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Here's a neat idea for a web-based business that will allow you to satisfy your shopping addiction using other people's money and get paid for it at the same time! Believe it or not, there are people out there who do not enjoy shopping and/or simply don't have the time to do it. Busy executives often fall into this category, for example. That's where your personal shopper service can come in.

To start, set up a website that will allow you to take online orders.  To begin with, your services are going to be necessarily limited to your own local geographic area if you can't source what you need online.  But over time, you can recruit other shoppers into your network and eventually offer a nationwide service.

Your customer selects a pricepoint, fills in an online form that specifies what they're looking for (provide for input fields in your form that will extract the necessary information) and away you go!  You shop for the item, have it shipped and also wrapped if it's a gift.

The merchant charges the customer's credit card directly inclusive of all shipping costs.  Your webpage should include an agreement and acknowledgement that you will be making the customer's credit card information available to the merchant for this purpose.

In addition, you charge the customer for your time. One way of doing this is to charge a percentage of the amount spent by the customer with the merchant. A couple of disadvantages with this approach are that you may not be adequately compensated for your time when the purchase is for a low-cost item.  Also, the customer may become distrustful of you, thinking that you'll deliberately source a more expensive item than necessary.  To overcome these objections you may instead want to settle on a flat rate for different levels of service.

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USEFUL RESOURCES:

Sites:

Della.com

Your-Shopper.com

Book:

Get Paid to Shop: Be a Personal Shopper for Corporate America
by Emily S. Lumpkin