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Sharing my experience so far with e-commerce

Ask me anything!

Nomad

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I haven't been around here for some time, but I learnt a lot from reading the threads here and I'd like to offer something back to the community.

First of all, a couple of disclaimers. I deliberately haven't chosen a clickbait title and I haven't quit my job or done anything crazy. That said, the ecommerce business that co-founded with my brother two years ago (our first ever business) is still growing and picking up traction. I think that there are a lot of really good threads here that might seem 'far out' to someone just starting out (from their insane success), so maybe this thread can fill the gap 'in between' from having nothing to having a wildly successful business.

I'm happy to answer questions on pretty much anything but I won't reveal my niche or my website.

Some background to the story... My brother worked in a shop and there was a particular product that used to always be out of stock and seemed to be in decent demand. We spoke one day about it and had the idea of setting up some kind of store selling this item to see what happens.

After doing some research online on sites like Alibaba, we found a few suppliers from China and negotiated with them (as per some of the threads on here). We got a some samples in and threw them onto a basic ecommerce website, and after making some sales we decided to increase inventory and keep the process going. We do still reinvest the majority of the money, but we have both gained an incredible amount of experience in running a business and all avenues within it. Even if this business were to fail, the education we have both gained is priceless.

We used to get about 4 orders a month when we first started and we are doing 50-60 on average now. There are a lot of things I would do differently than when I first started, but I put these down to lessons learned.

Hopefully I can share this experience with you guys here and help out! Does anyone have any questions?
 
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motosnipe

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I love reading this forum for this reason. I am determined to make this year mine. My biggest hurdle is finding something I can do with the limited funds I have, and feeling secure enough to still provide for my family. I've only read a little bit about eCommerce, but it definitely seems like something that I could work with. Especially now that I just lost my job last Friday, that pushed me even more to want to pursue something.

Good luck in your travels, I wish the best to you and your brother.
 

Evil_Jester

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What traffic sources works for you?
Would you try any built-in traffic sites like amazon or ebay?
 

Nomad

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What traffic sources works for you?
Would you try any built-in traffic sites like amazon or ebay?
So far the main source of traffic to the store is via Google Adwords. I do some SEO work in tandem, but getting instant traffic without waiting months to rank is better. I usually create a couple of ads per ad group, run them for about two weeks then check back and cut the underperforming ones.

People have a lot of success using Amazon and eBay but I haven't tried them myself yet. I may try Amazon in the future, but eBay is not something I want to consider. People are selling similar products at prices where I can't understand how they make a profit, and that is not a market that I want to compete in. With our website, we are competing with our own brand, instead of a generic list of products sorted by price.
 
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