Making The Dream A Reality

But the day finally arrives when you realize....you're running out of room in your house to keep all of your collectibles! Maybe another collecting interest has stolen your heart. Perhaps you realize that your kitchen counter could be used to actually prepare food instead of storing your Blue Willow plates and saucers. And you think...it's time to sell my collectibles collection.

How do you do it online? This article will run you through the basics and provide you with a jumping-off spot to make it happen for yourself.

Before You Begin
Prior to selling your collectibles online, you need a web site. It doesn't have to be fancy, it doesn't have to cost a bazillion dollars...but having a web site will provide you with space to upload the pictures of what you're selling. If you don't mind ads, many sites online offer free web space - you can find a comprehensive list on Web Design.About.com. Remember, if you're online from any ISP, you probably have been given space to create your own personal site and can take advantage of that as well.

Step 1 - Define Your Audience
Prior to selling your collectible online, you need to determine who would be interested in buying it. For example, if you want to sell your Telephone Insulator collection, fellow enthusiasts would be a good place to start. Additionally, if people have used your collectible in their professions (in the above example, workers from telephone companies might have encountered them), that might be another viable audience to consider.

Step 2 - Find Where Your Audience Resides On The Internet
This is a crucial step and luckily very simple to do. The glory of the Internet is that it allows for anyone and everyone to connect with one another. No matter what your collectible, almost certainly there is at least one (and probably a few dozen) mailing lists, enthusiast sites, forums, web rings or message boards that cater to it.

An easy way to uncover this is to visit Google and search for (collectibles) For example, perhaps you want to sell your cookie jar collection. Searching on "cookie jars" (note the quotes - if your collectible has more than one word, use quotes) will return you several sites that sell new cookie jars.

Next, go to Yahoo Egroups! and search for your collectible.Cookie jars returns several mailing lists dedicated to this particular item.

Another way to uncover where your fellow enthusiasts gather is to tack on the descriptor "mailing list" or "forums" or "discussions" or "collect" etc. when searching for your interest. By patiently searching on the Internet, you can most likely uncover several key spots in which your audience resides.

Next >>> Page Two Build a Resource Page and Selling Your Site