From our young age, we have been advised that to be successful in life, you must have a good degree. Most of us spend 12 years in school, then four more as undergrads. Some of us go even further with postgraduate and doctorate degrees. We spend thousands of dollars on education, and when it comes to taking the 9 to 5 working world by storm, we have no experience and have to start from the bottom.
While this is the case for many individuals in our society, more and more people are starting to figure out that it doesn’t have to be this way. There are plenty of ways to make a good living without a college degree. One of the most rapidly growing careers right now is the world of ecommerce.
One of the best things about ecommerce is that you don’t need certifications or qualifications. It is among the good paying jobs without a college degree in our modern world. ecommerce allows you to comfortably start your own business where you have the potential to be successful without spending years of your life and thousands of your dollars on a fancy degree.
In ecommerce, you rely on your ingenuity, hard work, motivation, and resilience. Anyone can start an ecommerce business if they have a few essentials.
What are those essentials?
It includes a product or service, place, payment method, and marketing strategy to attract customers and earn profits.
What is ecommerce?
Before beginning a career in ecommerce, you need to know what it is.
ecommerce stands for electronic commerce.
In layman’s terms, it is nothing but selling a product or service online.
In recent years, the growth of the ecommerce business has been exponential.
The latest stats show that, in 2021, ecommerce sales worldwide amounted to approximately 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars. This figure is expected to reach around 7.4 trillion dollars by 2025.
Also See: Ecommerce SEO Checklist
Starting small, medium, and large businesses and even freelancers have benefited from ecommerce.
A customer can discover a product or service easily online, purchasing it anytime from almost any part of the world.
Ecommerce is the fastest-growing retail market. According to Insider Intelligence (2022), ecommerce sales are expected to generate over $1 trillion in the U.S. alone and over $5 trillion worldwide by the end of 2022.
There are several best ecommerce platforms for SEO that you can choose to launch your store.
With ecommerce being electronic, you have a global market. This multiplies your target audience exponentially. You can also choose who your customers are and define how to target them. With your store being online, you are open 24/7 and 365 days a year.
Your customers can purchase from you all day and any day. Once you have a dedicated team working on managing your inventories, packing, and shipping, you can operate from anywhere if you have an internet connection. Regarding ecommerce, you make lower investments and can reduce your costs compared to a physical store.
Products and Services
To run an ecommerce store, you need a product or service. You can make it yourself or buy it in bulk and retail.
But, you should know who you’re selling to make your business thrive.
Your product or service has to be unique. Finding your niche in the ecommerce world is vital because you don’t want to sell something accessible everywhere else. If you fail to do it, you will have to fight with more competition, and your chances of sales will also be reduced.
Think of a product or service idea that solves your customer’s problem. If your business can make their life easy, people will love your business and keep paying you for it.
Finally, consider pricing. You may price lower than your competitor to capture your audience’s attention. But, remember, reducing the cost too much can affect profitability, whereas overpricing can keep your customer’s away. So be cautious. Consider your production cost, distribution cost and other factors while fixing the price.
Also See: Best Ecommerce Marketing Strategies
Where to Sell
Choose a place – where your audience is present – to sell.
Since ecommerce is selling online, it is not necessary to have a physical brick-and-mortar store.
Either you need a website or an ecommerce platform to sell your products. You can build your website using developers’ support, CMS (Content Management System) software, or explore modern solutions like headless ecommerce platforms that offer greater flexibility and customization options.
CMSs enable you to create, edit, and manage your website without technical knowledge. WordPress, Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce are just a few examples of CMS.
Also: Powerful Ecommerce Automation Tools
Beginners generally start here as opposed to building their own website. As you gain more traffic, moving to a website will have far-reaching benefits for your business.
When choosing a CMS platform, here are some factors to keep in mind:
- Pricing
- Scalability
- Flexibility
- Ease of use
Remember, in ecommerce, your website is your physical shop. It is the place where your audience comes to interact and purchase from you. So, keep your website user-friendly and mobile-friendly to deliver a great user experience.
Also See: How To Do WordPress SEO
Also, if your ecommerce store sells products, tie up with a reliable shipping company to ensure your products are delivered safely and efficiently.
Processing Payments
The next big thing to look after is the payment processing methods.
Since your customers will be paying online, you have to ensure the safety and security of the transaction.
So, check your payment provider’s credibility and trustworthiness because, after all, they are the ones who will be handling your income.
Also, ensure that your payment method should be compatible. If you’re running an ecommerce store targeting the world market, then your payment tool must accept payments from different countries and their currencies. Before picking one, check its features, benefits, and customer testimonials.
Also See: Small Business Ecommerce Trends To Watch
Stripe and PayPal are commonly used payment methods that are highly recommended. Look into it and decide the best fit for you and your business.
Media Marketing
Lastly, you’ll need a good media marketing strategy if you’re running an online store. The reality may sound harsh, but if you don’t attract customers to your online store, you aren’t going to make any sales. This is unlike having a physical storefront where people may just stumble upon it.
You have to drive your customers into your online store. This area tends to be the most difficult to achieve and requires a lot of work. Observe the analytics to see what works and doesn’t to revise the strategy.
Also See: How To Keep A Good Reputation In The Media
The most important and invaluable thing any business needs is people. Whether it’s customers, suppliers, clients, investors, or employees, people are what allow businesses to run. If you crave your business to prosper, you must make sure a wide spread of people know about it, and the best way to do that is through advertising. You can digitally advertise your ecommerce business almost anywhere online.
Take advantage of the reachability and advertising potential of as many online platforms as you can manage because the more people it reaches, the greater the likelihood people will want to get involved.
Website
Having a good website could be monumental in creating traffic for your business. Today, over 4.8 million people use the internet. That is a very large demographic, and the pool of people your business could potentially attract is seemingly limitless.
Also See: How To Create A Website With WordPress
Not all websites get pushed by Google, and if you want the highest possible traffic on your page, it would be smart to get Google involved. The best way to do that is by submitting your site to Google, making sure Google can index your website, as well as linking your website to the UCI Directory.
Once you have your website, you want to clearly describe your business and make sure you regularly update it. Make it pleasing to look at. Have a neat and pleasant layout and presentation. Pick a font that’s easy to read, don’t overcrowd each page with too many words, and have pictures. Format it in a way that is obvious and easy to use and understand.
Also See: Best Website Builders
Email is one of the highly successful and powerful tools to keep your audience engaged. Having your customers sign up to a mailing list is a great way to keep them updated and engage in your business. While sending emails, don’t overwhelm your users with too much information; find a balance.
Also See: Best Email Marketing Companies
Build your email list. To do that, use some great, affordable tools to manage your email contacts list, segment, customize, create, edit, and manage multiple email templates, as well as detailed access reports on the effectiveness of each campaign. Some useful recommendations for email marketing are MailChimp and Klaviyo.
Also See: Free Email Marketing Software
Social Media
Having a website is a great start. However, if you want to reach as many people as possible, social media has become the number one way to do that. Currently, there are over 3.6 billion active users on social media worldwide, most of which consume large amounts of new content daily.
Also See: Top Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Instagram and Facebook are highly effective social media platforms for kickstarting ecommerce businesses. But don’t limit yourself, Platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat also have a far reach, and they each have their own demographics that they cater towards.
Most social media platforms today are littered with constant ads. Let your business be part of that by getting social media platforms to push your ads. Let them grab people’s attention by making them colourful, bold, short, straightforward, and easy to understand. Post images of QR codes (generated via a QR code generator) leading the audience to product pages directly from social media posts.
Instagram has approximately one billion active users, most young people between the ages of 16 and 30. If your business is looking primarily for middle-aged or older people, Facebook is probably more effective. If you look at young adults, however, most of them are on Instagram, with 90% being under age 35. With the rapid rise of targeted advertising, Instagram has collected over one million monthly active advertisers.
Also See: How To Gain More Instagram Followers
Facebook advertising has gotten hugely popular due to the mass amounts of people on it. There are about 2.8 billion active users on Facebook every month. That is a very large audience. Another advantage is a large number of targeted ads Facebook pushes. They draw in nearly 10 million active advertisers quarterly, so it is safe to say it is a highly effective strategy to advertise on Facebook.
Good Luck!
While it is understandable to be intimidated by mediating from the established model of how to reach success, it is important to know that there is another option. Success doesn’t only look one way, and ecommerce proves that point. At first, you might feel clueless, as you’re like a tiny fish in an ocean competing with giants, such as Amazon. Remember that you are not competing with them and that ecommerce is a big playground where anyone can play.
You have plenty of time and opportunity to grow, and the best part is that if one idea fails, you can always keep innovating until something sticks. You can do it part-time while getting a marketing or business degree. You can do it full-time and dedicate your energy to creating your own success. The options are endless, and the rewards can be very impressive. Your success with ecommerce is within everyone’s reach with dedication and a good idea. Good luck!
