile, new clients will want to seek you out and you’ll spot the new ideas that keep things fresh and you ahead of the competition. If you do find your mojo disappearing, look at why that might be – are you isolated? Do you need more support? Then fix it.

Do you have any of your own to add? Please tell me below…