Why I prefer eCommerce over other types of Internet Marketing...

Great post Alksense! I agree I'd love to have more people on here!

Ecommerce is one of my favourite things to do online too. Like most people I make money a few other ways like internet marketing, web development and seo services but I'm focusing a lot of attention on my own ecommerce business because it's snowballing in growth.

I love reading success stories, they motivate the hell out of me. I'm far from driving a Lamborghini but I'd say I'm a fair way ahead of most people on this forum in terms of ecommerce. So here is my story......

I started my first ecommerce store in 2008. I ran it for about 18 months before selling it. I worked a full time 9-5 job the whole time. It was selling around $3k per month and almost double that in Dec for Xmas. I did a lot of things wrong which equated to making basically nothing, but I learnt heaps. I pulled roughly $3k out of the business for the whole 18 months and I put a lot of man hours in.

Since I did not have capital I would accept orders on my site, then roughly once per week I would place the order with the supplier and ship it to my house. I would pack orders of a evening and post them on my lunch break at work. While the profit margins on the product were quite good it took a lot of my time and the double shipping was killing most of the profits.

It came to a point where it got far too busy to meet the demands of the business in my spare time, but it wasn't making anywhere near enough money to live off - so I sold in 2010.

I had a break for about a year and got back into it with a like minded business partner (my bro). We started a few stores and only drop shipped. It made some money but not much since it wasn't our main focus, we both had other things on the go.

This year we decided to ramp up operations significantly all while creating a scalable business model that runs (mostly) on autopilot. Before entering a niche we research it thoroughly. We only drop ship. We setup a store, drive traffic, conversion rate optimize, outsource order processing and customer service and move on to the next store. We have built a team of employees who handle jobs like writing, adwords management, customer service, data entry and web development. We have documentation and systems in place so everything is getting easier and faster. When can have an ecommerce store setup in under one day including all products added, design, shipping pages etc.We are just using WooCommerce now - it's so damn easy and cheap.

So I don't really want to disclose specific figures but we have been experiencing double digit growth for most months of this year. Our work mainly consists of growing as the stores essentially run on their own once set up and running - we just oversee everything and manage training/workers.

I think anyone can be successful with ecommerce but you have to treat it like a real business. It seems most people have just 1 or 2 stores and make a little bit of money. They treat it like a hobby. If you want to make big money you need to get serious. Hold yourself accountable and focus your efforts on the bottom line (growing revenue and profit). Don't stuff around on the little tasks - you can outsource these to very skilled people for very little money. You don't need to be a professional website developer, adwords gun, or customer service guru. You need to focus on the bigger picture.

Anyway I'll leave it at that, I've gotten carried away with this post but hopefully this motivates/educates someone about how good ecommerce can be!!

@pavv

Thanks for sharing your story!

I started in a similar way almost seven years ago... I didn't drop ship but I brought in products directly from from China to the US and sold them online. I then discovered the power of drop shipping and learned that I could still make HUGE profits while eliminating 90% of the work I had been doing!

I immediately cut all ties with my overseas manufacturers, started ONLY working with drop ship suppliers, expanded to over 50 different niches, and put all my stores on autopilot. Now I just start new stores and oversee the operations to make sure I keep getting paid!

The best part is the cost of building each new store is next to nothing when you compare it to potential profit.... and once you learn how to identify hot niches and find drop shippers you can repeat the processes over and over (just like you and your brother are doing).

I'm glad the two of you found success and I hope there are many more to come!

This business really is a lot easier then most people think AND there is a ton of untapped potential out there.

Great thread. I have a dropship store that does around $150 to $300 in terms of net profit every month, but I really can't scale it up much because its a tight niche. Having said that, I am planning on doing some PPC to try and divert some of the traffic that would otherwise land on other stores by hopefully outbidding them on some carefully chosen words.

I really want to scale my dropship business and move into the other niche areas. I would really appreciate the help if you can tell me where I can source products to dropship to the American market, particularly in health and skincare. For my current store I was lucky in the sense that one of my 'competitors' offers reseller prices. So, effectively, I just buy from him and mark the prices up a bit (enought to ensure I make at least $10 to $20 an item) and sell on. All without actually 'buying' since I only do that after an order comes in and I then email dropship partner, who then sends the item out. I don't physically need to get hold of the products which makes my job much easier.

By the way, which store scripts are you guys using? Though I am not using Wordpress for my only store, I am thinking I might use for other stores I am planning on building. Would WP Store lack the professional look? What you reckon? There should be some themes around.

Do you think I can manage 10 stores all by myself in terms of SEO, Adwords, email management with dropship partners, customer service (email help)?

I think building an email list is a good idea where people can opt into receive information in the future. The opt in can be done in the store and also as part of the buying process.

My main stumbling block is not knowing where to source dropship partners.

How do you ensure your prices are competitive? These days many web shoppers use price comparison sites just before purchase, and even when you Google a product quite often one of the results is a price comparison between different stores. As a dropship store, quite often your prices need to be slightly more than competitors in order to make a profit , so how do identify a price that won't tempt people to leave your store to and go elsewhere?

But I do think dropship is a great way to build up an internet business. If done scuccessfully its actually better than marketing to email lists who you always have to keep 'warm' to ensure they won't go cold on you. Not to mention, many people won't open the email in the first place.

@Anton543

You just need to experiment with pricing. You can get a good idea from competitors but there are other reasons people will buy from you like guarantees, site design, branding, product quality, social proof, product reviews etc.

One of my stores is in a fairly high margin yet competitive niche so we are able to be one of the cheapest and still make a solid profit. We also get a lot of sales because of it. We also clearly communicate to customers that great prices and great customer services is what we focus on.

Another store I have the margins in the industry vary a lot. Some competitors are MUCH cheaper but these products are not dominated by big brands so it's hard to differentiate products between stores. We sell at quite a high margin but we still get sales even though our competitors ads are right next to ours. We offer things like free shipping, great customer service (live chat, fast communication) and quality products.

The thing you have to think about is if you drop your margin how much more do you have to sell to make the same or more money? If you drop your margin from $50 profit to $25 then you have to sell twice as much.

You are better off selling 100 orders at $50 profit ($5,000) than 180 orders at $25 profit ($4,500).

That helps. At the beginning I think I will to build up two more stores, one focusing one higher margin goods and one on lower (but not too low) as those are very frustrating. I mean if yous ell something you want to make at least $15-$20 from it.

Do you employ someone for live chat? I don't think I will need to that at the beginning, but through great product descriptions and store Q&As, I think that process can be eliminated at first since people will probably find answers to any questions they have.

With fewer and fewer people shopping on the high street, I think its a great time to to get on to eCommerce. But the biggest challenge is finding dropshippers.
I suppose that will be my task for the next few weeks.

Even though I am in the UK I only want a store selling to American customers. The international shipping costs often make it prohibitive. However, my current store, a UK based one, I offer free shipping to the UK and small fee rest of the world. Of course, my dropshipper takes care of everything in terms of sending it out, returns and so on.

But the country where i live, I can't able to start eCommerce business. It is good for US/Canada/Uk. I live in the third world country. So it's hard to start. Do you have some tips for Asians/African?

alksense, great post.

Ive just started this type of business lately and so far what I do is buy in bulk at low prices, take the cheapest shipper possible, mostly free 90% of the time (I dont mind waiting 2-3 weeks to get it and not pay for shipping), then I put all the stuff in my basement and do the shipping to the customers as the orders are coming in.

What I sell is quite small so it doesnt take much space in my basement. I dont think it would be viable or as much profitable to dropship in my case because Im selling in Canada mainly and my products are bought overseas, delays and shipping fee would kill this.

I use this business mainly as a learning bacon since I had no experience in this field before so I dont mind losing some profit or putting tons of effort into this, im learning so much!

After reading your posts, I might consider going for dropshippers and with higher priced item for my next projects but I wonder if this would be a viable alternative in Canada since the dropshipers will probably come from the USA and the random custom fees and shipping delays might become a pain at some point.. I dont think dropshipping from overseas to Canada is a great idea either... which is why I prefer getting the stuff by myself right now.

In other words, the best thing would be to open an eShop in the USA right? Is is hard to get the US merchant account, papers, numbers, bank account?

Thanks for your time !

Hey Justin,

I've never actually went through the process of setting up a US bank account and merchant account for a non US resident so I personally don't know how hard it is or what it costs but I know it's possible.

I've worked with people from the UK, India and even Israel who set up drop shipping businesses in the USA.

It's great that you independently starting taking action. I'm sure you're learning a lot.

Obviously, I would recommend you get into drop shipping because you will have the potential to make A LOT of money and you will never have to ship anything on your own again!

Have you ever thought of starting a drop ship business only selling to Canada (from Canadian suppliers) to get started?

I actually have some drop ship suppliers who are located in Canada and I ship their items to my customers in the US (as well as in Canada). I' would think they sell through a lot of Canadian retail websites as well.

My mistake, I thought you were from the UK.

Thats a good point, I might start looking for dropshippers in Canada and maybe limit my online store to what they have to offer and see from there what can be done, then I could find and add dropshipers from the US.

Im currently using Prestashop and WooCommerce for another store, did you ever give those a shot? What is it you didnt like ?

I'll take your words and give shopify a try

Thanks for you help, this is serious business.

Excellent, I'm gonna give it a try in the next days for another project.

Thanks for making me aware of that. I must admit I never even thought about getting into eCommerce, I don't even know why.

Maybe my subconscious mind told me that is way too complicated and expensive to set up even one shop.

So at least you got me started to learn more about eCommerce though I still read it and tend to say, sounds nice but how would I do that?

I always thought best is to make money from real things like a commission for peoples' purchases from amazon, however, never thought about selling myself.

Cheers
Dan Hower

I saw this thread and decided to join the conversation. I've been in ecommerce for a little over a year now and learned a lot. I am trying to get to $100k/month in sales but its damn hard to scale that much, so far my best month was $45k.

I can tell you one thing about prices though, they don't matter. You could sell at additional 10-20% markup over your competitors and still get majority of sales. You know how? Reviews. What matters is your reviews and customer service. Once you get good amount of positive reviews syndicated into your comparison shopping listings, as well as those star ratings... It's on.

Alksense, I've read your ecommerce starting guide, it's quite good. Thanks for sharing.

I almost think there should be a system/website/marketplace where this whole dropship dilemma/bottleneck should be addressed. Hmm, maybe that will be my next startup

On the bigger note, I feel like eCommerce is going to replace a lot of physical shopping. I believe I heard this on Bloomberg the other day that traffic to the malls is decreasing thanks to online comparison shopping.

any thoughts?

Alksense- thanks for your story...I have read about this business a while back but never took part in seeing what it was all about, but now you have me wanting to get more information. Your a life saver!

alksense,

How do you take care of returned items from your dropship businesses, particularly product that are physically big in size. Do you have your customers return the item directly to yourself or have them return to your dropship partners who then deal with the returns? Wouldn't this involve extra costs and you customers finding out that another company was actually involved?

For my own store, my dropshipper has any returned items sent straight back to him. But we are talking about small items here and he doesn't put his own label.

One of the main reasons I like eCommerce over any other type of marketing is because I own the customer, and they're on my list.

Interesting points, OP! I'll have to think about this more.

World Wide Brands is where I get all of my dropshippers from. Also, I like the MAP pricing to keep the competition from pricing too low. I was trying to sell on Ebay but there are a ton of people on there cutting the prices to the bone so I couldn't make any money.

yes , im can started with little investmen

Online business gives you access to the largest market available, with billions of people currently connected and that number growing on a daily basis. One of the greatest advantages of e-Commerce is cost. It simply is the most cost effective way to open a business that is opened 24 hours a day.

I'm also glad there's an eCommerce section now, I've always wanted to create one.

Normally how many products you should put up in your ecommerce store for making decent amount of money monthly?

I have always been little surprised more people are not doing ecommerce. Maybe its cultural and people think pure blogging is either easier or quicker way of making money. But I agree with you...ecommerce is not only more profitable its the direction of future internet marketing. I will take it one step future...being the manufacture of the your product, setting up ecommerce site with parallel blog gives you total control from top to bottom and 100% of the profits.

Great thread especially on the subject of drop shipping. Speaking from the other side of the floor I recently started manufacturing my own candle accessory and am struggling with the cost of shipping. Sales to date estimate the retail value around $15, cost is $3 but I can't find ground shipping for less than 7 USPS and 9 for FedEx. What can I expect a reasonable profit margin to be for an eCommerce site? How much would you charge the customer for shipping or would you offer free shipping?

Thanks

just wanted to know what MAP is

and for those using dropshippers what happens when they don't deliver and you lose money/customers which will in turn tarnish your (business) reputation

I'm officially jumping into discussions on this forum. I do about 2 million right now between sites and amazon. No dropshipping.

Currently struggling with generating targeted traffic and growing my email list.

My niche (just 1) is growing more competitive by the day which is why we've branched into our own brand as well.

If you have distribution part figured out, branding products is the single best thing you can do. I made an automotive brand and sold it couple months ago. When you brand stuff just make sure you trademark your logos, so that you can send cease and desist letters to everyone piggy backing off your product on amazon and everywhere else...

It's madness out there but it's worth the stretch.

hello,alksense.can i take a look some of your ecommercie websites?I also added you on my skype.thanks

@shuwangyan

Sorry, but no. Most people here are looking to start an ecommerce business so I'm not going to give away my niches.

That is what I really like about eCommerce sites. Anyone can do it.

This is a great thread! In the past I have toyed around with the idea of e commerce as an income stream - bought a WSO by Sam England and learned tons. Put it on the backshelf as I did some other things. Lately been working a couple of Amazon sites - still new so not much activity.
AS to the poster in his 50's - so am I. I agree that this and other vehicles on "the net" can make for a great retirement income so keep at it.
Alksense - I see you are in NY - me too. Where abouts? Would love to chat over a cold beverage with you! PM me if you don't want to disclose here or don't if you want to keep it a secret.
I will be reading this section more and more as time goes by.

Alksense, very excited to come across this thread. I have not ventured into ecommerce as yet, but was always thinking to venture in that direction. I was made very aware of it recently because of coincidence via connections, in this case my cousin. I know about a launch taking place next month - a new software that allows for professional online shops to be created automatically within minutes with over 50 000 000 products to choose from. Templates provided with script license. I know about this as my cousin is the creator (joint venture with his business partner) and I was asked to create the video that will go on the website. I have received a license for free and will keep you posted how it works for me. I am looking forward to learn much from you as you are already experienced in this field

Alksense and others, do you feel it is important for ecommerce stores to have a favicon up in the address bar?

Hello All

This will be one of my first posts on warrior forum.

I want to talk about the experience I've had being a newb and trying to start my own ecommerce website.

I have ALWAYS wanted to get into ecommerce, as I've always been the tech geek, coupled with a crazy imagination and lots of ambition. It's essentially the perfect combination for success, in my own mind.

When I got married, I started getting onto my wife on what she would like to sell. She's brazilian, and loves lingerie (lucky for me). She knows of a small town in her home state of rio where they do nothing but make lingerie, and sell it to distributors. But you can go to this town yourself and buy direct for insanely good prices, on very high quality apparel. So being that I had some money to invest, we bought a couple grand of stock with the intention of selling it online.

I tried to go big right from the start. I didn't want to invest too much money, but I knew people want to buy from "reputable" sites. So I designed a web page using magento, bought some themes to spruce it up, and paid someone to do logo design etc. Then, I put up some shared hosting. Then, I decided I should give buyers the option of paying by credit card without using paypal. So I jumped through all the hoops I needed to get a merchant account, got a legit business license, etc.

Do you see where this is going?

I was investing serious amounts of time, energy, and money (okay, not big money, but for a side business $5,000 is not fun to just throw around). Once the website went live, I knew I needed some SEO, but with all the money I'd spent, I realized even if I sold all the stock I bought, I wouldn't even break even, and then I'd still have to go through the bullshit of having to constantly restock with the distributors in Brazil, pay for SEO, etc etc.

Fastforward a few months. The website is still alive, but not a single sale was made. I cancelled the business license, ditched the merchant account, and moved overseas due to my primary career. I still have all the stock I purchased.

I have no idea what I should do from here.

I want to get rid of my stock, but reading this forum, I was going about it all wrong from the beginning. **** trying to do it all myself, carrying a large stock and handling every single detail. Even if the business was "successful", the amount of time and energy required to make it work wouldn't be worth the potential profit.

Hope to get some inspiration for my next venture.

I'm hungry, and I'm ready to do what it takes. I just need some damn direction. Jumping in head-first without any research wasn't my brightest of ideas.

and I want to be clear that ecommerce is where I feel I should be. I tried like hell to get motivated to do affiliate marketing, especially seeing how many people were making huge paydays. But it's just not my thing. And if your heart is not 100% in it, you'll never truly be successful at it.

This post is great information!

I have sold on ebay and amazon and by far these are the easiest and quickest ways to make long term money online. It does take some time to build up but once you get it going you can really make some bucks.

Proper research online can help you find products and items that will fly off the shelf.
I would recommend you spend a good chunk of time doing so because it can be the difference between making or loosing money.

I typically use alibaba as a source for finding products and sourcing. Just starting off with an idea or products you can sell and working backwards can give you some really great ideas.

I have never tried droppshiping but may invest some more time into that route.

Those of you who do dropshipping, how do you know whether a niche is going to be profitable before you know what the suppliers prices are?

There seems to be a bit of a chicken & egg element to it, because before a supplier will accecpt you as a retailer, you need to at least set up a website to show that you can sell their products, but surely you don't know what kind of margin you can make until that supplier accepts you and sends you a price list? Are people hedging their bets, or is there something I'm missing?

I used to dropship for 3 years and trust me, there is more workload involving Ecommerce than IM.

The price changes, shipping updates, client's complaints, missing items etc.
You dont have any of those problems with Internet Marketing

cool stuff

Hey Guys,

I am really glad WF finally has an e-commerce area.

I need some help. I have two stores that combined do about 2-3k profit per month. My traffic is 90% paid advertising. I have about 5 different areas where visitors come from.

Lately the profits have dropped about 20% and I can't keep paying all the paid advertising as I was before.

So I was hoping someone could help me out with recommending someone trustworthy that has ecommerce google analytics experience to help me set up my sites to track a visitor to sale/abandonment.

I would appreciate any help or suggestions.

I must admit, that drop shipping attracts my attention much more than IM does; but I find IM challenging and fun in some odd fashion. I have done SOME IM, but no drop shipping and I surely want to, so this post is a great starting point for me. I have dug into information on it before and just set it and rested it when I probably shouldnt have. I know this question is doing to seem off to the subject, but with IM I was never interested in selling and promoting books from Amazon or another venue. I am interested in actual physical products from Amazon other than books (although I do enjoy IM clickbank products). So let me ask you this: say you see a product on Amazon ( like a piece of exercise equipment for 899.00 bucks). Would you go out and make an entire website dedicated to that product and solely that product? This is where my mind gets a bit confused and how to marketing Amazon products other than books. I can write an entire website based on a book and its contents as I will have alot to say, but when it comes to a product how can I write about that other than "heres my review" and making it a one page site? See my confusion?

Also, where are you finding the companies that allow drop shipping at? Once you find the drop shippers that you want in your niche, you would make a website and then apply ( I get that part, even add in chinavision to have some products already on there to sell), but how is everyone finding these companies??

@alksense Hi, It could sound a very dumb question, but I am very new to this and have no idea at the moment. Right now, I've an amazon affiliate site(3 months old) which is still very new so just 4 sales until now. I am interested in eCommerce. What I know about this is that in eCommerce we need to find suppliers, create a site, get orders and forward the shipping details to the supplier and that's all what I know. I am not sure who receive the payments? Me or supplier? And another thing, if most of the customers are located in a specific country(say USA), then do I need to find a supplier within USA(to reduce shipping cost)? What if I find a good supplier outside that specific market(country), how to manage things then?

A great read indeed. I have a pretty good start in the eCommerce world with my one site, and I am building my second next week in a great niche market. I have a strong social media following but am developing that further. No SEO on my site right now.

However---my downfall is I really have one supplier---now I can get my product from other suppliers--but I choose to just work with one. I am adding a second next week for different products. The issue I see ---if I have customer John Smith order products A, B and C and they are all shipped from different drop shipping companies? What do I do then? That is a lot of shipping?

My big question. I am planning on adding my products---some niche products too--but I am worries about the shipping issue. I do ship from overseas, but new source is USA--as well as developing my own brand.

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing ! I totally agree with what you said about Ecommerce and that why im trying it out. Im about to launch my first ecommerce site and facing many problems.. but i will take them down one by one.

It seems like i know nothing about dropshipping....shame...

@Hisma

Lingerie is super competitive and highly saturated. I have a website in that niche, but it's branded/designer. If you want to be in that niche, you have to heavily invest in branding/pr/etc to differentiate yourself from the drop ship sites, chinese sites, affiliate sites, etc., If your merchandise is unique, you may want to try selling on Amazon.

Yes--that is where I guess I just break even on some items? Or dont make as much profit. I need to actually run those numbers as I am adding ...slowly....more products from different makers.

Hi Anton,

Let me get this right, I stock up the web store,
then contact suppliers. After contacting them all,
isn't there a distinct possibility none of them drop ship?

Is there a way to minimize that possibility in my research phase?

Thank you.

Best,
Ewen

Just have to chime in here to say that Anton (Alksense) is the man when it comes to ecommerce. I was one of the first to buy his course (well worth it!) but his site is full of a ton of great free info.

Hi,

what an great ecommerce millionaire thread!

Anton for me, its not easy to find europe dropshippers (I'm from europe) and when I have it understood right, as an dropshipper you can not sell on amazon, then you must send these products first to their amazon store before amazon sell it for you, so you must buy these products first. or you not buy and sell it on ebay.

In europe I have found 1 serious supplier, but you must pay 70$ to get their csv,yeah I think the most suppliers want money from you first, so how I find serious dropship suppliers without spend an investment? That is the big quiz show millionaire question.

And notice, these one europe dropship supplier I must pay weekly per bank account direct debit, but he makes not an fix datum with me as dropshipper, so I don't know the weekly day he makes the bank account direct debit, that is very fatal if you not have an bank credit line,when you bank account has not parallel turnover coverage. And then?

All that together does scare me off to make business with this supplier.

So the other option is to make money as affiliate, you must not buy,you must know to write good content,backlink and seo. It is not possible selling on ebay as affiliate, please correct me if I'm wrong.


best wishes
marco005

@marco005

I wish I could be of more help to you but all of my business is done in the US and I really don't know how the wholesale/drop ship system is different in Europe (if it is at all).

I can tell you that I've never had to pay to be approved with a supplier but again, things may be different overseas.

I typically set up "pre pay" terms with all of my suppliers, meaning that I pay them (via credit card to build up rewards) every time that I place an order with them. They also offer credit terms but I love to travel so I take advantage of being able to build up lots of flight miles very quickly

Being an affiliate is a totally different ball game. I do A LOT of business as an Amazon affiliate through my Amazon stores BUT I do not use the same traffic techniques as I do with my eCommerce sites because affiliate links are usually not allowed.

@mikeb1

I just replied to your PM.

My friend from Israel was able to set up his US based LLC and bank account while he was living in NY for the summer. I also have a course member from Singapore who isn't planning on traveling to the US anytime soon who took a different approach to this (see PM for details).

Thanks for your helping information.
I will not give up and look for dropship suppliers in europe.

But I be little little afraid with ebay business and paypal, hm, there are enough sellers who paypal has freezing their account/money, so you not can pay your dropship supplier, but I as an sole priorship, has unlimited liability to pay the dropshipper..........this is a risk with paypal.

marco005

Hi,

ah, I think when I hold every month 10-15% of my sales income in paypal account as reserve for chargebacks, then paypal will be satisfied with me (my theory).

marco005

Could you scale up 1 (or 2) shops max to make you good money every month? Or does it have to be 50? lol^^ I'm talking about effective branding.

Just an FYI--if you pay Shopify all at once for the entire year, you have no fees.

Very nice thread .Finally something what is really profitable like e commerce and much more real than IM as tried many things and nothing has worked as i wanted so far,There are so many people telling you how to make£ 1 mln or how to make 2k$ in week ,day or seconds.))
The e commerce conversion is much higher than IM things.Iam selling on Amazon,i have around 1200-1500 views a day with around 60-80 items sold and profit around 200-300£ a day.That makes more than 35000 view on my pages.

Many street retailers are already out of the game because of the more online buying customers especialy in UK and USA.Lets say some Jessops (some of the biggest ),Comet(also big chain) etc etc
The bright future is for those who realize all that))

To be honest--I even find myself shopping online more and more. And I am one who never did. It is just so much more convenient.

I would like to make my own website but dont have any experience in web design or control panels etc.Is Shopify the best solution for me.Also,at the moment iam selling on amazon and have chinece supplier .Iam happy with him and do a good business but i would like to find droppshipers .Would you tell me if its good idea to deal with Chinece droppshipers or not.Thanks

Sounds like a good reason to use eCommerce.

Ah thanks for this paypal tip.

marco005

Love these types of threads! always learn something new!

E commerce increasing your products worth and easily available for internet.e commerce easy to understanding and easy to using for any purpose .

- Ecommerce site is also a good site to have your own online business. You don't need to spend a lot of money for the investment and you can manage the business easily, without any hassle and no overtime.

Not sure if anybody mentioned Shopify, but it won't have any fees attached to it!

I am very new to this forum but I have been very successful with ecommerce and I have had my biggest month being 55,000. I sell Ewaste that I get sometimes from many companies for free and some I pay a little of nothing for . I have found 3 solid Platforms to move my products and since my overhead is so low I have been able to do really well. However I am here to learn affilate and Cpa marketing and if anyone is wanting to learn some trick and secrets of success with ecommerce I will be glad to trade information . Im not looking for a guru and I am not a super noob as I have been studying affiliate and Cpa 2 years I just havent put together any rteally successful campaigns and I would like to. HBO HELP A BROTHER OUT . Thanks Warriors!!!

IMO, the reason this forum has been a little slow on the draw is that most IM's don't jump into ecommerce is because it does require a bit of investment on your part. The higher the threshhold to entry - the fewer will enter... Another great thing about ecomm is that Google loves em! Most anyone that has done kw research will notice that 60 to 80% of the top 10 are ecomm sites..... I started my first ecomm site over 1 yr ago, unfortunately it has bombed!!! However I have learned a great deal about website construction, seo, market research, kw research....So now I'm starting my 2nd ecomm site that should really perform well. Thanks to Alksense and Pavv for the great contributions!

I've been doing e-commerce since 2005 and I'm always curious why people consider it to be "too much work" when compared with running a content site. Once the initial setup on the sites is done, I do less work than any other content sites I've managed. And if you want to avoid over-reliance on certain traffic sources (like Google) ,then selling e-commerce products is the way to do that i.e. earning more per visitor so that you need LESS traffic to hit a certain income target.

In terms of how many products you need, my most successful site is very niche and only has 10-15 products. That site does over $650K per year in revenue with 40-50% gross margins. But that's a specific niche where there aren't a lot of additional products needed. Other sites that I have will have closer to 1000 products with the top product accounting for 6% of sales, 10-15 accounting for 1-5% of sales, and the remainder being under 1%. So it's all 80/20.

How about Magento eCommerce shopping cart?

Such a great thread, read through all the thoughtful comments.

Was wondering if there is a WSO ecommerce any of you would recommend, that focuses specifically on how to get traffic to ecommerce sites?

Well said, yes it is very rewarding having such a business especially when getting a positive return.

Been moving towards ecommerce myself quite a bit recently starting with focus on ebay dropshipping but am creating personal dropshipping sites now.