My Offbeat World

Starting Our Online Jewelry Business

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silver-toned-necklace-and-earringsWhile we were trying to sort ourselves out with the Affiliate Marketing business, we deviated into a sideline of selling fashion costume jewelry.

This came about through a friend of Paula’s who was importing and selling jewelry on ebay. We thought this looked interesting and so we would give it a go. After all it combined two of our passions, shopping and jewelry.

It didn’t take long before we were making money and decided that we could do even better. The next thing was to attend the local markets and start a party plan. Well we soon tired of getting up at 5am and sitting all day in the cold or heat at the markets.

The parties were going well although each party seemed to be on the other side of Canberra. The next step was to start recruiting consultants and that became too time consuming. Then we hit on the idea of selling online,

The first template we found that we liked was very attractive but the stock management side was very clunky and cumbersome. It we wanted to change things around it took hours. Eventually we found a template with a shopping cart that is really easy to work with. The webmaster is located in the UK and he provides excellent support, so we thoroughly recommend Richard if you decide to start an online shopping business.

One thing the jewelry business does, is satisfy our need to travel and we have been to Bangkok, China and Hong Kong on shopping expeditions.

We currently sell wholesale although we do have clients that we do parties for and we recently started a monthly indoor market in Tuggeranong where we also sell our wares.

As successful as this business is it still isn’t what we really want to do and that’s where we realized that we had to get serious about the Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing can be done from anywhere in the world as long as you have computer access. Our intention is to travel around the world stopping where we want, for as long as we want, and this is what being in the Affiliate Business allows you to do.

It’s all about freedom of choice.

My First Forays into Working From Home

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When I was younger and had my 3 children I wanted to work from home to be with them.

Of course the internet hadn’t even been thought of in those days so the opportunities that are available today for young mothers to work from home, simply weren’t available.

I first worked for a company sewing side seams on cotton blankets for the princely sum of .20cents each side.  The courier would deliver boxes of blankets and I would sit at the sewing machine for hours and guess what I still didn’t have much time to spend with the kids, it’s just that instead of going out to work, I was stuck in one of the bedrooms.

Then I brought a knitting machine, I have always been a craft orientated person and my kids had beautiful hand knitted and crocheted dresses, ponchos and jumpers.  Well once again there is no freedom when you have to sit at a knitting machine all day long filling orders.

The next thing I went into was driving a 5 ton Ford truck with my husband, who is a carpenter and joiner but had decided to try his hand at something else that might have been more profitable.  Now what we were doing was picking up glass and broken bottles in 44 gallon drums that were placed strategically around Auckland.  Then we would deliver the glass to the Glass factory to be recycled into new bottles.

It was profitable for a time and then the Government began importing bottles from overseas and that was the end of that.

So in the end I went and got a ‘proper’ job working for the Government in a bank.  This way I could afford the little extras we wanted as a family. I put the youngest in day care and although it meant I wasn’t there for the kids when they got home from school, and weekends were a round of housework and taking the kids to sport and drama; but even with limited time,  as a family we managed to spend some quality time together.