Can anyone give me pointers to starting home-based internet business to sell stuff?

[SaltyNuts]

use shopify.
beware the fda.

Thanks pantoot! Will check it out.

 

[Pantoot]

Thanks pantoot! Will check it out.

No worries. Shopify is easy, you can do merchant services through them with pretty reasonable fees and there are enough plugins out there to customize till you turn blue.

You don't mention what sort of cosmetic, but short of color additives you should be ok with the FDA as long as you don't make any claims that your products will treat or prevent any disease. If you are dealing with soaps then the CPSC gets involved.

 

[Tweak155]

Tweak155, thank you so very much! Haha you will not only find not a lot of business minds in here, but not a lot of minds in general! Mostly loser and trolls, as you can tell from this thread! So I take it you overall made money, you just didn't enjoy it so you wound it down? Thanks!

Basically I opened a 2nd site with a competing product and was busted for it. Overall I let it die down as I was overall pretty happy to not be packing shipments every day and worrying about the next order to come in.

 

[Tweak155]

Sorry, going to have to disagree here - this goes back to my statement on opening a restaurant. We have all the demand in the world for fatties that want to go out to eat every-day. It could be fast food, sit down restaurants, coffee, etc... we have a HUGE amount of people that demand restaurants of all shapes and sizes. Again, you will be crushed instantly, ESPECIALLY if you don't have any upfront capital (which most individual people do not).

If it's not a niche product, that means there is already a producer for it and there is already someone making the product. What does that mean? It means someone else has already established the market, and has likely already fine tuned it with cheap manufacturing and cheap materials than you are likely to need to buy for much more expensive.

Of course, it all depends on what your goals are though. If you want a thriving business, you better have a niche. If you want some side income, go for it. They are two very different things.

I guess you don't understand the word "necessarily"? All depends what it is and how you approach it. Even delivering a well-known product in a different way can bring you business. You have to be willing to put in the effort to keep trying different things until you find one that works.

 

[Safeway]

Use SquareSpace. https://www.squarespace.com/

The SquareSpace platform itself has inventory management, order management, payment management -- accepting credit cards, Apple Pay, etc. -- fulfillment management, return and refund management, and more. This makes start-up, inventory, fulfillment, and accounting super simple and eliminates upfront costs associated with developing your own inferior system. It's a great place to start.