Well, dudes, have you ever thought that you live in blessed times?
That’s easy: we have lots of products on the shelves, different styles and brands. What is more, we can buy from sellers living across the seas, and we don’t have to know them personally or even talk to them. Our grandparents could only dream about it. And it was a common case to work on somebody’s factory, opening your own business was more than just difficult. That goes without saying that working from home couldn’t be a dream as it was nothing, but impossible.
Luckily, nowadays we have more freedom and having your business is an ordinary thing. Running it from home is hardly worth mentioning. This type of business running is called e-commerce. This marketing platform is very fashionable nowadays, so let’s see what it is about and how beneficial it can be for you.
To cut a long story short, eCommerce (or online shop) is an analogue to traditional shops in the mall with the only difference the former one is available on the Internet 24/7 without days off, holidays, lunch breaks and your location as well as time zone also means nothing to the shop itself.
There are also some differences for a shop owner: you don’t have to pay rent for the pavilion, spend money on salaries, insurances and staff education.
Points to work at
As far as you can see, this business seems to be very convenient for running, however there is a fly in the ointment.
You will have to invest in marketing a lot. If we compare ecommerce with traditional offline shop, in the latter example, clients can drop into it as were walking just nearby and got interested in by the windows or something like that. While the fact of having online shop deprives you from that advantage – how can find you, if nobody knows that you exist and how to find you?
All you need is people
Business will die without traffic, so you should think about e commerce advertising strategies to promote your business. The simplest variant is PPC campaign that implies you will pay each time when the ad was clicked on a third-party website and a potential client was redirected to your page.
As one more option, you can contact directly websites owners in a relevant niche to post your ads. For example, you sell sport goods and such ads will be suitable at fitness blogs, websites about healthy lifestyle and so on. Of course, everyone would like to be posted on Forbes, but the more popular the blog is, the higher the price will be.
So many shops…
The level of business competition is also very high. You have two ways out to be done with it:
- to launch a niche business with unique goods;
- work really hard for the clients to choose exactly you.
One of the solutions here is to pay attention to SEO. It is a free tool that will help you to have higher positions in search results and, thus, be more often mentioned in comparison with your competitors.
There is also a problem of trust from clients’ side. There are a lot of dishonest people and be ready for your buyers to trust you.
How can I get my product?
The point of delivery will fall on your shoulders as well. It can be one of your competitive advantages when all other conditions are equal. You can organize the delivery:
- by yourself (that may be too expensive for small shops);
- cooperate with other shops to join their delivery system for some fee;
- invest in an order fulfillment service;
- apply to some delivery agencies.
Some more advice
Having your business from home, unfortunately, doesn’t mean you will spend an hour or two for it. You will have to work a lot, especially at first stages.
- The understanding of success is too different for everybody, write what you want to achieve in a month, half a year, a decade. Check your real current condition with your goals and analyze what is wrong and what can be improved.
- Be careful with trying on somebody’s model especially if it is not from your niche. Magic happens only once, and what was a success for some other company may become a dramatic failure for you. Study their story, what is good, what is acceptable for your situation and how it can be modified for you.
- Study your audience: their needs, fears and desires. It will help you to serve them more effectively.
- Spend time for self education. Having your own business makes you be educated, versatile and curious.
Good luck!
