brett701

Can someone give me a quick run down on the quickest way to Ecommerce success. I have a direct relationship with many manufacturers in my niche and I am needing to create an Ecommerce based website. I'd like this to be solely Web Based even though i may eventually have a local shop or expand upon this.

I would like:

1. Summary of what it takes
2. References to learn more without reading 3,000 pages. I'm not against reading a good book if it really takes care of business.
3. what i will need?
ie: paypal account or paypal business account , subscribe to authorize.net, an appropriate theme or template site that looks good and is respectable,etc...


Thanks so much everyone. I really appreciate it.

webbusineses

Idea could be build and website, use social media to market your product or you can generate leads through email marketing once you build a list. You can visit Interspire Outsourcing, Choose a template customize it according to your need and then go for marketing. You can hit me up adnan.ahmed227 for more discussion regarding shopping cart

brett701

I actually am very familiar with SEO and have good corporate experience in this field. This is one of my strengths. Getting clients to the site isnt my challenge. The challenge is finding the time to create the ecommerce site that is fully functional(receive money) that doesn't look like junk.

brett701

My issue is that website has a page rank of Zero. I would not use it. No offense.

webbusineses

What website you are talking about! Is it about InterspireMods yes it is new website but from the old provider, Hostings House is in the market since 5 years and InterspireMods is the subsidiary of Hostings House. Well you can post some example of your dream eCommerce website that don't like Junk may be I could help you to get better than this..

chiwawa

The quickest way to ecommerce success is seo. Create of build a website, optimize this site so well that it attracts visitors. Market or promote your product through offpage and on page optimization. You can use social networks and social bookmarking sites to promote your product.

brett701

I agree. I can take care of the SEO / internet marketing portion. I am talking about setting up a site as quickly as possible that looks professional & trustworthy and is ready to accept payments via credit cards/google checkout/ paypal. Automated email replies and tracking of customer purchases. The site would also need to have an ease of adding and subtracting products.

contentwriting360

Brett, seriously, if someone here knows the QUICKEST WAYS to e-commerce success, he/she won't give it out. If I knew it, I will never tell it to anyone. I will keep it myself.

The best thing you can do is to conduct a sound research. Spend 10 to 15 days reading resources that are readily available online. Read threads on e-commerce related forums/sites. But believe me, if someone knows the quickest ways, he won't tell you that for free.

Just saying.

brett701

Thanks for your reply, however, I felt as if this were a community that people would share. I am not in direct competition with anyone as I am working in my own field. Even if i were in direct competition, it would not be affecting them significantly in such a small community. I know that i will post on other forums laying out very detailed information as to how I will approach things and people are very appreciative and i don't feel as if I am hurting myself when I do this.

DevMarkovich

Be patient to wait for months before your page rank gets higher while you will collect quality backlinks.
Once your pagerank is around 2, start a paid campaign on google with budget of 200$ for first run. But spend the budget wisely, first 50$ in first day, analyze keywords and then continue...

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DevMarkovich

e-commerce sites are hard to begin collecting earnings, but rather possible.

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Blase

This isn't the quickest way to success, but it's the quickest way
to get a site up that does everything you mentioned.

Check out ProStores and or Store Coach

They both have EXCELLENT support and their
systems make it pretty easy to get going fast.

good luck

"Nothing Happens Until Something Is Sold"

brett701

Thanks. This is a temporary solution to get things rolling. I will upgrade in time.

ThomasOMalley

The problem with your question is that it's so broad.

Yes, people share on this forum absolutely. But to answer your question would require a book.

No one is going to write a book for you.

sbucciarel

It's alwasy better to get a Paypal business account if you're going to do business with it, or at least a Premium account.

A Woo Commerce theme for Wordpress is my choice for getting an ecommerce site up and running quickly and more importantly, easily. They have a lot of extensions, including tons of different payment gateways. If you're using just Paypal though, no additional payment gateway extension is necessary.

juztin

Just a quick tip

1. Know which niche you will be on. Study that niche
2. Find suppliers...DO NOT USE DHGATE OR DOBA crap.. Contact the merchants directly.
3. DO NOT USE A CRAPPY THEME. Just get a nice Magento template from themeforest and modify the design so it will look original. This way, you can get a nice unique design for below 50$
4. Now once your site is done and your products are displayed properly. Start workin on the SEO
- make sure on-site SEO is correct
- Make sure you have done your keyword researches
- Run a project based on 3-4 keywords.
5. Get a 1-800 number

The goal is to look professional and legit with good products
I will also recommend you ask your dropshipper to send your business cards or any promotional pamphlet when sending the package to clients.

davedenholm

Bigcommerce or shopify will get you up and running fast and looking good for starters.
Whats your niche that is not competing with anyone else?
Good Luck
David

MattWell

I have always found setting up the website to be the quickest and easiest part of the process, but maybe thats just because I enjoy it.

I would reccommend Wordpress with the WooCommerce plugin and a good woocommerce theme (either on Woothemes site or there are some good ones on ThemeForest). Then you just put it all together, customise it and launch it. It would probably take less than a week.

You can also outsource this part. I normally charge $200. Some charge more, some may charge less. If you have any questions about it, just send me a PM and I'll happily help.

For more of my knowledge, go to my blog at MatthewWellington.co.uk

sroth

Hi Brett,
I have been an internet retailer going on 4 years now. I can tell you what would be the wisest thing to do if you are starting out so your business doesn't go down the tubes in the first year as is the case with so many businesses carrying or marketing physical inventory.
If you have a relationship with many manufacturers, start with testing both product marketability and availablity. Check if the product is selling on Amazon and the ranking of the product. If a product ranks at 100, it is selling really well on Amazon, which is a great indicator. If it ranks at 350,000, it is selling very slowly or not at all. This is how their ranking system works. Also check the price that the product is selling for on Amazon and Ebay. If you cannot compete with the price after all your expenses to sell the product, that may not be a good product to start selling yet until you have an established website with good established traffic (ie. fullfillment costs + your cost for the product + shipping costs + storage costs + any commission costs (ecommerce channels like Buy.com, Amazon, all have a commission or PPC rate if your product sells on their site).
You should realize that selling physical product by carrying inventory is more profitable by the piece than dropshipping, however, it is not scalable without having staff to manage the fulfilment and customer service. You will have to hire this staff or pay for a good fulfillment service.
Dropshipping on the other hand, is more scalable but must be done in great volume to realize a decent profit. The risk you run here is that you still have to swallow the cost of return products and you must be able to pay for the product and deliver it to the customer in a very timely fashion. If your merchant account delays your access to the funds paid to you by your customer for the product, you will have to have $ available to shell out first to get the product to your customer.
Lastly, consider affiliate marketing to sell physical goods first, especially if you can find the product on Amazon, Sharasale, or Comission Junction. That way you can learn how to market these products to your niche, build a blog that centers around the niche and its customers and their needs, and build a customer list from your blog. You will make some money with only the risk of your time and effort and you may find out a lot about your niche and products you want to sell in the process. You can also be building traffic that you can use later to sell physical product if your affiliate marketing efforts are successful.
In short, if you can't sell affiliate products, you will have difficultly selling physical products for which you are responsible for inventory, and that can be dangerous financially for a business just starting out.
Hope this helps

brett701

Thanks so much for the replies. The information is invaluable.

Shopify seems as if it takes 1%. I do not want to lose a % if i don't have to.

-Also important to me is making certain that the users have the maximum methods of payment. Id like this to be easy to set up.

ieaypal, Authorize.net, Credit cards, whatever else there is....

-I would like a filter option. Similar to a Zappo's. I will have many products.

-Also , I would like a 1-5 star system for each product as well as a user review portion like amazon


Thanks so much for your help and direction

pavv

Hi Brett,

I'd suggest WooCommerce with an awesome looking theme.

Also important to me is making certain that the users have the maximum methods of payment. Id like this to be easy to set up.
WooCommerce comes with Paypal built in, additional payment methods are easily purchased and installed.

I would like a filter option. Similar to a Zappo's. I will have many products.
Products can easily be set up with 'attributes'. Sidebar on the side allows customers to easily find products with predefined filter options.

Also , I would like a 1-5 star system for each product as well as a user review portion like amazon
This is built into WooCommerce, easy as pie

Happy to answer questions if you attempt this, alternatively you can shoot me a PM for a done-for-you solution

Ecommerce Website Development and Marketing

New to eCommerce? Please take a look at my product which teaches you how to find and research a product/niche, then how to build your own store.
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oscarb

I'm new to e-commerce but have been sourcing products at liquidation prices via thrift stores, tag sales, book sales and craigslist. My wife and I are selling these items on Amazon.com via the FBA program. We're not in profit yet but we started on a total and complete shoe string five weeks ago and are seeing margins of as much as 1,000 percent (low ticket, for the most part). We're projecting a solid third month in the black once we reach an inventory threshold, get our productivity up (with systems and outsourcing) and good feedback from data analysis tools provided largely by the Big A. At some point soon, we hope to add wholesale products to the mix and branch in to selling the direct route of merchant to customer as well.

Your question begs an answer but it's difficult to do so because the word "quick" is nebulous. What's quick for you? Most businesses take some time to get up and running. I'd love to be profitable today but that's not realistic yet. I know the IM space is notorious for enabling a fantasy mindset.

dexlink

SEO... and SEO is the ultimate success. It will take time but you need to adopt it. All attributes should be properly arranged with good keyword management.

brett701

honestly id like to be making money within 3 months. I have very good pricing compared to amazon.com. My plan is too offer at or below cost initially to get sales rolling in and building trust. and then slowly increase till i have a 5% profit margin and then sit there for a long time. From there i will continue to push prices down with the manufacturer through negotiations. Anything over 5% will be gained via negotiation or high quantities.

derekwong28

I cannot emphasize this more enough. You need to have a SEO-optimized shopping cart. I have been out of e-commerce for some time do I don't know which are the best one. If you make the wrong mistake on your cart, you would have condemned your business.

Do not get between a wombat and a chocolate biscuit; you will regret it dearly!
WebTalkForums - the friendliest webmaster forum on the planet!

pavv

Brett are your products high cost? A 5% profit margin is pretty thin unless your sales volume/revenue is high. Sounds like you have the product end well sorted but have you worked out how you will market this to get that volume?

Ecommerce Website Development and Marketing

New to eCommerce? Please take a look at my product which teaches you how to find and research a product/niche, then how to build your own store.
[WSO]I Made $70,689.71 Sales In The Last 31 Days, Let Me Show You How To Do It Too

PeckhamPirate

Make sure to have your site ready for international viewers, that's the kicker for me.
Almost nobody targets non-English speakers and foreign markets are nowhere near as saturated as the US, UK, Australia and Canada.
You'll be amazed at how much traffic will hot your site with very little effort on your part.

Justin Lavoie

I second that, 5% profit margin is really low. In my case I aim for 15-20% profit on average...unless I could get a very high volume of sales and I have to compete with very low prices.

brett701

1. Ecommerce site with woo
-set up authorize.net
-paypal business
-secured site
-Reviews on site
-1800 number
-Great customer support


2. My projected top 5-10 Products listed on amazon. Have great support and get great reviews(on my amazon, my site, google plus, and elsewhere) without receiving any profit and possibly taking a loss on the first 50 sales.
-My margin will be extremely minimal, but will always be very thin, but they will increase as my buyer power increases and my leverage on the manufacturers increases.

3. Internet marketing
ORGANIC
Organic will consist of a press release every other week with anchor links aimed back at my site.
I will join multiple forums and I will contribute to users to the best of my ability.
I will have My social presence created, but i won't be putting forward an excess on it bc/ to have it be VERY effective early on requires an excess of time. Most focus will be on linkedin and google+ most likely.

I will create an external blog that is related to the topic and i will write an article/create a review on an industry product on a weekly basis.
Inorganic
-After month I project a 300 per month budget for PPC campaign which will be growing at a steady monthly rate as sales increase.(the date and capital spent are subject to debate.


----------
Things to Consider doing
-selling on ebay and having an ebay store. ( I dont know much about ebay strength and whether or not it is worth using.

Tactics are to enter super cheap and stay cheap and push out mass volume(similar to walmart.) If i control the floor i control the market. Many high quality rating reviews is much more important than a low rating and bad review ratings of having 2.5 stars.

As I learn I will be constantly adjusting and finding ways to chop a quarter of a % here and there without sacrificing quality.

That is the quick guide as of now. And after typing this it makes me realize that i SHould probably do amazon.com before i do anything so that i don't waste time creating everything else and then realizing it will fail.

maximum growth and minimum profit is my goal. High & increasing traffic with a happy customer base, plenty of knowledge and not going bankrupt is the initial goal.

Eventually i may create tutorials on youtube with anchor backlinks aimed at my site.

This is the plan for now. Thanks !

brett701

So what do you recommend. My plan is to get a Woo ecommerce site which i believe has a good "seo" shopping cart. However, before that i have decided that amazon is the first step to test the process without doing all the other work and failing.

brett701

Great Tip. What do you recommend i do to ensure this?

brett701

Can you give me an example of what your amazon.com costs would include?


39.99 per month amazon fee? +4% shipping fee(this is just approximate for the example. The

I order the product from china manufacturer $10 and shipping is .40 (that is not the case for shipping its much more.

10.40 I mark up the price to 15.40. I make 5.40 at this point(where do taxes come into play?)

I then need to subtract the processing fee of authorize.net or paypal business which is 3% which is .30 cents

and this brings me down to 5.10 per item. maybe 3% for Credit card processor?


What is missing in this equation? (I believe there is a 39.99 cost for amazon monthly, but this is not a concern over a year if that is the only cost amazon is charging me?)

Thanks!

krzysiek

You have something wrong. If you're making 5% and then PayPal takes 3% of your total, you don't have much profit left.

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brett701

These are my approximations. I was hoping someone could clarify with actual #'s that they have encountered. Thanks.

derekwong28

It is not only PayPal fees. There will always be lost shipments, returns and chargebacks dur to fraud or disputes. You need a margin at least 20-30% to be safe, depending on the products.

Do not get between a wombat and a chocolate biscuit; you will regret it dearly!
WebTalkForums - the friendliest webmaster forum on the planet!

Justin Lavoie

Well I never tried amazone for this type of business. Ive done it as an affiliate but not as a distributor.

If its the kind of profit you get selling your product there... run away.

malia

Webstore by Amazon is also a good resource, which is different than, but works with Selling on Amazon/ Amazon Seller Central. It also has payment integration. But nothing really can work WELL w your margins. You're assuming you can squeeze out more w your manufacturer, not considering inflation or other things that affect prices (changes in import duties/taxes etc).

I would not use WordPress w Ecommerce. If you are really trying to scale and make money, it has limitations in its flexibility becuase you're putting ecommerce on top of a blogging/cms platform. While the store LOOKS great, it doesn't do well when it comes to the "back-end" and as someone who has been doing ecommerce for a long time, the back end is really where it's at.

The front end isn't anything, almost every cart can do the same on the front end, it's the administration, merchandising, crm, payment processing, etc that really makes or breaks the deal. Otherwise you end up layering something on top of something on top of something to "mimic" a decent ecommerce back end, compared to what "built FOR ecommerce" solutions can do, and integrate with, via APIs.

No offense to anyone who loves the WordPress + ecommerce plugin set up, it's just... I mean it is what it is.

Competing on price is not a good strategy. Seriously, if you go in w low prices thinking you can raise them you're thinking wrong. There will be somebody else bottom scraping and getting your customers becuase you competed on price to begin with, which isn't a strong enough differentiator for customer retention.

Same

I have a couple of ecommerce sites and they are not easy... I did my hard for almost two years then Google slapped me down... That hurts... Plus I made a big mistake when I first started I went after five of my major keywords which was very competitive... I should have went after all of the long tail keywords in my niche which would have been a lot easier to rank and about 50x the traffic... So be careful...

Daniel Elss

And speaking of the site, be careful about putting any company logos on there, (sidebar, header etc.,) without permission. I had a pretty snazzy site but learned the hard way on this one. It takes work for sure, keeping products and prices updated, sizes updated. depends on who your dealing with i guess.
As far as other ways to get exposure, and perhaps this was mentioned, Google Merchant has worked for me, then just put your SEO skills to practice after that :-D

Strasburgo

Lemme tell you a story. A story of a couple.

I'm the guy, she was the girl. (we broke up, precipitated by what I explain below)

Guy is well versed in many business topics. Guy is paid top dollar for managing other people's affairs.

Guy decides he wants to make physical products to sell to a niche market. Does research, gets prototypes made, finds factory, gets good e-commerce platform, optimizes for SEO, ...generally builds a better mousetrap to compete with other mouse trap makers. Guy thinks product is well priced for the market. Initial interest is high in product.

Girl is an online celebrity. Knows nothing about business, is in fact a little shaky on the math. She decides to sell a physical product that she makes herself. Asks guy for advice. Takes some of it, ignores the rest.

Guy launches, moves ~3 units. (2 of which are to friends!)

Girl launches and sells out her first lot, and continues to sell out until she moves to a bigger facility. (Girl of course realizes Guy was right on pretty much everything about her scaling business and takes rest of Guy's advice)

The quickest way - build your market before you put anything on sale.

Strasburgo

brett701

Can you send me some information and examples in your done for you sites. Thanks

brett701

I appreciate this advice but I think your situation is rare where famous has to do with the situation. How do you recommend us every day Joe's sell? How do you recommend building my market before selling? Thanks

jrgattison

Hi Brett. I am not sure if you have found what you are looking for but if not I want to see if I can add some help as well.

The initial topic of the thread was to focus on the quickest way to Ecommerce success and I think it has been answered with the excepton of success can be achieved in 30 days or less if you are willing to do the work.

The level of what you consider success is going to determine what time additional is going to be required for you to meet your goals. I have a few suggestions from my perspective which may be different than others.

First I would not go with a wordpress based site. That is just my opinion based on the fact that there are many other platforms that are Ecommerce specific and have been in the Ecommerce game far longer than wordpress plugins to run a site. Also platform like OpenCart, Magneto, ZenCart and others are going to give you a much nicer site along with everything you need to have an easy to operate administration panel.

Second I believe you are going to have to find good suppliers in order to make it worth your while. You want to either hook up with the manufacturer or at least a large enough importer so that your gross profits can be large enough to make it worth while. You can also sell unique products for better profit margins.

Seeking to do large volume sucks when starting out so I suggest to make decent profits first before seeking to do large volume because doing large volume is going to take time to ramp up to by getting traffic ramped up.

Third I suggest marketing using social media networks like facebook. You can quickly get into profit by building value through social networks. This is the wave of the future in marketing because people love to communicate AND buy but people don't like to be sold to. Social networks let people recommend or be exposed to information and products more on their terms.

There are things that can shortcut your getting going like buying a site already setup, paying for someone to setup your marketing plan and getting some paid information targeted towards what you are trying to accomplish.

This is not an exhaustive list of things you need to do but these are the keys to get your Ecommerce vehicle moving in the right direction.

I hope this is of help to you and I wish you success with your Ecommerce store. Take action and get into motion.

Kendall

Build a Business AND Have a Life - There's Nothing Else Like This!

Jesse L

This is ridiculous....
SEO is the slowest way and tells me you have no idea on how to sell products in a pinch.

If you really want quick sales then you are going to want to advertise and NOT hurry up and wait on (snicker) Google...

Study PPC startegies, laser target, have outstanding customer service, create a user friendly website with proper call to actions and then finally SEO along the way... when you find time.

Yes, SN can help, but it does take time. You want action? Then take your offer straight to the client instead of fishing around for lost stragglers.

JL

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. – Vince Lambardi

edatepro

I agree, You can get up the website as quick as you want but your product must be completely air tight! Once you put it up make sure your website is interchangeable,depending on where your manufacturer is you may have to change up your business especially with China!

pavv

Brett,

I will send you a PM shortly with details.

Ecommerce Website Development and Marketing

New to eCommerce? Please take a look at my product which teaches you how to find and research a product/niche, then how to build your own store.
[WSO]I Made $70,689.71 Sales In The Last 31 Days, Let Me Show You How To Do It Too

Fabianner

According to me one of the quickest way to achieve success in e-commerce business is to create a website that could be able to grab the attention of its customers. It should be impressive and well designed.

browse around this site

alksense

Step 1: Choose your Niche
Step 2: Find you Competition & your Suppliers
Step 3: Build the Framework of your Website on Shopify
Step 4: Start Contacting Drop Shippers
Step 5: Upload Products to your eCommerce Store
Step 6: Optimize your Store to Increase Conversions
Step 7: Start Marketing and Get Some Sales!

rajivonweb

An ecommerce site integrated with social networking platforms will see a good success.

Anvilek

Hard-working and focus on targeted & long-term customers