The key to making money over the holidays is to start early. If you are making things to sell, you should be in full swing by July. Christmas cards, stationary sets, handmade ornaments, holiday banners, quilts, stuffed animals…they all take time to create and you will need to photograph them, upload them to your website and sell them to people. Those happy customers will need the gifts to arrive in time to be wrapped and tucked under the tree, so plan on getting products up well before the last week before Christmas.

Of course, not everyone is crafty. How do you make money during the holidays if you can’t make items to sell? You may want to try reselling on eBay. It can be a very tricky business and many people fail, so start small and be careful about buying too much inventory. If you buy in bulk and it turns out someone doesn’t like the product, you may end up with a huge pile of whatever it is on your living room floor instead of having money in your pocket for the Christmas season!

For some, drop shipping is the answer. That way, you don’t have to actually touch the product. You just list it, sell it and tell the drop shipper where to send it. You can then spend all the time you save promoting your products to potential buyers. Make sure you leave enough time to buy gifts for your loved ones after you make all of that holiday money.

For people who prefer service based businesses, offering gift wrapping or personal shopping services may be the key. Again, you’ll need to start preparing well ahead of time to be successful! With this type of business, you’ll have to be prepared to shop at the last minute, since you will make most of your cash in the week or so before the holiday.

Once you decide how you want to make money for the holidays, you have done the hard part. Now, you just have to stick to your business and work hard to promote it.

Recommended Resources:
Why should you care about making money during the holidays? It’s the best time of the year to get people to part with their cash. Online shopping is especially big during the holidays. This article by my favorite drop shipper talks about just that:
Cashing in on the Bump in Online Holiday Retail Sales
By Stuart Lisonbee

While online merchants aren’t exactly bulldozing their brick-and-mortar counterparts into retail oblivion, they are managing to chip away some of the mortar between those bricks.

Roughly 75 percent of U.S. homes are now connected to the Internet, and in many of those homes, in the comfort of their living rooms, dens, and home offices, people are shopping online to avoid the traffic jams, high gas prices, and raging crowds. Increasingly, people are hopping on the information superhighway to buy the best products at the best prices through the convenience of online stores built by tech-savvy merchants like you.

While online sales still represent a small portion of consumer spending ($24 billion online versus $450 billion offline according to 2006 estimates) the numbers are increasing significantly. Experts predict that this year, 8 percent of all holiday sales will occur online. As an online retailer, the number one question you should be asking yourself is… Read More