One of the downsides of living on the coast as I do is the winter. Whilst I get to see some of the best weather the UK has to offer, I also get to see the worst. We are not even close to the main winter months yet but I have still spent the last couple of days holed up at home watching some spectacular storms over the sea and ?enjoying? force 8 winds battering my house! Some of the more crazy locals chose to windsurf in the incredibly rough sea but given that I managed to crack a rib a few weeks ago windsurfing in next to no wind, I figured I would give it a miss :-) It looks as though the summer sun has been and gone for another year.....

On the plus side, as we creep into the autumn/winter months many business owners will be heading towards their busiest time of the year. This is especially the case if you are in retail of some kind as the run up to Christmas should, ideally, mean that you will be rushed off your feet for the next two or three months.

Every year I start to see the same signs around the end of September/beginning of October and this year is no different:

? My wholesale search engines start to serve noticeably more search results each day.

? My wholesale directory sites start to attract more visitors and members.

? I start getting more and more emails with wholesale-related questions.

? General online activity increases as buyers start to think about purchasing Christmas presents and sellers start to offer suitable purchase options.

Of course, many retailers will have been thinking about how they will approach the Christmas rush for months already but if you haven't, there is still plenty of time to jump on the bandwagon and make some cash!

eBay still offers one of the best online opportunities for anyone wanting to start selling stock on the Internet. When I traded on eBay my sales during November and the beginning of December always used to skyrocket. One of the main reasons for this was that I chose to sell relatively low cost products (less than ?20) which were ideal for people to give as Christmas gifts. Often time I was only making a few pounds profit on each item but because I was able to sell so many of them, the overall profit became substantial.

Of course, eBay isn't your only option and indeed, you don't have to restrict your trading to the Internet either. Going back fifteen years or so, I worked in a large office of around 100 staff for a major UK bank. I didn't have the luxury of the Internet back then but that didn't stop me making a few quid at Christmas. Instead of selling online, I would simply buy some stock and sell it to my work colleagues - it saved them trawling around the shops and my prices were cheaper too!

If you work with a large number of other people, this might be a perfect way for you to make a bit of extra money this year? Remember, the Internet isn't the ?be all and end all? - the offline world does still exist :-)

And if you are keen to get started right away, forget about Christmas for a bit and concentrate on Halloween! Fancy dress is getting bigger and bigger in the UK and we have access to a huge fancy dress costume supplier with superb costumes from just a few pounds each! Last year I needed a fancy dress costume for Halloween and left it until the last minute to order and ended up really struggling to find something suitable as everywhere had sold out. No doubt demand will be just as great this year so why not take advantage of it?

If you want to make some money from the Christmas rush, you need to start taking action NOW! Don't let the opportunity pass you by because it's a long time to wait until next year...

Copyright (c) 2006 Richard Grady