Hey everyone,
It's time for another of my business guides. I thought, with the holiday season approaching fast, to share my knowledge on setting up profitable eCommerce stores.
This will probably evolve into a series of posts, depending on the popularity of them. If you want to know something specific or have any requests, feel free to hit me up at steemit.chat.
1. Going Broad or Going Narrow
The first thing you need to know before you start out with e-commerce is what kind of store you want to open. Do you want to become a rival to the huge general stores in the market such as Amazon or would you rather specialize in a certain niche and try to corner that market. I would personally advise going for a smaller, niched out store. The setup is easier, your audience and traffic is easier to obtain, and there's a bigger potential for selling your store further down the line.
A general store does allow for more flexibility and choice in your product selection, but maintaining it is more work. The income potential for a general store is much higher than a smaller store, since you can practically sell everything you want. It will take you longer to build your reputation and brand on the other hand.
2. Choose Your Topics
Regardless of going for a general or a niche store, you'll need to decide on product categories to sell. These tie in tightly with your niche selection. You can divide these into certain groups:
- Sports: From skateboarding to golf or midget-tossing, there's a market for everything.
- Animals: Cats, dogs, snakes, etc... People love their pets and want to show that by buying stuff from you!
- Hobbies: Sci-fi, gaming, beards, weed, camping, ... You get the drift. Hobbies are always a sure bet to get people to your store.
- Jobs: Nurses, lawyers, firemen, ... A bit more specialized but still very profitable.
- Events: Weddings, pregnancies, graduations, ...
There is no rule here. Just pick whatever you want basically! I would advise to take something you like personally as well. Would be rather awkward to start selling doghouses while you actually hate them and would rather slowly roast every single mutt you see, don't you think? :)
3. Create a product list
Just knowing your general topic or niche won't make your e-commerce site a success. Some ideas just don't do very well online. Others are sure-fire winners. I tend to stick 4 different categories of products.
- Functional items: Products your audience would use such as golf clubs, dog combs, tents, bongs, ...
- Value items: Items with a high perceived value (but are actually quite cheap). Jewelry, watches, and specialized electronics are perfect examples of this.
- Passion items: These are products that allow your customers to express themselves. They are usually bought on impulse and emotion and have the potential to go viral. Usually items such as mugs, phone cases, laptop bags, posters, and clothing.
- Seasonal items: Self-explanatory. Sell items based around certain time-sensitive themes such as the Superbowl, Halloween, or Christmas.
4. What makes a good e-commerce product
There's a few check-boxes that need to be ticked to make it easier for you to sell a certain product online. I'm not saying it's impossible to sell other products, it's just that it will be a lot easier if you choose the correct products from the start.
- Choose a low-tech item, especially if you're just starting out. You don't want to get stuck with constant support questions or refunds.
- Make sure it fits into on of the product categories from before.
- Can you make at least $10 profit on the item?
- Is it already selling successfully on Amazon or Ebay?
- Does it have good reviews?
5. Searching for your products
This is highly dependent on where you choose to source from. I only have experience with sourcing from China, so I can only comment on that. I know people who are successful with sourcing from Europe or the USA, I just don't know how to find suppliers there.
If you're just starting out, the easiest way to find decent products is doing thorough research on Ali Express. This sister site of Alibaba is the Amazon of China. Almost every item sold on AliExpress can also be found for wholesale prices on AliBaba.
Let's go through a quick example. Let's say you want to open up an e-commerce site in the golfing category. Open up AliExpress and go the golf department. Order the results by best sellers. This is what showed up on my browser at the time of writing:
Going over these results I right away spot a few good products that require further investigation. The grip wraps are an obvious candidate, with over 1500 orders. This might be a bit too popular in other stores though. But still something to put on your shortlist. The gloves are also interesting. Since it is genuine leather it has a high perceived value, and is likely to sell for at least double or tripe that price.
A quick check on Amazon shows that most of the brands sell similar leather gloves for about $15-$20. If they sell on AliExpress for $7, that means you can get them wholesale for a lot cheaper. Plus it's an item that is easily brandable by putting your logo on it, which is a service most manufacturers provide if you place a big order.
And that's about it! You don't have to make it too difficult here, since it's hard to predict what will sell the most. Sales will fluctuate with time and trends, so it's a good idea to offer a relatively broad selection of items on your e-commerce website.
If you have any questions about all of this, feel free to hit me up at steemit.chat under the same username as here.
Steem on!
Menta
I tried to buy something from Aliexpress before and also taobao (which is also by alibaba). Taobao is good if you understand Chinese. Otherwise, you pretty much have to go Aliexpress.
Awesome post @menta! I agree niche is definately the way to go especially for a small store trying to carve out a space in the market.
Yeah, it makes it much easier to get traction and those first clients in!