There are a lot of people that run amazingly successful eCommerce businesses from their homes—with minimum overheads and maximum profits. Running your own eCommerce business can be flexible enough that you can run it alongside your current employment, university course, or other family commitments. It can be kept very much as a paying hobby or allowed to grow into your dream career, with just a few simple tools at your fingertips.
If you are considering setting up an eCommerce business at home, here is a guide on the resources that you will need.
1. The correct tech
For those who like to go old school, you will probably want a computer or laptop. However, you do not necessarily need to have one. Indeed, a normal cell phone with a camera could be your entire office in your hand. Put it this way—you will need to take photographs and access the internet, and you’ll need a piece of tech to type your listings onto your sales page.
2. A platform to sell from
Although you can sell from your own website, you will find that you’ll get more—and quicker—sales from using platforms such as eBay or Amazon. This is because it is very likely that your target market is already shopping there, and for most customers, these kinds of platforms are their firstpoint of call rather than searching on the internet for websites that provide the products that they want to purchase.
3. Professional help
However, to make your selling pages work even harder for you, and to obtain the maximum number of orders, you are going to need the help of professionals. For instance, nuancedmedia.com is the website of a marketing agency that specializes in platforms such as Amazon. This is because they are experts in marketing and strategy, as well as many other useful business growth areas.
4. Products to sell
Of course, this all means nothing if you do not have any products to sell. When you research the products you are interested you should also be looking for:
- Customer demand
- Supply quantity and accessibility
- The price for both you and your customers
- The cost of shipping
- Your profit margin
If a product has low demand (or none at all) you may be far better off looking at another product. Equally, if the product has high demand but very little profit margin, again you may do better initially if you look for an alternative. This is because it is your profit margin that you will keep in your pocket, not the sale price.
Final thoughts
As you can see, you need very little in the way of tech or room if you want to start an eCommerce business at home (unless you are looking at selling large items that you will need to keep in your home—sometimes under these circumstances it is a good idea to look for dropshipping sales techniques or storage unit rental).
Although you can set up a website and sell your items independently it is faster to use a platform that is already set up. Moreover, you are likely to see faster profits and increased sales volumes by using the skills and experience of professional marketers who know the platform and selling strategies inside out.
