Advice on starting Ecommerce

Hello everyone,

I wanna start earning some passive income through e-commerce. There's been a niche in my mind that's currently not available in my country and I want to capitalize on that.

I've been reading a lot of guides and threads here on BHW but the majority of the things I read doesn't seem applicable to my country. The plan for the e-commerce is to buy toiletry products in bulk and start selling them online to a specific target market. Dropshipping is a small market here and would not apply.

I am still in the process of sourcing for a local supplier to buy products whole sale. Once I finalize on the supplier, I will build an e-commerce website using WooCommerce. However, one major concern is the shipping to customer's address. I am thinking of using a logistics company (NinjaVan) to send the products out to customers. Logistics would be the biggest worry in starting the business. Need some advice.

Anybody?

Yeah, there is no passive income in ecommerce.... You really need to rethink or change your mindset

fc-dh said:

Yeah, there is no passive income in ecommerce.... You really need to rethink or change your mindset

Click to expand...

I might have gotten the wrong idea. I really have no idea how all these work that's why I'm asking and getting opinions. But basically I will still put in the hard work to operate the e commerce.

Ecommerce is hard work, you have to setup your store, write product descriptions, handle support, handle shipping, handle payments, advertise or SEO for traffic, there is absolutely nothing passive about ecommerce unless you outsource everything but then you have to deal with VA's and training them firing and hiring, as i set if you come to this game with the mindset of hard work now so you can have a passive income stream you're really looking at the wrong section of IM, you should be doing affiliate stuff

fc-dh said:

Ecommerce is hard work, you have to setup your store, write product descriptions, handle support, handle shipping, handle payments, advertise or SEO for traffic, there is absolutely nothing passive about ecommerce unless you outsource everything but then you have to deal with VA's and training them firing and hiring, as i set if you come to this game with the mindset of hard work now so you can have a passive income stream you're really looking at the wrong section of IM, you should be doing affiliate stuff

Click to expand...

I'm prepared to do what is necessary.

I just don't know how to go about doing it especially the logistics

e-Commerce site is the best option. Just you will need to learn so many things to manage it. You should have the knowledge of web development and design. You will have to learn the integration of payment gateway as e-commerce site will need that. You should learn the security things for securing the all details which your customers used to share online. Those should not be disclosed or hacked as there are bank details, credit/debit card details etc.

You will need to introduce your website so you will get the visitors and your customers. SEO is the part of it, you will need to perform it to catch the new clients online. You will need to write the unique contents on your website.

So there are so many things which comes under single website design and development.

Regarding OP's question about logistics, I suppose you will ship internationally and not just to your country. By the way your drop shipping supplier does not have to be in your country. Often the drop shipping supplier (the company you buy the goods from) can ship the goods themselves directly to the buyer. Alternatively you can use a company providing warehouse + shipping. Or finally you can ship yourself which is not scalable.

First off, I highly recommend that you research your target demographic and make sure that your "toiletry products" is something that they truly need and/or want. I've sold a great deal of products online, however your product doesn't seem like a particular niche that you may want to pursue unless you have thoroughly tested it on your targeted audience.

If the product is viable for your target audience, I recommend it starting out on a small, bare-bones Woocommerce store. Set up 8 to 12 products within the store and run a few paid advertising campaigns to a few of your most realistic high-value products.

I recommend Facebook ads as a extremely viable source of targeting the correct demographic and ensuring that you have a winning product before you expand to other areas like SEO and other social networks.