Antiques Dealer

Fueled by collectors or just occasional sentimental buyers the antique market is a chance to start small and make it big. Work from home antique dealers typically begin with a small stock of low ticket, high demand items. Ebay and various other online markets such as antiques.com (if you live in the US) have allowed antique dealers to work from home without necessarily opening a garage based store. A love and keen interest for all things old is a must!

Before The Start-Up - Let’s Not Get Ahead Of Ourselves

No qualifications needed here, although antique experience is. If you’re not an antique enthusiast its recommended to first gain experience as a consumer before trying to become a dealer. Antique pricing not a simple undertaking, your experience is essential to help spot a great buy from a worthless piece of junk.

The Start-Up

Your start up will depend on your initial capital outlay; small starters should begin their inventory with the fastest moving and most popular low ticket items. Re-invest your earnings and slowly graduate to higher ticket and rarer items. Equity financing is always a safer option than debt financing even if it can be a much slower undertaking.

Sure you can follow the traditional model of hawking antiques out of your garage but we don’t recommend it. Whether or not you live in the USA various online markets exist for antiques, concentrate your efforts here. To trade you’ll need a work space, desk, computer, internet connection and digital camera. To accept credit card payments you’ll need an account with PayPal, 2CheckOut, Click Bank or one of the many other facilitating companies who offer service to your country.

Making It Work

Slow moving high ticket items can lead to a stumped cash flow, when you have better access to capital don’t invest solely in high ticket items. Spread your risk and balance your cash flow by stocking a combination of high ticket slow moving items and low ticket fast moving items.

Marketing

If you develop an online following, developing a website of your own and cutting out the middle man might prove quite profitable. As it’s expensive consider it only when you’ve generated a substantial income stream. Other marketing methods include local classifieds and other forms of print advertising.

Don’t Forget

Packaging and shipping add an extra cost to selling online, the level on competition in your market and behaviour of competitors will decide whether this will be an additional charge to customers or provided free of charge.