What is Ecommerce?
Ecommerce is the sale of products or services on the Internet. This can be done through a website, mobile application, social media platform, or any other digital platform. The advantage of selling online is that your potential customer base is larger than it would be if you were operating your business only in a physical location (such as a mall). This allows you to sell more products and make more money because you are able to reach more people. Ecommerce businesses are booming today because they have such an easy way to get started and grow their business.
By learning how ecommerce works, anyone can start their own online business! You don’t need any special skills or experience; just some motivation and drive! That’s why I love this industry so much: anyone can do it! Below I will detail exactly how ecommerce works with examples from my own experiences (I’m currently selling on eBay). Let’s jump into it!
How does ECommerce work? It all starts with an idea for something you want to sell…
The first step in starting an ecommerce business is brainstorming ideas for things that people might want to buy online. For me this was easy: I was browsing Reddit one day when I stumbled upon someone selling used textbooks at high prices. The plaintiff’s actions were impacting the market value of used textbooks and I felt like it was a scam. I decided that I would sell my own textbooks online to make some money off of this scammer’s actions!
I began brainstorming other ideas for products that might be high-demand because of their low market value or popularity (and the fact that they are so cheap). This is when I landed on selling loose leaf tea. Loose leaf tea can be very expensive in grocery stores, but you can buy the leaves in bulk for cheap on Amazon. This makes it a great opportunity to make some profit by selling loose leaf tea at a higher price point (especially since students need it!).
From there
You will need to determine your pricing strategy for how you want to set your product prices and how much profit you want to make from each sale. You can use a pricing tool like ProfitScout to help you with this.
Make sure that your pricing strategy is viable and will result in sales. You don’t want to spend a lot of time sourcing products only to find out that they’re not selling! A good way to do this is by checking out similar listings on eBay or Amazon and see how much they are selling for on these platforms. This will give you an idea of what the lowest price point could be for your product (and what people are willing to pay).
Another thing about Ecommerce
You’ll need to decide is whether or not you want to ship your products yourself, or if you would prefer using a drop shipper like I did. Drop shipping is when you sell products that were sent to you by a third party, rather than sourcing the product yourself. This can be advantageous because it allows you to sell products that aren’t readily available for purchase in stores.
However, drop shipping is also more time consuming because you will have to contact and communicate with your supplier every time someone places an order on your site. This process can be difficult for some people (I wouldn’t recommend drop shipping if you don’t like communicating with people). So it really depends on what type of businessperson are; if this doesn’t bother you, then go ahead and use a drop shipper!
Another option would be to source your own products from online wholesale markets like Alibaba and AliExpress. These websites allow sellers in China and other overseas manufacturing sites to sell their goods directly to customers online at a low cost.
I hope
That this guide has been helpful and you can get started building your own ecommerce business! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me and I will help answer them. You can also check out some of my other blog posts for more information on how to build a profitable ecommerce business!
Be sure to stay tuned for the next blog post in this series: How To Get Customers For Your Ecommerce Business.
