Written with the would-be home based entrepreneur in mind

Online competition is fierce and I imagine you don't have money to burn so do a lot of thinking, sleeping on and research before you go out to buy stock and have a website built. There will be another future article about how do you make sure the website will be any good.

• How will you attract people to your website? Building the website and getting stock is the easy bit. Then what?
• What's the average conversion rate for this type of product? If you have to pay to get traffic to your site is it cost effective especially in the case of fashion items which can have a conversion rate of 0.5-2% which means you get one sale for every 50-200 visitors to your site?
• Once bought what is the likelihood that customers may want to return the product for a refund?
• What are all the costs of sale you can think of?
• If a new product is it being sold on the high street too which is a good way for getting the concept out there?Is there a demand for this product - are people typing in the relevant keywords in to Google for it? 
• Are there any rules governing the sale or import of this product e.g. you can't import python skin into some countries and any metal that touches the body needs to be nickel free?
• Is the product genuine and free from copyright disputes? Websites selling fakes are often shut down as my friend's 15 year old nephew found out to his cost after buying in some fake headphones via the alibaba.com sourcing portal to sell on a website he created - a Delboy in the making I fear.
• Use Google's 'Shopping' results and a general Google search plus an ebay search and also an Amazon search to see how much others are selling it for and how many others are selling it?
• Is the market flooded with this product already?
• What price will you sell at and is there enough margin to make it worthwhile?
• How trustworthy and professional do the sites selling the product already look? 
• Have the competition pulled out all the stops with their SEO efforts or is there room for you to muscle your way in?
• How much will it cost to post the product - courier service or Royal Mail?
• How much will customers be willing to pay for postage?
• How will you package the product so that it won't be damaged in transit?
• How will you store the product?
• Are there too many variants like colours and size to carry that would make it a nightmare?
• Will you be able to answer detailed customer questions about this product?
• Will you always be able to source this product should there be the demand for it?

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