The world has been turned on its head – lockdowns have stopped most things we consider normal from happening.

Almost every industry has been affected – travel and holidays have stopped, education is taking place at home, eating out doesn’t happen and (here in the UK) lots of the takeaway restaurants are also closed, affecting services like Just Eat and Deliveroo.

Online, there are shifts in what people are looking for and what they’re buying.

I sell lots of things online – some as an affiliate, some as my own products, some as physical items on eBay and Amazon FBA.

With the Amazon items, I can’t restock many of them as they are giving priority to essentials and – with one exception – my products don’t fall into that category.

With eBay I’ve seen an upturn in certain lines and keeping them in stock is borderline impossible. A couple of items I sold more in a weekend than I’d normally sell in a month, others are seeing similar increases. With a lead time for delivery from China of typically 2 to 4 weeks it means I’ll be out of stock for a while and – since I don’t know how long the lockdown will stay in force (no-one does as far as I can work out) I’m cautious about restocking with too many when demand goes back to normal.

Online there’s been an increase in affiliate marketing/make money online. Plus in the self help side certain titles are getting more traffic and sales – coping with the isolation, relaxing, that kind of thing.

You need to be making sure that whatever you’re doing currently is working.

Keep a closer eye than usual on stats and sales.

And be prepared to adjust what you’re doing to take account of the rapid changes that have taken place in recent weeks.

If you haven’t yet got an online business that’s generating sales then now is the time to consider what you need to do.

My preferred method of articles on websites and videos takes a while to gain momentum. Of the two methods, videos are quicker because YouTube has built-in traffic and reacts quicker to new videos being posted than Google does. And you can get some views if you’ve got subscribers to your channel.

Which means if I was asked to choose a method to start now, I’d definitely use YouTube with the caveat that it’s not totally under your control so have a website as a longer term backup.

Whatever you choose, make sure that you create a plan and keep to it as much as possible.

The upside to being in a lockdown is that there’s plenty of time available because you’re not out and about doing other things.

The downside is getting distracted and procrastinating.

Hopefully you’re on target to making the most of the current crisis.