Anyone own a succesful E Commerce business?

[kopetski7]

Thanks for all the information so far! When it comes to SEO for E Commerce sites are their any services out there that you recommend? And what traffic techniques have you seen work the best for increasing SE rankings for your home and category pages?

I am also looking into hiring someone from the warrior forum to manually build Web 2.0 sites and wondering if anyone has has had success with this, I was looking into Matt LaClears page one service. Or if anyone here offers good services that you know of for a relatively new e commerce site?

 

[sams3]

Setting up an e-commerce business is incredibly competitive and rewarding. Aside from the website, i mean you have to buy the the stock, you would have to have a nice little range of products to start off.
And the cost of stocking electronics can run you up into the tens of thousands especially if you want to avail of bulk prices in order to compete with your competitors. Todays consumers are extremely price savvy because of the recession, they will shop around for the best prices and because you cant get bulk rates its extremely hard to compete against the likes of newegg, ebuyer etc etc.
I want to set up an e-commerce business myself ever since i was 16, i am now 20. I have about $13000 saved up, aside from the website costs, i dont know how im going to manage it in terms of other costs. I am a hard worker and always finish what i start, im just trying to figure out how im gonna do it.
I could do with a mentor if anyone is willing to help me?

EDIT:
I think im demographically screwed too. My little country has high VAT(23%), and my country is an island too to make things worse, Small population only 4.5 million, increased shipping costs, exporting to the UK is virtually out of reach since i wouldnt be able to compete against big e-commerce websites. God i wish lived in america, I know the government is corrupt and tyranny is rampant, but at least id have no tax added on to my online prices, and its a much bigger market, shipping from ireland to USA takes some time, so exporting to the US is out because i would then have disgruntled customers.

I know i might sound negative atm, but i have to think of all these factors, because exporting is where the money is at, especially for me because im demographicaly screwed, but it would be different if i lived in the USA.
Every entrepreneur has these negative thoughts at some stage in their life, but it has to be done

If someone could reply to this post and and possibly point out my wrong thinking, i want to succeed, but i dont want to stick my hand into the fire without knowing the consequences

 

[dubcorp]

I would be forever thankful if someone could PM me their SEO contacts

 

[cyberjunkie]

Setting up an e-commerce business is incredibly competitive and rewarding. Aside from the website, i mean you have to buy the the stock, you would have to have a nice little range of products to start off.
And the cost of stocking electronics can run you up into the tens of thousands especially if you want to avail of bulk prices in order to compete with your competitors. Todays consumers are extremely price savvy because of the recession, they will shop around for the best prices and because you cant get bulk rates its extremely hard to compete against the likes of newegg, ebuyer etc etc.
I want to set up an e-commerce business myself ever since i was 16, i am now 20. I have about $13000 saved up, aside from the website costs, i dont know how im going to manage it in terms of other costs. I am a hard worker and always finish what i start, im just trying to figure out how im gonna do it.
I could do with a mentor if anyone is willing to help me?

EDIT:
I think im demographically screwed too. My little country has high VAT(23%), and my country is an island too to make things worse, Small population only 4.5 million, increased shipping costs, exporting to the UK is virtually out of reach since i wouldnt be able to compete against big e-commerce websites. God i wish lived in america, I know the government is corrupt and tyranny is rampant, but at least id have no tax added on to my online prices, and its a much bigger market, shipping from ireland to USA takes some time, so exporting to the US is out because i would then have disgruntled customers.

I know i might sound negative atm, but i have to think of all these factors, because exporting is where the money is at, especially for me because im demographicaly screwed, but it would be different if i lived in the USA.
Every entrepreneur has these negative thoughts at some stage in their life, but it has to be done

If someone could reply to this post and and possibly point out my wrong thinking, i want to succeed, but i dont want to stick my hand into the fire without knowing the consequences

Your assertion that you are 'demographically screwed' is misguided.
You are complaining about things which are trivial in the world that
we live in, age I sense is the factor.

First it might be a good idea for
you to actually focus on what you want to sell, that would be a good
place for you to start. Then you might want to read a good book:
'The World is Flat' Thomas Friedman

Good luck

 

[dubcorp]

I would be forever thankful if someone could PM me their SEO contacts

anyone?

 

[dubcorp]

There is a huge opportunity in ecommerce section. So build a good ecommerce platform where you will be able to carry on your ecommerce strategies.

thanks for that

 

[LeopardSeal]

i do dropship and earn 70$ per month

Don't give up man.

 

[dubcorp]

why wont anyone share their seo guys with me?

 

[Revolate]

why wont anyone share their seo guys with me?

Because it's cost everyone 1000's to find the right people, and it really depends on what your after.

 

[pattymayo]

Thanks for the always very valuable information guys its such a pleasure

 

[willinabox]

I have an ecommerce site im rolling out using magento + wordpress. I'm using wordpress to create articles/pages to bring in organic SEO. Anyone done something similar?

 

[radarsurge]

Good info. Did anyone host a blog on your Volusion site? Or was it a different domain? Thanks!

I have several ecomm sites, biggest at 60k/sales on a good month. If you can't commit to making ecomm your full time gig, don't try. It's MUCH more work than people think.

 

[dubcorp]

Good info. Did anyone host a blog on your Volusion site? Or was it a different domain? Thanks!

I have several ecomm sites, biggest at 60k/sales on a good month. If you can't commit to making ecomm your full time gig, don't try. It's MUCH more work than people think.

Thats what Im planning to do starting next month! Gonna go full time with it...

Still looking for SEO talent...anyone care to share some legit providers?

 

[mistachewy]

I have an ecommerce site im rolling out using magento + wordpress. I'm using wordpress to create articles/pages to bring in organic SEO. Anyone done something similar?

I am in the middle of migrating 3 sites over to Magento right now. We have our blogs on different platforms but wordpress should integrate into magento easily and you can make it pretty much seamless. I was hoping to get the blogs moved to wordpress for that reason. This is a basic ecommerce setup I would recommend.

"If you build it, they will come" is a load of crap. It is fairly simple to get an ecommerce site up with a blog but if you truly don't market it, it will get nowhere.

Having a company blog can be extremely valuable as long as you are keeping it active and focused. This blog is a great platform for you to build Brand trust and Brand trust is very important. If you are only posting articles once a month or even less, it is not going to have any impact for you and may actually bring distrust to potential customer. When I am checking out a new site to buy from, i will usually jump over to their blog if they have one. If it doesn't look like they update it much or don't care about it, I tend to look not trust them. Especially if it hadn't been updated in months or even years.

You will still need to do a lot of SEO if you want to get meaningful traffic and not worry about getting penalized. From what I have seem with the ecommerce company I work for is that a little over a half of our business is coming from good organic traffic while PPC makes up almost the other half. People debate which is better but they are equally good. PPC is great for testing quickly. From the successful PPC campaigns, you can then take that and use it to create focused SEO campaing that you know people are interested in.

Apologies if I have rambled off. Typing when the sleep meds are kicking in is not always the greatest idea.

 

[GiorgioB]

I have an ecommerce site im rolling out using magento + wordpress. I'm using wordpress to create articles/pages to bring in organic SEO. Anyone done something similar?

I use the same formula and I have to say magento is awesome. Wordpress blog on the same domain to get lots of contents.. I started about 6-7months ago, I only drop ship and I think I might make my 1st $1K this month... ecommerce is not going anymore and is definitely a lot of work but also a full out business model combining logistics, supply chain management, brand management as well as online marketing (as opposed to a blog with adsense or affiliate marketing or smthg.. ). That's what makes it so interesting, IMO

 

[Corydoras007]

Besides magento, does anyone have any recommended ecommerce platforms out there in terms of it being relatively easy to use?

Thanks.

 

[willinabox]

I have several ecomm sites, biggest at 60k/sales on a good month. If you can't commit to making ecomm your full time gig, don't try. It's MUCH more work than people think.[/QUOTE]

Are you saying you wouldn't recommend it vs IM? Broad Q but I'm curious

Also, anyone have any solid social media strategies that have been working for them?

 

[Xetchx]

Good thread guys and thanks to all for their experienced info.

I had a ecomm site a few years back, selling Glass tile it was doing good until my supplier/drop shipper turned on me. Currently I am trying my hand at learning how to affiliate blog but my goal when I get back into the rhythm of things is to start another Ecomm site. Spent many a days so far looking though drop shipper sites lol sooo much fun.

Question though, do most of you guys auto feed from your suppliers site or manually upload?

 

[PreacherJesse]

I'm gettin tired of my 9-5 and I wanted to get more sleep so I decided to venture into e-commerce.

I targeted a small, non-competitive niche that also captures my interest and my advocacy so I won't get bored with it. Actually, I'm planning to make it one of my lifetime advocacies.

Anyway, here's what I have so far:

> Established a contact overseas for the products. I buy the product from him at wholesale price and will be selling here in my country in retail mode. Price is still competitive even if I double the price of the products that I buy from him.

> set up the website. got free 6 months hosting from site5 thru a coupon and then paid for the domain. my basic strategy is a "Blog with a Store Section" kind of thing. used fantastico to install wordpress as a platform. Not really an expert on coding and shit so I went for it. Will try to learn html along the way. I can write about the target keywords that I want to rank the site/blog for and then hope to bring my readers at the top of my funnel.

> Site's about 60-70% complete now. need to write content for the products and set up the payment with and without CC and shipping. Using credit cards is not too popular in our country so I'll have to set up other payment gateways as well.

> i use woo commerce for my shopping cart and product management. I'm actually impressed that it's kinda easy to handle. will try to learn more of its features so I can unleash its full potential.

> i know a bit of seo but I am not focusing on that as of this moment. Currently focusing on content that can capture my reader's interest first and then SEO later.

do you think my strategy will work guys?

 

[abby01]

how do they do that? can you possibly give us tips how to do that? omg i have been doing this dropship and create my own product but still i'm not able to make it on that income.