I'm thinking of starting an e-commerce business in the future. Advice?

Do: import matches (the long ones)

Don't: import potato chips while exporting diapers.

 

You're in the best place in the world to find investors and there's a littany of talent and intelligent people. If you have a good idea and network properly, you'll find smart people and money to back you.

 

Your product better have astronomical margins and/or be easy to ship. Shipping costs cut into your profit by a lot. Companies like Amazon/Walmart do not make money on selling items and they already have an e-commerce network.

 

Research a niche that's high in demand. See if Aliexpress has it. If they do, create a website, add a Aliexpress dropship plugin and once that's done, test different adverting platforms for traffic. I use facebook ads, for every 1000 hits on my website I get about 40 sales. Each click costs me about .20 cents so I'm spending 200 dollars for 40 sales. I'm making gross profit of 10 dollars for each sale. I don't have to ever worry about shipping, only downside is returns.

 

For every 1,000 Facebook clicks you get 40 sales? $5 in ads per sale seems like it would make it hard to profit on that unless the sale price is pretty high. What do you sell?

 

The price is $10, I sell it on my website for $20.

 

You know those hoverboards all the kids are racing around on? Yea, don't invest in that.

 

There are different plugins you can buy that will help you list the items from aliexpress to your website. When someone does buy an item you get notification on what the item is and a link to the to item on aliexpress so you can order and ship to your customer. The plugin I use allows me to search for the product through the plugin and add it to my website. They well set up everything which includes product description, pictures, and price which you can adjust the markup later.

 

This is the greatest business proposal I've ever seen.

 

From a marketing perspective, in the early stages, most of your traffic would probably come through paid search. Since you would be spending quite a bit of money, you need to focus on relevant campaigns/keywords. I would recommend hiring somebody experienced who knows what he/she is doing or taking courses and learning Adwords/BingAds/Other Paid Search sources inside out prior to starting.

As you build your brand (generate strong content, generate buzz on social media, establish yourself as a player in your space), you'll rise in organic search and bring in free traffic. That is when things would really take off.

Also I would recommend selling on Amazon along with the site. The margins aren't as good and that should not be the focus BUT the fact is they rank near the top of a Google search for possibly any product known to man. They are just too big to ignore. Just be careful when selling on Amazon, your customer service has to be elite and your fulfillment has to be fast.


Also read these to help you get started (his blog for marketing analytics is very good in general, check it out):
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/best-web-analytics-tools-quantitative-qualitative/ (there are alternatives/new options available to some of these tools but just read the concepts of what they do)

 

VR p*rn

 

I work for a niche company. We buy all our **** from aliexpress and mark it up like 200-600%