People sell us things every day. Buying and selling things is what makes the world go round. Shops used to be the main way that people sold things to us, but nowadays online shopping is becoming the main way that businesses can sell us things. Businesses are selling more things than ever online, and the number of things that are for sale on the Internet is constantly increasing. Have any online businesses sold anything to you recently? I'm sure that they have. It seems likely that in the future, most things will be sold online, and the idea of shops selling things will be rather old-fashioned.

And what about you? Have you ever sold anything to anybody? If you work, then you are selling your time and your skills to your employer. If you are self-employed, like me, you are selling your time and skills to your clients or customers. The fact that you are doing this lesson means that I have sold it to you through the British Library, as the British Library is the only way that I sell my lessons to students. Luckily, when you buy a British Library pass you get access to all of the lessons in the library, so I don't have to sell you them one by one. I don't have to hold a sale either, because students can pay what they want anyway. 

Online shops sell slightly more things to women than they do to men. Whether you're a man or a woman, you probably like to buy whatever it is you buy in a sale. Everything that you normally buy is for sale, otherwise you wouldn't be able to buy it, but sometimes a retailer will reduce the price of an item and put it on sale. Everyone likes to get a bargain in the sales, don't they? Can you remember when you last bought something that was on sale? Things are often put on sale because they don't sell well at the normal price. Popular items usually sell out quickly whatever the price the shop sells them at.

Expensive things sell for a lot of money and are less likely to be sold at a discount or to be found on sale. Having said that, expensive things can normally be sold on for a good price because they tend to hold their price. A sales person who wants to sell an expensive item may try a hard sell to close the sale. People who put houses or expensive cars up for sale rarely put them on sale as the market generally dictates the price. It's usually smaller items that end up on sale in shops or online. I'm not a fan of the hard sell, nor of having lots of sales through the year, and that's why I decided to go for a pay what you can afford model at British.

We also live in a world where new technological advances seem to appear every day. As soon as these new gadgets become available, you'll find them on sale. Once the latest must-have gadget goes on sale it is likely to sell out quickly. If you really want to be first in the queue, you need to buy one as soon as it goes on sale. You can, of course, wait a while until the next version goes on sale and then you might be able to find today's version on sale at a considerable discount, but of course it will no longer be the latest version.