How can i expand my business?

[Billy]

I am a market trader selling home goods and candles at a very low price but getting great returns. The items im selling pretty much sell themselves and i can always buy more stock when i want. I am only 21 years old and i have a full time job alongside this with no real business experience. I don't have enough money to buy a shop but would like to expand my business. What could be the next steps i take? Selling online ect and how do i do this? Thanks
I think you both misunderstood what I meant by "the products sell themselves". I meant that the quality of the products is of such a high standard that they are so easy to sell and the price that I am selling them at it is hard for people not to buy them. They are shop quality.

[Joe Koh]

You could start a commerce online site:

Few steps:
1. Set up your e-shop with an easy-to-use shopping cart software
Install a shopping cart on your website and your shop will go live in minutes!

2. Secure your transactions with a powerful SSL certificate
Set up an SSL certificate to secure your online transactions!

3. Collect customer payments via your merchant account
Get a merchant account and a payment gateway to collect your customer payments! Paypay, 2 checkout are some of them.

4. Lastly, monitor your website traffic with the help of tracking code like Google Analytics. It's free

After setting up the system, you want people to look at your online shop.

Here are a few ways to get visitors to your website.

1. Submit your website to thousands of online directories. There are some online directories, which have good traffic and some of that traffic can be yours if your website is listed in them.

2. Start posting in free classifieds. There are hundreds of free online classifieds websites that you can post in them to get visitors to your website.

Craigslist and gumtree are two biggest classifieds sites, and you can get targeted traffic from them.

3. Sign up to social-networking websites like Facebook and twitter. Add relevant people to your friend list and increase awareness about your website. You can post links and get visitors from these social-networking websites.

4. Join related forums in your market and post some useful comments on threads. Try to help other users and put the link to your website in your signature. It will get some steady traffic to your website, and this traffic is extremely targeted.

5. Start commenting on blogs in your niche. Use a profile from Gravatar and post useful comments on other people's blog. If you provide good information, people will click on your links and go to your website to find out more.

6. Write guest posts for other websites or blogs. Make a list of blogs or websites in your market who are already getting good traffic. Contact their owners and ask them if they can publish your posts on their website. This is a nice way of building traffic to your website.

7. If you can invest money, there are many ways to get traffic to your website. You can advertise your website on Google or other search engines.

You can also put ads on other people's website or on social-networking websites like Facebook. You can also buy text links from other websites in your market.

[Mark M]

Your main focus should be to show the profitability of the existing business. Make sure you've got solid financial statements of your past performance.
Then get the help of an accountant to prepare realistic financial forecasts should you acquite that new facility. Prepare a Profit and Loss for the business for at least a year after getting the loan. It needs to show the expected income for the year, expected expenses including the loan interest and the resulting net profit for the year.
You also need to prepare cash projection statements - this can help the bank see that you will have the funds to repay the loan.
Your poor credit score can be a point against you. But you've got a co-signer and have the experience needed to successfully run the business. Hopefully your financials are strong enough to convince the bank to grant you the loan.