Do You Diversify

From the time we are at school our parents, teachers, grand-parents are always telling us to focus on one thing at a time, and then when we start work or our own business we are again told to focus on one area and not spread ourselves too thin. Well today I want to ask you the question “Do You Diversify” ?

Now I am not asking you to spread yourself so thin, you are running around like a headless chicken, but I am asking you to look at diversifying your business interests. When you diversify your business many things can happen – Your profits will go up, and you should always have sales coming into your business, for example if eBay sales are down for some reason you will find Amazon or Etsy sales will be up. And the same can happen if like happened at Christmas if you had all your business on Amazon FBA, you would have lost out, as Amazon suffered poor postage and shipping during the bad weather.

Let me give you an example, I was selling on both Amazon and eBay, Amazon FBA and I was selling the same product line, and had orders coming in from all three channels. Well as we know Amazon FBA almost closed down, but I was able to sell each and everyday, and all but one of my orders got through. (The one that did not get through was lost in the post).

Another reason you will want to diversify is one sales platform could ban a product line, and if you only sold on that one platform you would be stuck, but if you sold on multiply platforms then you sales would not really be affected. The reason being is the fact that you had a presence on the other platforms as well.

Products are another reason why you need to diversify. You have been to a Trade Fair, sourced a product, and it is selling well. One day your supplier phones you up and say they are sorry, but they are no longer going to be selling that line. If you do not have other products you are in big trouble. You need to find different product niches and ranges that you can sell and work on and bring you in the profits day in and day out.

The last area where it is good to diversify, is with you product suppliers, yes you can have your main supplier, but it is also very good to have a few suppliers where you buy small quantities of the product, and you keep open lines of communication open just in case your main supplier is no longer able to support you with products.

I hope today’s article has helped you to see that when you are asked “Do You Diversify” you can say yes and not be afraid to be told off, as you can say you are protecting your business interests.