How much time will I need to spend per week managing my ecommerce store?

[letthemsurf]

Hi everyone

I know this is a how long is a piece of a string type question but bear with me.

I predict I'll make close to nothing in year 1 of running my store. I need some income in that first year and do quite while doing as a growth marketing consultant. Can I get by on spending 20 hours per week on the store?

The store:

• 1 product that's sold on subscription. A couple of different packaging/quantity SKUs but essentially 1 product.
• It has a shelf life and the MOQ is reasonably high so I can't just chill out and take the sales as they come. I'm also using a 3rd party logistics company so incur costs for having product in storage (although these are not substantial).
• 2 suppliers. One for the product itself and one for the packaging. Product supplier sends it to packaging supplier. Packaging supplier sends it to 3rd party logistics company who pick, pack, and ship it.
• Goal is to do $60k gross in year 1
• I'll spend $1k - $1.5k p/month on a part-time person to manage support, returns etc. Estimate these will be lower than avg due to the fact it's a subscription product so as time goes on a growing % of sales are made by existing customers.
• I have a lot of experience in online marketing, websites etc. (although limited in ecomm). I'll hire a freelancer to make any major updates to the site but will do smaller ones myself. I'll do all of the digital marketing.
• So I would have 20 hours weekly to handle marketing and logistics.

Does this seem feasible?

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

20 hours a week = 3 hours a day, it seems reasonable, based on the info u provided.

 

[biophase]

I don’t understand why you are even asking this question. So you’ve got one product on subscription and you predict that you will do $60,000 a year in sales. So that is $5000 in sales a month. Which is about $167 in sales per day.

Now I’m just going to make the assumption that your product is $16.70 to make it easy. That is 10 sales per day. If your product cost $33 then it’s only five sales a day. Also being on subscription you would have an idea of how many sales are coming down the pipe in future days so you can pre-pack your orders a few days before.

If this is the case why do you need to hire some third-party to ship it? Why do you have to hire somebody else for $1500 a month?

Can you not handle all of this yourself and still work your regular job?

To me, this is an odd question to ask how much you have to work on a brand new business that you have just created. My answer to you would be work as many hours as you have to to get this business off the ground.

 

[letthemsurf]

I don’t understand why you are even asking this question. So you’ve got one product on subscription and you predict that you will do $60,000 a year in sales. So that is $5000 in sales a month. Which is about $167 in sales per day.

Now I’m just going to make the assumption that your product is $16.70 to make it easy. That is 10 sales per day. If your product cost $33 then it’s only five sales a day. Also being on subscription you would have an idea of how many sales are coming down the pipe in future days so you can pre-pack your orders a few days before.

If this is the case why do you need to hire some third-party to ship it? Why do you have to hire somebody else for $1500 a month?

Can you not handle all of this yourself and still work your regular job?

To me, this is an odd question to ask how much you have to work on a brand new business that you have just created. My answer to you would be work as many hours as you have to to get this business off the ground.

Thanks for the response. I don't live in the market I am selling in to, so its cheaper (as well as easier) to have a 3rd party do the shipping.

I have a family to support. I'll have to invest some savings to start the business. I can't give all of my time to this so I'd like to know the feasibility of being successful on limited time. I know nobody can say definitively one way or the other but would be good to hear others experiences of starting an ecomm business.

 

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