When I see people talking about starting a home business, they often ask what others think would be good for them. And very often they include that they don’t want to sell anything.

Say what?

The very nature of business means you are going to have to sell something. Even if you create a purely informational website you have to sell people on the idea of visiting it. And if you actually want to make money you’re going to either have to have pay per click ads on it or recommend… that is, sell, products or services.

What most people mean when they say they don’t want to sell is that they don’t want to go into a business where they have to be harassing their friends and family to buy from them. And who can blame them? No one wants to lose friends just to make a buck.

While you’re going to have to sell to start a business, you need to realize that there are different ways to sell. Not all of them involve harassing anyone. Actually, no program can require that you harass anyone. It’s just a picture many people have and fall for, thinking they have to really work their warm market much too hard.
Starting a website allows you to sell. It’s not an easy way to sell for most people, despite what some may say, but it is a very comfortable way to sell if you don’t want to always be approaching everyone you meet. If you sell through affiliate programs you also have the advantage of not having to handle any sort of order taking or fulfillment or handling much in the way of customer service. You will sometimes have customers contact you, but not nearly so often as you would if you handled the orders yourself.

The thing is, that if you really believe in what you’re selling, you will enjoy selling it. You could be selling a service or a product and just enjoy telling people about it.

If you truly love what you do, you may well make sales without even trying. Just talking about what you do may make sales. And guess what? That is a perfectly valid sales technique. Enthusiasm sells wonderfully.

I think what most people mean when they say they don’t want to sell is that they don’t want to sell something they don’t really believe in and don’t think there’s anything out there they could sell that they do believe in. Considering that between direct sales programs, affiliate programs and offerings you create yourself you can sell just about anything, you can probably find something you’ll be delighted to sell.

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