It’s time to break free from your 9-5 job, where you put in long hours and just earn money for your employer with little to no advantages. You receive nothing if you work more, but your boss is breathing down your neck about letting the company down if you have a bad day.
2022 is the year to seek new ways to work for yourself, earn more money, and have a better, more prosperous life. An eCommerce company is the simplest to start with little capital, and it may start as a side hustle but soon grow into your major source of revenue.
Follow along as I walk you through the processes of starting an online store. I’ll go through locating a product provider that will store and ship things for you, so you don’t have to.
What Exactly Is An E-Commerce Company?
eCommerce stands for electronic commerce, which refers to the buying and selling goods and services through the Internet. The clearest example is Amazon, the world’s biggest eCommerce company outside of China, which began tiny but has grown to over 600 billion dollars each year.
For the sake of this book, we’ll concentrate on selling things over the Internet utilizing a third-party product provider who will store and transport everything for you, allowing you to concentrate on growing your company rather than managing the products.
What Should I Do If I Want To Start An eCommerce Business?
Your future success will be determined by the kind of eCommerce company you establish. In general, you should choose a specialty and concentrate your advertising efforts there. It will be impossible to promote efficiently if you attempt to offer too many different things, and your website will seem spammy.
After you’ve established your first eCommerce store, you may want to try creating numerous websites, each with a distinct product specialty.
Most people will urge you to choose a niche or sort of business that you’re passionate about, which is sound advice, but you also need to think about which items sell the best so that you can make money and develop your company.
The best product categories are usually:
- Food-related items
- Health Supplements
- Fitness Equipment
- Products for the Beauty Industry
- Fashion Accessories and Clothes
- Products for Travel
- Products for the Home
- Baby Supplies
- Pet Supplies
Other product sectors may produce money, particularly if you love them or a wealth of information about them that can aid in your advertising. Still, you should avoid niches with minimal selling potential.
Consider what sorts of things people want to purchase and if there is a huge consumer base for them vs. specialized products with a tiny customer base that will keep your firm small.
What Is The Best Way To Begin An E-Commerce Business?
Starting an eCommerce company is straightforward, thanks to a wide selection of prebuilt platforms; absolutely no technical knowledge is necessary to get started and maintain your firm, and the initial investment is minimal.
You can sign up for the essential systems and get up and running fast with the help of this tutorial. Start with the following systems, and keep in mind that most of them are turn-key, so you won’t have to construct anything; all you’ll have to do is set them up:
Supplier of Products for Website eCommerce Store
After you’ve set up the systems, you’ll need to start promoting your shop using several methods, including:
- Content development for search engine optimization (SEO) or to improve the ranking of Google search results
- Advertising on social media may be done for free.
- Advertising that is paid for
How to Start an E-Commerce Business
The stages below provide a high-level overview of what you’ll need to accomplish and the choices you’ll have to make when you start your eCommerce firm.
This tutorial will not walk you through the actual procedures of setting each component. Still, each of the proposed platforms has a wealth of installation and configuration manuals available on the Internet, and in most instances, you can figure it out on your own after you sign up.
Select a Reliable Product Provider
After you’ve settled on your niche, you’ll need to discover a product supplier that can provide trendy items to your target market. So be sure anybody you choose has a sufficient supply of high-quality items that meet your requirements.
Using a product provider helps you keep expenses low while removing any product handling. They will locate, purchase, and store all items, which you would then display on your website for consumers to purchase.
When a customer purchases a product from you, your eCommerce shop sends the client’s information and money to the product provider, who packages and ships the product to the consumer. Not only do they handle the packaging and shipping, but you don’t have to pay for things unless a consumer pays you first, which means you don’t have to pay for inventory.
Depending on what you wish to offer, there are a variety of goods providers with varied prices. It’s vital to choose the greatest product supplier feasible for a successful eCommerce company; some of the main elements your supplier should give are:
- Trending updated items means that your supplier keeps track of what’s hot in the industry and offers you a variety of high-quality selections to choose from. They should also be regularly upgrading their product list so that you can provide new things to your clients.
- Customers will be put off if they have to wait 14-30 days for their goods to arrive, which is common if your supplier is located in China.
- Low product price; otherwise, your earnings will be limited since you can only charge so much, and income comes from the cost after paying the supplier.
- Reasonable shipping rates, since you must either charge the buyer or absorb the expense. Most customers are used to receiving free delivery from online retailers such as Amazon.
So, Salvia is a better, more well-known, and trustworthy product provider. They offer numerous advantages when you use them, so if they have the sorts of things you’re looking for, it’s a fantastic alternative. Look around for the finest provider for your requirements and even your area.
The following are some of the advantages that Salvia may provide for your eCommerce business:
- 1-3 day delivery across the United States from a US-based warehouse.
- They stay up with the latest trends by doing their research.
- All of their items are reasonably priced. Compare their pricing to those of other vendors.
- Free delivery is a significant plus since many vendors do not provide it.
- Product import pages with excellent English descriptions for all goods, which is not often the case when working with a Chinese supplier.
- All items are subjected to quality control to ensure that buyers get high-quality, functioning goods.
- Integrations with the most popular eCommerce systems are available.
If you reside in the United States, they’re the greatest choice because of the quickness of delivery and the that they’re free. If your things take too long to arrive, you will lose consumers.
Create a Website
Creating a website is unnecessary since your eCommerce shop may serve as your main website. On the other hand, a dedicated website allows you greater flexibility and income prospects beyond merely selling things.
Choose a content management system with a large number of addons, including a large number of free design templates, so you can choose a nice website design. WordPress is one of the finest, with a large number of free layouts, but if you’re more comfortable with another system, go with it instead.
When choosing a content management system, consider the following factors:
- Setup and usage are simple.
- Flexibility
- There are several add-ons available, allowing you to add a variety of features to your site at no cost.
- There are many design templates to pick from, allowing you to create a gorgeous website design for free.
- eCommerce shop system must be integrated.
What is the difference between integration and an eCommerce store? You’ll choose a platform to store information and accept payments for all your items. Still, you’ll also need a mechanism to communicate that information with your website, which you can achieve with integration or extension.
WordPress is a wonderful alternative since it provides a wide selection of connectors and extensions for practically all large eCommerce sites.
Using WordPress also makes it easy to implement a portion of your advertising plan content development, which we’ll cover later in this guide’s advertising section.
If you decide to take that path, a website independent from your eCommerce business also offers up additional income sources, such as:
- Providing services in your area of expertise
- Selling courses or other forms of instructional content, such as videos or eBooks
- Set up an affiliate marketing campaign Your Shopify Store
Setup Your eCommerce Store
The platform you chose for your eCommerce business will be your first step in getting it up and running. Many platforms provide eCommerce solutions that enable you to connect with goods suppliers, accept payments, and execute all of the operations you want from your shop.
You’ll need to link your eCommerce shop to your supplier so that you can import product pages and send orders back to them to fulfill. As a result, be sure that either provider and eCommerce shop you choose has a simple connection method.
All of the solutions in this book integrate well and are utilized by a wide variety of organizations, so you should have no difficulty implementing them.
Choose your products
You may begin choosing and importing the items you wish to offer to your consumers after completing the installation and setup. You’ll be able to configure pricing and even alter product pages after you’ve imported the product pages from your source.
You’ll be able to see how much each product costs and then select a higher price based on how much money you want to earn on each sale. The lower the price, the simpler it will be to sell the product; but don’t keep it so cheap that it isn’t worth your effort to manage the company.
If you wish to supply your product photographs or alter the product descriptions after they’ve been imported, you may do so. You could even want to buy some things and shoot images of yourself using them instead of utilizing the stock photos, which can assist with sales.
Begin promoting your online store
How successfully you market your eCommerce shop will determine your potential to take it from side hustle to a full-fledged enterprise.
To persuade clients to visit your business, you don’t need to be a marketing master or a social media specialist; in most circumstances, all it takes is a little time and effort on your side.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Content Creation
Writing articles and material on topics relating to your product niche is a terrific way to get people to your website for free. You may develop and upload material on your WordPress-powered website that search engines will pick up when people search for certain phrases relating to your expertise.
For each article you create, you should choose a key search phrase to concentrate part of your writing and word choices on that term. So, if your search keyword is “the best dog leashes for toy poodles,” you may focus your post on dog leashes for toy poodles and include that precise phrase a few times throughout your article.
Simply avoid overusing the phrase; otherwise, you risk being punished by search engines for attempting to cheat them. That would be okay if you used the keyword approximately four times in a 1000-1500 word piece.
There is no set amount of articles you must produce, but giving fresh articles for search engines to locate regularly will help you get better results, so 1 article every day or at least 2-3 per week would be ideal.
Article Writing Can Be Outsourced
Suppose you’re not a great writer or don’t want to devote the time to produce many articles every week. In that case, you may outsource your article writing to sites like Fiverr or Upwork, where you can discover a range of writers that specialize in your subject.
You’ll only want to go at their sample work to ensure it’s up to par for what you’re looking for. Depending on who you hire and their expertise, you may pay different amounts, so articles might cost as low as $5.
Paid Ads on Search Engines
If you have the funds and don’t want to wait for organic search engine results, you can pay to appear at the top of the results for certain search keywords. The charges will vary depending on your specialization, with the more competitive search phrases being more expensive.
Sign up for Google Ads to learn how much search phrases cost and if it’s a viable alternative for your existing budget.
Marketing on Social Media
Creating social media accounts for your eCommerce company is a terrific method to attract clients for free. It does, however, require some time and work, and you’ll need to choose the ideal platforms for your skills and items.
You should publish regularly and maintain all of your social media pages up to date.
Platforms like Tiktok and Instagram might be wonderful possibilities if you’re comfortable shooting videos or photographs.
If you don’t want to generate as much graphic material, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are other fantastic possibilities.
You should research who buys your items, such as gender and age, and then target your social media efforts to platforms that have greater percentages of your target demographics.
Paid Promotion
Each social media site will enable you to advertise and show them to interested prospective clients. They may assist you in targeting the proper population for your adverts, depending on your requirements. It’s also an excellent alternative if you just have a little money to invest and don’t want to spend time building up a social media presence.
Working Together With Influencers
Most social media influencers will promote your company or publish a post about it so that their followers know you and can learn more about what you have to offer.
Finding a reasonable-priced influencer in your field might bring you immediate clients and new followers on social media.
Final Thoughts on Getting Your E-Commerce Business Off the Ground
eCommerce companies are the simplest to start since they need no prior expertise and low initial investment. You may work on the company as a side hustle until it generates enough revenue to sustain you, at which point you can turn it into your major source of income and devote more time and attention to it.
