I have taught you the secret to getting rich is to spend less than you earn. You then invest the remaining funds to create multiple streams of income. But, spending less and living a frugal lifestyle is not the only way to fulfill that equation. You can earn extra income. Today, we look at how to start an ecommerce business online.
Previously, several readers have commented that they are running affiliate marketing websites. This is a fantastic low-cost way to earn commission income by marketing for somebody else.
Another low-cost way to market other people’s products is through drop shipping. What is drop shipping? Drop shipping is a supply chain method that allows you to buy products individually from a wholesaler, who then ships them to your customer on your behalf.
Below, I am going to outline a 6 step strategy to start an ecommerce business online. Then, over six more lessons, I will hold your hand and we will delve into each of the steps in more detail.
You don’t need any prior knowledge or experience. Just make the decision to take action. Work through the six steps and you will be well on your way to running a successful ecommerce business.
Let’s get started!
Step 1: Select a niche based on your passion
Although there are thousands of products out there you could sell, you need to tap into your own unique interests. If you have a true passion for what you are selling, you will love dedicating your energy and time into providing the best experience for your customer.
It is a fact many people go into retail sales only for the money. If this is you, it will show in your website! What you need is a store and an excitement for your products the customer will never forget. Remember, enthusiasm is contagious!
But what if you don’t have an obvious passion? In this lesson we will look at a strategy to discover YOUR niche. We will also look at some free or inexpensive tools to help refine your perfect niche.
By the end of the lesson you will:
- have selected a niche for your ecommerce business,
- know there is a market for your product or range of products, and
- understand who your customers are and why they need your product.
Next, you need to get those products to your customer through an online store.
Step 2: Create an online store
You may feel overwhelmed by the need to create your own website. But, in this era of technology, anybody can build an online store using a specific technology.
I will guide you through this technology in Lesson 2. The technology is simple to use and you don’t need any programming or web design skills. If you have access to a computer and the internet, you can have your website up and running in a surprisingly short period of time.
Who knows, you may become so good at creating websites another side hustle is born! This is how I fund many of my subscriptions to membership sites and newsletters.
Step 3: Access millions of products for free
Once you have set up your website, you will need something to sell. This is called inventory.
In this lesson, we will look at how to gain access to millions of products without spending your money. You will set up your own online business with hundreds (or even thousands) of products that you never have to physically handle. This is the secret behind drop shipping.
I will give you website access to millions of products, including sought-after brand name items from the USA.
Step 4: Attract targeted visitors to your business
Without visitors to your website, you cannot expect your website to be successful. After all, who will buy your products if nobody visits your store?
Now, in the case of your store, we want to entice a specific type of visitor traffic. These people are actively interested in and looking for the products you are offering in your store.
In this lesson, you will learn a strategy where you can access billions of visitors and direct them to your ecommerce store.
Without these targeted customers, your website won’t generate a sustainable profit.
Step 5: Multiply your profits
To get your business growing in leaps and bounds and to make even more money from your website, you need to leverage your traffic and inventory. In this lesson, I will teach you a specific 2-step strategy for maximizing your profits.
The first step is email marketing; sending out regular emails to your customers and simply asking them to buy more. But sending out an email campaign is not as straight forward as it sounds. There is specific software you need to make sure that the email you send out to your customers ends up in their inbox rather than the spam folder.
We will also look at the strategies to use for different product price ranges. For example, the strategy for selling a $1,000 watch is very different to the one you would use for selling a $20 children’s toy.
The second step is diversification. By coming up with a new range of products and using a product launch through your emails, you can almost guarantee your profits will double. One way to diversify your product range is to take your top-selling products and give them private labels. Private labeling means you can get YOUR brand name on every package and product you sell. Great for brand awareness and more sales!
You may also want to consider providing customer support as your business expands. Taking care of your customers by providing a toll-free number shows you value their patronage. And, because your customers are happy, they will continue to buy from your website………multiplying your profits.
Step 6: Repeat the process
The title of Step 6 is pretty self-explanatory, but there are pitfalls to watch out for as you grow your business. There is no limit to how many stores you can create or how many products you can sell. Then, you only need to generate new targeted traffic to increase your earnings. If you can rake in a fortune from one site, imagine what you could do if you had five sites, all attracting thousands of visitors.
This is an important key to your success. Multiple streams of income ensure that if one business has a down month, there are other stores to bolster the earnings.
Are you ready to take action?
So there you have it in a nutshell. A 6 step process to start an ecommerce business online.
Come back and check the website regularly if you would like access to the six lesson training program. Or, you can follow me on Facebook and I will let you know when the first lesson is available. Choosing the right niche for YOU may be the most important step to success, so you won’t want to miss out.
Catch up with you again soon at Your Financial Freedom.
Gary
Was this helpful? Share it with your friends. After all, they also deserve the fine things that life has to offer.
I’ve been looking to start up a second job online for about 12 months now, but the phrase ‘ecommerce business’ sort of put me off on many an occasion!
Thanks for laying out the process so simply here – I now have a bit of confidence behind my dream. How long does it take to see money coming in from this sort of project?
Hi Chris,
I appreciate you commenting on my article on starting an ecommerce business.
I think at some stage we are all reluctant to start something new. The fear of failure causes many people to avoid change. Why do something different if I am only going to fail!
But, if you have the right tools and use the best strategies, you can succeed. After your first success, you wonder why you didn’t try this months (or years) ago.
How quickly you can make money will depend on the strategy you use. If you rely solely on organic traffic, it can take months or years to earn a good income. However, if you follow the strategy I am going to teach in this series of lessons, you can start earning income almost straight away. Choose trending products which people on social media are talking about and use Facebook Ads or Pinterest Ads to promote these products to targeted customers.
You (probably) wont get long-term customers but you will build your brand and some quick cashflow. Then, expand your business into other evergreen products to build a customer base.
Market to your customers through social media and email marketing and you can build a successful ecommerce business.
I hope I have motivated you enough to give it a try. If you do, let me know how you go with your store.
Gary
I had never heard of drop shipping. Thank you for the info. Will your following posts have more detail as to how to get started? You mentioned that you would show sites to start but didn’t in this post. Is that something we can expect soon? Look forward to it. Thank you
Hi Carlos,
Thank you for your comments.
I will post six lessons to provide more detail on each of the six steps to starting an ecommerce business. An article on niche selection will be posted in the next few days. I will provide specific details on the questions you need to ask yourself when choosing your niche. Several tools which I use to search for great niches will also be recommended (and they are either free or inexpensive!).
I hope to see you back here at Your Financial Freedom for the lessons. You can also follow me on Facebook and I will let you know when the lessons are posted.
Gary
Hey Gary,
A great guide to start an eCommerce Business. I have been an affiliate marketer for more than 2 years and had much interest in starting up a dropshipping business to diversify my income stream. The 6 steps you mentioned in this post has provide me a guide in setting up my dropshipping business and l have bookmarked this post for reference.
Thank you.
Shui Hyen
Hi Shui,
Thank you for your comments on the article.
It is great that you are considering starting up a dropshipping business to generate an additional income stream. That is what I promote at Your Financial Freedom; building financial independence so that you don’t have to work the 9-to-5 grind!
If you would like to be notified when the lessons on starting your ecommerce business are posted, you can follow me on Facebook or drop back here any time. I hope you will find my other articles interesting as well.
Wishing you much success with your online businesses,
Gary
Hi there, I would like to join this side and I really like to learn more about 6 step.
And would like to start my as soon as possible because I have been looking for so long.
Hi Nazir,
Thank you for responding to my article on starting an ecommerce business. I will post Lesson 1 on niche selection in the next few days and then follow up with the other 5 steps. You can check back here to read the articles or follow me on Facebook where you will be notified as each article is posted.
Gary
Thank you very much for this, I love the steps you listed on how to start an eCommerce business especially the 5th step where you mentioned email marketing, I would love to know the software you use in sending email, Is the software effective? will it help in reaching out to my customers in a most efficient way?
Hi Favour(?),
It is my pleasure to provide you this strategy for starting an ecommerce business.
In the 5th step, I will discuss several email marketing softwares. They are all very effective at marketing to the customers on your email list but they all have pros and cons. I hadn’t considered it, but do you think it would be worthwhile for me to post a review article on my recommended softwares?
I hope you take the time to work through all the six steps and build your own business. But, if not, come back at Step 5 and you may learn something new that you can use to build the relationship with your customers. After all, that is the goal to winning sales.
Gary
Excellent outline! I’ve always believed the more passionate you are regarding your niche the greater your success will be. Passion in a certain field, whatever it may be, allows us to communicate with our audience naturally and in our own voice. While many might have found the online store to be overwhelming, I actually had fun creating my first one in my niche and each week I’m adding more content to the store. Thanks for sharing this article, which will be a go-to for anyone new to the e-commerce industry.
Hi Todd,
Thank you for your comments.
If you aren’t passionate for what you are doing, it shows in the language and the layout of your website. People see a poorly designed website and automatically discount it as just another person trying to take their money.
If you show enthusiasm in what you do, it is infectious and the customer then also feels your passion.
Wishing you every success with your online store,
Gary
This is a great article. I love that its laid out as a blue print with all the most important details. You are right that when it comes to choosing a niche you should pick something you are passionate about as just picking something could get boring rather quickly thus making it hard to maintain your business.
I think many people dream of making money online and this is a great way to get started.
Thank you for taking the time to collect the info and providing it for all of us.
Dale
Hi Dale,
Thank you for providing your comments on the article.
Not only does it get boring if you are not passionate about your store, your customers will also sense that your only interest is in making money without any real interest in the customer. People will not come back if you are not excited by your own store!
I am happy to provide the information if it motivates you or anybody else reading the post to consider starting their own online ecommerce business. I will be even happier if you take action and do it!
Wishing you every success in 2019 and beyond,
Gary
Very helpful guide on starting an e-commerce website and making money online. It really is that simple, I think people just need to put the time and effort into their business.
What has been your experience with e-commerce or business online? Has it been positive? I know many people who say that starting a blog is the way to go, and they seem to really like it!
Thanks for the post!
Hi Jacob,
Starting an online ecommerce business really is just a matter of taking action. If you make the commitment to working through the six steps, you can create a successful business.
I have this website, My Financial Freedom, and an ecommerce store through Shopify. Everything is running slowly at the moment as China has shut down for Chinese New Year and drop shipping is grinding to a halt. I will need to plan better next year as I will now miss out on one of the greatest niches, Valentines Day!
Best wishes for your financial future,
Ggary
This is really helpful. I was thinking of setting up my online store using Digi store builder. I have selected my niche but having problem selecting the specific product because I don’t want to display products I won’t be able to sell in time. I’m going to follow your procedure listen above and as soon as I get it right, just like you wrote, am, repeating the process.
Hi Fasuan,
Thank you for your comments.
It is fantastic that you have already selected a niche. When you set up your store, make it look as professional as the major players. Check out the Walmart ecommerce site for ideas. That way, you gain credibility and people will visit your site. If it looks like it was slapped together in a hurry to make some quick bucks, customers will not hang around.
Get your store looking good while you select your products. Don’t rush; write good descriptions of the products, use good quality images (especially images where people are using the product) and study competitors sites for pricing and store reviews. Try to offer a better service than your competitors and you will get sales (and repeat sales).
Wishing you success with your online ecommerce business,
Gary
Hey Gary,
Great post! Having an online store is a great way to own and operate an online business. Besides selling products, you can also earn commissions by being an affiliate to those sellers and suggest products for your readers to buy on your website/blog. That way, you are not the seller, you are the referrer, sparing you from the hassles of operating an online store – orders, stock, returns, complaints, etc.
Thanks again!
Marios
Hi Marios,
Thank you for the comments.
This is my exact point. By not having to hold inventory, you costs to start your business are minimal. As your ecommerce business expands, you can consider holding stock but it is not really necessary.
And as you say, you can also earn commission as an affiliate marketer for the suppliers.
Again, thank you for responding to my article. Wishing you great success with your online endeavours,
Gary
This article is not only highly informative but also incredibly inspirational. My “real life” job is a drop-ship situation, but it’s not an online business and not something I control…it’s just something I “fell into” years ago. Now I’d like to turn all that on its head and create a business I’m passionate about that will earn me income via the same simple means. Personally I love NOT having to deal with products themselves and, instead, enjoy the process of building a customer base. Which is now more interesting (and easier) than ever with technology and the connected-ness the internet provides. I look forward to your training lessons, Gary. This is great stuff!
Hi Cheri,
Thank you for your kind words.
You already have a head start over many people just starting out in the world of drop shipping. I hope I can provide you the information you need to motivate you to take action and start your own ecommerce business.
Let me know through this website how it all goes or contact me via the contact form if you have any questions. I am happy to help out.
Best wishes for your online business,
Gary
Thank you for this great and amazing post, i really find it helpful and highly informative. You have really provided great insight into making money online. I have been having a hard time creating a niche because I feel the one I have passion for is too competitive. Can you help me with some tips?
Hi Clement,
Thank you for your comments.
I am just in the process of reviewing my first lesson on choosing a niche and will post it very soon. Hopefully, it will help you determine if your niche can be competitive or not. If it isn’t, you may still be able to narrow it down further and make it competitive. The number of variations on any niche is almost unlimited and you can find somewhere that you can own!
I hope to hear back from you in the future with the details and update on your successful ecommerce business.
Wishing you every success in 2019 and beyond,
Gary
Thanks for this great review, these 6 steps to success when starting an e-commerce business online will no doubt work for me as i have been looking for a side hustle to maximize my earnings. I don’t really know much about drop shipping can it be done from one country to another? Should I incase want to go into this. Thanks for this informative review.
Hi Seun,
Thank you for the comments on my article.
You can run a drop shipping business from almost anywhere as long as you have the following; good internet so that you can run your store and contact drop shipping suppliers that will provide your inventory to customers, a method of being paid (PayPal or some other online payment method) and a positive mental attitude to ensure that you can provide a passionate experience to your customers.
If you have these, you can start a successul ecommerce business online.
I hope you take actiion and start your own store,
Gary