Like many before, a simple request - advice/business manager.

Chris,

Thanks so much for the encouraging message! Electronics is definitely a passionate lifetime love, as I use many and follow all the new gadget releases very regularly. I really wish I could stay in electronics, but all the dealers I've found thus far (3 excellent ones) are all selling the products for around the google.com/product price and thus I would not be making any money off them.

I made ecrater store for kids products that has actually sold a few things, but that just frustrated me even more because the ecrater store took 2 days to set up and my electronics website took nearly a month to get going and SEO'd. I've gone back and forth between which one to focus on and that has also added to my confusion, unfortunately.

The logical approach from my learning thus far would be to find something people need that others aren't providing and capitalize on that, but the electronics niche is so crowded I feel frustrated every time I try to list another product I think is a good buy. Is trying to stand up against walmart and amazon something I should do?

Thanks again for any comments. I appreciate all the help I can get.

-Matt

My business is named "Buy Home Electronics" with the domain name to match, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Haha.

Ultimately, I'd love to sell them to individual customers. Cool gadgets and accessories are my calling, but almost anything within the field would satisfy me. I suppose thinking of the money is indeed the wrong approach.

I don't even have to support myself with it. I really just want to do this as a hobby. I just got hired in to what I believe will be my career for the rest of my life and am almost finished with college. Ideally, I want this to be able to be not too much, and not too little so I can balance work and the side business. My endgame is to own an online store and have someone come to me out of the blue and tell me - Hey, thanks for all the great customer service and a good product!

Have I gone too far down the path without proper planning? Or is the proper mindset that I am off to a good start? Thanks for all the advice thusfar Chris. Already I feel encouraged!

I agree with Mr Enthusiastic that it may be a good idea to tighten your focus a bit and perhaps specialize in a few key products initially.

I'm wondering if you might be able to add some value to your offerings and differentiate yourself in the marketplace by creating and including some tutorial material for the products you sell. Some electronic gadgets are very complex devices and the end user may only use a small number of the more obvious functions.

I know of people making a full time living purely from selling tutorial videos for complex consumer gadgets, and I think it's worth considering as both a marketing tactic and possible supplemental income stream.

You clearly enjoy working with this stuff, and have products to hand. A quick video overview of the gadget and it's benefits would be a great marketing piece and teaser into your complete tutorial, which could be sold separately or bundled 'free' with the product itself.

Yes, there will be some extra work to create the videos, and they should really be fairly polished, but that's not rocket science. Nowadays its pretty inexpensive and straightforward. Bill Myers has a great video workshop available which specifically targets producing this kind of material (product review videos), and covers everything from sets and lighting to editing and publishing.

Competing on price in consumer electronics is tough, and I think it's more important to look at ways you can add value instead. By initially selecting and focusing on a few core products, you could position yourself as an expert by producing supplemental information products, which themselves can also be sold on. It may even be possible to base your whole marketing campaign around this.

Food for thought anyway.

Cheers,
Phil