Need a Bit of Advice

My thoughts if you are going to be deployed away, and you want to do ecommerce, then you have a couple of options.

1) Dropship. I presume that you are in the US, and the great news is that dropshipping is well established there so you should find suppliers for almost any product. Average margins are around 20% I think. You can make a lot of money with dropshipping and there are a load of businesses out there that do, I'm talking 6-7 figure revenues, which means a good 5-6 six figure profit (not typical example) but possible.

With dropshipping all you would need to do is to answer customer questions and fulfill orders online.

2) If you don't have much time every day to 'run' your business due to your occupation, then you might want to consider an affiliate ecommerce store. Basically, decide on what you want to sell, find an affiliate program for that product and sell it like that. Sure it has much lower commission levels, but you are selling real products and will give you time to grow with no risk. Amazon is a great example and you can be an affiliate of theirs, meaning you can make a commission selling anything that they sell. Or try some other affiliate network like Commission Junction for example.

People can make thousands of dollars each month. The beauty is that it's pretty much hands-off. No customer enquiries, no products to handle and no orders to fulfill. You have the products on your site which redirects them to the main merchant site to complete the purchase.

This can be developed when you get more time. You can gradually introduce or replace the affiliate products on your site for dropship or even items that you stock for higher margins.


Hope that helps and good luck. By the way, as for what you want to sell, just do some research on the topics you have listed and see what the search volumes, keywords and products are out there.

From my experience, the best ideas for products are usually right in front of your face -- which makes them hard to see because you're too close. One trick I use to overcome this problem is keep a "problem" notepad with me whenever I take on a new project, learn a new job, face a tough challenge --that because the best product ideas are always about solving a common problem. Forget about looking for products--look for solutions.

As long as you have an internet connection you can still plan and run an ecommerce website from Kuwait. The biggest difficulty is finding the time while deployed if they have you working 16 hour days. Since you are in Kuwait, from the other military members I have met and worked with, the amenities there are pretty nice and a lot better then being in a compound in Iraq.

There is a series of planning things you need to do anyway while you are over there. But with a drop shipping business, you don't have to be based in any particular location, as long as you have internet and a credit card, you can pretty much run it from anywhere (any many do).

Plan your deployment time doing your research, exploring providers and reaching out to those you need. Depending where home is, it can be quite easy to start a business without ever being in your home state. For one of my ecommerce stores, I planned the entire thing from email.

And when you are ready to do your cart, let me know as I have upgrades for service members when you are ready.