Dealing with Generational Changes

Starting a small business selling stuff online (at a profit) isn't as easy as many authors would have you believe. In these difficult economic times there are lots of people looking for ways to earn extra income. There are also lots of sellers willing to tell them how to do it (for a price). Unfortunately, many (most?) of the sellers are especially gifted at writing advertising copy and may have little or no experience actually selling anything except their own products.

The technical difficulties of selling online are no longer overwhelming for many people, even those in the baby boomer generation. While still difficult for a complete novice, the selling tools get better and better. There is no question that setting up a system to sell online has never required less technical skill than it does today. You may find that hard to believe as you wade through some of the setup instructions, but, believe me, it's true.

This website came about because I have a problem. After a lifetime of collecting things at auctions, online and from deceased relatives, the time has come to get rid of a LOT of stuff.  I know I am not the only one with this problem, but have the advantage of extensive experience building websites and a son with expertise in designing and coding the systems needed to set up an efficient and effective sales system.

Selling Stuff (this site) is designed to serve as a "Hub" for our multi-site approach to selling collectibles.  We are convinced we get the  best exposure of our stuff buy displaying it on lots of small websites.  In particular, this is where we report our results with venues such as CraigsList, ETSY, and others.  We have so much antique glass to sell we built another hub website around the concept of an American Glass Museum.  That site links out to smaller sites specific to the many, many kinds of antique glass.

At Walking Rain Gallery we are building a network of sites to sell high resolution photos we take while traveling.  We expect to pay much of our travel expenses as well as completely manage this online business activity while on the road. So, Walking Rain Gallery is a "Hub" where we can exploit the opportunity to sell photos online.

At Paul & Erik we lay out the overall strategy for starting our online small business and also delve into the technical details of writing, editing, and updating hundreds of small sites.  Without some care it is easy to find yourself spending all your time making changes to existing sites and software and not getting new material written.  Take at look if you have questions about the technical framework of our online home business.

Thanks for visiting.  Please leave us a comment if you have questions or suggestions.