You're deeply unhappy. You want to quit your job. You want to start your own business.

But what business will you start? Don't focus on a "business" idea yet. Think in terms of buying and selling. Nothing happens in business until someone sells something.

You can trade your way into money. That is, you can buy something lots of people want, and sell it for at least three times more than you paid for it. If your margin (the difference between what you buy something for and what you sell it for) is wide enough, and if you sell enough of the product you choose, you're well on the way to a successful small business.

The Internet makes it easy to become a small trader. Take a look at eBay (www.ebay.com). Thousands of small traders make money on eBay, selling everything you can imagine, and then some.

=> Buy cheap

First comes product. What do people want? To get ideas, check the Lycos 50 ( http://50.lycos.com/) to see what people are searching for each week.

Another site for getting ideas for products is Ubercool at http://www.ubercool.com/

Basically, when you're choosing a product, it comes down to your intuition. What do you think will be popular enough, so that you can sell enough to make a good profit? Take your time over making a decision.

Tips for making your product choice:

• Choose a product you're interested in, and that you have some experience in using. For example, weight loss products will make money for you for the foreseeable future --- people are always looking to lose weight. If you've had success with a particular weight loss product, such a product would be an excellent choice for you to sell.

Many of these products are sold via MLM (multi-level marketing), so the benefit here is that you don’t need to worry that you won't have enough of the product to sell. (Note: this doesn’t mean that I endorse MLM schemes. As in all things, buyer beware.)

• Join an affiliate program. These programs pay you a commission when you sell their products. You'll find thousands of affiliate programs online.

• Consider your storage space. Large products need plenty of storage space. Packing and shipping for large items is also a hassle. (Of course, you can simply act as an agent, in which case the manufacturer ships the product.)

• Can you create your own product? If you're a creative person, like a writer or an artist, you can certainly create your own products and sell them.

If you're a writer, ask yourself: what people will pay money to learn? Then create an information product which teaches them how to do it. Your information doesn’t need to be a book. It can be a tape, a booklet, an ebook, or a multimedia CD.

If you're an artist, "greeting cards" is one of the most popular search terms on Lycos. Can you create greeting cards to order? Print up cards on your computer?

=> Sell dear

How do you price your product?

You need to know your margins. Take into account what the product costs you, plus your overheads, plus the value of your time. If a product costs you a dollar, and your overheads are five dollars, and it takes you a hour to create and sell each one, you'll need to price the product at $16 if an hour of your time is worth ten dollars.

=> Make money

You've got a product, you've priced it well, and you're all set to sell it.

Selling it is the fun part, yet this is where many business people come unstuck. Nothing sells itself. People have to know that you have the product, and you need to tell them what the product will do for them.

The easiest way to sell anything is via a classified ad. The next easiest, is to sell it on eBay, or on your own Web site. How you sell your particular product depends on the product, and what resources you have.

So there you have trading in a nutshell. If your job is making you deeply unhappy, and you're not yet set up to make money from your creative talent, you can trade your way into a weekly income.

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