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Don’t Bother Me with Those Fees!

You find a hot niche for your eCommerce business. You spend a few months to get your business set up. Then, you discover all the various fees you get hit with. No one told you about them when they sold you on starting up this type of business. Suddenly, that hot niche that you thought was going to bring profit margins of 25% has shriveled to a measly 10%.

Know your fees before getting started. You can easily contact suppliers and ask them what fees they will charge. For instance, many suppliers will drop ship for you but they charge you hefty fees. If you don’t ask, they won’t necessarily volunteer that information. These fees can seri-ously eat into your profits.

Unfortunately, you will come across fees while doing business that may not be apparent when at the research stage. If you want to sell on places such as eBay and Amazon, they will charge you listing fees. So, make sure you know what these are before embarking on your business.

Shipping fees are a big factor when running an eCommerce business. Some sellers overinflate their shipping costs to make up for low-profit margins on the products they sell. This can be seen by customers as de-ceptive. They are being enticed by a low price for the product and then get slammed with a huge shipping cost. If you partake in this practice, your customers will complain and you won’t get repeat sales.

Vendors don’t always make their shipping costs known. You need to make sure you ask questions of them to know exactly how much they are going to charge. Usually, when you buy in bulk, you should be able to save some money on the overall shipping costs. But, you will then be responsi-ble for shipping to your customer. You will need to negotiate rates with carriers to keep these costs down.

If you get your products from other countries, you will need to deal with international shipping nuances as well as fees associated with govern-ments and funding institutions. This can complicate the process and cause you to lose much of your profits.

After all of this, you need to make sure you consider taxes. More states are jumping on the bandwagon of charging sales tax even if the items are sold online. It’s been a contentious issue but one you still need to factor in. Do not forget about paying any other taxes you may be responsible for, as well.

Finding a Mentor to Find Your Niche

Niche selection is one of the most important aspects of succeeding in an eCommerce business. Why leave this to chance? The wrong selection can leave you trying to sell products that no one buys. Also, you may find a hot seller but the margins are so thin you will struggle to make any prof-its over the long run.

Hiring someone who has successfully taken on eCommerce projects can be a wise choice. But, there are many who will tout themselves as ex-perts but have little to no experience. Worse, you find your fair share of scammers as well. When you make your considerations for a candidate, ask many questions. Do a lot of research online to find profiles of success-ful people.

When choosing a mentor, ask what kinds of guarantees they offer. If they are experienced, this should not be an issue with them. If it is, simply move on and find someone else. You don’t want to deal with a situation where they offer you low-quality advice which produces bad results. They should know all the necessary components of your eCommerce business. Ask them to produce a plan before you agree to work with them. If it seems like it makes sense, then you can proceed with them.

Don’t be afraid to spend some money when doing this. In fact, paying more will save you in headaches and prevent you from wasting money. If you find people who are willing to mentor you for low dollar amounts, this could be a sign of inexperience or incompetence. eCommerce is a hot ticket item so good mentors are going to command high rates. You need to accept that if you want to work with a quality mentor, it’s going to cost some money.

Ask them for examples of what kinds of projects they have worked on in the past. While it is easy for people to pass off any website as one in which they claim they worked on, let them explain to you in detail how they set it up. Ideally, you want someone who has their own eCommerce set up and is still profiting from it. It’s okay if they had one and sold it for a decent price. But, try to see if they can prove the sale. That’s not al-ways easy to ascertain.

Make sure you have a way of measuring the success of your mentor. Work with him or her to come up with a set of deliverables that can help you keep on track.

Found a Hot Niche? Test the Waters First

You’ve run the numbers. Everything points to a particular niche that you feel will make great money. You contact suppliers, and they want you to order in bulk. That’s how it works. Even though you like the information you saw on the niche, you’re a bit skittish about ordering that much prod-uct. If it doesn’t pan out, you’re stuck with loads of it in your warehouse.

Instead of going down this road, why not test the waters first? What if you could order a few products and see if there is a market for them? There are several ways to accomplish this.

First, go further with your research and see what kinds of sales are hap-pening on eBay. They have a completed listings feature that allows you to see which listings actually sold and for how much money. This is the bare bones minimum you should do before ordering any products. Amazon also gives selling numbers which can be derived from a product’s sales rank. The lower the rank, the better (towards #1, etc.) After you complete this step, the next step is to buy the product at re-tail, if it’s available. Sell it for close to that number to find out how well it will sell. It’s one thing to analyze numbers reported online. It’s entirely different to measure actual sales from your own efforts. You aren’t ex-pecting to make any money when you do this. You’re only looking to scout out potential sales.

When you find a product that passes the first two tests, the next step is to reach out to the manufacturer and see if they are willing to drop ship the item. Drop shipping is a concept where you are responsible for taking the orders, but the vendor is willing to ship the orders on your behalf. It gives you the ability to sell while not having to take on a bunch of prod-ucts in your warehouse. Some products will do well with drop shipping, and you may choose to continue with this paradigm.

After you find a hot selling item, you can then choose to take on more product and buy in bulk from a distributor or the manufacturer. By using these techniques to get a feel for the “hotness” of the market, you won’t have to dish out a chunk of money until you have a strong indication that it’s going to sell well for you.

Helpful Resources for Your E-commerce Niche

It can be overwhelming to start an e-commerce business. There are many facets of the business, and it is constantly changing. While the resources on this page are subject to change, they can help point you in the right direction.

Amazon.com

Sellers should always start any search on Amazon. Even if you have no in-tention of using Amazon, the information you can gather from them is priceless. They are, after all, the industry leader in online selling. You can also use them to sell. They have a program called Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) where you can send your products to their warehouse along with shipping materials, and they will take care of the selling for you. They also handle the order and payment processing as well as returns by customers.

eBay.com

Although eBay has lost some of its appeal, there are still a huge number of buyers and sellers. They have shifted the focus away from auctions (although they still exist) to selling direct. They too can give great insight of what is selling online.

Shopify.com

If you decide to handle your own fulfillment, you are going to need a shopping cart solution. Shopify is one of the fastest growing companies in this segment. They offer a complete solution including the look and feel for your web presence, as well as its own payment processor. They also have great online resources and a team of experts who can help you at every stage of your e-commerce venture. They help you incorporate so-cial media into your solution.

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A Fantastic Method of Engaging on Insta-gram

Of all the methods that will help your business, this one will rise above. It is something people have been doing for many years (even before the in-ternet) and it continues to work due to the excitement factor. This method is to hold a contest on Instagram.

The best kind of prize to give out is your product. This is because people will associate the contest with your product and will make that connec-tion whenever you hold these contests. It can also get people who would not normally be buyers of your product to give it a shot.

Contests are a great way for brands to go viral. People share them like crazy. How cool would you be if you let ten friends in on a contest for a great prize? This is how people think when they share. They want to be the one who initially shared. They become the trendsetter among the group of friends.

What kind of contest should you run? That depends on what your objec-tives are, but one great contest to hold is to ask customers to upload pho-tos to Instagram of them using your product. This alone can get people in-terested in buying. However, if the prize is the product itself, you may want to choose something different. A popular alternative is to use acces-sories for the product.

If you don’t have a decent prize to give away, reach out to other vendors who may have something good to offer. They give you the product in ex-change for good PR for their product. You can mention their company as being the sponsor or you can let their product speak for itself. It all de-pends on the agreement you have. It’s probably best to choose vendors with similar products to yours or at least products that compliment your products.

Make sure that you follow all local laws regarding contests. The laws have become stringent and not following them could lead to serious fines. For instance, you may have to allow entry into the contest for free and spec-ify no purchase necessary. Of course, this may negate the strategy of get-ting them to buy your product to participate in the contest.

Use your imagination. You will find a way to incorporate contests. When you do, you should be able to increase sales of your product or get people on your mailing list. If nothing else, you will be able to increase your fol-lowing on Instagram.

A Thousand Pictures Are Worth How Many Words?

Instagram is all about pictures, images, or graphics, whatever you want to call them. You need great pictures to share to the platform. Mediocre pictures may still get shared. But, it’s an uphill battle.

It’s up to you whether you want to employ a professional photographer or do it yourself. Granted, a pro is going to be expensive. You don’t want to skimp on the quality or the experience. Too many people think they are getting a deal by using inexperienced photographers, but you get what you pay for.

It’s your business and Instagram for business is only going to get more competitive. Most of your competition won’t be using pro photographers, so you can consider that a competitive edge should you go that route.

If you do want to do everything yourself, make sure you set it up in a strategic manner. In other words, don’t post images whenever the muse strikes. Have a plan of many images and fit them in a way that makes sense to your brand. If you are planning a new product or service release, get the images ready to be released before that release date.

The graphics don’t have to be the highest quality available. In fact, most people are going to view on their smart devices and many won’t have high-end equipment. The web supports only a certain level of quality any-way. So, spending too much time on the highest possible quality pictures is probably a waste of time.

However, don’t skimp on quality. If your pictures are pixelated or they don’t present well on an average smart device, people won’t take you se-riously. Once you lose these people, it’s difficult getting them back. One person gone means dozens of people they won’t share your content with.

Those dozens will each have their own dozens, etc. This is not a good sit-uation for businesses to find themselves in.

Consider finding an average quality device to test out the images you plan on posting. You should be able to pick up a cheap device on eBay or Craigslist.org. There are simulators that you can find online as well that can be sufficient for this purpose. You may believe that everyone has the highest-quality phones but that simply is not the case. For this reason, you want to appeal to the lowest common denominator of quality.

Whichever means you decide to create your photos, they need to be com-pelling enough to be shared and then shared again. Otherwise, you are going to put in serious effort and it won't produce the benefits you had hoped.