An Average investor would think about shares and funds when it comes to the word “investing” but Investing has lot of other options as well. According to research, it shows that lot of people world wide, now think about alternative investment methods. Trend started with the booming of these other options of investment and the falling prizes of shares.

Thinking about other investment options with low risk margins, Real estate, exporting, Work from home, Freelancing, Social networking sites and many other alternative options come into mind. You have to think of investing your money in an industry that has the lowest risk margin.
 

Real Estate 

Real estate sector is booming all around the world, especially in Europe and Australia. Recent researches done in Australia shows that, people prefer to invest in real estate more than they do in the mining sector, which is unpredictable. Land prices have started increasing at a rate never recorded in history before. There is a risk margin again, because you have to think relatively with the average income of the majority. There is a point, that an average person will not be able to afford even a small apartment or unit. First, second and may be the third owner might make a profit by selling a house or land. You have to research the prizes of apartments and houses before you buy. The latest researches show those people, who invested in real estate sector targeting a short term profit, have the difficulty in selling their investment property. Prizes will go up eventually, but there is a threshold. Average person, usually the first home buyers will be unable to afford a home of their own. Investors should consult a financial advisor or think about the time frame they are planning to get a return from their investment.

Exporting 

Exporting opportunities have increased with the decreasing Dollar value. Manufacturing businesses are rare to profit from exporting, because still China is the largest supplier. Most manufacturers are outsourcing to China because of the low labour costs. Primary industries keep on thriving in the export market. I am not going to talk about exporting very much. Let’s see what other opportunities of alternative investing we have.

Work from home

Many people tend to start their own work from home businesses. Many women today, are work from home moms. Work from home is becoming popular rapidly. Many men also tend to work from home due to increasing pressure in their workplaces. We find lot of couples working from home these days. Government assistance to work from home businesses has increased recently. Small Business Corporation offers seminars on tendering and other business issues with advisers ever ready to give assistance. Lot of big businesses has started outsourcing work to these home businesses because they will have less problems in employing people, and also they can get the work for a cheaper prize. These home based businesses work as independent contractors. They are the starting point of outsourcing.
 

Outsourcing
 
Outsourcing to Freelancers has become very popular with the work from home moms. Now it has expanded overseas.  India has become the major freelancing market place with its highly English literate people. Many Indian IT companies are freelancers. It is very hard to beat the competitive prizes of the Indian freelancing market place. Many businesses tend to outsource to India. Many American companies have invested in the Indian freelancing market. With the sprouting network places and increased communication methods, you can do the whole accounting function of a business from overseas.
 

Social Networking places
 
Social networking places have become very popular with the increasing freelance workforce. We see that many small Social networking sites mature in to mass communication and meeting places of business people all round the globe and then sold to other companies for millions of Dollars.  

With all these businesses sprouting up over the Internet, alternative investment methods have become the most popular market place of the world. In future, AIM will be the most popular around the globe.

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Why?

Sellers spend lot of time preparing their listings with correct key words and proper descriptions. Most of them do not understand that they need to consider about timing and traffic flow. EBay traffic is not continues as expected. It differs from time to time, day by day and also by season to season. If you list your items for auction, and if the auction closes before a peak visitor time, you are not going to profit as you expected.

Understand when to list.

Items listed for seven days on a Friday, will close on next Friday closing time. Your items listed on Monday for three days, will close on Thursday.

List your Auction to end during a peak time or in a more constructive time. You are likely to get more visitors if your listing time is lengthier. Most eBay visitors search several times a weak. They do not buy at one go, instead they bid at the last moment of the auction ending time. Most bids are placed during the last thirty minutes. Your listing will also appear under “closing soon” section so you are likely to get more bids.

Peak time daily, is between 8.00PM and 10.00PM.  Speaking of peak visitor time weakly is during Saturday and Sunday. Most buyers by during Sundays between the times mentioned above.

Listing your item on Saturday to end on Sunday between 8.00PM and 10.00PM will reduce your long listing fee.

Why 8.00PM and 10.00PM?

According to research, most visitors from Eastern Time frame, brows auction sites during 8.00PM and if considering Pacific Time, it will be during 10.00PM. So if you list geographically, this will help you to decide the ending of your auction time.

This post relates to my previous post about “why you should have a catalogue”. 

Supplier Hubs is a supplier managed hosted catalogue interoperability service. They aggregate mass data from supplier catalogues, clean and decode those data into standard of other catalogues. After decoding, resellers can access supplier catalogues in a standard format.

Some resellers have complicated procurement systems that can access supplier data. Catalogue item master file will be automatically picked up and data will be arranged according to the reseller’s system instantly.

As a supplier, you can host your own catalogue and let your buyers access it online. This can also be automated.

A supplier’s catalogue is the central location for numerous other business activities inside an establishment. If you are a business selling computer accessories, without a catalogue it will be impossible to operate. Data of all the accessories and stocks you have is in the catalogue. You also need a catalogue to access the list of suppliers and their prices.

The problem of catalogues

If your business is a small supplier, creating and selling a specific variety of products in which you have specialised and take pride of, and you have two main customers who buy from you in bulk. They are your biggest customers. Your business relies on their buying your products.

Your biggest customer decides to put into practice, an electronic trading system. They send a letter to all of their suppliers, telling that, within a given time frame, all of their suppliers must be system compatible with their new proven practise. That means, you must provide your catalogue data in accordance with the customers given format.

You are now afraid of loosing your largest customer; and you invest several thousands of your capital designing an e-catalogue that complies with the customer. You still communicate with the other customer via fax and phone.

Meanwhile the second customer decides to create a new e-buying plan and you will be informed that they too will be requiring you to create your e-catalogue compatible to their system. Their system is different and cannot comply with the system you have with the first one. Now you are shattered and will have to make a very difficult choice. 

If you say no, you will loose an important percentage of your sales. You are not able to say ‘yes’ either. Now you will have to invest a significant portion of your capital to make a catalogue matching to the second buyer.

Sometimes they will again require you to keep an additional list of your product records on their own systems through a hosted solution. This is not possible, with you constantly updating and re – keying your product details. It will be a nightmare and lot of errors are bound to happen.

So for this, comes a solution. ‘Catalogues must be able to interoperate’.

Small businesses that plan to sell their products or services online, must consider a range of issues before they start their E-commerce plan.

Some businesses according to their requirements minimize their involvement by joining the e-market place, where another business will purchase their products and sell it for them.  That means, if you have services or products to offer, another business will purchase them from you and sell it for you.

You do not have to worry about your marketing campaign. More buyers you connect to, more business you make. What you have to do is, send your product to the buyer’s destination or provide your service according to the buyer’s requirements.

There are many e-market places having various business strategies. They might act as arbitrators. E-marketplaces offer services such as business directory listings and Electronic catalogues.

Top market places to join are those that tender low cost financial accounting systems and connect with other market places.

Happy blogging.

Independent e-marketplace

Buyer-oriented e-marketplace

Supplier-oriented e-marketplace

Many businesses want to express their online presence in a professional manner to their clients. Free web hosting platforms are ideal for beginners. My best platforms are wordpress and Blogger. Disadvantage of wordpress is that they do not allow you to display banners and affiliate links if you are not having a paid version. Blogger is different, you can display many banner ads and you feel free. My blog with Blogger disappeared after ranking very high in search engines and later appeared after many appeals and talks with forums with its url changed. Is Blogger safe? Paid version will not have that effect, I agree.

Freewebs offer many pages and blogs as you like. Later you can upgrade to a paid version. I do not recommend this site for beginners to start with. Blogger is the best place for a beginner. Freewebs is a good place for professionals to express themselves and their portfolios. Freelancing professionals can use this site. This provider offers lot of templates that are very attractive and there is a “widget bank” to add what ever you like to your site. You can add and edit contents as you want and you do not need to know HTML.  

Disadvantage is that until you change to a paid version, Freewebs have the right to display their ads and delete any page or your website if you do not abide by their policies of publishing. This is only one platform from many. I am doing research on webhosts. There are many more.

I prefer Blogger or wordpress at any time. They are flexible. The exiting thing about freewebs is that they have a huge variety of templates to choose from.

Compared with Blogger and wordpress, they have very few widgets but you can upgrade your site to a Paid version or a paid e-commerce website. I created an account in freewebs just to check. I think it is ideal for Freelancing professionals to host their websites.   

Log in to your PayPal account and click the Send Money option. You will be directed to the form below. 

Enter the recipient’s e-mail address or phone number. Be specific and use the area code. 

Put the amount in the Amount box.

Use the preferred currency

Then click the option for: What you are paying for. 

Click the continue button 

Enter and check your order number and message.  

You will have the options to pay with your PayPal account or eCheck.

Select eCheck option. 

Complete the transaction.  

Your Recipient will be notified by e-mail and if they do not have a PayPal account, they will be prompted to create one and your money will be deposited automatically in their account. 

Happy blogging.  

I feel like mentioning my favorite bloggers apart from Christy and Sindhu. Give me a break. Yes, Surjit in his Gurushabad is one of my favorite bloggers with his little inspirational posts I recommend him as the best inspirational blogger.

Priyanka in her Friendship postcards has a nice blog with lot of friendships and lovely pictures. Nikki is a freelance writer and she writes flowing articles in her Chaos in the country blog. 

Happy blogging to all of you my fellow bloggers.