Many of us have probably sold the occasional item, like an old book or used piece of clothing, on Amazon or eBay – but that’s a far cry from making a whole business out of online selling. Making such selling your livelihood can throw up various unforeseen bumps and hurdles, too.

If you aren’t careful, you can end up spending a huge chunk of your time simply putting out fires – rather than, ironically, selling anything. Here’s what you can do to help yourself keep admin at bay.

Choose the right online gateway for card payments

Anyone who wants to buy from you online probably wants to use a card of some description to do so. Fortunately, accepting online card payments can be straightforward when you set up the right payment gateway. There are many gateways, as detailed by Startups.co.uk, from which to choose…

The site intricately details pros and cons of each, making it easier to select the right one for you. The range of gateways includes those from trusted names such as PayPal and Amazon.

Use up-to-date accounting software

How do you manage your accounting? You should make sure that your accounting system is not antiquated, especially if your business anticipates generating over $10 million in sales, as Entrepreneur contributor Chris Penttila has urged – though you could be a long way from that yet…

It would be particularly useful if your accounting software can automate multiple aspects of the accounting process, helping you to ease your tax obligations.

Don’t let your administrative department become bloated

As your online business has grown, its admin responsibilities have probably grown as part of it.

However, did you know that, according to The Freedom Formula: How to Succeed in Business Without Sacrificing Your Family writer David Finkel, most service and admin departments can actually lose a quarter of their staff without curbing the quality of their work?

Many departments could even shed a third of staff without any major negative impact, Finkel observes in an Inc. article. However, he insists that the lesson for you to take from this is not to cut staff but instead to avoid hiring more quickly than your revenues grow.

Outsource your HR responsibilities

Another reason why you don’t necessarily need to recruit admin staff heavily is that you could outsource many HR tasks anyway. Through doing this, you can free up time for yourself while ensuring that you still meet tax payment deadlines and so avoid being landed with penalties.

Be clever with how you look for new stock

There are certainly plenty of products from which you could source, but that’s actually a big part of the problem. So much choice can lumber you with debilitating indecision. Which items are likely to sell especially well and at the highest profit margins?

For an improved insight into that, you could use a sophisticated search tool like Source Mogul, which would let you speedily filter particular items to consider trading on Amazon. This tool is available through a free trial, too.