Ecommerce and e-tailing have exploded over the last decade because of two overriding factors. First, we now have the technology that allows us to sell online securely and profitably and also because there has been a decline in jobs throughout many other industries. But, if you want to make money by selling things online, where do you begin?
Start Small
Keeping things simple to begin with could save you a lot of time, energy and money in the long run. Plus, there is a learning curve to be considered and it will take time to explore all the factors that go into building a successful e-tailing business.
Online marketplaces like eBay are a great way to get to know the ecommerce environment and to make some money that you can use to scale up your operations. Using an online marketplace will help you work out things like margins – how much you need to sell things for in order to cover your costs and still make a profit.
In addition, you will learn how to optimise your product descriptions and do some basic marketing so that customers can find your products more easily.
What you end up with, for example, may look a little like this; an eBay account called “Sparkles” that sells jewellery and that is promoted using social media channels.
When goods start to sell, you will of course need to ship them and this means employing the services of a respected parcel delivery service.
Scaling Up
Once you are making some money using online marketplaces, you may decide that you want to scale up the operation and the next logical thing to do is to get a website. Here there are several options, but perhaps the most sensible is to use a template for your website and these can be found using a platform such as WordPress or Prestashop.
Now there are many important factors to consider, such as branding – the way you use words and images to represent the business and to appeal to your customer base. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is also important as this raises the visibility of your website on a very crowded internet.
The business you will now be running constitutes a full-blown ecommerce venture and as such you will need to be registered as business and to keep accounts that detail the businesses financial activities. With so much to do, it is at this point that you may want to consider getting some help to continue being a successful e-tailer.