If you are running an Internet business and you use eBay as your auction site, you may be surprised to know that both buyers and sellers are boycotting the site and moving to alternate places to do business

2008 was a difficult year for eBay with sellers leaving in droves because of complaints against this auction giant.

But what can the thousands of people who have turned their tiny cottage industries into profitable businesses using eBay do? If you are one of the multitude of people who are getting frustrated with trying to build a profitable business using eBay, there are other places you can go.

—Amazon.com has a marketplace, aptly called Amazon Marketplace that allows sellers to list items for free. Unlike doing business with eBay, sellers at Amazon only pay commissions on actual sales made. Items that Amazon allows are limited to the items it already sells, but Amazon seems to be expanding this list daily. However, you are competing not only with others also trying to sell their items, but with Amazon itself. Still, it is an alternative if you are one of the small business owners who have decided that eBay is not for you.

—Bidville is another site that allows sellers to list any item they have for sale. Depending on the actual final sale price, sellers will pay a commission of 5 percent or less.

—If you make your own items, such as jewelry or other craft-time products, Etsy.com might be a good alternative. It’s “the place to sell all things homemade,” according to the site. Etsy charges a 20 cent listing fee, as well as a 3.5 percent sales commission.

—Overstock.com also has an auction area with listings for almost any kind of product. Overstock charges fees that are based the percentage of the selling price and also offers a way for buyers to purchase an item outright without bidding.

—There are also online classified sites such as Craigslist which have become very popular. Though most people use these sites to get rid of things around the house, they are becoming more popular with home-based business owners. The listings are free, you don’t pay fees, but you do have to deal directly with customers.

In your search for a new auction site, there are things to consider before you begin to sell:

—Research price. Make sure you’re not the highest-priced item. See what others are charging for the same item. If you are selling via an auction, setting a reserve price that is too high will only discourage bidding.

—Take the time to thoroughly research your product. Although all business carries an element of risk, the last thing you want is to be stuck with a garage full of some product that is not selling any longer. —Sell stuff that sells. Sell hot items that continue to be hot! Women’s plus size clothing is a solid seller, and on the other side of the coin, exercise equipment and weight loss aids also do well. Designer clothing, sunglasses, handbags and other items also do consistently well—even if they’re knock-offs (which should be disclosed).

Starting out from his Garage Jeff Bezos built the foundation of
Amazon.com from the garage of his two-bedroom house rented
outside of Seattle. He fashioned his first office tables from
wooden doors, angle brackets, and two-by-four lumber purchased
from Home Depot.

This article summarizes the recognizable aspects of Amazon.com’s
success and lays down lessons learned in the form of tips. You
have the opportunity to analyze the tips given here and apply
them with prudence to your own business.

You as the owner of your own home based business started – or
about to embark if you have not as yet started – with the same
resources as Jeff Bezos. You are in a similar situation – if not
much better position – than the Amazon founder because you have
the secret to his success to learn and apply into your own
business.

Tip No. 1: Be modest in your initial investment. For example,
your laptop or PC shall not necessarily be top of the line. Your
office location could be a corner of the house or your room,
basement or garage. Save on office rent by all means. Be like
Jeff Bezos and other successful marketers who spent prudently
and succeeded.

Motivation You should motivate yourself to succeed. When Amazon
was struggling to make profits for the first time, only its
founder Jeff Bezos believed that the business goal could be
achieved in a year’s time. Everybody was astounded when Jeff
Bezos achieved his goal after one year.

Tip No. 2: The lesson that could be learned from the above
account is to lay down and make known in clear fashion your goal
to every stake holder of your small business. They include your
spouse and your web designer, among others.

Write down this goal and post this on the wall beside your desk.
Save this goal in your hard disk and make the text the start up
page when you boot your computer. You can convert your goal into
a screensaver. Read your goal to yourself every day as you go
about your business on the Internet.

Tip No. 3: You should motivate yourself every day and pass this
motivation on to every one who’s involved in your business. To
paraphrase the author Wallace D. Wattles who wrote The Science
of Getting Rick in 1910, envision yourself right now as having a
very successful business and do every which legal and ethical
way to actualize your vision. FYI, Wattles’ book is featured in
my web site.

Change It is said that change is the one single permanent thing
on this planet. Amazon changed the way it does business through
the years. First it was an online book seller. Next it expanded
into selling music and videos.

Then it offered toys, consumer electronics and software to its
customers. These were linked with a host of new products until
this very day. Amazon has a constantly evolving product line.
Its competitors have a hard time catching up with the innovator.

During its initial years of operation, Amazon was not making any
real profit. It practiced instead the habit of reinvesting its
income into new markets. This it did to make possible for its
customers to make wider choices for the company’s offerings.

Tip No. 4: Your home based business should be run like Amazon.
You could be selling your single information product now. Two
weeks from today you will have added another back end product.
Next month you will have introduced into your product line the
inventory of the affiliate program you have joined in.

Tip No. 5: If your web site is content based, you should be
adding new content every day. Casual visitors to your web site
will become your regular visitors when they see new content
every time they come back to your site. And these visitors will
in the end become your regular customers.

Be a Generalist A generalist is one who does a multitude of
things. In computer language it is known as multi-tasking. This
has been the culture at Amazon.

Tip No. 6: You as the single person in your home business must
be a generalist, too. This means doing and knowing everything
that goes in and out of your business.

You don’t know any HTML coding? This is tolerable. You must
strive however to understand at least the basic formatting that
goes into you site code. This way you can make small insertions
into your web pages when your web designer is nursing a cold or
is out of town. Or you can learn a thing or two on scripting. By
the way, HTML tutorial is one of several categories among the
home based business free learning stuff presented in my web site.

Work Ethic Jeff Bezos was the company CEO and he and his wife
were the first workers at Amazon. Their work ethic was marked
with hard work and consistency, among others. These traits were
handed down to their employees through the years. Tip No. 7: To
succeed and last long in your Internet business, you should work
hard to put your business online in the fastest and frugal
manner possible. The important thing to consider is to start up
and put your small business online early and rapidly. If you
have to wake up at two in the morning to do your Internet work,
by all means stick to this routine.

Tip No. 8: You should be consistent in your business-related
tasks. If your content needs updating twice weekly, follow this
schedule with devotion. Visitors to your web site will notice
even slight changes to your content when they go back to visit
your web pages. Not to mention the search engine spiders which
would just be too glad (i.e., in electron manner of speaking) to
index new contents to your web site.

Be First to Embrace Technology Amazon was among the first, if
not the first, to adopt online book retailing. When the major
book sellers – Barnes & Noble and Borders Books among others -
realized this new way of selling books, Amazon was miles ahead.
Jeff Bezos surveyed the Internet horizon and embraced the best
technology on sight.

Tip No. 9: New technologies come and go almost daily. Some of
these technologies enable you to run your business fast and
easy. Other technologies rob you of your investment. Your duty
is to examine each technology and assimilate into your business
the best

Starting out from his Garage Jeff Bezos built the foundation of
Amazon.com from the garage of his two-bedroom house rented
outside of Seattle. He fashioned his first office tables from
wooden doors, angle brackets, and two-by-four lumber purchased
from Home Depot.

This article summarizes the recognizable aspects of Amazon.com’s
success and lays down lessons learned in the form of tips. You
have the opportunity to analyze the tips given here and apply
them with prudence to your own business.

You as the owner of your own home based business started – or
about to embark if you have not as yet started – with the same
resources as Jeff Bezos. You are in a similar situation – if not
much better position – than the Amazon founder because you have
the secret to his success to learn and apply into your own
business.

Tip No. 1: Be modest in your initial investment. For example,
your laptop or PC shall not necessarily be top of the line. Your
office location could be a corner of the house or your room,
basement or garage. Save on office rent by all means. Be like
Jeff Bezos and other successful marketers who spent prudently
and succeeded.

Motivation You should motivate yourself to succeed. When Amazon
was struggling to make profits for the first time, only its
founder Jeff Bezos believed that the business goal could be
achieved in a year’s time. Everybody was astounded when Jeff
Bezos achieved his goal after one year.

Tip No. 2: The lesson that could be learned from the above
account is to lay down and make known in clear fashion your goal
to every stake holder of your small business. They include your
spouse and your web designer, among others.

Write down this goal and post this on the wall beside your desk.
Save this goal in your hard disk and make the text the start up
page when you boot your computer. You can convert your goal into
a screensaver. Read your goal to yourself every day as you go
about your business on the Internet.

Tip No. 3: You should motivate yourself every day and pass this
motivation on to every one who’s involved in your business. To
paraphrase the author Wallace D. Wattles who wrote The Science
of Getting Rick in 1910, envision yourself right now as having a
very successful business and do every which legal and ethical
way to actualize your vision. FYI, Wattles’ book is featured in
my web site.

Change It is said that change is the one single permanent thing
on this planet. Amazon changed the way it does business through
the years. First it was an online book seller. Next it expanded
into selling music and videos.

Then it offered toys, consumer electronics and software to its
customers. These were linked with a host of new products until
this very day. Amazon has a constantly evolving product line.
Its competitors have a hard time catching up with the innovator.

During its initial years of operation, Amazon was not making any
real profit. It practiced instead the habit of reinvesting its
income into new markets. This it did to make possible for its
customers to make wider choices for the company’s offerings.

Tip No. 4: Your home based business should be run like Amazon.
You could be selling your single information product now. Two
weeks from today you will have added another back end product.
Next month you will have introduced into your product line the
inventory of the affiliate program you have joined in.

Tip No. 5: If your web site is content based, you should be
adding new content every day. Casual visitors to your web site
will become your regular visitors when they see new content
every time they come back to your site. And these visitors will
in the end become your regular customers.

Be a Generalist A generalist is one who does a multitude of
things. In computer language it is known as multi-tasking. This
has been the culture at Amazon.

Tip No. 6: You as the single person in your home business must
be a generalist, too. This means doing and knowing everything
that goes in and out of your business.

You don’t know any HTML coding? This is tolerable. You must
strive however to understand at least the basic formatting that
goes into you site code. This way you can make small insertions
into your web pages when your web designer is nursing a cold or
is out of town. Or you can learn a thing or two on scripting. By
the way, HTML tutorial is one of several categories among the
home based business free learning stuff presented in my web site.

Work Ethic Jeff Bezos was the company CEO and he and his wife
were the first workers at Amazon. Their work ethic was marked
with hard work and consistency, among others. These traits were
handed down to their employees through the years. Tip No. 7: To
succeed and last long in your Internet business, you should work
hard to put your business online in the fastest and frugal
manner possible. The important thing to consider is to start up
and put your small business online early and rapidly. If you
have to wake up at two in the morning to do your Internet work,
by all means stick to this routine.

Tip No. 8: You should be consistent in your business-related
tasks. If your content needs updating twice weekly, follow this
schedule with devotion. Visitors to your web site will notice
even slight changes to your content when they go back to visit
your web pages. Not to mention the search engine spiders which
would just be too glad (i.e., in electron manner of speaking) to
index new contents to your web site.

Be First to Embrace Technology Amazon was among the first, if
not the first, to adopt online book retailing. When the major
book sellers – Barnes & Noble and Borders Books among others -
realized this new way of selling books, Amazon was miles ahead.
Jeff Bezos surveyed the Internet horizon and embraced the best
technology on sight.

Tip No. 9: New technologies come and go almost daily. Some of
these technologies enable you to run your business fast and
easy. Other technologies rob you of your investment. Your duty
is to examine each technology and assimilate into your business
the best