How to Make Money with Ecommerce: Easy Steps for Beginners

Make Money with Ecommerce

Start an E-commerce Business in 2023: A Complete Guide

Do you want to start an e-commerce business? If your answer is yes, then you are in the right place. In this article, we will take you by the hand from scratch to the professional level in e-commerce. Are you ready?

Prepare your cup of coffee and summon all your focus, because this is the first step to achieving your dream of an e-commerce business that will generate you huge profits.

Why start an e-commerce business?

Let's start with "why." There are many reasons why you should start an e-commerce business right now, at the top of which are:

Ease of getting started: You can now start an e-commerce business in a few hours without any difficult requirements at all.
Low start-up cost: You can start an e-commerce business with simple costs that you can easily manage.
People are used to buying from the internet: Nowadays, everyone is used to buying anything and everything from e-commerce stores, not like before, and demand is increasing by high percentages on e-commerce stores.
There is still room for you: You may think that the field of e-commerce has become very crowded and that there are dozens and hundreds of stores in every field, but the truth is that this is not true at all.
Continuous profit: You can profit from e-commerce while you are sleeping, on vacation, or traveling outside the country, e-commerce = great freedom in terms of profit.
You are your own boss: You can work whenever you want and from wherever you want, and you don't have a boss to control you.
You learn a lot of important skills (especially digital ones): During your journey of building your e-commerce store, you will be able to learn a lot of skills that will benefit you and strengthen your potential in the labor market.

The Ultimate Guide to Starting an E-Commerce Business in 2023

In fact, nothing, you just need to have the idea and the right mindset to learn and develop and the ability to correct mistakes and improve, this is the most important thing you need.

It may also benefit you to have a capital at the beginning, but if you don't have one, there are other ways that may suit you with very simple costs to help you get started.

In general, whether in life or in work, the most important thing you can have is the desire, perseverance, and learning. If you have these three, you will succeed in anything you do.

Steps to Start an E-Commerce Business

In this part of the article, we will provide you with the 8 practical steps you need to start a successful e-commerce business.

Pay close attention and bring a pen and paper to record all notes and responses related to each of the 8 following points:

1: Finding the right business model

A successful project = a successful business model, and this also applies to an e-commerce project.

The business model is the foundation of the entire process, and on its basis, all the details and the following eight points are determined.

Some of the most popular business models that can be followed in the world of business and trade are:

B2B (Business to Business): In which the sale is made from company to company, and it is a matter of selling services and goods directly between companies and each other in large quantities and on a regular basis in most cases.
B2C (Business to Consumer): This is the most common model in any e-commerce project, and it is a matter of selling products and services from companies or stores to individuals or consumers directly.
C2C (Consumer to Consumer): This is a model in which users sell products to each other through an intermediary platform such as Etsy and eBay.
C2B (Consumer to Business): A rare and unpopular model at all in which users provide services to companies, and it is often associated with freelance work and websites such as Upwork and Freelancer, among others.

2: Choosing the product

After you have chosen the business model for your store and have determined most of the features of your project, you now need to choose the products you will sell.

It is likely that since you opened this article in the first place, there is a product or several products that you are considering selling, but before you make this decision, you need to consider some factors.

These factors will ensure that you do not encounter any problems in the future, and they are:

The product has an audience: Coming up with a new and innovative product idea is great, but it is not practical in most cases. In contrast to the product that already has an audience that knows it and buys it on a regular basis, the risk and cost will be much higher.
The product is not seasonal: You need to make sure that you will be able to sell the product throughout the year and not just for a short period of time during one of the occasions, events, movies, or trends. The product you are looking for is one that there is always a demand for.
The product fits your budget: No matter what product you sell, you will need to provide it in large quantities, which may not fit your budget in the beginning. Therefore, you need to look carefully at your budget. For example, do not open an iPhone store in this way, and you can barely buy two or three phones.
The product is within your expertise: This point is not as necessary as the previous points, but it greatly increases the chances of success of your online store. The closer you are to the target market, the better you will know how to attract its customers.

3: Finding a source for the product

In most cases, you will need a supplier. Whether you are offering a product or a service, you will need someone to provide it in large quantities.

Either you will import goods from a supplier such as those on the Alibaba website, for example, or if you are offering a service or digital product, then freelancers will be the suppliers in that case.

After reaching a number of good and reliable suppliers, you need to know the prices and shipping methods. Request a sample to make sure of the quality of what they offer.

Then choose the most suitable for you, and of course you will use the same criteria with freelancers if you are offering a digital service or product to you.

There are some business models that do not require all of these steps, such as dropshipping, in which you hunt customers and take a percentage on them while the supplier or the other party does all the work and tasks.

The last choice you can choose is to manufacture your own products, and this model is very effective in cases such as handicrafts.

4: Market research, competitor analysis, and target audience

Market research and competitor analysis are essential factors for the success of any e-commerce business, or any business in general. It is one of the important steps that you should not skip.

We need to clarify something important at the beginning, which is that the existence of a highly competitive market does not mean that you are late or that you will not be able to sell in it, but it means that this market already has a large audience that you can make a lot of profits from if you take the right steps.

Therefore, do not let the market and the high competition prevent you from starting in a specific field and turning to another market with less competition.

At the same time, do not start in markets that are dominated by large brands, as you are most likely not at this level yet in your early stages.

After you choose the product you will sell, you will of course be aware of the most consuming categories for it, whether they are age, social, or other.

Based on this, you will determine all the details of the product, starting from its shape and price, to its marketing methods and platforms, which we will discuss in the following points.

In this stage, you also study the most important competitors for you who sell the same products or similar products, for the purpose of learning from them and then excelling them by distinguishing yourself from them.

This distinction can be the result of competitor analysis in the product itself, marketing, shipping and payment methods, or even price and other competitive points.

Finally, do not forget to accurately define your target customer, because any mistake in this will have very serious consequences for your project.

Make Money with Ecommerce

5: Legal and tax procedures

Do not listen to any advice that advises you to cheat on the law, sooner or later you will get into big problems because of this, and this is the summary of the experience of many who thought they were smart and tried to cheat on the law.

Know well all the necessary legal and tax details in your country, even if you have to resort to a lawyer or a legal expert.

Allocate a period to search for all the procedures that you must do, and start in them one after the other in conjunction with the rest of the steps, and you will thank me later.

6: Defining the details of your e-commerce project

There are key details for any e-commerce project, and you will need to define them from the start to ensure your success and achieve the best results and sales without going through periods of failure and confusion in the beginning. These details are:

a) Payment methods and means

One of the most important of these details is payment methods and means, as there are many payment methods that vary depending on the product, customer, and country.

Therefore, you need to think carefully and put yourself in the shoes of your target customer in order to choose the appropriate payment methods.

Also, one of the most important of these details is shipping and delivery methods, as perhaps everything is correct and accurate, but relying on the wrong shipping method may ruin the whole thing.

b) Pricing and profit margin

Pricing is always at the forefront of thinking about opening an e-commerce business, and it is a big detail that can either make or break any e-commerce business.

Although it may seem a little difficult at first, it is actually not that difficult. All you have to do is look at the prices of your competitors, and set your prices in the same range, while making sure to achieve a reasonable profit margin.

Be careful here not to fall into the most common mistake of beginners, which is to lower prices in order to attract customers, as it often does not end in good results at all.

Try to play on all the other competitive points and make the price your last card, because it is a very big risk.

c) Marketing methods

Marketing is one of the most important factors in the sales process in general, whether in the traditional or online format. Therefore, you need to make it a top priority when selling.

There are many ways to market your online store, each with a different cost and target audience. You can use email, social media, Google ads, or even influencer marketing.

We will dedicate a full step later on for marketing, in which we will cover all the details you will need to know.

d) Market gaps

One of the most important things you need to study is the weaknesses of the market, and the aspects that can make you stand out from other stores in the eyes of customers, which can generate you a lot of purchases.

These gaps can be in price, shipping methods, marketing tools, or even difficulty in communication and returns, etc.

Here you need to exploit the gaps of your competitors and use them in the marketing process, as we discussed in the market and competitors research point, in order to surpass them.

e) Name and brand

When I hear the word e-commerce, specific store names come to mind. I think the same thing happens to you or anyone who buys through the internet.

The secret to the entrenchment of these commercial entities - small or large - in our minds is because of their strong brand or brand.

That's what you need to do as well. You need to choose an attractive name for your store, along with designs that match what is being sold in this store and what the audience that uses it prefers, and a professional and attractive user experience.

However, if your budget does not allow you to do that point perfectly, do not let that stop you from continuing to build the store and then developing that aspect in the future.

7: Designing the online store

In addition to the previous points, now you will have to take another step before starting selling and receiving profits, which is the step of designing the store.

The look of your store is considered to be the interface that people look at before looking at the products, and the first impression about your brand is built on it. Do not neglect it in any way.

The store design will revolve primarily around the target audience, as mentioned earlier. According to age group, product tone, brand, and most competitor designs, try to reach the most appropriate design.

In fact, unlike everything we mentioned before, this is considered one of the easiest and fastest steps you will take. You will not necessarily need to hire a design expert to create the website for you.

Rather, there are many platforms that offer you the ability to create a store by dragging and dropping and without any prior experience, such as Shopify.

Of course, if you have a big budget and want to hire a professional to design a WordPress website, this option is still available to you and you will find many of them on freelance sites like Fiverr and others.

And if you have decided to sell on a platform like Amazon or Noon or others, you won't have to worry about that at all.

8: Start Marketing

Once your store is ready, you can now work on attracting customers and generating revenue. But to do that, you need to market it.

No matter your choices in the previous steps, you will need a strong digital marketing strategy to achieve the results you aspire to. There are many channels and methods you can choose from.

Each method and channel has its own advantages, disadvantages, and costs. You can choose between them based on the nature of your project. They are:

Social media: Just having a presence on social media increases the chances of being seen by potential customers, which contributes to increasing your sales.
Influencer marketing: One of the best marketing methods for e-commerce, as it is a guaranteed way to attract customers. You target them through someone they trust and rely on. However, one of the disadvantages of this method is that it can be expensive compared to other methods.
Email marketing: A highly effective method, especially in getting customers who have already bought to buy again by constantly sending the latest news and offers via email. It is a very easy-to-implement method, and there are many tools available for it, such as Mailchimp.
Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is one of the best and most beneficial ways to succeed in e-commerce, by using the correct keywords that potential customers are searching for. The goal of this is to appear in the results or the first page of their search results. You will find a lot of information and articles about SEO on the internet.
Paid advertising: The most classic way to sell online, which is usually used by stores of all sizes. It is simply to create a paid ad on Google or any social media site to make your product more visible to users.

Conclusion

Starting an e-commerce business is much easier than you imagine and does not require complex steps as many people imagine. If you follow the right steps, you can launch your store in a few days at most.

In this article, we help you start your business and provide you with all the information and steps you need to make it successful.

In the end of the article, we hope you have benefited and enjoyed it. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

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Article sources :

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Image from : [pexels.com].

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How to Make Money with Ecommerce: Easy Steps for Beginners