Number of people making a living selling online

Hi tomsimpson,

I tried searching for a database that mentions the total number of people selling online but unfortunately I found none :( Partly, because there is no site where everyone selling online is required to register at before they can actually sell anything - nobody's really keeping tab (officially)

Just curious, why do you want to know the total number of people?

All the best!

I see, some sites do mention the number of members they have, so you can try doing it that way. It's tedious and time consuming but right now this is the only way I know of which may give you a somewhat close approximation. Hope this helps :)

By the way, welcome to the site Tom!

My guess is its the exact same proportion as offline. Meaning only a small percentage make their living off of the internet as a business and most go belly-up as is true in the general marketplace.

The only difference would be probably many more are attempting to earn a living off the internet than offline and the ability to earn a couple extra bucks is much greater than ever before.

With that said, the internet offers great potential to earn a living but very few attain it. Most make a few bucks here and there. Maybe 100 to 500 extra dollars per month. Some are in the 500 to 1000 range. 99% of ebayers are in this category.

Off eBay and Amazon, my guess is 99 out of 100 websites fail after the first year or break even.

From my readings, there are three ways to make money online. Offering a product or service, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and affiliate marketing with affiliate marketing requiring some SEO knowledge.

Personally, I have only ever been involved with offering products for sale and have had some periods of great success and periods of little success.

I have only ever sold on eBay with a couple of Craigslist and other site sales.

My greatest successes came from jumping on the bandwagon in certain computer parts a couple years ago; selling for a collectibles shop on a commission basis; and finding stuff to sell.

My first eBay sale was finding a Cricket bat at a Goodwill store for 7$ and reselling on eBay for 25$.

I should add that I did pretty well drop shipping watches from a supplier in Asia until eBay's new DSR rules.

Im making a living selling on Ebay and its GREAT!

Its takes alot of Dedication, Research and Hard work!

Never give up! And always want more!... dont settle once your making money.

(I am constantly thinking of New Ideas & Products i can offer)

I can name one who isn't, but who is also determined to.

I can name one who isn't, but who is also determined to.

me tooo

been a bit quiet this week

I can name one who isn't, but who is also determined to.

me tooo

been a bit quiet this week

Wait till you start offering the hot apple pies mate, Captain Crunch will be one order in the bag at least :)

Realsitcally, as Planes said I think. If you look at the amount of small business that go under in the first year of trading in the more traditional field of offline sales, the numbers are staggering. The reason they go under is even more staggering, bad planning and bad management.

You can relate those two exact issue back to why a lot of online business goes under. The biggest problem I see with new traders to ecommerce is that they dramatically underestimate just how hard it can be to succeed. There is so much garbage written about how easy it is to make money through ecommerce, and most unfortunately believe it.

I've been involved in both, and the one thing I've learnt over the years is that I get the same return from my online business efforts that I do from my offline efforts, and they are both proportionate to the effort I put into them in regards to planning and management.

They are two completely different animals in a lot of respects, but the same sound business principles apply to both.

Sage and realistic advice; that is why I am here.

I have business experience, but in a niche field. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, I was partnered in a medical equipment supply business. The business model, planning, marketing, are all very specific to that field.

I'm no stranger to hard work, research, planning, brainstorming and an acceptance of some number of failures needed to reach success.

Again, your advice is well stated and spot on.

My thanks

Hi Islander7,

Thanks for your comments, and your experience that you write about leaves me in no doubt that you have the perfect business grounding to make a success out of ecommerce.

Have you looked at possibly restructuring your old business model in an effort to covert it to online. With your experience in such a niche field, it would be a very strong advantage to carry that over if at all possible.

Of course you also have well established contacts, and we both know how important it is to build networks in business. There just seems to be so many positives there that you can work with.