What is eCommerce?
eCommerce is buying and selling products online. Some of the biggest platforms that you can buy products online include amazon. The way this works is that you visit the website, check out the products they are selling or even search what you want. When you find the product you want, you proceed with the checkout process. Once you complete the payment, the online shop like amazon will ship your products to you.
eCommerce is widely growing as more and more people go online and get access to the internet. Even more so, more and more people are becoming familiar with online shopping hence the industry is growing very fast. Hence you need to tap into this fast growing opportunity to make money online.
In this article, we are going to show you how you can make money online with eCommerce. We are going to go through a step by step guide on how to make money online with eCommerce.
Step-by-Step guide on how to make money with eCommerce.
Step 1. Choose the Right eCommerce Model.
The very first thing that you need to do to launch your eCommerce business is to choose the right model. There are so many structures that you can use to design your eCommerce business. To go over a few of them quickly, these are some of the most common models you can try.
- Dropshipping. In this eCommerce model, you do not hold any inventory. You only promote and sell products that are not yours. Once you make the sale, the supplier ships the product to the customer directly.
- Print on Demand. With this model, the customers make orders, then you make the custom product and ship to them. Such custom products include shirts or mugs.
- Wholesale/Retail. With this model, you buy the products in bulk. Then you sell these products at a higher margin.
- Private Labeling. With this model, you manufacture and brand your own products. Hence you are the main part of the process.
- Digital Products. These are electronic intangible products that are bought and sold electronically. Such products include eBooks, courses, software and templates.
- Subscription Boxes. This is a recurring revenue model.
Step 2. Select a Profitable Niche.
Once you select the model that you want to structure your eCommerce business on, its time to choose your niche. What are you good at? What products do you have access to? Additionally, what products can you actually sell? What are your sales skills? With all these questions, you can be able to decide which niche of products you want to sell.
Other factors that will help you decide which niche to choose are high demand, low competition and passion/expertise.
For example, some of the profitable niches that you can try are pet accessories, fitness, tech gadgets and eco-friendly products.
In order for you to be able to identify the best niches or the most profitable, there are tools that you can use. Use Google Trends, Amazon Best Sellers or TikTok trends to find hot products. These tools can really help you find the best niches.
Step 3. Build Your Online Store.
Once you identify your niche, the next step to establish your eCommerce business is to build your store. Like the name suggests, eCommerce happens on the internet. More specifically on a website. Hence you will need to build a website where people can visit your store and see your products.
To create your store, you can use platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix or BigCommerce. These platforms have a lot of tools and systems built specifically to help you establish an eCommerce store.
However if you do not want to establish your own store, you can use third party eCommerce platforms like Etsy or Amazon. With these, all you do is create your store-front. Much like an online profile, list your products and then let amazon fulfill the orders for you.
Remember to optimize your store in order to rank online and improve UX. Remember to make it mobile-friendly, fast-loading and SEO-optimized.
Step 4. Source or Create Products.
Depending on the eCommerce model that you chose in step 1 above, source or create your products. If you sell your own products, then create them. Manufacture them or print them.
On the other hand, if you sell products that are not yours, then source them. This can be buying the products from the wholesalers. Similarly, you could get the products from dropshipping or affiliate suppliers. If this is your model, some of the sources can be AliExpress, Alibaba, Spocket or Printful.
Always remember to focus on quality, uniqueness and branding. To grow your eCommerce store and catch repeat customers, you will have to provide them with products of high quality. Let the products be unique and have your branding so that they can know its you and keep coming back.
Step 5. Set Up Payment and Shipping.
You will need a method of getting paid right? You will need a way of your customers sending you money. Hence you will need to integrate a payment processor. Some of the most common payment processors that you can use include PayPal, Stripe, Flutterwave for Africa.
In addition to the payment methods, you will need to provide multiple shipping methods. This will make it easy for the people to receive the products.
You will also need to have a clear and elaborate return and refund policies.
Step 6. Market Your Store to Drive Sales.
As all businesses, your eCommerce store will need marketing. All businesses need marketing in order to reach customers and make sales. Some of the methods that you can use to promote/market your business include:
- Social Media Marketing.
- Influencer Marketing.
- SEO & Blogging.
- Email Marketing.
- Paid Ads.
Step 7. Optimize for Conversions.
To make more sales, you will need to optimize your website and products. You need to optimize your product descriptions, images and reviews. This will lead to your potential customers ending up being customers.
To make sure that you do not bleed potential customers, you need to use upsells and cross-sells. In addition to that, you need to send emails to abandoned carts. In the emails remind them to complete the order.
To make more sales, add urgency. This involves things like limited stock and countdown timers to make the customers buy immediately.
Step 8. Track & Scale.
As part of growth, you will need to track the progress of your business. You will need to track your products and your sales to know how you are performing. With such information, you can scale up your business for growth. Use tools like Google Analytics, Meta Pixel and Shopify Analytics.
Scale winning products with more ad spend and influencers. This will be a better ad spend that has higher ROI. Moreover, you can expand your product line or try international markets.
Conclusion.
Now you know How To Make Money with eCommerce. Now you know how to start an eCommerce business and make money with it. Go ahead and follow the steps we have listed for you to get started. eCommerce is a scalable and accessible way to make money online. Hence do not miss out. Start small, test often and then grow. Even some of the biggest eCommerce companies today started small.
