Article by Jan Roos

If you’ve considered looking into how to start a cell phone business, you may be on the right track. Wireless Intelligence (a collector of cell phone use statistics) reports that cell phone connections worldwide grew from 1 billion to 2 billion in just three years (2002 – 2005). Since then, cell phone connections are well over 3 billion. It’s definitely a growth industry!

So, this leaves you with a decision to make when starting a cell phone business. Do you aim for a traditional bricks-and-mortar retail store, or would an online business better suit your needs? As you’ll see, an online cell phone business offers many advantages over a physical location, especially if you have limited funds to invest.

Start-up Costs

First, there’s the issue of start-up costs. With a retail location, you’re looking at renting space, turning on the power and other utilities, stocking the shelves with inventory, paying for insurance, and staffing the store with knowledgeable employees. Whew! You’ll be well into thousands (probably tens of thousands) of dollars just to open the doors. Not to mention the hefty franchise fees, depending on the provider with whom you affiliate.

Contrast that with starting an online cell phone business. Your “rent” will be the monthly cost of a website – probably less than /month for good hosting. You’re already paying for the power and utilities in your home, so that adds nothing to the bill. The cell phones and accessories are not kept in your home, so you need no extra storage space. You’ll need no additional insurance coverage. And, unless you choose to, you’ll have no need to hire employees.

Product Selection

Another advantage of choosing to start a cell phone business online is product selection. Many cell phone providers offer their phones and accessories through affiliate programs, giving you a much broader choice to offer customers. In most cases, if you own a franchise operation in a retail store, you’re limited to just a few product lines through a Master Agent, who in turn only provides items from manufacturers that have contractual arrangements with the parent company.

This is a serious advantage in the cell phone business. The days of just a few options from three or four big companies are long gone. The wider the selection you can offer potential customers, the more sales you stand to make – bottom line.

Getting Started

There are a couple of ways to get started in the online cell phone business industry. You can create a website and fill it with affiliate links to cell phones and accessories. Big, well-known companies like Amazon and Ebay have affiliate programs, and there are literally thousands of cellular products they offer at any given time.

The other option, which will get you up and running and earning money even faster, is to join a network marketing opportunity that is built around cell phones, service plans, and accessories. Most of them take all the guess work out of how to start a cell phone business. They will supply the website, training, inventory, and payment processing.

There you have it, I hope this article shed some light on how to start a cell phone business.

To your success,

Jan Roos

Bluetooth, cases, chargers, iPhone speaker docs … even Crocs for your cell phone. Hands-on with mobile phone accessories from CES 2008 in Las Vegas.
Video Rating: 4 / 5