Sometime last year I was introduced to eCommerce.

I hadn’t a clue what eCommerce was but when names like Amazon and EBay were mentioned and it was explained that average people were setting up their own online stores, I thought I had stumbled upon a fun way of killing my time by selling things I loved.

It never really dawned on me how simple setting up an online store could be. I was more or less sceptical about the entire process of arranging a store, adding products to it, connecting a payment processor. I really was not ready to learn how to design or code a store which is why it never crossed my mind.

I also thought that it would have been labour intensive and costly to hold inventory and package and ship items to customers.

Frankly I had no time for that.

But what was the game changer was when they said that I did not need any of that to open and run an online store.

Ok well now we’re onto something aren’t we?!

I know that most people get turned off from the thoughts of having a mountain load of things to do for an online store but I want you to know that there are so many apps that you can use to make the process more streamlined and efficient.

Once you have an online store set up, which may take a week or so, the only real thing you have to do is market it using advertising. 

Other things like customer service and dealing with product orders can actually be outsourced. That is what made the idea so much more attractive and because of that, Winton Lane Marketplace, my first eCommerce success, was born.

My First Ecommerce Business

The idea for Winton Lane Marketplace came about because I wanted to sell as many knick knacks as I could under one roof, hence the word “Marketplace”.

I realised that just like blogging, you need to give customers what they want. A business is never about you so I had to find products that people were passionate about and were willing to buy.

I also had to source my products from somewhere. Of course I could have gone to a wholesaler and bought a load of products in bulk but at the time, but I had no place to stock them.

I also did not want to bear an additional cost of storing these items. When I decided to start my online store, I wanted to keep my costs as low as possible. Every store owner’s dream right aside from being an eCommerce success?

Well the only way that I could have done that was through drop shipping.

At the time, I studied this model in great detail and decided to give it a try.

What Is Drop Shipping?

Drop shipping is a supply method where you, the store owner, does not hold any inventory or stock. You also do not deal with transporting the item to the customer. What happens when you receive an order from your customer, you will pass their information to a supplier, manufacturer or wholesaler who packages and ships the order to the customer on your behalf.

With a drop shipping business model, you never get involved in stocking or posting items. It simply requires a relationship with a supplier who takes on the burden of doing these tasks for you.

You also do not need to worry about the customer receiving the supplier’s own invoice within their package as you can easily set out an agreement that no branded invoices will be contained within the package.

This keeps the supplier anonymous and ensures that your brand name remains in tact with the customer.

What other store owners have done, is to ask the supplier to include custom made branded marketing material within packaged goods. Some suppliers have this service as an extra cost to the store owner so you can decide if you want to add this touch to increase personality in your brand.

The drop shipping model was pretty straightforward and ideal as it allowed me to focus on marketing my store and driving sales.  

With Winton Lane Marketplace, I used the Alibaba Marketplace to find products. If you do not know what Alibaba is, it is a Chinese supplier based in China.

They sell hundreds of thousands of products in any and every niche you can think of at very inexpensive wholesale prices. From clothing to electronics to toys. If you can think of it, they probably had it.

This is why it was such an easy option to use the Alibaba Marketplace, since I did not have to worry about where to find a specific product.

However using a supplier from China did come with some trouble. The one thing that I did not like about this model was my customers were in the US.

So you know what that meant?

Ever had to order a product from China and it arrived within a month? Well not every customer was pleased with this even though my shipping policies were clearly stated on the product description for everyone to read.

So you can imagine that dealing with customer service was a nightmare.

Thankfully some customers were understanding but others were not. But I will outline for you later on, how you can avoid this little hurdle.

If you are using the drop shipping business model and you want to be an eCommerce success, the best advice I can give to you is, be very prompt when addressing customer queries. If there is any delay they can file chargebacks on your payment accounts and you do not want to be in trouble with them.

That is how some of my eCommerce friends got their PayPal accounts suspended because they failed to respond to customer requests quickly and efficiently. When PayPal sees that there are many disputes rising on your account, they can suspend your account preventing you from accessing the funds in it.

If you have no access to funds then you cannot pay the supplier or pay for your advertising.

So be very wary of this.

How I Made $7.5k With My First Shopify Store In One Month

When starting a Shopify store the one thing that you want to pay attention to, is your profit margin. This is super important if you want to be an eCommerce success.

Your profit margin is the amount of profit you make, after all expenses are taken away.

For example,

You list wall art in your online store for $300.00

You purchase it for $80.00 including shipping from your supplier

Your supplier ships the product to the customer

You earned $220.00 net

After paying for ad spend which may be $25.00

Transaction fees $17.00

Your profit is $178.00

Therefore you must always, ALWAYS know your numbers. Avoid this major pitfall of having hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue but losing thousands of dollars because your expenses were greater than your income.

It can happen and I’ve seen it happen.

In order to make $7.5k with my store, I made sure that I sold products which were of a high perceived value so that I could mark it up to a realistic price that the customer would be willing to pay. This would ensure that my profit margins were high.

Products which are of a high perceived value are:

• Wall art
• Jewellery
• Sneakers
• Electronics
• Cosmetic Items
• Sweaters
• Custom T shirts

You also want to make sure that you sell products in a niche that people would buy from. This is why research is so important.

How To Do Research

You can start doing your research on Amazon or Facebook.

For example, if you want to start an online toy store, then searching Amazon’s toy section will show you which toys are best sellers.

You can also look in the section New Releases, Movers & Shakers and Most Wished For items for ideas.

In order to remain competitive it is a good idea to head on over to Alibaba Marketplace and see if you can find similar products where you can mark up the price so that it is on par with Amazon’s price.

You want to make sure that you are not overpriced. After all you are competing with stores like Amazon and shopping places like Ebay.

And a customer will choose Amazon or Ebay over a non-branded store anytime.

Another way that you can do research and which is the way that I found my winning product, was through Facebook.

Facebook eCommerce store owners use keywords in their ads as call to actions. For example, buy yours here, grab yours here or get yours here.

I plugged those same keywords into Facebook search and found a few items, which were hugely popular by looking at the amount of engagement the ad received.

If you have a particular niche that you want to sell in, then use the keyword for the niche and keyword search terms. For example if you want to sell products for horse lovers then your research will include the search term “horse grab yours here” or “horse buy yours here”.

Where To Find Products

I already mentioned the Alibaba Marketplace to find products for your store but there are many other wholesalers that you can use that provide better quality products.

You can also find wholesalers who are available in the United States which may be more convenient to you, if your customers are in the United States.

If you find that sourcing products from China is not ideal for you and you want to avoid the lengthy delay that your customer will face (and the wrath of the customer), then you can have your products imported to a fulfilment center like Dollar Fulfilment where they will take care of packaging and shipping to your customer.

They even take care of receiving returns on your behalf.

Whilst using fulfilment centres, takes away from you having to hold stock, there will be that initial cost of shipping the items in bulk and other additional costs like import taxes.

If you do not want to use fulfilment centres you can also use online fulfilment companies like CustomCat or Pillow Profits which allow you to sell custom printed clothing articles like t shirts, shoes or handbags.

Lucky for you, I can help you avoid the guesswork of finding the best wholesalers and drop shippers for your store because I am giving away a MASSIVE list right here.

Click here to download your free list of niche wholesalers.

How To Start An Online Store

Anyone can start an online store and become an eCommerce success but you must be willing to do the work first and put in the effort to get it up and running.

This will include doing the research to find great products to sell and setting up the store.

Thanks to great online store builders like Shopify or Woocommerce, putting together an online store is very easy.

In my article, How To Start An Online Clothing Store, I went through the steps of building an online store using Shopify.

Shopify is one of the largest online store platforms that helps its users sell online, on social media, offline or even from the trunk of your car.

You do not need any design skills as the platform uses drag and drop features to make building your store as easy as possible.

If you do need design customisation then you can contact their design team as they offer one hour of complimentary design. If your customisation requires more work then you can hire one of their design experts.

Shopify is also used by over 500,000 businesses and has over 1 million active users.

So it is a pretty stable and popular platform that most people are using and achieving their own eCommerce success.

To start selling online with Shopify click here. Shopify is giving my readers a free 14 day trial so you can try it and see.

Ready To Start Your Own Online Store?

Having an eCommerce store is a majorly profitable side business that anyone can do. It is one of those side hustles that I recommended in my article 25 Best Online Passive Income Ideas because it can be passive income once you have set it up and automated the entire process.

If you are seriously interested in eCommerce and starting your own online store, I would highly recommend the Sellosity Labs Ecommerce training course. In this training series you will learn:

• How to tap into a multi trillion dollar hungry market and become an eCommerce success just like myself and many other successful online store owners
• How to drive traffic to your store and market your product globally to increase sales
• Ecommerce success secrets that no one tells you
• How to get started with your online store.

If you are new to this type of online career then it is important to understand how eCommerce works so that you do not waste a lot of time and money.

Once you have the know how, it is insanely lucrative for the average person to master.

To get started with the Sellosity Labs course click here.

I hope the experience with my first store has given you some inspiration to get started. Whilst I no longer run Winton Lane Marketplace, my first eCommerce success experience taught me a lot of lessons that I am happy to share and pass on to you, my readers.

When I started Shopify I had no idea what eCommerce was, but I saw other people winning and I wanted that for myself.

I was prepared to learn the skill and learn it well.

Now it’s your turn.

Start with your Shopify 14 day trial here.

Learn how to master eCommerce here.

Happy selling!

Cheers