What direction for a new business?

The easist way for you to get started is by letting other people find affiliates for you. To do this you will need to save up some money first.

After you saved up some money, then place your product in a CPA network (the starting amount you will need will depend on the network that you join)

How do your prices compare with Amazon? If you priced identical items the same as Amazon, would your margins still be 30-45%?

Therein lies the challenge that all startups like your company face when selling hard goods online.

Who is a sportsman going to go to for a fast secure purchase? Amazon or a small startup that is "... by no means rich so we will be working on a minimal budget."

If I am an affiliate, why do I want to earn 20% per sale with a startup? Especially when I can earn 50-75% commission on digital sales.

These are the kinds of questions that you must be able to answer in order to have a successful business online. There are ways for small hard goods merchandisers to sell successfully, but the competition these days requires you to do things differently than everyone else, especially if you have very limited marketing funds.

The very best to you,

Steve

You have three options:

You can either....

1. Join an affiliate network - which one will depend on your own requirements, but ShareaSale comes to mind.

2. Advertise and find yourself an affiliate manager. Depending on the person, you might be able to find someone who is willing to work on a commission-only basis (an override of all the sales sent by the affiliates he or she recruits and manages - the extra 5% you are willing to pay in commissions can cover that).

3. Reach out to top bloggers and social media stars in your niche, and present your offer.

Option 1 will guarantee you get seen by a number of potential affiliates, but it will cost you to get started (those types of networks have minimum deposits to ensure clients can actually pay affiliates).

Option 2 depends completely on the capabilities of the person you employ. If it is someone who already has some reach int he internet marketing world, he or she might be able to come up with affiliates quite quickly. if not, it can be a long hard journey to collect them one by one.

Option 3 is very much hit and miss - but even just a few people with an existing fan base or mailing list can give your sales a push in the right direction.

Just my 0.02c

You need to promote your website over related groups & communities.

First of all many thanks to those who responded.
grumpyjacksa We are competetive with Amazon if we drop to 15 to 20% profit. We could go that route and then follow Davids advise of promoting in related niche groups and communities I suppose. One thing for sure its going to be trial and error but we wont give up.
Bob Broctor once said, "Set a goal to achieve something that is so big, so exhilarating that it excites you and scares you at the same time"
Im setting my goal, I will make it work one way or another.

Where I always go and have gone since the paper catalog days: BUDK.com - Knives & Swords At The Lowest Prices!

You don't find any more reliable or secure and as I'm a buyers club member my prices are dirt cheap. The only downside is since they sell a lot of knives they do not accept PP, but my PP business debit card works fine.

If you want to be a player in this market, BudK is your real model and competition.

Brent