Want to earn more on the side, but not quite ready to quit your day job yet? Ecommerce is a great way to start your entrepreneurial journey because it’s low-cost and low-risk. It can also get going fairly quickly, and be less hands-on than a second job. Here is all you need to know to go from ecommerce newbie to ecommerce entrepreneur in a day. The hardest part of ecommerce side hustles is just getting started, so start today and get one step closer to being in a better place economically.
What is an ecommerce store? According to Shopify, it is a digital space in which customers transfer money (and data) in exchange for goods or services. This begs the question, what should you sell? To find what you should be selling online in the ecommerce marketplace, do a keyword search. This is probably one of the most important tasks of the day, and the one you should start with.
Keyword research will not only tell you what products to stock and what product categories to include, but it will also help you suss out the competition and size up your intended niche. If you start broad and home in, you are able to explore different keyword avenues to make sure you’re covering all bases. Save all your data in spreadsheets and use data filtering to help you manage keyword variants. Also, be sure to make a list of all the keywords you need to use in your title tags and on your product and category pages and have it open when you write.
Product development and working with suppliers can take a pretty big amount of time up, so why not start with drop shipping instead? Drop shipping means that you only handle the sales side of the bargain – leaving the order fulfilment to someone else. This means you don’t have to handle product and can be much more flexible to do your full-time job. To start, you will need to find a supplier who matches your criteria. The best option is a wholesaler who will allow you to use your own branding to make the whole chain more consistent for the consumer. Go with someone reliable with a good track record. Remember, you’ll be dealing with the fallout on the customer side. As the sales side of this sort of operation, you become the person who hears from customers if things do not go well. You can become a seller on third-party sites like Amazon or eBay and take advantage of retail arbitrage, or have more creative and personal control over your ecommerce site on a platform like Shopify. These sites have great SEO and their product pages rank well, so this could be potentially lucrative if you get the right deals.
Another interesting place to look into is affiliate marketing is another popular niche which is all about commission-based earning. Affiliate marketing is easy to set up as you don’t handle the products yourself, but some affiliate programs don’t offer great commission. The best way to make an impressive profit is to handle as much as you can on your own.
When you’re short on time and energy for a side hustle, be sure to avoid trying to do too much. Adapt processes and paperwork from other stores and merchants and customize them so that they fit in with what you are trying to achieve.
Don’t go and write your terms and conditions, delivery policy and privacy policy all by yourself. What ends up happening is that you will just get needlessly delayed and frustrated. There are loads of policy generator tools and plugins out there that you can tweak and refine. Also, be sure to use competitor research as your launch pad. Make sure not to copy what they are doing, but learn from their achievements and mistakes to form what you are doing in your ecommerce business.
In the end, your side hustle in the ecommerce space may become so profitable that you can make it a full-time gig. For now, focus on doing these things to develop an ecommerce side hustle to bring in extra cash and make a greater living for yourself and others!
Money-Making Side Hustles in Ecommerce. (2022, Apr 27). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/money-making-side-hustles-in-ecommerce/