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Everyone is tapping the virtual world to get a good bargain and you can market your skills well if you offer value for money. "A lot of companies cannot afford to hire full-time workers and prefer to outsource these," says 60-year-old Ganesh Krishnan, who prepares regulatory dossiers for drugs.
Krishnan had been working in the pharmaceutical industry for almost 30 years, when a company asked him to prepare a dossier for a drug that it wanted to export to various countries. Each country has a different format to describe the process of drug manufacturing, quality checks and side-effects.
Krishnan's expertise in the field made it easier for him to work on the dossier, but he required a helping hand. So his wife Mohana Ganesh quit her job as secretary of the vice-president of the Chase Manhattan Bank in Mumbai and joined him in 1999.
The couple's work was appreciated by the company and word-of-mouth publicity helped them get more clients. Currently, they have 10 dedicated clients and earn Rs 1 lakh a month.
Though some back-end office work requires technical expertise, a lot of online jobs can be done by freshers. These include data entry, virtual assistance and online research.
For instance, some headhunters will pay a commission to have someone go through job portals and look for candidates suitable for a post. However, such job offers are also the most scamridden, so you need to be wary before picking up one (see How to identify a bogus online money making offer).
Virtual bazaar
JOBS: Online enterprise
SKILLS: Guts, gumption and marketing savvy
INCOME: Whatever you want
Shakil Thasariya began collecting autographs as a 13-year-old schoolboy, when the former President APJ Abdul Kalam gave him one in 2003. A year later, he discovered that his passion could be profitable when he sold 10 autographs to an antique dealer for Rs 4,000. However, finding buyers in his hometown, Rajkot, Gujarat, wasn't easy.
The perfect avenue: eBay. The portal opened up access to a wider and more keen clientele. He made quite a few successful sales and also got in touch with a lot of autograph dealers in the US and Europe. "This business of selling autographs is based on trust, especially if you are doing so online. To have a credible long-term reputation, I offer my clients a 100% money-back guarantee if they discover that my autographs are fake," says Thasariya, who earns about Rs 7,000 a month by selling 7-8 autographs.
The online medium is a perfect platform for small entrepreneurs or start-ups, who cannot afford to rent office space or shop. However, maintaining a Website also requires work and money. A free and easily manageable platform is social networking sites, most notably Facebook. Say Nikita Fernandes and Vinisha Dugar: "We were already members of Facebook and had a wide circle of friends, so when we decided to launch our own business, Fishing Hook, using the site was a logical choice. Besides, managing a dedicated Website would become too difficult to handle."
The two Mumbai-based friends launched their business in July last year. The 23-year-olds outsource fashion accessories from China and Hong Kong, put up their photographs on Facebook and then sell these in India. Within three months, they had lamost 500 fans on their page and were generating orders worth about Rs 10,000, of which Rs 3,000 was their profit margin.
Initially, they would deliver the products themselves and collect cash from customers. However, as their clientele grew in other cities, they began to courier the products and charge Rs 100 as shipping charges. The payment mode also changed to online bank transfers.
In September this year, they joined hands with an e-commerce portal, Ebagsfull.com, where they have put their products on display. Today, their Facebook page has nearly 2,100 fans and their client base has expanded to Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kolkata.
Like Thasariya, Fernandes and Dugar, there are hundreds of online sellers who are leveraging the World Wide Web to create wealth. And this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
TIPS FOR ONLINE SELLERS
You can find a buyer for virtually everything in the online bazaar, be it your own creation or junk you want to get rid of. Here are a few steps to help you hone your selling skills.
Provide all information: Give a detailed description of the product you want to sell and include photographs that have been taken from various angles. Also, provide information about yourself or your company. A contact number, address or e-mail ID help the buyer get in touch with you as well as confirm authentication, which builds confidence in the buyer.
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